More and More Christian Stuff

Science Helps Us Understand "Free-will"

2012-01-04T14:20:00.000-08:00

First, we have to pin down the concept of free will. Because God LOVES His creation, most especially human beings, He gave all human beings FREE WILL. He didn’t want us to be His “toys”, because toys are mere objects. Instead, He created us to be children in His Family. He wants to interact with us and have a dynamic relationship with us. The way He did this was to bestow upon us individual sovereignty – or free will. We can choose. We can, through our decisions and actions, alter the timeline. In fact, every decision and action we take does just that. As we travel through linear time, we are constantly shaping and directing how the timeline unfolds.

Now a little recreational physics. I have always LOVED physics. In Steven Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time”, one of the concepts that Hawking explained was the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. In a nutshell, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle states that we can never know the exact position AND velocity of any particle, because in order to observe a particle, you have to bounce a photon off of it – which then alters its position and velocity. Now, you might think that is no big deal, but it is a HUGE deal. You’re just going to have to take my word for this for the moment, but what this means is that when a particle travels from point A to point B, it traverses EVERY POSSIBLE PATH SIMULTANEOUSLY. I’m not kidding. This is experimentally proven.

What does this have to do with God and free will? God in His omniscience knows and sees not only the Real Timeline, which is the result of all of our individual decisions, but he also knows and sees all of the “Heisenberg Timelines” which are constantly and infinitely shooting and branching off from the Real Timeline. In other words, the Heisenberg Timelines are the timelines that WOULD have happened IF we had made a different choice. When we say that God is INFINITE and ALL-KNOWING, we really don’t comprehend the real scope of what we are saying. Infinite means infinite – not limited in any way. Hence, the infinite number of Heisenberg Timelines fit very easily into that set.

What God does is constantly reset His Perfect Will after every decision every person makes. He always has a clearly defined Will, which is always for the perfect good, given the timeline up to that point. Let’s say that right now in this moment His will is for Lou to do action Y, which is in accord with His Perfect Will, but I instead choose to do action Z. After I choose and execute action Z, He adjusts His Perfect Will to a new set given action Z. If action Z was a sin, His new Perfect Will now includes that I confess and repent of that sin, but the timeline continues given the reality of Action Z, which I freely chose. If I choose action Y, no adjustment is made on His part, because I have acted in accordance with His Perfect Will, and the timeline likewise continues. I cannot emphasize enough the infinite love, patience and condescension we are talking about here. There just aren’t words.

So what we see is that God is in an unending Heisenberg dance of love manifested in freedom with all of us. His Will is always for perfect good, but in His love for us, He allows us to act freely, and then in His Mercy, He resets the Heisenberg timeline according to our choices. He allows us to, in a sense, cooperate with Him in authoring reality. This is why wonderful things tend to come out of bad situations. Think of all of the husbands and wives who have met and fallen in love . . . because of a war. How many times have you heard a person recall a terrible childhood, or a terrible accident, and then say, “. . . .but I wouldn’t change a thing.” Now you know why. Does God ever enter into the timeline and “nudge” events? Oh, yes. Many times these “nudges” are barely perceptible and exist almost entirely within the conscious or sub-conscious mind. But He does also on occasion physically enter into spacetime to nudge the timeline, and those instances are called “miracles”.

And yes, He is managing to do all this while driving billions and billions of fusion reactions per second in those many stars around us. What a God!!

It's ME! Here I Am! I love YOU!

2012-01-02T12:54:00.000-08:00

It's ME! Here I Am! I love You!

Posted by Ann Barnhardt - December 24, AD 2011

Christmas is about the Incarnation, and I think that the Incarnation is one of the most under-appreciated and glazed-over concepts in Christianity. God became a man. The Second Person of the Holy Trinity took on human flesh. Jesus is fully God and fully Man. Born in a manger. Sweet Little Baby. Angels. Shepherds. Wise men. Presents. Isn't that nice? Moving right along . . . Not so fast. In order to really enter into Christmas and shake the secular cultural disaster of consumerism and greed that it has become, one needs to ponder the Incarnation. Deeply. And it seems to me that the key to understanding the Incarnation, and thus Christmas, lies not in the manger in Bethlehem. No, the keystone that ties it all together and allows us to begin to grasp the infinite terror and majesty (yes, I use the word "terror" very thoughtfully) of the Baby laying in a feed trough is actually 33 years later in the Garden of Gethsemane. If you really want to understand what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown, look in the Garden. But I warn you, it isn't happy. If you like Christmas as it is and just want it to remain a secular gift exchange with tacky sweaters and delicious baked goods, STOP READING. Because my intention is to plant concepts and images in your mind and soul that you will never be able to remove. Every time you see or hear anything that reminds you of Christmas, I want these seeds to flare up and burn your soul. Not all burning is bad. Burning purifies. Purification makes us better. If you're not interested, STOP READING RIGHT HERE. Merry Christmas!
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The key to beginning to understand the Incarnation, God becoming Man, is Christ's agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. If you recall, after the Last Supper in the Upper Room, Jesus and the apostles, except for Judas who was on his errand of betrayal already, went to the Garden of Gethsemane. John tells us that Jesus went there with the apostles frequently to pray, and thus it would be one of the first places Judas would have known to look for Him. The wheels of the Passion are in motion. Jesus knows exactly what is coming, and that it is coming within a matter of hours. He withdraws a short distance from the apostles to pray, but close enough that they can still see Him. He asks the apostles to simply stay awake (because it is now the middle of the night) and to watch and pray. Jesus withdraws and begins to pray. But what the apostles see is horrifying. Jesus isn't calmly and serenely kneeling in prayer. Jesus is literally laying on the ground, curled up in a ball, writhing in agony. Jesus is a quivering, trembling, sobbing mess. Jesus is in such stress and agony that the capillaries in the sweat glands in His scalp and forehead are bursting, and there is blood in the sweat that is running down His face, mingling with His tears, and dropping on the ground. Sobbing and shaking, Jesus BEGS the Father to let the events of the next twelve hours pass from Him if at all possible, but resigns Himself to the will of the Father. Reading this, some may be unimpressed with Jesus. Afterall, many, many men and women have gone to their torture and execution fully aware of what was coming, while managing to maintain their composure. Some men, especially, might be tempted to view Jesus and being somewhat cowardly in the face of His Passion, and thus be a bit turned-off by the whole scene.
Yes, Jesus is terrified. He is more terrified in this moment than all of the terror felt by mankind in all of history combined, rasied to the power of infinity. His terror is literally testing the limits of the human body. If any of us felt anything even close to the sort of fear that Jesus felt, we would drop dead. People can and have died purely of fright and/or intense psychological stress, usually by means of a heart attack precipitated by massive adrenaline production.
But the real question is, "What is He afraid of?" His terror and agony are NOT centered around the physical means of His death. He is not trembling and sobbing because he is thinking of the pain of being scourged, or the pain of being crucified. He is curled up in a ball crying so hard that He is sweating blood because He is thinking about WHO is going to torture and kill Him. When God took on human flesh, He took on EVERY ASPECT of our existence. He experiences things exactly the same way that we do - except at an infinitely amplified level. And that includes love. And being that He is also completely God, He is in Himself infinite knowledge and infinite love. In a nutshell, this means that Jesus went through His entire life on earth completely in love with every single person. Every person He saw or passed on the street He had known from all eternity; He had created that person atom-by- atom accordingly in the fullness of time; He had intimate knowledge of that person's every thought, desire and deed; He was infinitely in love with that person.
Have you ever been in love - as in completely CRUSHING in love? Do you remember the feeling when your beloved person would first come into view? Walk into the room? Can you remember the rush of adrenaline and joy you would feel just to SEE that person? Can you remember having to supress and contain the urge to smile, jump, clap, run around the room, tackle and kiss to death said person? Remember that feeling? Bring back happy memories? Experiencing it now? Understand that this was and is Jesus' experience with every single person. Yes, both male and female. Remember, He is God, so His love is completely pure and perfect. He FEELS love in His body without ANY impure or sinful nature. BUT, He knew that He couldn't simply run up to every person and kiss and hug them. He couldn't grab someone, look in their eyes and say, "It's ME! Here I AM! I love you!" It wouldn't have worked. He had to hold back and simply admire from afar. Can you imagine what life was like for Him for those 33 years? Can you imagine what simply going into town and walking through the market must have been like? Every face He passed was His beloved. Every person who brushed by Him was a souce of simultaneous joy and the pain of unrequited love. Every laugh He heard was a laugh He wanted to share, and every whimper of sadness was sadness He wanted to share, every struggle was a struggle He wanted to help, and every bit of pain was pain He wanted to soothe. And not in an abstract, altruistic way. He wanted to engage these things personally, as we would with our intimate beloved. But He couldn't. Can you imagine having all of that love pent up inside of you, with your beloved so near, and have to hold it all inside? It couldn't have been fun. Are we starting to get an idea of how terrible and wonderful the Incarnation is? Remember all of this.

Let's go back to the Garden. Jesus takes a couple of breaks from His prayer to go back and talk to the apostles, who are His best friends. Yes, He loves everybody, but the apostles are different. They know, to a small extent, who He is. They have spent many days and evenings together working, playing, eating and just talking. Jesus has told them who He is, and He has told them in no uncertain terms that He loves them. And they have assured Him that they love Him too. Their relationship is not one-sided. Jesus has finally gotten to experience reciprocal human friendship and love, lopsided though it may have been.

Jesus has just spent a considerable amount of time in agony a stone's throw away from His beloved friends, and when He comes back to them, He finds them all asleep. He is dying. (My soul is sorrowful even unto death.) He asked them, His beloved best friends, to simply stay with Him, watch, and pray. And they couldn't even stay awake. And this happened twice. Heart. Ache. This is the reality of the Incarnation.
Now here comes Judas. As with every other person, Jesus is completely in love with Judas. Judas is the person Jesus loves most in the world (and that goes for every person because Jesus is God and has infinite capacity.) And Judas has sold Him out. It is one thing to be betrayed by an enemy. It is quite another to be sold for 30 pieces of silver (which assuming one ounce pieces would equate to just under $1000 today) by the person you love most in the world. And just to make it as terrible as possible, Judas has told the guards that the man he kisses is Jesus. And so when Judas kisses Him and Jesus says to Judas, "You betray the Son of Man with a kiss?" there is agony there that can not be described. This is the reality of the Incarnation.
The guards. Every single one of them is the object of Jesus' infinite love. All Jesus wants to do is say, "It's ME! Here I AM! I love you!" And they despise Him. Jesus could have stopped it all at any time, not by some act of miraculous violence, but by asking the commanding guard if he remembered that certain tree he used to climb as a child, or that certain toy. He could have frozen them in their tracks by simply reminding them of their own experiences and feelings - which He had already shared with them because He had been with them the whole time. But He didn't, because He couldn't. If He didn't let them kill him, there would be no hope of ever being with them in heaven. Agony. This is the reality of the Incarnation.
Now before the High Priest Caiaphas. Same thing. Except Caiaphas, and the rest of the Sanhedrin, have been as their entire vocation and purpose in life, praying for the coming of the Messiah. They have been praying to Jesus (unwittingly) for Jesus (unwittingly). And Jesus has heard their prayers, and the prayers of all of the priests for generations past, and is finally, finally now standing in front of them. And remember, He is personally in love with them. They look Him up and down and utterly reject Him. "No, no. You're all wrong. You're not what we want. We want a big macho-man king to vanquish the Romans and sit on the throne. LOOK AT YOU. YOU'RE ALL WRONG. WE DON'T WANT YOU. Go to hell and good riddance." (But it's me. Here I AM. I love you.) Agony. This is the reality of the Incarnation.
Pilate. Selfish indifference. "Look man, I neither know nor care who you are or who you say you are. I have a lot on my mind and I simply can't deal with stuff like this." (But it's ME. Here I AM. I love you.) Agony. This is the reality of the Incarnation.
The Roman scourgers. Jesus was whipped and flagellated until most of His skin was gone by men whom He loved infinitely and intimately. Can you imagine how He felt as he walked to the pillar, turned and saw the faces of his scourgers, and seeing the face of every human being looking back at Him? Can you imagine being slowly and brutally whipped to the brink of death by the person you love most in the world? Say your spouse or best friend? It would be one thing to be whipped by a total stranger. But to be tortured by the person you love most in the world? (But it's ME. Here I AM. I love you.) Unfathomable agony. This is the reality of the Incarnation.
The crowds. Everywhere there were crowds of people looking on - the scourging, the trial, the streets he walked while carrying His Cross to Calvary. Every single face was intimately loved. And every single face, excepting Mary, John, Mary Magdalene and a few other women, were either viciously hostile or completely indifferent. I wonder which was worse? The reason I ask is because the opposite of love is NOT hate, as most would assume. The opposite of love is indifference. There is no greater blow that can be made to a human soul than indifference. How many people saw Jesus that day - locked eyes with Him - and honestly just didn't care what happened to him. "Live. Die. Whatever. Just don't bother me. You're messing up my plans. Now I'm going to have to go completely out of my way to get around You and this damndable mess You're making." (But it's ME. Here I AM. I love you.) This may have been the worst agony. This is the reality of the Incarnation.
Almost everyone treats Jesus with indifference to one degree or another. We are all inflicting that agony on Him. How, you ask? By sinning. We know that our sins hurt Him infinitely, but we commit them anyway. Few people sin because they actively HATE Jesus and want to hurt Him. A few do, but not too many relative to the broad population. No, most people are just indifferent. There He is at the pillar, and our sin is the next lash. And we do it anyway. CRACK! Because we're indifferent. And again, and again. (But it's ME. Here I AM. I love you.) "That's your problem, Buddy." Agony beyond words. This is the Reality of the Incarnation.
That is why Jesus was sobbing in agony in the Garden. He didn't fear the physical pain. He feared being utterly, completely and totally rejected to the point of torture, execution and the indifferent witnessing of this by the person He loved most in the world, which is YOU. And ME. He feared not being tortured and killed, but being tortured and killed by the person He loved most in the world. And despite this, He still chose to go through with it all. He went all the way to the end, just so there would be a CHANCE that one day we might knock on HIS door and say, "It's me. Here I am. I love you, too."
So while you're opening your presents and unstuffing your stockings tomorrow morning, be sure to think about that Sweet Little Baby and the infinite agony of love that He has signed up and gone all-in for by being born in Bethlehem, because that is what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.

Why the WEEK?

2011-12-21T09:04:00.000-08:00

What is the real origin of the universal seven-day rhythm of human life? Why are our calendars set up into seven day groups? Why are most TV shows aired every seven days instead of every four or five? And why is it easy enough to mistake a Tuesday for a Wednesday, but almost impossible to mistake a Friday for a Saturday?

These questions point to something so pervasive, so universal, and so deeply entrenched in our lives that we take it for granted: the seven-day week. Next to the day, the week is the most important calendar unit in our lives.

How did this seven-day cycle come to so conspicuously occupy our minds and our calendars? Where did it originate and become such a rhythm in our human lives?

Most other major measurements of time are determined by what happens in the skies above us. The length of a year is determined by how long it takes our planet to make one full revolution around the sun. The month is based on the time required for our moon to complete its cycle. A day is the time the Earth takes to complete one full rotation on its axis.

But what about the week? What astronomical cycle determines this seven-day span?

Divided Lunar Cycle Theory

One common explanation says the week is based on one quarter of the 29.5-day lunar cycle, which would come to nearly 7.4 days. Proponents say ancient peoples used the moon’s cycle to determine the duration of both the month, in its complete cycle, and the week, as one quarter of that cycle. The early Babylonians did have a calendar in which each month began on a new moon and was separated into four 7-day segments followed by one or two odd days each month.

But the week is essentially defined as a precise multiple of the day, quite independently of the lunar month. And any subdivision of the lunar cycle necessarily involves some mathematically inconvenient remainder of hours, minutes and seconds.

The divided lunar cycle theory also does not explain the fact that, in almost all societies, the week is seven days longs. After all, a lunar month could just as easily be divided into three 10-day sections, or five 6-day blocks, six 5-day spans. Why would early societies choose to divide the lunar cycle by four? The number is arbitrary.

Visible Celestial Bodies Theory

Another explanation for the week comes from adding up the number of celestial bodies in our solar system that are visible with the naked eye. The sun, the moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn would all have been visible to early stargazers who had no telescopes, so the sum is seven.

It is undeniable that the days of the week on our calendars (in English and European languages) are named after the visible bodies. However, the facts of history prove that the seven-day week existed long before its days came to be associated with heavenly bodies or with ancient gods. Seven-day observance had been established long before the astrological week ever came into being with its naming of the days of the week.

Thus the visible celestial bodies theory doesn’t explain the week’s origins any better than the divided lunar theory. History and logic easily disprove both of these theories and reveal how weak they really are.

An Invention of Ancient Israel?

Some conclude that the seven-day week was the invention of ancient Israel, and that it eventually spread from that early society into the whole world. The trouble with this theory, though, is that biology proves the seven-day week predates all societies.

Mankind has long understood that our bodies operate on circadian (daily), monthly and annual rhythms, but chronobiologists have only recently discovered seven-day patterns written into the biology of people, animals and plants. They have found that the blood pressure cycle, hormone cycles, immune responses to infections, production of blood and urine chemicals, and even the heartbeat operate on a seven-day pattern.

Seven-day cycles also govern fundamental aspects in the lives of flies, rats and other critters. And researchers have uncovered no cycles that occur in five, six, eight, nine or any other number of days – only seven.

The Week’s True Origins

The week is completely oblivious to seasons, tides, orbits and every other aspect of external nature. Nothing in the cosmos happens in seven days, so there is no astronomical reason for the week. So the week had to originate from another source. Science proves that the seven-day cycle is also etched deeply into mankind’s DNA, proving it could not have been the invention of any society.

The intelligentsia of the world have strained in vain to attribute the week’s origins to something secular, but it cannot be done.

THAT IS BECAUSE THE WEEK WAS CREATED BY GOD.

The first two chapters of the book of Genesis detail God’s creation of the universe. It speaks of “days” of creation with God resting on the seventh “day”. Some biblical scholars say that these were actual 24 hour days. Others say that these “days” were actually long but definable periods of time beginning with the Big-Bang 14 billion years ago.

For our discussion, the point to be made in Genesis is that there IS a seven day cycle ending with God resting on the seventh day. God then commanded His people to rest on each seventh day of the seven-day cycle from then on as an external tribute to God’s creation and rest (Exodus 20:8-11; 31:15-17). So, almost as a byproduct of the work He accomplished during the seven “days” of creation, God also created the WEEK.

In Mark 2, Jesus Christ says, “the Sabbath was made for man.” Leviticus 23:3 says, “Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of rest, a holy convocation; you shall do no work therein.” So, it was not just the Sabbath but the entire seven-day week that was actually made for men. The command to labor for six days is every bit as clear as the command to rest on the seventh. And Christ did not say this model is just for Jews or Israelites, but for “man”, or all mankind.

Some societies have experimented with “weeks” longer than seven days. In 1793, just after the French Revolution, France adopted a 10-day week. The revolutionaries made the move in an effort to simultaneously de-Christianize the country and increase its productivity. But France only kept the 10-day week around for 12 years because of its extremely disappointing results. During these years, French society saw a stark increase in injuries, exhaustion, illness and work animals that collapsed and died at astounding rates. These people were attempting to operate on a rhythm other than the one that was created for them and the results were disastrous.

On the other extreme, there are some cultures that operated on a week of only 3 or 4 days. A person would work two days and then rest one. But the cultural and economic output of such cultures is weaker than those of societies that labor six days before resting one.

We are not only commanded to rest on the seventh day, but also to work on the first six days. More or less than this and penalties are inevitable.

But Which Day Is the Seventh?

Muslims say Friday is. Jews (and some Christians) say Saturday is. The majority of Christians say Sunday is. Which are right? Or does it matter?

As far as the seven-day Sabbath cycle, it does not matter! Every person tunes his own body to his own personal seven-day cycle – work six days and rest on his own seventh day. Some jobs require Saturday or Sunday work – then, for that worker, his seventh day may be Monday or Thursday. The point is that in every seven-day cycle, there MUST be a day of rest. The functioning of the body requires it, otherwise things become dysfunctional.

What is to be done on the seventh day? God made a very strict keeping of the seventh day in the Old Testament to point out the importance of the day. In the New Testament, those strict requirements have been dissolved along with the whole Old Covenant but the seventh day of rest remains.

The only guidelines given in the New Testament are: 1) rest from work and 2) getting closer to God by church attendance if possible, or time to study God’s Word with prayer.

So, in conclusion, the week was created BY God, to be used in proper bodily function for health, and for recognition of God as Creator and Savior of ALL mankind.

So-called Agnosticism

2011-12-10T07:31:00.000-08:00

What concerns me most about the new atheists’ attacks – aimed mostly against Christianity – is not that they convince people to become atheists. It’s the impetus and “excuse” they give people for retreating into so-called agnosticism, a now popular and culturally acceptable stance (or non-stance) on religion. More and more people today embrace a religious pluralism or vague spirituality that rests on a shrug: “Whatever a person believes about God is okay because no one can really know.”

I suspect that your network of family and friends includes more people who fend off faith in Christ from this fuzzy perspective than from disbelief in God.

“Agnostic” today is a polite, sophisticated term for “non-committal”. While it makes sense for a person to say, “I don’t know YET” and then try to find an answer, it’s a violation of logic – and also an absurd risk – to say, “I CANNOT know!” [It has been said the the difference between “try” and “triumph” is the UMPH! Many people don’t put the umph into their search for truth.]

Aggressive atheists look for any opportunity to provoke anti-Christian fervor. In a recent speech Sam Harris, a leading atheist, blamed rampant child abuse on biblical teaching, quoting (imprecisely) from Proverbs: “Spare the rod and spoil the child.”

This is an example of the all-too-typical distortion of Scripture. The actual verse is Proverbs 13:24 which says, “He that spares his rod hates his son – but he that loves his son chastens him sometimes.” The “rod” used here was described by King David in the well known 23th Psalm as “comforting” and is a biblical metaphor for loving discipline. Shepherds used it to safeguard their flocks, not to injure them. Imagine a world without appropriate discipline and restraint!

In that same speech, Harris declared science as the true arbiter of morality because science can now measure (via brain scans) pain and suffering. Everyone would agree, Harris says, that pain and suffering are the very definition of EVIL. I’d like to ask him to let us all know when science develops an objective test for motives. Until then, his view lumps together criminal acts with the healing work of physicians, acts of abuse with acts of loving care.

These are examples of the many distortions we see and will see from those who wish to discredit Christianity. We must be on the alert not to be deceived or to allow those close to us to have their faith distorted into SO-CALLED AGNOSTICISM.

Why Not Good Works Versus Bad?

2011-11-12T07:52:00.000-08:00

Many religious leaders including many Christians, Jews and Muslims, have contended for centuries that a “weighing in the balance” of good deeds versus bad deeds ultimately determines our eternal destiny. Many people around the world today still think such a scenario represents Christianity.

This view of salvation (or condemnation) leads to minimizing sin and its damaging effects, and at the same time exaggerates both the quantity and quality of good works.

The question of how God judges became the focus of a debate between the prophet Ezekiel and Jewish religious leaders of his day.

Ezekiel declared the common perception of judgment day as the balance scale scenario to be only partly correct (18:4-32; 33:10-20). He explained what God does with the “record” of people’s lives. It all depends on their response to God’s grace - whether they accept or reject His offer to replace their prideful spirit nature with a nature to obey. Once a person accepts that exchange, “none of the offenses they have committed will be remembered against them” (18:22). On the other hand, if a person repeatedly refuses to repent and receive God’s gift, then “none of the righteous things that person has done will be remembered” (18:24).

In essence, only one pan remains on the proverbial scale. When people turn from trusting their own righteousness to trusting in God’s righteousness, God deletes the record of their transgressions. IT’S GONE! So for those who accept God’s offer, made available personally in Jesus Christ, judgment day resembles a joyous awards ceremony (1 Cor. 3:12-15). When people opt to trust in their own goodness as if it were “good enough”, God deletes their accomplishments record. IT’S GONE! All that remains is the account of their misdeeds. So for those who reject God’s offer in Christ, judgment day means facing up to a nightmarish reality (Rev. 20:13).

Ezekiel’s explanation drew a huge outcry from the religious leaders. They complained, “The way of the Lord is not just” (18:25,29). Yet an earlier prophet, Isaiah, had already warned them that their self-righteous deeds looked more like filthy rags (Isa. 64:6) because such acts represented efforts to bring glory to self rather than to God. They reflected pride, not humility. And so they could not be considered good at all.

As Ezekiel reminded them, God in His kindness had determined not to count such “righteous deeds” against those who remain unrepentant and ungrateful. He implored the people, “Repent and live!” (18:32).

Among those who bow before God, no room for pride remains. They grow to understand that whatever good they accomplish is motivated, empowered, and set up by God. As the apostle Paul wrote, “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Eph. 2:10).

An Ever-Expanding Awareness of Christ In You

2011-10-13T07:15:00.000-07:00

[ My class at Grace Church on October 12, 2011]

OK. First, let’s get the title of this class straight. It is not an expanded awareness of Christ in you as the bulletin read. It is an EVER EXPANDING awareness. It is an expanding awareness that goes on forever – in this life and for eternity. It is an ongoing process for eternity.

Before we get into the ramifications of knowing Christ in you, let’s talk about NOT knowing Christ is in you as a Christian.

Let me give you my testimony and you will see why I have a “Christ in you” ministry. I was born into a Catholic family and, as well as I can tell, I made my own personal decision to follow Christ at about 12 years old. I was what is termed “a devout Catholic”. I tried to follow all of the instructions on how to be good. For about the first half of my life I believed that Catholicism was the only true way to God.

I went to confession on Saturday night and Mass and communion on Sunday. I became an altar-boy and assisted at Mass during my last years of grade school. I went to CBC Catholic high school and received my doctorate in dentistry at St. Louis University – the first Catholic university west of the Mississippi.

In my adult years, I attended Mass and received Communion practically every morning. Up until about age 35, I believed that being saved and getting to heaven depended on my behavior. When I sinned, I lost God’s grace and was going to hell – UNLESS I confessed my sin to a priest and received forgiveness. Then I was back in God’s grace and was going to heaven. Until I sinned again. My spiritual life was up and down like a roller-coaster. I always feared dying between my sin and my confession.

I never really read the Bible but rather used the Catholic Missal which was a compilation of verses taken out of the Bible for epistle readings and gospel readings and for prayer at Mass.

My Christian faith was supposed to give me mental peace and security but, as time went on, I found less and less of peace and security. I never knew where I really stood with God. I’m telling you, those were frustrating and insecure years for me. I began to think that this could not be the way God wanted His children to live.

I began a headlong search into the New Testament to get its perspective. I began to find that many doctrines and rules of Catholicism were not in the Bible and, in fact, were the opposite of what the Bible stated. I could find only 2 sacraments mentioned: baptism and communion (or the Lord’s Supper). Even marriage was not discussed as a church function but rather a civil one. It then became obvious to me that the other 5 Catholic sacraments were established to perpetuate the power and function of the hierarchy. A member of the clergy was necessary to dispense these sacraments.

When I began reading the Bible for myself to see what it really said about salvation, I found a completely different perspective.

I began discovering the fact that salvation was ALL by faith and not by behavior. I left the Catholic faith at age 35 and began an in depth study of the Bible – especially of the way to salvation.

In all those early years of Catholicism, I saw Jesus as being an external helper to be called upon when I really needed Him. But my in depth studies showed Him to be much more than that. I found scriptures like Colossians 1:27 “Christ in you, the hope of glory” and Galatians 2:20 “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I but Christ lives in me..”

I began to see salvation as being born again once and forever and having Jesus come to live in me – forever. I was saved – with Jesus living in me in a living union – His Spirit with my human spirit.

I no longer had the fear of dying between sin and forgiveness. The difference between punishment and correction became clear to me. As a born-again Christian, I would never receive punishment for my sin – Jesus had taken all that punishment on the Cross for me. My sin would have physical effects and bring on correction from God to get me back on the right path. But I was still saved!

Punishment is a penalty imposed on an offender for a crime or wrongdoing. It has retribution in view (paying someone back for what he deserves). Punishment is looking back to the offense, is impersonal and automatic, and its goal is the administration of justice.

Correction or discipline, on the other hand, is totally different. Correction is training that develops self-control, character and ability. It is looking forward to a beneficial result, is very personal, and individually applied. Its goal is the administration of mercy.

Punishment and correction sometime “feel” the same to the one on the receiving end! But the sharp difference can be seen in both the attitude and the goal of the one applying it.

Under the New Covenant, God never deals with His children on the basis of punishment. All of the punishment of God for our sins was fully received by our Savior, Jesus Christ, on the cross. Now that we are children in the family of God, He deals with us only on the basis of correction.

