A Time of Silence
Before the birth of Christ we are told that there was around 400 years or so of silence. Many things were happening in the world but God was silent. There were no new prophecies being foretold because He was preparing for the coming of His Son, the greatest gift of all and with the anticipation of His coming how could anyone recognize it if He was providing new prophecies as well? Oh, I am sure that Satan was hard at work providing his own prophecies in order to avert the attention of others away from this special moment but God had His own plan and that was to not alert them anymore than He had already done in scripture. We saw few who were actually paying attention to the signs that He had shown for this tremendous occasion and it stands to reason that He will accomplish the second coming of His Son in the same manner. After all we are told in scripture that it will be as in the days of Noah. We will be going on with life as usual; eating, drinking, marrying, going to work and doing all the things that preoccupy our time and keep us from seeing the signs that God has displayed for us. We get wrapped up in these so called prophetic messages spoken by mere men, which many do not even compare with scripture at all. This is the first sign for us that we need not listen to these things. What we need to do is to search God's word, comparing spiritual things with spiritual things. Jesus said that many would come in His name, who are not His to draw away the very elect. I have myself remained somewhat silent as of late because I see many brothers and sisters while claiming one thing go chasing after another thing. We have a popularity contest going where we attempt to gain as many friends as possible but we do not cultivate the friendships we have and I am as much to blame as the next person. There are very few people who even read these blogs which in some cases is a good thing because we have false doctrine being passed out as sound doctrine. I remained silent because I have been in His word and in study of many things that I have read in order to understand better at how to provide an answer regarding the Hope that I have. It is not enough for us to answer with scripture or claim it is because the Bible say's so nor is it enough to claim blind faith because our faith is not blind. Our faith is based upon the evidence that He has provided for us since He spoke the earth into form. Our faith is based upon logic which surpasses man's own logic for as the Creator of logic, He can confound the thoughts of man. I have remained silent because I have been led to do so, as Paul could not but go into Jerusalem regardless of the warnings he received from others regarding the fate that awaited him there. I remained silent because I knew that until I had a better understanding of what we faced I would not be able to see it nor could I answer in the way that God would intend me to answer. In many cities Paul merely passed through or spent little time therein because God laid it upon his heart when to remain silent and when to speak the loudest. As he left behind those Ceasera to go into Jerusalem he provided the greatest example to those of us who would come after him. It was the example that Christ had provided before him and one that many of us will also provide to those who will come after us. Regardless of what lies ahead we cannot but proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ for there is no other name under heaven whereby you may be saved. The silence may not end in some places because there is no sense in casting pearls before the swine but in the cities and places where they are willing to hear the silence will be broken and the gospel proclaimed. Our warning is of woe because we have heard the word, we have seen the light therefore our punishment will be greater than those who have not heard or seen it.
Mat 11:21 Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works, which were done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.
Mat 11:22 But I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment, than for you.
Mat 11:23 And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell: for if the mighty works, which have been done in thee, had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day.
Mat 11:24 But I say unto you, That it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for thee.
I speak now only to those who are willing to hear, those who know the word of God and who are willing to compare spiritual with spiritual and those who are willing to put God's words above mans. I ask that you also speak. Surrender your will to His will and allow the Holy Spirit to guide you in all that you do and say. To those who will not listen or insist on promoting mans ideas and words, those who share words that are not consistent with His word I remind you what He says about these things. I do not repeat them for if you are in the Word you know these things and if you do not know these things then you are not in His word. I will not do battle with you for it is not up to me but it is in Christ's hands. He does the battle for me and if you sit there as Judas and ask 'Is it me Lord?' simply turn the words around for they reveal the truth. 'It is me Lord.' He knows who is His and who is not and you know in your heart the truth, just as Judas knew. Regardless of the miracles he was apart of, regardless of the work that he did; both he and Jesus knew that he was not of Him. The opportunity was there for him to become His, Christ did not need him to accomplish these things because He freely gave Himself. He did not cower in the Garden but approached them as they came in asking who they sought. Just as the opportunity arose for Judas to betray Him so the opportunity will also arise for those of you who merely go through the motions to deny Him as well. The question is what choice will you make or the real question is have you gone past the point of making the right choice.
Monday, March 23, 2009
Monday, March 9, 2009
Has Religion Changed?
