All posts by oldwarrior632015

Unknown's avatar

About oldwarrior632015

A retired chaplain/pastor who thinks.

Gabby & Brian, Deceased but not Forgotten

Politics and Society, Theology

Why are people so interested in the Gabby Petito case?

Gabby was a petite, relatively attractive as all fit youth are, woman who incidentally was white and who was living the feminist dream. (I mention her ethnicity because it is true that were she of one of the minority ethnicities, say a black or brown one, it would have merited no more than a column inch or two in the local paper. It is sad that the only women valued in our over-sexed culture are young, petite, and white, but that’s just a fact.) Her death, (probably) at the hands of her lover, makes a lie of the myth that a woman can do anything a man can do, and do it safely and without regard or regret. My Body, My Rules only works when you have the muscle to back it up.

The big lie that has infected American women and all others who live in the so-called West, i.e., those nations that are heir to the democratic philosophy that was birthed by Christianity, is that there is no reason to honor and respect the biological and psychological distinctions of the sexes. The idea that God created our race male and female, and endowed these two sexes with distinctives that make their mutual support essential to the survival of the race is treated as an anachronism from the age of dinosaurs. The full weight of opinion makers and government is dedicated to erasing the thought that women are not men’s physical equal, and that they are such to ensure they are available to birth and nurture the next generation as their husbands provide protection from the elements, enemies, and want. Mr. Biden’s social infrastructure trillions are dedicated to making the family unnecessary and to further the idea that men and women do not need each other for the race to survive. Women were not intended by God to be competitors with men but their complement. Women complete men and men complete women in marriage and in community.

So Gabby was out there on the road living the dream. Marriage and family? Who needs it? She was a free spirit spreading her wings. And she was with a man who had the same disdain for this most essential of human relationships that has been passed down to us from the Garden. I don’t know why he (probably) killed her; most likely in a fit of anger over some minor matter. But regardless their mental and emotional state at the moment of her death, what is absolutely true is neither of them honored their created purpose in their relationship. They had built their life together on shifting sand when they needed a life built on the Rock, and in that tempestuous moment her feminist ideals were no match for his brute strength.

I have great sympathy for these now dead young people. They believed the lie. They believed there was no higher authority than their own dreams and desires. Rejecting the family that God had established in Eden, they rejected both his authority and his grace to guide and direct their lives. And they paid the price for that rejection. Theirs, thankfully, is a relatively rare outcome of kicking God to the curb, but no one can do so without cost. Think of all the children slaughtered in the womb. Think of all the children born into fatherless homes. Think of the senseless violence in our communities as feral youth roam our streets raised without the stability of a marriage and without purpose and without hope. Think of women battered by men who need not do better. My list could go on ad nauseam, but the picture is clear: a life lived outside the boundaries established by an all-wise Creator is a life destined to failure, pain, and death – not always in the here, but assuredly in the hereafter.

But back to the initial question: why are people so involved with Gabby’s death? Why are there protesters waving signs outside the home of Brian’s parents? My answer is this: feminist women (mostly) and others with a there-is-no-god-but-me attitude have been hit with the reality that no amount of human laws and institutions can protect a person from the consequences of rejecting God. Laws “protecting” women from the consequences of their lifestyle choices do no such thing and it is illusory to think otherwise.

Is the Family Done and Done?

Politics and Society, Theology

Why did God institute the family? Is the system of father, mother, and offspring the best basic building block (love that alliteration) for a healthy society? Or is it a relic of a patriarchal past? That is the question, the one after, “Is the God who revealed himself in the bible real or is he a leftover of a more primitive past?” that most clearing defines what it means to be human and how we as humans are to organize ourselves to best fit in the world around us.

You have no doubt seen the picture of Mr. Biden’s Transportation Secretary and his fellow sodomite lounging on a hospital bed with the infants they had purchased to be their children. They are the secular ideal of the American family. And this is the family vision that Mr. Biden’s 3.5 trillion-dollar plan is designed to support. Virtually every feature of his “human infrastructure” plan is designed to undermine and subvert the family structure God instituted.

I know it is not a popular thought, but the family structure outlined in Genesis 3 & 4 is the one best suited to build healthy communities and societies. In the God-designed plan, husband and wife have distinct and complementary roles. The man is to labor to put food on the table, clothes on their backs, and a roof over their heads. The woman is to bear the next generation and to raise and nurture those children that they might become responsible adults carrying those roles for future generations. The man is not more important than the woman, nor the woman the man. Their roles, though different, fit together to make a perfect whole and form the basic building block for every system of family, clan, community, state, and nation.

So, what’s wrong with Mr. Biden’s plan? It replaces family with state. In the name of freeing women from the drudgery of raising children, the state will provide subsidized or free infant and childcare so the mother can enjoy the freedom of the office or the warehouse instead of the confinement of the home. Mr. Biden would replace the education of the young child at the feet of its mother for indoctrination by the state in pre-school or early childhood education. Instead of the child receiving and reflecting the teachings of its parents, it will reflect the state-approved principles and practices of a godless secularism.
The state giving a child payment sounds like a good idea, right? Who doesn’t was to see children clothed, fed, and housed! But where’s the father in this formula? Mr. Biden’s plan is designed to make fathers inconsequential at least, and unnecessary to the well-being of their women (I was going to say, “wives,” but marriage with all its responsibilities and pleasurable duties ceases to have value in this plan) and children. By replacing fathers as the primary providers for, and protectors of, their families, it makes men the equivalent of those males in the animal kingdom whose only function is to demonstrate their reproductive benefit by dominating the other males of their species, and to provide sperm to propagate the next generation. We have feral young men in our urban areas (and some rural ones as well) whose only function in life is to dominate through violence and to plant their seed in every receptive womb. They contribute nothing to the family system other than the occasional sperm and nothing to society other than mayhem and murder. But the Biden plan subsidizes this vision of society.

