Filed under: Weekly Columns
20 September 2006; Volume 8, Issue 27
PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/nosafeegypt-6.pdf
A few weeks ago I finished the essence of this article. It had a different title and a slightly different emphasis, but in essence the meat of the topic is still the same. As happens in the age of computers, we all sometimes hit the wrong pop up button and things happen we had not expected. In this particular case the whole file was lost forever. Little ones and zeros returned to the randomness of virtual reality.
Try as I might I was not able to satisfactorily begin to reconstruct what I had written. Hence, I was left questioning, in the realm of God’s unmerited grace were my wonderful words of prose too harsh, or not harsh enough? This week we begin afresh, never knowing for sure the answer to that question, but confident that these words shall be words that will effect our present view of reality.
That following Sunday, the pastor at the church I attended preached a sermon on the principle that most American evangelical Christians were a mile wide in their beliefs, but only an inch deep in application. He related, that of all people Christians should not only be a mile wide, but also a mile deep.
As I left the service, I walked by some of the cool dudes, conversing intelligently about the sermon’s application, all the while kicking their cigarette butts into the storm drain rather than leave them littering the parking lot. As a part of all of inch deep Americana, they did not have a clue that cigarette filters are one of the most persistent forms of pollution in the world. They just never go away and are filled with all sorts of poisonous chemicals.
Then approaching my rig, another pair, though I didn’t catch the full context of their conversation, rapidly pulled away from the parking lot in the genre of “After all, time is money.” Was that a joke, did they just sit through a different sermon than I heard, or were they completely untouched by the message?
As I alluded to in “Welcome Shade,” I was gifted with being taken to the maximum depth of human personality in my aortic replacement surgery recovery experience. That depth strips away all our so called layers of stuff and importance and all we are left with is what we really take from this earth.
Somewhere upward in those depth layers is the question and the answer, “If you were to die this evening, why should God let you into His heaven?” That is a man made manipulation, while created for all the right reasons, limits the sovereignty of God’s grace. The real question, the answer of which is all we really take from this world to the next, is found in Matthew 16:15 when Jesus asks His disciples, “But who do you say that I am?”
In verse sixteen, Simon Peter’s doctrinal answer is the one and only correct response, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
In verse seventeen we again see Jesus’ doctrinal response of God’s sovereign grace (and dare I say election), “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.”
That is as deep and as simple as it gets in this world and illustrates quite remarkably all the meaningless platitudes that this world and the church consider as keys to success in this temporal pilgrimage. Doctrine is what gets us into heaven, nothing more nothing less.
Salvation is a specific revelation of God that comes from God’s grace alone and is base solely on the finished work of Jesus as the Christ (Messiah) and is inherited by the individual by faith in that work alone, for God’s glory, not mans! This is the Christian doctrine of His sheep, but not worldly religious goats.
Part of the specific revelation of the Bible is the analogy of the pilgrimage of the child of God from Egypt (a type of Augustine’s “City of Man”) through the wilderness into the Promised Land (Augustine’s “City of God.”)
Changing somewhat from analogy to allegory, in that wilderness we are to learn the natural theology that is required for the residents of that eternal city as well as the temporal city in which Christians now have dual citizenship. The problem, just as the natural children of Israel desired in their real journey, is its a quick retreat to Egypt when faith is required in the wilderness, therefore they never lived to reach the Promised land.
In our self appeasing, vain, narcissistic, democratic world, there is no stubborn leader that requires our obedience, so Christians never see even the symbolic parting of the Red Sea, nor see God’s provision in daily manna. In fact, rather than being leaders in the type of Moses, our modern leaders turn out to be priests of the church of the Egyptian’s golden calf, as did Aaron.
There is however, no safety in Egypt at this time in this world. That is true both in the spiritual sense, and also in the literal sense.
So how much are you paying for the security of that Egyptian palace, where you park your toys and your family? There is the mile wide answer and the mile deep answer and very little of importance betwixt the two.
I can remember in the not too distant past when the words Paul spoke to Timothy about a coming world, was taken my most to be a future prophesy. But today we now live in a time when both the Cities of Man and God are populated almost exclusively of men being lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power.
