DEATH AND LIFE ON NEW YEARS DAY

     The first day of January 1962 dawned bright with the promise of excitement and joy for the day and for the year ahead.  A fifteen year old boy in a small town in north central Ohio, for reasons now unknown, decided to remain home alone while his parents went to visit relatives and his older brother went hunting with friends.  On many days since then that older brother has thought:  "if only I had asked him to go with me that day". 
     Hawks and owls belong to a class of birds known as raptors.  Ironically, that word comes from the same word used in the Latin Vulgate text of I Thessalonians 4:17 and reads in English "caught up . . . to meet the Lord in the air".   This is the origin of the word rapture.  The hunting laws of the day clearly said that "hawks and owls are protected unless doing damage" but hardly anyone paid attention.  During the Great Depression, less than three decades earlier, raptors were viewed as competitors for scarce food like the chickens that were on nearly every farm.  Thus they were referred to as "chicken hawks".  A boy grew up in those days hearing: "there's a hawk (or owl); shoot it".   Just a couple weeks earlier this fifteen year old boy had been encouraged by his older brother to shoot a hawk along a rural road.  Regret number two for the older brother.
     Right after lunch on this New Years day, this boy saw a hawk in a tree back of the house but too far away for a shotgun.  So he picked up his .22 rifle and carefully fired about six times at the hawk without success.  Every box of .22 cartridges, even then, had on it the words "Dangerous within one mile -- be careful!"  But like the law protecting hawks and owls, few paid any attention.  This fifteen year old had watched his older brother and many others shoot at birds in trees with a .22 rifle.  No one seemed to give much thought to the question:  "where will this bullet come down?"  Regret number three. 
     Hunter safety courses would not be required in Ohio until 1978 and the older brother in this incident was one of the first trained instructors when that law went into effect.  He taught firearm safety to dozens of young people for twenty years and continues to do so informally.  He was always conscious of how indifferent to this rule of firearm safety he had been in the days before New Years Day 1962.  Regret number four.
     One half mile beyond where that boy stood to fire those six fateful shots, an eight year old boy was playing in the yard with a cousin.  They heard a sound of something hitting the small trees and brush near them and walked over to investigate.  Soon the sound of sirens was heard in that small town and not long after that a police officer came to the door where the fifteen year old lived.  "Did anyone here fire a rifle in that direction?"  Some boys in the U.S. may have answered that question with a "no" to protect themselves.  This boy frankly answered "yes" and surrendered his rifle to the officer.
    Later, his older brother got a call at the home of friends:  "Can you come home; there's been an accident".  The eight year old had been struck in the forehead by one of those 40 grain lead bullets fired from that .22 rifle.  The mathematical odds against that accident ever happening the way it did were nearly astronomical.  But it happened.  The boy was rushed to the Cleveland Clinic and died the next day.  The fifteen year old was brought home from school in the middle of the day to be given the tragic news.  He sobbed uncontrollably. 
     The funeral was conducted by a minister with a theologically liberal background and his remarks had little, if any, of eternity's values.  In the years since, the older brother has stood at that grave site more than once.  Regret number five.
     Within a week, the parents of the fifteen year old felt pressured to send an attorney to the family of the eight year old to offer to pay all expenses,  though they did not know how they could possible afford it.  By summer, the parents of the deceased boy had filed a lawsuit for an amount that would seem relatively small today but in 1962 seemed like a terrifying amount.  The parents of the fifteen year old were frugal folks and they had what was then called "fire insurance" on their house.   They did not feel they could afford what is today called a "homeowner's policy" which would have covered lawsuits.  They were looking at the very real possibility of loosing their home.
     The fifteen year old began to show signs of mental stress.  His stuttering problem became much more acute.  But his walk with the Lord deepened significantly.  Some friends of the family belonged to what can only be described as a secretive, fraternal organization and it appears that they somehow brought pressure to bear on the attorneys involved who were also members of that organization.  By November the lawsuit was settled for one tenth of the original amount.  The family sold one half of their ten acres of land to cover it.
     Eight years, seven months and twenty days after January 1, 1962, the fifteen year old boy, now nearly twenty-four, drowned while trying to save a boy from drowning.  There were now two graves for the older brother to visit while thinking deeply about all that he might have done differently.  Regret number six.
     More than thirty years after January 1, 1962 special meetings were being held at the church beside the cemetery where the eight year old was buried.  The speaker had never personally know the fifteen year old but was telling the audience the significant impact for Christ that this young man's life had been before his death at age 23.   In the audience sat the mother of the eight year old.  She was now a widow.  She went home after the service, picked up the phone, and called the parents of the fifteen year old.   That conversation brought the most profound healing to both families. 
     No argument for the truth of the Gospel and the claims of Christ could be more powerful than what happened at that church and during that telephone conversation.   The only person still living of all those involved in the tragedy of January 1, 1962 is the older brother of the fifteen year old.  In Jesus' parable of the Lost Son the term "older brother" does not have a good meaning.  Perhaps in this instance the term will have a somewhat better meaning.  But the regrets will never be completely gone.
     The name of the fifteen year old boy was Donald Eugene Enzor.
    
    
    

USING THE "L" WORD

     It was begun by the pioneer Bible translator William Tyndale.  It was continued a century later by the Authorized (King James) Version translators.   All English language Bibles, except perhaps those for Jewish believers in Yeshua (Jesus), still use it.  I am talking about the English word for a sovereign ruler.  It was used to translate the Hebrew Adonai and YHWH (Yahweh) in the Old Testament and the Greek word Kurios in the New Testament.  It is, even today, the name of the upper house in the British Parliament.  English speaking believers in Christ world wide utter it hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of times daily.   It is so often on our lips that its awe-filled meaning is easily dulled.  But in deepest sincerity we sing from the heart:  "He is Lord, He is Lord, He is risen from the dead and He is Lord.  Every knee shall bow, every tongue confess, that Jesus Christ is Lord."  Used this way, the word means deity; He is both God and Man in one Person.
     More than a few believers have paid with their lives for declaring that Jesus Christ is Lord.  Beginning with those who were smeared with wax and burned as torches to light Nero's gardens, down to those tortured and murdered in Muslim and Marxist countries today, it can be costly to utter those words.  Others, in free countries, utter the words casually and the Lord Himself asks them, "Why do you call me Lord and not do the things I say?"  The first few generations of believers in Christ were, from time to time, ordered to say:  "Caesar is lord".  In the worst persecutions (both in Rome and modern times) they were also ordered to curse Christ.  Merely uttering "Caesar is Lord" was viewed by enlightened Romans as a simple act of patriotism, promoting the unity of the empire as embodied in the emperor.  The utterance was to be accompanied by a pinch of incense dropped on a flame in a public place.  A certificate called a 'libelli' was issued to prove that the act of emperor worship had been performed; something like a receipt for paying taxes.  Unethical and dishonest "Christians" would get a friend to obtain a libelli for them.  Thus they could 'truthfully' tell the rest of the church, "I have not bowed to emperor worship". 
     Honest and courageous believers would refuse any form of emperor worship and cursing Christ was unthinkable.  Instead, they boldly and publicly declared,  "Kurios Iasous" -- "Jesus is Lord" (or in Latin:  "Jesu Domini").  The current form of  "Caesar is Lord" here in the U.S. is the requirement that you not call certain things sin.   High officials have said, "Christians need to change their beliefs".
       In a practical sense, I confess His Lordship in my attitude and obedience to Him.   I can deny His Lordship in how I treat people.  Most believers, down through history, have confessed or denied Him in these seemingly small ways day after day, rather than under some threat of torture and death.  But the stakes are being raised.  The county clerks who have resigned rather than issue those God-defying same-sex 'marriage' licenses; the employees who resign rather than lie for their employers;  the teachers who resign rather than teach anti-God and anti-Christ curriculum; they are all paying the price for confessing His Lordship over all of life. 
     I gladly confess His Lordship by giving thanks for food in the midst of unbelievers and offering to pray for all kinds of people on all kinds of occasions.  And, if I write on historical subjects I confess His Lordship by writing the dates as either B.C. or A.D. and refuse the growing practice of denying His Lordship by writing B.C.E. ("before the common era") and C.E. ("common era").  If unbelievers want to use those Christ-denying abbreviations that is their choice.
     Did I lose you on those last two sentences?  Since the year 525 A.D. Christians have honored their Lord by writing  dates since the birth of Christ as A.D. (Anno Domini -- "in the year of our Lord"), and if the date is before the birth of Christ as B.C.  The Latin "vulgaris aera" ("common era") was used by Christians centuries ago, but they meant something quite different from its current use.  To them it was "the common dating system based on the birth of our Lord".   The world wide use of the calendar based on the birth of Christ is God's sovereign overruling of history to honor His Son.  In the last 30 years, however, the C.E. and B.C.E. abbreviations have become the symbol of banishing Jesus the Lord from all of life as secular humanism wages its war against the knowledge of God.  Don't believe the claim that those abbreviations are used to avoid offending those who do not believe He is "our Lord".  This is gross hypocrisy because there is little concern about offending conscientious Christians.   Pay no attention either to the disingenuous excuse that "the calendar is off by five years anyway". 
     As further evidence of the irrationality of using those abbreviations consider this.  If they write a date such as "1860 C.E.", ask them, "eighteen hundred and sixty years since what?!  It is as though they are saying, "we will continue to use the calendar based on His birth but we will never mention Him."   I will not bow to this current form of emperor worship and use those Christ-denying abbreviations!   Even the writers of the U.S. Constitution boldly signed that document with the words: "done at Philadelphia IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD one thousand seven hundred eighty-seven" (emphasis mine).  The next time someone tries to tell you that the writers of the Constitution did not consider God important enough to mention in that document, tell them, "but they did, however, confess Jesus as Lord at the end of that document before they signed their names to it;
     Finally, may "the LORD bless you and keep you and make his face shine upon you".
    