And then the part of Mr. Biden’s plan that “should” be near and dear to my heart: eldercare. Having made the state the primary provider of childcare instead of the family, his plan would make the care of the aged the responsibility of the state as well. Now this does a number of things. First and foremost, it tells adults that they do not need to marry and form families in order to have the time immemorial system where parents provide for their children while they are young, and the children provide for their parents when they are old. No, the state will replace parents for the young, and adult children for the old. Then it is also a great wealth transfer system. Instead of keeping resources at the most elemental level possible, in the family, the Biden scheme transfers wealth from the family to the eldercare industry. His scheme makes it advantageous to put the old into warehouses designed for the purpose and paying for it through taxation. The eldercare and medical industry then enrich the political hierarchy through political contributions and wealth transfers. (How many well-placed politicians leave office poorer than when they entered?) Ultimately it finalizes the breakup of the family by making the family unit subsidiary to the state instead of foundational to it. There is no need of family to support one another. This will all be done by the state, although admittedly, by the prevailing moral standard of the state. It will determine what support is appropriate and to whom it should be given.

Much has been said about the benefits the Biden scheme will confer upon “people of color.” Well, POCs only need the benefits because of the havoc previous Democrat schemes such as Mr. Johnson’s “Great Society” have done to the Black and Brown family. They, and every other family, would benefit far more from policies that reinforce the family of husband, wife, and children, than from policies that demolish the family and create an artificial, overarching state to replace it.

In the Mosaic Law there were instructions on how to deal with mildew infestations of the house. The first step was to thoroughly clean the infested area. If the mildew returned, the portions of the house that were contaminated were to be removed and replaced. Finally, if the restoration process was unsuccessful, the entire house was to be demolished and the rubble discarded away from human habitation. America is infested with progressive “mildew.” If it allowed to spread it will eventually take over the house and the only way to cleanse her of this disease will be to tear it down and build back better.

Today is a “Make Your Decision” day. We can allow Mr. Biden and his team in the Congress force policies upon us that guarantee our eventual decay, decline, and destruction, or we can tell him and his cohorts of chaos that, No, we will maintain the social order established by God and not replace it with the Frankenstein of their creation.

Long live the God-given family!

Decision Points and Waymarks

Politics and Society

October 17, 1982 is a date of near infinite importance in the life of my family and the course of our ministry. Aside from the fact that October 17 was my father’s birthday as well as being the birthday of my oldest sister, October 17 marks the day my wife and I took the first step on the journey of a lifetime – a step, I might add, that set the course for our children and their children to come, and a step that brought us into contact with the lives of thousands of other men and women we would not have otherwise known throughout the intervening years.

On October 17, 1982, I was the pastor of a three-church district located in the mountains of Colorado in the towns of Leadville, Salida, and Fairplay. I don’t think I was a very good pastor although I may be being a little hypercritical of myself; I know I was a discontented one. I was a minister in the Seventh-day Adventist denomination, which, if you don’t know it well, is a denomination with a very episcopal organization, i.e., a highly-organized, top-heavy system of bishops, archbishops, cardinals, and a pope although they call these men (and maybe a few women now) conference, union, division, and general conference presidents. My “bishop” viewed me with suspicion. I was then, as I am now, a questioner and a bit of a contrarian so I can’t really blame him. When he hired me, he told me he thought I was too intelligent to be a successful pastor! (To soften the blow to my pastoral skills just a little, the churches loved the wife and me. It was the bishopric that treated me with disfavor.) Every Saturday morning, I would preach a sermon in Leadville where we lived, have lunch with that congregation and then make the hour+ drive to Salida for an afternoon service there. And then, once a month, instead of Leadville-Salida, it would be Leadville-Fairplay where there was a tiny church of one extended family. Anyway, I was an unhappy and discontented pastor who saw no exit from his discontent. God had called me to be a preacher of his Word, and only God could let me off the hook.

My father had died on October 10 and I had flown out to Oklahoma to be with my sibs and to conduct his funeral. I flew back to Colorado on the 17th and met up with an Army Reserve chaplain in one of the Denver churches. There on the 17th of October, 1982, I raised my right hand, took the oath of office to become a Chaplain (First Lieutenant), United States Army Reserve, and signed the document accepting the commission and pledging my fealty to these United States.

The following summer, I attended the Chaplain Officer Basic Course at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. In a mere six weeks I was transformed from being a civilian to being a fully-qualified Army chaplain! Then on September 15, 1984, my wife, three sons, and I drove from Colorado to Fort Hood, Texas where I became the chaplain for the 1st Battalion, 77th Field Artillery Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division, and my life and the lives of my wife and children were set upon the course for which God had chosen us to travel and a one far different from one I’d have imagined even a few years earlier..

