Chronicles of Diversity

18 October 2006; Volume 8, Issue 30

PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/whatsup10-18-6.pdf

So what’s up, that seems to make your today?

Well, I read earlier this week that again another Muslim leader told is fellow followers of Mohammed that they should leave the United States because during the Holy Month of Ramadan terrorists attacks will be carried out on US soil. Ramadan this year begins on October 23 and continues to November 22. What’s up, in this case seems to center pretty much around the American elections, all not good news. I wonder if the attacks will come before or after we go to the polls, or if the attacks will come at all?

What’s up in this country of basically good people of all faiths, that we might even be having thoughts of such nightmares? I mean, after all, the crusades were a thousand years ago.

For some historical context, how about the fact, the Middle East as we see by the lines on the map, really didn’t exist before the close of World War I. France, England, and to a lesser degree we Americans parceled up these countries to tribal chiefs, without regard to actual and Biblical tribes and nations, but rather on the evolutionary concept of race. I know that is a generality, but did we really care about the long term consequences of these actions?

Then there was the little opportunity of the Balfour Declaration from 1917, which gave Jewish Zionists the right to form communities in Palestine. Just because this would eventually become the state of Israel after WWII, does not mean that a Biblical based country should exist on the shore of the Middle East desert! Especially, if those Jews would turn that worthless ground into an oasis of prosperity and personal freedom. Western civilization where none had existed before, not a good idea to make peace with Isalm.

Oh, the jihadists are also upset by the American invasion of Iraq. I was recovering from my heart surgery, laying on a hospital type bed in my living room as Shock and Awe took place, so I really had little else to do but watch a lot of the coverage. Impressive I must admit. But again we were attempting to change the power structure, on the predating lines on a map, and it was even apparent at the time, that the Kurds, the Shia, and the Sunni residents of the area were going to be happy with their western style democracy or else. Well, three and a half years later, the “or else” is a real and present danger.

Thank God my vote only counts once. I have not had a very good success rate in my voting for President. Besides voting for Jimmy Carter, and Bush senior, my two votes for GWB, seem not to be my best insight. At least I have an excuse, we both share GWB initials, very few of the conservative members of the Christian right have that excuse.

How quickly we forget, one of the reasons that Dubya is our Commander and Chief, is that the illustrious Democratic Party ran a self inflicted war hero, and a mediocre senator and now famous save the earth documentary film producer. I guess I don’t really know how that salvation is supposed to work, I haven’t seen the film. Saving the world by controlling green house gases, that is surely something we can carry out, if we all work together and have good thoughts.

Too bad some of us have a different definition of what saving the earth is all about.

I will have to admit, I did have some reservations about my vote for George, I thought he lacked discernment, just like most of the rest of the religious right. True to form he is definitely passionate in his beliefs, and to that end I guess he still has not made any mistakes in the very hard work that his administration is carrying out. As a consequence, it looks like the political party that hasn’t had a positive idea at least in this century, may again, take control of the Congress of the United States.

Well, should George have fired Donald Rumsfeld? The book by Bob Woodward seems to think so. Would that have solved the problem? I think not, perhaps the more important question may be should Rumsfeld have been appointed Secretary of Defense in the first place? All water down the road, and the wash out, we will have to deal with for a generation of more down the road. Should those radical Islamists set off the seven bombs in our homeland in the next month, the problems will last much longer.

Books, and other writings, sometimes should be read more widely. As was pointed out to me this last week, a book by Cal Thomas and Ed Dobson, may have pointed to the major problem of this administration, in the book, “Blinded by the Might.” Here is a quote from the Amazon.com Editorial Review of the book:

“Ed Dobson, who helped draft the Moral Majority platform and served as personal assistant to Jerry Falwell, offers a particularly compelling chapter in which he compares the U.S. to Northern Ireland, where Dobson grew up as a Protestant. ‘We have politicized the gospel with our agendas,’ he writes. ‘To be part of the Christian right is to be part of the Republican party. For some, this means to be a real Christian, you must be a Republican. That is heresy and is only a short distance from the extremism of my Irish counterparts.’”

It just so happens that that bastion of liberal media, CBS also promoted a similar book on “60 Minutes” Sunday night. “Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction” by David Kuo was released Monday by Free Press. So you can buy on Amazon this new best seller together with Woodward’s “State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III” for only $32.05. Together they qualify for Free Super Saver Shipping.

According to “60 Minutes”, the White House staff dismisses the leaders of evangelical Christendom as buffoons. Brother Jerry (Falwell), brother Pat (Robertson) and brother Jim (Dobson), could it be that these men of the cloth have forsaken the gospel of Christ crucified, for the power of politics.

If you skim down the current reviews in the Amazon list for “Tempting Faith” you might find the term Mayberry Machiavellis (MM) and a Esquire article. While the article does not currently exist in total that I can find, there is an excerpt that you can locate by doing a internet search for MM, which also includes on the same page a link to and “on the record letter” from John DiIulio, the person who coined the MM term. That letter is worth reading.

Back to what’s up. Last week I wrote about worldviews, that Islam is a worldview unto itself that needs to be recognized, and we of the western culture must be aware of Islam’s worldview agenda. However, how is Islam supposed to be able to discern the difference between the Christian worldview of the so called Christian right and the Christian worldview of the Christian gospel?

Truthfully, probably Isalmists don’t care, unless we convert to their particular sect of Islam, we are all infidels. Consequently, if the bomb or bombs go off we will all have to pay the price. However, bomb or no bomb there are changes in the landscape that we shall all have to cope, should the Lord tarry.

One of the things I have found interesting in an academic sort of way is that the power and money behind the religious right comes from almost exclusively pretribulation rapture enthusiasts, not from the preterist camp. Why if the rapture can happen before Ramadan begins, does it make any difference whether the bomb goes off, or the Republicans win the election, or don’t lose control of the Congress?

The Post mil people should be the real leaders of this movement. I mean if the millennial reign of Jesus Christ is taking place and will take place until the second coming, as the whole world is slowly being converted to Christianity, it seems like a strong political stand would be required now and as time unfolds hence forth. Could it be the Post mil folks, with all their shortcomings, tend to preach another gospel instead? However, this political drive comes from those who know in their heart of hearts, that at any moment they will be one of the billion or so people, not left behind. It just doesn’t seem to compute.

Over the years books have been written, again mostly by pretrib rapture people, explaining why the United States does not seem to be evident as a major player in end of time events. But books aside, they are right, while a lot of the world is mentioned, the world’s current only super power can not be found in the natural eschatology of the last of the last days, before the Day of the Lord. Basically one must assume that the American model ceases to function.

One model for that could be the secret rapture of the church, as the mark of the beginning of the Great Tribulation. However, that is pretty much the circular reasoning evolutionary explanation for the fossil record and the geological column of sediments. By definition the Great Tribulation begins when the church disappears. This does not take into account the possibility of a Mid Trib, or Post Trib rapture, or no literal secret rapture at all. More importantly it shows very obtusely that the Christian life on this earth is supposed to be without trouble once you turn and give your heart to Jesus.

That is just not true, biblically or empirically, by anyone who has lived outside the suburban evangelical bubble. More importantly however than the individual, are the bigger cultural and community applications. A dirty bomb, or a real Richter 9 earthquake, another natural or man made disaster, and your eschatology will quickly be revisited, not just as an individual case, but in the larger stage of the whole Christian community.

What would be the consequences of such a revival of reality? Again the Bible speaks about a great turning away, or great apostasy in the last of the last days. Now if you have lived your whole life in a church were the gospel is really not the gospel of Jesus Christ crucified for your sins and raised from the dead for your justification, your whole world and worldview is going to be destroyed in an instant. The parson, no matter his political and economic standing within the community, will quickly come to know, deeply and personally, Paul’s admonition to Timothy about being spiritual leaders.

That could be a good thing. Through out it all we have the promise of Jesus Christ to build His church, persecution and stupendous change is what she can handle like no worldview religion. In fact, as we have stated here before, the power to become all that God wants you to be, does not come by your desire and efforts to be a good person, it comes by simply trusting in the finished work of God through Christ alone by faith. Once you truly live outside your personal religious reason, in that faith promise, you become truly aware of the peace of God’s grace and the natural praise that flows from that total revelation.

When faced with difficult times only Christians can sing praises to their Redeemer simply because the final breath of this life is not all there is, but only the beginning. While countless hymns have been written to express this joy, one comes to mind written by Edward Mote (1797-1874) an English Baptist preacher. When is beloved congregation offered him the title to the church building, he is said to have remarked, “I do not want the chapel, I only want the pulpit; and when I cease to preach Christ, then turn me out of that.”

May we all live to see that again in Christ’s church, not only American soil, but also all over God’s green earth, no matter what life’s tribulations may bring.

My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.
I dare not trust the sweetest frame,
But wholly trust in Jesus’ Name.

Refrain
On Christ the solid Rock I stand,
All other ground is sinking sand;
All other ground is sinking sand.

When darkness seems to hide His face,
I rest on His unchanging grace.
In every high and stormy gale,
My anchor holds within the veil.

Refrain

His oath, His covenant, His blood,
Support me in the whelming flood.
When all around my soul gives way,
He then is all my Hope and Stay.