CALLING HOURS

     Friday afternoon and school was out for Christmas vacation.  The ground was snow covered already.  Not long after I got off the school bus my mother handed a bag of groceries to me with instructions to take it to my maternal grandmother.  My grandparents' house was no more than a half mile away and it was like a second home to me.  My grandfather was not yet home from his job of hauling livestock each day to the Cleveland Stock Yards.  In the summers I sometimes rode in the truck with him as he left around sunrise each day to pick up stock at farms and go on to Cleveland.  He would unload and then take me to get lunch in a big room with yellow block walls and noisy men all around.  Then back home.


     I walked right into Grandma's house without knocking like I always did.  But something was different.  She did not answer my soft call; soft because I thought she might be asleep since the door into her bedroom was closed.  So, I quietly left.  At least that is how I have always recalled this day for sixty-five years now.  When I came back to our house I told my mom that grandma was asleep and that I left the groceries on the table.  Years later my mom would admit to me that she and others in the family believed that my grandmother was already dead on the kitchen floor when I arrived and that is why I said "grandma is asleep".


     If that was the case, then my merciful, omnipotent Heavenly Father made my grandmother invisible to spare me the trauma of finding her dead.  But, why was the bedroom door closed?  It never was and that is why I recall it so vividly.  When my grandfather arrived home, at the same time as my cousin Mary who lived with them, grandma was indeed dead on the kitchen floor.  She had died of a coronary embolism when she bent over to light her gas oven to bake cookies.  She had a medical history of her blood forming clots and carried a nitro pill in the pocket of her apron.  Evidently, medical science in 1950 did not know that half an aspirin each day would have extended my grandmother's life.


     The phone at our house rang and my mom and dad rushed out the door while my uncle Dale remained with my brother and me.  Our phone rang again in a few minutes. Uncle Dale answered it; put the receiver down; turned to me and said:  "Your grandmother has died."  I recall vividly just staring for the longest time at the beautifully decorated Christmas tree and trying to comprehend what death was.   The next day I was sent to stay with my uncle Bud and aunt Eleanor while relatives came from far and near to stay either at our house or with my grandfather.  The undertaker, Cal Bender, prepared my grandmother's body and placed it in a plain, cloth covered casket and brought it back to the house.  There in the northwest corner of the living room the earthly tabernacle in which my grandmother had dwelt, lay in state until the funeral, the day after Christmas.   Friends and relatives came at any time from morning until evening for two days.   This is, of course, very different from the current practice of the family standing in a receiving line at designated times.  I much prefer the older way.


      My uncle Bud must have brought me out to the house each morning of those two days because it seems like I was there most of the time.  Much of that time my cousin Duane and I played outside in the snow.  But once I stood by the casket and watched one of mom's brothers as a large tear rolled down his face and landed on the soft white material that lined that casket.   He went on to become an alcoholic, lost a great job with a large corporation and died a pitiful human being.   Another of my mom's brothers was still in his twenty-five year career with the Navy and I stared in fascination at his uniform.  But he laughed and joked sometimes and never indicated any sadness nor did he seem to appreciated the endless hours his mother had worried over his fate during the dark days of World War II.  To the best of my knowledge he died an unbeliever.


     The morning of the funeral Mr. Bender returned with his long black hearse and the casket was slowly carried from the house.  My mom and her two sisters broke down in the most painful grief and tears at that moment.  I recall the funeral service at our church, even the blue hat that the pastor's wife wore as she and her husband sang a duet:  "Near To The Heart Of God".  I do not recall what was said but here in a notebook of family history beside me is the actual sermon outline that Pastor Robert Collitt used.  His text was the twenty-third Psalm and he concluded by pressing upon all those assembled this question: "do you know the Shepherd".   He always made the Gospel very clear as well as the need to personally receive the Lord Jesus as Savior.  Fifteen years later while preparing for a funeral at the church where he was then serving in Maryland he found this sermon outline and sent it to my mother.  I treasure it greatly.  To the best of my knowledge my grandmother had been a believer but my grandfather never responded to the Gospel until he was on his death bed seven years later. 


     As we filed past the casket for the last time, a cousin of mine said, "take a good look Russell; that is the last time you will see her".   At eight years of age I knew nothing about the Resurrection or the Scripture that said "we shall know even as we are known" but somehow I knew at that moment that my cousin was wrong!  In less than ten years after that funeral I, by the Grace of God, would be standing behind that pulpit and other pulpits and explaining what the Scriptures say about being absent from the body and present with the Lord; "that it is appointed unto man once to die and after that the Judgment"; and that in Christ I can stand before the Creator of the Universe in a perfect righteousness.


     I have seen several posts on social media about being sensitive to grieving, lonely people at Christmas time.  If such a person reads this or any of my social media posts I sincerely and deeply hope they will send a personal message to me.  I learned at eight years of age something of what they are facing.  "May our Lord Jesus Christ Himself and God our Father, who loved us and by His grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope, encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed and word."  I Thess. 4:16&17

DRINKS, DRUNKS, AND DIVERSIONS

     Public Broadcasting (WOSU in this area) recently rebroadcast the historical series on Prohibition.  Here is a brief review for those who may not have seen it.  The place of alcoholic beverages in American life is traced from earliest times showing the problems of drunkenness and the resulting domestic abuse and poverty.  Two main groups arose to combat this.  One was the Women's Christian Temperance Union (still active when I was young) and the Anti Saloon League, founded at Oberlin, Ohio.  The later was so politically powerful in its day that its efforts resulted in the election of many governors and legislators sympathetic to the "dry'" cause, as it was called.  This all came to a great climax with the ratification of the nineteenth amendment to the Constitution in 1919 which outlawed alcoholic beverages in the U.S.  This was known as Prohibition. 


     This was not a conservative movement; it was the liberal/progressive movement of its day.  But Christians were the heart and soul of that movement just as they are now of the pro-life/anti abortion movement.  The Methodist Church was heavily involved in the Temperance Movement.   Lutherans and Episcopalians were the only large Protestant groups not involved.  The German Lutherans liked their beer and the Episcopalians liked their Sacramental wine.  Most Christian groups of that day either believed or were sympathetic to the post-millennial view of the Second Coming of Christ.   This view of Scripture saw the Kingdom of God steadily advancing in this age until sin was put down and righteousness would triumph in the earth.   The millennium of Biblical prophecy would be brought in through the preaching of the Gospel and the efforts of believers to apply God's laws to society.  Then Christ would return after (post) the Millennium was brought in. 


    This was a huge motivating force in the "Temperance Movement" as it was called and the passage of the nineteenth amendment was seen as a major triumph for the Kingdom of God.  But the post-millennial view began to die out with the carnage of the Great War (1914-1918).  The increase of lawlessness and immorality during the 1920's dealt a further blow to the optimism of post millennial belief.  (It has had a mild resurgence in our day.)   Another factor in this loss of optimism was the sinking of the Titanic which dealt a death blow to over confidence in technology.  (It was "unsinkable".)  Prohibition was repealed by the twenty first amendment in 1933 and Americans went back to drinking -- legally.  Many of them never stopped.  The standard text book view of Prohibition is that it was either a "noble experiment" that failed badly or it was a benighted effort of Christians to "impose their morality on society and we should never allow them to do anything like that again because church and state are separate".


     Ironically, the same logic which sees Prohibition as a total failure could also be applied to drug laws and, if consistent, would abolish most laws on controlled substances.  The legalization of marijuana is already underway. 


     The purpose of this historical review is to arrive at the third word in the title of this blog -- diversions.  The believer in the Lordship of Jesus Christ is under the Great Commission of Matthew 28:19&20 and diversions from that can be very attractive.  Those diversions can easily be seen as the good works of Ephesians 2:10 that believers are saved to do.  But when they take the place of the Gospel and even stop the proclamation of the Gospel they cannot possibly be good works.  My impression of the Temperance Movement is that it hurt -- badly hurt -- the advance of the Gospel and the Cause of Christ.  Not all believers were diverted by it.  Dwight L. Moody, while sympathetic to the Temperance Movement I'm sure, was never diverted by it.  Until his death in 1899 he proclaimed the Gospel to many thousands here and in Europe.  There were others like him.  They understood that when someone is a new creation in Christ they do not tend to get drunk or help others get 'wasted' on alcohol or any other substance.  They understood, like some believers now understand, that social improvement is a fruit of the advance of the Gospel and not the goal of it.