We know little of the futures decisions made early in life determine for us. I chose to enlist in the Naval Reserve in November 1963 as a 17-year-old high school senior. I chose Submarine Division 12-11 to be my drilling unit because it drilled one weekend a month instead of weekly in the evening. I chose to enlist in the Regular Navy while still 17 after graduation. The Navy chose Submarine Sonar as my rate (job) and the USS Darter and Charleston, South Carolina as my first stop after school. Then after many decisions, both good and bad, God tapped me on the shoulder (or slapped me upside the head) and called me to a life with Jesus.

That call to discipleship brought me into a life of service and into 50+ years of marriage. That marriage, besides giving me the stability of a loving wife and a whole lot of fun, gave the world and the church three wonderful Christian men in strong Christian marriages with growing Christian children. And that decision to raise my right hand on the evening of October 17, 1982 took us to places where our sons embraced Christ, to places where they met and married the fabulous women who are now members of my clan and the mothers of the world’s greatest grandchildren, and to the soldiers and churches and families we have been blessed to serve over the years since.

If you are a youth or young adult, know that every choice you make now will determine the course of your life. Every person befriended, every romance, every career choice or educational endeavor, every choice however insignificant it seems now, are what fixes your future happiness and usefulness to the rest of humanity. Remember my October 17 and choose wisely.

When the Foundations Are Destroyed

Politics and Society

Psalm 11:3, “If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?” (ESV)

I am going to apply this text politically, although its intent is primarily spiritual and directed at the Church, and to the politics of the United States specifically. The foundations upon which this nation was established are being intentionally and systematically destroyed. This assault has undoubtedly been on-going since the writing of the Constitution in 1787, but it is accelerating in our time.

Mr. Biden has as his mantra, “Build Back Better.” You see it on the wall behind him when he makes his pitch, or on the chyron streaming below his speeches on CNN. Build back better, hmm? Anyone done a home remodel or renovation? The first step after the planning is demolition. You can’t build back without tearing down. And that is what the so-called progressive movement of which Mr. Biden has the lead is doing. They have planned a radical restructuring of our nation and are now dynamiting the foundations. They are destroying the reputations of our founders and their contributions to our republic. They denigrate the explorers and pioneers who crossed uncharted seas and plains to establish something new on this continent. Yes, there were people already here. And, yes, they saw these locals as people to either be conquered or assimilated. And, no, that is not something unique to our founding; that is what every tribe and nation throughout history has done. A stone age population was replaced with one that was driven by the Enlightenment and the Reformation. The stronger replaced the weaker just as the Romans were replaced by the Germanic tribes that swept the European continent during the early centuries of the Anno Domini. The history of the world is the history of emigration and immigration – a history, I might add, that is being repeated at our southern border today as waves of desperate migrants seek better shores and more favorable opportunities.

Every statue destroyed or holiday renamed is a chipping away at the foundations. Do you not marvel that a statue of Thomas Jefferson is replaced with the image of a drug-addled criminal? Yes, I am saddened that George Floyd died, but he is not a suitable replacement for the writer of The Declaration of Independence. And I have no problem whatsoever with upholding the treaty rights our nation made with the tribal nations with which it warred. But I reject vehemently the denigration of European exploration by pretending the European discovery and colonization of the Americas was a tragedy and disgrace. This was not Eden and its occupants were not Adams. They warred and conquered and killed long before my ancestors ever arrived on these shores. If an Indigenous Peoples Day is needed, replacing Columbus Day with it is foolishness made large, and having a President that celebrates it is evidence he is part of the wrecking crew.

I could write a book on slavery. Slavery is not a stain on the American soul. Slavery was and is a universal reality, but my ancestors determined that slavery here was something whose time had expired. They worked hard at trying to bring it to an end. Our Constitution was designed to end its trade, and the “back to Africa” movement of the early 19th Century was an attempt, albeit an unsuccessful one, to solve the slave issue permanently by returning Africans to Africa. We even fought a war over it. The southern states had built their economy around cheap, mostly slave, agricultural labor while the northern states were building theirs around cheap, mostly immigrant, manufacturing labor. Manufacturing beat agriculture as a source of raw power and slavery as an institution was ended. The fact that our nation was willing to war over the issue of slavery is not a stain but a virtue. It is true that we have never quite been able to integrate the formerly enslaved and their descendants into the broader society, but the fact that we keep trying demands applause not condemnation.

But back to the scriptural question: the foundations are being destroyed and what are we to do about it? Let me suggest at least one response – say, No! A favorite weapon of the foundation destroyers is shame. They want to shame this nation for its failures instead of celebrating its successes. And we must, if we are to keep America, America, is to return to our roots. We must not let those who hate this nation rule over it. They have taken academia captive. It would be difficult to impossible to find a major university in this country that is not a hotbed of hatred for our founding. Entire academic departments are dedicated to making the lie of the religion and philosophy that form the bedrock of the nation. The darlings of the media are professors who hate everything about America and the best seller lists are replete with their hatred couched in academic terms to give it the guise of scholarship.