Refrain

When He shall come with trumpet sound,
Oh may I then in Him be found.
Dressed in His righteousness alone,
Faultless to stand before the throne.

On Christ the solid Rock I stand,
All other ground is sinking sand;
All other ground is sinking sand.

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Our latest Chronicles:

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
No Safe Egypt; PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/nosafeegypt9-20-6.pdf
Lost in space; PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/lostinspace9-27-6.pdf
Beyond the good;PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/beyondgood10-11-6.pdf

11 October 2006; Volume 8, Issue 29

PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/beyondgood10-11-6.pdf

In recent years, months, weeks, and days, two related terms are increasingly in the thoughts and conversations of much of western civilization. Those terms are worldview and Islam. I started out to say all thoughts, then most, but then realized that most conversations are exclusively about us, and the present and future stuff to which we link our security.

Most westerners no matter where they may be stationed in the world, are too insecure in their materialistic worldview, to truly look at this present reality. Why can’t the world just live in peace and harmony?  All we really want; that goodness will fill the world. We have been brainwashed that good thoughts, actions, and words will create a good world.

Truthfully, these lofty goals do not come from evolutionary dogma. Perhaps in Dispensationalism, where that fly away mentality saves us from evil might we find some solace, but linking goodness with global materialism seems also distinctively wanting.

The truth about Islam is that jihad is the prescribed conflict by which the whole world will be converted to the religion of Allah. That is, if Allah so wills it to be. If that does not come about, then that is not Allah’s will, but Allah may still bless his warring soldiers chosen to attempt to carry out his perceived jihadist will. Allah only promises paradise to those who die as martyrs in the cause, in which the best things of this world are given to self justified dead heros.

I have been studying the concept of worldviews for a number of years, but it is only recently that I have realized that no matter how you dissect these philosophies, religions, and their implementations in the lives of the individual, the larger community, and culture, Islam has been completely ignored as a distinct worldview in our western intellectual nirvana.

This is made all the more interesting by the fact that over it’s 1400 year history, the soldiers of Mohammed have been a bigger threat to the demise of western culture than all the serious and petty tyrants the post Islamic world has ever known. Hitler, Stalin and others were after all products of western civilization and no matter their evil works, they were still trying to reform or remake western culture within their sick image. Islam is a very different threat.

Contrasted with all the other major worldviews, Islam is the only one without any concept of grace. Allah’s unknowable will is all that is, and he is absolute in that nescience. All other worldviews, except for Christianity, grace is achieved through works, but it is achievable within the worldview paradigm in some absolute goal. Even in pure naturalism, where everything can be explained as having a natural, rational, cause and effect, man’s reason and time are those absolutes.

What this means is the current War on Terror, has little to do with lines on a map and political choice, it has everything to do with the actions within a particular sect of the Moslem faith, all others being infidels in the final outcome. The civil war, as it is now politically correct to call the war in Iraq, is really not civil at all, but just an extension of that final jihad.

I recently read some articles about how both Calvin and Luther viewed the Turks, or the Islamic invaders of their day. Both saw a similarity between the papists (Roman Catholic church) and the Turks. In their view both, must be converted to Protestant Christianity as the Lord Jesus Christ builds His church before His return. Interestingly Calvin found Islam, not Rome as the prime actor in much of the prophetic writings of Daniel and Thessalonians. Perhaps Dispensational writers could find new elysian fields of fame and fortune, redrawing the papacy and the revived Roman Empire of the Great Tribulation in the guise of Iran, or Saudi Wahhabism.

Western culture in a Biblical worldview must be based upon the blessing given to Japheth and his brother Shem by Noah in Genesis 9:24-27. In this regard the Islamic troubles with western culture including Israel, stems from the curse given to Ham and the blessing of God to Abraham’s son Isaac, but withheld from Ishmael.

Call it common grace, but western culture, throughout its history, and especially in our day, really can not comprehend the concept of evil. The common good is really the essence of western culture. Just as this good cannot be understood within the  intellectual worldview of Islam, neither can true evil be grasped within the intellectual framework of the west, except as a short term aberration.

Democrats, Republicans, Christians, atheists, Jews and even western Moslems are infected with this disease of maybe not love, but at least peaceful coexistence.  Bigots of all shades and descriptions come and go, but even in their self centered view of right, right exists as a good thing for them and their followers, this is if they have any converts.

Modern Christianity is really a western phenomena. Even in its worldwide influence it has been promoted and financed by western culture, and heavily by the United States. This does not mean that the United States was founded nor has ever been, or ever will be a Christian theocracy. However, for lack of a better term theocracy is the basis of all of Islamic society. Human theocracies don’t have to be good, because by definition they are right (meaning not wrong). Secular society allows for a diversity of goodness, hence using genetic terms, goodness can be bred or hybrid, and is not subject to man’s limitations, but the Biblical God’s grace toward all humanity.

Do you know of someone who doesn’t want to be a good person? There may be a few in western society, but goodness in the west is pretty much synonymous with normal. However this goodness in the short term, no matter how benevolent it might be is not and will not be a counter force in the march of Islam. In fact, tolerance and goodness, are looked upon as weaknesses by Islam, only accentuating their resolve and determination to eliminate that weakness by forced conversion to a disciple of Mohammed.

That goodness however, is over the long term more powerful than hate and evil. Maybe just because it is more energy efficient. Hate takes an incredible amount of energy to indoctrinate and to stay focused, and after all most people are basically lazy. The west has the laws of entropy on it’s side.

Discipline however, is not one of the west’s strong suits, to keep it up we need more than just the hope of the wide screen TV to get up and fight the battle everyday. Materialism is only capable of feeding our desires of life, but is unable to deal with life’s true reality. Why am I here and what am I to do? The true great questions of mankind are not capable of being addressed by the great trade deficit from China.

What about the nuclear attack, or the hurricane, or the earthquake, or the cancer, or the car wreck, or the —? Some material stuff is useful here, but most just gets in the way.

The common goodness of the west’s blessed people will help prepare the way for the doom of Islam, but it will come with an externally applied discipline, and without true moral absolutes most so called good people can be just as evil as the self appeasing jihadist. However, common western goodness, is part of the blessing given to a people by the God of the Bible, not the god of the Prophet Mohammed. That common goodness is evident in the catastrophic, or as I call it the stupendous  change event.

There is also a remnant of a deeper kind of goodness however. That is a goodness not of universal blessing, but of a specific act of God’s will, performed by God on the behalf of all evil men. Even those who are so evil that they compare themselves naturally on a par with God himself, are the beneficiary of this grace, by an act of faith. How does this take place? It is a miracle, beyond the nature of the natural or what we call the supernatural.

What can mankind do to receive this gift of holiness. Nothing for it is ultimately a gift of God’s grace alone. Through the gospel of Jesus the Christ’s propitiatory sacrifice on the cross of Calvary 2000 years ago, it was finished. Death and evil were defeated forever. What remains is an intervening period of time where the Bible says, Jesus of Nazareth will build his church and the gates of hell, or the wishes of Islam, or other man made worldly religion will not prevail.

Church building, through the gospel message, is the high calling of mankind. It is not so much done, as lived. For if we do it, then it is not grace at all, but merit in some degree. Both Calvin and Luther would be appalled of the doctrines of men, more worldly and wicked than the papist could ever have dreamed, are part and parcel of modern Protestantism. But they too were but fallen men saved by grace.

Islam will not prevail against the west, just as it has tried and failed over the last 1400 years, not by our armies, though we may write our histories in such fashion, but by the grace of God alone. That does not mean however, that the refining fires and stupendous changes brought about by a religion without a God of grace, will not change perhaps significantly the worldliness of western culture.

What it does mean is that God’s church will emerge from the chaos as the only place of hope and goodness in an evil world. I suppose even Calvin and Luther would call that The Rapture. The times in which we live, using the terminology of  Augustine, will demonstrate to the whole world, not just Islam, that the City of God, is truly unique and different than any city of man.

The Old Testament speaks of the cities of refuge in Israel, those cities were build and maintained on the basis of Mosaic Law. The New Testament gospel City of God is based on the grace and will of the Triune God of Christianity. Hence, the residents of the City of God are there by legal adoption by the city’s creator, not by their works. All this based upon a Biblical worldview where the covenant of grace has always superseded, the requirements of religious observance and piety.

Beyond the common good, is the gospel of the Christian God, nothing more, nothing less. No other worldview has this absolute power associated with it. Not because it is based upon God’s almighty power to create or recreate the world, but on God’s sovereign grace imparted to mankind through Jesus, mankind’s Messiah. Grace takes a little longer, and is infinitely more difficult to understand than shear power, but grace shall prevail, to those God has given the grace of faith alone.

Again the true gospel message is our only hope beyond common goodness, and it shall prevail against all the evil this world desires to bring its way.  Amen.

Our latest Chronicles:

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
No Safe Egypt; PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/nosafeegypt9-20-6.pdf
Lost in space; PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/lostinspace9-27-6.pdf

27 September 2006; Volume 8, Issue 28

PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/lostinspace9-27-6.pdf

During the Vietnam era, I served as a commissioned officer with the Army Security Agency in Augsburg, Germany. The ASA is the Army’s communications intelligence arm, similar and providing a lot of the communications intel for the National Security Agency. While not being spies in the clandestine sense, never the less we had a few classes in our training on how to obtain worthwhile information from people without their apparent knowledge.