Getting back to the Colossian letter, you will notice in the context that the first chapter carries us right back into the mind and heart of God before the world was, and we are shown what was going on in the plan of the Father concerning His Son. It is called the “mystery”, that is, the divine secret. Out of the secret of His heart concerning His Son, every activity of God proceeded, and down through the ages He was occupied in many activities, in many forms and ways, working with His secret, enshrining His secret in His self-expression, never giving out what the secret was, never proclaiming what was in His heart in so many words, but hiding it, hiding it within symbols and types and many things.

Then at length, in the fullness of the times, at the end of these times, He sent forth His Son. Then by revelation of the Holy Spirit He was pleased to make known the mystery, pleased to disclose the secret, and the first chapter of Colossians is the matchless, incomparable unveiling of the secret of God’s heart – “Christ IN you!”

That which was in the mind of God from before the foundation of the world has its commencement in the receiving of Christ into the human spirit by faith on the part of the believer, the individual believer. That is not the end, that is the beginning. What will follow will be the Church which is His Body. That has been foreseen and is complete in the eternal thought, but it will follow the individual believer’s reception of Christ.

God now begins on the inside. Paul has a good deal to say about this eternal thought as to Christ and His centrality to the believer, and he speaks concerning this matter very largely from his own life and his own spiritual ambition, and as far as I can see, he gathers it all up into five main aspects. There is the revelation of Christ within; there is the Life of Christ within; there is the forming of Christ within; there is the home-making of Christ within, and there is the consummation of Christ within.

1. The Revelation of Christ Within

The first stage which every believer must arrive at is the John 3:16 experience. “God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.” This, of course, has to do with the new birth. It is impossible to achieve God‘s plan for you if there is no born-again experience. The new birth in John 3:5 is plainly stated as being the necessary experience if one is to know God and to enter into the things of God. We might very well declare the new birth to be the “HOW to become a child of God” experience. This is fundamental. This is basic to Christianity.

Now proceeding from this, every group of believers who form some part of Christianity has a key to God of their own. For some it is water baptism. For others it is church membership, catechism and rituals. For others it is tongues and the gifts. Others concentrate on miracles and faith. God may use any of these stages at any time in a Christian’s Life. But I believe that everything is ultimately directed to an understanding of the Galatians 2:20 experience - that everything depends on Christ living in me. This final key might be called the “WAY to be a child of God”. Jesus said that He was “the Way, the Truth and the Life” (John 14:6) . The eternal Life of a child of God is in the Son (see I John 5:11-12 ) , and the giver of that Life is the Father who births His children by placing His Seed, Christ, in them. Only by coming to the awesome understanding of the Galatians 2:20 experience will the believer ever fulfill God’s basic purpose for his earthly life and only then will the believer come to really know who he is by the new birth. There are multitudes of bona fide, saved, born-again Christians in the world today who do not know who they are by their new birth, and as a result never come to the fullness of the Life of a child of God and recognize the full implications of the Christian Life, both on this earth and later in heaven.

Galatians 1:12-16 tells about Paul’s personal revelation of the secret – not from man, but received and revealed from God. Now, for ourselves, that principle holds true as it did for Paul, that everything hangs upon an inward revelation of Jesus Christ. Our lives as children of God are constituted by that, and all that we are and all that we do in relation to Him rests upon that inward revelation which has resulted in His supremacy so far as our lives are concerned. It is so even for religious people, for Saul was an exceedingly religious man. I say that because so often there is a kind of a mental kickback when we speak of Paul’s conversion and the radical nature of it, and the attitude is mentally taken – “Yes, well, but I have never had such an experience; God has never done to me what He did to Saul of Tarsus. Therefore the same cannot be expected of me, and cannot be basic to my life.” Now in spite of such a mental reaction, the truth is that you and I will never be Christians, or servants of the Lord, in real spiritual life and effectiveness beyond the measure of our inward apprehension of the indwelling Jesus Christ. That is basic to everything. Many have not had a thorough-going revelation of knowledge of Christ within because they themselves are not thorough-going with God. Saul of Tarsus was “busy” about God and the Lord met him on his own basis, on his own ground, and because he was so thorough-going, the Lord was thorough-going with him. If you and I are more or less careless about spiritual things, the Lord will meet us on that ground, and we will never get anywhere. But when we get to the point of being determined in the interests of the Lord, even though we may be mistaken about many things, God will meet us on that ground.

Is it not true with so many that they had to be brought to the place where it was a matter of desperation, life or death hanging upon a new knowledge of Christ? He has not been able to give them that inward unveiling until there could be for them no more life unless there was a new knowledge of the Lord.

These two truths apply: one, because of the revelation of Jesus Christ in our spirits we have a passion for Him; on the other hand, because of the absence of a sufficient revelation of Christ in our souls we are out for other things which we would say were in His interest, and for Him, but which can never, never satisfy God’s desire for us.

Therefore it is not converting people to Christianity, or getting them to be followers of a movement; it is receiving Christ, the revelation of Christ in you. The initial knowledge a new convert receives is Christ FOR you, a Savior from your sins. This is overwhelming enough and is about all that you can handle. Christ does come to live in you at conversion and new birth, but it takes a while to see Him as anything more than a “help” to fight sin. But our determination and zeal, however misplaced and misunderstood, brings the revelation of Christ within to a new level. God meets our zeal with His zeal for revelation.

2. Christ the LIFE Within

We now go on the second of the aspects of “Christ in you” and come to the second part of my favorite verse of the Bible, Galatians 2:20: “I have been crucified with Christ – nevertheless I live – yet not I, but Christ lives in me. And the LIFE that I live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God Who loved me and gave Himself for me.” The first is the revelation, however misunderstood, of Christ in you working FOR you; the second is the LIFE of Christ within. He IS my new Life forever (With a capital L to distinguish it from the old death-life of humanity). It is important for us to recognize that this is not just the fact that Christ lives within, not merely that Christ is within us, working for us, but this carries with it something more than that – that Christ is the believer’s LIFE! And He IS - that LIFE just in the measure in which He is central and supreme, no more, no less.

So many believers who now have eternal Life dwelling in them never seem to come to such an understanding of it so that it makes a big difference in their daily living. Eternal Life concepts always make a difference when one thinks of dying. Even though it seems at many times to make little difference in daily activity, yet every birthed believer has eternal Life here and now. When this concept becomes a normal perception of life, what a remarkable change is seen. Though the idea of eternal Life is anticipated in the Old Testament, the concept of eternal Life is largely a New Testament revelation because the issue of eternal Life follows the new birth. You must be born-again, and in the new birth you have a whole new and different Life. While we are physically alive by the death-life which is in this body, we are not body-persons any longer. We are spirit-persons by Christ indwelling us. It is important to distinguish between “life” and “Life”!

But we want to understand in what way Christ within is the LIFE of the believer, and this whole letter to the Galatians helps us to that understanding. We often speak about Christ being our life, we often say things to that effect, that He is our very life. We use another fragment of Scripture which is not in the same realm as this passage exactly, although linked with it: “When Christ, Who is our life, shall be manifested, then shall you also with Him be manifested in glory” (Col. 3:4). It is not just that Christ is to us that vital energy and power which we call life. Of course He is that. But if you look at the immediately surrounding words you will see that this statement of the apostle represents a change. This letter, as you probably know, is dealing with the legalism into which the Galatian believers had fallen, by which they had been overcome and ensnared. You notice how chapter 3 begins: “O foolish Galatians, who did bewitch you…?” They had come under a spell of a false legalism. Now what Paul is saying here in verse 2:20 represents a change. Paul had lived in the old days by holding on to the law. His position as a Jew was that under the law man must live by the law. The law was: “Thou shalt,” and “Thou shalt not.” When the “shalts” were complied with, and the “shalt nots” were observed and avoided, then a man’s life was preserved by God. And we know, even from one like Saul of Tarsus who rigidly kept the law, that it was a tremendously burdensome thing, and it represented always condemnation and death. It was like the sword of Damocles always hanging over the head. Deviate one hair’s breadth and you die, you come under condemnation, judgment and death. Everything for a Jew was purely outward, and there was always the inward sense of something wanting, something lacking. But Saul had lived by holding on to the law with all its burdensomeness, all it wearisomeness, all its threat, judgment, condemnation, and its shadow of death which it always kept in view. That was his past life.

Now no man had ever been found, as Paul makes perfectly clear in the first chapters of his Roman letter, who by his own ability could perfectly satisfy God on every point and requirement of His Divine law. All had broken down, all had failed, and in no man was the root of righteousness found. But Christ, the only one who could do so, had fulfilled the law up to the hilt by virtue of inherent righteousness of the Father within – Christ had the LIFE of the Father.

Jesus had introduced a new dispensation, not of law but of grace. He had brought a new regime where the government is not the government of “thou shalt not” and “thou shalt”, not a government of systematized legalism, but of grace through faith in Christ – faith in Christ who has satisfied every demand that God ever made of man; faith that in Him all who believe are gathered up and represented, and God is satisfied.

That Christ with whom the Father is completely satisfied on the matter of all righteousness is within the believer; so that the believer in Christ has all righteousness in Him. The believer is not anymore righteous in his soul than he ever was, but the Righteous One is within his spirit. God does not look upon our changing soul mind as us; He looks upon His Son in us. Paul says in effect in v. 2:20: “Now I live, not by holding on the law but by holding on to Christ, and the thing with which I hold on to Christ is faith – and that LIFE which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, that faith which is in the Son of God.” How? By saying, when the Accuser comes to lay a charge at my door, to bring me under condemnation, “Christ is my righteousness.” When the Accuser attacks with a fiery dart and says, “You are no good and can never be any good to the Father”, I say, “Christ, who satisfies the Father for me, is in me – His LIFE is what the Father sees.” “I have been crucified with Christ – you can’t nail me again!”

In as much as I constantly keep the link of faith strong in what He is to the Father for me, I live – I live the LIFE force of God. Christ becomes my LIFE in that sense. You see it is something more than our regarding Christ as the backup vital energy and power within us which keeps us going. It is no use our trying to meet the enemy in our own “human life” strength. We must meet him with Christ, knowing our union with the indwelling Christ – answer him with the LIFE of Christ, every time!

3. Christ Formed Within

Galatians 4:19 – “My little children, of whom I an again in travail until Christ BE FORMED IN YOU.” First we have: Christ in revelation within; second, Christ in LIFE within; thirdly, Christ in formation within.

Take again the whole letter to the Galatians. The motive for writing is the correction of an error. Due to spiritual immaturity, these believers had not gone on as they should have gone on in the Lord. Paul puts his finger right upon the root of the matter when he says in effect, “All this is because of the indefiniteness of Christ in you.” The word “formed” in v. 19 is a very strong word. What he is saying is: “Yes, Christ is in you since you are believers and children of God, but it is an ill-defined Christ, an unformed Christ, a Christ without features developed. And because of this, there is all this weakness and this aptness to be misled.”

There was confusion, indefiniteness, because they had not seen clearly that Christ is the end of the law to them that believe; that Christ really represented a clean cut between the old dispensation and the new, the old order and the new. Because they had not grasped the clear definition of union with the indwelling Christ, they were a prey to anything that came along. Now today, there are a lot of Christians like that. They are a prey to all sorts of things because they have not recognized the clear implications of Christ within.

Why are so many of the Lord’s people just beaten and harassed and tormented by the Accuser causing them always to have their eyes turned to soul self-analysis, self-conscious guilt, so tied up with themselves that they are useless to Christ and to other people? They have not had deliverance from self into Christ – Christ is not formed in their minds. But still they are in an ill-defined way trying to provide God with satisfaction, and it is an awful struggle. They have not seen the clear features of Christ within.

When we become “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4), “old things are passed away” (2 Cor. 5:17). There is an essential transformation of the spirit at the new birth rather than just a moral decision. The moral transformation comes after the new birth as we partake of the divine nature.

It is here that we must see there is no human nature. There is a human mind, which many in religion have long attributed to being a human nature. The mind is where decisions are made, a God-created place of the soul, but the mind is not a nature. The nature is in the spirit of man, not in the soul of man. The nature of the earthly birth of human beings is basically the characteristics of Satan being manifested. With the new birth, the next basic result is that he now has the nature of God in his human spirit. This gives him the ABILITY to do those things which are pleasing to God and which are akin to the Family of God. With the sin-nature out and the God-nature in, this newborn person CAN cease from sinning and CAN become conformed to the laws of God by love. It will take time. It will take chastening (Hebrews 12:7-11). It will take submission and trust. But God promises us that this spiritual inoculation WILL “TAKE”! Christ will never leave us or forsake us (Heb. 13:5).
Prior to this new birth, there was no possibility of a sinner producing the will of God, for the sinner was actually dead to God and needed to be rebirthed.
Since there has never been a human nature, though the world and many in religion loudly proclaim it, it becomes necessary for the Christian to have a change in the mind. Paul said that the mind must be renewed (Rom. 12:2) . The believer does this by his daily walk of faith and trust. He is born of God and now he must be “raised” as a child of God. It means that all God intends by His righteousness will be effected in the Christian by the inward pulls of the new God-nature. We hold this God-nature in us as a treasure in earthly vessels, waiting for the total spiritual fulfillment.
Paul says, “I am really anguished and disappointed over you my brethren, that you must finally come to a place where Christ is defined in your souls; where He takes form, and is not a formless Christ.” That is the meaning of Galatians 4:19.

4. Christ Making a Home Within

And then the next thing, the fourth thing. Ephesians 3:17: “That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith…being rooted and grounded in love…” Now you have here an advance upon what has gone before. You may not recognize it, but it is an advance. This is not saying that Christ may take up residence in your heart. This is not saying that Christ may come into your heart. This is saying that Christ may “dwell” in your heart and the Greek word there is, “make His home” or “settle down” in your heart. That is something more than a lodging, that is something more than just coming in and being there. Every house is not a home.

The human life of Jesus demonstrates. “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man has no place to lay his head.” That was His place in the world. But Bethany felt like home. He came to Bethany, and He came again, and He came again – and in the face of greatest stress, when things were pressing more and more heavily upon Him towards the end, His constant retreat was to Bethany. The only home He seemed to have had on this earth was Bethany. It was because He found soul satisfaction in Bethany. There was one there who “kept on listening.” In the story of the sisters, Martha and Mary, the literal translation of Mary’s listening is: “she kept on listening to His word.” He wanted someone, He wanted some heart into which to pour that which was in Himself and find appreciation and response, and He found it at Bethany – the better part. He was made to feel that it was the greatest of all privileges to have Him there. We are so often like Martha – we are doing a multitude of things for the Lord when the Lord is just craving an opportunity to be listened to.
Christ says to us, “Yes, I know you mean to be very busy for Me, I know you mean it all for Me, I know your motive is right. I fully appreciate all that, but oh, that you could give Me a chance to say a few things to you; oh, that you would give Me an opportunity just to speak into your soul, to show you things which you do not know, which could make such a lot of difference.” He would draw us from the feverish activities of the “many dishes” to a place where He is listened to. We have got to run the risk of being misunderstood for seemingly doing nothing; as Mary was misunderstood. Sometimes we are afraid that people will think that we are slacking because we get away with the Lord a little more. That’s okay. Christ knows – He knows He needs a home. And He will come and make His home where He finds an open ear to family values.
Busy Christians must remember that all your work, in the Lord’s mind, can never take the place of an opportunity which He craves of being able to speak fuller things into your heart. Your activities will be without vitality unless you are giving Him time to speak and He is having response to new understanding. Christ is on a mission to make your “house” a real family HOME.

5. Christ Glorified in the Believer

Now finally, in 2 Thessalonians 1:10. “When He shall come to be glorified in His saints, and to be admired in all them that believe.” It is the consummation of Christ within. Yes, we expect to see Him coming in glory, we expect to see the glorified Christ, but He is working something in the meantime which means that when He appears His glory will also be in the saints! It is not only the objective Christ in glory coming, it is the subjective Christ manifested in glory IN US. “If so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified together.” (Rom. 8:17). “God has from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth: Whereunto He called you by our gospel, TO THE OBTAINING OF THE GLORY OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST.” (2 Thes. 2:13-14). Christ is going to be glorified IN the saints and marveled at IN them that believe.

It was, from the world’s point of view, an ordinary Palestinian peasant who one day went up the slope of a mountain. There may have been things striking about Him, impressive, but for the most part He was like other men. He reached the summit of that mountain and suddenly that One became ablaze and aflame with heavenly glory. His clothing changed, white and glistening; glorified, changed suddenly from an ordinary man - as the world would say – to the glory of God. It so bewildered those who were there so that they began to talk and did not know what they said. Utterly taken off their feet, they were.
Fellow Christian, fellow believer, fellow child in the home of Christ, fellow saint – that Christ is in us! We are very ordinary folks among men, there is nothing very striking, outstanding, distinguishing about us, but there is a moment coming when that which happened on the mount of transfiguration is going to happen to us. Christ in us is going to blaze out in glory through us, and as those on that mountain marveled at Him, so He is going to be marveled at in all them that believe.
Now we may have a problem. I was once challenged by the following situation. I had said to a person seeking the truth that the Christian life really means that Jesus Christ lives in me.
The person quickly shot back at me, “That sounds to me like you claim that you ARE Jesus! I can‘t and I won‘t accept that! Many of the trouble-makers in religion have claimed to be Christ!”
When I say that Christ lives in me, does this say that I AM Christ? No! Does this say that I am Christ/Lou? Yes, I believe that it does.
Galatians 2:20 does NOT teach that Paul became Christ. What is overlooked here is that there are two basic concepts being discussed in the verse. First, there is IDENTITY. Paul exists, as Paul. “I am crucified with Christ.” Paul who still exists has undergone a crucifixion wherein his old man was crucified. This crucifixion did not put Paul out of existence. He was still around to tell about it. Moreover, he underwent a resurrection and he, Paul, was still around to tell of that as well.
But what of Christ‘s part in the process? This does not involve identity or existence, but rather the second concept of ACTION. Christ is not the only one who is alive in Paul after Paul‘s crucifixion, but Christ it is Who lives (or is doing the living) in Paul. Christ produces the life in the still existent Paul. Paul still exists as Paul but Christ produces the spiritual life within him. What appears to be confusing here is the matter of existence versus producing life. I exist but I do not produce spiritual life, Christ does. Now this constitutes a living union between me and Christ and makes me one spirit with Him, but it does not make me Him.
I still exist as me, having a body and a soul along with this spirit union. My nature comes from my spirit, but I have a soul, and I live in a body. The fusion of my spirit with His has produced a radical change at the very core of my being, but it is not completely realized yet in experience. So there is still an “I” that exists which is being profoundly affected by this fusion of spirits.
We have a body that is uniquely us apart from Christ, we also have a personality within our soul that is uniquely us. That personality can be profoundly altered if we allow Christ’s nature to be released in us. In fact, all of the sinful influences affecting our personality can be overcome by Christ‘s life within. There are, however, neutral aspects that remain. These personality quirks are what make us uniquely us. They are not sinful or carnal, they are merely human. They are us, the human. By no spiritual semantics can we erase these things or say they cease to exist.
We must understand that we are dealing here with much more than just man OR God – am I Lou OR Christ. Man and God, though always distinct in identity, are nonetheless joined, as stated, in a spirit union. The humanity of man and the deity of God have been united. The question all of us must come to grips with is: HOW IS MAN MEANT TO FUNCTION IN A ONE-SPIRIT UNION WITH GOD WHILE MAINTAINING HIS INDIVIDUAL HUMANITY?
What I have been trying to say to you is this: Christ can and does live through man without violating man‘s humanity or having man become God.
Here’s how it works. Before conversion, you did not have to WORK at trying to know God or to get Him to convert you. You were converted by grace - the unmerited favor of God. When you called out for a Savior, God heard and answered by placing Christ into union with your human spirit. You could not earn it. The only function of your human soul was to RECEIVE IT.
Well, now that Christ lives in you, it is still all by grace. The only true function of your human soul NOW is to receive and accept the understanding of Jesus Christ living in you and, IF I MAY BE SO BOLD, CHRIST LIVING AS YOU – YES CHRIST LIVING AS YOU - TO YOUR WORLD.
We ought to go back over the whole five stages, from the revelation to the consummation, and see what each one of them represents as a demand. You will see that Christ as revealed in the believer means a captured vessel. You and I have been captured. Christ living within as our LIFE means, not a changed life so much as an EXCHANGED life, a crucified and resurrected vessel. Christ formed within means a vessel that is going on with the Lord, not standing where the Galatians were, but being defined in Christ. Christ making His home in the heart is connected with being “rooted and grounded in love” and then there follows the phrase “with all the saints”. This fellowship in the Body of Christ, and the mutual love one for the other is a “Bethany” principle, leading to Christ’s settling down. And so each one represents its own peculiar responsibility and demand until you come to the consummation. Here the consummation of glory is related to faithfulness and trust in living out to others through Christ, when it feels good and when it hurts. You see there is a demand for each aspect of Christ in you – the key to LIFE – the HOPE of glory!

Made By My Mistakes

2011-09-21T07:51:00.000-07:00

Have you ever messed up royally as a Christian? A sin that bursts apart your soul and makes you wonder if Jesus Christ is truly living in you? If you have, you know what it’s like to wear a burden of pain that tears at your soul. Sometimes it tears with lion claws as the enemy turns over the soil of your past and digs up half-buried memories. It can feel hard to lift your head, to feel lovable, accepted, desired. Yet, when the rain of grace falls upon that soul, what grows out of your darkest days can become your greatest gift.

Such was the case of an impetuous fisherman named Peter – a man who in a moment of bravehearted grandeur boldly declared his willingness to die rather than deny his Savior. Yet hours later he cowardly cursed at anyone suggesting he knew the carpenter’s son. His devout promise is torn to shreds by fear and confusion. A rooster’s crow marks his darkest hour. Peter has betrayed the One he loves most, and now he wonders if Jesus can ever trust his love again.

Reading the last chapter of John always puts me on pins and needles. I see myself tugging at the robes of Jesus and begging, “Please be gentle. You know Peter loves you. You know he has always loved you. Sin is stupid and fear rips us up, and we slip into darkness – but you know Peter. He has never stopped loving you….I have never stopped loving you.”

“Do you love me?” Jesus asks. Peter replies with a resounding “YES!” But Jesus asks him again…and again. Many have said that by asking three times, Jesus was reflecting on Peter’s betrayal. I can’t help but think that Peter must have flashed back too. I envision him sighing deeply and dropping his eyes as he chokes out his final answer, “Lord…you know everything. You know I love you.”

I suspect Peter’s internal dialogue ran something like this: “O Jesus, you knew I would betray you. You prophesied it. Therefore you must also know that I love you more than life itself. I am weak. But I trust you to see past the weakness and know my heart. Since you know everything, you know that I love you.” Peter loved Jesus fully – yet he sinned. But sin was powerless to separate Peter from Jesus’ love.

I believe grace rained down in bucketfuls as Peter grasped the reality that love is not hinged on behavior – it is anchored in the truth of who Jesus is – LOVE ITSELF. Jesus was not there to condemn Peter; he was there to commission him. Out of the soil of pain a tree of righteousness was growing. A tree that can only grow when planted in the truth of grace.

Peter walked away from that encounter a changed man. Maybe more changed than all the others because he hadn’t a shred of ego left that believed he “deserved” love and glory and the honor of sitting at Jesus’ right hand. He had encountered the outrageously generous love of God – and he simply loved God right back.

It is up to us in our time of darkness to remember Peter and his time of darkness. He had dedicated himself to Jesus but he had messed up – he had not stopped loving Jesus but he had just made a big mistake. We also do not stop loving Jesus who now lives within us – but we, in weakness, make mistakes.

When we enter the book of Acts, Peter “the rock” emerges. A man altered beyond recognition. A man who stands bruised, battered and bold, crying out, “Do you think God wants us to obey you rather than him? We cannot stop telling about the wonderful things we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:19). Why? Because love does not stop.

Peter’s story reminds me that Jesus uses broken people – people who have come face to face with their limitations, fears, inadequacies and selfish egocentrics. When we have crumbled before the reality of who we are and we hear God whispering, “I love you anyway. You are exactly who I want you to be at this point in your life. You are exactly who I want as a growing child in my Family.”

We, too, cannot stop telling the world about the wonderful things he has done. Obedience no longer carries a checklist of duties – it flies on the wings of love. In those moments I don’t mind so much being “made” by my mistakes.

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A message on the anniversary of 9-11

2011-09-10T07:22:00.000-07:00

[Sermon given by Lou Hodapp at the Missouri Veteran's Home on 9-11-2011]

We come together on this rather solemn day of remembrance of the tragedy of 9-11. What a horrible, evil thing that event was!

The questions in some people’s minds were: How could a good God allow such evil? And why do bad things happen to good people? Godly people down through the ages have wrestled with these questions. I don’t profess to completely understand God’s plans but I do know this: God IS in control!

The book of Job is the oldest book in the Bible – it was written even before Moses wrote about the creation and the flood of Noah. Job was a man who really was involved with the two questions mentioned: Why have evil at all, God? And why does evil strike good people, God?

Job was a person who God allowed to lose all his children and all his material wealth.

I call the book of Job the first and greatest debate.

Job had 4 friends who debated with him over evil and suffering. Job refused to blame God and said that God has a good purpose even though Job couldn’t figure it out. His friends blamed a punishing God and Job himself for the evil circumstances.

One reason the problem of evil has persisted as an argument against God may be that we struggle so hard to identify what eventual good could possibly justify the magnitude of evil’s horrible inpact.

We all have freedom to choose good or evil. Those Muslim pilots who flew those planes into the towers had the free will to do it. Free will serves a purpose in God’s plan for humanity.

Twentieth century history sadly reveals how difficult it is to expose humanity’s fatal leaning toward evil. More than a hundred million people were brutally murdered in that one century alone at the hands of despots who built their power over people.

No doubt Job found himself unable to imagine any good that could possibly outweigh his suffering and loss. Rebellion against God takes many forms. It may be a s subtle as simply ignoring God or as blatant as lashing out violently to harm others. But without the freedom to exercise this choice, humanity would be little more than robots.

In the last chapter of Job, after all the Great Debate, Job reached a conclusion he could live with.

Job replied to God, “I know that you can do anything and that no one can stop you. You ask who it is who has so foolishly denied your plan for good. It is I. I was talking about things I knew nothing about and did not understand things far too wonderful for me.”

In effect Job said, “I can never totally understand you, God. But I trust you and your plan for humanity and it is a place of peace and praise. I will love you and trust you to see me through what I do not understand.”

I’m sure we have all looked at the events of 9-11 and tried to see where God fit in. Just remember this – God is in charge of EVERYTHING.

And His whole purpose is to bring people to the understanding of their weakness of mind and inability to live life by their own power and strength.

In the days immediately following 9-11, the churches were filled with praying people. But God also wants us to pray on the good days, not just when we think we need God. What I’ve learned in 80 years is that real confidence in prayer isn’t found by projecting my desires on God on my bad days. Sure, I still do it – I still call on God to get me out of bad situations. But confidence is not built by how these bad situations turn out. Confidence is built by loving prayer and communication on the good days. Confidence is built when things are going right for us on the good days and we can sit restfully down and be thankful for the overall pattern of our life in Christ. We grow to understand that everything in our Christian life is used by God as a means of His overall WILL toward growth in His Family. Sometimes I have been grateful for His “yes.” Sometimes I’ve seen the wisdom of a “no”. Sometimes I’ve even wondered but learned to enjoy God in the process of waiting for His answer. Don’t neglect prayer on your good days. After all, there is no question of “yes”, “no”, or “wait” when you are cultivating a love relationship with God in Christ. Prayer on good days makes prayer of need on bad days easier to deal with and, in the long run, more of a love relationship.

Let me inject a little humor on this solemn day. A man was out hiking on a mountain trail. He got careless and slipped over the edge. As he hung by his fingertips on the precipice, he called out, “Is anyone up there that can help me?” He heard a deep voice say, “I am God. I can help you. Just let go and I will sweep you down to the ground on angel’s wings and prevent you from dashing your head on the rocks.” There was a long pause of silence. Then the man said, “Is there anyone else up there?”

Friends, God won’t test you like that to save you.

At Grace Church, our pastor has spent the whole summer basically on one topic – God loves you – just the way you are. But He wants you to be MORE than human. He wants you to come into His divine Family. You don’t have to and in fact you can’t earn your way to becoming a son or daughter of God. God has made it very simple – it is by faith alone. By calling out to God for a Savior from your sins, Jesus Christ’s death substitutes for your sin penalty. By agreeing as best you are able, to make Jesus the Lord of your life, you are saved.

Join me in your heart with this prayer: Heavenly Father – I really can’t figure out everything about you. As my Creator, you are just too big and all-knowing. But this I do know: You have proven yourself lovable to me and I want to be in your Family. I do accept Jesus as my Savior and will follow Him as Lord of my life as best I can. Thank you, Father, thank you, Jesus. You have promised in your Word to see me through good and bad circumstances – that you will never let me go. I stand on your promise. I have peace now. In the name of Jesus, Amen.

Let’s finish with a specific prayer about 9-11. This is the prayer of Pope Benedict when he visited ground zero in April 2008.