Has Religion Changed?
Has religion changed or is it man who adjusted it to fit his own thought process. While it is true that organized religion has changed over the years the fact is that one thing has never changed and that is God’s plan and idea for mankind. As I have been reading over several papers, theories, lectures and books regarding the subject of religion, man’s reasoning and free thought, Origin of the Species, and anything else I can get my hands on I have come to the conclusion that we are all just a bunch of idiots. We have science on one hand based upon mans own perception of things, conducting experiments whose conclusions are determined by the same people performing them generating thesis as a fact based upon these conclusions and then several years later those facts are proven wrong by another group, which goes on and on. We use test to determine the age of the earth with data formulated by us and coming to conclusions that support the data that we input into the test and we all just eat it up. We buy into it because we need to believe in something and we believe that evidence to be absolute yet when fallacies are found we just as readily accept the new evidence. The same rationale that they use to promote their own theories and tear down those pertaining to God can be used to tear down their own rationalization because honestly I cannot see how it took millions of years for some vertebraed Pikaia to become what we are today. Furthermore I cannot see the logic in their determination of the evidence that they have or the logic in their debates against Christianity.
Of course we ourselves have aided them in this because we hold to the breakdown of the organized religion therefore agree with them that the protestant reformation was a deciding factor in the change when if we were to honestly look at it the same principles were implied at creation. It was His idea from creation that we follow the precepts He set forth, it is just that as our free will denied Him and disobeyed Him He had to tweak it in order that He not alter our free will. He wanted us to love and honor Him on our own and not because we had too. We aided them by altering scripture to make it fit a modern world thereby justifying the very principles that they claim against it. We aided them by using scripture to justify our motives for our own private battles and wars; when the very basis of wars while found in the Old Testament were not for selfish reasons. In each case the nation, that He had Israel conquer had practices that were detrimental to society, with most of them practicing human sacrifice the highest form of obscenity towards God. Consider for a moment the demise of the Aztec, Inca and Mayan people; each had forms of human sacrifice many of which were extremely brutal. Look at many of the indigenous tribes of South America where cannibalism was practiced and where warfare was prevalent many tribes we will never know about because they were annihilated just as many North American tribes were forced into extinction by us. It was not God’s people who caused the North American tragedy but the selfish greed of man. We move places we don’t need to be and then adjust the interpretation of scripture to fit our greed and I am not speaking about physical moving here but a degeneration of our own morality because we want what the world has just as the children of Israel wanted what these neighboring tribes had. Just as they worshipped the idols of the land so we too worship the idols of the land and our education does little more than encourage it. It deadens our senses to scripture and towards others because we’ve adopted their principles and then changed the scripture to fit the new principles that we have adopted. Then we argue that they are what God meant when He inspired the Word and because we are educated many buy right into it thinking that we know what we are talking about and all the while we are grieving the Holy Spirit who has gone from screaming at us to a silent voice that we couldn’t hear with the greatest technology and honestly we don’t want to hear anyways because it goes against how we were raised and what we were taught in college concerning economics one on one. I don’t think Christian speakers should have a set price for their seminars or speeches because it adds to the fire power against us when we have men asking for several thousand dollars to come preach. Many of these guys have agents who help set the price and I must ask as Mark Cahill, what is a soul worth? Is it worth the evidence that we fail to display in these actions? Is it worth your big home or your six digit income? Is it worth your business that you refuse to operate under His authority? Quite honestly I am sick of hearing the cases against us and seeing it for the truth of the situation. We did not come from the Catholic Church; they came from us. They infiltrated the body of Christ and distorted The Way for their own personal gain. They weren’t right from the beginning. They figured a way they could incorporate all the idolatrous practices of those around them to be able to draw them in and then devised a way to keep them there by indoctrinating the bondage of the law yet the Word did not die. It remained until the appropriate time and was revealed, yet while it was hidden for a period there were still those who were obedient to it. There were still those who denied the power of those false teachers who like Stephen would not be silent even to the point of death. It was not God’s doing but the free will of man and his selfish desire of power and pride but as long as there are those who will stand for Him, He will continue to fight their battles, like Enoch who did not die but was taken up alive, Noah who would not yield to the ways of the world even though everyone else was following their own free thought; their own reasoning and logic because after all it had never rained before and they had it all figured out. Joseph who refused to let his power control him like it had done many of his contemporaries or Daniel, or Nehemiah, Esther, David, Gideon, the eleven disciples or Paul.