Our cities are hotbeds of foundation destruction. The first duty of government is the protection of the lives AND property of its citizens, yet in city after city policing is being constrained. And in the cities that are controlled by the foundation dynamiters crime is rampant. We see merchants stripped of their merchandise while the city government expresses sympathy for the thieves instead of punishing them. These mayors and city councils are destroying the foundations. What are we to do? Men and women who love this country and its foundations must take back control of its political institutions starting at the local level: the city and county councils, the school and regulatory boards – and the courts that release the lawless to prey on the law-abiding. It is not sufficient to vote in a congressional or presidential election and consider that you have done your duty. If you do not want to see the foundations destroyed and this nation replaced by another with the same name but a different character, you must stand up, take the abuse heaped upon you by the destroyers, and become a restorer of the breech. We may yet lose this nation, but we should not let it go without a fight.

On Eternal Life

Theology

The one nearest and dearest to me in this life is walking into the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Yes, I know the death sentence for Adam’s sin hangs over all his generations, including you and me, but when the doctor says, “Your cancer has returned,” the reality of that sentence becomes a stark reality. The question for each of us is not, “Will I die?” but, “When and how will I die? And more importantly, is there life beyond the grave and will I have it?”

What does the bible say when we are confronted with death’s cold reality?

The longest narrative in the gospel of John after the section relating the final week of Christ’s life including his crucifixion and resurrection is the story of the resurrection of Lazarus. The first question we should always ask when we read the bible is, “Why is this in the bible?” And the second is like unto it, “What does this mean?” Jesus told his disciples that Lazarus had died for the sole reason that he could show his power to raise the dead. And why is that so important? So they (and we) might believe he is who he claimed to be, and by believing we might have everlasting life through him.

Look at the story. Lazarus is deadly ill. His sisters send for Jesus. He delays his coming until after Lazarus is good and dead. Now he has already proven his power to heal the sick. Everybody knows he can do that! But power over death? Only the Giver of Life has that kind of power. So Lazarus dies and Jesus goes to bring men and women to faith in himself by bringing Lazarus up from the dead.

He goes up from Galilee to Bethany and is met by Martha, Lazarus’s sister. Here John picks up the narrative: Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.” Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:21-26, ESV)

This is one of those bible narratives we can dive into and just keep going deeper and deeper and I’m not going to even try to plummet its depth, but Jesus is making the point that he is life itself. He didn’t say, “I have the power to raise the dead and give life to lifeless bodies.” He said, “I am the resurrection and the life.” Elsewhere, in his first letter, John wrote, “And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. (1 John 5:11,12, ESV) Life is not separate from God; life is God himself.

Let’s swing back to the creation story in Genesis 2. The Lord God (The Son of God who later became incarnate as Jesus) shaped man from the dust of the earth (in other words, we are elemental to the earth on which we dwell.) and breathed into him the breath of life. This life breathed into Adam is the life that is passed from Adam to Eve and then to their generations down to you and me. That mysterious spark that separates us from the dust of the ground is God’s giving of himself to his creation. So Jesus could say, “I am life itself and whoever has me has eternal life. As long as I am alive, and I am the eternal, self-existent One whose human flesh might die but whose eternal nature is just that: eternal, those who have been born into me by the action of the Holy Spirit, possess eternity through me. (How’s that for a mouthful!)

Then Jesus spoke and raised Lazarus from the dead. Again, what’s the point of the story? It is that all who hear might believe that Jesus is the Son of God, and in believing they might have life in his name.
So how am I, how are you, fellow Christian, to view death? Jesus demonstrated his power over death in the resurrection of Lazarus, and his intent to raise all who believe on his name by the reality of his own resurrection. So what are we to do when death comes knocking on our door?

The final line of the Apostles Creed is, “I believe in the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.” The end of the Christian’s faith, the goal towards which we stumble, is to see the face of Jesus Christ and to hear his voice calling us from our graves on the day of his return. Paul put it this way, “For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. (1 Thessalonians 4:14-17, ESV) As the old gospel song goes, “But what will it be to see Jesus!”

We, with all the Christ followers of all the ages, know that we shall die (unless he returns very soon). But death holds no fear for those who are in Christ Jesus. In fact, if we are to believe Paul, and I do, he was looking forward to being dead. Look at what he said to the church in Corinth: “For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened—not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.
“So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight. Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.” (2 Corinthians 5:1-10, ESV)

Paul wasn’t looking forward to being a disembodied spirit floating on the clouds and plucking a harp! No, he was looking forward to wearing that new body, that body that will never again be subject to age and disease and death – a body just like the body of the resurrected Christ. And that is every Christian’s hope.

Remember in the Old Testament, when God led Israel out of slavery in Egypt and into the wilderness at Sinai? He had them make this beautiful tent for his sanctuary that he might dwell among them. But this was a temporary arrangement. Solomon was to build him a permanent sanctuary later on. (See also John 1:14. The word for “dwelt” there means, “pitched his tent.” Jesus pitched a tent as a temporary dwelling before his resurrection in his permanent dwelling: the body that he will share with all who are to live and dwell with him forever.) That’s what Paul is talking about here.

Death is planting the old body in the ground so that a new and glorious body arises when Christ returns. (See 1 Corinthians 15) That is why death holds no fear for the Christian. Death is not the Great Unknown! Christ demonstrated his power over death in the resurrection of Lazarus (that’s why the story is so detailed in the gospel) and showed us our future in his own. So we can look death in the eye and shout, O death, where is your victory! O death, where is your sting?

