Yearly Archives: 2007

One Year Closer

December 27, 2007

People like to look back at the year just ending and ask questions: Where did the time go? Did I get done what I had hoped? Why can’t we get rid of the Infernal Robbery Service (IRS) so I wouldn’t have had to do all that record keeping?

But while a lot of that can’t be avoided, it’s always best to look forward. Things have been pretty bad in the world, and things political seem much more heated now than they have been in a while. But one thing Christians have is hope. Those of us who believe God when he says this corrupt world of suffering will not go on forever, who eagerly await Jesus’ second return (and typically have that on our minds as we just celebrated his first), can look at 2008 as “one year closer”. Every year, every day, is a step closer to The End: the end of pain, the end of grief, the end of struggle and disappointment and injustice.

Some criticize us for wanting final judgment to come, as if we are selfish and care nothing for the lost. But what kind of “bride” does not wish to see her “groom” because it would hurt the feelings of her “single” friends? And what kind of Christian does not wish to see their Savior because those who have rejected him will have run out of time?

Some of those lost people might just snap out of their denial when confronted with the Apocalypse, who would otherwise have died in their sins. So God is actually doing a favor for those people, one that was never offered to the lost of previous generations. But which is better? Should we be mad at God for not doing something drastic in the past for each lost person, or because he will eventually lock the door? It seems to me that many people just want another excuse to blame God no matter what he does.

The fact is, God did do something drastic: Jesus became one of us, to die for us, and to rise again so we could also have the hope of eternal life in heaven. But many think that just wasn’t enough. That God shows anyone mercy at all, that he gives us time, is a testimony to his love. So we cannot fault God (as if we had the right anyway) for not bringing an apocalypse to all the lost of the past, and we cannot fault him for the one that will soon come.

So I say, Come, Lord Jesus! May this be The Year.

Posted in: Prophecy, Salvation, The World – No Comments

What’s Honor Got to Do With It?

December 17, 2007

I never cease to be amazed at people’s capacity for twisted thinking and blind devotion to reprehensible traditions. I refer to today’s news article about a Muslim woman who got “re-virginized” before her wedding.

Talk about things that make you go “Huh??”!

She wants to honor her family by “proving her virginity” to her husband-to-be. I don’t know about you, but isn’t there something just a little wrong with sleeping around and then putting a bit of body tissue where something else used to be and calling it “virginity”? And what could motivate such obviously hypocritical thinking?

The answer brings us to another case of “honor”-related madness: murdering someone to keep them from shaming you. If anyone found out that this woman wasn’t in fact a virgin, they’d kill her. I say there is no honor in killing one’s own relative just because they were immoral. How many of the killers are immoral? How many of those self-righteous Muslim men are virgins themselves? We’ve seen story after story about devout Muslim men who trained to be martyrs in the name of their “religion of peace”, but before they blew people up they spent time in brothels or strip clubs. And these people talk about honor!

Such a lopsided view of religion should make Islam nothing but a bad memory, but this same kind of madness is infiltrating the churches. Many want to go back to the dark ages and treat women like property, and teach that only women are supposed to be pure and chaste. It wouldn’t take much for such men to slide down to the level of Islam.

Posted in: Other Religions – No Comments

“Plain Reading” and Communication

December 15, 2007

Often we here someone say “A plain reading of the text here tells us…”, especially if the matter being discussed is controversial. Everyone says they’re just doing a “plain reading” of the scriptures. But it is literally impossible to read anything at all without interpreting as we go, so what exactly is a “plain reading”, and it is a good thing?

Communication is more art than science, and written communication is even tougher to interpret because it lacks certain aspects of context such as body language, vocal inflections, the situation of the writer and reader, etc. One only needs to visit the average message board to see how very difficult it is to communicate by written word alone. And this happens as much between contemporaries speaking the same language in the same culture as with speakers of different languages. What one post reader would consider a “plain reading” might be completely opposite of what the post writer intended to communicate.

Now add to this already precarious scenario two very different languages, cultures, and times, and you have the reason people argue over what the Bible really says. To simply read the translated words and nothing more is not a “plain reading” but irresponsible and lazy reading. Surely the Bible deserves better treatment! If it is wrong to even read “just the words” in the original languages, how much worse is it to do so with any translation. Yet so many people insist (but only when it suits them) that this overly-simplistic and childish reading is the proper way, and accuse anyone who disagrees with that approach of trying to twist the scriptures (see earlier post Are You A Gymnast?).

There just is no way to avoid digging into language and culture when studying the Bible, and for this most of us are at the mercy of translators and researchers. Some will read that and object, “How elitist! You say only educated people can read the Bible, and that’s just like any other religions with their ‘infallible interpreters’.” But the difference here is that even the educated would not qualify as “infallible interpreters” unless they also were pledged to some particular ideology or privileged status. But the uneducated are still at the mercy of the educated, at the very least for translations. There is no avoiding it.

