Category Archives: Theology

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.

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.

And on September 10th All Was Well

Theology

I was 253 days into retirement from the Army on September 10, 2001. It was a beautiful Monday as only a Washington Monday can be in September – just a hint of the autumn that would soon be upon us and a remembrance of the summer almost gone. It was a day like any other day when the world is at peace, when people are going about their daily grind, and we are more concerned with family and friends and work and vacations than we are about discontented Muslims in some far-off and distant land plotting the restoration of the caliphate in Spain and Portugal and the overthrow and American hegemony in the world. As I say, it was a Monday like any other. I went about my daily routine and when evening came, I watched the evening news, read a little, and retired for the night.

Then came the morning. My alarm was set for 0600 and when I awoke that Tuesday morning the radio was saying something about a plane that had struck one of the twin towers of the World Trade Building. Must have been some sightseeing plane that had gotten in trouble, but no the newsreader said it was a passenger plane. And then the second plane struck the other tower and I knew we were under attack and a new war had begun.

We went from peace and calm to war and chaos in an instant. And that’s how it will be in the time before The Return.

Jesus said, “But concerning that day and hour (the time of The Return) no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only. For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.” (Matthew 24:36–39, ESV)

And Paul wrote, “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.” (1 Thessalonians 5:3, ESV)

No one, at least no one of whom we are aware, knew an attack was coming. It just came, as it were, out of the blue. So will it be when Christ returns. Those who are ready now will be those who are ready then. So, as it is written, today, if you hear his voice calling you to repentance and renewal, answer the call. Don’t be caught unawares and unprepared for what is coming on the world.

When the Natural Is Not Natural

Politics and Society, Theology

Jeremiah 24:10
And I will send sword, famine, and pestilence upon them, until they shall be utterly destroyed from the land that I gave to them and their fathers.” (ESV)

If it’s any consolation, the ancients rejected the idea (fact, really) that God would use the natural world in unnatural ways to accomplish his purposes every bit as much as people do today.

This word from Jeremiah (I was going to say, “prophecy,” but that gives too much cover to those who are blind to the reach of God into our everyday existence) came during the final years of the Kingdom of Judah before Nebuchadnezzar sent his army in to burn its fortresses and palaces, and to tear down its walls and temple. God said, through Jeremiah, that he was going to use international conflict and local criminal enterprises, climate change and its consequent food shortages, and pandemic diseases to bring a nation that repeatedly rejected his right to rule to a catastrophic end.

Are we any different today? Are not Joe Biden and the Congress and Courts as set in their rejection of God’s sovereignty as was Zedekiah, the last king of Judah? Have not the American people, and the peoples of the world generally, chosen to worship their gods of gold and silver and stone rather than the Creator of heaven and earth? Is not wealth and fame more important than character and fidelity? Have they not embraced the LGBTQ perversion? How many violate the “No wed, no Bed” decree? Has not marriage become a renewable-term contract rather than a lifelong commitment? Do we not slaughter infants on the goddess’s abortion altar? Do we not teach our children in the public school system that there is no God and that man is the master of his destiny?

I could go on for pages detailing how we are no different than our ancient forefathers. Their rebellions are our own. The human heart and soul hates God unless it has been transformed by his Spirit, and every attempt to replace him with science so-called, or philosophy, or enlightened religion that has no place for a sovereign God, or the mindless pursuit of pleasure and entertainment, are but mankind whistling past the graveyard.

Just as our rebellions are the same as the fathers, so God’s judgments follow a similar pattern. Look at our world torn with wars, rumors of wars, and crime. Do you think that all the murders on our streets are just happenstances? Do you not believe the consistent rejection of Jesus Christ results in death here as well as in the hereafter? And yes, the climate is changing. It’s always changing, but can you not see God’s hand in the California fires, the gulf coast hurricanes, and the New York floods? I mention these three because California is the heart of the sex-is-god worship, New Orleans is dedicated to human decadence, and New York is, well, is New York. Need I mention Covid? It is sweeping millions of men and women around the world to their graves – many of them Christless graves from which there are no second chances to repent. If we would accept it, Covid is a call from God to turn to the One who has revealed himself in nature and in Jesus Christ.