Warning! Warning! The Sky Is Falling!

The Seven Trumpets, Theology

Lift up your eyes to the heavens, And look on the earth beneath. For the heavens will vanish away like smoke, The earth will grow old like a garment, And those who dwell in it will die in like manner; But My salvation will be forever, And My righteousness will not be abolished.
Isaiah 51:6 NKJV

The covid pandemic has caused me to take another look at the 7 Trumpets recorded in the bible in the book of Revelations. The catastrophes in the first four of the Trumpets will be seen as terrible natural events to all but God’s elect. (If you want to know who these elect are, just ask and I’ll muddle the water further.)

Laying aside the elect or those who were sealed with the Seal of God, the Holy Spirit, earlier in the book, trumpets are the call to judgment in the bible. This is best illustrated by the Feast of Trumpets that came 10 days before the Day of Judgment as recorded in Leviticus 23 as the 5th of the 7 Sabbaths of the ancient Hebrews. (I’ll write an essay soon on how the 7 Sabbaths given to the Jews as they came out of slavery in Egypt were the foretelling of the person and ministry of Jesus Christ.) So these 7 Trumpets of Revelation are God’s final and complete call to judgment as he brings to an end this world and all within it and begins the era of the New Heavens and the New Earth.

I enjoy studying paleontology and paleogeology. The fact that those who labor in those fields do so atheistically doesn’t bother me. It just means they don’t see the hand that guided and directed what they are studying – but I can! What I have gleaned from their studies is that this world we inhabit is the product of a God who has engineered matter, energy, and space through time (another of his creations) so that this beautiful blue planet with its interior seething with molten rock, and with just the right balance of the various elements and compounds and mixtures necessary to make up its structure, rotating in just the right orbit at just the right angles, with just the right moon, can reproduce and sustain life – our life.

I live in the Pacific Northwest. The ground on which my house is built and the terrain that surrounds it is the product of the last Ice Age (not the animated movie, but the geologic event). I know this to be a fact every time I want to dig a hole, rocks, nothing but rounded rocks! The world in which we live and the weather and climate it enjoys is a world at the tail end of that Ice Age. The last of its glaciers continue to retreat just about everywhere and with that retreat comes a change in this delicate balance of things that make our lives livable. Places that were fertile plains millennia ago are now deserts. Places that once were too cold for agriculture are now farmlands. The world is constantly changing and we live in this little blip of time when life here is possible.

I hope you get the picture. We are living in the moment in time when this planet is most hospitable to our needs. But this hospitality will not last forever. The time before ours was “without form and void,” (Genesis 1:2) and the time immediately after is likewise “without form and void.” (Jeremiah 4:23) Isaiah made it clear, this earth, this solar system, and perhaps even this universe we are just now observing in all its glory, is growing old, wearing out like a favorite pair of pants. The only thing permanent in all the universe is God, its Creator.

We are fragile creatures living in a fragile ecosphere. Our lives are so brief we think that because little changes in our lifetime, little changes – ever. That is utter foolishness. This world is in a state of constant change, and it will keep changing until the time set in which he will bring the world as we know it to an end. As this time approaches he will send natural disasters upon us to awaken us to our fragility and our need of that which is unbreakable. But only a few people will awaken to that reality.

I find this greatly disturbing. Jesus told a story once about a rich man who died and went to hell and a really poor man who died and went to heaven (Abraham’s bosom). Not that all rich men go to hell and all poor men go to heaven, but in truth not many rich will avoid hell and being poor won’t get you into heaven. But the point of the story wasn’t about rich men and poor men and who gets to go where. The story is about people turning their backs on the clear and plain revelation of God in Jesus Christ, or to make it simpler, None are so blind as those who will not see!

So these Trumpets will seal the vast majority of our race in their rebellion and awaken a sealed in Christ minority to the joyous fact of the soon return of their Savior.

I think the Trumpets span a period of about 7 years. I could be wrong, but if I’m wrong, sue me after the fact. That the trumpets are about to blow will be signaled by a great earthquake. I don’t know where or how grand it will be on the scale of big earthquakes. We are waiting for one here in the NW that can rip through a fault that stretches from Vancouver Island in Canada down to near Crescent City in California. (It’s overdue.) It’s called the Cascadia Subduction Zone and it’s where the Pacific Plate is pushing under the North American Plate. These plates get stuck, and when they get stuck they start compressing like a spring and more and more tension builds until it can’t take it anymore and the Juan de Fuca Plate (part of the Pacific Plate) shoots under the North American causing a great earthquake, a drop in coastal elevation, and a massive tsunami. The last time this happened (January 6, 1700) it caused a 9.0 earthquake with a tsunami that washed the shore of Japan.

I tell this tidbit of geologic history to say earthquakes are natural events and inevitable. The tectonic plates are part of this incredible engineering feat that is our planet. They are shifting and moving, and when they shift and move we have earthquakes. But if the series of events outlined in Revelation 8-11 start to occur after the great earthquake then those who are looking forward to Christ’s return can start rejoicing – the end is at hand.