Our particular kaserne was probably the closest major US military base to Dachau, the famous German extermination camp of WWII. I have had an interest in survival and those who lived and died in survival circumstances as long as I can remember. Therefore, while it was an extremely depressing place to visit even those 30 some years later, the stories of the survivors and those who escaped the Holocaust make for interesting reading.

Little did I know at the time, one of my uncles was among the first Allied liberators of the camp. As he is now in his 80’s, at times using my best intelligence interrogation techniques, I have tried to see if I could get him to briefly discuss some of his Dachau perceptions. Since I am the only grandchild with military experience, and even experience in this direct area of southern Germany, we have discussed the region in some detail, until we get to the gates of the camp. Then the conversation quickly shifts to grafting different apple varieties to his apple trees in his Harrington, Washington garden.

All war is hell on earth, but some things just can not be handled by the human psyche, and must be suppressed in order to maintain our sanity. I believe my uncle’s Dachau experience is one of those events for him. It is beyond the realm of Post Traumatic Stress. This is for a good Christian, who loves Jesus and does his best to serve his fellow man.

As a heartland boy, obviously given the choice to serve in Germany as an officer, or in Viet Nam as a infantry grunt, there was not a big dilemma to make the right choice. Hence, in my military role my biggest obstacle was dealing with other officers, mostly from eastern families of privilege. The likes of John Kerry and George W. Bush, except without either’s class or desire for true public service. In other words worthless bourgeoisie preppies.

On the other side of the continent there was a group of similarly affluent, centered in Berkley. These types were closer to home. However, they also seemed way too self absorbed with their own importance to really make a significant difference in the world. This of course is where the roots of the antiwar movement began. We mused in our secure, untapped private discussions in Germany about getting out of the service and taking our SLR cameras to the anti war demonstations to see if we could strike up a conversation with the real spies, which we knew were present at all of these rallies.

Saturday night I had the opportunity to watch the documentary, “Berkley in the Sixties.” Taking these free speech and anti war events and following a number of the people of the ‘60s historic film footage until the present, it was amazing they were still doing what they were doing back then, except without the idealism. They had sold out to the materialism that they once rejected, but at the same time they still had the same liberal agenda, in some small way to live outside at least a few establishment conventions.

I remember in Germany seeing a movie in the local post theater where a bunch of these people were in a room discussing democratically what they were willing to die for. The scene went on and on until the hero, whom I believe was Robert Redford rose to his feet and announced, “Well I’m not too sure what I am willing to die for, but I am sure of one thing that I am not willing to die for, and that is boredom.” He then walked out of the room.

As I went to bed the concept came to mind, “A generation lost in space.” That surely was these people. Likewise, my compatriots from my military elite. I had to get out of bed and do an internet search to find the source. The source turned out to be a verse from Don McLean’s 1971 song, “American Pie:”

Oh and there we were all in one place,
A generation lost in space
With no time left to start again.

According to the commentary I read on the lyrics, the place was Woodstock, three days of peace and music. The lost in space either referred to a television show, or more likely a spaced out drug high. Hence also a space cadet. There sure is not a better song to describe a whole generation.

The people I saw in the documentary were today still a generation lost in space, nothing had changed. The exploits of John Kerry and George Bush don’t seem much better. But George seems to have a better alibi, drugs and of course during the rare instances he did something in the National Guard, he was said to be a fighter pilot. John just got Purple Heart after Purple Heart, three I believe, by only taking friendly fire.

The sad thing is we now live in a whole country, no a whole world lost in space, but it doesn’t come from drugs, or politics, or any other likely cause except our own vanity.

Bill Clinton was our first boomer, lost in space president. In his own words, a lot of his troubles he brought on himself, things which he shouldn’t do, because he could. More completely however, he didn’t do a lot of things he should, because he couldn’t. I fully realize this only makes sense in Slick Willies legacy statement: “It depends what your definition of is, is.”

He should not have messed with Monica, but he did. He should have messed more with Osama, but he couldn’t because Osama has a right to his own definition of is also. The whole of western culture is lost in space, because there are no longer any absolutes from outside of mankind. Osama knows absolutes, and relativism to be an infidel lie, which he can exploit at will.

Our second boomer lost in space president is Dubbya! It’s too early to truly have a short legacy statement to summarize his presidency, but he sure isn’t short of mistakes. After all Bill was almost done, term wise, when he gave us his relativism gem. I suppose Bush’s pompous arrogant statement, “Bring it on!” will have to serve for now. George did not seem to recognize he was not talking about a baseball series between the Texas Rangers and the Seattle Mariners, but a war with some mean and evil people, who not only do not play by our rules, they make up their own rules rapidly on the fly. A whole other ball game we are incapable of playing well, nor should we try to emulate.

The first lost in space generation were educated to be the first – - -. We are now educating the third lost in space generation. This space cadet education program became concerned with the Soviet Union’s first Sputnik launch on October 4, 1957. With a Post WWII education system, flush with the optimistic dream of world domination through a John Dewey enthralled evolutionary paradigm, and a similar theological liberalism that believed that God used evolution to create the world, we made a successful blast off. Charting our course, that Jesus might have been the savior of the world in former days, but in the enlightened church he is just a good moral teacher, we used his ethical teachings to explore the dark side of the moon.

Luckily, to use the proper metaphor, I was gifted to grow up in a church that still then believed in the Biblical truth of salvation through the grace of Jesus Christ alone. Perhaps, it was just the gift of growing up in a small town with the name Lutheran on the church door. However, in that catechism class I was also told that God had wisely used evolution and evolutionary time to slowly form the world we now see.

In the light of Commander Buzz Corry and the rest of the Space Patrol, we knew where we were perfectly in space in 1950-1955. Later, I might have not been mature enough to know what the definition of “is formed by evolution is,” but I was sure not naïve enough to know that what I saw in the natural world around me, isn’t and wasn’t.

One example, or is that seven examples of how this space odyssey may come to an end was discussed last week in “No Safe Egypt.” To add a natural element I learned after I had finished Egypt, there have been 18 major plate shifting earthquakes in Cascadia (northern California all the way through Southern British Columbia) since the end of local glaciation. These are in the Richter Scale of 9 plus and shook for a duration estimated to be 4 minutes or more. The last of these took place in January 1700 as verified by Japanese Tsunami records.

In evolutionary time that is one about every 500 years. Using Bishop Usher’s biblical chronology that is one about every 100 years. Should the Rapture not happen soon, the Northwestern United States will make New Orleans’ Katrina devastation look like a tiny wind storm. So who are you going to believe, evolution or Usher.? But it really doesn’t matter for man makes his space cadet plans, and God controls man’s destiny. As Jimmy Swaggarts’ cousin, Jerry Lee truthfully told the early lost in space generation there is a “whole lot of shakin’ goin’ on.” and it is not from rockin’ roll.

So is there any way for members of the three lost in space generations to make a soft landing on planet earth without crashing where you will forever be scarred by the trauma of absolute gravity? “Eight miles high and falling fast” is bound to make a pretty good splat. Then again what will you find when you touch down?
Eight miles high and when you touch down
You’ll find that it’s stranger than known
Signs in the street that say where you’re going
Are somewhere just being their own

Nowhere is there warmth to be found
among those afraid of losing their ground
Rain gray town known for its sound
In places small faces unbound

Round the squares huddled in storms
Some laughing some just shapeless forms
Sidewalk scenes and black limousines
Some living some standing alone

Eight Miles High (The Byrds 1966)

Now, there are some spaced out lyrics, even it they are only about an airplane trip, as claimed by Gene Clark who wrote the song. However, there are really two landing sites literally. One or both are worse than being lost in pleasure seeking materialistic space. It depends upon what your definition of -, -.

The first is that you will land in a tyranny. The most obvious at this time is a fundamentalist Islamic state. But as we have seen when you are lost in space there are not compass points by which to find your directions. Right now as radical Islam truthfully points out the other option is a corporate-nationalistic model of the peace and harmony of more materialistic consumption. Lest we too quickly forget, that is what launched the first lost in space generation in the sixties.

Remember also, that this launching pad included the then contemporary Christian church singing praise songs about the journey. Much of that church still thinks that if we just love Jesus enough and love one another as in the hippie commune, then the world will beat a path to their door. Only in the evangelical church are the space cadets of the old hippie movement still turning inward and dropping out. The real hippies moved on decades ago.

To achieve a soft landing, or even a hard landing of terrorist attack or earthquake, and to be able to handle what you will then find on earth, you must know something about the world in which you will find yourself. These lands have no worldview that truthfully and logically explains the existence of the universe, or its form. Furthermore, they can not similarly explain the existence and the uniqueness of man. That includes the uniqueness of man to do both good and evil. All we will have done is exchange real space for terrestrial space.

Hence, you will have to bring the proper worldview with you, and be willing to live it out no matter the consequences and the ridicule. The weakness of my uncle’s worldview is it is fundamentally from the world of pre space cadet American Christianity that was highly influenced by revivalism and separatism via so called holiness. Seeing the evil of Dachau in operation, gives you a shot of total depravity that has never been taught in any mainstream of American Christianity.