We have aided them by our lack of knowledge to the point where they do studies to prove that religious people are less intelligent than those of non-religions. We aid them because many of us couldn’t pose a probable argument defending the evidence of our faith to save our lives and this shows them a lack of intelligence because who would believe in something that they did not understand. Faith in Him is based on the evidence received from the past, looking forward to the promises that are to come, providing hope in those promises. Yet because we cannot provide an intelligent answer we are perceived as ignorant and the reason we can’t provide this is because we haven’t worked out our faith. We’ve accepted the promise, and placed faith in the blood but as for the rest of it we are too busy living for ourselves to care about it or is it because we are as the parable of the soils? If so then what soil are we? If we are unable to provide an answer to the world how do we expect to be able to provide one for our children and before you say it is by our life please understand that what they grow up seeing in us had better be enough to withstand when they are in the world and it had better be firmly grounded in sound doctrine.
The logic of the world is not final and we have evidence for that based upon the flood because just as they rationalized with the fact that it had not rained before the One who had created caused it to rain and just as they claim that there is no God the One who created them will return again and He will judge them in their sin just as He had judged those during the flood. Just as He judged Sodom and Gomorrah in the days of Lot and just as He judged Israel during their disobedience and as He will judge us based upon our works. We are justified by faith but we are rewarded by our works and this is where we have changed scripture to fit our failure to do so. While there are many out there who actually live his word they are in minority and those who do not are the ones who are changing religion to fit their own image of God. One who thinks like them and like the things they like while those in the world think they are god. Who can blame them when you consider that they logically came from a vertebrae billions of years ago.
Has religion changed or is it man who adjusted it to fit his own thought process. While it is true that organized religion has changed over the years the fact is that one thing has never changed and that is God’s plan and idea for mankind. As I have been reading over several papers, theories, lectures and books regarding the subject of religion, man’s reasoning and free thought, Origin of the Species, and anything else I can get my hands on I have come to the conclusion that we are all just a bunch of idiots. We have science on one hand based upon mans own perception of things, conducting experiments whose conclusions are determined by the same people performing them generating thesis as a fact based upon these conclusions and then several years later those facts are proven wrong by another group, which goes on and on. We use test to determine the age of the earth with data formulated by us and coming to conclusions that support the data that we input into the test and we all just eat it up. We buy into it because we need to believe in something and we believe that evidence to be absolute yet when fallacies are found we just as readily accept the new evidence. The same rationale that they use to promote their own theories and tear down those pertaining to God can be used to tear down their own rationalization because honestly I cannot see how it took millions of years for some vertebraed Pikaia to become what we are today. Furthermore I cannot see the logic in their determination of the evidence that they have or the logic in their debates against Christianity.
Of course we ourselves have aided them in this because we hold to the breakdown of the organized religion therefore agree with them that the protestant reformation was a deciding factor in the change when if we were to honestly look at it the same principles were implied at creation. It was His idea from creation that we follow the precepts He set forth, it is just that as our free will denied Him and disobeyed Him He had to tweak it in order that He not alter our free will. He wanted us to love and honor Him on our own and not because we had too. We aided them by altering scripture to make it fit a modern world thereby justifying the very principles that they claim against it. We aided them by using scripture to justify our motives for our own private battles and wars; when the very basis of wars while found in the Old Testament were not for selfish reasons. In each case the nation, that He had Israel conquer had practices that were detrimental to society, with most of them practicing human sacrifice the highest form of obscenity towards God. Consider for a moment the demise of the Aztec, Inca and Mayan people; each had forms of human sacrifice many of which were extremely brutal. Look at many of the indigenous tribes of South America where cannibalism was practiced and where warfare was prevalent many tribes we will never know about because they were annihilated just as many North American tribes were forced into extinction by us. It was not God’s people who caused the North American tragedy but the selfish greed of man. We move places we don’t need to be and then adjust the interpretation of scripture to fit our greed and I am not speaking about physical moving here but a degeneration of our own morality because we want what the world has just as the children of Israel wanted what these neighboring tribes had. Just as they worshipped the idols of the land so we too worship the idols of the land and our education does little more than encourage it. It deadens our senses to scripture and towards others because we’ve adopted their principles and then changed the scripture to fit the new principles that we have adopted. Then we argue that they are what God meant when He inspired the Word and because we are educated many buy right into it thinking that we know what we are talking about