I am convinced that every event in the Revelation up to the New Creation in the final chapters are to be folded into the 7 Trumpets. The beasts, the dragon, the antichrist, the mark of the beast, the 7 plagues, all of it are confined within this 7 year period of the Trumpets.

So here’s the Trumpet list:

  1. A great meteor bombardment. I was going to say, “shower,” but that does capture it. If a bombardment fro space were to span 24 hours, it would belt the globe.
  2. A large asteroid strikes one of the oceans causing widespread destruction and death. It’s not a big as the one that hit the Yucatan back when, but there is evidence around the globe of major asteroid strikes.
  3. A large asteroid strikes one of the continents throwing cubic miles of debris into the atmosphere and causing deaths in the millions.
  4. The smoke from the fires of Trumpet 1 and the debris from 2 & 3 blot out the sun causing massive global cooling and consequent famine.
  5. Trumpet 5 is where it starts to get interesting. The earth is a mess, and as we have seen from the covid response, governmental response is haphazard and incompetent. Good science says that the first 3 catastrophes and their consequent 4th will bring the human race to extinction. The world is in a panic. Electric cars and a ban on coal isn’t going save the race. And in steps a savior. I don’t how he’s going to do it. Will he step off a spaceship like a Vulcan in Star Trek: First Contact? Or will he go from invisible to visible like something out of a transporter? The text doesn’t say. But what it does say is that Satan, the devil, the dragon, will appear as an angel of light to tell humanity that if it submits to his benevolent directives, the race will be saved.
  6. With this Trumpet the whole thing falls apart. People are dying by the 100s of millions. What was once a world population of nearly 7 billions can now be numbered in the millions scattered about the planet and dying of all that is outlined in chapter 16. Sometime during this Trumpet the antichrist convinces the unbelieving world that their only hope of survival is to kill the followers of Christ. The covid response shows us how easily this could happen. Just as the no-maskers and the no-vaxers wear the stigma as killers of the innocent embracers of governmental dictate now, in the time of this Trumpet, those who worship Christ are condemned to death to be freely killed that the earth might be saved.
  7. And then the Lord returns! This is the 7th Trumpet. The world has demonstrated the justice of God. He is right to destroy sin and sinners with it. If left to their ways they would gladly worship and serve the devil and kill all who will not bow to his rule.

God will not leave us without warning before he brings this present age to an end. His warnings fall on deaf ears of those who refuse his grace, but will be sweet music to those who love the Lord and long for his return.

Murderers Must Die for Their Crime

Politics and Society, Theology

“Murderers must die!” is a divine command.

When reading the bible one must ask, “Why is this here?” The bible isn’t just some random collection of folktales from a bygone and more primitive age; it is a holy history lesson. It was written to inform and enlighten those who would come later of how and why to live.

Genesis 9:6, God’s statement of why the flood, is clear: anyone who takes the life of another for any reason other than accident or self-defense (as made more clear elsewhere in the law) is to pay for his crime with his own life.

The first murder in human history is recorded in Genesis 4. This murder of Abel by his brother, Cain, is also the first human death recorded. Sin was new to the race and these new sinners had no concept of how sinful sin really was. To guide the race in its understanding of sin, God commanded that the guilty go free in this instance. As an aside, whenever we wonder why God allows the wicked to prosper and sin to flourish, we need only look to the first 11 chapters of Genesis. The absolutely worse thing we can do to someone who has embraced sin is to leave them to the consequences of their desire to be their own god. Sin pays a terrible wage in sorrow, disappointment, cruelty, and death. A sinner left unpunished will take an entire civilization into the pit. And so with Cain. He was not immediately punished for murdering his brother and the consequence was such degradation and depravity of the race that God’s only recourse was to push the restart button and begin afresh.

Murders are up almost by 1/3 this year over last. I was listening to the district attorney for Philadelphia decrying the prevalence of guns on the street and the senseless slaughter of men and women on the streets of the City of Brotherly Love. If I could, I would have shouted at him, “When was the last time Philadelphia executed a murderer within two years of the crime?” The answer would be, “Decades ago.” The secular left have used the law against the people by protecting murderers from the due penalty for their crimes. Where the Proverbs makes clear that God hates both the condemnation of the innocent and the acquittal of the guilty, the “enlightened” progressives in both church and law have determined that the innocent should suffer at the hands of the guilty.

Philadelphia is not unique. Texas is executing a man for a murder he committed 30 years ago. Executing 30 years after the fact is not justice. Justice demands immediate retribution. Our cities are awash in blood for two reasons: 1) because justice goes crying in the street and men with guns set out to bring about the justice the law denies them; and 2) the law is a toothless nag.

America is in need of a spiritual revival and a legal reset. Progressivism must be rejected as proven never to work when embraced. It must be rejected by the church as an attempt to make man appear wiser than his creator, and it must be rejected by the people as always leading to social disintegration and decay.

Crime must be punished appropriately by the people for the protection of the spirit as well as the body.

What Makes A US Citizen an American?

Politics and Society

The Black Lives Matter movement awakened me to the realization that American is not my ethnicity but my ethos. Ethnically I am Scots-English with a smattering of Irish, German, Viking, and whoever else was passing through when the women were fertile. Those are my ancestral peoples and who they were and where they came from has shaped who I am and how I view the world. A person cannot be an American by birth or compulsion. American is a condition of the heart not of birthplace or citizenship. A person can be a citizen of the United States and not be an American in heart. And a person can be an immigrant (legal or illegal) or even a refugee without any rights as citizen and be thoroughly American.