     The Temperance Movement went way beyond Christians taking a responsible role in representative democracy and voting.  It became for thousands of them THE CAUSE.   And the current loss of a Christian Consensus in the U.S. may very well be one of the long term results.  I saw this first hand when I was quite young, in 1953. 


     Twenty years after the repeal of Prohibition many Christians still saw alcohol as the evil to be stamped out.  I grew up surrounded by this mentality.  The community where I grew up had two churches.  One of them began an initiative to have a local election to outlaw all alcoholic beverages in both the village and the township.  The church where my family attended joined that effort and became the main force in that effort.  For three or four years before that, our church had seen phenomenal growth and dozens of people coming to Christ. 


     The bitterness generated by that 'local option' election in the fall of 1953 brought that progress of the Gospel to nearly a complete halt.  Attendance levels and witness in the community were never again what they were in the summer of 1953.  Although I do not agree with a few of the things he says, Phil Yancey, in his book What Is So Amazing About Grace, clearly documents how some Evangelical political activism has made the Gospel so unattractive to so many people. 


     How can we so easily forget that sinners will always sin; that unbelievers will usually act immorally; that those who are cut off from the Life of God will remove all references to Him from culture; and that laws, even good ones, will not change human nature?  How much praying is going on in out churches for people who are outside of Christ?  How much cooperative effort is going on among Christians of various churches to bring people to Christ?  Why are we so surprised that our country is going the way it is?  In the last book of the Bible it is Christians who are told to repent, several times over in chapters 2&3, before the word is ever applied to unbelievers. 


     A final word of encouragement to you who are showing acts of help and kindness to unbelievers.  You are "making the teaching about God our Savior attractive".   (Titus 2:10)

CANCER -- WAITING FOR THE REPORT

     It's a tightness in the chest that is only known only by those who have waited to hear if they have cancer or if it has come back and they are no longer in remission.  You are shown to the little room where you sit and wait for the doctor to come in.  The seconds become like minutes and the minutes like an hour.  Then he comes in, greets you and begins to look at the report from the radiologist.  That's when your chest gets really tight.  Then he finally says . . . .  


     Susan and I sat there this morning.  I could count back through my journals to 1988 and total up how many dozens of times we have waited.  Just before Christmas that year we got the original diagnosis.  Susan had been trying to lose some weight that summer and fall but her clothing still fit tighter and tighter around the waist.  She went in to our regular doctor in December for a routine physical to renew her school bus drivers license.  Even though she was a teacher she found it quite useful to have that license.  The doctor checked her abdomen and was quite alarmed.  "You have a tumor".  He sent her straight to the hospital for a CT scan.  When he got the report he called me at the school.  I was called out of a chapel with the words, "The doctor wants to talk to you on the phone".


     "Russell, Susan has lymphoma".  I went to a dictionary but that didn't help much.  In the following weeks I would get a medical school level education about lymphoma and, in particular, malignant lymphoma.  Hers was an abdominal lymphoma about the size of a grapefruit.  Lymphoma is any swelling of a lymph node in your body.  It can happen when you have an infection, and then the lymph node will return to normal.  When you have cancer of the lymph system it is malignant lymphoma.  I found out how ignorant even some doctors are about the subject.  A close relative told us that his brother-in-law, a physician, told him that this enlarged lymph node in Susan came from cancer somewhere else in the body.  I reported this to Susan's oncologist (cancer specialist) and he politely told me in so many words that someone did not know what they are talking about.  You can have, he explained, all kinds of cancer picked up and transported by and in the lymph system but Susan had cancer  of  the lymph system; i.e. malignant lymphoma.  So much for the misinformed relative of ours and his less than an expert brother-in-law.


     Next came surgical biopsy of the tumor itself and of the bone marrow.  I found out that it does no good to surgically remove a lymphoma tumor.  It is a systemic disease.  Chemotherapy or radiation are the only options.   This is when we started to get good news.  Bad news would have been that Susan had "T cell" lymphoma.  Hers was "B cell".  Then, a friend whose son was undergoing treatment for leukemia at Columbus Children's Hospital told his son's oncologist about Susan's diagnosis and asked "what are her chances"?  The reply:  "Well, if you have to pick a cancer you might as well pick that one because we are getting some good results in treating that one."   Every day seemed to bring encouragements of this sort.  In the years since then the type of cancer cells that Susan has have been called "good players".


     We soon found out that people everywhere, some as far away as Asia,  were imploring our merciful Heavenly Father to deliver Susan.   After two months of chemotherapy the tumor was more than half gone.  The oncologist said he would have been happy if it had just not grown.  And so the good news kept coming.  Susan returned to teaching in the fall and slowly regained strength.  But the massive chemotherapy left some effects that are still felt to this day.  In 1990 the CT scans were clear.  In 1991 the devastating news came that the CT scan revealed an enlarge lymph node.  Susan was given an oral drug with the trade name 'Lukaran' (sp?).  It worked.


    So, year after year she had the CT scans and we waited to hear the results.  In the 1990's it came back again and the oral drug was used successfully again.   In 2001 a lymph node became enlarged in the groin and for the first and only time radiation was used.   Then nearly eight years went by and we thought we might be "home free".  But an enlarged lymph node appeared on the CT scan in the chest area.  A biopsy was taken by inserting a long needle through the back and the lung.  More good news . . . the cell type of the lymphoma had not changed over all the intervening years.  Expert predictions that it would change into a more aggressive type of cancer did not come true.  More good news.  A new drug was available:  "Rituxin".  It is not a chemotherapy drug; it is a monoclonal antibody.  Your hair does not fall out and it does not make you sick.  It attacks Susan's particular type of cancer cells directly. Perhaps the day will come when something like this will make treating most cancers as routine as penicillin made the treatment of infections.


     The first infusion of Rituxin dissolved the small tumor so quickly that Susan nearly went into shock because her body could not absorbed the dead cancer cells quickly enough.  At six month intervals from the fall of 2011 until the spring of 2013 Susan had four rounds of Rituxin infusions.  The three extra rounds have proved, in lymphoma treatment, to prevent a relapse.   So every December since 2013 she has a CT scan and we await the results.  Just like we did this morning.  Oh, I almost forgot.  You want to know those results.  "The scan is all clear and your blood work is fine.  Go and enjoy Christmas with your family."  Those tears you see are tears of joy.


     Now, something practical for you the reader because Susan and I care about you.  If people would alter their diets the cancer rate would plummet to unheard of lows.  Fresh fruits from apples to blueberries; plenty of dark green vegetables;  yellow and orange vegetables; green tea and black tea both; reduce red meat and fats; more fish and poultry;  more whole grains; and cut those calories and get rid of that big gut!  There!  Have a blessed Christmas!


    


      


    


    

HONDURAS, SWITZERLAND AND ME

     One of those pre-packaged posts is showing up all over social media.  It compares Honduras to Switzerland on the matter of gun ownership and murder rates.  I have marked "like" on it for several friends even though I knew that anti-gun advocates could seriously challenge it.  There are too many  variables involved to do a direct comparison; that much is true.  But it is also true that it raises a matter worth talking about so I marked "like".  Some 'counter posts' to it have given it a 'pants on fire' liars award.  I would like to present the counter posts people with a hypocrites award of some sort for only pointing out flaws in logic if it suits their cause. 


      I am still waiting for them to give a liars award to media outlets that cover up innumerable instances when lives are saved and murders prevented because some citizen was armed.   They get a solid gold hypocrites award for never pointing out that proposed new gun laws, if they had been on the books, would have done absolutely nothing to prevent the mass murders of recent years.  After the Sandy Hook School massacre the proposed new law would have made background checks mandatory on all private firearm sales.  The public seems blissfully unaware that background checks are already required of all sales by dealers and that the new law would have made you a criminal for giving a family member a shotgun to go pheasant hunting.  The weapons used at Sandy Hook were purchased by the perpetrator's mother and she had a background check.  (Not to mention that the perpetrator murdered her before killing all the others at the school.)  Yet those in Congress who voted against this irrelevant and useless proposed law were accused of being cold hearted toward all the children and teachers killed at Sandy Hook.   If this is not hypocrisy then hypocrisy does not exist.  One armed guard in that school would have saved 22 lives.
But that solution doesn't fit the 'ideal world' envisioned by liberal progressives.