O God of love, compassion and healing, we ask you in your goodness to give eternal peace to all who died there on 9-11 – the heroic first responders, the fire fighters, police officers, emergency service workers, along with all the innocent men and women who were victims of this tragedy simply because their work brought them there.

We ask you in your compassion to bring healing to those who, because of their presence there that day, suffer from injuries and illness.

Heal too the pain of still grieving families and all who lost loved ones in this tragedy. Give them strength to continue their lives with courage and hope.

We are mindful as well of those who suffered death, injury and loss the same day at the Pentagon and in the fields of Pennsylvania.

God of peace, bring your peace to our violent world. Turn to your way of love those whose hearts and minds are consumed with hatred. Grant that those whose lives were spared may live so that the lives lost there may not have been lost in vain.

Give us the wisdom and courage to work tirelessly for a world where true peace and love reign among nations. God bless America.

Amen.

Thank you for having me.

Why Must We Endure Hurricanes?

2011-09-07T07:19:00.000-07:00

[written by Hugh Ross - from his book, "Hidden Treasures in the Book of Job"]

In the aftermath of Hurricane Irene and other massive storms, one wonders why God would subject the planet to such forces. Given the laws of physics the Creator used in shaping the universe, the absence of such storms would mean either less rainfall, less evenly distributed rainfall, lower quality living space on the continents, or more extreme day-to-night temperature differences. The present number and intensity of hurricanes yields the optimal balance between advanced life’s well-being and collateral damage.

Hurricanes serve a number of beneficial proposes. They substantially increase chlorophyll concentrations along continental shelves, bringing nourishment to many species located there. Hurricanes powerful winds lift huge quantities of sea-salt aerosols from the oceans, and these play a critical role in raindrop formation. They also ensure that enough rain falls to support a large, diverse land life population. In addition, these aerosols and the clouds they form efficiently scatter solar radiation, allowing hurricanes to act as a global thermostat. When tropical oceans get too hot, they generate hurricanes. The aerosols and clouds produced by hurricanes serve to cool down the tropical oceans.

Every form of severe weather, not just hurricanes, brings beneficial effects. Lightning, for instance, is a major contributor to nitrogen fixation, a crucial nutrient supply for plants. Lightning also generates wildfires which remove growth inhibitors, infuse soils with water-retaining and mineral-rich charcoal, and facilitate the growth of fungi, a vital nitrogen fixater for plants. The lightning strike rate on earth is optimal for maintaining a high quality of life. Scientists observe the same level of optimization in every other form of “bad” weather.

Jesus and Muhammad

2011-09-01T07:41:00.000-07:00

Among the world’s great religious leaders, only two founded religions whose adherents now number well beyond a billion people—Muhammad and Jesus Christ. As of 2008, researchers estimated world totals of approximately 1.5 billion Muslims and 2.1 billion Christians. Therefore, combined, Muslims and Christians make up approximately 54 percent of the world’s population.

While Muhammad (AD 570–632) and Jesus Christ (c. 6–4 BC–AD 30) loom as arguably two of the most influential people in history, the identity, mission, and message of the two leaders stand in stark contrast. In this article I will introduce the life and thought of Islam’s prophet, Muhammad, and then briefly compare him with Jesus Christ, who among Christians was known as the Son of God

The Life of Muhammad

Muhammad was born into the Quraish tribe in the vicinity of Mecca (modern day Saudi Arabia) in AD 570. Orphaned early in life, he was raised by his uncle Abu-Talib who was the chief of the tribe. Without formal education, Muhammad served as a camel driver in the Arabian Desert where he experienced cross-cultural interaction with members of the Jewish, Christian, and Zoroastrian religions. At 25 years of age he met and married a wealthy widow named Khadija and they had several children together. Through marriage Muhammad became a rather well-to-do merchant.

Islam’s Prophet

According to Islam, while meditating in a mountain cave on the outskirts of Mecca (Mount Hira), Muhammad fell into a trance and was greeted by the voice of the angel Gabriel. Through these extraordinary angelic encounters Muhammad is said to have received divine revelation that he would memorize and later recite. These revelatory encounters propelled Muhammad to the status of conduit of the God, Allah, and the specific messages formed the content of the Qur’an. As a result, Muhammad became the final and supreme prophet (seal of the prophets) of Allah.

The content of Muhammad’s message focused upon God’s absolute unity (radical monotheism) and the impending divine judgment facing humanity. That message is succinctly summarized in what Muslims refer to as the Shahadah (Islamic creed): “There is no god but the God (Allah), and Muhammad is the messenger of God.”

Muhammad’s importance in Islam is not limited to his prophetic or revelatory role. For ‘‘Muslims’’ (meaning those who submit to Allah’s will) he’s also the principal moral example. Muslim scholar Seyyed Hossein Nasr explains: ‘‘The prophet is seen by Muslims as the most perfect of all God’s creatures, the perfect man par excellence…whom the Quran calls an excellent model.”1 Of course, it should be understood that Islam views Muhammad as being solely a human being. But some Muslims revere Muhammad’s moral example highly enough to call him the “living Qur’an.”

Upon his death in AD 632, Muhammad was the undisputed religious and political leader of the Arabian people. He headed a religion that would one day dominate the entire Middle East and beyond. At least one historian has ranked Muhammad as the most influential person in history.

The Prophet and the Son of God

Muslims view Muhammad as the supreme and final prophet in a long line of prophetic figures (some 124,000) that includes but is not limited to such biblical figures as Abraham, Noah, Moses, David, Solomon, Job, Joseph, and Jesus. Historic Christianity refers to Jesus Christ as the only Son of God—meaning the person who shares God the Father’s divine nature and is therefore God in human flesh.

Five Ways Muhammad and Jesus Differ

These two respective leaders of the largest religions on earth profoundly differ when it comes to their person, nature, and message.

NATURE: Though viewed by Muslims as history’s greatest person, Muhammad never claimed to be anything other than a mere human being. In contrast, Jesus Christ proclaimed himself the Son of God who possessed both a divine and human nature.

CHARACTER: Muhammad, while highly intelligent, courageous, and persuasive, was––from an objectively historical perspective––not a morally perfect man. Whereas in Western civilization the greatest moral compliment to be paid is to say that one is Christlike in character.

MISSION: Muhammad’s mission was to persuade people to submit their wills completely to Allah. Jesus Christ, on the other hand, came to rescue sinners by providing a permanent sacrifice for human sin on the cross.

ROLE: In Islam, while everything is based on Muhammad’s life and teaching, nevertheless he is not the center of Muslim worship and devotion. In sharp contrast, historic Christianity is all about Jesus Christ (emphasizing his person, nature, life, death, and resurrection).

STATE: Muhammad died at the height of his power as a great spiritual and political leader but remained in the grave. Unlike all others, including the great leaders of the world’s religions, Jesus Christ rose bodily from the grave at his resurrection.

Hope vs. Assurance

The Islamic prophet Muhammad offers a message of moral reform and submission to Allah’s will with hope of paradise in the hereafter. The Son of God, Jesus Christ, secures for those who trust in him salvation from sin and eternal life via his victory over death.

Comparison of Leaders:

Jesus Muhammad

Figure: Historical, factual Figure: Historical, factual

Status: God Incarnate Status: Merely human

Role: Lord & Savior Role: Prophet & Example

Mission: Redeem sinners Mission: Promote
Submission to Allah

State: Resurrected State: Dead

Comparison of Religions:

Christianity Islam

Problem: Human Sin Problem: Human
Weakness

Need: Reconciliation Need: Moral
Guidance

Solution: Faith & Repentance Solution: Submission

Ultimate: Personal Redemption Ultimate: Paradise

Assurance: Yes Assurance: No

Deity: Trinitarian Monotheism Deity: Radical
Monotheism

An Obituary for Common Sense

2011-08-08T12:28:00.000-07:00

An obituary for Common Sense

Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape. He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as when to come in out of the rain, the early bird gets the worm, life isn't always fair.

Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don't spend more than you earn) and reliable parenting strategies (adults, not children are in charge). His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well-intentioned but overbearing regulations were set in place. His condition was worsened by reports of a six-year-old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate, teens suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch and a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student.

Common Sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the job they themselves failed to do in disciplining their unruly children. His health declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer aspirin, sun lotion or a band aid to a student, but could not inform the parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion -- and when a woman spilled a little hot coffee on her lap, and was awarded a huge settlement from the restaurant that served it to her.

Common Sense lost the will to live as churches became businesses; and criminals received better treatment than their victims. Common Sense took a beating when people lost the right to defend themselves from burglars in their own homes -- when burglars were able to sue them for assault. Common Sense finally gave up the will to live when the government officials we hire imperiled the financial stability of our nation by failing to solve our budgetary crisis and maintain our good credit.

Common Sense was preceded in death by his parents, Truth and Trust; his wife, Discretion; his daughter, Responsibility; and his son, Reason. He is survived by three stepbrothers; I Know my Rights, Someone Else is to Blame, and I'm a Victim.

Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone.

The U.S. Constitution Is On Its Deathbed!

2011-08-04T13:20:00.000-07:00

A fanatical statement? Our Founding Fathers prophesied it would happen if our “religion and private morality” grossly degenerated. That has happened. That lack of response reveals how little the Constitution means to us.

The U.S. Constitution is the supreme law of the land. When people no longer keep that law, a crisis will hurl us into violent anarchy and destructive chaos, so prophesied our Founding Fathers. Unless our Constitution is based on biblical religion and biblical morality, it will not work, so stated the Founding Fathers.

Time magazine recently wrote a cover article about how the U.S. Constitution was under siege, but not in a crisis. I totally disagree. The Constitution is over 90% destroyed already. But almost nobody understands or knows why.

Will we allow the Founding Fathers to tell us why?

Much of Christianity today has become an empty ritual. Where are our leaders who will speak out against family breakdown, U. S. drug usage, and the crime it causes? The Constitution won’t work for such biblically immoral people! Who is willing to hear what our own Founding Fathers prophesied? All political parties are guilty of rejecting their warning.

The famous British historian Paul Johnson wrote an article titled “No Law Without Order. No Freedom Without Law.” It was printed in the Sunday Telegraph, Dec. 26, 1999. In it he wrote, “The rule of law, as distinct from the rule of a person, or class or people, and as opposed to the rule of force, is an abstract, sophisticated concept. It is mighty difficult to achieve. But until it is achieved, and established in the public mind with such vehemence that masses of individuals are prepared to die to uphold it, no other form of progress can be regarded as secure. The Greek empire tried to establish the rule of law. It failed and the empire collapsed. The Roman Empire also tried to build a society based on law. They had succeeded under their republic but Caesar and his successors had destroyed it. The essence of the rule of law is that it is impersonal and omnipotent. It is the same law for everyone, everywhere – kings, emperors, high priests, the state itself, are subject to it. If exceptions are made, the rule of law begins to collapse – that was the grand lesson of antiquity.”

But have we learned that lesson? Failure to do so means we pay the supreme sacrifice: loss of our republic.

The continual problem of man has been his failure to learn from history.

What was our Forefathers’ overall goal? Early immigrants who came to this land were often persecuted in the countries they left. They usually lacked religious freedom.

“Both in Virginia and in New England to the north, the colonists were determined, God-fearing men,” Mr. Johnson wrote, “often in search of a religious toleration denied them at home, who brought their families and were anxious to farm and establish permanent settlements. They put political and religious freedom before riches. Thus took shape the economic dynamo that eventually became the United States – an experiment designed to establish the rule of God on Earth…”

What a goal! That means they had the goal of each person keeping the Ten Commandments of God – the basis of all righteous law.

How many Americans are willing to face that reality? Not many. Because then we would have to admit that we often fight not to establish law, but to promote lawlessness!

Consider some statements from the Founding Fathers. In his first inaugural, President George Washington said, “The foundations of our national policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality.” And in his famous Farewell Address, he said, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. Without them we are doomed to failure.”

John Adams backed him up: “Statesmen may plan and speculate for liberty, but it is religion and morality alone which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand.”

In 1954, Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote, “I believe the entire Bill of Rights came into being because of the knowledge our forefathers had of the Bible and their belief in it.” Ironically, he subsequently began to gradually tear the Constitution apart.

The Constitution is the foundation of our republic. And the Ten Commandments were, in many ways, the foundation of the Constitution.

It was very hard for our Founding Fathers to spill steams of blood winning our freedom, and to create and establish our constitutional law. And it will be just as hard for us today to maintain it. Are we too vain and arrogant to see how profoundly strong they were and how pathetically shallow and weak we are?

What a noble and rare document our Constitution is. Our forefathers had the awesome opportunity to establish the rule of God in this great country. So they established a Constitution to protect all of us from the extremes o.f human reason. Tyrants, unjust judges and biased leaders were controlled by this law.

When Robert Bork was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court by President Ronald Reagan, it created a firestorm in Congress, and he failed to get confirmed. Shortly thereafter, he wrote the book “The Tempting of America”. In it he said, “The founders of the Constitution put in place the walls, roof and beams of our Constitution. The judges’ purpose is to preserve the architectural features – adding only filigree or ornamental work. Instead the lawyers and judges are changing the very structure of our representative republic.”

We are experiencing a constitutional earthquake, and most of our people don’t even know it – yet. Your future is being changed for you and often you have no input.

The order of events in the life of an empire has often gone like this: 1. Establishment of a representative constitutional government which succeeds for a time. 2. The constitution is gradually changed and weakened. 3. Apathy among the people grows allowing corruption in government. 4. A dictator or oligarchy takes over power and the constitution is completely ridden over. 5. Either the people rise up in anarchy to take over the government and establish a new constitutional government OR 6. The country becomes so weak by overtaxation and spending that a foreign power is able to conquer and destroy the country.

Cal Thomas wrote in the March 8, 2000 Washington Times, “In the final Democratic debate before the Super Tuesday election, Vice President Al Gore responded to a question about the type of Supreme Court justices he as president would select: ‘I would look for justices of the Supreme Court who understand that our Constitution is a living and breathing document, that it was intended by our founders to be interpreted in the light of the constantly evolving experience of the American people.’

Mr. Gore’s view of the Constitution, shared by most political liberals, is one of the most dangerous philosophies of our time. It establishes a class of philosopher kings who determine the rights of the people and shreds the Constitution as a document that conforms people to unchanging principles that promote their own and the general welfare.

A “living” Constitution means the Constitution is “up for grabs,” and it becomes whatever the justices decide, not the people through their elected representatives.

Law scholars today don’t believe our founders established the rule of law. But that is just what the founders did. And now their foundational work is so often rejected.

Why did the Founding Fathers keep pointing back to these fundamental building blocks of religion and morality? John Adams himself answered that question in 1798, while serving as president: “Our Constitution was made ONLY for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Without the moral restrictions of a higher spiritual law, the liberty afforded Americans in the Constitution would be abused. The success of our Constitution does not depend on which political party we belong to – it depends on how biblically spiritual we are!

Today, many Americans have departed from the ideals of our forefathers. They reason that religion and morality are nice, but certainly not necessary for the overall wellbeing of the nation. We have been led to falsely assume that private morality and public duty are separate issues. George Washington would have been appalled by such reasoning. And he was the father of our nation.

When Americans have gone from proclaiming that a free society can only exist when founded on private morality to thinking that character just doesn’t matter, it is time to ask some hard questions about the future of this nation.

The Confusion of Matthew 6:12

2011-07-04T09:09:00.000-07:00

Let me define “religion” for you. Religion is the traditional, widespread human belief that performance of the right rules and rituals will gain a higher standing with God than would have otherwise been enjoyed. It assumes to mediate between God and humans, to speak for God and to dictate “His” demands.

There is much “religion” within Christianity. An outstanding example is religion’s interpretation of the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew chapter 6. The religion in Christianity believes that God will only forgive us as and when we forgive others, and cites Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 6:12 as proof:

Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.” Those who accept and believe a religious interpretation of this passage unwittingly turn God’s forgiveness into a conditional act, which depends on human merit. But if God will only forgive us as and when we forgive others then His forgiveness depends on an action we must first take, and which, in turn, gives us the power to earn God’s forgiveness.

What Jesus is actually saying in this verse is that God makes it possible for us to forgive others. The only true, lasting and eternal forgiveness a human may offer another human is a gift which only God can give. Apart from God, humans are incapable of offering divine forgiveness to another. We are incapable of mustering true forgiveness from within our soul.

God does not wait to see if we will forgive others before He forgives us. If His forgiveness was conditional upon our perfect forgiveness of others, then no human would ever be forgiven by God. His forgiveness is conditioned and based on His goodness, not our own. His forgiveness is given to us by His grace, not because of any action or behavior we can humanly produce.

“But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

While suffering the most excruciating death any human could ever experience, Jesus prayed, “Father forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). But surely those who beat and tortured him, those who nailed him to the cross, and those who insulted and cursed him as he hung dying, knew what they were doing. What did Jesus mean?

I believe that Jesus was saying that they had no idea that they were actually taking the life of God the Son, God in the flesh, their own Creator, the second Person of the triune Godhead. Jesus knew that many humans had some responsibility for killing him. Yet Jesus was clearly stating that God’s forgiveness does not depend on human abilities. God’s forgiveness is unconditional – no matter how much culpability you or I may have.

That’s why you and I cannot give divine forgiveness to another human, apart from God’s grace. We cannot give what we do not possess.

We cannot participate in God’s forgiveness unless we have first accepted His grace, which itself entails an acceptance and even a surrender on our part – a realization that we do not have what it takes to forgive others, or for that matter, ourselves.

God’s limitless love means that His forgiveness is inclusive, rather than exclusive. It’s not just for people who have all their doctrinal ducks lines up, or who memorize the right creed, say the right prayer or sing the right tune.

God’s forgiveness breaks the chain of an eye for an eye, by transforming our pain. If our pain is not transformed by God’s grace, then we will transmit that pain. We will, apart from God’s grace, be consumed by the pain of what we have suffered, and it will be manifested as hatred and vengeance.

Only God can give us forgiveness, and it is on His terms of unmerited grace. Don’t let religion get you confused.

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Where Things Went Wrong With Freedom

2011-05-27T10:01:00.000-07:00

We are hearing much these days about freedom. We have the “freedom-fighters” rebelling in the Middle East. We see so many dictators taking “freedom” away from the common people.

One political approach is that people should be free in their lives to start new businesses and run their daily lives without the intrusions of government. The other political approach is that people need government control because so many are not free to live the “good” life because of poverty and disease.

To understand freedom, we must focus on the true meaning of freedom. We humans have played fast and loose with the word. We tend to regard the word as meaning a situation where we can be or do anything. Not so. Freedom is a meaningless concept unless it is freedom to choose. If there was only one thing in the world, there would be no choice, and therefore no freedom. There would not be such a word.

But freedom has as its firm base the responsibility of making intelligent choices, and right ones. Then, when we have made our choices, freedom has its limitless expression within the limiting bounds of that choice.

Repeating, freedom is LIMITLESS potential expressed within LIMITED choice. Marriage would be a human illustration. A supposedly intelligent choice is made, and then all freedom in family living is expressed within the limits of that choice. A young person chooses a profession, and then within its boundaries puts all he has into the development of the calling.

The starting point of this being the meaning of freedom is that it is stated to be true of God. We say He is unlimited. But the Bible says He is limited. Paul speaks of God who cannot lie. The writer to the Hebrews says it is impossible for God to lie. Not that He does not lie or should not, or did not, but He cannot. Therefore there is something God cannot do. What does that mean? The lie is one form of self-centeredness. It is preserving one’s own interests at the expense of another. Therefore, it is saying that God cannot be a self-seeker, self-lover, self-magnifier.

Why, if God is freedom? Because freedom means right choice and all activities as an expression of that choice; and it is here saying that from eternity that “choice” has been God’s eternal nature. He “cannot” be a self-seeker. He can only be a self-giver. Everything He has ever thought or done in His “freedom” is some form of self-giving. There is nothing else within the boundaries of His freedom.

So you see, God has given us humans freedom of choice – a necessary first step toward freedom of action within that choice. The right choice is self-giving, a choice not often seen in human history. Oh, it is seen in the rest of creation – in an involuntary way, everything has its true life, not in being itself, but in becoming others or something to others. The tree becomes the chair and table; the bread and meat become our body; water is our life. Everything is a servant, by giving up its independent life to become somebody else’s life; this is God life.

But back to us humans. Immediately there arises the dilemma of all history. If God must have free persons by whom to express Himself in freedom, then we must choose God and His boundaries of freedom! And we must be sure it is the right choice.

We cannot say that God ever made a choice in time, as we do; but we say that God, the three-in-one, always was love. But for us there is the choice. We, as created persons, could have consciously chosen to affirm that relationship and thus be natural free expressions of the free self-giving God. But equally, in freedom of choice, we can choose to be ourselves as if independent if god and live in the illusion, yet dreadful reality for us, of being independent self-loving selves.

We, in our freedom, can be united to Him in His freedom, every limitless human faculty freely expressing Him. He loves and we love. He thinks and we think, He wills and we will. He acts and we act – we humans being in essence God walking, God talking, God acting, God loving, in John’s words, “as He is, so are we in this world.” Are all humans that? Obviously, tragically not!

Then what has happened? It is not hard to see. Indeed, the Bible makes it quite plain. FREEDOM CAN BE MISUSED. It can make the wrong choice, which God the original Self, never made.

The fall of angels and humans broke open a dimension of the self-life which should never have been exposed, which never was known in God, a dimension where all that self-centeredness produces and actually becomes its way of life – pride, lust, hatred, jealousy, lying and the rest. The Bible speaks of this as “becoming as a god” for a god is an originator, and this choice of independence began this kingdom of lawless freedom which the Bible calls sin.

If, in our freedom, we choose just to live as ourselves and for ourselves, we have diverted the self to a use which never should have been in existence; but if, in our freedom, we choose our being in God, and now through the redemption and our living in union with Christ, we find a freedom in action that has limitless boundaries of self-giving love.

So, when voices yell “FREEDOM!”, we must consider what they mean – and what GOD means. The wrong choice has its own boundaries of freedom, and they ain’t good – but the right choice has GOD’s boundaries of freedom – and there ain’t nothin’ like it!

I’m going to date myself, but back in the 50’s Bing Crosby sang a song about freedom:

O give me land, lots of land, under starry skies above – Don’t fence me in!

Let me ride through the wide open country that I love – Don’t fence me in!
Let me be by myself in the evening breeze,
Listen to the murmur of the cottonwood trees,
Send me off forever but I ask you please,
Don’t fence me in!
Just turn me loose, let me straddle my old saddle
Underneath the western skies.
On my cayuse, let me wander over yonder til I see the mountains rise.
I want to ride to the ridge where the west commences,
And gaze at the moon til I lose my senses,
I can’t look at hovels and I can’t stand fences,
DON’T FENCE ME IN!

This cowboy sounds like he really likes the freedom of God’s creation. I hope that it is through a relationship with God Himself.

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Romans Says It All

2011-05-25T14:14:00.000-07:00

I see God as presenting a loving three-fold approach to fully redeem and liberate lost mankind to the purpose for which we were created. These three stages are nowhere more clearly explained and presented to us than in the great Roman letter. Let’s now examine them more closely, always bearing in mind their ultimate goal: that man was originally created and now re-created in Christ to find his place in God and He in us.

The first stage may be called the outward approach. Man starts out as an extrovert, or at least he seeks to live like one. To look too far within might be disturbing. He tries to live on the surface; work, pleasure, practical interests, social and religious activities, the world’s merry-go-round. So it is from the outside that God approaches him. He can understand a God in heaven; he can see a Savior in history; he can recognize the sins he himself has committed. On this level, then, the gospel is preached to him.
Look at the first five chapters of Romans, where more plainly than anywhere else in Scripture, the way of salvation is presented. First, “God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men” (1:18). Then the sins of men are exposed in loathsome detail, and attributed to a worship of the creature rather than the Creator (1:21-32). The coming day of the righteous judgment of God is proclaimed (2:5-11). No pronouncements could be in plainer language: a child can understand them. The verdict of guilty on all the world is unmistakably foretold for the simple reason that all have sinned (3:19-23).
The gospel of free grace is then presented in the same practical, objective and reasonable form. There is a way by which the guilty are pronounced righteous. God has a worthy substitute for all to see at an exact place and on a fixed date: Jesus Christ (3:24-25). And it is not by works of self-effort but by “believing on Him who justifies the ungodly (3:27-28). To that man or woman who so believes, “his faith is counted for righteousness” (4:3-5).
The primitive forest-dweller, the little child, or alternatively, the sophisticated intellectual, hedonist, religious, can all understand such facts, if they will.
It does not deal with any such matters as our dwelling in God and He in us; it does not draw attention to the ramifications of the self-life, or raise questions of soul and spirit. In these first five chapters of Romans, up to 5:11, no reference is made to an inner relationship to God, except the one statement that “the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit.”
But what a change in Romans 6! What does Paul mean when he suddenly alters the emphasis from Christ’s dying to my having died? (6:2). This takes us at once from the objective, outward approach to the second stage: the internal but still independent approach – from the historical to the mystical and spiritual. Anyone can understand the historical fact of the Savior dying for us, but who can understand the statement that we are dead? Quite obviously, physically speaking, we are not dead! And still less buried, as 6:4 says! Now we are passing on to where man really lives – within himself.
We have seen how the natural man will escape the discomfort of looking within himself, if he can, and God meets him where he lives. But, when he has come to Christ, and the Son has been revealed in him as his Savior, it will not be long before he finds out that the real problems of life are within. At his birth, it was his past sins that concerned him; but now he discovers that it is not the sins, but the sinner that must be dealt with. “Shall we continue in sin?” asks the apostle. The rebirthed Christian now wants to follow Christ, but what is he to do with the influences that rise up to prevent him? There are the attractions of the world, the distractions of home and business, the deadness in prayer and Bible study, the powerlessness in witness. He has to face the fact that the joy of sins forgiven, the gift of eternal life, the knowledge of Jesus as Savior and Friend does not give him the inner release and victory he needs. Often he seems to be still overpowered by sin and self; he struggles, he resolves, he prays; but one powerful sin or another keeps winning him over.
Paul gives the answer as no other writer in the New Testament. He leads us now into this second stage, to which the first was a gateway, and from which the third is a normal and necessary continuation.
He now begins to open up an inner relationship with God. For the saved man, though he does know Christ, he normally regards Him as apart from himself, often even outside himself, and sometimes so separate that there appears a great distance between them. Sometimes this especially appears to be so in prayer, or in time of crisis and bewilderment. Even very often, from our pulpits, no nearer presentation of Christ is given to the believer than that He is a Friend close at hand. The veil of a false separation is left over the eyes. Here, of course, lies the great error. It leaves man to do the very thing he was never created nor redeemed to do, to carry on by self-effort helped, he hopes, by the assistance of God.
We see in Romans 6 how Paul pointed out that in our redeemed experience of salvation by faith and new birth in Christ, we do not continue in sin. The reason is that as our Lord died and rose again as representing us, we then died with Him to being sin-indwelt and rose with Him to being Christ-indwelt, as symbolized by our burial and rising in our water baptism.
But this is based on a further startling fact of a different kind – that we are no longer “under law, but under grace,” and that we are “dead to law” as well as “dead to sin.” But wait a minute! If we are not under law, don’t we mistakenly conclude that we shall easily slip back into sin living? Paul then opens to us the basic radical delusion that we have lived in since our human birth – the lie of us being independent, self-managing selves who must therefore see to it that we respond to law by our self-efforts. Not so.
Paul then points out that in fact we have always been just slaves, either to the sin-owner or the righteousness owner; branches bearing the fruit of either the false vine or the True Vine; married and producers of the seed of either Satan-husband or Christ-husband. There never has been such a thing as us being independent, self-producing human selves, and responding ourselves to a law of evil or good.
Paul proceeds to Romans 7 to explain his own experience of discovery and release from his false deceived bondage in this radical misconception, and thus his freedom in Christ to a totally liberated life. In Romans 7:7-25 Paul turns from general statements to the strictly personal. How do I find that the Christian life works? How do you? To explain, Paul does a big thing. He deliberately backtracks from his actual present experience as “dead to the law” and aligns himself with every born-again believer, using the present tense of “I, I, I.” He shares with us his earlier years of spiritual adolescence, and finally his searching and wrestling right through to the final answer for himself, and thus for all of us.
Paul’s use of the present tense about himself in sharing what he had long left behind has been misunderstood through all these succeeding years by millions of sincere believers, who have themselves not entered into the final understanding. Thinking that the furthest a believer can know in life is humiliation, struggles and constant failures under sin’s apparent dominion, they have falsely deduced a “two nature” condition, as if we humans are permanently caught up in the opposing strife of sin and holiness natures. Then we would have to oscillate despairingly between them and take them for granted as our normal experience.
The truth is that our God-created human self is merely a neutral vessel, or container. In Romans 7:17-18, Paul described it as being in itself neither the good nor the bad. It is merely the fruit producer of whichever vine it is a branch of and it can never be a branch of both at once.
Paul describes in detail his past dramatic experience. It was the sudden impact of that tenth commandment, with its “Thou shalt not covet,” which so rudely awakened him. He had been blissfully ignorant (7:9) and that is how all the world lives until confronted by the law. Paul had been “delighting in the law” (7:22). But under the lie of independent self, when that “Thou shalt not covet” struck him, he blindly thought, “No, of course I won’t and don’t.”
Then the blast hit him. Paul found an influence over which he had no control, which he named sin. He was devastated, not that there were these sin drives, but because he thought he ought to be able to control them. “I want to do good but there is an evil presence influencing me” (7:22). “I want to do the good and not the evil” (repeated in verses 14, 15, 18, 19 and 21).
There He says, “I am a wretched man” (7:24), a new-born Christian but still a slave to sin. Where lies the trouble? Is there a remedy?
The trouble is in that deceived, independent “I” popping up 32 times in those 19 verses. It is the enormous delusion which the law came to expose.
So all self-effort is Satan-backed effort whether good or bad in appearance. Paul lived with a godly nature of Christ (as all Christians do) but was externally influence by Satan.
In his self-delusion Paul was so ashamed and humiliated that he said he was like a slain man (7:7-11).
While in our deceived, self-relying state, we have to be confronted with the law and the standards by which the universe was created to function. These laws were first embodied outwardly for our enlightenment in those Ten Commandments from which any deviation finally brings total destruction. We are forced to accept the realization that first we didn’t fulfill them (conviction of sin) and second, we can’t fulfill them which is the final discovery of this Romans 7 chapter. You have no independent human ability to keep or not keep the law.
Now we move with Paul into Romans 8. Here he comes right out with the third and final stage of God’s approach to man – the internal and dependent rather than independent approach.
What Paul said he had “reckoned” on in 6:11, he now says he “realizes” (8:2). The governing principle, “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus,” has set him free. Now at the summit there is no condemnation. We are freed from that false self guilt – we are Spirit people in outer bodies. Now we are under Christ’s law with no escape. That old law standard, which had seemed unattainable, is now our natural way of living – “the righteousness of the law fulfilled in us”(8:3-4). Paul lays unique emphasis on life being the Spirit in us. Nowhere else in the New Testament is this said in such plainness. There are 15 mentions of the Spirit in chapter 8 in place of those many “I’s” in the previous chapter.
Paul says, “Get this clear! We are now Spirit people. Christ is living our life. We are walking His way (8:3). We think His thoughts (8:5-6). He in us counteracts those former self-for-self thought patterns.”
Certainly there are flesh pulls – sin’s self-for-self influence getting at us through all the world’s atmosphere around us. But we don’t resist them by any false self-effort. We recognize and admit them, but then we affirm who we ARE and know we ARE – Christ in our forms; and our faith affirmation puts to death those influences (8:13).
The normal background to our daily lives is the Spirit’s witness that we actually are God’s children (8:16).
From the moment in 8:17 when he opens up the incredible destiny of us humans being co-inheritors of the universe with God’s Son, Paul changes the tone of what we are to experience in our daily lives. This talk of sufferings comes as a shock until we see at the end of the chapter that those are the devastating condition in which we, as sons, operate triumphantly as Christ people.
Paul says the animal and material creation around us is engulfed in suffering – living in tension. The deliverance will come through the sons of God, but the methods aren’t explained in detail (8:19-22).
The Paul goes a glorious step further. He opens up the hidden purpose behind our suffering and disturbed conditions. He says these are necessary training years on earth. But we must not confuse God’s soul transforming operations, taking place in us through those constant trials and pressures, with the total basuc transformation of human spirit already taken place. Growth in conforming us to the image of Christ (8:29) is the daily spontaneous development of trusting in our Christ union.
And then that glorious chapter ending verses of total security – we will be forever enveloped in the love of God as His child and nothing “shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (8:39).