and all the while we are grieving the Holy Spirit who has gone from screaming at us to a silent voice that we couldn’t hear with the greatest technology and honestly we don’t want to hear anyways because it goes against how we were raised and what we were taught in college concerning economics one on one. I don’t think Christian speakers should have a set price for their seminars or speeches because it adds to the fire power against us when we have men asking for several thousand dollars to come preach. Many of these guys have agents who help set the price and I must ask as Mark Cahill, what is a soul worth? Is it worth the evidence that we fail to display in these actions? Is it worth your big home or your six digit income? Is it worth your business that you refuse to operate under His authority? Quite honestly I am sick of hearing the cases against us and seeing it for the truth of the situation. We did not come from the Catholic Church; they came from us. They infiltrated the body of Christ and distorted The Way for their own personal gain. They weren’t right from the beginning. They figured a way they could incorporate all the idolatrous practices of those around them to be able to draw them in and then devised a way to keep them there by indoctrinating the bondage of the law yet the Word did not die. It remained until the appropriate time and was revealed, yet while it was hidden for a period there were still those who were obedient to it. There were still those who denied the power of those false teachers who like Stephen would not be silent even to the point of death. It was not God’s doing but the free will of man and his selfish desire of power and pride but as long as there are those who will stand for Him, He will continue to fight their battles, like Enoch who did not die but was taken up alive, Noah who would not yield to the ways of the world even though everyone else was following their own free thought; their own reasoning and logic because after all it had never rained before and they had it all figured out. Joseph who refused to let his power control him like it had done many of his contemporaries or Daniel, or Nehemiah, Esther, David, Gideon, the eleven disciples or Paul.
We have aided them by our lack of knowledge to the point where they do studies to prove that religious people are less intelligent than those of non-religions. We aid them because many of us couldn’t pose a probable argument defending the evidence of our faith to save our lives and this shows them a lack of intelligence because who would believe in something that they did not understand. Faith in Him is based on the evidence received from the past, looking forward to the promises that are to come, providing hope in those promises. Yet because we cannot provide an intelligent answer we are perceived as ignorant and the reason we can’t provide this is because we haven’t worked out our faith. We’ve accepted the promise, and placed faith in the blood but as for the rest of it we are too busy living for ourselves to care about it or is it because we are as the parable of the soils? If so then what soil are we? If we are unable to provide an answer to the world how do we expect to be able to provide one for our children and before you say it is by our life please understand that what they grow up seeing in us had better be enough to withstand when they are in the world and it had better be firmly grounded in sound doctrine.
The logic of the world is not final and we have evidence for that based upon the flood because just as they rationalized with the fact that it had not rained before the One who had created caused it to rain and just as they claim that there is no God the One who created them will return again and He will judge them in their sin just as He had judged those during the flood. Just as He judged Sodom and Gomorrah in the days of Lot and just as He judged Israel during their disobedience and as He will judge us based upon our works. We are justified by faith but we are rewarded by our works and this is where we have changed scripture to fit our failure to do so. While there are many out there who actually live his word they are in minority and those who do not are the ones who are changing religion to fit their own image of God. One who thinks like them and like the things they like while those in the world think they are god. Who can blame them when you consider that they logically came from a vertebrae billions of years ago.
Friday, March 6, 2009
Continuing The Hunt
The year was late 1981 and I was sitting in the middle of the woods on top of a hill. Below me I could hear the rumbling of the river to one side and every so often the bubbling of the brook that fed into the river. The moon was out but could barely be seen through the canopy of trees that covered the area. Even through this there was a stillness, a peace that confirmed everything would be okay. Unsure of what the future would hold for me, a young man in his junior year of high school. I no doubt had ideas of greatness, assured that there were things that I was meant to do, but fear surrounded me that I would not be able to accomplish them. As I listened to the rattling of the leaves caused most assuredly by some small creature I was reminded of how small I really was; just a insignificant country boy who came from a less than stellar family with no real accomplishments of their own so how could I accomplish anything. Suddenly in the distance I heard the sound of Duke, my young Walker coon dog baying. I sat there listening to his beautiful voice running that coon down, knowing that he would never actually catch it he continued anyways on the hunt. I laid back on the ground, shut my eyes and just listened to him. I don’t think I have ever heard a sound as wonderful as his voice since then. As he ran from one trail to another his voice would change confirming that he was on the right trail. By the end of the night he had finally got tired of running the trails and walked up beside me. We sat there for a few moments before he put his head in my lap and I scratched his head for a while before we finally headed home.