     The push for 'universal background checks' on all private sales of firearms should be understood for what it really is and not as a crime prevention measure because those bent on crime will get their weapons legally if they can or illegally if they cannot, just like they do now.  No, the push for background checks is very much a part of the total liberal, progressive effort to control people.  This was behind the "Affordable Care Act"  (Obama Care) and behind every major piece of legislation Obama and his allies put forward -- control!   Their 'solution' to the breakdown in society is control by an elite.   And who is more qualified than we are? they say, and they really believe it!   A well known Christian in the 1970's clearly saw this coming and he described it as the death wish of modern humanism, the desire to beat to death the Christian base of our forms and freedoms.  Then to substitute an imposed order by a manipulating, authoritarian elite.


     This is why the election of "better" politicians only postpones, not prevents, the inevitable breakdown.   A massive shift in public attitudes about God, His moral Laws and His Son Jesus Christ would produce again a consensus in America that embraces wide freedoms without freedom turning to chaos.  BUT, and this is a very big qualification, God will not bless any effort to promote His Kingdom that has as its primary purpose the saving of American civilization as important as that may be.  Any motive less than the glory of God is a corrupt motive and unworthy of the people of God.  America is experiencing a form of judgment short of the ultimate judgments on nations in the Great Tribulation. 


      Of all the titanic freedoms without chaos that the Christian consensus produced in America the right to be armed is seen by thoughtful historians and political scientists as "an insurance policy that the Founders bought to prevent tyranny".  I agree.  But I also see that armed citizens without moral absolutes and the Fear of God cannot save themselves from the increasing breakdown.   I have been a vocal advocate all my adult life for the principle in the Second Amendment yet I have never obtained a concealed carry permit.  I may yet do so but I have hesitated for several reasons.  My situation is somewhat unique.  I see myself as closely related to the five missionaries who allowed themselves to be murdered in the jungles of Ecuador in January 1956.  They had a rifle in their little airplane but the souls of their killers and the souls of all the tribe they came to reach were more important than their own lives.   As one trying to be a faithful minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ I must balance the desire to prevent Muslim (and other) terrorists from murdering people with the ultimate goal of seeing them turn to Christ.  It is very easy now for believers to see only the first and forget the second.  "They overcame the devil by the Blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death."  (Rev. 12:11)  I cannot stress too much that I am speaking only of myself here and not urging a universal policy in this regard,


     If I had a concealed carry permit I would probably never use it to save my own life, only the lives of others.  For that reason I may still obtain one.  On a more practical level, I have not wanted the continual fear of "have I carried this into someplace where I could get into legal trouble for having it?"  The banks and other places who post the little sign that indicates "no arms allowed here" - I hate to say this but its true - are nothing but idiots.  Someone bent on crime will ignore it and the people you will want in the event of a crime will be unarmed.  Idiots!  There is no other word for it. 


      No matter that pacifists have tried to explain it away, Jesus did approve of at least some prudent measures of self defense in Luke 22:36.  "If you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one."   Just don't make it your first resort.  You already have angelic protection.  (Matthew 26:50-54)


    

THE BROKEN WINDOW PHENOMENON

     It began as an observation that if a broken window in an abandoned building was not immediately repaired it was an open invitation for vandals to break all they wanted.  It grew into a theory of the cause of crime in urban areas.  If 'minor laws' such as breaking windows and littering were not strictly enforced law breaking would escalate to worse and worse crimes.  I first felt compelled to apply the concept to mass murders after the Colorado high school murders around twenty years ago.  But the internet was only in its infancy and the possibilities of a blog like this were almost undreamed of.
     The broken window theory of crime is not new at all.  Around nine hundred years before Christ it was observed by Solomon.  "When sentence for a crime is not quickly carried out, the hearts of the people are filled with schemes to do wrong."  (Ecc. 8:11)   The same general idea is found in the Proverbs and appears from time to time in writings ancient and modern.  At the time of the Colorado high school killings I saw it as predictive of where the U.S. was headed.  From the 1960's on there has been a steady "breaking of moral windows" by groups as diverse as the entertainment industry and the Supreme Court.  This has been rightly called a form of anarchy.  In the words of the Book of Judges: "every man did what was right in his own eyes".   In particular there has been complete sexual anarchy: first, we will live together unmarried; then we will have children without being married; if married, we will divorce and remarry for any and every reason; then we will wallow in pornography; we will approve any sexual acts between "consenting" adults regardless of their gender; then we will get the highest court in the land to declare that all this anarchy is an inalienable right.  There!  We just broke about every window in the building and we feel so proud of ourselves for scoring so many hits.  We are working on breaking those remaining 'windows' of pedophilia and polygamy.   It had not seemed to occur to us that by not protecting all 'windows' those 'other windows', like murder - even mass murder - might get smashed also.
      So now we have a slight problem.  We have a few people who want to break things other than the 'moral windows'.  They want to shoot people!  Many people!  All at one time!   I mean, after all, they get a much bigger thrill out of 'breaking' people than merely breaking the other moral windows.  So we have got to stop this breaking of 'other things' like people and limit window breaking to just the sexual 'windows'.  So how are we going to stop this other 'breaking'?  The solution is easy!  Any morally and intellectually bankrupt mind can come up with the solution.  GUN CONTROL!
     But wait!  When we had virtually no gun laws to speak of (50 or more years ago before the Gun Control Act of 1968) we hardly ever heard of a mass shooting.  There was one at the U. of Texas in 1966 but the perpetrator was found, during autopsy, to have a brain tumor.  No background check would have found that.  Semi auto rifles with extra magazines have been available for at least a century.  From 1920 to 1935 you could easily and legally buy a Browning Automatic Rifle or a Thompson submachine gun.  No mass shootings.  But, you say, what about the gangsters of the 1930's?  They mainly shot each other and rarely - thank God - killed an innocent person with their automatic weapons.    But the point holds true.  Outside of organized crime, mass shootings were virtually unheard of.  With the exception of New York's notorious Sullivan Law which created safe working conditions for criminals by banning pistols to almost all civilians, there were virtually no gun control laws.
     In his monumental series "How Should We Then Live?" Schaeffer predicted forty years ago where we would go.  With the loss of the Christian consensus and the absence of compelling moral absolutes we would descend into chaos.  People cannot live in chaos.  They will give up their liberties for the promise of security.  We will probably not have, Schaeffer said, a dictatorship like Hitler or Stalin.  We will have arbitrary absolutes imposed upon us by a manipulating, authoritarian elite.   Just think.  Obama was only a teenager and Hillary was virtually unknown when Schaeffer wrote that.  He was more of a prophet than anyone at the time could have guessed. 
       Do we, at this moment of history, have another authentic, prophetic voice to see a move of God and repentance on a scale that will be . . . . . . off the charts?

PAUL HARVEY, THE DEVIL AND COLORADO SPRINGS

      Hard to believe it's been fifty years already.  A new generation has come of age who has no memory of Paul Harvey.  It has been said that he was such a master of radio broadcasting that he could read the telephone directory and hold you spell bound.  Fifty years ago he read on the air his classic "If I Were The Devil".   If you've never read it you can find it easily on the internet or better yet you can probably hear Paul himself read it somewhere on Youtube.   All this background so that you will not charge me with plagiarism for using the phrase "if I were the devil".


     If I were the devil I would have to freely admit that I have been behind the abuse and murder of children since the beginning of human evil.  I would freely admit that I am behind the killing of children before they are born.  Now, that would not include those rare instances where taking the life of the unborn would be necessary to save the life of the mother.  No, those are very, very rare but I have convinced a lot of women that their lives would be ruined unless they "get rid of this child before it's born".  So, if there is an organization that claims to promote "women's health" but that destroys millions of babies in their mother's womb, then I, as the devil, must be involved in this somewhere.  Right?


     I failed to get Moses and Jesus killed right after they were born, so I learned my lesson and I go after these pesky kids before they are born.  Now, if this organization that kills so many preborn infants suddenly gets a very bad reputation, how can I generate sympathy for them?  It seems that killing preborn infants was not enough for them.  No, they had to start selling the  body parts!  I now have a gigantic PR problem with one of my favorite groups. 


     I am, after all, the devil, meaning 'the diabolical one', so coming up with a solution to the PR problem is fairly easy for me.  There is this guy who is heavily under the influence of one of my demons.  So, I tell the demon, "whisper in that guy's ear to go shoot up a PP clinic".   Problem solved.  Massive outpouring of sympathy for my kind of organization.  


     Let me now set aside this "if I were the devil" manner of speaking and talk straight from my heart.  Those employees of PP (not to mention the police officer) who were murdered were just as precious in the sight of God as the babies who perish in these 'clinics'.  Only the most warped kind of reasoning rejoices at assault and murder perpetrated against those employees.  Most of those in PP 'clinics' across the U.S. are not consciously thinking, "I love to see babies killed".  They probably think of themselves as doing a noble task by serving the health needs of women.  But at some point they have to suppress the voice of conscience and keep telling themselves that "these women need to have the right to choose" or some other such reasoning.  But being sinners does not diminish their worth, or your worth, or my worth, in the sight of God.