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Happy 400th, King James Bible

2011-05-06T09:55:00.000-07:00

May 2, 2011 marks the 400th anniversary of the printing of the book commonly known in America as the King James Bible. How well do you know the history of what led to the making of the King James Bible? Only a few know the real history and goal. This history leading up to the publication of the King James Bible is worth knowing – lest history repeat itself! There was one single goal: Give everyone the opportunity to become a Bible student.

By the 1500s, the Renaissance had swept across Europe. The dark oppression of the Catholic clergy was broken by the light of education in art, literature, math and science. The invention of the printing press in 1450 made the production and distribution of educational materials readily available for a public eager to gather them up.
The first book published by printing press inventor Johann Guttenberg was a Latin-language Bible. The Bible was the hottest selling item in Europe at this time. The Catholic church having for centuries made it forbidden had made it even more popular.
Early in the 16th century, Disiderius Erasmus (1466-1536), a Dutch scholar, became an international celebrity. A founding father of the Renaissance, he is best known for his 1508 book In Praise of Folly, a satire on society. He did not spare the practices of the church and clergy. Having a rich knowledge of Greek, Erasmus grew to prominence lecturing at Cambridge. He studied the best early Greek texts he could find in order to make a Latin text that was more accurate than the Vulgate. Though his project was considered sacrilege to Catholic authorities – who would dare tamper with the Vulgate? – his goal was to direct scholars to the Bible in order to cleanse the Catholic church of error. Erasmus’s New Testament had its greatest impact at Cambridge, at that time considered the intellectual home of the English Reformation.
Then, in 1517, Martin Luther, a member of the theology faculty at Wittenberg University, began to speak out against papal indulgences. He invited scholars across Europe to join him in the study of what the Bible had to say about church doctrine. For Luther, the Bible was a rival to the authority of the pope. Rome called for him to recant. He refused and widely circulated numerous books explaining his beliefs throughout Europe and England. His writings found special residence at Cambridge. Martin Luther produced a German-language Bible in the years 1523 to 1529.
When Luther’s books were banned at Cambridge, revolutionary thinking students such as William Tyndale, a priest, theologian and gifted linguist, fled the university. Tyndale intended to translate the Bible into English from fresh sources following in the tradition of Erasmus. When denied approval by the English Catholic church authorities, he found financial support for his translation project through a wealthy cloth merchant who provided him with food and shelter.
Tyndale was a linguistic genius. He was proficient in eight languages. His intensive labor produced an English translation that was so astoundingly clear that common people could easily read and understand it. He had a true gift for transmitting the original meaning from one language to another. Much of his New Testament translation still appears as originally written in today’s King James Bible.
Authorities could not short-circuit the demand for Tyndale’s work. They resorted to buying copies simply to burn them. The battle over the Bible became very bloody. Many, including Tyndale, who was betrayed by a friend, lost their lives fighting for the right to have the Bible in their native tongue. The calculated ecclesiastical destruction of Tyndale’s Bible was so thorough that only three copies survive to this day.
Eventually the Bible was in England became tangled with Henry VIII’s battle to divorce his first wife. After winning his fight with Rome, the proud king soon realized that he faced an incredible dilemma. The nation was bitterly divided between Catholics and Protestants. He recognized that even the newly established English church was splintering into religious factions. Henry’s leading counselors urged him to produce a new official Bible to attempt to reunite the nation.
Henry laid the task at the feet of the English bishops. But because of deep disagreement nothing had been done by 1535. So began a new kind of war, not one of Bible translation but one of Bible interpretation.
By the time James I (James VI of Scotland) came to the throne, two bloodstained centuries of war over Bible translation had taken place. As James ascended the throne, essentially that war was over. People were free to own and read the Scriptures. Now came the need to strip the English Bible of all interpretation.
At the suggestion of church leaders, James personally convened the Hampton Court Conference on Jan. 1, 1604, to officially start the massive translation project. He set strict guidelines to ensure translator objectivity and that only the purest translation of the Scriptures was brought into English.
The Bible was divided among six teams of scholars; two each were set up at Westminster, Oxford and Cambridge. Not only did they use the best Hebrew and Greek texts, they took advantage of every available version to compare the variant readings. The basic text was completed in four years. Then the translation was subjected to two additional years of further checking. Then, to ensure the very best translation, in 1610 another team, two men from each of the original six teams, completed a final check.
After all these years of grueling translation and proof, the authorized Bible was published in May 2, 1611. Its contribution to Western society is without question. It has molding and shaped our thinking.
Many have died to give us the right to own, read and study this incredible book. Do we highly value that right? If we don’t, we could easily lose it. In the apparent coming of religious war, the Bible is certain to figure prominently in that war.
Around the world today, many are losing their lives over owning or reading a Bible. It is said that there are more Christian martyrs in the last hundred years than there were in the twenty centuries since Christ. And much of this martyrdom was over the Bible.
Britain and America became great nations as this book grew to become the bestseller of all time.
If we forget this book, could history forget us? If, on the other hand, we see this remarkable book we call the Bible as God’s own words, then we will appreciate that printing of the Bible 400 years ago for the purpose of being understood by the common people. Then we will take it off our bookshelves, open it and search for the solutions to the problems that are about to overwhelm us.
God help us to come to the right answer.

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A Mother's Day Tribute

2011-05-03T07:30:00.000-07:00

A tribute to mothers

Somebody said it takes about six weeks to get back to normal after you’ve had a baby.
Somebody doesn’t know that once you’re a mother, “normal” is history.

Somebody said you learn how to be a mother by instinct.
Somebody never took a three-year-old shopping.

Somebody said that if you’re a good mother, your child will turn out to be well behaved.
Somebody thinks a child comes with directions and a guarantee.

Somebody said you don’t need an education to be a mother.
Somebody never helped a fourth-grader with math.

Somebody said you can’t love the fifth child as much as you love the first.
Somebody doesn’t have five children.

Somebody said a mother can find all the answers to her child rearing questions in books.
Somebody never had a child stuff beans up his nose or ears.

Somebody said the hardest part of being a mother is labor and delivery.
Somebody never watched her “baby” get on the bus for the first day of kindergarten – or on a plane headed for military camp.

Somebody said a mother can do her job with her eyes closed and one hand tied behind her back.
Somebody never organized four giggling Brownies to sell cookies.

Somebody said a mother can stop worrying after her child gets married.
Somebody doesn’t know that marriage adds a new son or daughter-in-law to a mother’s heartstrings.

Somebody said a mother’s job is done when her last child leaves home.
Somebody never had grandchildren.

Somebody said your mother knows you love her, so you don’t need to tell her.
Somebody isn’t a mother.

St. Louis, Missouri and Tuscaloosa, Alabama

2011-05-01T06:49:00.000-07:00

Is the God of St. Louis, Missouri also the God of Tuscaloosa, Alabama??

“No deaths in St. Louis tornado called a miracle” – Headline, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 25, 2011
Only days after tornadoes ripped through the St. Louis area without killing anyone, other tornadoes and storms killed at least 200 people in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. And just last month a historic earthquake and tsunami in Japan claimed 14,400 lives, with more than 11,600 still missing.
So why have so many died elsewhere but not in St. Louis? Does God love Americans more than Japanese? Or people in St. Louis more than people in Tuscaloosa? Are people in St. Louis “better” people than those in Alabama who maybe require a little punishment?
Hopefully, everything within you says no. God’s heart breaks over all these tragedies. Simplistic answers don’t add up.
We don’t know why some live through such events and others don’t. God does intervene in a miracle for some, but in most cases He just lets nature take its course. One thing we must not do is sound like the disciples who presumed that God us punishing the suffering. Everyone suffers at times – this we know.
The Bible does tell us that when sin entered the world, God said that nature itself would work against the people. "Cursed is the ground because of you…. It will produce thorns and thistles…until you return to the ground" (Genesis 3:17-19). When the first people sinned, nature itself went awry - and nature will win over every person, and every person will return to the dust from which they came (v. 19). Old age will strike - unless something else does first - and nature will have its say.
Paul says that creation itself "was subjected to frustration" (Romans 8:20), and it waits for the day when it "will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom" (v. 21). Frankly, we do not know how physics would function without "decay" of some sort, and we do not know how God will fix the problem. But we do know that there is something wrong with nature, caused by sin, and God had chosen to allow that - even with the difficulties it causes, even though those "difficulties" are sometimes huge disasters that kill thousands of innocent people. Sin often affects innocent people, and sin has somehow affected nature itself.
We may pray for the day when "the times comes for God to restore everything" (Acts 3:21), but we still have to live in the world gone awry.
Jesus saved His disciples from a natural disaster - the storm on the sea of Galilee. He saved Paul and his companions on a storm-caused shipwreck near Malta. But nature still had its way, for they all eventually died. Many were killed by evil people, others by disease (another example of nature gone awry), some by old age. God allows nature to take its toll. Not forever, not permanently, but God still lets it happen. Someday, I suppose, we will see how magnificent the plan is, but for now it seems quite messy.
Jesus talked about a natural disaster in one man’s life. Who sinned, the disciples asked: this man, or his parents? Neither one, said Jesus (John 9:1-3). Not all problems can be pinpointed to a particular sin. It’s just that nature doesn’t always work the way it is supposed to, and for this particular man, the result was a disaster in his own life. Jesus fixed that particular problem, but most of the time, He allows His people to suffer the consequences of a world messed up by sin, where even the forces of nature work against us.
Jesus talked about another disaster in Jerusalem: the tower of Siloam fell and killed 18 people. It was not a natural disaster, of course, but a disaster nonetheless, a tragedy that killed innocent people. Jesus did not spend time blaming the engineers or the builders. Instead, He turned to the audience and said, "Unless you repent, you too will all perish" (Luke 13:4-5). Take that disaster, and instead of blaming somebody, examine yourself. Get your priorities in order, and the chief priority is your relationship with God.
Bad things happen to good people as well as to the bad. The disaster that hit someone else could have just as easily hit us. God could allow it to hit us just as well as He could allow it to hit them - that’s the lesson we need to consider from these tragedies. We need to turn to God, to trust Him even when the so-called "acts of God" strike close to home.
During his tremendous trial, Job said, "Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him" (Job 13:15). We need a similar kind of trust - knowing that the God who did not spare His own Son will never cut us off, though we walk into the valley of the shadow of death, though we enter death itself. The God who spared not His own Son also rescued His Son after He went through that valley, and He promises to rescue us, too. He will give us life again, but to do it, we live in a world that takes life away.
If Jesus were talking to the families of the 18 people killed by the tower collapse, He no doubt would have been as compassionate as He was with the man born blind. When we are dealing with the victims of tornadoes or any other disaster, we need compassion too - compassion that motivates us to help. Many of you have given generously, and no doubt will continue to help during the long recovery period. But we also need to examine ourselves. When tragedy strikes someone else, we do not need to ask where God is - we need to ask where we are, and whether we can do something about it. The only thing worse than nature gone awry is a heart gone cold.
Can we trust God even when nature strikes us dead? Yes, we should, for one way or another, nature will strike every one of us dead. We have nowhere else to turn, for God has the only solution to the problem. But we need to trust Him.
When disaster strikes, God is there, suffering in His people, and working in His people. Therefore, when disaster strikes, God’s people can be found standing with Him, not casting blame, but helping out, making a positive difference, loving as Jesus loves.
Was this latest tornado a St. Louis “miracle”? Maybe it was! But, more likely, it was just a case of people saved by being in the right place at the right time.
God loves Tuscaloosa just as much as St. Louis. We’ve all sinned but God loves us all. In the big scheme, God wins, and so do those who accept His grace. As Christians, we can take God’s love to the victims.
So although we don’t have all the answers, we are grateful for no loss of life in St. Louis and now focus on those whom we can help.

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My Easter Message - Jesus Christ is here NOW!

2011-04-22T07:16:00.000-07:00

For much of my life, I lived in a prophecy-saturated religious culture. I lived in constant apprehension and fear of an impending doomsday. I believed that “the end” could come at any time; I was convinced that we always lived in a window of a “few short years” from the events surrounding the second coming. I did not treasure the message of the Book of Revelation, I feared it. The specific “end-times” interpretation I was taught exercised enormous power over me and many others. Decades later God’s grace completely changed my understanding of Revelation – from a book to be feared to a book to be treasured. God’s grace helped me to find the authentic message and unique Messenger of Revelation and in the process to discover what it has to say about the real agenda of God – and this agenda does not include performance-based religion.

I was not alone in my experiences. In his book The Jesus I Never Knew, Philip Yancey shares his childhood experiences growing up in a church that sponsored annual prophecy conferences. Yancey relates that these conferences “revealed” that a ten nation European Common Market would fulfill the prophecy of the biblical beast with ten horns. “What sticks with me, though, is not so much the particulars of prophecy as their emotional effect on me. I grew up at once terrified and desperately hopeful,” Yancey says.

Today millions continue to be enslaved by “just-around-the-corner” interpretations of Revelation. Some live in fear within cultic groups where apocalyptic anxieties allow leaders to combine irresponsible prophecy teaching with authoritarian control, while others experience the rigors of prediction addiction (prophetic teaching that turns into a religious addiction) within churches that generally teach sound doctrine but corrupt and cheapen the gospel with unwholesome speculation. In either case Revelation is used by religion as a club to control and intimidate.

For many years my relationship with God was in large part dictated by what I was taught about the Book of Revelation. I was forever looking to future events and predicted dates that were misinterpretations drawn from Revelation. I was focused on a Jesus who would return, rather than the one who had already come and conquered on the Cross: the risen Lord, the head of the Church, who is always with His people corporately, and IN His people individually.

The power of God’s grace eventually dismantled my former understanding of Revelation. I came to see that Revelation was not about an out-of-control-beast I had to fear; rather it was all about the beauty of God’s amazing grace and the sovereign power of the Lamb.

I now see that such prophetic teaching is much like a drug, providing an incredible rush while also being the source of the depression and disillusionment that inevitably results from unrealized and unfulfilled expectations. By God’s grace, I came to see that the views I had cherished and believed amounted to a sleazy religious carnival where prophecy pundits and pushers sell their prophetic potions.

Along with its equally seductive cousin of religious legalism, prediction addiction had been the language of my life, the drum beat of my religious soul. It is an obsession, a compulsion to continually seek exhilarating “fulfillments of Bible prophecy” in current events of the day. In my experience, the bondage of legalism combined with an addiction to prediction gave meaning and order to my world while at the same time being the perfect one-two punch religion needed to control me. Legalism told me what I HAD to do in order to earn God’s love and the kingdom of heaven. Prophetic teaching assured me that people who did not do what I was convinced the Bible taught would experience the plagues of Revelation. And, on the other hand, if my works were acceptable to God, I would be saved from those plagues.

The two evil cousins of religious legalism and prediction addiction work hand in hand; where one flourishes the other cousin is surely to be found in the same general vicinity. They feed off of each other. They both lead to religious captivity and eventually control those who buy into their premises and beliefs.

For much of my life to age fifty (I am now seventy-nine), I was in a never-ending race to be found faithful at the soon-coming second coming, and so my life on earth consisted of earning my own salvation by deeds. There was no doubt in my mind that if I didn’t “get right” I would “get left.” I accepted date-setting as a part of my life; failed predictions would all simply be re-issued by extending the goal line to some even more future and far off date.

Political and historical events and people, past and future, had the lead roles in the Revelation I once knew, with Jesus far from center stage. The Jesus of the Revelation of my past was a far-off, future Jesus, not one who had already conquered on His cross and who was already reigning in my life and in the lives of those who trusted in Him. Seeing Revelation through the eyes of grace, with a Christ-centered filter, revolutionized this amazing book for me.

Most of what we believe about Bible prophecy has come from trusted sources: parents, teachers, pastors, congregations, and denominations. Most of us have been given one perspective and one perspective alone, and we often find ourselves woefully unaware of the teaching in other Christian faith traditions. No book of the Bible offers a better illustration of how these preconceived religious presuppositions work than the Book of Revelation.

Over the centuries Christian scholars, authors, priests, and pastors have attempted to blaze new interpretive trails to discover the treasures contained in the Book of Revelation. Most of these ideas and methods can be summarized within four foundational methods. What you have been taught about Revelation is almost certainly some permutation or modification of one or more of these views. Each of these perspectives claims to be based in Scripture and is now believed, and has been believed by millions of Christians throughout history.

The primary flaw in all of these methodologies is that each one (with the possible exception of spiritism) places a premium on attempting to answer the when of Revelation. While the when is definitely an issue, it is not THE issue.

The primary characters in Revelation are Jesus and religion (religion being defined as a system of belief that human relationship with God and His salvation for us is directly tied to human performance and accomplishment). Jesus is the Message, the Subject, the Object, and the Goal of Revelation.

The first method of interpreting Revelation is PRETERISM. Preterists believe that most and possibly all of the prophecies in the Book of Revelation were fulfilled during the time of the Roman Empire. They believe that this fulfillment took place in the years prior to and with the fall of Jerusalem in 70AD. They point to passages such as Revelation 1:1 which say that the message must “soon take place.” They point to Jesus’ Olivet Prophecy in Matthew 24 as being fulfilled in 70AD.

Their view is that most and possibly all of the apocalyptic language of events described in Revelation were fulfilled in the horrific events leading up to and surrounding the fall of Jerusalem.

The second method of interpreting Revelation is HISTORICISM. Historicists believe that the prophecies of Revelation have been fulfilled throughout history and are still being fulfilled today and refer to the entire history of Christianity.

Historicism isn’t as popular today as it once was, but most of the great Bible commentators from a century or more ago were historicists. Many of the leaders of the Reformation were historicists: Wycliffe, Knox, Tyndale, Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli for example.

They say that Revelation is a kind of survey of church history with historical events symbolically portrayed. For example, most Protestant historicists of the past believed that the Antichrist of Revelation referred to the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church, the two witnesses were Luther and Calvin, with the triumph of Protestantism over Catholicism being the ultimate victory promised by Revelation.

Critics point out that historicism has not kept up with history much past the fourteenth century and that it is Eurocentric, not recognizing more recent and significant developments in the church in other parts of the world. Historicists can miss the big picture of God’s grace while they attempt to retrofit history into the text.

The third method of interpreting Revelation is FUTURISM. This is the view held by many contemporary North American evangelical pastors and teachers. Ironically, many of its current advocates would be shocked to find that modern futurism originated in 1585 with Francisco Ribeira, a Spanish Jesuit priest, for the purpose of refuting the anti-Catholic views of the Protestant reformers.

The most popular version of futurism today has only been around since the 1830s when J.N. Darby began teaching his ideas of a secret rapture of the church followed by the “great tribulation” and the millennium – the thousand year rule of Christ and the saints. They believe in a literal view of Revelation, and from the 1830s until the present, each new generation has projected chapters four through twenty-two of Revelation into a future time, often future dates on the calendar that occur within, or just after, their lifetime.

When futurists insist upon a literal interpretation of Revelation, they not only ignore the apocalyptic style of writing Jesus inspired John to use, but they can also unwittingly twist and distort the meaning given and inspired by the divine Author.

The fourth method of interpreting Revelation is SPIRITISM. Spiritists believe that most prophecies in Revelation portray an ongoing cosmic conflict of spiritual realities. They look for lessons or principles that are symbolically depicted in Revelation. They take into account the apocalyptic style of Revelation, and see the central theme as the triumph of good over evil, Christ over Satan. While other approaches may take certain passages as chronological, spiritists take these as recurring realities in history, as part of God’s sovereign plan for humankind.

So we have four ways that Christians have interpreted the Book of Revelation over the centuries. But incredibly, many Christians today are not aware of these four views. They are only aware of the futurist interpretation that their pastor or favorite televangelist or favorite prophecy writer teaches.

Although scholars and teachers may identify themselves with one of these distinct methods for interpreting Revelation, in practice they may use various combinations of the four.

Attempting to fit Revelation into one humanly devised time-bound interpretive mold is missing the boat.

And what is the “boat” being missed?

It is critically important to realize that the Book of Revelation is not written in a straight-forward style easily understood by the twenty-first century western mind. Revelation is written in a literary style called apocalyptic. This writing style uses poetic language, metaphorical messages, and figurative images and symbols to convey its message. Some images that are used are known – common animals for example. Other images described in the visions given to John that form the text of Revelation are nightmarish beasts, unknown to any biologist or zoologist. It is a book filled with cosmic symbols.

Characters and events are portrayed in images because no literal description could convey the profound meaning that the Lamb of God reveals. They are physical symbols of spiritual realities, and in the Book of Revelation the greatest reality is spiritual, with the physical and earthly reality being but a shadow of the greater and deeper heavenly reality.

The symbols, figures, numbers, and colors in apocalyptic writing were not intended to be taken literally. Because of their culture and familiarity with apocalyptic literature, the original readers of Revelation would have had a better sense of how to interpret these symbols than we do. Christ, the Messenger of Revelation, inspired the human author, John, to use the literary style of apocalyptic exactly because it was familiar to the original audience. And in addition it was a time of great persecution both by Rome and by the Jewish Zealots, and some veiling of opponents and events was necessary. Thus Revelation cannot be read and understood the way we read and understand popular twenty-first century literature (but that doesn’t stop literalists from giving it the old college try!). The practice of placing a premium on literal meanings can actually block the intended message.

The emphasis of the four methods I have briefly considered is when. I believe there is a fifth way, A CHRIST-CENTERED PERSPECTIVE of Revelation based solely on GOD’S GRACE. This perspective primarily concerns the who of Revelation.

God’s grace enables us to see Jesus standing at the center of Revelation, and Jesus’ Cross as the hinge center of the book.

While blame for Christian preoccupation with detailed predictions, speculations, and the when of Revelation must be laid at the door of all four popular methodologies that have been used to interpret this book, futurism is the primary culprit. This is not to say that there is not a when element in the book, whether that time is past, present Whether the coming of Jesus Christ to this earth and the establishment of His kingdom on this earth occurred in 70AD as preterism asserts, or a future event yet to happen as futurists predict, the fact is that the risen Christ, for us Christians, is with us and IN US NOW, even while we often find ourselves engulfed by speculative predictions that obsess about specific events and times. Such an emphasis can lead us away from Him who is in us.

The emphasis of our daily walk with the indwelling Jesus Christ must be that He is reigning as King in our life right now – today. He has things He wants to lead us to today in His kingdom. He has character to build in us today. He has a ministry to others He wants to extend through us today.

Whatever the spiritual meaning of the wild beasts and strange images of the Book of Revelation, TODAY IS THE DAY OF SALVATION. We must allow Jesus to do His work through us today. He is our reigning King and we are in the Kingdom of God as His children today.