The point being, that if we must rely on experts to translate and to make dictionaries in order to understand the Bible, then we cannot object to experts being consulted for more than just translation. We must concede the need for help in learning about the culture and time and other pertinent factors that will affect our understanding of the text. For example, when we know that Gnosticism was a problem when the NT was being written, we can better understand why John would write, “Many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world” (2 John 1:7). Gnosticism denied that Jesus came in the flesh because they held that the flesh was too evil for God to be associated with it, and so they denied Jesus’ humanity. Of course there are many other scriptures where this makes a much bigger difference, but this illustrates the point without getting anyone terribly upset.

In spite of knowing all this, many people will still insist that anyone who disagrees with their favorite time-honored misinterpretations is twisting the scriptures and should just do a “plain reading”. But it’s important to at least try and explain why this is not the way to read scripture, or anything else.

Posted in: Apologetics, Bible Text – No Comments

Misogyny’s War Against Egalitarianism

December 7, 2007

Every war has its roots; they don’t just pop up suddenly and without warning. If you’ve read some of the material here on the issue of women and the Bible, you know that this war began with God’s putting hostility between Eve and the serpent, between her “seed” and his. Women have been the devil’s object of supreme hatred ever since. We see this played out in the general oppression of women by men in history, even in the Bible.

But when Jesus came, he proclaimed freedom for the imprisoned and healing for the sick. There were no disclaimers about this being only applied to men either. What he did by example, and taught expressly, was to restore women to their rightful status as fully human. But although women and men were made equal, he went even farther to turn the world’s notion of society upside down: the “greatest” were to put themselves on the lowest level, to support and serve the “least”. Think of this as an inverted pyramid, with Jesus as the “cornerstone” that holds up everything else. Greatness in the Kingdom was to be found in a person’s willingness to serve and support, not command and control. No disciples of Jesus were ever to “lord over” each other, and again there was no disclaimer that this only applied to men.

Yet no sooner than the ink dried on the last pages of the New Testament, misogyny overtook the assembly, and it has reigned ever since. Like the rabbis before them, the early “church fathers” pulled no punches in their views of women. Some quotes from a decent article (but painful color scheme!):

  • “Rather should the words of the Torah be burned than entrusted to a woman…Whoever teaches his daughter the Torah is like one who teaches her obscenity.”
    Rabbi Eliezer
  • “Do you not know that you are each an Eve? The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives in this age: the guilt must of necessity live too. You are the Devil’s gateway: You are the unsealer of the forbidden tree: You are the first deserter of the divine law: You are she who persuaded him whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack. You destroyed so easily God’s image, man. On account of your desert even the Son of God had to die.” St. Tertullian
  • “What is the difference whether it is in a wife or a mother, it is still Eve the temptress that we must beware of in any woman……I fail to see what use woman can be to man, if one excludes the function of bearing children.” St. Augustine of Hippo
  • “As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active force in the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex; while the production of woman comes from a defect in the active force or from some material indisposition, or even from some external influence.” St. Thomas Aquinas
  • “If they [women] become tired or even die, that does not matter. Let them die in childbirth, that’s why they are there.” Martin Luther
  • “Woman’s identity cannot consist in being a copy of man, since she is endowed with her own qualities and prerogatives, which give her a particular uniqueness that is always to be fostered and encouraged… To all in our age who offer selfish models for affirming the feminine personality, the luminous and holy figure of the Lord’s Mother shows how only by self-giving and self-forgetfulness towards others is it possible to attain authentic fulfillment of the divine plan for one’s own life.” Pope John Paul II, 1995
  • “Most of these feminists are radical, frustrated lesbians, many of them, and man-haters, and failures in their relationships with men, and who have declared war on the male gender. The Biblical condemnation of feminism has to do with its radical philosophy and goals. That’s the bottom line. Jerry Falwell
  • “…God, by creating Adam first (Gen. 2:18; 1 Cor. 11:8) and also by creating woman for man (Gen. 2:18,20,22; 1 Cor. 11:9), has set the gender-based role and responsibility of males in the most basic unit of society (the family) to be that of leader, provider and self-sacrificial protector (also cf. Eph. 5:25; 1 Peter 3:7), and likewise has set the gender-based role and responsibility of females to be that of help and nurture (Gen. 2:18) and life-giving (Gen. 3:20) under male leadership and protection (cf. 1 Peter 3:7)…” The Council on Biblical Manhood & Womanhood
  • “…make dads the godly leaders [of the family] with the women in submission, raising kids for the glory of God.”
    Randall Terry, Operation Rescue
  • In the beginning God made man male and female. He made Adam first, and then made Eve from Adam’s rib. This order of creation subordinates wives to their husbands in marriage, and women to men in the church. As an act of submission to their Creator women are commanded to submit to their husbands and to male leadership in the church. Women are not allowed to teach or have authority over men in any formal capacity in the church.”
    Reformation Fellowship of the East Valley, Mesa, AZ