     And there is no denying that some women sometimes get very necessary health care at PP; care that could be given without destroying children. A balanced view of what happened at Colorado Springs is not all that easy to come by.  A profound sympathy for those who were attacked is one part of the equation.  That the prince of darkness really hates those PP employees as much as he hates the babies they sometimes assist in destroying is also a big part.  The final part is that the 'god of this present age' (II Cor. 4:4) will do everything in his power to spread the idea that "these Christians who have criticized PP are to blame for this violence and we must silence them!"  If we think that massive hatred toward believers in Christ "could not happen here" we only need look at how successful the enemy has been at getting otherwise brilliant legal minds to believe "that the fetus is not a person". 


     I have also noticed that some who call themselves "evangelicals" have supported the political party that promotes the killing of the unborn.  They have justified this by saying that "this party does more to help the poor".  That claim is of course false and irrelevant even if were true.  So, I have not been surprised that these same persons have recently supported same sex "marriage".  They are as devoid of true absolutes and as inventive of arbitrary absolutes as any other modern humanist.  By their fruits you shall know them. 


      Prayer:  Thank you Heavenly Father for the crisis pregnancy clinics operated by your children all over this country.  Please bless them greatly.  Please, also,  open the hearts of many PP employees to turn to You.  Please open their eyes to see all persons, in whatever stage of development, as of infinite value because we are created in Your Image.   In Jesus Name.

THE PILGRIMS, PBS AND BILL O'REILLY

     I tuned in after it started so this is not a review of the whole program.  PBS aired a program this week purporting to give the 'true story' of the Pilgrims and Indians -- excuse me, the "native Americans".   That term is itself problematic since it is fairly certain they migrated from Asia and skeletal remains of one person in the northwest dated to around 10, 000 years ago had European DNA.  But I digress.   This program contained a lot of hard facts but strung together in such a way as to give the view of far left, revisionist 'historians'.


     William Bradford was portrayed as disheveled, unshaven and just a little weird.  The 'native Americans' were the predictable 'noble red man' myth that dates back to Rousseau.  The Pilgrims were the true 'savages'.  Why?  Among other reasons given was the incident in a subsequent military engagement with the 'native Americans' when Miles Standish (or someone with him) decapitated a dead 'native American' and put the grisly head on a pike on the fort wall for months afterward as a warning.  How convenient that 'native American' barbarities against living Europeans tend to get overlooked.


     Where does one start to reply to all this.  First, PBS finds no problem at all with Planned Parenthood ripping babies from their mother's wombs and selling the body parts.   And PBS wants us to take their word that they know who the true savages really are.   So PBS, like all 'liberal' humanists, has no moral standing whatsoever to lecture us on past barbarities.  


     The sad truth is that the Pilgrims, who were actually Separatists, were in fact handicapped by some bad theology.  They, and the Puritans after them, believed that Christians were the "new Israel".   This is sometimes called 'replacement theology'.   Israel as a nation failed in what God wanted them to do so Christians have 'replaced' Israel.  Just about any Scripture relating to Israel can now be applied to the Church.   Carried to its extreme, this view saw the 'native Americans' as ancient Israel saw the Canaanites, who were so utterly depraved that God ordered their destruction.  Something, by the way, that God subsequently decreed for a depraved nation of Israel because God is no respecter of persons.                       
     Seventeenth century English Christians did not always take the New Testament view of things, that those they called 'Indians' were nations to be given the good news of redemption in Christ.  This also explains why the Puritans had witch trials.  Instead of dealing with demonic activity by fasting, prayer and the Name of Jesus they tried to be like ancient Israel and execute those they thought were witches.   And on and on it went.  Now you can see why a dead 'native American' was decapitated just like David did to Goliath after killing him.  Very sad indeed but PBS just doesn't get it.


    Speaking of bad theology,  a couple evenings ago Bill O'Reilly was relating how he had received criticism about his book "Killing Jesus" because he had omitted the Resurrection.  He defended himself by saying "I was giving history not theology".  There are times when you ask yourself how can someone who seems so intelligent say something so asinine?   If you claim to be giving only history and you omit the Resurrection you are, in effect, declaring that the Resurrection is not an historical event, that it is a myth with a theological meaning.   And Bill considers himself a 'good Catholic' no less.
     Now I appreciate Fox News for being sympathetic to the Christian worldview and I appreciate Bill O'Reilly for often showing this sympathy.  But this does not blind me to the fact that he can be both arrogant and illogical.

AND THE LIGHT FROM THAT GLOW . . . . .

     Near the end of his life President John Q. Adams was speaking at a Fourth of July celebration.  Our two greatest holidays, he said, are July 4th and Christmas and they are connected.  Without the birth of the Savior there would have ultimately been no birth of the U.S.  I have good memories of both Christmas and July 4th but the memories that have the warmest glow for me are those surrounding Thanksgiving.  Please enjoy the warmth of that glow with me.


     I have seen and heard of tragedy and heartache at Christmas when hearts are most tender and sensitive.  My maternal grandmother died two days before Christmas when I was only eight.  My dad's cousin suffered the unbearable pain of having her son and his wife killed in a car accident on Christmas eve.  I could go on.  Those memories have not spoiled Christmas for me but Thanksgiving seems to not only be free of such memories but the memories of Thanksgivings are to me both lifting and healing.  As I share some of those memories may their glow bring lifting and healing to you. 


     Thanksgiving is the most purely Christian of holidays.  In colonial America there were often days proclaimed for fasting and prayer.  Then there were days for, in the words of George Washington, "acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God".   Reading the Thanksgiving Proclamations of U.S. Presidents from Washington on down is uplifting in itself until you get to the current occupant of the White House who in one Thanksgiving Proclamation credited "luck" as the source of our blessings.  


     Following the death of my maternal grandmother when I was eight, Thanksgivings were, until later years, spent with my dad's side of the family.  On one particularly memorable one (1953) all the men went hunting as was common in those days.   My grandmother Enzor invited the pastor and his family to the noon meal and her small house was packed with joyful and thankful people.   A small footnote to that day:  I carried my grandfather's double barrel shotgun that morning as I went hunting with my dad and uncles.  My youngest son owns that shotgun today.


     Sixty years ago (1955) my parents and brother went to Akron to spend Thanksgiving with mom's sister and family.  I stayed with an aunt and uncle and checked my dad's trap line in the morning then went hunting alone until noon.  My uncle attended the community Thanksgiving service where the pastor of our church, Robert Collitt, was the speaker.  He was not only an excellent speaker but had the gift of creating sermon titles that made people want to come just to hear what it was about.  His title that day, published earlier in the local paper, was "The Millionaires of Greenwich".   I asked my uncle when he came back from the service who the millionaires were.  He said, "would you take one million dollars for your eyesight, your health or, most importantly, for your salvation in Christ?"  I may be paraphrasing what he actually said but that was the thrust of it.  So, not only does the memory of sunny November days glow warmly but the eternal aspects glow even brighter.


     Then there was Thanksgiving 1959.  I was a senior in the academy of Toccoa Falls Institute, Toccoa Falls, Georgia.  Today it is Toccoa Falls College.  There has been no academy, only the college, since 1976.  I suppose we all could have waited three more weeks until I came home for Christmas vacation but I wanted badly to see Susan and my family and they wanted to be with me on Thanksgiving.  They left Greenwich late in the afternoon on Tuesday and drove through the night for 17 hours.  There were no interstate highways then.  Today it is an 11 hour trip.  On Wednesday morning I came out of first period class and there stood Susan waiting for me.  The previous nearly three months were the longest Susan and I have ever been apart since we began going together.  


     There was Thanksgiving 1962 when my brother Don hitchhiked from Greenwich to Winona Lake, Indiana to be with me at Thanksgiving.  Susan and I were both in Grace College and we would be married the following year.  At that time I did all the cooking for the two fellows who shared an upstairs apartment with me.  So, that Thanksgiving there were at least six of us at the table with Susan and her dorm roommate joining us.  Without the Presence of the One Who promised to never leave nor forsake us those times might be pleasant memories only, but His Presence makes them glow with eternal significance.


     Many Thanksgivings have come and gone.  We are nearer than ever to the moment when a number that no one can count, out of every nation, redeemed by the Blood of the Lamb, will be saying, "Amen!  Praise and glory and wisdom and thanks and honor and power and strength be to our God for ever and ever.  Amen!"