America is not an homogenous people of one primary tribal group like most of the nations of the world. We are composed of voluntary immigrants and the peoples who came into this union by compulsion. The original European settlers were primarily English and Scots who established colonies patterned after the land from whence they had come – hence “New England” and “New London” and “New York.”

The first group who became compulsory citizens were the Indians. They were here first, but they were the last to become United States citizens. Those settlers from the British Isles found the land sparsely occupied by the descendants of those who had journeyed here thousands of years earlier – a people less technologically and less civilizationally advanced than themselves, and soon to be overwhelmed by the waves of immigrants from Europe. They viewed these native peoples as something to be assimilated and transformed into good Englishmen or to be subdued and driven away. The Indian tribes that were here first were legally considered aliens and not citizens. Their alien status is enshrined in the US Constitution and at the establishment of the United States of America in 1789 they were treated as sovereign nations with which the United States dealt with through treaty and through war and it was not until 1924 that Indian tribes (as opposed to individuals) became citizens of the United States.

The second conquered people to find themselves citizens of the United States were those dwelling in the territories “liberated” in the 1835-36 War of Texas Independence (or the Texas Revolution from a Mexican perspective) and the Mexican War of 1846-48, the primary causes of which were the annexation of Texas into the Union and the discovery of vast deposits of gold in California. The young American republic was feeling its oats and considered itself destined to stretch from sea to shining sea and Mexico was in the way. So a war of conquest and a conquered people to be made citizens of the United States as these territories transitioned into statehood – the first being Texas in 1845 and the final two being New Mexico and Arizona in 1912.

The third group to come into citizenship by compulsion were the descendants of African slaves. Africans were viewed as a source of cheap labor and were purchased from that continent and brought here as slaves. (Enslaved people were then, had been for thousands of years, and are even today a common source of cheap labor and service throughout the world.) After a bloody civil war brought an end to chattel slavery in 1865, citizenship was extended to those whose ancestors had been bought and brought in chains in 1868 via the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution.

I would be amiss if I didn’t at least give mention to some others who are US citizens by compulsion. They would be the people of Hawaii who had their sovereignty stripped away by business interests in a coup d’état in 1893 and became a territory in 1898, the people of Puerto Rico who became a prize of war in 1898 and had US citizenship thrust upon them in 1917, and a scattering of island peoples in both the Caribbean and the Pacific who became possessions and territories of the United States through various and sundry ways.

Why this meandering through the history of America’s settling and the formation of the United States and her citizenry? Well, as I said, the Black Lives Matter movement awakened me to the realization that while the United States are one nation, we are not one people. And our various peoples are not identified so much by their geography as their ethnicity. The ethos of America is deeply rooted in the Protestant Reformation and the Enlightenment. One can come from anywhere and embrace those roots, or one can be born here and reject them. The ethnicity of our citizens is as diverse as the world itself; that which binds us together is holding to the common ethos. You understand this when you hear a Black or Latino or Indian or immigrant politician or race agitator (aka activist) speak of “her people” as opposed to “our people” or “the American people.” This person is making it clear that her identity is separate and distinct from an American identity.

There is a distinct difference between a common ethos and a common culture. The cultural distinctives of all the different ethnicities that comprise our population do not detract from that which we hold in common. One does not need to discard tacos and tamales in order to be fully American anymore than one needs to toss roast beef and potatoes or spaghetti and meatballs to join the American experiment. The diversity of our ethnic origins makes us the richer. For example, I believe we should always honor the treaty obligations we have with the native tribes. If the treaty says they can hunt whales, then hunt whales they can. But a communist/socialist or a nazi/fascist is not American at the core regardless her citizenship. Whether she was born in Brooklyn or Mumbai; is ten generations North American or a first-generation immigrant, what a person has in common with the American ethos makes her American, not her ethnicity.

Lord, Teach Me How to Count!

Theology

Psalm 90:12
So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. (ESV)

I have a special interest in the over-60 crowd – probably because I am well-ensconced in that cohort. But let me tell you why lest you start thinking I’m interested in recreational opportunities or healthcare for the elderly. I am not. At least not to the point of it holding my interest for long. I care especially about my aged peers because we have all lived longer than we are going to live, and it is of ultimate importance that we have done with the minor irritations and pleasures of life and focus on the eternal.

The Psalmist prayed, “Lord, teach us to number our days.” Our numbering begins when we mark its O so swift passage and our momentary hold upon it. The older I get the more I think of how briefly I’ve lived. I look at pictures of my sons when they were children and of their children when they were small and it seems like only yesterday when I was sharing those days with them. The “me” that I see in my mind’s eye has changed but little since those days; the “me” I see in the mirror reminds me that while I was a soldier once and young, those days have slipped into the dim recesses of history.