Only in the Bible is there a description of that Creator of the universe and of mankind. He is a personal God of love, but also of all truth, righteousness, and grace. In the Bible you find Jesus as the incarnate Creator of the world and its one and only redeemer or Messiah. The message of the Bible is completely revolutionary, because no matter what you may have learned in church, none of it rests on your ability to perform in any fashion. Historically and contemporarily for most of the Christian religion however, grace alone is an anathema not consistent with their Pelagian theology.

Throughout the world God through His son Jesus is building His church and the gates of hell, Islam, or corporate materialism will not stand against it. The question is the fundamental black and white question in this world. Which side of the line are you on? On the black side nothing has meaning, life, the world, stuff. On the white side everything not only has meaning but also scientific and artistic perspective. It didn’t evolve, it was created that way by God, and He created mankind in His image to enjoy that creation. What a legacy that is, especially when the alternatives are to live in tyranny, or to be continually lost in space.

Our latest Chronicles:

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
No Safe Egypt; PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/nosafeegypt9-20-6.pdf

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

23 August 2006; Volume 8, Issue 26

This issue is dedicated to the memory of Gavin Coffee, who died in a stupendous car crash late last week. Pray for his family and friends as they learn to cope with this completely unexpected occurrence. (See post script at this article’s end.)

PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/welcomshade8-6.pdf

“Welcome weary traveler, come and sit in the shade of my fig tree. It sure has been hot this summer hasn’t it. How about a nice glass of ice tea? If you would like lemon in it, I will fetch a lemon from that tree over there, and that little bottle on the table has some simple syrup in it if you would like a little sweetening. I also have some fresh squeezed lemonade in the fridge in the house if you prefer.

“There you go, enjoy! So what brings you this way on such a hot sunny day?

”Oh, there’s no charge, all this is just a gift I have been given, but there is sort of an unspoken, unwritten contract, that if I want to keep this orchard growing and enlarging the house for travelers, I have to give it away. Some years back Kathy Mattea put out a song by that title. I had been thinking about how the most important things in our lives are really gifts that we really can’t earn, then I heard the song and it sort of put it into perspective. I had been working on this place for many years, but since I quit directly charging for this orchard’s gifts, it has just sort of mushroomed. It’s one of my favorite songs on my iPod, why don’t you give it a listen.

“So you have been gifted with this journey, so where are you from, and where are you headed?

“Lost it all, I see. I really don’t know where this place is headed either. But I was blessed early on in travels down this lonesome trail by a couple of old wise mentors. They had made millions in this life and basically considered money as sort of a way to keep score, somewhat in competition with their friends. I thought it was odd too, but their wisdom was; out of all the complexities of this life, money was the easiest to obtain. Their advise was to work diligently on developing your gifts and the money will take care of itself, and in the end, though the journey may be difficult and many times you seem to lose your way, it may be stormy and you want to give up, the money or other resources will appear.

“I suppose it helped in my case, that at the time I was working on a unique gold processing stream. From raw ore to processed gold and silver, that was so simple that it completely amazed me. Oh, it doesn’t scale too well in that global bigger is better world order, but it was designed for travelers like you. As you continue to travel along your journey, why not do a little prospecting. There is a passage in the Old Testament, the book of Haggai 2: 6-9, that talks about all the gold and silver belonging to God, especially in times like this. You can contemplate that passage as you travel.

[“For thus says the LORD of hosts: ‘Once more (it is a little while) I will shake heaven and earth, the sea and dry land; and I will shake all nations, and they shall come to the Desire of All Nations, and I will fill this temple with glory,’ says the LORD of hosts. “The silver is Mine, and the gold is Mine,’ says the LORD of hosts. “The glory of this latter temple shall be greater than the former,’ says the LORD of hosts. ‘And in this place I will give peace,’ says the LORD of hosts.” Haggai 2:6-9]

“Anyway, over time I became more and more amazed at just how much money I could make, I mean since it came from the earth and from God and not some scheme of man, or from the stock market like Bill Gates. I realized I couldn’t spend that much money and not get tangled up in the whole mammon scheme. Along the way though I sort of developed my first concept of giving away your gifts. I really did nothing to develop this concept, it just sort of appeared and I could be rich beyond my wildest dreams.

“Like everyone else my first plan was to give away ten percent and keep the ninety for me. Over time that vow moved to keep ten percent and give the ninety. To be honest, everyone I tell about this giving idea thinks I am really freaky. I guess to make a long story short. I am still looking for a few people with the wisdom of my first two mentors, that would be more concerned with putting the gold was really doing some good, rather than accumulating it in safe deposit boxes and bank accounts, that they really can’t take with them beyond this world. I suppose the saddest thing, is of the ministries and charities that I have contacted, they seem content to continue to raise money the same old way, by bugging people to contribute rather than truly dig a hole in the ground processed only by faith.

”Well if you should come into that natural wealth, or meet someone who is rich enough to be more concerned about the final destination rather than just getting more, send them my way. God willing I will still be here, or I will be back soon.

“Yeah, I got one of them just last week. Actually mine was a little booklet. You know, it’s like most of the other stuff in this world. If you are just a little more organized, work a little harder, think positive thoughts, do this and that and you will create a new rich reality for yourself. As you just said, and as Kathy’s song says, it worked until you lost it all. And now you are some where down that trail to realize if and when you get there again, you will give away more, accumulate less, and try not to worry about tomorrow so much.

“I’ll come back again to that thought and my development concept, but I think I should mention some of the training I received from my mother. Actually, I probably had one of the best upbringings anyone could hope for in this life. It still amazes me, what a great job my parents did, with so little to work with. I suppose when you consider their own limitations it was an absolute miracle.

”Anyway my mother never went to college, but she received a PHD in Worry, while minoring in Stuff Accumulation. I suppose to some extent it is part of my environmental inheritance, to go along with the genes they gave me. Worry and stuff seem so natural to me.

“One of the Bible passages I find troubling, as I am still trying to manage some of the stuff that my mother accumulated before she died, was the New Testament passage from Mark where Jesus tells the rich young ruler to sell what you have and give to the poor. I have thought about just giving away all the stuff I don’t need, but selling stuff takes a whole lot more effort.

[Then Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “One thing you lack: Go your way, sell whatever you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, take up the cross, and follow Me.” Mark 10:21]

“This sort of also relates in what I have to sell to the world, that over time brings in enough liquidity to continue to enlarge the orchard and the guest house. What I do is similar to what my doctor does when he replaced my ascending aorta. Here and in the surrounding country is where I do my research and my writing, just like he did at the University of Washington Medical Center. When I’m not here, just like he does, I’m out teaching, somewhere in the rest of the world, what I have learned.

”That aortic surgery was sure another gift experience, if you stick around for a few days I can share the details of that too. The coolest part of that was when they put me into a drug induced coma to help correct my heart arrhythmia, as about a third of the patients develop. All these worldly trappings and fluff were stripped away, and I was gifted with a high peak experience of the true gift of my life. Just so I would not forget, since I am not too good with numbers, it happened March 3rd, 2003, at about 3 AM. I’ve added thirty three minutes and seconds just for effect, but I was in really no place for telling time in that very low state of existence. But I do remember past midnight and how scared I was, and I woke up about five thirty in the morning much to the amazement of the nurse watching my vital signs in my intensive care room.

“So this is very briefly what I teach here and around the world.

”Creation is the ultimate reality that we experience in this world. As created creatures, created in the image of God, we can either learn from creation or from man. Life is ultimately a balancing act, or better a tensioning process between those two extremes. Western urban culture is by far and away the highest art form, of believing that we can control and conquer nature, that the world has ever known. Therefore, virtually everyone is tensioned and highly biased toward human rationality, ultimately resting on the premise of materialism; money, stuff, worry, and about how to get and maintain them. In short, we believe in an illusion of security, instead of even having a concept of true security.

“Creation on the other hand is the ultimate completely natural free gift of God’s Natural Law and Common Grace. We have the choice, no matter our religious understanding or lack thereof, to learn from it, or ignore it. You haven’t told me much of how you happened down this trail, but virtually everyone who has come to sit in the shade of this fig tree and have a glass of lemonade or iced tea, has left behind, maybe by choice or by force, a lot of excess rational baggage, and a pretty sizable library of self help materials.

“You just happened to show up while our guests are out in the field learning that all their life and enterprise stuff, is really just a model, a poor model at that, of the diversity of God’s natural creation. Some of those guests are here on a so called scholarship, or partial scholarship, those who can afford it, are paying the big bucks, a few really big bucks. That’s simply the gift they all bring.

“Overtime, just through the routine learning experiences, they get to know who has paid their dues with money and those who have paid their dues in some other way. I suppose the most interesting thing about the whole process, is through the community atmosphere we try to develop, they all begin to realize that life itself is the ultimate gift and this life is way too short to keep anything completely to yourself. No matter what your divine gifts may be, most discover that to paraphrase from the ”The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,” it’s much better to live in a land where it is always Christmas and never winter.

