Several decades ago I was sitting in my doctor’s waiting room when a mother with two small boys came in. All attention was riveted on one boy who had a fishing lure with grab hooks in it in his mouth with two of the hoods penetrating his lip and jaw. Later I learned that his story was this: “My brother and I were playing fishing, and it was my turn to be the fish!” Painful? Oh yes! A little humorous? Indeed! Needless to say hooks in his jaw rendered him totally ready for medical help.
Perhaps the illustration is a little crude, but in Ezekiel 38:4, God says of Gog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal, that He would put hooks into his jaws to bring him forth, an exceeding great army. Moreover, in verse 16 God says that it is He Who brings Gog down against His people in the end time of the age, so that God may be sanctified by the nations; that they might know Him.
This is so reminiscent of what God did in Egypt in the days of the Hebrew Exodus. It was God Who hardened the heart of Pharaoh that the plagues might continue upon the Egyptians, and that He might be acknowledged by them that He is GOD! The world may choose to ignore God, but He will be sanctified in them. He is the Creator whether the world wants to acknowledge that or not. The day comes when they will do so to the last person.
It is interesting to note that some of the greatest military and political minds that are given to strategy now acknowledge Putin as the meanest, most resolved, headstrong, and powerful leader in the world, stopping at nothing to get what he wants. In recent days, the world has stood by while his forces simply marched in and claimed Crimea of Ukraine. The prediction now is that he will not stop there since there is no resolve among the nations to seriously challenge him. They see him taking all of Ukraine eventually, and then for some reason that is not presently clear, most likely political, he will make his move on Israel. The sea merchants and young lions (western nations) will say, “Are you come down to take a spoil….. ? verse 13.
Perhaps, they will once again threaten to close his western bank accounts! But is this to be lamented? Let Christians be biblically literate and wise. God Himself is doing this. He is putting hooks in the jaws of Gog. He will be sanctified of the heathen. Some bible scholars see this as a pre-Armageddon battle. Others think it is Armageddon. It is difficult to see this as clearly as one would like, but the greater picture shines through powerfully. Nations have forgotten and ignored the very idea of the Creator God. In time, He will put hooks in the jaws of Gog, and He will be sanctified of the heathen. The wise realize they do not know all things, and they are very slow to make definitive predictions or judgments. Rather they keep these things in their heart and ponder them as they coalesce the wonders of the Holy Word.
FOR THOUGHT: Do you believe the Bible revealed works to bring the age to a conclusion were finished from the foundation of the world? If so, is there any power in the universe to stop or even postpone them? From what you know of the Bible and of world events, do you think the end of the age is near?
HOPPING KANGAROOS: HAVE YOU LOST YOUR MIND?
“But he said, I am not mad, most noble Festus; but speak forth the words of truth and soberness.” Acts 26:25
After Calvary Baptist Church, Duncan, Oklahoma sent their endorsed missionary to Australia to open that field of witness to the churches of the American Baptist Association, they later sent Laura and me there in 1972 to help search out an appropriate building site and possibly arrange financing. International currencies were fluctuating wildly, and the Australian Dollar was actually worth more than the U.S. dollar.
In consultation with the president of Commonwealth Bank in Campbelltown, New South Wales, it became apparent that financing would have to be done in the United States. However, the jolly fellow offered this possible help for fundraising. His chain of banks had ordered 10,000
Kangaroo coin banks for advertisement, but they did not meet their specifications, and were rejected. He suggested that those banks might be bought for ten cents each instead of the original one dollar cost.
I thought it a great idea. After contacting the company that made them, they offered to sell them to us at just that price: ten cents each. It was a deal if they would be responsible to ship them to America. They agreed! About three months later, I received a phone call that my shipment was in port at New Orleans. A local pastor walked them through customs and had a freight company ship them to Oklahoma.
So, do you know how many 10,000 kangaroo banks are? Somehow I did not. Instead of a regular delivery truck with a couple of boxes, a tractor-trailer truck arrived with a lot of huge boxes. Kangaroo banks were everywhere in the church house: classrooms, hallways, etc. Then to top it all off, the ladies auxiliary thought I had lost my mind when I asked them to put stickers on each one, but they did it anyway, and enjoyed the fellowship while doing it.