The mirror tells me how blessed of God I have been to have lived to white hair and wrinkles, but it also tells me that this amazing life is drawing to its inevitable close. That afore-mentioned Psalmist also reminds us that our lives are like the grass that greens in the morning dew and withers and fades in the heat of the day. We are so short-lived! Just as we begin to delight in a wisdom honed with experience, we fade away into forgetfulness. I am so tempted to sing that song from the 60s, “Is That All There Is?” “Lord God,” I cry, “Is this it? To live, flourish briefly, and then wither and fade?”

If this is all there is, if we live long should we be so lucky, if life is lived, ended, and over, then why should we not despair!? But wait! He asked to be taught to number his days. Now this little bit of advice goes for everyone from the teen to the toothless because no one knows how many days are allotted to him.Is one to live to only see twenty or might he see five times twenty? I do not know; only God knows. But the longer we live the shorter the span until our death.

There I said it: death, Death, DEATH! That dreaded word we don’t even speak when referring to one who has died. They “passed away.” They “crossed the rainbow bridge.” They “expired.” Expired like a jug of milk no less. But no, I’d rather use that out of style word, that word we don’t even hear in funerals: death. It is appointed unto all men once to die. But death is the end for no man. Death is the doorway into either heaven or hell.

It is appointed . . . and after that the judgment. Each and every one of us is bound for the divine assize. (Isn’t that a cool word? Assize – it’s just a fancy word for the county court system used in the UK until the 1970s and now to be used for the court that sets in heaven.) And this is of overwhelming importance, there is only one bench before which all of humanity will stand: the judgment seat of God. There we have but one advocate: the Holy Spirit. And only issue upon which judgment is passed is this: what have you done with the Son?

There’s no avoiding it: we are all sinners, and sinners are destined to die the death from which one never lives again . I know no one who can claim he is so good he doesn’t need Jesus. That is, no one can stand before the Righteous Judge and claim he is so good he doesn’t need Jesus. We can claim we are good enough for heaven while we’re still burning oxygen, but that claim goes with us into the grave.

If we need Jesus, how do we get him? Great question – in fact it is THE question. But we don’t “get Jesus” like we would get a car or an ice cream. We have nothing in our accounts – in fact we all are running a deficit – with which to “get” him. That’s bad news! But here’s the good stuff. Jesus will give us his very life – both inside and outside – in exchange for our broken one. What do I mean by this? I’m talking miracles!

Through Jesus Christ, through his perfect life, his atoning death, his resurrection and ascension into heaven, through everything this he was and is, we are born into his family (we move out of our earthly tribes and into his heavenly one), we are given new desires and impulses, and most importantly, we are forgiven and treated by the God who knows us far better than we know ourselves as if we had never sinned in our entire lives. And because of this divine transaction in which God exchanges our broken lives for Christ’s perfect one, we are given the promise of the resurrection of the dead and eternal life with him when Christ returns.

And this brings me back to those of us in the over-60 crowd. 95% of everyone who has died of Covid in this country were over 60. In any given year 80% of the 3 million people who die in the US every year (typically .9% of the population) or 2.4 million of those who died are over 65. Why do I share such “good” news? Because we are in the it’s-about-time-to-die cohort! We don’t have time to waste! We don’t have much time at all. So, as the scripture says, today, if you hear his voice, do no harden your heart. Heaven’s door is ajar. We may have wasted a lifetime on foolish pursuits. We may have amassed wealth that will go to the taxman and wastrel relatives. Our boats, cars, houses, and lands will soon go to auction. We take nothing from this life but the record of life lived. Whose record do we want the judge who knows all to read: Christ’s or ours. Me? I choose Christ’s.

Our Peaceless Peace

Politics and Society, Theology

1 Thessalonians 5:2–3
For you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying, “There is peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. (ESV)

God has three instruments of judgment that to the uninformed mind look to be natural or manmade disasters, but to the mind informed by the Word of God are seen to have the unseen hand controlling. They are The Sword – wars and criminal activity; Famine – aka Climate Change (which is always declared disastrous whatever the weather happens to be doing at the moment. Government and advocacy groups are the Goldilocks of our age.); and Pestilence or Disease.

Reading the Old Testament prophets and their almost continual warnings that continued rebellion by the kingdoms of Israel and Judah would result in national disaster cannot but be a warning to God’s people of today. Look, I know that there is no national counterpart to the place of those ancient kingdoms today. Israel and Judah were the forerunners of the Church not America the beautiful. As much as I would like to think of The United States as a Christian nation, it is not now, nor has it ever been such. America was founded as a secular state with many Christian citizens and its non-establishment clause in the 1st Amendment to the Constitution was put there to protect against denominationalism not Christianity. But . . .

But while it is true that no nation today can claim special status with God, it is also true, as the scripture makes clear, God holds the nations to account for how closely they hew to his directions given in scripture. So looking at America and its place in the world today, I am forced to say that the “natural” events that are prevailing are not all that natural. God sets up kings and kingdoms and takes them down, and what looks like civil unrest or the ignominy of America slinking out of Vietnam or Afghanistan are the “natural” result of God’s judgment upon the nation. The floods and droughts that plague us, the disease that is now causing so much fear and uncertainty, while natural events, are they really all that “natural” or are they reminders from God that we are but mortals whose lives are as brief as dew upon the morning grass?

We should look at the sword, both internally and externally, at pandemics and floods, as calls to examine ourselves, to check our behavior, to look beyond ourselves to those around us, and repent.