“I suppose you were gifted today, because I normally do my writing later in the week, today I am here, because I have some not for money work to do on Wednesday, which is when I am normally at my laptop and visiting with new friends that always just seem to stop off the trail. You are welcome to hang around, if you would like to stay, we need to give you a personal interview so we will know how your gifts can best be utilized to help you out, and also help others, so that you can better enjoy and grow from your continuing pilgrimage. Yes, we are working on all that marketing stuff, but it always seems to get pushed to the back burner by the gifts of life.

Better than all that, even though I have been doing most of the talking, I can see from the questions you ask and your genuine demeanor, I am the one who is truly blessed today.

“Do you have any other questions?

“Oh, the fig tree is very unusual in this country. We have to go through all sorts of contortions to keep it alive. We even move it into a green house for the winter. Obviously, it is not a native plant of this area or this climate. But you really are a gifted person, most of our guests don’t pick up on that for a long time, some never do. We make it a point to never discuss the allegory unless we are asked directly.

“Everything on this earth as a place and a season, just as in Ecclesiastes Chapter 3 and the song from the hippie times. But actually the fig tree relates to a couple of Old Testament prophets and their descriptions of eternity. In those utterances, every person was blessed with the gift of his very own fig tree and the opportunity to enjoy its shade with friends.

”I suppose that assumes that it gets warm enough in heaven to enjoy the shade with a cool glass of iced tea or lemonade. We have endeavored to bring that model here. So although we are still stuck in this world like a fig tree in a pot, not knowing for sure if tomorrow will bring sun, rain, frost, or drought, we should enjoy the gifts we have today, and let God control the future. That is the ultimate gift that our creation programs teach. Hopefully you will find it, if you decide to stick around for a while.

“Therefore our real goal is to strip away your dependency on the security that the world requires you to carry, and travel with a lighter pack and with a new vision of the ultimate gift of life and your unique place in the world. Those two Old Testament prophecies are found in Micah 4:4 and Zechariah 3:10. We have prepared this little card to help you focus both on the requirements of the present today, viewing somewhat your future fig tree that will be planted in eternal soil and not just a big pot.

[But everyone shall sit under his vine and under his fig tree,
And no one shall make them afraid;
For the mouth of the LORD of hosts has spoken.Micah 4 :4

In that day,’ says the LORD of hosts,
“Everyone will invite his neighbor
Under his vine and under his fig tree.’ ” Zechariah 3:10]

Gavin Coffee post script: This may sound harsh, but Gavin did not pass away in a tragic car accident. Such accounts should be stricken from all our thoughts and our remorse. Through out all of human history, regardless of religious affiliation, people have a God created belief in an after life, it is only in this western atheistic world view that people pass away. Furthermore, tragic car accidents do not happen in the Christian or Jewish world view. While the mode of his death was unexpected to us, death is just an opportunity to enter into eternity. He died instantly and was transported to an eternal kingdom, in which he has begun to prepare an eternal orchard and home for his family and friends. All this has taken place by the grace of God alone, offered through Jesus Christ alone. I one day hope to stop by for a glass of iced tea, or maybe lemonade, and maybe a tree ripened fig. Hopefully Gavin will say you have stopped by too.

Our latest Chronicles:

Chaos Economics; PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/chaoseconomics6-14-6.pdf
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

16 August 2006; Volume 8, Issue 25

PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/buildsanctII8-16-6.pdf

Since we live in an age of conspiracies and counter conspiracies, we might think that the tensioned link between Romans Chapter 7 and 8 is a plot to undermine established American Evangelicalism.

I was reading an article last week that stated that two of the featured people were revolutionists, not revolutionaries. Trying to find out the difference, I launched a small information insurgency into the internet. As best I could determine from the context, a revolutionist is less violent, more politically correct, but still seeking substantial change in the culture. That could be secular, religious or a combination of the two. Revolutionists however, are still seeking a new world order, just like revolutionaries.

Within Christianity and much of evangelicalism, there is a growing clamor for a new Reformation of the church. This is in part because much of Protestantism has become no different doctrinally, and just as decadent as the Roman Catholic church of Luther’s day. These people may call themselves reformers or reformists, attempting to bring about a modern Reformation.

While I may be somewhat an out spoken individual on some of these points, I do not believe we need a new revolution or a new reformation, what we really need to do is get back to the basics, not create something new and better. King Solomon perhaps said it best, “Their is nothing new under the sun, and everything is nothing but vanity.”

We all seem to run around humming the song, “Your so vain, you probably think this song is about you.” The problem is of course the old saying, “When you point your finger at someone else, three are pointing back at you.” The revolutionary concept of our day however, is that we no longer believe that this is true. In our current age we may believe that those three pointing fingers really don’t mean me, or perhaps they point that I am truly three times more intelligent, hence it isn’t vanity at all, but simple superiority.

So fitting within that superior concept, I have adopted the title of “Reformationist” as opposed to a reformer or a reformist. A Google search returns only a little over 600 hits for a reformationist, and a great many of them attributed to “the Reformationist” not me, but a distinct individual. Again as I have defined the term a reformationist, they are uniquely different from the masses of reformers, reformists, revolutionaries, or revolutionists. The reformationist, does not seek to develop new revelations of a higher order, but to accentuate the basics. In this case the essential doctrines of the historic Protestant faith.

So what separates the Reformationist’s movement from all the vain attempts to move Christianity in one direction or another? The key lies in Paul’s unity in writing the book of Romans, and specifically the tension between Chapters 7 and 8. The specific point being anyone who tells you that he or she can differentiate between, the work of God on the one hand and the work of his own fleshly vain desires is not telling the truth, but is succumbing to the control of his own vanity.

Virtually all the time these so called sanctimonious insights are based upon redefining works under the law as the basis for us rising to God’s holiness. “I don’t do these things and neither should you.” But where is the grace and the true diversity of human possibilities?

However, Paul doesn’t separate the things of the spirit from the things of the flesh. He succinctly states that the things we do for God are so encompassed by sin that we can’t tell where the flesh leaves off and the work of the Spirit begins. As stated last week when you try to develop that distinction you move from resting in Christ Jesus’ righteousness and rest upon your own understanding. In that process you lose the power, to truly live a life without condemnation as stated in Romans 8:1. Therefore over time, you must work harder and harder to fulfill the law’s requirements, eventually becoming legalistic. Then you try to place your burdens on others, who wisely reject this notion, leaving you without friends, which you further justify as persecution.

Something so simple we have spun so many ways that we have a world full of bad revolutionaries, lousy revolutionists, poor reformers, and mediocre reformists, and virtually no awesome reformationists.

If you haven’t gathered it already this distinctiveness of reformationists is just an attempt to show that whatever handle we may put on what we do is not so important, what is important is that we really are incapable of fully understanding our motivations in virtually everything we do.

This concept of moving beyond human reason, is not something that comes easy to western culture and individuals. It contributes greatly to what radical Islam considers the “great satan” that they are trying to destroy. They can truthfully see that there is no room for God in what we call grace, but the distinction is between western atheism and Islamic theism. If Allah, or God is not the center of your life, them by definition you can not be a religious person. But they too are motivated by the guilt of not resting in Christ’s finished work, because they do not understand, they can not truly contemplate a gospel that seems to rest on materialism rather than God. In that bondage they seek to make converts forcefully to Islam, and when the whole world accepts that concept the Islamic work will be completed.

There are probably countless distinctions where we honestly can not determine the difference between our fleshly nature and where God’s Spirit prompts us. Recently in my own life two of those predominate, one is with anger the other is with the concept of waiting on God.

About a month ago a semi-truck from one of the large grocery chains moved into the lane of traffic I was driving in and took off the drivers side mirror. Accidents do happen in the world. I don’t know the reason why the driver moved into my lane, but instead of admitting his mistake, or even saying that he didn’t think he was in my lane, he stated that I was trying to cut in front of his truck to pass a bus.

Now as best as I can understand his explanation of the event, we must move him well beyond just an ordinary truck driver into the realm of at least Super-hero. He must have been able to read my mind, (while driving a small Saturn, I was trying to pull in front of his big tractor with a 54’ long trailer, so that I could pass an equally large bus stopped at an bus stop over a block away).

Not only was this driver a mind reader, he also had xray vision. From his elevated position in the cab of the truck, not only could he see that the front wheels of his tractor were in his lane, (because he must have seen the line striping), he also could see my car, which during the time of the incident and because of the traffic was all the time out of his normal vision (because of the engine cowling and the tractor’s engine). Also because of this supernatural vision gift, while I was in front of his mirrors, I presume he could also see that I was in his lane.

Needless to say I was furious with his tale. Not only was my integrity being challenged, the driver was lying to the extent it would have been humorous, except to the damage to the mirror of my tiny little Saturn. I sent a well reasoned response to my insurance company and later to the Risk Management person of the food chain, stating that because of their drivers negligence I expected them to fix my drivers side mirror, (total insurance replacement cost including tax, $111. and change, well below my deductible.)

After not hearing from the Risk Management person for a couple of weeks, I sent him and email asking what was up. A few days later I got a letter from him, (of course dated the day before I sent the email, but taking two days to get from Bellevue to Seattle), stating that they had agreed with their mind reading driver, I was at fault.