Not long after that I arrived home from school one afternoon to find an empty dog box and leash. In the middle of the day someone had stolen him from our yard but I never forgot that dog nor the sound of his voice. He had left an even greater impression on me with his determination. Even though he knew the coons would evade him by climbing a tree he still persisted in the hunt. He refused to give up even when the odds were against him and that is what has driven me all these years later. As I read the letters of Paul while he was in prison I am reminded of Duke. Tucked away in a Roman prison, chained to a guard Paul could not but praise God with prayer and song. I am sure that those around him were thinking him crazy but he persisted because it was not about him but Jesus Christ and because of that persistence many came to know Christ as their Lord and Savior. All too often we give up way too soon. Things get hard or maybe we are laughed at and we give up. The cares of the world overtake us and we get wrapped up in our own success and we give up. We get looked over for a promotion at work and get our feelings hurt and we give up. Oh we might still go to church on Sunday but we have given up living for Him. We hear the world denying him and we give up instead of getting on a new trail and continuing the hunt. We stop baying and give up, returning to the Master empty handed instead of continuing in the hunt until we can’t hunt any more. Stephen continued even while they threw stones at him and though he never saw the fruit of his message the young man holding the coats continued the hunt until he too was put to death.
Several years after Duke was stolen I was in the Air Force when I got a call from my dad. He called to say that while on his way home from work he had gone a different direction and had seen this dog in someone’s yard. After a few days he decided to stop and after he had gotten out of the car the dog recognized him and began jumping all over him. When the new owner came out to see what was going on my dad explained what had happened years before. The man could only acknowledge that the dog recognized my dad and offered to give him back to which my dad explained I was no longer around. This relieved the man as he told my dad that the dog had been the reigning night champion hunter for the past couple of years. Duke had never given up the hunt. “The harvest is plenty, but the labors are few, pray that the Master of the harvest would send laborers.”
Not long after that I arrived home from school one afternoon to find an empty dog box and leash. In the middle of the day someone had stolen him from our yard but I never forgot that dog nor the sound of his voice. He had left an even greater impression on me with his determination. Even though he knew the coons would evade him by climbing a tree he still persisted in the hunt. He refused to give up even when the odds were against him and that is what has driven me all these years later. As I read the letters of Paul while he was in prison I am reminded of Duke. Tucked away in a Roman prison, chained to a guard Paul could not but praise God with prayer and song. I am sure that those around him were thinking him crazy but he persisted because it was not about him but Jesus Christ and because of that persistence many came to know Christ as their Lord and Savior. All too often we give up way too soon. Things get hard or maybe we are laughed at and we give up. The cares of the world overtake us and we get wrapped up in our own success and we give up. We get looked over for a promotion at work and get our feelings hurt and we give up. Oh we might still go to church on Sunday but we have given up living for Him. We hear the world denying him and we give up instead of getting on a new trail and continuing the hunt. We stop baying and give up, returning to the Master empty handed instead of continuing in the hunt until we can’t hunt any more. Stephen continued even while they threw stones at him and though he never saw the fruit of his message the young man holding the coats continued the hunt until he too was put to death.
Several years after Duke was stolen I was in the Air Force when I got a call from my dad. He called to say that while on his way home from work he had gone a different direction and had seen this dog in someone’s yard. After a few days he decided to stop and after he had gotten out of the car the dog recognized him and began jumping all over him. When the new owner came out to see what was going on my dad explained what had happened years before. The man could only acknowledge that the dog recognized my dad and offered to give him back to which my dad explained I was no longer around. This relieved the man as he told my dad that the dog had been the reigning night champion hunter for the past couple of years. Duke had never given up the hunt. “The harvest is plenty, but the labors are few, pray that the Master of the harvest would send laborers.”
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