I know some will read this as the rantings of a silly old man. And maybe I am! But silly and old, this I know: if there is a God, he has revealed himself in the natural world and in the supernatural revelation of himself in the prophets and in his Son, and if there is no God, then eat, drink, kill, and fornicate to your heart’s content because we are all just going to die and that’s it. But before you decide which course you are going to take, at least take a look at Jeremiah and maybe, just maybe, hear the voice of God calling you to faith, obedience, and life.

Sorry, Mr. Biden, Abortion Is Murder

Politics and Society, Theology

Jeremiah 44:15–19
Then all the men who knew that their wives had made offerings to other gods, and all the women who stood by, a great assembly, all the people who lived in Pathros in the land of Egypt, answered Jeremiah: “As for the word that you have spoken to us in the name of the LORD, we will not listen to you. But we will do everything that we have vowed, make offerings to the queen of heaven and pour out drink offerings to her, as we did, both we and our fathers, our kings and our officials, in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. For then we had plenty of food, and prospered, and saw no disaster. But since we left off making offerings to the queen of heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, we have lacked everything and have been consumed by the sword and by famine.” And the women said, “When we made offerings to the queen of heaven and poured out drink offerings to her, was it without our husbands’ approval that we made cakes for her bearing her image and poured out drink offerings to her?” (ESV)

Two signs held by young women in front of the Texas Capitol tell us the worship of the ancient gods and goddesses has never ceased. One reads, “Sex is beautiful. Reproduction is optional. Abortion is healthcare.” The other reads, “Fetuses are not babies. Abortion is not murder. Women are not incubators.” More on this after a little biblical exploration.

Take a look at the Jeremiah passage and let’s have a little historical context. Josiah was perhaps the best king to have ever ruled over the southern kingdom of Judah. He was only 8 when he came to the throne (640 BC), and he came in troublous times. Judah was a subordinate state of Assyria and had been since the erasure of the Northern Kingdom of Israel some 80 years earlier (720 BC). Trouble was brewing on the borders of the Assyrian Empire as the Babylonians were growing stronger and the Egyptians to the south were looking to expand their reach. (Josiah would die in battle against the Egyptians in 609 BC.)

Josiah’s subjects were dedicated worshipers of every god but the God of heaven. The people of Israel were always of two minds when it came to worship. The gods of the day were gods who scratched where they itched. God made us sexual creatures. His first command was to have sex and make babies. Sex is essential to our continuance on this earth, but when sex becomes the object instead of the means, it becomes an idol. It’s an attractive idol, and an idol that easily displaces the God who devised it for the pleasure it bestows. The queen of heaven was one such god. Her worship and the worship of her consorts were sex parties where anything goes. The land was filled with pleasure palaces and glens, and sacrifices were made, often the lives of infants and children, on their altars.

Josiah set about changing the mindset of sex for sex’s sake. He destroyed the pleasure palaces and salted the glens. He restored the temple in Jerusalem – the priests and the Levites were as into these gods as were the people – and with the prophets, called them to worship God with all their hearts, minds, AND bodies. For awhile it looked like real reform, a real return to the God of the Exodus, was taking place. Throughout the reign of Josiah, the worship of Baal, Astarte, Moloch, and all the other gods of Canaan, Assyria, and Egypt, plus whatever gods they picked up on their travels along the trade routes of that region, disappeared. Well, not disappeared really. They went into the closet only to come back full force as soon as Josiah died and Jehoiachim took the throne. He and those who came after worshiped the gods and goddesses of sex for sex’s sake full bore until Nebuchadnezzar tired of them and their intrigues and completely destroyed the nation in 586 BC.
Off the remnant of the land run to Egypt dragging Jeremiah along. And this is where our text comes in. Jeremiah gives the message that their sins brought this destruction upon them, and they respond by telling him he’s full of it and they are going to worship these gods and goddesses just as they and their fathers had done as far back as memory could take them. And they killed Jeremiah.