Needless to say I was even more angry. Since they are a self insured company, and having spent more than a few years in corporate America, I understand that it costs a lot of money for them to write a check of any size. I further understand that it also costs money to investigate properly any incident. I also checked with the state Insurance Commissioner and found out, because they are self insured I would have to file a claim in Small Claims Court.

I fired off a very terse letter response to the Risk Manager, along with a copy to my insurance company, again restating my claim, and decided to let it rest at that, at least for the time being. After all, I can only spend so much time fighting over a $111. claim, even on the basis of the principle of the thing.

Now the question I have to ask myself is how much of my response is the result of righteous anger for being falsely maligned and how much was based upon my own flesh wanting to get those guys? I really don’t know especially in the context of the tension between Romans 7 & 8. Furthermore having to listen to my own preaching, I better just let it rest in that tension and see what might happen henceforth.

Interesting, Monday afternoon I got a call from my large insurance company. After reading all my responses and I presume talking with the food chain representative, they realized that if they also do not rebut the other driver’s description of the accident, as my insurer they will be responsible to the damages to the tractor, which is a tear in the fiberglass at the back of the tractor’s front fender (again showing that their driver was accelerating from behind me) probably well in excess of the price of my mirror. So I had the opportunity to again state my case and position against the food chain.

So where this will lead I do not know, but I did my part, either in my flesh, or as Godly anger, I surely can not differentiate, for as superior I may think I might be most of the time, I surely am not that good at any time.

There is a Godly anger, one of the most interesting is in 2 Kings 2:24 where two bears mauled 42 youths after they had mocked Elisha. In anger even Jesus overturned the table of the money changers which can be read in the three gospels.

Even more complicated in proper discernment of the flesh and Spirit, is the concept of waiting on the Lord. On the one hand you have this Biblical concept, on the other side you have your fleshly nature to be slothful and also just many of the distractions of this life which seem to fill all of our days.

I am in Spokane, not really knowing other than building my small house on my property what I need to do to move out of Seattle. While everything seemed to be moving rapidly forward while I was over here last month, once I returned to Seattle, nothing seemed to be going forward, and my return was delayed by the mirror incident and things beyond my control for a couple of weeks.

Things look naturally that there is not enough time and money to do anything significant up there this year, but I also feel even more strongly that I need to move from Seattle as soon as possible. So here I was waiting on what might occur and really not feeling that anything else I had found really fit within this scenario. Then yesterday there seemed to be progress in the two areas that seemed to be the significant hold ups.

Until yesterday, I have been occupied by what I call 2 hour jobs, that take all day. The question in the context again of Romans 7 and 8, were these jobs even necessary to begin, or were they a way to just procrastinate instead of focusing on the task at hand? I am really incapable of judging any of it in the proper timing context. At least I didn’t take a nap, but was I diligently waiting on the Lord, or was I simply wasting time to keep occupied?

I hope these last couple of week’s incidents taken from my life, have given you an reformationist concept of how you can be your natural self and not beat yourself up by not being able to keep God’s law or even your own laws consistently.

In the midst of the active mirror problems, I was reminded of Walt Disney’s, Davy Crockett line, “Be sure you’re right and then go ahead.” But changing the metaphor slightly, you better be sure your job is to drain the swamp, before you walk in amidst the alligators.

The substance of the power from freedom from condemnation in Romans 7 and 8, is contained in resting completely in Christ’s justification of your sinful flesh that can be probably best contemplated from the promise of Isaiah 55:8,9

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
Nor are your ways My ways,” says the LORD.

“For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
So are My ways higher than your ways,
And My thoughts than your thoughts.

Our latest Chronicles:

Evolved Units; PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/evolvedunits6-7-6.pdf
Chaos Economics; PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/chaoseconomics6-14-6.pdf
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; PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/buildsanctI8-9-6.pdf

9 August 2006; Volume 8, Issue 24

PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/buildsanctI8-9-6.pdf

Salt is a good thing, it preserves and enhances the taste of food. But what good is it if it loses those qualities? Well salt can’t change its nature, NaCl was the way God made it. If you replace the chlorine with say carbonate, you still have a salt in the chemical sense, but it can give you a bad case of gas. It has other worthwhile uses, but does not do much good compared to regular salt.

This of course is a loose paraphrase of Matthew 5:13.

I made some Indian smoked salmon this week. It is virtually impossible to buy in the store, because it is cold smoked until it is dry. Mine took about 30 hours to get to the stage where I like it. You can hot smoke (kipper) salmon in the same modern equipment I used in about 2 hours. Real Indian smoked salmon will keep virtually forever without refrigeration, mine because it is not so dry would probably get there eventually, because it has enough salt to keep it from spoiling. Hot smoked salmon needs refrigeration all the time. Without refrigeration for more than a few hours and you are looking for trouble. Chances are it won’t kill you, but it could make you sick enough to wish you were dead.

So what good is an “on fire church” if it isn’t salty, and the air conditioner isn’t working?

Today, the times are like none I have ever experienced. Thank God, that the Rapture could happen at any moment and we will all be in air conditioned heaven. It must be a global warming thing after all. Of course my salmon (I used pinks) is still high enough in oils that without refrigeration it will eventually become somewhat rancid. The real Indians used Chum salmon, lower in fat. But Coho and Kings don’t work at all. Their oil nature becomes rancid over time, so even hot smoked and refrigerated, it still must be vacuum sealed to maintain its flavor. Now if the world just had a holy knife, or pair of holy scissors maybe they could cut through the thick plastic and taste the Christian essence?

I once went to one of those full gospel or Pentecostal churches. The pastor was the son of one of those tongue speakers also. So as this pastor was reaching the sunset of his life, he had pretty much seen all the manifestations of the gifts of the spirit, the good, the bad, and the ugly. While giving a sermon, he could get an idea, pause for just a moment, and then give it a spin that would be the least offensive to the majority of the congregation, but still get the point across to those not just warming the pews.

When need be, there is something about being six five and weighing over 250 pounds that can give you a certain swagger. I will never forget one of his sermons. I don’t know what title he had for the sermon, if he had one. I called it, “Be careful what you pray for, it might just come true.”

It was preached right after one of those great commission seasons, you know, Acts 1:8: But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”

It seems that the Jerusalem church did a pretty good job at evangelizing the Jerusalem part, not quite so good in Judea, a little less well in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth, you can forget that. “We might fall off the edge of the globe, or their might be demons and bad people out there.”

First it started with persecution, Saul or Paul knew something about that, but that really didn’t have a significant effect, the Jerusalem church still was the Jerusalem church. “Filled with the power and the gifts of the Spirit! Can I get a witness? Amen, brothers and sisters. Praise the Lord, Hallelujah!”

As time went on the persecution got worse, but the fishers of men, were still fishing from the dock. Then in the year of our Lord 70, the dock was destroyed, along with the rest of the city. Finally, we have Christian evangelists at their best, running for their lives to the ends of the earth, seeking safety from the storm.

That sermon doesn’t preach very well in most places. I condensed it considerably, just for my readers, ‘cause I’m such a sensitive guy, but there are enough facts available to fill 20 – 30 minutes for a real sermon.

I realize that the comments on Acts 1:8 in the American Evangelical Study Bible says that short term missions trips, provided they don’t exceed two weeks in length qualify as fulfillment of the Judea, Samaria, and end of the earth requirements. Also, it is perfectly acceptable to account for them as true missions giving in the church’s financial records. After all the sheep will not just give tens of thousands of dollars to build a school or something with a permanent effect, but if you can make them believe that their vacation fulfilled their (and by their extension God’s) missions requirements, they can return to their Jerusalem and justify all the stress of leaving their secure material comforts.

We live in a world of religious warfare. It’s not a “War on Terror,” like the President so stated almost 5 years ago. It is not “World War III” like Newt and other Neocon and conservative pundits have recently so stated. Democrats and liberals have redefined everything in so many politically correct ways, if it were not for God’s gift of gravity, I might forget which way is up and which way is down, so war to them is just bad karma that will soon dissipate as the wind blows. However, this is war, and it is a war based on three great Babylonian religions, against everyone else who are part of the infidels, including the other two.

Three great Babylonian religions? That’s right Sunni and Shia Islam, and western Globalism.

You see the devil doesn’t want you sitting under your own fig tree enjoying your family and friends as the Bible describes as paradise. The devil wants you subjugated to any higher power other than God Almighty. Whether that be overtly as in the case of Islam, or covertly in the case of Globalism you are stilled called to worship at the altar of another Caesar. In the case of Islam it is Allah, derived from the Moon God, and in Globalism it is Mammon, earned from the materialism God.

When Jesus sets up His Kingdom on this earth, no matter how you think He will bring it about, that Kingdom will be a Theocracy.

In any theocracy there is no separation of church and state. Sorry to say many of America’s founding fathers were Christian theocrats. Which works really well if you are elitist enough to believe you have a direct line to God, and all the rest of the world is made up of carnal Christians and the carnally damned. To know for sure the absolute difference between good and evil and what’s best for everyone else, that is heaven on earth, and Man at his sinful finest.