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The World's Leading-Edge Laboratory

2011-04-10T12:29:00.000-07:00

What kind of machine do you need to explore the surface of Mars?
It’s quite a puzzler for the scientists tasked with the job. In fact, the best minds in space exploration have found it easier to get a spacecraft to reach that distant planet than to build a robot that can successfully navigate the rugged Martian landscape—with anything near the agility of your common mountain goat.
On Earth, everything rolls on wheels.
On Mars’s boulder-strewn, canyon-covered landscapes, wheels don’t work so well.
To address the problem, scientist Rodney Brooks took an alternative, yet eminently logical approach. From his earliest days of designing robots, Brooks began with the hypothesis that any successful system had to be grounded in the physical world. “I argue for simplicity,” he says. “I’m interested in building something that can’t fail to work.” So he built based on something that already worked.
In this case, he—perhaps unwittingly— followed the wisdom of a biblical proverb, and went to the ant. Anyone who has ever seen an ant crawl out of impossible- looking holes or up steep walls can understand why. The more Brooks observed the tiny six-legged creatures, the more amazed he became. He could scarcely believe humble insects were capable of forming logical descriptions inside “that puny little head with 50,000 neurons.”
By watching high-speed videos of insects running, he noticed that “they fall all the time and hit their metaphorical chin.” But because they are so lightweight and their skeletal strength is so great, they can have missteps and still recover.
While other scientists were building massive, unwieldy, fragile robots, Brooks (in conjunction with another scientist and a high school student) designed a small, lightweight, six-legged, ant-like robot called Genghis. It was good enough to get the attention of Pasadena’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (jpl) and nasa.
Brooks’s ant robot, built in the mid-1980s, represented an established trend in technology— one that has been exploding in popularity in recent years: When science reaches a limit, when it hits a wall, engineers, builders and inventors look to a fascinating source for inspiration.
They turn to the creation. It only makes sense. Whether or not you believe in the existence of a Creator, the natural world is teeming with eye-popping, mind-stretching engineering and scientific feats that, well, work. Elegantly, beautifully, without fanfare.
Nature’s Drawing Board
Perhaps you are familiar with the seeds of the burdock plant? A bane to hunters and woodsmen for thousands of years, this little-known photosynthetic organism is now the poster child for the burgeoning field of biometrics (or as it is also known, biomimicry).
Even before the fateful day in 1941 when George de Mestral went for a hike in the Swiss Alps, came back covered in sticky burrs and had an epiphany—Velcro— scientists have been copying the methods and systems found in nature and adapting them to everyday problems. In fact, learning and applying the lessons of living things is at the forefront of some of the world’s most cutting-edge technology.
During the early years of jet engines, researchers encountered a perplexing design barrier. As planes got faster and faster, the engines persistently stalled out at certain speeds. The air, instead of flowing into the engine, would for some reason flow around it. Puzzled, researchers looked to nature’s fastest animal: a diving peregrine falcon. How could the bird still breathe, they wondered, while traveling at an incredible 200 miles per hour? Looking at the falcon’s nostrils, they found that a small cone protruding from the front slowed down the air, allowing orderly airflow into the nasal cavity. Fashioning a similar cone in front of the turbine air intake slowed the air enough to maintain proper airflow into the jet engine.
Flight engineers continue to scrutinize the natural world for solutions. For example, it has long been known that the wing shapes of different birds favor different types of flight. Some wings work well for rapid acceleration; others work much better for long-distance cruising: Think sparrow versus albatross. Additionally, birds have the remarkable ability to spread their feathers during the different stages of flight to maximize efficiency.
Scientists from Penn State University want to exploit these advantages by building mechanical aircraft wings that can change form. With these next-generation wings, sliding scales cover a shape-shifting understructure that allows the wing to morph in mid-flight to enable faster, more efficient flying and conserve fuel.
Other scientists and planners are trying to boost flight efficiency by mimicking bird behavior. Some birds, like Canada geese, increase the distance they can fly by more than 70 percent by flying in V-formation. Scientists have discovered that when one bird flaps its wings, it creates a small updraft that lifts the bird behind, allowing it to glide more and expend less energy.
A team at Stanford University says that passenger airlines could likewise benefit from V-shaped convoy flight. Models suggest that if, for example, groups of three or more jets from West Coast airports flew in formation en route to East Coast destinations, taking turns in front as birds do, the aircraft could use 15 percent less fuel compared to flying alone. Not a bad savings for doing something as simple as imitating bird behavior. In 2009, the Defense Department announced plans to pay Boeing to investigate the merits of formation flight.
Meanwhile, scientists at the University of Leeds in Britain are studying the defense mechanism of the bombardier beetle to see if the insect might help them learn how to reignite stalled gas-turbine aircraft engines in mid-flight. The beetle is known for a highly efficient discharge apparatus that enables it to spray predators with a high-pressure stream of boiling fluid a distance of 200 to 300 times the length of its combustor. Its exit nozzle system— with its incredibly short mass ejection time and long range of spray—may serve as a prototype to help aircraft more accurately squirt plasma into gas turbine combustion chambers during the reignition process.
Engineers at Airbus are also making hightech, nature-inspired wing modifications. In order to smooth the flow of air over the wings of the aircraft, they are using a striated foil coating inspired by the shape and texture of sharkskin. Intriguingly, scientists have discovered that the rough texture of sharkskin actually helps channel the flow of water over its surface—reducing turbulence and thus drag. Sure enough, the same principle works with airflow. The result of their nature-inspired modifications?
Planes creating 6 percent less friction and enjoying increased fuel efficiency. The sharkskin discovery applied even more directly at the last summer Olympics in Beijing. Swimmer Michael Phelps won a record-breaking eight gold medals there. Training and aptitude were no doubt the biggest reasons for his success, but his swimsuit, fashioned with synthetic sharkskin fabric, definitely provided an edge. In fact, 89 percent of all medal winners at that competition wore sharkskin-model suits.
Similar sharkskin-type coatings are being applied to the hulls of ships as well because their bumpy, rivet-like contours inhibit the growth of barnacles, algae and other organisms that normally like to adhere themselves to boat bottoms.
Higher, Faster, Further—Cooler?
Inventors have designed fabrics that could be used to make clothing that adjusts to help keep you warmer or cooler depending on your body temperature. How? By studying the way pinecones open and close depending on humidity.
One new smart textile is constructed with a layer of thin spikes of water- absorbent material that opens up when the wearer sweats. When the layer dries out, the spikes automatically close again. A second layer underneath would protect the wearer from the rain. These fabrics promise to reduce or eliminate the need to wear multiple layers of clothing.
Keeping cool is also a challenge for building engineers, especially when you want to avoid expensive air conditioning bills. To solve this problem, some designers have turned to the humble termite.
As it turns out, termites are masters at managing the temperatures inside their termite towers. They do this by constantly opening and closing vents throughout the mound to bring in cooler air from lower levels and release hot air through chimneys.
The new high-rise Eastgate Center building in Harare was inspired by these amazing insect mounds. It collects cool air at night and lets it settle to basement levels. Then this air is used to cool the structure throughout the day. The result is a modern building that uses only 10 percent of the energy required by a typical multistory shopping mall.
When engineering solutions are not enough to keep heating and cooling costs down, super-efficient wind turbines can help. For this, the creation is offering solutions too. Ever wonder why humpback whales have odd bumpy protrusions on the front of their flippers? Despite traditional fluid dynamics that say this isn’t possible, it is because the scallops actually reduce drag and increase lift. This new science—which is actually as old as humpback whales—is revolutionizing wind turbine technology. New airfoils designed with humpback flipper-like bumps on the leading edge reduce stall angles and purportedly increase efficiency enough (almost a third) to make the wind power comparable, on a cost basis, to other, more traditional forms of power generation.
Changing to Survive
The wild Martian landscape is far from being the only challenge in space exploration. High-energy radiation bombards sensitive electronic equipment and extreme temperatures cause drastic mechanical wear and high rates of system failure. To get around these problems, scientists commonly include shielding. They hardwire spare parts, build in redundancy, and take other measures. But the drawbacks are formidable. Spare parts and insulation are heavy and costly. Plus, you can’t carry spare parts for everything, or—in the case of space travel—it might not fly. Some scientists, however, are taking a radically different approach—one also grounded in the real world of the creation. What if you could build a circuit board, a computer program or a robot that could adapt depending on conditions? Even better, since there is no post office to deliver spare parts on Jupiter, what if you could build a system that could repair itself?
That is what scientists like Adrian Stoica at jpl are working on. Consider humans. In some ways, we’re quite fragile. We are optimized to live in 70 degree climate, but we have learned to adapt to live in climates between minus- 40 degrees in arctic tundra to 104 degrees or higher in warmer climates. We adapt to our environment by wearing clothes, eating high-energy food, drinking lots of fluids, and avoiding intense sunlight. Even a child learns to put on a pair of socks when his feet are cold. This makes us much more resilient. Scientists like Stoica are developing circuits and even computer programs that adapt when they notice a change in the environment or when they fail at a task. Working for jpl and nasa, Stoica’s job was to build electronics that could perform functions in extreme environments such as volcanoes or nuclear reactors, or even outer space. As opposed to the standard approach of shielding electronics from the environment, he thought of a second possibility: When the environment changes, why not just replace the broken parts by having the electronics reconfigure themselves?
Thus Stoica designed and built flexible circuits that actually self-adapt to find optimal functionality under radiation, temperature or other environmental changes.
“The human body offers a good analogy,” say Dennis Shasha and Cathy Lazere in their book Natural Computing. “Cuts normally … heal naturally in a few days, broken arms in a few weeks. But an amputated limb requires a prosthetic. If a spacecraft could be designed so that minor failures would be repaired locally and severe failures would be repaired by replacement with a spare part, then the spacecraft [or robot] might survive for [much longer].” A spaceship that can fix itself might sound fanciful, but consider that the transportation industry is already developing products based on the same concept for use much closer to home. Self-repairing plastics for use in things like aircraft fuselages and automobiles are being tested with the hope that they can make vehicles lighter, more fuel-efficient and safer. When the hollow plastic fibers are stressed or broken, the microscopic tubes release an epoxy resin, creating a “scab” nearly as strong as the original material.
Other scientists are taking the concept of biological adaptation even further: working to produce machines that can not only mimic and adapt to change, but also make decisions and solve complex problems on their own. “[T]he future,” say Shasha and Lazere, “is a synthesis with nature.” In other words, get ready for some mind-boggling advances. are observation, experimentation and reason.
Are those tools wrong? Not at all! The error comes from rejection of revelation. For revelation is the true starting premise.” If you want truth, if you want real answers, God must be your foundation. The Bible reveals that when God saw everything He had created, “it was very good.” God designed the material world with all its physical, chemical and biological laws to work well. The more you look at creation, the more you come to understand that even our most advanced man-made technologies look primitive by comparison.
Although scientists today don’t realize it, as they look to nature for solutions to problems, they come very close to the correct scientific method. Looking to the lessons of living things—which are designed
by God, the Supergenius of cutting-edge technology—is about as close as this world comes to asking God for answers. When God’s knowledge is the foundation of a project, it is inspiring to see what can be accomplished!
Shasha and Lazere say that the future “is a synthesis with nature.” In truth, the bright future scientists are working toward will come as a result of a “synthesis” not with nature—but with the Creator of “nature”! The Bible prophesies of a time when all human endeavor will be based on the right premise, and grounded in a robust relationship with God. Under direct divine tutelage, the scientific barriers holding us back today will come tumbling down! Invention and technology will enter its true golden age!
The Correct Scientific Method
The discoveries—that is, rediscoveries— are coming faster and faster. Considering the vastness of the creation, the potential is virtually limitless.
Consider. Deep-sea sponges have inspired commercial optical fibers. Giant water-capturing fog nets in Chile and Peru were inspired by a Stenocara beetle. Batlike sonar-emitting canes help blind people locate obstructions. Superhydrophobic paint that won’t collect dirt is coming to storerooms near you—and was inspired by the lotus plant (will you ever have to wash your car again?). Sea creatures related to sea urchins, called brittle stars, have led to improved optical lens designs. The gecko has taught us how to make tape without glue.
Who knows what discoveries the yeti crab or star-nosed mole might hold? How long before we are commercializing rope based upon super-strong spider silk? Or making glass out of dissolved silicon in seawater, like microscopic phytoplankton? What other technologies will the creatures living in deep-sea underwater volcanic vents stimulate?
As scientists know, success in an endeavor requires building on a sound foundation. Often, when scientists and builders get into trouble it is because they build on a faulty foundation. If you begin with an incorrect premise, you’ll end with an incorrect answer.
Creation-based science is proving to have a terrific premise. Why is that? If we are honest, we cannot attribute the supremely developed engineering behind the natural world to random chance. It reveals a mind of stunning intelligence and creativity.

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Confidence - Not Condemnation!

2011-03-31T07:05:00.000-07:00

Lately I have detected among some of my fellow Christians that the monster of "COMDEMNATION" is rearing its ugly head again among God's children. Periodically this false concept becomes more prominent and insidious in the church. Let's get the truth straight once and for all.
“There is therefore now no CONDEMNATION for those who are in Christ Jesus ...“

Romans 8:1
As I have progressed along my road of spiritual understanding, there have been many questions answered for me about my relationship with God.
Early in my life, I came to see that Christ died for my sins to wipe away my past guilt and to give me a possible future in heaven. This was a good start and I worked hard within a Catholic environment to try to do what would keep God happy with me. In other words, I tried to earn my salvation. Sometimes I did a pretty fair job of it, but most of the time I fell flat on my face. And I developed a FEAR of failure. I loved God as I understood Him, but I seemed unable on a consistent basis to do the things that would please Him or to avoid the things that would displease Him.
I wanted to go to heaven. But I lived in continuing doubt that I would ever make it there. As I understood the situation in the church, every time I committed a “mortal” sin, I lost heaven. And in order to regain my heavenly future, I had to repent, confess my sin, and do penance for it.
And the Catholic catechism listed many “mortal” sins which I found awfully easy to do. Not only that, but there were many “good” things which a Christian was expected to do that I was not inclined to do.
Sins of commission! Sins of omission! How could anyone ever be good enough for heaven? What I had was CONDEMNATION - GUILT! Heaven was possible but, knowing me, it didn’t seem very probable! Now, mind you, I was not an ax-murderer or a rapist or a drug addict or a robber. I just was often not very Christ-like as I saw His human example. I was always fearful that I would die between my sin and my repentance. And as often as I slipped up, this left an awesome amount of potentially ruinous time to die.
Heaven was out there, but it just didn’t seem like I was likely to make it. I had faith in God. I had faith in Jesus Christ. I had faith in the whole spirit realm. BUT I JUST DID NOT HAVE FAITH IN MYSELF! Oh, I had faith in my ability to make a life for myself in the material world. I was a good student, a good learner. I had much materially going for me. But I knew there was more to life than that, and I questioned whether I was Christ-like enough to reach heaven.
I guess that this question of where am I going to end up after this life is common to every person on the planet. Some without much of a spiritual leaning can put the question aside and not be bugged by it -whatever will be will be. But for a person like myself who believes in God and wants to please Him, this doubt, this condemnation, this guilt was hard to live with.
I lived close to fifty years of my life like this until it was revealed to me that all of this was driving me to a greater realization of my relationship with and my need for God. Then a series of Bible verses began to come together for me into a new found realization of what salvation and “heaven” really consists of.
First, the opening verse quoted above - no condemnation when you are in Christ.
Then, II Corinth. 5:17 - if any man is in Christ, he is a new creation.
Then, Galatians 2:20 - … Christ lives in me ...“
Then, Coloss. 1:27 - ... the mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”
Then, John 14:20 - you shall know that I am in my Father, and you in me and I in you.”
Then, Hebrews 13:5 - I will never leave you or forsake you.”
By these and other verses, I came to see that “salvation” is a one-time thing that comes when you call out for a Savior and accept Jesus Christ as Lord of your life. You are instantly “saved”, made a new person, a new “species” containing the Trinity within you - having the divine nature of the Father - having a living union with Christ in your spirit - and having the Holy Spirit within your soul, your mind, to teach and to guide you in the things of the spirit.
And so I came to see that salvation is not a conditional situation given by God. Salvation is actually the FACT OF YOUR NEW BIRTH WITH CHRIST LIVING IN YOU. Salvation IS THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST. When you are made a “new creation”, you are SAVED - and it is permanent - eternal -you have eternal life in union with Christ.
Christ died accepting the punishment, the condemnation, for your sins. That is why there is, therefore, now no condemnation for those in union with Christ, new creatures, “partakers of the divine nature”. You are joined with Christ. He will never leave you. You will live eternally with Christ. You are saved and will never be condemned.
The Bible speaks of having the “peace” of Christ. I believe that the greatest part of this peace is knowing that you are eternally saved and eternally a member of God’s Family; you are God’s child. There can be no greater peace than this and until you resolve this question of “Am I going to make it to heaven or not?”, there can be no real peace. Guilt or frustration over what you do or what you don’t do will always prevail.
Now I know what many will say. “You mean that it doesn’t matter how bad you act after conversion? You can commit any sin you want and you will still go to heaven? Why, that can’t be! That is a license to sin!”Well it is true that by the new birth, you will ALWAYS be a child of God and will NEVER suffer eternal punishment. But, as a “child”, you will receive “correction”. We need to talk about the difference between punishment and correction.
The confusion of the two concepts of punishment and correction probably comes from our experiences with well-meaning but fallible human parents, who often disciplined us in love, but also sometimes punished us in frustration and anger. We then project those characteristics upon God, and assume that He acts the same way. However, nothing could be farther from the truth.
PUNISHMENT is a penalty imposed on an offender for a crime or wrongdoing. It has retribution in view (paying someone back what he deserves) rather than correction. Punishment is looking backward to the offense, is impersonal and automatic, and its goal is the administration of justice. The simplest example of punishment in action is the policeman who pulls you over and gives you a ticket for speeding. You may not intend to speed. You may be just preoccupied and inattentive to the speed limit. You may always try to be a law-abiding citizen. You can explain all this to the police officer and he can be very sympathetic and understanding - as he writes out that ticket.
You see, the law officer isn’t interested in why you were speeding; he doesn’t care whether or not you did it on purpose; nor is he interested in hearing about all the other days that you did abide by the law. All he knows is that you broke the law, and here is your penalty. You will also notice that he did nothing to compliment the 50 other drivers he saw that were within the speed limit. He just sat there unresponsive, until there was a violation, then he got into action. That’s punishment.
CORRECTION or discipline, on the other hand, is totally different. CORRECTION is training that develops self-control, character and ability. It is looking forward to a beneficial result, is very personal, and individually applied. Punishment and correction sometimes “feel” the same to the one on the receiving end! But the sharp difference can be seen in both the attitude and the goal of the one doing it. After conversion and the new birth, God never deals with His children on the basis of punishment. All of the punishment of God for our sins was fully received by our Savior Jesus Christ on the cross. Now that we are children in the family of God, He deals with us only on the basis of correction.
The Bible states in no uncertain terms that Jesus Christ took on Himself all the punishment for the sins of all men when He died on the cross. In a very legal way, He stepped up after we were sentenced to die for our sins and agreed to die for us. All we had to do to go free was to accept the radical concept that someone could and would step forward to do this. We had to call on Christ for deliverance. This is what “conversion” is. This is what being “born again” is. This is what becoming a “new creature” IN CHRIST is!
But we do not lose our freedom of choice when Christ takes over our lives. Such freedom is basic to being a person. We will, at times, be externally influenced by Satan and the world to ignore the Christ life within us and try to go it by our own strength. We invariably fail, and sin. But Christ guides us back under His direction, we repent, and our sin is once again totally forgotten.
But one important fact about sin remains. And this fact alone should be enough to keep us from using our secure salvation as an excuse to sin. This fact is: SIN HAS PHYSICAL EFFECTS – SHORT-TERMED OR LASTING - BUILT IN TO THE SIN ITSELF! When we sin, bad things happen. They may not be immediately observable, or they may be instantly seen. BUT SIN HURTS! Examples:
Sexual union with a partner other than your spouse in this day of AIDS can be fatal or at least disease producing. You don’t lose Christ when you sin sexually but you may gain a lifetime of pain.
Stealing and cheating, not to mention murder, can bring conviction at law and prison sentences. Christ does not leave you when you steal, but He may have to keep you company in jail.
One lie must usually be covered by another lie causing mental frustration and physical rejection by friends when discovered.
Coveting every good thing that you see others have can keep you broke. Credit card debt, nowadays, is often a physical penalty for sin.
In general, every sin has short term or long term mental stress attached to it. And mental stress HURTS! It might not show on the surface for many people, but hidden sleepless nights, bodily stress and even disease can come from emotional stress.
So even though we are saved and have a future eternity to live with God in heaven, WE ARE STILL HUMAN AND HAVE TO LIVE WITHIN HUMAN PHYSICAL CONSTRAINTS! The physical effects of sin alone should be enough to make us avoid sin.
But there is even a more compelling reason why we not only should but CAN avoid sin as a child of God. The US Army says it so well: “BE all that you can BE!”
As I said, at the new birth we enter a union with the Trinity of God. God IS love. And that Love is within us, available to us. We are weak towards sin (acting independently from God), but by trusting in and depending on Jesus Christ to guide our every thought, word and deed, we are more than conquerors.
Sin loses its appeal when looked at through the spiritual eyes of Jesus.
So when you have made Jesus the Lord of your life, you are a new person, a Christ-person. Get rid of that sense of CONDEMNATION and develop a strong sense of CONFIDENCE in your salvation, in Who you are, in the PEACE of Christ.
THIS SENSE OF SECURE SALVATION CAN BE THE STEPPING STONE TO THAT “ABUNDANT LIFE” THAT JESUS SPOKE ABOUT!
[See also article "True and False Condemnation". Click here.]

God lives under the bed

2011-03-29T06:33:00.000-07:00

I envy Kevin. My brother, Kevin, thinks God lives under his bed. At least that's what I heard him say one night.

He was praying out loud in his dark bedroom, and I stopped to listen,

'Are you there, God?' he said. 'Where are you? Oh, I see. Under the bed...'

I giggled softly and tiptoed off to my own room. Kevin's unique perspectives are often a source of amusement. But that night something else lingered long after the humor. I realized for the first time the very different world Kevin lives in.

He was born 30 years ago, mentally disabled as a result of difficulties during labor. Apart from his size (he's 6-foot-2), there are few ways in which he is an adult.

He reasons and communicates with the capabilities of a 7-year-old, and he always will. He will probably always believe that God lives under his bed, that Santa Claus is the one who fills the space under our tree every Christmas and that airplanes stay up in the sky because angels carry them.

I remember wondering if Kevin realizes he is different. Is he ever dissatisfied with his monotonous life?

Up before dawn each day, off to work at a workshop for the disabled, home to walk our cocker spaniel, return to eat his favorite macaroni-and-cheese for dinner, and later to bed.

The only variation in the entire scheme is laundry, when he hovers excitedly over the washing machine like a mother with her newborn child.

He does not seem dissatisfied.

He lopes out to the bus every morning at 7:05, eager for a day of simple work.

He wrings his hands excitedly while the water boils on the stove before dinner, and he stays up late twice a week to gather our dirty laundry for his next day's laundry chores.

And Saturdays - oh, the bliss of Saturdays! That's the day my Dad takes Kevin to the airport to have a soft drink, watch the planes land, and speculate loudly on the destination of each passenger inside. 'That one's goin' to Chi-car-go! ' Kevin shouts as he claps his hands.

His anticipation is so great he can hardly sleep on Friday nights.

And so goes his world of daily rituals and weekend field trips.

He doesn't know what it means to be discontent.

His life is simple.

He will never know the entanglements of wealth of power, and he does not care what brand of clothing he wears or what kind of food he eats.

His needs have always been met, and he never worries that one day they may not be.

His hands are diligent. Kevin is never so happy as when he is working.

When he unloads the dishwasher or vacuums the carpet, his heart is completely in it.

He does not shrink from a job when it is begun, and he does not leave a job until it is finished. But when his tasks are done, Kevin knows how to relax.

He is not obsessed with his work or the work of others. His heart is pure.

He still believes everyone tells the truth, promises must be kept, and when you are wrong, you apologize instead of argue.

Free from pride and unconcerned with appearances, Kevin is not afraid to cry when he is hurt, angry or sorry. He is always transparent, always sincere. And he trusts God.

Not confined by intellectual reasoning, when he comes to Christ, he comes as a child. Kevin seems to know God - to really be friends with Him in a way that is difficult for an 'educated' person to grasp. God seems like his closest companion..

In my moments of doubt and frustrations with my Christianity, I envy the security Kevin has in his simple faith.

It is then that I am most willing to admit that he has some divine knowledge that rises above my mortal questions.

It is then I realize that perhaps he is not the one with the handicap.

I am. My obligations, my fear, my pride, my circumstances - they all become disabilities when I do not trust them to God's care.

Who knows if Kevin comprehends things I can never learn? After all, he has spent his whole life in that kind of innocence, praying after dark and soaking up the goodness and love of God.

And one day, when the mysteries of heaven are opened, and we are all amazed at how close God really is to our hearts, I'll realize that God heard the simple prayers of a boy who believed that God lived under his bed.

Kevin won't be surprised at all! (Anonymous)

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A Lion's Tale

2011-03-05T11:49:00.000-08:00

[Taken from the book, “Sheep Tales” – the Bible according to the animals who were there. By Ken Davis]

So the king gave the order, and they brought Daniel and threw him into the lions’ den. The king said to Daniel, “May your God, whom you serve continually rescue you!

Dandy lived in an old home – one with quite a history. Dandy’s home had been formed thousands of years earlier, when a river used to flow beneath the mountain. Over time, the churning motion of the water had cut a huge cavern beneath the surface of the earth. From there, the water hurried on through a vast underground river system. Eventually the river headed away in some other direction and disappeared, leaving a cave that had been dry for more time than any animal could remember.

Above the cave, erosion had washed the soil out of a huge group of interlocking boulders, leaving a ragged hole high in the ceiling. Except for a rock embedded near the entrance of the den, the floor of the cave was smooth. The walls extended upward and inward toward the shaft in the ceiling. And down at the bottom – well, that was the place the lions now called home.

The lions couldn’t reach the opening, but they enjoyed the light and fresh air that streamed in. Dandy’s great-great-grandfather had been one of the first lions to make the cave home. Years ago the king had sealed off all the exits except for the elevated opening where the river had entered the mountain. This was used as an entrance. There were many little passages that led back into the mountain, but the lions rarely ventured there. Over the years the kings had used the cave for two purposes: as a kind of royal zoo, and as a place to dispose of garbage. On the night the man named Daniel came, it had been Dandy’s home for three years.

Every day just before noon, the sun would stream through the shaft high in the ceiling. It created a spotlight of warmth that would move slowly across the floor as the day grew older. The lions often fought for the privilege of lying in that wonderful brightness. Not only did they relish the warmth, but they also knew that late in the afternoon, when the sunlight touched the smooth stone embedded near the entrance, it would be feeding time. The men from the palace would appear with dinner. It was a first-come, first-serve arrangement. A lion had to be quick to eat.

When the lions heard the sound of voices, the smell of men would begin to filter into the den. The roar of the lions would shake the walls as they fought for position in the patch of light and waited for the food to fall from above. Usually it was leftovers from the palace tables. Sometimes it was a dead or a sickly sheep that men considered unfit for their table. On very rare occasions the meal was even a man! The man might be someone who had attacked the nephew of the king or had broken some law. It didn’t matter to the lions whether it was beast or man, dead or alive; whatever entered the den was quickly ripped apart before it touched the floor.

By the time the lions finished fighting over the scraps, the sun had usually moved low enough so that only a sliver of light remained on the floor, then disappeared altogether. For the rest of the evening, the den would be filled with a softening glow until finally darkness claimed the cave. Dandy hated darkness. It was during those dark nights that he most longed for freedom.

It was on one of those nights when a great disk of light shone in the sky that something happened that Dandy would never forget.

It was a Sunday, Dandy remembered, because on Sundays the lions usually got ribs. He was awakened out of a sound sleep by the murmur of voices. Someone was coming. The light streaming through the hole in the ceiling was brighter than Dandy had ever seen it before. He rushed to the spot where it illuminated the floor. Was it feeding time already?

Still half asleep, Dandy’s brain scrambled to make sense out of the confusion. The other lions were just as bewildered as Dandy as they opened their sleepy eyes. They all charged toward the circle of light, their eyes fixed on the opening. The dust they kicked up took on an eerie glow as it boiled through the shaft of evening light. Dandy decided it couldn’t be feeding time; the lions were always fed in the daylight, never at night when the special light appeared.

Still, snarling eagerly, Dandy joined the others. Every eye was fixed on the entrance where the shapes of three men appeared out of the darkness. Two of them where pushing and pulling a taller man who walked between them. With an outburst of cursing and laughter, they shoved the taller man through the opening. Dinner would be tasty tonight! Every lion sprang forward as the flailing body fell into the den. These were ribs as fresh as they come.

Dandy was the first to reach the man. He opened his jaws for the first delicious bite – but he couldn’t close them. Somehow Dandy’s jaws were stuck, wide open.

Although the man lay just inches from Dandy’s nose, he couldn’t touch him. He lashed out to drag the man toward him, but his claws wouldn’t work properly. His paws floundered in thin air as though he were a harmless kitten batting at a ball of string.

Dandy began to tremble with fear and embarrassment. The other lions were watching. He would be teased mercilessly for this. He lunged again, but this time his mouth, which had finally snapped shut, wouldn’t open at all! His growls were turned into a deep, throaty hum. Dandy slunk away to a corner of the cave in humiliation. What could be worse than a humming lion?

The meal lay right in the center of the circle of soft light. He was curled into a ball, his hands shielding his head. Dandy glanced around curiously. Amazingly enough, not one of the other lions was tearing at the man either. In his entire life he had never seen anything that had entered the den last more than a few seconds. Something very strange was going on.

Sitting beside Dandy was his scared and scraggly friend, Leopold, the bully of the den. This old warrior would often wait for the other lions to do the killing for him, then seize the parts he wanted. Tonight his eyes were fixed on the meal that lay before him and his mouth was watering. He cocked his head to one side as he watched the man slowly uncurl. The lions’ dinner was very cautiously lowering his arms to take a look around.

Leopold’s eyes narrowed to slits and his ears lay flat against his head. But rather than leaping, the old lion could only twitch and slobber. A chuckle escaped from Dandy’s throat. He couldn’t help himself – Here was Leopold the killer lion, the terror of the den, helplessly drooling all over himself. The hunger in his eyes was plain to see, but there was also a look of confusion and apprehension. Dandy didn’t dare say anything, for fear that it would come out as a hum again, so he nudged Tawny, the lioness standing next to him.

As Dandy and Tawny chuckled together, the enraged Leopold leaped forward and with a mighty swipe of his paw sent Dandy sprawling across the den. “What are you laughing at?” he snarled. “Tear an arm from this man and bring it to me.”

Dandy nodded and crept toward the man. Leopold was in no mood not to be taken seriously. But he discovered, to his surprise, that the man was now smiling – another thing the lions had never seen an evening meal do; he was kneeling with his uplifted face bathed in the light and his arms lifted toward the place where the light came from.

Something else was odd: No matter how hard Dandy tried, he could not break into that patch of brightness. Every time the tip of his nose touched the light, he quickly lost the ability to move. Then he noticed that one of the man’s hands had lowered slightly and was sticking out of the shaft of light. This was an opportunity. Dandy curled his lips into a snarl and lunged. He could take hold of the arm with his teeth and drag the man out of the light – and the lions would finally be able to enjoy a gourmet dinner. Dandy might even be hailed as a hero.

What happened next haunted Dandy for the rest of his life. He lunged forward with a roar – and started licking the man’s hand. When Dandy’s rough tongue touched the man’s hand, the man jerked it back so fast that he fell over backward.