This brings us back to Austin, Texas. Texas just passed a law saying that as soon as a heartbeat is detected, that which is in a woman’s womb is not her body, but is another person. This is anathema to those who worship the goddess. Sex is for pleasure, they cry, producing the next generation is an afterthought. An infant developing in a woman’s womb is just a blob of tissue and an abortion is no different that cutting one’s hair or trimming one’s nails. But they are deluded! Indeed, we are told in 2nd Thessalonians that they are under the sway of Satan and that God has sent them a powerful delusion that they might believe his lie that there is no God, and that they might be reserved until the condemnation of Judgement Day. It pains me to say this, but these women and the men who support them are the enemies of God, and thus of God’s children. Any enemy of my Father is an enemy of mine!

What’s a Christian to do? Speak the truth in love. These women are deluded children of the devil and must be identified as such. Do not smile and pat their hands. Tell them they are just one step from hellfire and although the door to heaven is not yet closed, they are pushing against it. Can God forgive a woman who murders her child? Yes, as he has forgiven countless repentant murderers throughout the history of our race. He forgave David for murdering Uriah; he is willing to forgive any and all who confess and forsake their sins. But do not be deceived! Murder is not a woman’s right to choose. I don’t know how many children have been sacrificed on the altar of the goddess since seven God-hating men determined the murdering of children to be written in invisible ink in our Constitution. One would be too many, and millions weigh heavily against the future prosperity of our republic. Should God send his judgements of Famine, Plague, and Sword upon The United States of America as he sent them upon Israel and Judah, those whom he has redeemed can say naught but Amen.

On a Dream – Or Fight On!

Politics and Society, Theology

Many years ago I was a pastor in a Christian sect that has a long history of pacifism, yet I felt an overwhelming desire to go into the Army as a chaplain. How could I reconcile the pacifist beliefs of my denomination with the ministry to soldiers whose duty was to fight and kill as necessary in the nation’s service? Could I tell a soldier who was drawn to Christ that he must lay down his arms and study war no more? (As I had been instructed when God called me to himself when I was a young sailor.) As you can well imagine, I was torn. Was it to be the teachings of the church or the calling of God (as I believed then and yet still believe)?

I am a “Whole Bible” Christian. I know that David’s God is my Lord Jesus Christ, the second member of the Trinity. So I was reading the stories of Abraham rescuing Lot, and the conquest of Canaan, and the wars of David and feeling the tension between what I had been taught and what my bible related.

Let me throw a clarifying paragraph in here. My former denomination has many faithful followers of Christ on its pews. No human institution, and denominations and churches are human institutions run by men, has a grasp of the absolute truth of God. No preacher or professor is right on everything – and that includes me! So while I am convinced from scripture that what I had been taught to believe by my church was wrong, that does not mean they were wrong about the big things like what is contained within The Apostles Creed and the other historic creeds of the church. There are churches and denominations and there is The Church, the body of Christ, the redeemed of the Lord, the congregation of the born again to which some members of denominations (churches) belong. Churches that are faithful to the Core of the Christian Faith (The Kerygma) are part of Christ’s Church; those that are not, are not.

Now back to my story. I was pitched on the horns of a dilemma and knew not how to get off. In my troubled state I had a dream and my struggle was resolved. In this dream I was driving my Bronco down a city street and came upon a group of young men beating and robbing a man. I stopped, prayed, “Lord God, give me strength and courage!”, and leaped out to join the fight and rescue that man. When I awoke I knew that fighting to defend the right is right and I should become an Army Chaplain. Long story short, almost three years later I was reporting to Fort Hood, Texas and the First Cavalry Division as a Chaplain (1LT) and embarking on a ministry non-pareil.