MY FAVORITES

     God has given me many wonderful friends.  You, the reader, are probably one of those friends or, perhaps, you landed on this blog and know little or nothing about me.  You have probably noticed that I have not done a profile.  Sometimes a friend will ask me what my favorite this or that is.  Here are some favorites.
     Translation of the Bible:  The original New International Version of 1978.  The most thorough and largest effort ever at bringing Scripture into the English language.  One hundred and five highly qualified translators from many denominations, plus reviewers for style (like the late Elisabeth Elliot) with multiple cross checks of each others' work.  It was well on the way to being the commonly used Bible in the English speaking world until the Committee on Bible Translation, that controls the text, gradually sabotaged it.  No one seems to have told them "don't fix something if it is not broken".  The changes to the text in 1984 were, fortunately, comparatively few.  But by 2011 the Committee made radical changes, some of them justified of course, but confidence in the newest NIV was less and less.  Evangelicals in droves went to the ESV and so we are deeper than ever into disunity on the wording of Scripture.  ALL CHANGES IN THE NIV SHOULD HAVE BEEN PUT IN THE FOOTNOTES AND THE TEXT OF 1978 SHOULD HAVE BEEN LEFT ALONE FOR AT LEAST FIVE GENERATIONS WITH NO MORE THAN ONE ONE HUNDREDTH OF ONE PERCENT CHANGE IN THE TEXT IN ONE HUNDRED YEARS!!!!!!  (More on this another day.)


      Commentary on the whole Bible:  The Expositors Bible Commentary;  Editor - Frank Gaebelein;  12 volumes;  based on the NIV text and many of the contributors were also NIV translators;  published one volume at a time from 1979-1992.  Once again, someone cannot leave a good thing alone and I understand the publishers have been tinkering with this also.  Buy the original.


     Food:  I enjoy a great variety.  I love good fish, salads, fresh fruits and vegetables.  An apple a day is shear joy.  I would rather have good breads (French, rye, etc.) than cakes.  But I like my cake without frosting unless it is chocolate and that not too often.


     Recreation, sports, etc.:  I love being in the woods and fields.  I grew up doing a lot of hunting - fox hunting with a good hound on fresh fallen snow was my favorite.  I enjoy hunting now only when it is with a friend or friends.  I regularly enjoy loading ammunition and going back to the range and test firing loads for accuracy.  The word for "sin" in the original text of Scripture is derived from a word meaning "to miss the mark".  Shooting at paper bulls eyes reminds me to 'hit the mark' in doing the will of God.  I have little interest in most spectator sports.  I often say, only half jokingly, I would rather watch paint dry.


     Music:  On one end of the spectrum - Bach, Handel, Mozart and Beethoven.  On the other end of the spectrum - bluegrass.  Readers of my Facebook posts know that I have taken up playing the organ again after about a half century away from it.  Talk about being rusty!  In praise and worship music I am partial to orchestras and choirs with bold, majestic sounds whether the praise music is old or new.   Greatest choral music ever - "Messiah" by Handel.  Greatest instrumental music ever - Symphony No. 5 by L. Beethoven.   Greatest organ composition ever - Toccata and Fugue in D minor by J.S. Bach.  It became even more glorious when it was scored for orchestra in the Disney movie "Fantasia".   Best bluegrass - "Orange Blossom Special".


     Books:  Those of an historical nature - Billy Graham's autobiography, "Just As I Am" and David McCullough's biography of Harry Truman ("Truman") for example, because much that is in books like that happened in my lifetime.  Generally, I want to know as much history as I can, even that which some consider trivial, because it is much more interesting than fiction and because I use it to try to make teaching/preaching the Scriptures as interesting as I possibly can.  The same applies to movies and T.V.  I much prefer documentaries or at least docudramas that are accurate.  For the most part I detest watching actors act.


     Cars and trucks:  Several decades ago I would have said anything Mopar (Chrysler products).   Up until the 70's Chrysler engines and transmissions ruled.  Now, I will take Toyota, thank you.  I think Toyota is now what Chrysler was in quality 50 years ago.


     Favorite Christian speakers/teachers now living:  William Lane Craig, Ravi Zacharias, John Lennox and Hugh Ross.  (Three apologists and one scientist).   Least favorite Christian speakers/writers:  Sorry!  My time is up.  Got to go.  Blessings.


    


    


    

NOT PRAYING FOR PARIS

     OK.  So the title is true only in one particular sense and not totally true.  If you feel a little bit tricked into reading something just because of a catchy title please stay with me a bit longer and let's see if we can make this worth your while.  If by "praying for Paris" is meant some vague, general sense of "God bless the Parisians" or "Bless the people of France", I (and you) can do better.  But stop!  A prayer like those two examples is not to be despised.  All of our praying (even that of the 'most spiritual' among us) often needs editing by the Holy Spirit.  "In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness.  We do not know what we ought to pray, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.  And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will."  (Romans 8:26&27)
     The news came that France had been hit by the worst blow since World War II.  In fact they had lost more lives and suffered a worse national set back when the Vietnamese communists defeated them in 1954 in what was then called French Indochina.  The U.S. had been financing France's war against Ho Chi Minh's forces on the rationale that communism must be 'contained' in the post World War II years.  But communism or no communism the anti colonial spirit was working against the French and ultimately against the U.S.  The one bright spot in all that war and death was expressed to me more than 20 years ago by someone who had been in the Gospel ministry in an Asian country for many years.  He said that the sacrifices of the 57,000 plus Americans who died in Viet Nam had bought precious time for the believers in that land to prepare to live under Communist tyranny.  I never miss a chance to tell this to a Viet Nam veteran.
     So, what is a good way to pray at this moment.  "Lord please pour out Your Spirit in great grace and power on believers, the Body of Christ, in France.  Strengthen Your people there that they may speak Your word with great power into this moment of history.  Give them, Father, many open doors of effective witness.  Open the hearts of many thousands of French men, women and children to the glorious gospel of the Lord Jesus.  Father, may this moment of great grief, fear and uncertainty in that country not be wasted.  May it be redeemed by many thousands turning to You through complete trust in Your One and Only Son, the Lord Jesus.  May this move of your Spirit extend to all of the French people, even the leadership of the dominant Church.  May they be profoundly moved to return to the Gospel of salvation by grace through faith apart from works.  May they be moved by You to turn away from hollow religious tradition and may they lead their people in this way.  And, Father, may that same gracious, all powerful move of Your Spirit extend to the United States, our leaders, our churches and the great mass of Americans who now have no place for You in all their thoughts.  May this extend to England, throughout western Europe and to Islamic lands where many thousands are already turning to the Lord Jesus.  In His Name.  Amen"
     The French people have had a lot 'stacked against them', in a spiritual sense, for many centuries.  Their country has seen very little of authentic, biblical expressions of Christianity.  Listen to what one historian said:  "In Gaul (now called France), Clovis, pagan king of the Franks, married a Catholic Christian princess and was converted to orthodox Christianity in 496 A.D.  This proved extremely significant for Christianity in the West. . . (but) it changed neither Clovis' character nor his reign, which continued to prosper on its treachery, brutality and murder."  So the attacks this week were not the first of that kind inflicted on the French people.  Listen to another historian speaking of Clovis' 'conversion' to Christianity:  "This event points up the general pattern of early medieval conversions.  The change to Christianity was essentially a matter of royal policy.  The ruler's conversion decided the religion of his subjects."  So, since the king is a 'Christian' that makes all of us 'Christians'. 
     The first Islamic invasion of Gaul (France) was stopped dead in 732 A.D. by Frankish armies under Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours.  The current crop of Islamic warriors are a kind of hybrid that combines the two evil empires of World War II with the demonic doctrines of Mohammed.  They are like Nazis ("death to the Jews") and they are like the Japanese Kamikaze suicide pilots.  How significant that Islamic leaders and countries were so sympathetic to Hitler.  And how significant that the President of the U.S. once referred to Mohammed as "the holy prophet".  
     "Both in individual nations and in the overall world the widespread use of political terrorism has become one of the phenomena of the age.  Random and indiscriminate terrorism is even more frightening.  Similarly alarming are the indications that terrorist organizations from all over the world have in some way coordinated their efforts.  We have already seen indications of how people give up liberties when they are faced with the threat of terrorism."   Those words were written nearly 40 years ago by the late Francis Schaeffer.  He also said, "In such circumstances, it seems that there are only two alternatives in the natural flow of events:  first, imposed order (loss of freedom) or, second, our society once again affirming that base which gave freedom without chaos in the first place -- God's revelation in the Bible and his revelation through Christ."
     "The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace."   