Then in 1973, I pulled a large U-Haul trailer to the ABA meeting in Little Rock and provided a large sack of banks to every church messenger who would agree to use them. They were asked to have Sunday School classes fill a bank with coins at least one time, and mail the offering to us. After that, they could use the banks for their own fundraising projects.
Before it was over, those who may have initially thought I had lost my mind were smiling because God’s people responded, and funds began rolling in to pay for a two acre plot of ground known as Mountain View, overlooking Campbelltown from the Lumeah area, a suburb of Sydney, Australia.
Today, a beautiful church plant sits on the property where a fair sized congregation meets to worship regularly. Most of the time, the Lord’s provisions come in unusual ways, giving all the more reason to rejoice. Hopping Kangaroos! If this is losing one’s mind, it would be such a pleasure to do it all over again!
FOR THOUGHT: Think of some unusual ways God has answered your pressing need or your prayers? How did that make you feel? Are you better prepared to trust His guidance as a result?
HOW BAD IS ONE LITTLE SIN?
A considerable amount of conversation over the years has involved two phrases: a little white lie, and a big black lie. Is there a difference? Think with me about it.
It is the propensity of folks to categorize right and wrong by degree without any evidence of divine support. Admitting, propagating, and proceeding on such a foundation of thought is what the Bible calls iniquity. It is a viewpoint of sin coming from depraved hearts and/or carnal minds. Stay with me!
Consider the sinful, global mess of men. Initially, God set Adam and Eve in a beautiful, pristine garden under absolutely ideal conditions. His one obligation was to refrain from eating of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Now, hang on! The fruit of that tree is not identified, but something is known about it. It was pleasant to the eyes; it was good for food; it was desirable to make one wise. This is the triune temptation the apostle John wrote about saying,
“For all that is in the world; the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.” 1 John 2:16.
Now just how bad can the decision be to eat beautiful, luscious fruit from a tree in a garden given to your care? It is supposed that the entire world would say the decision seemed to be wise, and should be done, but how very wrong they would be.
So, that little white sin of simply eating what was forbidden brought down the entire cosmos into the laws of sin and death. Not just to Adam and Eve, but to all their posterity, and to the creation over which they were given lordship.
The conclusion is inescapable! There is no little sin, certainly no little white sin. Neither is there a little black sin, but all sin is big and black. Moreover, one sin admits the presence of sin, and not one sin will be present in the cosmos of God after judgment occurs.
A dear friend is old now, and has never professed Christ Jesus as his Savior. I pleaded with him to turn to the Lord. His reply was: “Well I have lived a pretty good life. I will just take my chances.” Those words tore my heart! I replied, “My dear friend, you mean so much to me, and you mean so much to our Lord that He died to save you. So, I am telling you here and now that without Him in your heart, you do not have a single chance. Hell will be your eternal home if you depart as you are right now. I continue to pray that he will open his heart to God. Little sins are big sins. One must stop worldly comparisons and see the righteousness of the Son of God as the only righteousness acceptable to the Heavenly Father.
FOR THOUGHT: To commit one sin is to become a sinner, having broken the righteous laws of God. What is the difference between a chain being broken by the might strength of giant machines, and one being cut in two pieces by a little lady with a pair of lock cutters? Is the result not the same? So it is with sin! What are some of your “Little sins”? How does God see them?
HOW MANY HUSBANDS/WIVES???
An experience common to modern man is that of occasional wondering just who it is that is staring back at him in the mirror. One preacher said that each time he wants to look into the mirror; some old man beats him there. Once while visiting an old friend in the hospital whom I had not seen in many years, he said, “I know I look different, and some things have changed, but I am still the guy you knew years ago.” Such is the often amazement of the aging process. In response to a question to one man by his wife: “Wil you love me when I am old and gray?” came the reply,
“Certainly; I have already loved you through six other colors!” On a more serious note, medical science tells us that with the exception of brain cells, every cell in the human body dies and is replaced every seven years, and it is the oxidation of cells creating imperfect replacements that accounts for the aging process. Hummm, every seven years! No wonder then that my wife has had eight husbands, and I have enjoyed eight wives! But alas, when brain cells die, they are not replaced. Could that mean there is a lot of short-circuiting going on between the ears? We are indeed a changing people in a changing world.