This sort of material should make every honest believer turn away in disgust. Instead, we have a resurgence of it in the churches. There was no excuse for it any time in history since Jesus came, yet it lives on and prospers. This deplorable mindset is absolutely satanic and obviously the antithesis of everything Jesus and the apostles set forth. They should be ashamed of themselves! But they are proud, arrogant, and intent upon doing to women what the Pharisees did to everyone: “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.” (Mt. 23:13) Women in the churches can honestly say along with John, “I wrote to the church, but Diotrephes, who loves to be first, will have nothing to do with us.” (3 John 1:9)

Anyone who “loves to be first” is least in the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus said so.

Posted in: Christian Living – No Comments

Like Moths To Flames

November 30, 2007

In the movie “A Bug’s Life”, two bugs are flying along when they see a “bug zapper”. One turns toward the light and the other screams, “No! No! Don’t go near the light!” But the first one says, “I can’t help it, it’s so beautiful!”. And of course that bug is promptly “zapped”.

In today’s Churchianity, there is a giant “zapper” called Contemplative Prayer or the Emergent Church. It looks so beautiful, so full of light and peace, and it’s drawing in Christians like moths to a flame. Some of us stand and scream “Don’t go near that!”, but the others just can’t believe there is any danger in something so attractive, and they get quite annoyed and even hostile to the few who aren’t joining them and are ruining their party. But the Bible warns us,

For such persons are false apostles, deceitful workers, masquerading as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising, then, if his servants also masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will be what their actions deserve. (2 Cor. 11:13-15)

“Not all that glitters is gold”, and not all that shines is the Light. We are told to “test the spirits”:

Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.(1 John 4:1)

Exactly how are we to test the spirits, to discern true from false? Inner feelings? Muslims and Mormans have those. Rely on some ecclesiastical authority? Pretty much all other religions and cults have those. Mystical meditation? That’s the thing we’re trying to test!

Jesus told us that “you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:32). Note that is it knowledge, not experience or feeling or passing the responsibility to others, that leads to truth. Knowledge involves the brain, and it requires the examination of facts and claims. And the statement just prior to that one is even more specific: “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples.” So to know the truth, we must know and accept Jesus’ teaching.

The New Testament is the written record of Jesus’ teachings, either directly or indirectly through his apostles. Without this written record we would have no way of knowing what is divine teaching and what is human distortion. So to discern or test the spirits, we must look to the Word as our unchanging anchor. Ironically, the Contemplative/Emerging movement would never have gotten off the ground without their proponents writing books! People quote them and treat them better than the Bible, which they hypocritcally dismiss as being outdated, dead words.

Don’t be naive and gullible like moths who cannot help themselves from the attraction of that which will kill them. Learn to recognize a “zapper” when you see one. Study the Word.

Posted in: Christian Living – 8 Comments

Another One Bites the Dust

November 20, 2007

Today brought us news of yet another scandal: a self-important “Pastor” had a child by his brother’s wife, other affairs as well, and lied under oath. And what’s the “solution” according to the “love child”? “‘It was a necessary evil to bring us back to a God-consciousness,’ said the younger Paulk, explaining that the church had become too personality-driven and prone to pastor worship.”

Not only are wolves guarding the sheep-pen, they’re also setting up housekeeping with the sheep and making little, uh, ’sheeves’, and the sheeves are feeding on Hinduism. But at least some of them recognize the problem of personality and pastor worship, which is more than I can say for most “Pastors” and teachers today. One has to wonder why there is deafening silence from Christian leadership nationwide when one of their own is caught in great sin, and probably unbelief.

Why indeed the silence. You don’t suppose it’s got anything to do with possible skeletons in the closets of said leadership, do you?

As each scandal breaks, the name of Jesus is further maligned, and rest assured that we’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg. Instead of disciples of deep character and solid doctrine, we have “Pastors Gone Wild”. Churchianity surely deserves the bad reputation it has earned among unbelievers. We cannot give anyone a position of power among believers, not only because it is a direct violation of Jesus’ “not so among you”, but because power still corrupts “even the elect”. But for two thousand years the lesson remains unlearned.

When will pastor worship stop? When will The Club disband? When will people read the Bible for themselves and see Christianity as it was designed to be, a family instead of a corporation? When will The Clergy swallow their pride, and the misogynists give up their lust for power? When will the “sheeple” stop listening to these “hired hands” and follow the True Shepherd?

Acts 20:28-31
Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood. I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. Even from your own number some will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. So be on your guard! Remember that for three years I never stopped warning each of you night and day with tears.

Jeremiah 51:45
Come out of her, my people! Run for your lives! Run from the fierce anger of the LORD.

Revelation 18:4
Come out of her, my people, so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues…

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