How is one supposed to find the true way (in this wilderness)?
I read recently that the Islamic terrorists have plans to detonate at least seven nuclear devices within the United States. There is really no reason to believe that they shall not be at least partially successful at killing us infidels. What will that do to your well planned future early retirement, or even your present existence? That does not take a nuclear scientist to figure out. But those thoughts must be down at a depth of at least of foot, definitely too deep to be concerned with today.
Forcing a little furrowing: let us see, Washington DC and New York for sure. That is two on the east coast, five to go. One more east coast city, either Miami, or Boston. I would choose Boston, because of it’s American historical significance, and it’s colder there. Miami is warmer, has more people of other ethnic origins, a much better beachhead on the American homeland. West coast three metropolitan areas: Los Angeles – Long Beach, San Francisco – Oakland, and Seattle – Tacoma, almost a no brainer. One city in the American center or heartland, Chicago or Houston. The same logic for choosing Boston over Miami seems to apply.
Furthermore, we also have no concept that anyone would believe that America is a land of infidels, even if our now religious ethos is based on the universal last days of Paul’s warning to Timothy. Our form of godliness just won’t allow America to be the home of anyone but perfected saints, it is just a self esteem issue. This is the type of thinking that got us into the war in Iraq to begin with, and still looks at all Moslems in the politically correct view of just another religion, and we definitely have no concept of the hatred between Sunni and Shiite extremists. So really the only true salvation in the Egypt of this world is that Sunni Islamic terrorists prevail over their Shiite brethren and we actually move to Cairo.
Francis Schaeffer, the best known Christian thinker and apologist of the last half of the 20th century, used a concept known as pre-evangelism. That means you can not understand the basics of Christianity and the Christian worldview if you have no understanding of this world based on any absolutes. We really live in a world in which God, heaven, hell, sin, infidels, and a whole host of fundamental cultural concepts have either no meaning or a variety of meanings depending upon religious or political spin. The beginning of pre-evangelism is to communicate that contrary to popular culture some words can be defined qualitatively and quantitatively, and in that context they can have absolute meanings and hence convey absolute truth.
So where do you begin this quest for truth?
When modern preachers speak about the wilderness, they always do so metaphorically, allegorically, or spiritually. Basically because they never have been there naturally. If they have been there it is for only a very short hike and typically they were someplace where they could get a hot shower within minutes after their return.
A ha! The wilderness is where you have a hang nail and no way to clip it off. Or, somebody has stolen your wallet with all the credit cards, “Oh what are we to do?” If you have to cope with real problems, don’t bug us, you must have done something wrong, and there is some unrepentant sin in your life. Life in Egypt is good, if you only look at the bright side and ask, “What would Jesus do?” We will say we will pray for you, but heaven helps those who help themselves, and we are just too busy with our life, ministry, and stuff acquisitions to help you at this time.
Make no mistake, Islamic Jihadists want to turn the United States of America into a wasteland desert. Why? Basically because they understand the power of the desert, along with the power of the gun and violence. Atheism is an urban disease of the infidels. Anything it takes to make you a convert to (militant) Islam is fair game. Whatever you may say about Islam, it is a religion of the desert, and hence the desert forces you to look to a reality outside yourself and society. In the case of Islam, Allah is that God, distinct from the monotheistic triune personality of Christianity, and the Almighty of Jewry.
The grace of the God of the Bible and of creation is the west’s only hope, but as true infidels, that is the last place we will look without being forced. In our politically correct modern world we hear about the brutality of the Crusades, but we never hear about one of the main causative forces for that crusading desire, which was the Battle of Tours in 732, or the threat of the Ottoman Empire from the east as one of the causative factors leading to the Reformation in the 16th century.
In the desert exodus from Egypt God created a wilderness economy. Every day there was manna to collect and to prepare as food. The rest of the time they were actively involved in community life and family. Those who died, died from unbelief, not boredom. You don’t train an army for the conquest of the Promise Land by looking for naval lint, and ear hair. Even God’s army needs to know how and where to fight. But all modern preaching says is let go and let God fight all your battles. Especially the ones that require the building of personal character, personal character building is way too much work because it requires personal discipline.