November 11, the Prophet Daniel, Jesus and Us

     From 1921 until 1954 it was Armistice Day.  Since then it is Veterans Day.  "So what is it really?", you ask.  If it were up to me I would have left it alone as Armistice Day with everyone pausing at 11:00 A.M., as they once did, to pray for peace in the world.  Veterans are honored on Memorial Day because most people don't know the difference between honoring living veterans and remembering those who died in armed conflict.  Some people are aware that the First World War ended on November 11, 1918 but beyond that . . . well they are not sure.  Hold on; you and I are going to take a fast trip back through history.
     The Old Testament prophets saw seemingly contradictory visions of the Messiah/Christ.  Daniel, for example, saw that the Messiah would be "cut off" (9:26) and Isaiah used those same two words in his powerful vision of the suffering Servant, the Lord Jesus (53:8).  But most of their prophetic visions were of the glorious Messianic Kingdom, the goal of history, which we now see will be at the Second Coming of Messiah.  Daniel saw the future of Gentile world powers until Messiah's Kingdom.  He saw that Babylon would give way to Medo/Persia, then the Greek Empire, and finally the awesome and terrifying Roman Empire (chapters 2 & 7).  Daniel saw the final form of this fourth empire existing in a ten king confederation at the time that Messiah's Kingdom of righteousness sweeps the gentile powers off the earth and, in the words of Isaiah, righteousness will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.
     But the Roman Empire ceased to exist in the west in the 5th century and in the east some time later.  But Daniel's visions from God are true and the efforts have been many to revive the Roman Empire:  Charlemagne, Napoleon, Bismarck . . . . and that very briefly brings us to the 20th century when the rivalries between European powers, all of them wanting to be a Roman style empire, exploded into the Great War of 1914-1918.   The Armistice of 1918 brought an end to that slaughter which had taken over 10 million lives and paved the way for both Stalin and Hitler.   That embodiment of evil in Germany would call his rule the Third Reich.  In his view Rome was 1st, Bismarck was second 2nd and he was the third and final Roman Empire.  And in a demonic parody of Revelation 20 he bragged that his Reich would last a thousand years.  Daniel's vision of Rome existing in some form just before the true Messianic Kingdom comes is indeed where history is headed. 
     Back to my thought that we would be better off if this were still Armistice Day.  We would be remembering biblical prophecy fulfilled in the rivalries that led to World War I.  We would recall how truly preventable that horrible slaughter was and how all the crowned heads of Europe who started it were grandchildren of Queen Victoria who was supposed to be a symbol of morality!  We would recall how the U.S. actually entered the war because the allies were so in debt to us for armaments.  We would recall that U.S. involvement in it did not, as  President Wilson promised, "make the world safe for democracy".   We would remember that it only paved the way for Hitler and another war that was at least four times worse.  We would be better off honoring veterans on another day and not forget all these things.
     And there is one other thing that no one seems to have the courage to say.  Not all veterans are worthy of honor.  Some are; some are not.

"Russ, I Cannot Pray For ______________"

     The words could be uttered by someone who has been cruelly betrayed; or someone whose child has been the victim of a horrible crime; or by you for reasons known only to you.  The name in the blank could be someone previously close to you or a complete stranger.  "But I tell you:  Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.  He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous."  (Matt. 5:44&45)
     In the two blogs on Dispensationalism I said that neither dispensationalists nor their critics had, in my opinion, dealt adequately with the Sermon On The Mount (Matt. 5-7 & Luke 6).  Dispensationalists apply it strictly to Israel in the coming Messianic Kingdom.  Their critics (which are many) ignore entirely the context, that it was spoken to Israelites still living under the Law, and attempt to make direct application of all its parts to all believers at all times.  But this ignores statements like "if you are offering your gift at the altar . . . ." (Matt. 5:23), and requires clever ways to explain away statements like "do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you."  (Matt. 5:42)  I can think of many people to whom I would never loan money or anything else because they are so irresponsible.  And that is the same feeling of those who have said loudly through the years "we must obey the Sermon on the Mount".  We need to clear up some things before we return to the very painful problem of praying for certain people.
     The New Scofield Reference Bible of 1967 correctly pointed out that the Sermon on the Mount is part of the "all Scripture (that) is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness." (II Tim. 3:16  NIV)   But the footnote in the NSRB of '67 should have gone further.  Jesus was setting straight the people's understanding of righteousness.  Their leaders had reduced it to outward, legalistic observances.  He was now taking them back to the Scriptures (what we now call the Old Testament) and nearly everything he taught in the Sermon was already in the Scriptures and had been overlooked or deliberately ignored.          The 'gift at the altar' passage and several others are clearly based on Lev. 19:18, "Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself.  I am the Lord."  (italics mine)  Prov. 18:19 dealt with making things right with an offended brother.  The difficult passages on "turning the other cheek" and lending to just about anyone, are based things said in Exodus 22 on how Israelites were to treat their fellow Israelites.   (Other passages dealt with compassion to foreigners.)  
     So, if I am going to teach and quote from the Sermon I have a huge obligation to show that I have applied the principle involved the way it was intended in the O.T. and the way it is subsequently applied in the New Testament.   This is the great error of believers who quote from the Sermon to justify their pacifism and their opposition of all military actions by the government.   Jesus was talking about personal grudges and strife and not about the God ordained police powers of the state.  (Rom. 13:1-7)  
     Some things in the Sermon have been raised even higher on this side of the cross.   Speaking before the cross Jesus told His fellow Israelites to forgive so that they might be forgiven.  (Matt. 6:14&15)   The principle in that passage is eternally true, that if I, in disobedience to the Lord, maintain a hateful grudge, it becomes doubtful whether I am truly saved.  But, on this side of the cross I am told to forgive because I have been forgiven".  (Eph. 4:32)  The Holy Spirit helps me maintain both of these:  the deadly danger of refusing to forgive and the other principle which motivates me so powerfully to want to forgive because I am forgiven.   This is why Romans 8:4 is so critical in relating the Sermon on the Mount to us today.  "The righteous requirements of the Law are fulfilled in us who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit".  (NIV)
     Now, we can do much better with the problem of "I cannot pray for ___".    Praying for them is precisely how I shall be delivered from this awful feeling I have about them.  I pity them!  What they have done means they are facing a terrible accounting at the Judgment.  So, did I use Matthew 5:44&45 correctly when I quoted them at the beginning of this blog?  I must have because Paul used them in exactly the same way in Rom. 12:17 ff.  So now we are getting somewhere.   Praying for them has set me free!
     But there is one other name that more than a few people have put in the blank of the title of this blog.  "I struggle to pray for the President because he is so evil" is what I have heard said.   Is he really that evil?  I am afraid so.   To begin with he is a deceiver.  "Marriage is only between a man and a woman" he once said.  But, those close to him have admitted that this was totally dishonest and part of his plan to get elected and further the same sex marriage agenda.   From the killing of unborn babies to making marriage meaningless by redefining it, we cannot name a single anti-God, anti-Christ agenda he has not supported.   In the light of Daniel ch. 10, he is most likely under the domination of a powerful demon who might be called "the prince of the United States".   He is the first President born to and nurtured by an atheist.  I feel especially sorry for his daughters.  He and his wife, however, know full well what they are doing.  I need not indulge myself in hating him.  He faces, unless he repents, the most fearsome judgment of Almighty God. 
     And so I pray:  "Father in Heaven, I confess my sin of not coming to you more often on behalf of those in authority.  Cleansed by the Blood of Christ I beg you Father to restrain any evil in the heart of the President and in the hearts of those who share his views.  Please, please turn his heart to you in repentance and faith.  And please turn the hearts of millions in this land to Yourself in repentance and faith.  And please deliver those who, like me, are your children.  Deliver us from spending more time condemning the evil than in praying to you on behalf of the evildoers.  In the Name of Jesus, the Name above every name.   Amen."
    

NICKEL AND DIME CONVICTIONS - OR - SMALL CHANGE OF LIFE




     It was one of those documentaries on the family history of Queen Elizabeth II of England.  Her uncle, Edward VIII, was king for less than 11 months in 1936 when he abdicated and his brother George VI took the throne.  Why did he abdicate?  So he could marry a divorced American woman.   You say "what!!!???"  You heard me correctly.  The Church of England, the official state church, forbid the marriage of or to divorced persons.  There was a major constitutional crisis in England over this, so Edward abdicated and turned the throne over to his brother so that he could "marry the woman I love".   The royal family has been an endless soap opera.
     Fast forward to the 1950's.  George VI died in 1952, after a lifetime of chain smoking, and his oldest daughter took the throne as Elizabeth II.  A few years later Elizabeth's sister, Margaret, wanted to marry a divorced man.  Another crisis.  Margaret changed her mind.  Crisis averted.  As I watched this program it was at this point that I heard a statement by a commentator that is one of the most revealing we will ever hear.  In regard to the whole matter of divorce and remarriage he said, "Well, now of course, THAT IS THE SMALL CHANGE OF LIFE". 
     "That's it!"  I said to myself.  That is precisely the view of divorce and remarriage both inside and outside the Church today -- with some exceptions.  Let's stop right here and clarify something.   It is not easy for me to write this, having as I do several very dear friends in this situation.  But they know my heart and know that I have no desire to make life more painful for them.  But, the "small change of life" view of this issue is calling into question how many professed believers in Jesus Christ have any real intention of obeying Him as Lord.
     The Church of England  today not only has no trouble with divorce and remarriage but will gleefully ordain those engaged in sexual practices explicitly forbidden in Scripture.  Ditto for U.S. 'mainline' denominations.  Evangelicals (a word that is supposed to mean 'those who take Scripture seriously')  do not have much of a problem with divorce and remarriage either.  I know firsthand the situation of a smaller U.S. denomination where a minority made a huge issue over a certain mode of baptism as a requirement for church membership.  That minority finally split off and formed their own denomination.  That same denomination once, many years ago, had an absolute prohibition of the remarriage of divorced persons.  What a huge irony!  The minority group will fight to the death for their view of baptism (a SYMBOLIC issue) and accept without question the change regarding divorce and remarriage (a SUBSTANTIVE issue).
     Taking together all the statements that Jesus made on this issue and the statements in Paul's letters it is clear that a believer can separate from a spouse because of unfaithfulness and, by implication, for their own and their children's safety.  The matter of remarriage is somewhat less clear however, especially in I Cor. 7.  That is why throughout most of the last 2000 years it was generally (but not always universally) forbidden in Christianity.   I once took an absolute stand against remarriage.  The Holy Spirit helped me be less dogmatic but still very cautious about it.  If a fellow believer tells me that, before God, they were absolutely faithful to their spouse and did all within their power to keep their marriage vows, but their spouse still left them, I will take them at their word unless I have clear evidence otherwise.  If they then choose to remarry I will accept them in that decision but I will probably ask to be excused from performing the ceremony.
     I will be completely candid.  The very casual practice of divorce and remarriage among so many professed believers, treating it as the small change of life, makes me FEAR FOR THEIR SOULS AND THEIR ETERNAL DESTINY.   I have entered into what I consider to be a personal covenant with God, that He will deliver from the scourge of divorce all of the children, grandchildren and descendants that Susan I will ever have until His Kingdom comes and His will is done on earth as it is done in Heaven.
    