Dandy was mortified. His friend Tawny thought this was the funniest thing she had ever seen. “If you can’t eat ‘em, lick ‘em,” she roared as she rolled over on her back. Dandy sulked, He was hungry, but he was beginning to wonder if this particular meal was worth the trouble.

He looked over his shoulder, expecting Leopold to tear him to pieces for his failure. But Leopold had other problems – he was still drooling like an idiot. What was going on here? Every few minutes another lion would try to attack the man. As long as they were still within the den’s gloom, the lions had that fierce, hungry look that terrifies all other animals. But once they reached the light, they would slink away in fear or suddenly lose interest.

Perhaps the man’s smell would provide a clue to what was happening, thought Dandy. Maybe he was poisonous. Dandy had just stretched his neck out for a good sniff when the man began to do something else meals never did: He began to sing.

The lions fell all over each other as they scrambled back, trying to get away from the strange sound. Dandy had never heard singing before, only screaming.

The man was standing now, with his arms still thrust high above him, and he was singing at the top of his lungs. And he still looked delicious.

Leopold didn’t much care for music. He’d had enough. He pinned Dandy against the wall and growled, “Kill him or I’ll kill you!”

“Kill him yourself,” Dandy heard himself saying, surprised at his own foolish courage. He had never stood up to Leopold before. For a brief second, Leopold looked at him as though he were deciding where to sink his fangs. Then he turned and walked toward the back of the cave, growling orders for everyone to follow him. In the darkest corner of the den, the lions huddled and argued over what strange power could be keeping them from enjoying the meal that stood there singing before them.

Finally Raja, the oldest and wisest of the lions, spoke. He pointed out that each lion who tried to destroy the man lost his or her power at the point of entering the ray of light. The light, Raja argued, must be what was protecting the man. There were low growls of agreement. A plan began to form. In a few hours, the special night-light would vanish, as it always did, and with it would go the strange power that protected the man. When the light disappeared, the entire pride would dine in style. Just the thought of it caused Leopold to begin slobbering again.

The lions lay down to wait. Time seemed to slow to a crawl. As Dandy lay there he wondered why the special light had not moved. One by one the lions dozed off. But the man seemed to be talking to someone in the sky above him, where the light was coming from. Maybe he was talking to the light. It still hadn’t moved when Dandy finally closed his eyes.

He was startled from a deep sleep by Tawny’s cry. Her neck was stretched upward and her eyes were wide with fear. Soon all the lions were awake, and their eyes followed her gaze.

High up in the cave, sitting in a crevice, was a beautiful creature of light. From this creature there shone a wonderful light that streaked down and bathed the man in a protective glow even more radiant than the light of the sun.

A soft sense of peace filled the den, and suddenly, amazingly, no one was hungry anymore. Dandy looked around and was surprised to see all his friends lying down; many had gone back to sleep. Then he saw the most amazing sight of all. Leopold and Boris had moved into the circle of light and were lying down right beside the man. Then the man smiled and sat down by the lions. His lips moved in a silent prayer as he reached out and stroked Leopold’s mane. The man’s hand was still buried in the coarse hair when he too fell asleep. That’s the way the kings’ guards found them in the morning.

At the first light of dawn, the king got up and hurried to the lions’ den. When he came near the den, he called to Daniel in an anguished voice, “Daniel, servant of the living God, has your God, whom you serve continually, been able to rescue you from the lions?”

Daniel answered, “O king, live forever! My God sent his angel, and he shut the mouths of the lions. They have not hurt me, because I was found innocent in his sight. Nor have I ever done any wrong before you, O king.”

The king was overjoyed and gave orders to lift Daniel out of the den. And when Daniel was lifted from the den, no wound was found on him, because HE HAD TRUSTED IN HIS GOD.

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Satan's Trick

2011-01-23T09:36:00.000-08:00

OK. We have been born again by accepting Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord of our lives. Christ has come to join His Spirit with our human spirit giving us His divine nature. He will never leave us or forsake us (Heb. 13:5). That’s all well and good – in fact it is fantastic!

So then, what about those continual pulls that we still have to that old garbage in our soul intellect and emotions – those invasions of fear, hate, worry, lust, self-seeking and weaknesses? We are still alive to Satan’s subtlest assaults on us. The subtle trick occurs when we feel those constant pulls on us and we go back to the old habit of trying to fight them off. Bang! We have been caught back in the old habit of thinking we are independent, and thus need to respond to an “ought to” or an “ought not”. This is the subtle trick. And the moment we think that, we are caught up in false condemnation. That “ought not” only reaches us because we have slipped back into thinking we should be watching ourselves, running our own lives and combating the wrong pulls.
That is where Satan has his laugh on us. There we are struggling and condemned, or maybe following through to some actual sin.
Why? Here comes Satan’s final subtle trick. We are tricked into thinking that having those pulls is sin; whereas the real sin is the slip into thinking we are again independent selves who must control our lives in our own strength. The real sin is forgetting WHO we really are!
Paul tells us in Galatians 5, “Walk in the Spirit [in recognition of your spirit union with the indwelling Christ] and you will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh.” We are Spirit people in union with Christ, but still flesh in our human soul and body, and thus open to all Satan’s pulls on us in our soul-body emotions and appetites. So now what happens? We are Spirit people bearing Spirit fruit and loving to be so, but we now also feel the pulls and desires of the flesh with this Satan-filled world attracting us back to his self-for-self ways.
Forgetting Christ and being in the lie of independent self temporarily puts us back under Satan’s trick. But all Satan has created is the illusion of separation from Christ.
The one and only way to handle worldly pulls is to suddenly remind ourselves of WHO we really are – Spirit of Christ bound and Spirit of Christ led, our self expressing Himself. We then say, “Wait a minute. Of course I am not an independent self feeling these pulls of Satan. That is his lie. No, I am a Christ-self.”
I do not deny or fight the reality of my flesh pulls which, by the way, Jesus continually had according to Hebrews 4:15. But I am dead to them in Christ. They can shout at me by temptation, but have no hold or right to me. I am alive to God, a Spirit person and led by the Spirit.
Through Christ in me, the Spirit has replaced that old “law of sin and death” by which I spontaneously did the things of the flesh.
So in the midst of these pulls, I go free – back to WHO I have been since my new birth. This is Paul’s definition of daily freedom under daily flesh-assaults or pressures. By admitting Satan’s right to pull at us through the flesh, we are also free to affirm our right to our divine nature in Christ. We swallow up the negative pulls, or rather use those very pulls to express His pulls: love replacing hate; faith replacing fear; rest replacing strain; strength replacing weakness; self-giving replacing self-gratifying; and so on.
We don’t deny or resist the temptation. Instead, we resist the tempter by saying. “That’s not me you are pulling. That’s only my outer soul emotions and bodily appetites, which of course are open to all that can reach me from your outer world. But I am not a bunch of outer responses – I am in union with Christ. He is the real Self expressed by my human container self.”
As I do that, I am in fact seeing myself in my true self-relationship of Christ in me. And as I do that, the consciousness of myself as a Christ-expresser swallows up the negative consciousness of Satan and his pulls on me.
Light swallows up dark. We don’t fight the dark; we recognize its right to exist, but we replace it by turning on the light.
Our danger, then, is not the fact that temptation pulls us. We shall always have plenty of that on all levels. The danger is that it tricks us back into our old ways of thinking before out new birth.
And if we are tempted to think, “But yes, we are constantly assaulted by the same things,” then we equally say, “And yes, that gives me continual practice in recognizing again and again WHO I am – Christ in me!”

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Christmas Service and Communion at Missouri Veteran's Home 12-12-10 Lou Hodapp, speaker

2010-12-12T09:33:00.000-08:00

Well, it’s good to be here again with you veterans. This is one great facility to care for our Missouri veterans.

We are here this morning to consider the Christmas season and to receive communion. This is the season when we give gifts to each other in the way that the three wise kings brought gifts to the baby Jesus. It is a spiritual time of the year in spite of the fact that many in the world have made it very worldly in practice.

You know, receiving communion and the Christmas season fit together very nicely. Christmas and communion have a common theme. They are both “Celebrations of Remembrance” – remembering birth and remembering death. At Christmas, we are reminded that God in the Person of Jesus Christ was born into the family of man SO THAT WE, you, I and everyone may be reborn into the Family of God.

And as for communion, it is again a reminder that Jesus Christ died for OUR sins SO THAT we may be reborn into the Family of God.

First, let’s consider history before Christmas. Things looked pretty bleak for the human race. Our first parents, Adam and Eve, had blown it big time. They had made a choice for independence rather than the dependence that their Creator and Father God had asked for.

God said that life was now going to be hard for the woman and the man. But then that same Father said that another would be coming in human form, one who would be different. In this way the Father spoke on our behalf when He addressed Satan about the coming Seed of the woman and about us, His stolen children.

The prophet Isaiah told us that this different Person wouldn’t have a human father or come by human conception, but would be born of a virgin. He would be a Savior and a Conqueror.

Then the apostle Paul came on the scene and the whole purpose would become clear. In Galatians chapter 2, verse 20, my favorite verse in the Bible, Paul said about himself and, by extension, about all Christians, “I am crucified with Christ – nevertheless I live. Yet not I, but Christ lives in me. And the life I live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me.”

This Christmas, amidst all the activity of the season, let’s dwell not so much on His coming at Bethlehem (as important as that event was), but rather on His coming to live within us. If you surrender to Him as Lord, that’s where He belongs – WITHIN YOU!

Have you been saying, “I just can’t seem to feel the Christmas spirit this year”? That’s too bad. You are really saying that you feel no joy that Jesus came into the world. You are confessing that His presence in the world is not a reality to you. And beyond that, as a Christian yourself, you are ignoring the joy of the indwelling Christ who cleans up our lives.

Jesus! Born in a barn! The Son of God came to this material world within a dirty animal home. His first bed was an animal manger. Jesus could hardly have picked a more lowly place to dwell. You know, animals may be dirty on the outside but they are clean within as far as God is concerned. They are without sin. Humans without Christ may be clean on the outside but they are dirty within. Upon accepting Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord of your life, Jesus sweeps out the uncleanness of your manger life and comes to dwell within you in a living union.

Maybe this year was not the best on a human level. We all have had Christmases in which sickness or relationship problems have resulted in the time of year not being quite as joyful as in previous years. In those cases, what we can do is concentrate on making it pleasant for others.

Christmas is not only a celebration of Jesus’ birth but a reminder of hope for the year ahead.

2010, for many people has not been a good year materially – the economy way down, home foreclosures, jobs lost. What more can you say about it. But our lives are not all material. They are more importantly spiritual. Let Jesus have a new birth in your life and become important to you this coming year. No matter the problems we may face in the future, our living union with Christ can bring us HIS peace and joy. In a few cases, Jesus takes the problems away so that they no longer exist. But in most cases, the problems remain for us to live through. But Jesus can bring us through them without anxiety and fear and, believe it or not, with peace and joy. The Bible says that He will not leave us or forsake us. What more can we ask for?

Now let’s talk about communion. Jesus Himself gave the reason why He established the taking of bread and wine.

Much is made today about the ability to remember things. Books are written about memory techniques. The ability to remember names and faces is a great factor in business success. We all wish that we could remember other people’s names and things about them better.

Practically every memory technique that you hear about involves the subject of “association”. Some of these talented “rememberers” say that when they first hear about something which they wish to remember, they associate the name, the face, the event, with some other common thing or event. This helps them to recall the thing they want to remember.

Well I believe that Jesus Christ understood the principles of memory association very well. And this is what communion or “the Lord’s Supper” is all about.

I’m going to take the liberty now of stating what I think Jesus had on His mind as He was eating at that Last Supper. Something like this:

“Here are my closest followers feeding their faces. This is something my followers everywhere will be doing every day – eating. I’m not going to be eating with them, living with them, teaching them much longer. But I want them to remember me. My followers now and of the future are going to get busy with things of the world and will tend to forget everything I mean to them. I don’t want them to forget what my death means in saving them from the penalty of sin.

Look at this bread. My followers are going to be eating some of this every day of their lives. When they take it into their mouths daily at mealtimes, I want them to think about my body, broken in death. They can associate eating the bread with my body death FOR THEM.

Look at this wine. They are going to be drinking some of this at their mealtimes also. As they raise that cup to their lips daily, and swish that wine into their mouth, I want them to think about my blood being spilled in death. They can associate drinking wine with my bloody death FOR THEM.

This is the best way I can think of to keep them IN REMEMBRANCE OF ME.”

Do you see what I mean, veterans? I believe that this communion event was meant by Christ to be a simple memory association. It was Jesus’ way of getting Christians to remember Him, in the confusion of the world, at least three times a day.

When you eat and drink your breakfast, your toast and coffee, remember His body and blood. When you eat and drink your lunch, for instance a sandwich and fruit juice, remember His body and blood. When you eat and drink dinner, a dinner roll and wine with your entrée, remember his body and blood. We can even pray a blessing before eating in thankfulness that we CAN remember!

It is certainly good, proper and uplifting to assemble together for a “Communion Service” as we are doing today. And you veterans have played a part in keeping freedom of worship in this country. Worshiping God in prayer or music together and then partaking of bread and wine or juice together is a fine way to increase our awareness of Christ’s importance in our lives. And that is what we are going to do here this morning.

But I really believe that Jesus had in mind a DAILY association of food as symbols about Him. After all, Jesus used symbols of physical things to represent Himself many times. He said He was the vine and we are the branches. He said He was the Light of the world – the Shepherd of the flock – the Bread of life – the source of living waters.

Nowhere in the gospel does it say that communion must be taken in a group. But it is good that we do this.

Before we go on. If you have never really accepted Jesus as Savior and Lord, let’s do that now. Just pray along with me in your heart:

Father – To the best of my ability, I accept Jesus as Savior from my sins and want to make Him the Lord of my life. Strengthen me to live as you would have me live. Amen. A simple but powerful prayer!

We can go ahead and start to distribute the elements now. This is an open communion. Anyone who is a follower of Jesus Christ is welcome to participate.

When you receive the wafer and the juice, please wait until all have received and then we will partake together.

Let’s sing a hymn now – You all know “O come all ye faithful”.

O come all ye faithful
Joyful and triumphant
O come ye O come ye to Bethleham
Come and adore Him
Born the king of angels
O come let us adore Him
O come let us adore Him
O come let us adore Him
Christ the Lord.

Let’s silently think now about Christ’s death for us and the meaning of communion.

All right. Let’s read from the Bible. The apostle Paul said, “For I received from the Lord what I also pass on to you. The Lord Jesus, on the night He was betrayed, took bread and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, “This is my body which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” Let’s eat together.

“In the same way, after supper He took the cup saying. “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me. For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.”

Let’s drink together.

You see – Jesus himself said that this is all about remembrance of His death for us.

Let’s finish this celebration with a prayer.

Father – we DO remember. Thank you for the birth of Jesus and, through Him, making us your children by a new birth. And by this communion we DO remember how Jesus paid the penalty for our sin by His death on the cross. We thank you that we have these remembrances of Jesus. The world causes our spirituality to leak out requiring recharging. We want to grow as your children. And you have promised that the Holy Spirit would accomplish this. We love you and thank you for all that you’ve done and all that you’re going to do. In Jesus name, Amen.

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Where Did Music Come From?

2010-11-19T07:56:00.000-08:00

Is music a happy accident? Is this glorious organization of sounds the product of millennia of chance discoveries, trial and error, and so-called evolutionary development? Did vocal music originate from prolonged grunts of early human-like beings? Did instrumental music develop accidentally from a prehistoric hunter becoming fascinated with how his bow twanged after an arrow was unleashed?
The greatest human minds in musicology cannot answer this most basic question: What is the origin of music?
The answer is as inspiring as it is little understood.
Most music historians begin their study of music around the third century AD at the earliest, overlooking millennia of music history – and completely ignoring music’s origin.
The history of “ancient” music needs rewriting, because the greatest source available has been rejected: the Word of God.
Even many professed Bible scholars, though they may reject evolutionists’ happy-accident theory, believe music originated with a descendent of Cain named Jubal (Gen. 4:21). Because some view the Bible as a valid yet flawed historical resource that is not superior or more special than any other historical text, they lend no special credence to what the Bible says over any other historian’s work.
The Bible actually indicates that the FIRST man knew and practiced music. What’s more, music existed LONG BEFORE ADAM.
When God was talking to Job, putting this wise man in his place in comparison to the creative feats of God Almighty, He asked a question that gives insight into history BEFORE Earth’s creation. “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the Earth?” God asked, “When the morning stars SANG together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?” (Job 38:4,7).
This reveals that God created angels before He created Earth, that they witnessed this magnificent moment, that they shouted for joy, and they were SINGING!
Consider how sound exists in this spirit realm. Ezekiel heard the “noise” of the great cherubim (Ezek. 1:24). The book of Revelation records the lyrics of the angels’ shouting and singing around God’s heavenly throne, not to mention that they are playing instruments in this spiritual dimension.
The Bible reveals that God SINGS (Zeph. 3:17). The question then arises, since God has always existed, wouldn’t His attributes – including His voice – have always existed, as well as His infinite wisdom? (see Prov. 8:22). Surely therefore, music – or at least the capacity for music – has ALWAYS existed.
Now, there was a moment when music took on a more institutionalized form. That was with the creation of angels. In them, God created innate musical ability. The chief of this angelic (and musical) creation was the archangel Lucifer.
Ezekiel chapter 28 describes Lucifer’s characteristics ending in “the workmanship of your tabrets and of your pipes was prepared in you in the day that you were created.”
This is not a physical king or else the notion of musical instruments being created “in” him makes no sense. This refers to a magnificent, beautiful, wise spirit being, an angel, who was in Eden.
This being’s “tabret” is very similar to a timbrel, or percussion instrument of the Hebrews. The phrase “your pipes” comes from a root meaning something “hollow”, but it is not the word used to describe the typical Hebrew pipes. In fact, the word neqeb is used only here in the Hebrew Bible. It appears this was a unique spirit instrument that required a unique Hebrew word, though similar to the pipes.
This great cherub Lucifer was endowed with musical talents beyond human capability. God told Job the morning stars “sang together.” This means there was ensemble, community and cooperation in music, and Lucifer was of course included. How this must have changed, though, when he rebelled! Imagine how distorted and warped Lucifer’s music became when he turned from God’s way. Just before the description of Lucifer’s fall, Isaiah 14:11 talks about the “noise” of his neballim – another instrument, perhaps like bagpipes – being brought to the ground.
After God created angels, He created the material universe. Did you know that music was BUILT INTO this physical realm? The Hebrews have long understood the idea of the “harmony of the spheres.” This harmony refers to the planets actually being analogous to each other as musical pitches – philosophically in the sense that their distances held the same ratios as between pleasing musical intervals, and literally in the sense that the planets, or spheres, resounded in actual tones.
This belief is now attributed to Pythagoras. Aristotle said that, to the Pythagoreans, “the whole heaven was a musical scale and a number.”
In his book, “Music of the Spheres”, science writer Jamie James explained, “Here, in our first encounter with the concept of the musical universe, it is clear that the Pythagoreans did not simply discern congruities among number and music and the cosmos: They identified them. Music was number, and the cosmos was music. The Pythagoreans conceived of the cosmos as a vast lyre, with crystal spheres in the place of strings”.
The spheres were known to be spaced according to the same ratios that existed between frequencies in the musical scale.
King David has this understanding. In Psalm 19, he states, “The heavens declare the glory of God…there is no speech or language where their VOICE is not heard. Their LINE is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world…”. The word for “line” is verse 4 can mean rope or musical string. In fact, when the apostle Paul quoted this verse to the Romans, he used a Greek word for “line” that actually translates into “musical sound.” “But I say, have they not heard? Yes truly, their SOUND went into all the earth, and their words unto toe ends of the world.”.(Rom. 10:18).
The ancient Hebrews, who were well aware of this astronomical reality, undoubtedly applied it to their understanding of music theory. Man did not start with a one-, three- or five-note scale and slowly decide that seven tones work better together mathematically. God gave His people understanding in science, and the use of stringed instruments – and a seven-tone scale whose relationships parallel the solar system!
In addition, the Hebrews believed, as the Bible indicates, that the movement of these celestial bodies produces certain sounds.
Aristotle believed this as well. James continued, “The motion of bodies of that size must produce a noise, since on our earth the motion of bodies far inferior in size and speed of movement has that effect. Starting from this argument, and the observation that their speeds, as measured by their distances, are in the same ratios as musical concordances, then the sounds given forth by the circular movement of the stars is a sublime system of mathematical HARMONY.”
Now modern science is supporting what the Hebrews believed. Sound can occur anywhere pressure waves can travel, meaning that sound waves can echo through the atmospheres of the planets and even the gas surrounding an enlarging black hole. The universe contains the equivalent of rhythmic pulses like a percussion section, as well as low drones, like a bass section.
Science has also discovered “heavenly music bellowed out by the sun’s atmosphere” (Space.com, April 2007). These frequencies, at a thousandth of a hertz, are too low for human ears to hear (we can hear between 20 and 20,000 Hz). The sun’s corona carry magnetic sound waves similar to those of musical instruments. “Explosive events at the sun’s surface appear to trigger acoustic waves that bounce back and forth between both ends of the loops, a phenomenon known as a standing wave,” the Space.com article stated. “Standard waves are exactly the same waves you see on a guitar string.”
The Bible indicates that God created sound waves to emanate from all creation in an organized fashion to make a certain music – perceptible at least to Him. 1 Chronicles 16:33 states that “the trees of the wood sing out at the presence of the Lord.” Isaiah 44:23 reads, “Sing, O you heavens…shout you lower parts of the earth – break forth into singing you mountains…”. Isaiah 55:12 says, “The mountains and the hills shall break forth before yo into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.” The other obvious natural music would be that of the animals, which also sing (Song of Solomon 2:12; Eccl. 12:4; Psa. 104:12).
God sees His creation as a musical composition. And perhaps even the smallest quantum particles are vibrating and resounding in lovely music that God can hear and enjoy.
Now we come to the first man and the Garden of Eden. Surely the Almighty Creator and Musical Expert would have wanted to instruct His creation in the science of sound and how it could be managed and organized for such magnificent purposes! After all, God enjoys music and possesses great capacity for it. God then would have instructed the first man in the basic principles of music, or at least have guided him in finding the fundamental facts in this field for himself.
Since God created man on the sixth day and used the seventh day to teach him these essential spiritual truths, would this first “worship service” have been without worship music? Or would it have been the ideal time to show man that it is “a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord, and to sing praises unto your name, O most High”? (Psa. 92:1).
Perhaps the Creator God – ready to instruct Adam on that first Sabbath day – had a hymn for the first man and woman to sing. How appropriate this hymn would be, which actually teaches that it is a “good thing” to give thanks.
If Psalm 92 is, in fact, that first hymn for the first man and woman, then we have some incredible insight into Eden!
Verses 2-3 read, “To show forth your loving kindness in the morning, and your faithfulness every night, upon an instrument of ten strings [literally: “the tenth”], and upon the psaltery [Hebrew nebel], upon the harp [Hebrew kinnor] with a solemn sound.”
Music – singing hymns especially – was given to humans largely to draw our minds closer to God, especially on the day He has set aside for special worship of Him.
Could musical instruments have been in Eden? God had just created much more complex creations – for example, the human body. And God designed the garden to be where His presence was. God’s heavenly presence is surrounded by music – not just vocal but instrumental as well (see Revelation 5:8). Would God not have created or revealed the design for physical manifestations of these heavenly instruments?
Music did not originate clumsily and serendipitously from prehistoric brutes. Nor did it originate with the Bible’s Jubal, who fathered the mishandling of music. The capacity for music had no beginning – like the God who is surrounded by it, who created it in His angelic creation, the physical universe, and into the garden sanctuary where he planted the first human beings.
By being given the ability to understand, appreciate, enjoy and produce music, mankind can partake of something with an eternal past –the very mind and greatness of the Creator God!

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What About Muslim Martyrs?

2010-11-09T12:37:00.000-08:00

It has been said that one of the proofs of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection is that the New Testament writers suffered persecution and death when they could have saved themselves by recanting. If they made up the Resurrection story, they certainly would have said so when they were about to be crucified (Peter), stoned (James) or beheaded (Paul). Why would they die for a known lie?

In the book “I Don’t Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist” by Geisler and Turek, the following is a quote from pages 293-296).

“Hold on!” the skeptic may object. “We see people dying for their faith every day! Do you ever watch the news? There’s a suicide bomber nearly every week in the Middle East! Have you forgotten about 9/11 already? The hijackers were doing it for Allah? What does martyrdom prove? Does it prove Islam is true too?”

Not at all. There are some similarities, but there’s one critical difference between the New Testament martyrs and those of today. One similarity shared by all martyrs is sincerity. Whether you’re talking about Christians, Muslims, kamikaze pilots, or suicidal cult followers, everyone agrees that martyrs sincerely believe in their cause. But the critical difference is that the New Testament Christian martyrs had more than sincerity – they had evidence that the Resurrection was true. Why? Because the New Testament martyrs were eyewitnesses of the resurrected Christ. They knew the Resurrection was true and not a lie because they verified it with their own senses. They saw, touched, and ate with the risen Jesus on several occasions. And they had seen him do more than 30 miracles. So they willingly submitted themselves to persecution and death for what they had verified themselves.

This is unlike anything from Islam or any other martyr-producing belief system. While the current martyrs for Islam are certainly sincere about Islam, they don’t have miraculous eyewitness proof that Islam is true.

In fact, the contemporaries of Muhammad weren’t eyewitnesses to anything miraculous either. When Muhammad was challenged to perform miracles to confirm that he was from God, he never took the challenge (Sura 3”181-184; 4:153; 6: 8-9; 17:88-96). Instead he said he was a man (17:93) and implied that the Qur’an authenticated him as a prophet (17:88).

But there are no clearly defined miracles recorded in the Qur’an. Miracles were only attributed to Muhammad by Muslims who lived 100-200 years after his death because Christians kept asking them for proof that Muhammad was a prophet. These miracle claims are not based on eyewitness testimony, and give every indication of being legendary. Several speak of trees moving or saluting Muhammad as he passed by. Mountains and wolves allegedly salute Muhammad as well. And other miracle stories seem to be variations of the miracles Jesus performed such as turning water into milk, feeding a thousand by multiplying a small meal. These miracle stories are found in the Hadith, a later collection of Muhammad’s saying and doings.

If Muhammad wasn’t confirmed by miracles, then why did people follow him? They didn’t at first. He and his few followers were kicked out of Mecca in 622AD, twelve years after he apparently got his first revelation. Since Mecca was a polytheistic city filled with tributes to other gods, Muhammad’s message of monotheism was not well received by the local merchants who made their living off the commerce associated with polytheism. It wasn’t until Muhammad led several successful military conquests between 622 and 630 that he began to attract a large following. His popularity was greatly increased when he led raids on Meccan caravans and divided the booty from those raids with followers. He also took numerous wives which helped solidify his base of support. In other words, Muhammad’s popularity resulted from his lucrative military victories that he shared with his followers, his astute political dealings, and his personal charisma rather than from any miraculous confirmation.

The military aspect of Islam highlights another major difference between the origin of Christianity and the origin of Islam. Christianity began as a peaceful faith and was considered illegal for about the first 280 years of its existence (during which time it experience its greatest growth). If you became a Christian in the Roman Empire before about 311, you might be killed for it.

By contrast, after a brief but unfruitful attempt to propagate his faith peacefully, Muhammad turned to military force to spread Islam. By 630, he had seized Mecca by force and had control of much of what is now the Saudi Arabian peninsula. Although Muhammad died in 632, his followers continued military campaigns in the name of Islam. By 638 – only 6 years after Muhammad’s death – the Muslims had seized the Holy Land by force. In the first 100 years of Islam, they successfully swept across northern Africa and into Europe. Had it not been for Charles Martel, mayor of the city of Tours, France, all of Europe would probably be speaking Arabic today. Martel drove the Muslims south out of Tours in 732, exactly 100 years after Muhammad’s death. But northern Africa remains predominantly Muslim to this day.

So here’s the contrast: in the early days of Christianity, you might be killed for becoming Christian; in the early days of Islam’s growth, you might be killed for NOT becoming a Muslim! In other words, the spread of these two great monotheistic faiths couldn’t have been more different: Islam spread by use of the sword on others; Christianity spread when others used the sword on it.

What about the Crusades?” the skeptic will interject. Take a history course – the Crusades did not begin until nearly 1100, more than 1,000 years after the origin of Christianity. And the initial rationale for the Crusades was to take back the land the Muslims previously had seized by military conquest from the Christians. So it was Islam, not Christianity, that initially spread by military crusade.

Now one can understand why a religion spreads when it takes over militarily. But why does a religion spread when its adherents are persecuted, tortured, and killed during its first 280 years? Persecutions are not good selling points. Perhaps there’s some very reliable testimony about miraculous events that proves the religion is true. How else can you explain why scared, scattered, skeptical cowards suddenly become the most dedicated, determined, self-sacrificing, and peaceful missionary force the world has ever known?