We are living in interesting times. The war between good and evil that began in heaven and has been waged on this planet since Adam and Eve is getting hotter, whether in Afghanistan, or the US Supreme Court, or the wars and natural disasters that are occurring around the globe – evil surges and retreats throughout history and ours is one of those times when evil is advancing. I am agnostic whether this is the prelude to the final battle or not. Christians throughout the millennia have always believed, “This is it!” whenever evil seems to be gaining the upper hand. What we can know with certainty however is that the battle is at hand and there are no pacifistic bystanders – not now, not ever – everyone is fighting on Christ’s side or Satan’s. Every pastor, every elder is called to be a chaplain encouraging their soldiers to face the enemy and fight. Victory is certain; Christ has promised it to all who will stand and fight.
So be of good courage! The Lord will gain the victory with many or with few. All who believe an obey shall wear the crown of life. Fight!

Everybody Knows God Is

Theology

Psalm 19:1–6
[1] The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
[2] Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge.
[3] There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard.
[4] Their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.
In them he has set a tent for the sun, which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber, and, like a strong man, runs its course with joy.
[6] Its rising is from the end of the heavens, and its circuit to the end of them, and there is nothing hidden from its heat. (ESV)

A serious question deserves a serious answer. As Christians we are often asked how it can be fair for God to declare all humanity deserving of death for its rebellion against his authority when not everyone has heard the gospel of Jesus Christ as revealed in the bible. That’s a reasonable question to which the 19th Psalm provides the definitive answer.
God’s existence, declares the Psalm, is made clear by the testimony of the natural world. Just as buildings and other infrastructure tell us that human creators exist and tell us much about who they are and what they value, so nature tells us about The Creator. It makes it clear that there is a God, that his creation is a wonder and thus he must have creative capabilities far beyond our grasp. The more we study the natural world, the more awe-struck we should be at the one who formed it from the beginning. There can be no other rational explanation for the complexity of the universe and of the planet on which we reside – as well as the complexity of life itself – other than that there is a Creator.

Once it is obvious that there is a Creator, it becomes the duty of every thinking creature to discover all that it is possible to know about him. All of science should be dedicated to knowing the One who gives knowledge. “Why?” should be on every lip. But there is more to God’s revelation of himself than the handwriting in the skies. Nature tells us absolutely and incontrovertibly that there is a Creator, but it doesn’t tell us with certainty who he is. For this we need further revelation. Hence the next portion of this Psalm. Nature tells us of Elohim, he tells us, through special revelation, that he is Yahweh, the great I Am.

It is in the Old Testament scripture and then especially in Jesus Christ that God tells us who this Creator is, what he is like, and how we can know him fully. Because nature speaks so clearly to the reality of a Creator, it is living in denial to not dedicate our efforts to discovering who he is. This is why all humanity can be judged and found guilty for not knowing him and his will for his creation.

Let me choose a modern-day example of willful denial that is bound to make someone mad – and I do so on purpose. I want to make clear that denial pays a price. Covid. We know Covid can be a serious disease, for some because they are old and feeble, for others because they are young but diseased, and for others because of reasons unknown (there is so much about the natural world of which we are ignorant). Whatever the reason, this virus kills some people. Reason dictates, therefore, that we dedicate our efforts to finding a way to mitigate its reach. We look around and see that a vaccine has been developed that, while not preventing infection, is very effective in preventing the disease from becoming life-threatening. But some can see that the virus is deadly and still refuse to take the next step in limiting its reach. Well, that’s what just about the entire human race does with God’s revelation of himself in nature. It is seen clearly that nature’s existence demands a creator – only the most foolish or simpleminded can deny that. But they don’t choose to pursue the question. They don’t feel a need to know this creator. And in not knowing they find themselves under judgment and condemnation for willful ignorance and rebellion.

The heavens declare God’s glory; the scripture declares his character and purpose.