But, hold on, and rejoice! Our Creator/Savior is the same yesterday, today, and forever! So unchangeable also are His promises! The universal laws of sin and death are also unchangeable in the world of men. As the operation of those laws causes the human body to spiral downward into the clutches of death, so do they cause the very planet, and all therein to spiral downward. It is called the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the most provable law of science. But something else is potentially going on. Potentially, that is, to those who may not know the Lord personally in the free pardon of sin, but reality in those who do. In Holy Writ it is so stated: “. . .but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day.” 2 Cor. 4:16. This is shouting ground! This is the ultimate defiance of the Second Law of Thermodynamics! It is the essence of everlasting life in the here and now that shall continue to be enjoyed in eternity.
It is a blessing to enjoy multiple spouses all in one person that the aging process produces, but it is an exponentially greater blessing to know the eternal presence of spiritual life in Christ, and the exciting, invigorating hope it produces.
FOR THOUGHT: How many times has your body replicated itself? Do you realize the permanent state of your spiritual in contrast to the growth/deteriorating state of your body? Do you look forward to a new, incorruptible, immortal, non changing body?
HOW MANY, HOW MANY, I WONDER
“Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end.
Amen.” Ephesians 3:21.
The enormity of the gross error of finite beings believing they may fashion codes of conduct, worship, and practice that will please the infinite, even though contradictory to His stated Word, continues to be literally astounding. But it never stops.
Some time ago a question was posed to a small group of seminary students: “which church do you think is correct?” One answered immediately, “What do you mean which church?
God established only one!” Is it possible to identify that one, if it stil exists? If so, how?
Dr. L. D. Foreman, former president of Missionary Baptist Seminary in Little Rock, Arkansas, in class lectures, used the illustration of a train being watched by a father and son in a beautiful meadow by a railroad track. Soon a train came by. It was a blue engine with a fuel car, eight box cars, three passenger cars, a dining car, and a caboose. The number on the engine was 712. It was then that the train entered a tunnel and disappeared. The little boy cried that it had been swallowed. To appease him, the father took him to the train yard so he could see that it was there. However in the train yard there were many trains: engines of red, yellow, black. Some were connected to coal bearing cars; others carried logs, still others were all box cars. Finally, they found a train with a blue engine, with numbers 712. It had a fuel car, eight box cars, three passenger cars, a dining car and a caboose. Certainly, they had found the very train which had disappeared into the tunnel earlier.
When Jesus started His church, he promised it perpetuity. So, if the Bible is true, and it is, then the church Jesus started is still on the earth. It is still being governed by His Word, adhering to His doctrines and practices. It is still free from the encroachments of designing men, and unions with governmental powers.
His church still teaches the total hereditary depravity of man, salvation by grace through faith, plus nothing else, deep water immersion of a professed believer by a New Testament church; believes that Jesus’ church is local only, and the highest echelon of spiritual organization on earth. It was started by Jesus! It was started in 30 A.D. in the land of Palestine, and has had monuments of its existence in every century since. I want to meet Jesus as a member in good standing of that church.
FOR THOUGHT: Do you know the origin of the church of your membership? If its faith and practice cannot be traced back to the apostles, do you see that as a problem? Do you think Jesus will receive and reward any church that is not his own? Why?
HOW SOLID IS THE ROCK OF THE WORD?
“He only is my rock and my salvation: he is my defence; I shall not be moved.”
Psalm 62:6.
It seems evident that the farther down the lane of time mankind travels the more marginalized the Bible, and those who adhere to its teachings become. The drive to supplant it with humanism, pseudo-science, and situation ethics is near its zenith, and reaping what has been sown has begun. This will significantly increase in the short span of time left in this age.
So, a review of the Rock of the Word is always in order, but it is boldly underscored in these troublesome times. Consider with me for a moment.
The Bible is described as the “plenary, inspired, infallible Word of God.” Just what do these words mean? The term “Plenary” simply means “full, whole or complete.” “Inspiration”
means “God-breathed” or that the Holy Spirit superintended the writing of the scriptures, allowing each writer to use his own words, but assuring that the writing was without mistake.
“Infallibility” means totally without error or fault.