Let’s form a democracy and vote on it. Thankfully, the Puritan Presbyterians didn’t want to live in a Baptist theocracy, and vise versa. Surely none of them wanted to serve some Papist Pope, nor a Divine Right King. By the grace of God, America was founded as a republic. That of course has been systemically educated out of our educational system. In a true democracy nothing works. As America slouches closer and closer to that utopian democratic model isn’t it amazing how government at all levels becomes more and more powerless to do anything, constructive or otherwise. All the while free trade globalism is evangelized as the mechanism to bring heaven to earth.

Theocratic Shiites (Iran and organizations such as Hezbollah) hate Jews, Christians, and Sunni Arabs. Sunnis (Arabs and organizations such as Al Qaida and Hamas) hate Jews, Christians, and Shiites. Since in Islam, government and religion are one, Islam hates, Israel, the United States, and all infidels. Let’s all go to war and bring democracy to the middle east. Iraq and Afghanistan surely don’t understand a world of peace, harmony, democracy, and global materialism. Those simpleton Palestinians how could they be so stupid to elect Hamas the majority party in their government. The Lebanese by allowing Hezbollah to be armed by Iran through Syria and also being a political party, how inane. Well, Israel is in the process of taking care of that problem, even as Hezbollah rockets continue to make a point for and in Israel.

Peace in the Middle East could spontaneously evolve from this primordial chaotic ooze at any moment. Ain’t evolution grand, it gives us answers when things are too complex for us to understand, or God doesn’t tell us what exactly he is doing. But I probably could sell thousands of books, if I speculate enough and retain a good agent. “God I sure hope I’m not in the city where that suitcase nuke goes off as I am selling my books (and doing your work).”

No stupendous change is going to work in a positive way for you unless you begin to get a deeper understanding of how God uses this world to build His church and Christians. Real theologians call this progressive sanctification, whatever that means. The evangelical concept of this is being recreated into the image of Jesus. The problem with the evangelical application is that it seeks to raise the individual to equality with God’s glory without undergoing any earthly suffering. A lot of this evolves from the Wesleyan doctrine that you can rise above your sin. John and Charles admitted that they never quite got there, but at least they were holy enough to admit their “short comings.”

Modern evangelicals no longer share that humility, and you too can reach that Nirvana (sorry wrong religion) if you just indulge in their conferences, buy their DVD’s, CD’s, tapes, and books. The difference between these modern indulgence peddlers and Johann Tetzel of Luther’s day is that Tetzel was selling the offer for loved ones to escape purgatory. Today it is much more immediate gratification of the self. So instead of the pope trying to raise funds to build St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, the modern day authorities build their materialist ministries with the Pope Leo X vision of papal authority. Of course their vision also comes from God, just like the Pope, but they are too blind to see this connection, and of course are totally anti Roman Catholic in their preaching, even though the promote a more highly evolved version of a global catholic church.

Is it any wonder Islam cannot discern the difference between the United States, American Christianity, unfettered corporate greed, and the true gospel of the “people of the book?”

The Bible speaks to a different type of evangelism and a different gospel, remote to much of evangelicalism, which truly builds one through the process of progressive sanctification. Probably the most direct reference is in the contrast between Romans chapters 7 and 8.

To paraphrase briefly, Chapter 7: We are all rotten scum balls in this life, always have been, always will be. Chapter 8: In Christ Jesus that doesn’t matter, be grateful for what you’ve got and get with the program.

At least beginning with Pelagius, more than likely when this letter of Paul was first read, Christians have said and preached that the two chapters do not logically connect. You can’t be a scum ball, and not feel guilty about it (and without you trying to fix it). See, if we don’t silently add the trying to fix it and overcome the scum baldness (sic.) we will stay a scum ball forever. That is completely logical to all humanity. However and therefore, (for those of you trained in looking for those words) it also follows that by your works you can overcome sin. Jesus may do the heavy lifting, but by God I have a role to play (or else I’m worthless.) Ergo, I am at least partially responsible for my heavenly crowns.

But that is Biblical revisionism (to be humanly and politically correct). What Paul is saying in context is just as the paraphrase states above is true. Furthermore, when you move from Christ Jesus as your total justification before God for your sinfulness, you also lose His power to be without condemnation. That is ladies and gentlemen, some pretty heavy lifting. Spun another way, what you do out of gratitude alone, is the only sufficient means of grace to overcome the guilt of still being a scum ball of flesh.

Again, what Christ Jesus did on the cross finished the work of your justification and adopted you as heirs of God’s kingdom. You can’t become more adopted as a Christian, for some reason known only to God through Jesus’ blood on the cross, you are an heir positionally, not an error, this will never change. That adoption is also outside and within what we call time and space. That is Good News. Therein alone resides the power to be free of sin and guilt, resting in Christ. It is God’s freedom alone, and cannot therefore be linked to your best logic, or your best good works. Once you do, you will be plagued with guilt and powerless to overcome it.

So what type of gratitude filled salt do you wish to become? The enhancing flavor of Indian smoked that will keep forever. The salt of hot smoked salmon that must be refrigerated and vacuum sealed, a common salt that gives everyone intestinal gas, or just a brine that is used to melt the winter ice along the world’s roadways. These are of course just allegorical statements of a deeper truth. Through the cross alone comes man’s first true freedom, with that comes the gift and the power for you to make a choice and live successfully no matter what the worldly circumstances may hold. This true wherever you may find yourself, empowered not to worry about sin, completely on the basis of your total thankfulness and nothing else.

The world is going to hell more rapidly than perhaps ever in history. Therefore, your homework for next week is to think about what you might thankfully give up in this world, so that you won’t have to be forcefully exiled to “the end of the earth.” Christians were created to be allegorically the preservation and flavor enhancing common force in the world. The question is not whether you will be used, it is if you will enjoy the trip.?

Our latest Chronicles:

Unity in Diversity; PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/unitydiversity5-31-6.pdf
Evolved Units; PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/evolvedunits6-7-6.pdf
Chaos Economics; PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/chaoseconomics6-14-6.pdf
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

Walls & Ceilings
2 August 2006; Volume 8, Issue 23

PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/wallsceilings8-2-6.pdf

When you write commentary such as this, as we evangelicals like to say, by the Spirit, certain words or phrases sometimes catch your attention. You quickly dismiss a number as interesting, some force you to ruminate on them directly or indirectly, becoming the direction of another article, or series of articles. Last week as I wrote, “also facilitating church growth beyond building walls and ceilings,” I had such an epiphany.

In the context of the church and church growth, I was writing about natural walls and ceilings, but even as the words continued, I could not help but think that the real limits to church growth and development are not the physical walls but the invisible walls. These walls may be of God, but as I have continued to think about “walls and ceilings” over the last week I am convinced that they more often than not are of our own construction, to shield us, to protect us, from the harshness of the world, but even more than we would ever care to admit, the reality of God.

Before we continue let us look at what I wrote last week to get the context of the walls and ceilings comment:

“The point is however, we don’t know what type of church the Lord would build in America if preachers did not preach anything but Jesus Christ crucified and raised for our justification. I would suspect that men would then find something they could build upon in church that relates not only to their real lives but also facilitating church growth beyond building walls and ceilings. In other words Jesus Christ would set them free to build the church not just watch from the sidelines, while wondering what the Seahawks or the Mariners were doing. . . . . In that freedom in Christ and His church is the basis for changing the world in short order. Continued separation of the visible church from the true gospel gives us more of the mess that is leading this world more rapidly to Hades door.

In the context of building, I cannot help but wonder, if the spiritual house we build in this life, is the structure we will inherit for eternity?

“Jesus is building me a mansion in glory, where I will receive (and admire) the crowns I received for doing His work on this earth!”

“Oh, really?”

The context of last week’s message was that Jesus was building His church in the world bypassing the understanding of missionaries, missions organizations, denominations, and their supporters here and abroad. This brings up the question, “If what we are doing isn’t working the way God is working, perhaps we should change our building programs.”

What we are building then is not God’s church, but a church we would like God to admire. Walls and ceilings of our own understanding of God, but not of His true nature. Those walls may be lined with gold and precious gems, the best art known to man, but they are still temporal walls and ceilings of our own construction, trying to give us right standing with God. Worldly walls and ceilings that will not stand the judgement of God’s holiness, or even temporal time.

Probably Keith Green’s most popular song is, “The Sheep and The Goats” based on Matthew 25:31-46 To get the title referenced correctly, checking my iTunes playlist, I couldn’t help be amused by the next song on this album of his music, “Asleep in The Light.”

“Then He will also say to those on the left hand, ‘Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels: for I was hungry and you gave Me no food; I was thirsty and you gave Me no drink; I was a stranger and you did not take Me in, naked and you did not clothe Me, sick and in prison and you did not visit Me.’ Matthew 25:41-43

Now these walls and ceilings that we are building are a personal structure, a congregational building, and a larger visible to the world enterprise. That includes all the work we do, the application of the resources we are given, and the roles we play, both in the City of God, but also the City of man. These eternal structures are our life’s work, for both redeemed sinners, and pagan sinners. There is little difference, if any, when these buildings are constructed by our own hands, in our own strength. It is the rare structure indeed, constructed upon the foundation of the gospel of Jesus Christ as the only justification for humanity, both individually and as the body of Christ.