End of quote from “I Don’t Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist”.

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Language Speaks To Us About God

2010-10-01T08:57:00.000-07:00

A good starting point in understanding the origin of man’s present civilization –and disproving evolution – is the study of language.

There can be no nation, no civilization nor culture without language. Therefore the history of language and our civilization are inextricably linked.
Evolutionists try to demonstrate how language can evolve from basic grunts into the complex languages used today. However there is one problem: No evolutionist can determine the beginning of language.
The evolution story is set in a time long ago when mankind was evolving from apes. For this world to be constructed, apes must be able to learn language. Yet research conducted at Georgia State University concluded that this is impossible. “Despite popular myth, not even chimpanzees can learn a human language,” they say. Using the example of an advance chimp named Kanzi, they conclude, “Even Kanzi cannot string symbols together in anything resembling the complexity of a human language. The human brain is unique in having the necessary hardware for mastering a human language – that much is uncontroversial.”
The evolutionist must now ignore the research or pretend that even Kanzi, the genius hero of the chimp world, would be a fool compared to his predecessors which, if evolutionists were to be believed, must also somehow be less evolved than Kanzi.
When studying today’s languages, evolutionists ignore two concrete facts. First, they ignore that older languages tend to be of a higher order and complexity than modern languages. When you follow the movement of languages through time, the only processes that can be discerned are disintegration and collapse. That’s not to say there haven’t been any developments since that time, but the general trend is degeneration.
Instead of languages getting more complex, they have grown simpler! Compare Old English with modern English, Latin with modern Romance languages, and ancient Hebrew with modern Hebrew. In every case, the trend directly contradicts the concept of evolution, that of ever increasing sophistication and complexity.
Second, evolutionists ignore that no matter how far back we go with available written records of any language, the language already has pretty much the full repertoire of complex features found in today’s languages.
Instead of seeing written records that show some kind of evolution of a primitive language, we see a sudden arrival of already complex languages. There are no “missing links”.
Evolutionary linguists can’t figure out how language was invented because it wasn’t invented by man! That is the conclusion to which all the facts logically lead.
If we take the Bible as the foundational historical document that it is, there is an explanation of facts that fly in the face of evolution. Though the Bible record is brief, it contains no missing chapters.
At the time of the creation of man, that first man was given language – a fully formed, complete language. This explains the conclusion of modern research that only man’s brain can master language – that brain was formed and designed for a specific purpose by a Creator.
It is no coincidence that one of the names for God is “The Word”. Neither is it a coincidence that divine authority declares that the Word was there “in the beginning”.
Thousands of years after the creation of Adam, mankind became so evil that God wiped out all humanity except one righteous man, Noah, and his family. As Noah’s family began to separate and colonize the world, a rebellious people led by Cush and his son Nimrod decided to stay where they were and unite the families. The details are brief but found in Genesis 10 and 11.
“The Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. The Lord said, ‘If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other…That is why it was called Babel – because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.´(Genesis 11:5-7,9)
This event begins the history of the nations. Here God divided the people into nations by creating multiple languages. God gave several unique languages to the people, probably one to each of the main families listed in Genesis 10.
These parent languages would have then been changed and simplified over time into all the languages we have today, much like Latin gave rise to Spanish, French and Italian.
Our ancestors would have had no real choice but to migrate and dwell with the people with whom they could communicate, developing their own unique cultures and civilizations through their independent languages.
But the account of Babel is not just in the Bible. The building of the tower is also recorded in the ancient writings of Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria, Greece and Media. The most complete secular account is found in the Akkadian Creation Epic, reproduced in James Pritchard’s “Ancient Near Eastern Texts”, which even speaks of a father and son leading the project.
The Chinese, Hindus, Irish, Native Americans and Persians also tell us of the divisions of speech by a supreme God. In fact, thanks to Chinese and Egyptian record keeping, their ancient manuscripts mark this division of languages as the beginning of the origins of their civilization.
Yet modern evolutionary scholars and educational institutions reject all of this. They not only reject the Bible, but they also relegate ancient manuscripts, which they spent years deciphering and trying to understand, to nothing but fantasy! These manuscripts do contain a large amount of myth, but they also carefully preserve annals of and references to their patriarchs.
The rejection of these sources is a fairly recent phenomenon. It wasn’t until German rationalism became the rage within academia in the 19th century that the knowledge of the Bible and divine intervention was removed from education and the ancient manuscripts taken as pure myth. That is why today’s linguists are trying to prove how language evolved using godless evolutionary methods.
Man was given language from the beginning, which was also used to pass on mankind’s history, through oral traditions and written records. That is how Moses was able to write Genesis. The first language appeared with the first man, and there is no history of men before the written word existed!
The first recorded conversation was between God and man (Genesis 1:28-30; 2:16-17). The first conversation between two human beings is recorded in Genesis 2:23. The first attempt by man to reason without a foundation of divine revelation is recorded in Genesis 3:1-6, and its detrimental results in the remainder of that chapter.
So what will you believe? The account from the written Word of God that explains all the facts and is corroborated by ancient secular manuscripts and modern research?
Or will you reject divine revelation and the truth that God intervenes in history so that you can blindly believe in evolution, whose supporters must ignore and discard facts, even accepting unreliable data that must first jump through hoops to match their theory?

Where will you put your faith?

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Obstacles To God

2010-09-26T08:25:00.000-07:00

To all my nonbelieving, sort-of-believing, and used-to-be-believing friends: I feel like I should begin with a confession. I am sorry that so often the biggest obstacle to God has been Christians. Christians who have had so much to say with our mouths and so little to show with our lives. I am sorry that so often we have forgotten the Christ of our Christianity.

Forgive us. Forgive us for the embarrassing things we have done in the name of God.

The more I have read the Bible and studied the life of Jesus, the more I have become convinced that Christianity spreads best not through force but through fascination. But over the past few decades our Christianity, at least here in the United States, has become less and less fascinating. We have given the atheists less and less to disbelieve. And the sort of Christianity many of us have seen on TV and heard on the radio looks less and less like Jesus.

At one point Gandhi was asked if he was a Christian, and he said, essentially, "I sure love Jesus, but the Christians seem so unlike their Christ." A recent study showed that the top three perceptions of Christians in the U. S. among young non-Christians are that Christians are 1) antigay, 2) judgmental, and 3) hypocritical. So what we have here is a bit of an image crisis, and much of that reputation is well deserved. That's the ugly stuff. And that's why I begin by saying that I'm sorry.

Now for the good news.

I want to invite you to consider that maybe the televangelists and street preachers are wrong — and that God really is love. Maybe the fruits of the Spirit really are beautiful things like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, and not the ugly things that have come to characterize religion, or politics, for that matter. (If there is anything I have learned from liberals and conservatives, it's that you can have great answers and still be mean... and that just as important as being right is being nice.)

The Bible that I read says that God did not send Jesus to condemn the world but to save it... it was because "God so loved the world." That is the God I know, and I long for others to know. You should not choose to devote your life to Jesus because you are scared to death of hell or because you want crowns in heaven... but because he is good. For those of you who are on a sincere spiritual journey, I hope that you do not reject Christ because of Christians. We have always been a messed-up bunch, and somehow God has survived the embarrassing things we do in His name. At the core of our "Gospel" is the message that Jesus came "not [for] the healthy... but the sick." And if you choose Jesus, may it not be simply because of a fear of hell or hope for mansions in heaven.

Don't get me wrong, I still believe in the afterlife, but too often all the church has done is promise the world that there is life after death and use it as a ticket to ignore the hells around us. I am convinced that the Christian Gospel has as much to do with this life as the next, and that the message of that Gospel is not just about going up when we die but about bringing God's Kingdom down. It was Jesus who taught us to pray that God's will be done "on earth as it is in heaven." On earth.

One of Jesus' most scandalous stories is the story of the Good Samaritan. As sentimental as we may have made it, the original story was about a man who gets beat up and left on the side of the road. A priest passes by. A Levite, the quintessential religious guy, also passes by on the other side (perhaps late for a meeting at church). And then comes the Samaritan... you can almost imagine a snicker in the Jewish crowd. Jews did not talk to Samaritans, or even walk through Samaria. But the Samaritan stops and takes care of the guy in the ditch and is lifted up as the hero of the story. I'm sure some of the listeners were ticked. According to the religious elite, Samaritans did not keep the right rules, and they did not have sound doctrine... but Jesus shows that true faith has to work itself out in a way that is Good News to the most bruised and broken person lying in the ditch.

It is so simple, but the pious forget this lesson constantly. God may indeed be evident in a priest, but God is just as likely to be at work through a Samaritan or a prostitute. In fact the Scripture is brimful of God using folks like a lying prostitute named Rahab, an adulterous king named David... at one point God even speaks to a guy named Balaam through his donkey. Some say God spoke to Balaam through his ass and has been speaking through asses ever since. So if God should choose to use us, then we should be grateful but not think too highly of ourselves. And if upon meeting someone we think God could never use, we should think again.

After all, Jesus says to the religious elite who looked down on everybody else: "The tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the Kingdom ahead of you." And we wonder what got him killed?

I read once about "dirty theology" — that we have a God who is always using dirt to bring life and healing and redemption, a God who shows up in the most unlikely and scandalous ways. After all, the whole story begins with God reaching down from heaven, picking up some dirt, and breathing life into it. At one point, Jesus takes some mud, spits in it, and wipes it on a blind man's eyes to heal him. (The priests and producers of anointing oil were not happy that day.)

In fact, the entire story of Jesus is about a God who did not just want to stay "out there" but who moves into the neighborhood, a neighborhood where folks said, "Nothing good could come." It is this Jesus who was accused of being a glutton and drunkard and rabble-rouser for hanging out with all of society's rejects, and who died on the imperial cross of Rome reserved for bandits and failed messiahs. This is why the triumph over the cross was a triumph over everything ugly we do to ourselves and to others. It is the final promise that love wins.

It is this Jesus who was born in a stinking manger in the middle of a genocide. That is the God that we are just as likely to find in the streets as in the sanctuary, who can redeem revolutionaries and tax collectors, the oppressed and the oppressors... a God who is saving some of us from the ghettos of poverty, and some of us from the ghettos of wealth.

In closing, to those who have closed the door on Christ — I was recently asked by a non-Christian friend if I thought he was going to hell. I said, "I hope not. It will be hard to enjoy heaven without you." If those of us who believe in God do not believe God's grace is big enough to save the whole world... well, we should at least pray that it is.

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Mother’s Day Sermon at Missouri Veterans Home

2010-05-09T11:12:00.001-07:00

[Sermon given by Lou Hodapp - 5-9-10]

Happy Mother's Day to you all. Most of us happily remember our mothers and how they took care of us. For those few whose mothers did not live up to your standards, remember at least that she gave you life and you wouldn't be here without her.

When I was young, my family used to sing a song to my mom every Mother's Day. It was simply titled "Mother".

M is for the million things she gave me

O means only that she's growing old.

T is for the tears she shed to save me

H is for her heart of purest gold

E is for her eyes with love light shining

R means right – and right she'll always be

Put them all together they spell MOTHER – a word that means the world to me.

It is right and proper that we set aside a special day every year to remember our mothers.

The church which sponsors these services here for you veterans is named GRACE church. GRACE is a big word in the vocabulary of God. Grace is a free gift of forgiveness and love bestowed by God without regard as to whether we deserve it or not. In fact, no creature could ever earn it or deserve it.

When you think about it, a mother, on a human level, is kind of like Jesus.

Jesus' was willing to bear pain and heartache in order to birth children of God.

It is somewhat like the labor of a woman as she gives birth. Her love for her child is forged through self-sacrificing love, as she gives of her own previously youthful, free-of-stretch marks body for her child. This action of pain and love forms a bond that only mothers understand – a love for their child that few children completely appreciate, unless and until they too become mothers of their own children. Mothers forgive us and love us without regard as to whether we deserve it or not. As God gives grace, so does a mother humanly give grace.

We could never deserve to be God's children partaking of His very nature. We could never deserve to be forgiven of the punishment for our sins. But there is an old saying that – it never hurts to ask.

In court trials, there is an occurrence which has become routine but almost laughable to both sides. After the opening arguments by the prosecution and then by the defense, the defense always stands up and files a motion for dismissal of the case on the grounds of insufficient evidence. This is almost always instantly refused by the judge. But the defense figures that it never hurts to ask!

Well God is the ultimate merciful Judge. We can never deserve to have the case of sin against us dismissed. But it never hurts to ask for it! In fact, asking is exactly what God wants us to do. When we see that we are worthy of judgment for sin – when we are driven to understand the depths of the tragedy of our sins, all God asks for is a willingness to TRY to turn away from sin. And since sin is basically an attitude of independence from God, we must ask for and trust in the Life of Jesus Christ to cause us to live by God's ways and standards.

When we ask, that is, when we have faith that there is a legal way for our case to be dismissed, the GRACE of God begins to take effect. There ARE sufficient grounds for the dismissal of the case against us. What are the sufficient grounds? When we accept Christ as our Savior and Lord, we instantly become a NEW PERSON! That person who was indicted for the crime of sin no longer exists! The case must be thrown out of court when we ask in Christ's name because they have the wrong person.

God now gives us access into His grace. The letters in GRACE can mean: God's Riches At Christ's Expense. The Bible is chock full of the promises of God's riches that come with becoming a Christian and a child of God. And these become ours at Christ's expense – because his death paid the penalty of sin for us and changed us from sinners to saints.

God is all-knowing. Naturally! God is all-powerful. Sure! But the greatest characteristic of God is how He uses this knowledge and power – GRACE! His plan from the beginning is to share His riches with us humans by our free choice to just ASK for it.

Our position is one of absolute powerlessness to defend ourselves before God. It is as if we stand before God the Judge with no defending attorney to plead our case. The prosecution has presented an overwhelming opening argument. And there can be no defensive argument. All we can try is to assert the thought before the Judge, "But I'm not really that bad!" But if we were not that bad, Christ would have had no need to die. But as the apostle Paul said, all have sinned, all have come short of the glory of God.

God's plan of salvation can never come to us by weighing the "good" things we have done against the "bad" things we have done. Because before we receive God's grace at conversion, nothing we do is "good" or "righteous" – in right standing with God. Even things apparently good are done with the wrong motives. We have an independent spirit before conversion.

When that independent spirit has been beaten down by circumstances and we come to conversion and union with Christ as a new person, that strange brain of ours usually acts up again. When confronted with the reality of a Christ-slash-man union, we say, "But I'm not that good!" OH but you are! By grace – by nothing done to deserve it and by nothing done that God can't forgive it, we become members of the God Family.

Originally, there was just the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in the Family. Now since the establishment of the church at that first Pentecost, there is now John/Christ, Peter/Christ, James/Christ, Martha/Christ, and even YOU/Christ – put your own name in there if you have accepted Christ as Savior and Lord. The God-Family has now birthed many children, each containing the very nature, the very spiritual DNA of God.

So we see that God's grace is the key to everything. God, through grace, draws the sinner to repentance. God, through grace, makes that sinner a saint and child in the Family. God, through grace, builds awareness of and trust in the guidance of Jesus from within.

Let's talk a little about the guidance of Jesus from within.

Psalm 23 says, "The Lord is my Shepherd – I shall not want." John 10 says, "I am the Good Shepherd – the good Shepherd gives his life for his sheep."

As a Christian, Jesus Christ, the Shepherd, lives within you. Perhaps the earthly relationship between a shepherd and his sheep can help us to better understand our relationship with Christ.

Any sheep, if treated with kindness and affection, soon attaches itself to its new owner. Sheep are remarkably responsive, for the most part, to the attention and care given them by a good shepherd. This is especially true in small flocks where the owner has opportunity to bestow his personal affection on individual animals. They quickly become his friends. A select few are actually pets. They follow him as faithfully as his own shadow. Wherever he goes, they are there. It is in his company, and because of his presence, that they are ever secure and at rest. The same truth applies in our relationship to Christ living in us.

And Christ is an "eastern" Sheepman. How does an eastern sheepman gather up his stray sheep? How does he bring home the wanderers and stragglers?

He does not use dogs the way western sheepmen do. He does not resort to horses or donkeys to herd them home or round them up. Nor does he employ helicopters or Hondas as some western ranchers do.

No. The eastern shepherd uses his own pet sheep to gather in lost sheep. Because these pets are so fond of being near him and with him, he has to literally go out into the hills and rough country himself taking them along, scattering them abroad. There they graze and feed alongside the wild and wayward sheep.

As evening approaches the shepherd gently winds his way home. His favorite pet sheep quietly follow him. As they move along in his footsteps, they bring with them the lost and scattered sheep. It is a beautiful picture.

The Good Shepherd simply asks me to be one who will be so attached to Him, so fond of Him, so true to Him, that in truth I will be like His PET SHEEP. No matter where He takes me; no matter where He places me; no matter whom I am alongside of in my daily living, that person will be induced to eventually follow the Shepherd because I follow Him.

Second Corinthians 12:9 says, "My GRACE is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness."

Let's pray – Father – we hear your call of grace to us and we come to you humbly accepting Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord and Shepherd. From this point forward, to the best of our ability, we will follow and trust in Jesus. We thank you, we thank you for your grace. We don't deserve it – we can never earn it. But we are freed from punishment because of it.

Holy Spirit, keep us in awareness of who we are in Christ. When troubles come, and they always do, our relationship with Christ WILL see us through.

In Jesus name we pray, Amen.

Again, Happy Mother's Day!

Do You Hear the Music?

2010-04-28T10:54:00.000-07:00

"He has done everything well; He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak." (Mark 7:37)

What is the source of your Christian life? Do you hear the "music" of God?

Imagine yourself in a large house in which are living both deaf and hearing people. They are all mixed together, and you can't tell by looking who is deaf and who has hearing.

Sitting in a room by himself is a man. As you watch, you notice that he is tapping his toes rhythmically and snapping his fingers in time. You know what is happening. He's listening to music and obviously enjoying himself. His whole body wants to respond to what his ears are receiving. There's nothing strange or mysterious about it.

But now, let's add a new person to the scene. One of the deaf persons opens the door and enters the room. He immediately sees the first man and walks over to him and smiles a greeting. The deaf man watches the music-lover for a few moments. "He sure seems to be enjoying himself," he thinks. "I think I'll try it too." So the deaf man sits next to the first man and begins to imitate him. Awkwardly and haltingly at first, he tries to snap his fingers, tap his toes, and move like the person next to him. Everybody has some sense of rhythm, whether they can hear or not. After a little practice, the deaf man is snapping and tapping in time with the first man. He even smiles a little and shrugs: "It's not that much fun," he thinks, "but it's okay."

Let's now add our final factor to the story. A third man walks into the room. What does he see? Two men, apparently doing the same thing. But is there a difference? Absolutely! All the difference in the world!

The first man's actions are natural responses to the music he hears. The deaf man is only imitating those outward actions - even though he can't hear a note.

That is the difference between real Christianity and legalism. When we are approaching the Christian life in the way God intended, our attitudes and actions are a response to the "music" we hear. That music is our personal relationship with the living Christ who indwells us. All legalism cares about is getting people to tap and snap at the right time.

Legalism is like saying. "If you'll tap and snap correctly, you'll hear the music." No. God wants us to listen to His music - the message of His unconditional love and acceptance - and THEN respond to what we hear!

The Many. The Humbled. The Unemployed.

2010-03-13T07:37:00.001-08:00

(by blogger Paul Angone)

For a long time, I was an Unemployed. I won't say exactly how long I was such; just that it was longer than William Henry Harrison's term as President and shorter than James Garfield's. (Thank you Wikipedia.)

One day you're confidently standing on - the next, you're laid off. Your obvious expendability, slightly humbling. Like not playing in the playoff game and your team still winning 54 to 7 without you.

But hey, us Unemployed, we didn't like our job that much anyway, right? Yes, maybe being an Unemployed is one of those blessings in disguise, an open window next to a closed door, a glass of lemonade produced from our severance package of sour lemons. Maybe we've been given exactly what we've prayed for all along – our life back!

Time, truly, is now on our side. We can wake up at 10:45 AM and stay in our pajamas until 1:00 PM, calling all our cubicle-confined-friends to let them know of this eating-Captain-Crunch fact. We can exercise at 2:30 PM at the gym; every machine usually occupied by the sweaty, after-work-mob, now waiting for us with pristine, open arms. We can eat First Dinner at 4:30 PM, then Second Dinner at 7:00. Go to bed at 9:00 PM or 2:30 AM, it doesn't matter. We are our boss! Sure we don't pay well, but we have our freedom.

Now we have time to finish all those projects – clean out the garage, finish that scrapbook, and finally write that article for our favorite website.

Better yet, we can even start constructing that novel, hammer out that business plan, or find that lead guitar player for our band.

Yes, maybe this unfortunate termination is going to be an unfortunate, fortunate. Maybe God does have his hand on this, working all things out for good like we've been promised. Years from now we'll look back at this time in our lives and say, (on our interview with Jay Leno, after our book/band goes international) "You know Jay, it's funny. Life really began the day I got laid off."

But if there's a "heads" on one side, there's a "tail" on the other. And unfortunately around the month-unemployed, still-can't-find-a job anniversary, the tail hits a growth spurt.

First, there's no denying that your bank account has taken quite ill. First Dinner – now consists of chicken, Second Dinner – shrimp. Not these actual meats mind you, but broth-flavors for your bowl of Top Ramen.

Then your ad on Craigslist for a guitar player only gets two responses. One from a thirteen year old who plays the violin in his music class, Tuesday and Thursday. The second from a guy named Rosco, who doesn't seem to really play any instrument whatsoever, but desperately wants to meet in person to "figure it out from there." Umm…

Then someone asks you for the 49^th time, "Soooo…what do you do for a living," making sure to ask just loud enough for everyone to hear. A question which makes you grimace, forcing you to put on that conversational magic show once again as you attempt to pull a rabbit out of your hat that died two weeks ago.

Now it's 2:30 PM. On a Tuesday. You're prostrate on the couch, watching that Saved by the Bell DVD set you secretly own, getting angrier with every episode because how can Screech be on television for ten years and I can't even get hired at Starbucks!!! Where's that bottle of wine! (I might be speaking from experience here.)

Yes, being an Unemployed begins losing its luster, the shine turning quite dull. You can never truly relax, because you don't feel like you've ever done anything worth relaxing from. Discouragement, Depression, and Despair begin silently following you around like three sick dogs, jumping on your lap whenever you sit down.

"God, why have you forsaken me? You saved the lepers, tax collectors, and prostitutes. Now please God, save me – an Unemployed!"

However, after watching Disc Four of my Saved by the Bell set, I decided to open my Bible and stumbled upon this verse:

"Suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us" (Romans 5:4-5).

This verse starts with "suffering," and funny enough, suffering can actually mean suffering. And I guess every step from suffering to perseverance to character to hope is not a Sunday stroll through the park. Perseverance is doggedness. It's a steadfast and long-continued application, action, and belief in spite of difficulties, obstacles, and discouragement. It's continuing forward, one simple step after another, with shoes smothered in drying cement.

Why in the world did I think the reality of this verse was going to be easy? Why did I think people would lavish praise on me throughout the job-searching process, as I took one gritty, unglamorous step after another? I forgot that we praise perseverance only after someone has completely and officially persevered.

I need to keep moving forward, get creative, and look for ways that God is changing my course. Perseverance doesn't necessarily mean continually running head first into that brick wall, if there's a half-open door to the right. Perseverance means an unwillingness to not hope. To refuse disbelief. Perseverance is an all-consuming trust that God is working out everything for our good. Even when it feels quite the opposite.

Maybe you're not even unemployed. With so much shifting around us – in the church, the nation, our world, you don't have to be unemployed to be suffering. But in this time of 7.5-Richter-scale-shaking, let us hold tight to Hope. (And by that I don't mean bear-hugging Obama. Secret Service doesn't like that.)

No, let us cling to our ultimate Hope. Let us remember that the "testing of our faith is developing perseverance" and becoming faitheverance – forming something within us that is forever indispensable.

God, grant us all – Unemployed and not, the strength to move forward in Faitheverance.

Even in these times of doubt, let us be obsessed with Hope.

God save us: the Many, the Humbled, the Unemployed.

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Debt-free Money

2010-03-05T10:29:00.001-08:00

The Constitution of the USA demands that money must be printed and issued by the government debt-free and interest-free.

The first American colonists had practiced this system and made it legal. They had no tax-collecting machinery; they printed paper money to pay for public works. They established a government that rejected direct taxation and financed the building and maintenance of schools, hospitals, roads and ports, as well as all other government expenditure, with freshly printed paper money. By experience they found that it was not possible to issue unlimited quantities of paper money; that the purchasing power of this money depended on supply and demand.

To maintain stable prices and full employment, and create prosperity for all who performed some useful work, they had to ensure that the paper money in circulation did not exceed in value the goods and services offered for sale. They found that too much paper money caused prices to rise, caused inflation. In this case the further printing of money must be suspended.

On the other hand, prices fell when too little paper money was put into circulation, so more money must be issued to avoid deflation. All the American colonies which observed this simple rule became prosperous in a very short time, enjoyed stable prices for their products and had no unemployment problems.

However, this honest, straightforward monetary system was not to the liking of some European financiers who were determined to impose the dishonest system that had already prevailed all over Europe for 200 years.

On 22^nd December 1913, in flagrant violation of the American Constitution, they succeeded by deception, bribery or blackmail in persuading the American Government to hand over the right of printing and issuing money to their private institution: The Federal Reserve Bank. Since then, whenever the government has needed additional money not covered by taxes, it is no longer allowed to issue it debt-free and interest-free and use it for public expenditure, but is forced to borrow it from banks in exchange for Bonds on which taxpayers must pay interest in perpetuity. The Federal Reserve Bank pays for these Bonds with freshly printed dollar banknotes. In this round-about way the American Government is made to pay interest when borrowing its own money!

The banknotes printed by the Federal Reserve are really government property because the American Constitution does not allow a private bank to print and issue dollar banknotes; they may be printed only for the account of the American Government and are therefore government property.

Then the Federal Reserve has the audacity to resell these Bonds to anyone who will buy them at interest which turns out to be mainly foreign governments. In the present day, China and Japan have bought a large share of these Bonds.

Besides, on 22^nd December 1913, the Federal Reserve Bank contracted that every banknote printed and issued by them would be redeemable in gold or silver. If this redeemability was abrogated the contract fell away, the right to issue dollar notes became null and void; this would make the owners of the Federal Reserve counterfeiters.

In addition, Americans have been made to believe that the Federal Reserve is not a private bank but a government institution, and that the money printed and issued by the Federal Reserve is government property.

Very little is known of how some unidentified financiers, 300 years ago, succeeded in persuading the rulers of Europe to hand over to them their prerogative of issuing money; it has been kept secret. All we know is that Holland was the first country on the European continent to be tricked into accepting the Bankers' chains. That is why the system of making debts and paying interest is often called "Dutch Finance".

By misnaming their private bank "The Federal Reserve Bank of the US", these financiers created the impression that it was a government institution and that the money they printed was government property. This was the reason why so few citizens came to the Federal Reserve to exchange their paper banknotes for gold. Everyone had full confidence and believed that it would always, without fail, exchange all paper banknotes for gold. And so these financiers were able to print and issue millions of paper banknotes without any gold cover which they lent out at interest like real money.

But in 1932, under Franklin Roosevelt, even this unreal gold standard was lifted and the Federal Reserve was no longer required to back up Bonds with gold.

From time to time there have been people who investigated our money system and had the courage to expose its phoniness. Exposure had no effect because our government, which had the power to bring about change, simply ignored it or, supported by the Media, ridiculed and defamed potential liberators or destroyed them.

Here is the story of what happened to one of them, Louis T. McFadden, for 12 years Chairman of the Banking and Currency Committee of the House of Representatives. McFadden, after thoroughly investigating the American money system, on 13^th January 1932, addressed Congress in the following fashion: "We have in this country one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks. Many people think that they are United States Government institutions but they are not. They are private credit monopolies which prey upon the people of the US for the benefit of themselves and their foreign customers, foreign and domestic speculators and swindlers, and rich and predatory money lenders. On account of the Federal Reserve's operations we ourselves are in the midst of the greatest depression we have ever known. From the Atlantic to the Pacific our country has been ravaged and laid waste by the evil practices of the Federal Reserve and the Federal Reserve Banks. At no time in our history has the general welfare of the people of the US been of a lower level or the mind of the people so filled with despair. Recently in one of our states 60,000 dwelling houses and farms were brought under the hammer in a single day; 71,000 houses and farms in Oakland County, Michigan, have been sold and their erstwhile owners dispossessed. Every effort has been made by the Federal Reserve Board to conceal its powers but the truth is that the Federal Reserve Board has usurped the government of the United States. It controls everything here and it controls all our foreign relations. It makes and breaks governments at will. The member banks of the Federal Reserve were deceitfully and disloyally foisted upon this country by the bankers who came here from Europe and repaid us our hospitality by undermining our American institutions."