In the wilderness, your assets are your skills, not your money. Those skills need to be both wide and deep. In the context of the introduction, a mile wide and a mile deep. Hence, if anything I have written thus far turns out to be even remotely true, your best investment today is in acquiring those skills.
Over the last 20 years or so I have been looking for a wilderness training facility. Alaska, to Oregon, and from the coast to Montana, I have been given a dark vision on what is required. Finally, I think I have found it. Why, I suppose from my perspective of this wide area, it is centered at the end of the world. I have known about the place for a year or so, because it is the last place I would choose to go. Looks to me like a perfect place for God to work and to get the credit.
I have a friend that moved to North Dakota for a few years, he said that it wasn’t the end of the world, but you could see it from there. From my perspective this is that end destination resort. Sure there are more isolated, wilderness areas, but in pure wildness there is a certain charm. Probably in a more correct sense this place is not wilderness, but purely rural, devoid of most if not all of the trappings of esteemed culture. Therefore it requires more developing than the developing world.
There, will be the headquarters for the Wonder Springs Rural Institute, to be run by Wonder Springs Adventures Limited (a for profit charity). The company is designed for really small investors, taking what are generally considered non profit gifts and donations and turning them into stock, thereby building a diverse community of truly involved members.
On site at the present time is a 8000 square foot modern laboratory building and 15 acres of dry Eastern Washington glacial lake bottom ground. From that facility we will do research to develop the Justin – Grace precious metals mining and refining equipment. Eventually it is hoped to put the companies stock on the gold standard. This technology uses air instead of water as a concentrating medium, thereby virtually eliminating the water pollution aspects of historic mining practices. The refining uses a pre WWII South African process ideally suited for small scale independent mines.
We will also be working on developing the Wonder Springs Extractive Solvent Technology (WSEST), which is really an extremely energy efficient process to dry a wide variety of materials. This is the further adaptation of the defunct chemical process I was called to work on when I first moved to Seattle after Graduate School. The process has great energy saving potential, but was shut down for marketing and political reasons.
Those fifteen acres, as well as other nearby facilities and God’s created wonders, will provide the training ground for you to begin to develop the breadth and depth of the impending world order. Some of those skills were common place a hundred years ago, some of those are on the cutting edge of today’s developing informational economy.
Primarily however, the Institute will give you the place to glean the treasure that you don’t by your actions create reality, the really big step that is not only OK, that is a great insight. Because in that rural place is where the God of the Bible and the God of creation truly begins to conform you into the image of Jesus the Christ and begins to prepare you for the depth and breadth of eternity. After all “the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.” That is the first absolute truth.
Wilderness training, a new depth building experiment, something to upset our sense of illusional security, or a seed money deal that could turn out to be a gold mine. Let us know of your desire to make that investment in your more real future and we will provide you with more information and let you help to make this vision a true reality.
Cast your bread upon the waters,
For you will find it after many days.
Give a serving to seven, and also to eight,
For you do not know what evil will be on the earth.
If the clouds are full of rain,
They empty themselves upon the earth;
And if a tree falls to the south or the north,
In the place where the tree falls, there it shall lie.
He who observes the wind will not sow,
And he who regards the clouds will not reap.
As you do not know what is the way of the wind,
Or how the bones grow in the womb of her who is with child,
So you do not know the works of God who makes everything.
In the morning sow your seed,
And in the evening do not withhold your hand;
For you do not know which will prosper,
Either this or that,
Or whether both alike will be good.
Ecclesiastes 11:1-6
Our latest Chronicles:
Christian acquiescence; PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/christianacqui6-21-6.pdf
Building; PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/building7-26-6.pdf
Walls & ceilings; PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/wallsceilings8-2-6.pdf
Building sanctification, Part I; PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/buildsanctI8-9-6.pdf
Building sanctification, Part II; PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/buildsanctII8-16-6.pdf
Welcome shade; PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/welcomshade8-23-6.pdf