Truly, all of these things are absolutely true of the original autographs of the Holy Scriptures. While the Old Testament documents written in Chaldean and Hebrew remain with us in largely uncontested fidelity to original writings, there is much controversy regarding the veracity of several copies of the original autographs of the New Testament. A large collection (30 or more) of the most ancient copies have been compared. They coincide and are accepted as authentic. These grouped together are commonly referred to as the “Received Text” or
“Textus Receptus.” The original documents themselves do not remain with us due to early persecution, manuscript burning, etc. Still, multiple copies of those documents do remain, many dating back to the 2nd and 3rd centuries. But claims of “inspiration” and “infallibility” should not be applied to copies of those original documents, but to the message such copies contain. For instance, if a scribe should have transposed a number of a census or date of an historical event, it would not be a material error of the spiritual truths God imparted to man in the original documents.
The original languages should be studied, but to what degree then may our modern translations of the Bible, such as the Geneva Bible and/or the King James Version be trustworthy? The answer is totally. God has indeed preserved His marvelous truth for all generations, so that none having access to the holy pages may be excused from the knowledge so plainly and forcefully set forth. It is indeed an awesome responsibility to own a Bible! So, when we say, or read, that we believe in the “Plenary inspiration and infallibility of the scriptures,” we are saying that this description applies fully to the original documents.
Furthermore, we affirm and have proven that our KJV is a correct presentation of God’s wil for man as was doubtless set forth in the original autographs. Heaven and earth will pass away, but the Word abides forever. The Rock of the Word is solid!
FOR THOUGHT: How solid is the Word of God in your mind? Does the criticisms of skeptics make the Bible any less true or perfect? If the Bible is as true as learned scholars who are disciples of Jesus say it is, why do you think more people do not believe it? Bottom line: do you believe is the true word of the Creator to mankind?
I, EYE, AYE: THE PROBLEM
Some sage once said, “A man wrapped up in himself makes a terribly small package.”
While most would agree, they must also acknowledge that this very principle is the primary cause of all the woes of the race. Think with me about this!
Luke 12:16-21 records the sad saga of a rich fool. He abounded in the richness of his day. His barns could hold no more. Did he seek to be helpful to others? No! He said to himself,
“I” have no more storage room so “I” will pull down my buildings and “I” will build bigger ones. “I”
wil say “I” have much to last for many years so “I” will take it easy, eat , drink, and be merry.
Alas, he died that night, and not having lived for the Lord nor invested in the lives of others, left his goods to the wiles of the world; truly a fool! His kind has not perished, but increased in the world: folks with “I” trouble.
Additionally, the temptation that succeeded in plunging the entire human family into sin was one of “I” and “eye” trouble. Mother Eve in response to Satan’s self-serving appeal, saw that the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was beautiful to look upon (lust of the eye); she saw it was good for food (lust of the flesh through the eye); and she saw it was desirable to make one wise (pride of life) (“I” and “eye” trouble). There was no forethought here regarding the Word and the Will of the Creator; just “I.” Although that was nearly six thousand years ago, little children stil sing out the warning, “O, be careful little eyes what you see….”
Enter Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon. He was allowed to build one of the seven wonders of the ancient world: the magnificent Babylon with broad avenues, hanging gardens, and splendid structures. He said, “Is not this great Babylon, that I have built for the house of the kingdom by the might of my power, and for the honour of my majesty?” (“I” and “Eye” trouble).
He was judged immediately, and learned firsthand that these things were from, and for God.
Daniel 4.
Finally, there is another form of that phonetic problem that plagues the people of God, and should be corrected by all means. It is revealed in the story of two sons, Matthew 21:28-31.
A man directed one of his sons to go work in his vineyard. The son said “nay” (no), but he later did. To the other he gave the same direction, and that son said “aye” (yes), but never did. There are multitudes today who give acquiescent “aye” to the work of God, but never do it. They cannot imagine the enormity of the loss being incurred by such disobedience to their Heavenly Creator.
So, anyway you spell it, I, Eye, Aye, it is the sinful source of the ills of mankind in general, and of each individual in particular. May God help us to have a sweet spirit of truthful, and wholehearted surrender to the will of God Whom we all must soon meet face to face, and not be beset by the ages old, universal problems of “I, Eye, Aye.”
FOR THOUGHT: How many times have you been sidetracked from important opportunities due to “I, Eye, Aye” trouble? Has considering these things retrospectively made any change in your decision making propensity?