Part III -- Some Conclusions

Preface:  May the Peace of God, which transcends all understanding, guard
                your heart and your mind in Christ Jesus.  (Phil. 4:7)


     "We have much more to say about this . . ."  (Heb. 5:11) but the Holy Spirit has clearly said, "Put this subject on the shelf awhile after today".  Yes Lord, I will do exactly that; then, as You lead, come back to it on down the road.  "So cut to the chase, Russ, are you a Dispensationalist?"  Well, I think that I have been "up front" with you and shown that I have an appreciation for the broad, general ideas in Dispensationalism and I have tried to show briefly how I have modified it at certain points.  I have tried to set an example for those who hold different views of Scripture to similarly critically evaluate their own systems.  But I must also say that I do not really like words that end in 'ist' or 'ism'.  But we are stuck with them:  Calvinist, dispensationalist, etc., etc., etc.   So we'll do the best we can with them.
     Remember, that the word "dispensation" no longer appears in most English translations of the New Testament.  That is the main reason we rarely hear the word.  Some believers prefer to view the broad sweep of history by the covenants God has made with people.  This is often called Covenant Theology.  They see the Church as being the New Covenant People of God, as being what Israel failed to be and therefore being the New Israel or The Israel of God (Gal. 6:16).  They see baptism as replacing circumcision as the Sign of the Covenant and therefore they baptize infants.  This is a very brief description and I hope a fair one.  Covenant theologians may, of course, say it a little differently.  You may do a Google search to find more.  
     I have no desire to critique Covenant Theology only to very briefly say why I am unable to embrace it.  Paul, in his letters, rarely mentions the New Covenant and the context of those few references is to believers of Jewish background who need assurance that only in Jesus can the blessings of the New Covenant be found.  All believers, whether Jew or Gentile, receive the two basic blessing of the New Covenant:  their sins removed and being given a new heart.  But the believer in the Lord Jesus, whether Jew or Gentile, now has "every spiritual blessing in Christ in the heavenly realms" (Eph. 1:3), something even greater than the New Covenant.  God's purpose in the New Covenant was "with the House of Israel and the House of Judah". (Jer. 31:31)  It is no accident that the longest passages on the New Covenant in the New Testament are in the Letter to the Hebrews.   And it is also no accident that Paul's letter giving the most detail of the believer's standing in Christ and what the Church, the Body of Christ, is in God's plan and purposes, never mentions the New Covenant.  The word 'covenant' itself is only mentioned when he reminds Gentile believers that they were ". . . by birth . . . foreigners to the covenants (plural) of promise . . . ." (Eph. 2:11&12)   Agreeing with the broad, general aspects of Dispensationalism does not mean that I minimize the Covenants in Scripture.  But that is a topic for another day.
     Having said all this I quickly add that some of the greatest defenders of the Faith, past and present, have held to Covenant Theology and this is true of some of my dear friends in the Body of Christ.  The Covenant view of Scripture dominated Christianity from the time of Augustine (ca. 400 A.D.) until the 20th century when the broad, general aspects of Dispensationalism became, in the words of a well known Covenant theologian, "the majority report of Evangelical Christianity".  Interestingly, this same man also said that he believes Romans 11:26 will be literally fulfilled:  "And so all Israel will be saved . . . . "    (Be careful there R.C., you're sounding like a dispensationalist.)
     I hope that in these three posts I have passed the test of James 3:17&18.  "The wisdom that comes from God is first utterly pure, then peace-loving, gentle, approachable, full of tolerant thoughts and kindly actions, with no breath of favoritism or hint of hypocrisy.  And the wise are peacemakers who go on quietly sowing for a harvest of righteousness--in other people and in themselves."  (Phillips-New Testament in Modern English)
      The next post will be "The Small Change of Life" (as in "nickel and dime")

"Russ, what is Dispensationalism?" Part 2

      No method of viewing or interpreting Scripture is without need of improvement.  This includes Dispensationalism and all the systems that criticize it.  And no approach to Scripture by those in the stream of historic, Biblical Christianity is without at least some valid points.  Dispensationalism was promoted in the 1800's by the group in England known as The Brethren and known in this country as Plymouth Brethren.  A man named Darby was an early leader in this.  Later, Robert Anderson, head of Scotland Yard in London (at the time of the Jack the Ripper killings) published a small commentary on Daniel ch. 9 (The Coming Prince) that had great influence for many years.  Then C.I. Scofield, with the help of a distinguished committee of evangelical scholars, published his Reference Bible.  In the 20th century schools like Moody Bible Institute, most Bible colleges, Dallas Seminary, Grace Seminary and numerous others furthered this view of Scripture.  In my view the high water mark of Dispensational teaching came with the New Scofield Reference Bible of 1967.  The committee that produced this had such distinguished names as Frank Gabelein and Wilbur M. Smith.  They vastly improved the notes over that of the original Scofield and they corrected archaic words and gross mistranslations in the King James Version.  I still have high regard for this Bible.  There is a Scofield III but I have never seen it.
     The essential elements of Dispensationalism are:  1) seven dispensations from Creation to the New Heavens and Earth;  2) clear distinction between Israel (as an ethnic people chosen by God) and the Church (made up of Jew and Gentile without distinction);  3) the Church is not the 'new Israel' -- God will yet restore Israel to Himself during the Great Tribulation; 4) the destiny of the Church, the Bride of Christ is to be raptured, taken to the Father's House, before the Great Tribulation;  5) a sharp distinction between the 'Gospel of the Kingdom' in the four Gospels and early part of Acts, and the 'Gospel of the Grace of God' in Paul's letters; 6) the literal fulfillment of all the prophecies of the Messianic Kingdom at the return of Christ at the close of the Tribulation -- sometimes called premillennialism;  7) the final seven year period in the great prophecy of Daniel 9 is still in the future.
     Much, but not all, of these seven represents a return to the consensus of the early Church until the 4th century.  Regarding no. 4, the Christian leader Victorinus, in the late 3rd century said, "For the wrath of God always strikes the obstinate people with seven plagues, that is perfectly, as it is said in Leviticus; and these shall be in the last time, when the Church shall have gone out of the midst."  I generally agree with no. 4 but I arrive at it differently and I detest the terms 'pre', 'mid' or 'post' tribulation.  I emphatically use the term imminent rapture as being much closer to the spirit of biblical teaching. 
     Of the seven points I have listed the one I first came to be uneasy about (when I was still age 17) was no. 5.  I had been so influenced by Dispensationalism that I gravitated toward Paul's letters and tended to set aside the teaching of Christ in the Gospels as being 'for the Kingdom'.  Then I was memorizing I Timothy and came to 6:3 & 4 (KJV), "If any man teach otherwise, and consent not to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is according to godliness; he is proud, knowing nothing . . . ."  Then later I noticed that Paul, more than once, said he was 'preaching the kingdom of God' (Acts 20:25). 
     It is much better to say that there is one Gospel -- Jesus Christ Himself.  That one Gospel has several aspects: His death and resurrection; His coming again to bring about the doing of God's will on earth as it is done in heaven.  This is all part of the Good News -- the Gospel.  This is the first and most basic way I corrected dispensational teaching.  As we said at the beginning of this post, other systems of viewing Scripture could stand correction as well. 
     More to come in Part III.  If you, the reader, are facing a threat to your health; your marriage; your children; your church; your walk with God . . . may the Spirit of the Living God do for you now something beyond all that we can ask or imagine.