With this speech McFadden established himself as a potential liberator from the Bankers' chains. He clearly realized:

>> that the terrible depression had been created artificially by the Federal Reserve and its member banks;

>> that it was a gigantic attempt to destroy the middle-class society, not only in the US but worldwide, by deflation;

>> that the depression could be cured overnight by doing away with the Federal Reserve and its 12 member banks, which had created the depression by withdrawing 8 billion dollars from circulation;

>> that all members of the American government were nothing but loyal, well-paid clerks of the stockholders of the Federal Reserve.

If in 1932 America had done away with the Federal Reserve and put back the 8 billion dollars into circulation, the Great Depression would have vanished like magic and World War II would probably never have taken place. What happened next?

On two occasions gunmen made attempts on McFadden's life. He was preparing to break the full story when he collapsed at a banquet and died. It is highly suspected that he was poisoned. Men who oppose Superbankers are not blessed with a long life; their presence in paradise is usually urgently required.

Our history books hide the fact that the American War of Independence was instigated by the stockholders of the "Bank of England" – another non-governmental private banking institution. They denied the colonists the right to print and issue their own money. When the owners of the Bank of England became aware of the very successful aforementioned money system of the colonists, they pressured the English government and in 1764 the English Parliament declared the American banknotes illegal and forbade the further printing and issuing of banknotes by the settlers. Their former prosperity in ruins, the Americans felt they could not put up with such glaring injustice any longer and revolted.

Our governments are assisted by all kinds of "scientific" advisers, But these advisers seem to hold their jobs because they are prepared to support any ties the Bankers may invent to advance there aims even if well-established facts contradict them. These advisers try to cure inflation with high interest rates and depressions. And they try to cure depressions with lower interest rates and big government spending.

Both inflation and depression could be permanently cured almost overnight simply by replacing our dishonest monetary system with the honest one of the first American settlers.

In practical terms this means we must at once begin to print and issue, debt-free and interest-free, NEW banknotes redeemable in gold and exchange them for unredeemable ones at the rate of 10, 20, 100 or 1,000 unredeemable ones for ONE redeemable one – according to how many unredeemable ones are then in existence and according to the then ruling price of gold. In addition we must force the still unknown stockholders of our Federal Reserve to pay back in gold at least a portion of the billions of profit realized by defrauding us and demand that they also pay the arrears of income tax on the fortunes they have made by creating money out of paper.

If ever we are no longer ruled by the supreme masters in the art of lying and deceiving we can discard the gold cover. Hitler, with all of his faults, had no gold when he established an honest monetary system, but for every mark he printed and issued, he required an equivalent of a mark's worth of work done or goods produced. This is why the Superbankers saw Hitler's stable currency as a giant threat to them.

In conclusion, can we ever bring our country back under an honest money system which our early settlers prospered with? The Federal Reserve System seems like a giant snowball rolling down a steep hill – possibly unstoppable. But we have been established as a government "of the people, by the people and for the people". Can the PEOPLE overcome the present devious banking system and gain back the freedom they so richly deserve??

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Fulfilled Prophecy

2010-03-04T12:48:00.001-08:00

Visions and prophecy seem to hold an irresistible attraction for people. The movie "2012" just came out on DVD and is being rented and bought in massive numbers.

The movie uses Mayan and Aztec predictions that the end of the world would come on December 21, 2012. The special effects are spectacular. Hollywood productions often use prophecy as their main themes and plot points.

Unlike Hollywood plots, biblical prophets accurately predicted hundreds of specific events – sometimes in detail – many years, or even many centuries, before their occurrence. Not only were these biblical predictions comprehensive and far-reaching, they were largely independent of each other – making their precise fulfillment all the more astounding. This is good evidence for the supernatural accuracy and authority of the Bible. Here are just a few examples:

>> Some time before 500 BC, Daniel predicted the date of Jesus' public ministry. He further predicted that the Messiah would be killed and that his death would take place before Jerusalem was destroyed for a second time (Daniel 9:25-26).

>> Around 700 BC, Micah named a particular town, Bethlehem, as the Savior's birthplace (Micah 5:2).

>> In the fifth century BC, Zechariah said the Messiah would be betrayed for the price of a slave, specifically 30 pieces of silver (according to Jewish law) and that this money would be used to buy burial ground for poor foreigners (Zechariah 11:12-13).

>> Both King David and Zechariah predicted the Messiah's manner of execution roughly 400 years before crucifixion was invented. Furthermore, they said the Lord's body would be pierced but his bones, unbroken (Psalm 22, 34:20; Zechariah 12:10).

>> Isaiah foretold Cyrus by name more than a century before his birth and of his triumph over Babylon, Egypt, and many other nations, plus the decision to allow the Jewish exiles to return home without ransom (Isaiah 44:28, 45:1, 13).

>> Both Jeremiah and Isaiah prophesied Babylon's demise (Isaiah 13:17-22; Jeremiah 51:26, 43).

>> Jeremiah claimed the then-fertile land of Edom (part of present-day Jordan) would one day become a barren wasteland (Jeremiah 49:15-20).

>> Some 2600 years ago, Daniel had three visions that predicted in detail the rise and fall of the Persian-Median Empire and the Greek-Macedonian Empire and the rise of the Roman Empire (Daniel 2:31-45, 7:1-11:35).

Remember that the motive of God's prophets has always been abundantly clear – calling people to repentance and to worship of God. So we have to question the motives of so-called "prophets" in power who draw attention to themselves and their own powers as, for example, the Mayan priests.

If great special-effects in movies turn you on, then "2012" is probably the ultimate disaster movie. But take its prophecy with a grain of salt.

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Hanging Out With God

2010-02-26T08:39:00.001-08:00

When we read the life and teachings of Jesus, we read of God in the flesh who was always available. When his self-appointed security detail, also known as his disciples (as far as we know they weren't wearing designer sunglasses), wanted to prevent little children from bothering him, Jesus stepped in and granted the children access.

Jesus had time. He was not too busy. He was not some big-shot executive who was late for another meeting, whose groupies were waiting to usher him into his limo. In Jesus, God came near, but then, sadly, religion stepped in and attempted to restrict access.

For the past few decades teenagers have been using a phrase that colorfully describes how Jesus made himself available – Jesus was "hanging out". This term usually drives parents of teenagers crazy because it is so unstructured and ill-defined. When teens want to spend time with their friends they simply tell their parents that they will be hanging out. But this term is not specific enough for most parents. And parents have every right and need to know more about what teens will be doing than the all-purpose hanging out.

But I believe hanging out is a great term to describe part of what it means to connect with God in a personal and intimate relationship. As a child of God you can and you should hang out with God. Your time with him is not limited. You don't need a list of things to talk about. You don't need to wait to talk to him until you get inside the four walls of a church. You don't need to pray special prayers. You don't need to use religious lingo and insider church talk when you hang out with God. I picture God asking us, "Please, stop trying to impress me with your funny religious language. I didn't dream that stuff up – somebody else did. This is not King Jame's time, this is the 21^st century."

It wasn't long after the Cross of Christ, and his victorious resurrection that man-made religion started to put its own unique twist on God's availability. In effect, religion started to teach that we could have an appointment with God, but we would have to call his secretary, which, conveniently enough, was a job institutionalized religion appropriated to itself. Not long after the earth-shaking events of the birth, life, death and resurrection of our Lord, which flung open the doors of God's heaven, religion appointed itself as a gate-keeper.

The response that we get from religion leads us to believe that God must act something like a banker does. When you really need money, there's no way the bank will talk with you. When you don't need a loan, your mailbox is flooded with offers for all kinds of loans. Religion offers us a Santa Claus god who will give us what we want if we are good. But if we've run up some debts and if we have a bad spiritual credit rating, then religion assures us there is no way that Santa Claus will be stopping at our house.

Religion has given us the idea that God used to like us and he used to have time for us when we were being "saved". God had time for us when we were tearful and remorseful and walking down the aisle and repenting and making a commitment. That was our courtship and eventual marriage, if you like.

After we are saved, religion gives us the impression that our honeymoon is over. No more dating. No more holding the car door open. No more flowers.

Religion whispers in our ear: "What exactly have you done for God lately? You better get your act together or you won't be seeing much of God!"

Let's get back to hanging out. Hanging out is a relational term. God called Abraham his friend. Jesus said that he wouldn't call us his servants, but his friends (John 15:13-15). Friends are friends because we don't feel awkward around them, we don't feel as if we are always being judged, and we don't feel we must be perpetually attempting to impress them. All that stuff is for people you don't know. In fact, it's impossible to impress God with anything we can produce or perform. We can hang out with him.

Christian action follows Christian being. We live in union with Christ, his Spirit united with our human spirit, only because of God's love, and only by his grace. We are enabled to behave like Christ because he first lives his life IN us. Jesus does not take up residence in our spirit as a reward for our virtuous and moral deeds, but because he loves us and desires to live his life in us. And as we keep in remembrance that he is there joined to us, our actions change on a day to day basis. And though we sometimes slip up and, in effect, act like he is not there, Jesus is quick to remind us of what is true: he will never leave us or forsake us.

The key to the Christian life is just hanging out with Jesus as much as possible, making him part of our everyday lives.

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So Much Invested for Such a Short Time

2010-02-02T07:39:00.000-08:00

In 1983 a British mathematician, Brandon Carter, introduced what he called the “anthropic principle inequality” to the scientific world. Carter took note of the fact that several billion years is the minimum time required for the universe to expand and develop sufficiently to allow for the existence of the human race or a similarly advance species. Yet, according to his calculations, the maximum time window in which the cosmos can possibly sustain such a species amounts to less than a few million years. In other words, it took a very long time to prepare the universe to sustain humans for a relatively short time.

Physicists John Barrow and Frank Tipler demonstrated in 1986 that the inequality is far more extreme than Carter figured. They estimated that global human civilization – something more than just a few low-population people groups existing in one or two regions using Stone Age type tools – could last no more than 41,000 years. According to their calculations, this limit would apply to any physical intelligent species with a sophisticated global civilization living anywhere in the universe.

Barrow and Tipler noted that the laws of physics, the characteristics of the universe, and the properties of life would all contribute to this brevity of duration for advanced life. Other factors include the Earth’s rotation rate, fossil fuel supplies, solar stability, solar luminosity, plate tectonics and more. Additional limitations apply to affluent high-tech civilizations. These include declining birthrates, increasing genetic disorders, environmental catastrophes, sociopolitical upheaval, and more.

Furthermore, the preparation of the universe involves so many intricate details intertwined with such exquisite fine-tuning and timing that only one reasonable conclusion emerges: the Creator of such an environment must possess unfathomable power, genius, resources, and above all else, purpose. That high purpose most apparently involves humans.

Given that it costs the material resources of the entire universe and the investment of 13.73 billion years of time to support humanity and its civilization for only a few tens of thousands of years, the human species indeed must have immense worth and purpose.

In the movie “Contact”, based on Carl Sagan’s novel, lead actress Jodie Foster and others repeatedly proclaim that the universe is a terrible waste if humans are alone in it. That may be true if humans are limited to this universe. But are we? The universe is far from a waste if the Creator endowed humans with a destiny that extends beyond the universe itself.

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Location - Location - Location

2010-01-21T10:02:00.000-08:00

You may have heard it said that the three rules of real estate are: 1. Location 2. Location 3. Location. The same rules apply to the human race’s place in the universe.
1. Location of the human race within such a vast universe.
2. Location of the human race in time within such an old universe.
3. Location within our solar system.
4. Location of our solar system within our Milky Way galaxy.
5. Location of our galaxy within its galaxy cluster.

Location within a vast universe

The universe as now measured appears absurdly too large to serve merely as humanity’s home. Skeptics insist that a Creator wouldn’t make unnecessary matter and space or waste creative effort.
The sheer enormity of the universe is enough to make anyone feel inconsequential. This feeling raises questions: Does life really have any ultimate value, meaning or purpose? If God is responsible for our existence, why would the universe be so large?
Anyone who hasn’t had the privilege of studying astrophysics may not realize that the universe MUST be as massive as it is or human life would not be possible – for at least two reasons: it must be the right mass and it must have the right expansion rate.
The density of protons and neutrons in the universe relates to the cosmic mass, or mass density. That density determines how much hydrogen, the lightest of the elements, fuses into heavier elements during the first few minutes of cosmic existence. And the amount of heavier elements determines how much additional heavy-element production occurs later in the nuclear furnaces of stars.
If the density of protons and neutrons were slightly lower (than enough to convert about 1 percent of the universe’s mass into stars, then nuclear fusion would proceed much less efficiently. As a result, the cosmos would never be capable of generating elements heavier than helium – elements like carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, sodium, and potassium, which are essential for any kind of physical life. On the other hand, if the density of protons and neutrons were slightly higher, nuclear fusion would be too productive. All the hydrogen in the universe would rapidly fuse into elements as heavy as or heavier than iron. Again the life-essential elements would not exist.

The second reason the universe must be hugely massive concerns its expansion rate. According to the law of gravity, the closer various bits and pieces of mass are to one another in the universe, the more effectively they will slow down the universe’s expansion. Conversely, the farther apart those bits and pieces are, the less “braking effect” gravity has on cosmic expansion.
The delicacy of that ratio is very critical. In certain early epochs in cosmic history, its mass density must have been as finely tuned as one part in 10 to the sixtieth power to allow for the possible existence of physical life at any time or place within the entirety of the universe.

Location in time within such as old universe

The latest measurements indicate the universe has been around for 13.73 billion years. From as astronomical view, these billions of years represent the minimum time necessary to prepare a home for humanity. And, as it turns out, the minimum time required is essentially the same as the maximum time for at least four reasons:
1. Essential heavy elements need to build up.
2. Long-lived radioactive isotopes need to build up.
3. Dangerous events must subside.
4. Fossil fuels need time to form.

The heavy elements needed for life are manufactured exclusively in the nuclear furnaces of stars, and these elements built up gradually. The universe didn’t contain the variety and concentrations of heavy elements necessary to make planets and advanced life possible until after three generations of stars formed, burned, and scattered their ashes into the interstellar medium.

Human civilization with high-tech societies demands a great variety and abundance of heavy elements. Their creation took at least 9 billion years of manufacture in stellar furnaces. That’s how long it would have taken at a minimum to provide for a heavy-metal-rich planet such as Earth. And slightly more than 4.5 billion years ago, just as that essential abundance first became available, Earth’s solar system came together.

For a second reason, as the universe ages and the abundance of heavy elements increases, one class of elements eventually begins to decrease. As the universe gets older, star formation gradually tapers off and the rate of star explosions – especially the major ones called supernovae – also slows down. Supernovae produce all the universe’s long lasting radioactive material such as uranium 235.

These radioactive elements seem obscure, even dangerous, but they play a critical role in making Earth suitable for human habitation. The radiation they release provides nearly all the energy that drives and sustains plate tectonics and helps sustain Earth’s magnetic field.

Earth’s continents and oceans exist due to plate tectonics. Given the importance of uranium and thorium in serving the needs of advanced life, the best possible time for an advanced-life habitable planet to form would be when these elements reach their peak abundances.

Recent research reveals that the timing of that peak occurred when the universe was two-thirds of its present age – about 4.5 billion years ago. That age matches the timing of the Earth’s formation 4.5 billion years ago.

Third, dangerous events must subside. The same supernovae so crucial for building up the heavy elements and radiometric isotopes essential for advanced life also shower their environs with deadly radiation. Consequently, advance life could not be safely introduced until the rate of supernova eruptions in the Milky Way Galaxy had subsided considerably.

Dense molecular clouds are another galactic hazard for advanced life. Fortunately, as the Milky Way Galaxy aged, ongoing star formation eventually consumed enough of the gas and dust in such clouds that they ceased to pose a major threat to advanced life.

Gamma-ray burst events, both in our galaxy and in nearby galaxies, pose an even deadlier risk to advanced life than supernovae or dense molecular clouds.

Though a planet suitable for life’s survival could be assembled within 9.2 billion years after the creation event, nearly another 3.5 billion years were needed for all the above dangerous events to subside enough for advance life and civilization to survive and thrive.

Fourth, we must consider fossil fuels needed for advanced life. The decayed bodies of creatures buried during or soon after the Cambrian explosion (about 543 million years ago) made the largest contribution to Earth’s petroleum reserves. While the transformation of these buried remains into usable petroleum takes time, given too much time bacteria in the crust will turn the petroleum into natural gas. Likewise, the formation of reservoir structures in Earth’s crust for the collection and storage of petroleum requires certain geological developments that take specific periods of time. However, with too much time, tectonic activity will cause cracks to form in the sealer rocks. Such cracks mean petroleum loss through leaks.

The optimal time for petroleum production perfectly matches the optimal time for reservoir structure formation and the storage of petroleum in those structures. So humans are living on Earth at the optimal moment for petroleum exploitation. The conditions for coal formation and storage are also exacting and equally optimal in their timing for the benefit of humans and civilization.

Then there are solar system reasons to account for the necessity of an additional 4.5 billion year delay after the Earth’s formation 9.2 billion years after the creation event before the arrival of advanced life on the scene.

1. The sun had to stabilize. Human arrival and survival on the terrestrial scene depended on the Sun’s having reached a particular level of brightness and stability. This level was not reached until the Sun was about 4.5 billion years old.

2. During the solar system’s youth, it was filled with an enormous abundance of asteroids, comets, rocks, and dust. This material once pelted the Earth with great frequency and intensity. These bombardment events made the planet inhospitable to advanced life for about 4.5 billion years.
Bombardments also yielded some positive benefits for advanced life. They provided fresh supplies of water to replace that lost to outer space. They also salted Earth’s surface with valuable mineral deposits. For a few billion years these deposits accrued for the maximum benefit of human civilization.

3. The Earth needed time for transformation. Advanced life on Earth needs a rotation rate very close to 24 hours per day. Tidal interaction with the Moon and Sun has steadily reduced Earth’s rotation rate from its initial two or three hours per day down to its current 24. However it has taken about 4.5 billion years of tidal interaction to accomplish this reduction.

In addition, advanced life needs lots of free oxygen in its planetary atmosphere. It took 4.5 billion years to raise the atmospheric oxygen level from less than 1 percent to its present 21 percent.

For the human species to achieve a high population and high-technology global civilization, continental landmasses had to cover a significant fraction of the Earth’s surface. Such coverage demanded the continual operation of plate tectonic activity over a very long time.

Just Right Age For Observing

At 13.7 billion years of age, the universe is just old enough – and just young enough – to facilitate its visual and technological exploration from Earth.
First, in a continuously expanding universe, the space surface of a young universe would be much smaller than when it is older. In a young universe the light of nearby stars and galaxies would have blinded observers from seeing the more distant objects. It took billions of years for cosmic expansion to push the bright lights of the universe far enough apart for optimal visibility.

Second, these lights were much brighter in the past than they are today. The intensity of the light emitted by the cosmos is strongly tied to the rate of star formation. This rate reached a peak when the universe was about 5 to 6 billion years old. Then it took additional billions of years beyond that peak for the lights of the universe to dim sufficiently so as not to impair astronomers’ viewing capacity.

Third, during Earth’s infancy, its atmosphere was opaque to light. In its youth, the planet’s atmosphere was translucent. Only when Earth reached what astronomers call “middle age” (over 4 billion years) did its atmosphere become transparent enough to enable its inhabitants to observe the most distant objects in the universe.

Fourth, up to a certain limit, the older the universe, the greater the distance at which astronomers can make observations, or the farther back in time they can see. The human era is theoretically the earliest possible epoch that allows astronomers to study the light from the origin of the universe. Right now, astronomers can directly view 99.99 percent of cosmic history and almost behold the instant of cosmic creation.

Location Within Our Solar System

The Earth orbits the Sun in a middle position among the planets. If closer, advanced life could not survive the heat, and if farther out, advanced life could not survive the cold.
The giant planets farther out from us shield us to a great extent from asteroid and comet bombardment.

Location of Our Solar System Within Our Galaxy

Not all locales within our galaxy would make desirable homestead for advanced life. For example, anywhere near the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, lethal radiation emanates from a massive black hole as well as from a jam of supernova remnants and gigantic stars. These deadly conditions extend outward more than 20,000 light-years from the galactic core. Earth’s solar system orbits at a distance of 26,000 light-years.

Even at this distance, radiation remains a factor – unless the solar system stays protected within the plane of the spinning galaxy’s disk. Virtually all stars bounce up and down, above and below the galactic plane. But our solar system experiences very little up and down movement and thus remains protected behind that radiation shield.

Planetary systems farther out than 26,000 light-years from the galaxy’s core face a different problem. Heavy elements needed for advanced life’s existence and survival are sparse at such distances.

Only within a narrow ring about 26,000 light-years from the galactic core does advanced life stand a chance.

Location of Our Galaxy Within Its Galaxy Cluster

Another distinctive location is our galaxy location within its galaxy cluster. Nearly all other galaxies in the universe reside within dense clusters of galaxies, with giant or supergiant galaxies as neighbors. These giants intermittently blast their whole neighborhood with deadly radiation. Also, their gravity and the gravity of the thousands of smaller galaxies associated with them significantly distort the structures of the galaxies they contain.

But the Milky Way Galaxy finds itself in a tiny cluster of galaxies without any giants or supergiants nearby and where the galaxies are widely dispersed. A typical galaxy cluster contains more than 10,000 closely packed galaxies. The Milky Way’s cluster, called the “Local Group”, contains only about forty galaxies – two medium-sized (Andromeda and the Milky Way) and the rest small or dwarf.

In conclusion, one favorable time or location window’s alignment with even one other window might be considered an astounding coincidence. But the lineup of so many independent time and location windows with the brief human moment on the cosmic calendar speaks powerfully of PURPOSE.

This conclusion is one component of what the scientific community has labeled the “anthropic principle” – the observation that the universe appears to have been engineered for the specific benefit of the human species.

During the past several years of research, scientists have gathered a substantial body of evidence showing that the universe, the Milky Way Galaxy, the solar system and Earth are, or at least have been, an essentially perfect vehicle for humanity. Though each astronomical component manifests features that may initially seem strange or out of place, in the context of humanity’s needs, each characteristic is JUST RIGHT.

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One of God's Yo-Yos

2010-01-10T13:30:00.000-08:00

[A sermon given by Lou Hodapp Jan. 10, 2010 at the Missouri Veterans Home.]

Thank you, veterans, for the privilege of being with you again. Isn’t it great to be out of the cold Arctic air outside?
Ask me: HOW COLD IS IT?
I’m glad you asked.
It’s so cold, that as I was walking up to the building, my shadow froze to the sidewalk!
It’s so cold, that if Santa was leaving now, he’d have to jump start his reindeer!
It’s so cold, when I put on my coat to take out the garbage, the garbage told me it didn’t want to go!
That’s enough crazyness.

When you see children playing nowadays, you may be surprised to notice something – the yo-yo is back in style. But not the yo-yo that we remember of old. Now they have fancy yo-yos which do all the old tricks and in addition make noises and flash sparks.

I remember in my childhood days at school that oriental men would come around to the schools and demonstrate yo-yos. I believe that they worked for the Duncan YoYo Co. After watching these men do their tricks, each kid just HAD to have a yo-yo!

But I also remember that kids called other kids “yo-yos” and I definitely remember that it wasn’t a term of endearment. In fact it was comparable to “having bats in your belfry” or “he snapped his twig” or “three bricks short of a load” or “a full bubble off plumb”. (All you carpenters will understand that one). Knowing these things in school, I had always tried desperately NOT to be a “yo-yo”.

When I think about it, I must admit that there is a Christian parallel to the yo-yo. The yo-yo really does describe the ups and downs of the Christian life.

A yo-yo sitting on a table is not much good for anything except maybe a paper-weight.

When you call out to God for a Savior and make Jesus Christ the Lord of your life, He in effect takes control of the yo-yo string. Since I have given my life to the Lord, Jesus Christ, God owns me. Therefore I must be one of God’s yo-yos!

Now the world can put me in a pretty heavy mood sometimes – in fact, a lot of times. But I find that, inevitably, Christ in control gives me some fresh insights and I am uplifted beyond measure. I never stay in the “downs” long without bouncing right back up to the heights.

The action of the yo-yo also describes how I learn what God wants me to know about His lifestyle – first I am down and seemingly in the dark, and then up and on top of things. After a momentary stay at the top I am on my way down with another one of life’s lessons to learn.

Some might say that they’d rather not go through all this bouncing around. But bouncing is the nature of the yo-yo. You’re not functioning as a yo-yo unless you bounce. To me, being a yo-yo is preferable to being static in thought and not learning what Jesus has to offer within the Kingdom of God.

If the term “yo-yo” bothers you, think about the things a yo-yo can do. With a skilled handler there is a little move called “rock-the-baby”, and another called “walk the dog”. These are like stages in your life where you learn more of God’s exciting ways.

Another was called “round-the-mountain”. Yes, I am familiar with going around the mountain all right. To me, that expression pictures my taking one of God’s little side trips filled with lessons that will help me to get closer to where He wants me to be.

Then there is that thing which a skilled handler can do to make a yo-yo “sleep” – where the yo-yo just spins for a time with no up or down movement. It can seem like an awful long time down in the dark, but a skilled handler like Jesus will always bounce the yo-yo back up to the heights.

Some lessons to be learned can seem to be taking longer than we could ever want – just spinning away in the depths. But we trust (and that is the key, TRUST) that we will bounce up again.

This truth was brought out to me a while back when I delivered Meals-on-wheels to an older woman’s home. I had been delivering to her for quite a while and she always had a cheerful way about her and often said as I left, “Jesus is with you!” One day I felt the urge to speak longer with her. I asked her to share her Christian testimony with me. Her story included a special experience involving illness and pain which had taken place many years ago. She said that now, every day, she still experienced pain, “But hardly ever”, she said, “does anyone notice it.”
I was amazed to hear all this from her since I had never once noticed strain or tension, either in her voice or in her manner. Then she said, “Why shouldn’t we EXPECT Him to control our physical body when we are ill?”
And I thought, “That’s what trust is – expecting.”

When Christ controls our yo-yo string, you can expect to be snapped up out of the downs and climb that string back up to the heights. Why not expect Him to get us through worldly troubles? Why not expect Him to draw us up out of our sin? Why not expect to be transformed by every downer we live through?

The Bible says that Jesus learned obedience or trust by the things He suffered – His downers. Jesus had the Father controlling His yo-yo string, and we have Jesus controlling ours.

Years ago, my wife gave me a little wooden plaque with the Bible verse from Roman 8:28 which says, We know that all things work together for good to them that love God who are called according to His purpose.” That little plaque sits in my bathroom next to where I wash and shave. In the morning, I open my day and prepare my day thinking those words.

You know, yo-yos live by the moment just as we do. Back in the poetry phase of my life, I wrote this poem.

If we’re thoughtful just a moment,
In what all we say or do;
If we put a purpose in it
That is honest through and through,

We shall gladden life and give it
Grace to make it all sublime;
For, though life is long, we live it
Just a moment at a time.

Just this moment we are going
Toward the right or toward the wrong;
Just this moment we are sowing
Seeds of sorrow or of song.

Just this moment we are thinking
On the ways that lead to God;
Or in idle dreams are sinking
To the level of the clod.

Yesterday is gone; tomorrow
Never comes within our grasp;
Just this moment’s joy or sorrow
That is all our hands may clasp.

Just this moment – let us take it
As a pearl of precious price,
And with high endeavor make it
Fit to shine in paradise.

Yes, as God’s yo-yo, Christ is the Holder of my string. It’s not by my whim that I go up and down, but by His design.

I go DOWN – to experience, to see, to feel, and to accept faith.

I go UP – to share with others, to show that faith, and to be used by God.

Being a yo-yo takes on a whole new meaning. No more worrying about not always having that placid, straight-line disposition that I see some other Christians exhibiting. Life IS highs and lows. And the Christian life as a yo-yo uses those highs and lows as learning experiences in the lifestyle of God.

If I get a knot in my string, it will take a little longer to work on it and get it out – but it WILL come out!

Ultimately, if my string breaks, Jesus will be the one to pick me up and repair me. What more could a yo-yo ask for?

Probably many of you here today have seen your need for Jesus Christ and have made Him the Savior and Lord of your life. This is the most important decision that anyone can ever make.
But there are always some in every audience who have never really turned their life over to Christ.

Let’s say a prayer now expressing this need for Christ. For those praying this for the first time with meaning – wonderful! This is an awesome spiritual experience!

For those “old-timers in Christ”, it never hurts to renew our commitment.

Father – the ups and downs of life can be frustrating. For those without Christ they can seem hopeless.

But, Father, you have made provision for us to become your true children by recognizing our need for the salvation that Jesus gives us by His death on the Cross and resurrection to Life again.

Right now, right here, I accept Jesus Christ as my Savior and, to the best of my ability, I want to make Him the Lord of my life – to teach me trust during the lows and to use me outward to others in the highs.

I come to you as I am, far from perfect, but looking forward to a gradual lifestyle change to the way you would have me, Father. In Jesus name we pray. Amen

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