Matthew 24 describes the events that will happen at the end of the age. Preceding the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25 are the parables of the ten virgins and the parable of the talents. These chapters are known together by Bible scholars as the Fifth Discourse on the Kingdom of God: Kingdom Judgement. Therefore, the context of the ten virgins and sheep and the goats, directly relates to our vigilant investment of time and resources, and also our understanding of the times in which we live.

My God, is the God of creation first, the Bible second, and the church third. That is the way it has been all of my life as well as I can recall. As a consequence, I have trouble understanding why most evangelicals, especially in this age of stupendous change, are content to worship their God only for a couple of hours Sunday mornings, in a building which is increasingly a converted or a borrowed something or other.

Buildings, as walls and ceilings, have certain elements of infrastructure that facilitate the congregational aspect of the church, but should it be a creation to make people feel at home, or should it be a facility that gives God glory no matter it’s roots or foundation? I suppose that depends upon the foundation and the roots, not the limiting walls and ceiling.

As I said last week, and I try to say every week, the foundation of the church should be the historic Christian gospel. That in time and space two thousand years ago, the God – man Jesus Christ came to earth, lived the only sinless life, was crucified by God as our propitiatory sacrifice, and has become the only source of our justification for Godly righteousness and our hope of eternal life.

My non-scientific survey suggests that this historic foundation is absent, except in passing in most churches, and not at all in many of the largest. That gospel passing seems always leading you toward living the successful Christian life (materially most of the time) by doing this and that (again materially) and not doing anything bad, wrong, or dare I say sinful, which will take away your reward here and now, or in your eternal mansion filled with crowns.

That is not the true Christian gospel, but it is a gospel of worldly works righteousness that leads to bondage, despair, and much deeper problems. The power to live the Christian life does not come from your work to overcome your sin, your contributions, your Our Fathers and Hail Mary’s, or their Protestant extemporaneous equivalents. The power and the freedom to overcome sin comes through resting in Jesus Christ alone, for what He has accomplished historically in time and space. When He said on the cross that ”It is finished,” it was finished.

Trying to add to that is not only blasphemy, personally and corporately, it can and does build walls and ceilings, some with beautiful ornaments, but they are also the walls and ceilings of sin inherited limitations, bondage, and eventual destruction.

Probably the most powerful Christian message ever recorded is the New Testament book of Romans. Romans was the basis for the Reformation. It is great to dissect it into parts, but its greatest impact comes in one gulp. Preferably by listening to it read, so you don’t think you are doing any great feat by reading it yourself. As un-American as it sounds be completely passive and let Paul speak to you and what Christianity is all about.

How can I live a Holy life before God if I don’t try? Take it as a miracle! We look for miracles everywhere, why not in just resting in Christ’s finished work. The miracle in that rest, is that the power then becomes present to do much more than a list of the laws that we can never keep. Call it the ability to rise above the law and our flesh. It changes our focus outside ourselves. Changing the focus to outside ourselves, really takes a miracle the way the world is operating today.

Since I got the Netflix subscription I have seen more than a few documentaries, a lot of them made by those left wing, commie, pinko types, but a few by those right wing, libertarian, individualists. The last one I watched was probably the most scary, when you put it into the context of all the rest. The title of that one was “The Future of Food.” Because of my background in biology I was able to understand somewhat the nature of what is happening with genetic engineering of our food supply. Agri-business is in the process of putting in a killer gene in much of the seed they sell. That means essentially that you have to buy seed for your crops from the business to grow your harvest, because the gene keeps the produced grain from being a viable seed.

If this isn’t big brother enough, all this isn’t being done in laboratories, like other bio-engineering and stem cell research, but in open fields across the world, and no governments know where those crops are planted. Furthermore, the United States is the biggest advocate of this research, without any safeguards or governmental oversight whatsoever.

So what happens if this killer gene migrates to the other seed stock outside the engineered seed? You have worldwide famine like the world has never seen, but more importantly you lose all the genetic information of all the developed and wild varieties, that can provide for rebuilding the food supply. These varieties have been developed over the whole history of agriculture throughout the world.

The section of Matthew we have looked at earlier are the words of Jesus speaking about the end of the age and the need for vigilance. The book of Revelation is a more in depth look into what will indeed happen at the end of this age, as God installs His kingdom on earth, through the judgment of the Great Tribulation period. What is interesting in my strange sort of way, is that the third and fourth seals of Revelation 6 could be brought about by just such an occurrence as a man designed killer gene in our food crops.

Of course the majority of American evangelicalism sees no need for earthy vigilance because they will soon be raptured out to be forever with the Lord and to move into their mansion in glory. This is, somewhat in the context of Matthew 24 and 25, because of their attempts to convert America to a Christian nation and to give the rest of the world democracy. Oh, I forgot that the Matthew 25 context deals with helping your fellow man, not political power.

So what really is the abundance that is spoken about in the parable of the talents? God’s kingdom work, or the work of worldly abundance conversions to a relationship with a deist’s God?

Walls and ceilings, so what does your spiritual house look like? Does it reflect the God that all creation can only give us a dark vision, or is it a nice house in the suburbs, or a penthouse condo on easy street? Is its foundation based on Jesus Christ’s finished work, or is it built on the substance of prosperity, self righteousness, legalism, and vain attempts to live the victorious Christian life.

As for me and my house, we will stick with the God of creation, and the assurance of Jesus Christ crucified. This house will expand as we grow in Christ throughout eternity for its walls and ceilings are just a way to moderate the climate and not a building to limit God’s glory.

Our latest Chronicles:

Rootless in the world; PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/rootless5-24-6.pdf
Unity in Diversity; PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/unitydiversity5-31-6.pdf
Evolved Units; PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/evolvedunits6-7-6.pdf
Chaos Economics; PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/chaoseconomics6-14-6.pdf
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

Building
26 July 2006; Volume 8, Issue 22

PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/building7-26-6.pdf

It has been a few weeks since our last Chronicles. Some of you may have begun to ask yourself, I wonder what happened to Jerry? The one word answer is that I have been building. And for the foreseeable future it looks like I will continue. But my building really is not what I want to discuss this week.

When talking with a friend last week the question came up, “What is it about the church that turns off so many men?” This was followed by a corollary question, “What is it that men are really supposed to do in church?”

My first response is that men go to church because that is what Jesus called his disciples to do, to be part of the so called fellowship of saints, the body of Christ, and to be the spiritual head of the family.

But having said that, neither of those responses at all really answer either of the questions. In fact, to be honest in the case of many men, I would suggest that the answer to the first question is, “Almost everything.” and the answer to the second, “I haven’t got a clue!”

On a recent Sunday, being with the family of God experiences took me to Columbia River Bible Church, just a few miles outside of Kettle Falls. CRBC is the home church for one of my high school friends, but I really didn’t go to see him, I just sort of felt like I should go there to church. That Sunday morning my friend was not present and neither was the pastor. They had a guest speaker, a former pastor there, Larry Windle, currently the President of Rio Grande Bible Institute.

Larry began speaking on how the Lord is building His church in Latin America and how it is being done initially without any of the wisdom that church leaders have devised to plant and grow churches. The essence of the Lord’s church building process, is somehow, or somewhere, one person hears about the doctrine that Jesus Christ died for their sins, through His death on the cross, their sins can be forgiven, and by faith in that work they can receive eternal life. That person then tells others in their isolated village and pretty soon, there are a group of believers that meet together regularly to discuss how this is changing their lives. Soon, they think they need to know more about what all this means and so they begin to look to form a church, whatever that is. Eventually, they come in contact either directly or indirectly with Rio Grande Bible Institute so that they can receive some training or materials.

So Jesus, the Christ is building His church, without any of the initial direct expertise of missionaries, mission organizations, denominations, seminaries, or the other support groups that American evangelicalism thinks is necessary for church planting and growth.

Let’s see, Jesus is a man (as well as God) and He is building something that is near and dear to His essence, His church. It also seems that, at least initially, the programs of the established church are not what he has determined to use in these unchurched areas of the world.

Does this have anything to say to us in the churched areas, especially in the context of the two questions posed earlier?

So could the answer to our first question be: “There is nothing in church that a man can build that is near and dear to his created essence. In church he is expected to be a wall flower, or at best a flower child.”

That makes the answer to the second question, “The church to men should be an extension of their worldly created essence to be builders and the developers of life.”

To this I’m sure most pastors and ministry leaders will respond, “We have all these impoverished and wonderful programs that need all sorts of volunteers to make them work and to carry out the great commission, but men just don’t seem to care.”

And for good reason! Should I repeat myself, for good reason! Hum, for good reason!

Men are created as builders, one, if not the prime essence of building, is ownership. There is nothing in “these impoverished and wonderful programs,” that allow for ownership or really leadership for that matter. In church it is you do it our way, or the highway, you trouble making buffoon. That in the business world is politically correctly called micro-management, or less PC, petty, insecure, interference. In such a church, contrary to stated policy, Jesus is not the CEO, or even on the board of directors.

The pastoral and ministerial response to that is that they need to protect the church from the profane effects of the world (i.e. the worldliness of men). There are books written on the feminization of the church, but it is really much more serious. There is really nothing for a man to do in the church as it is constituted in most of America and the world, for there is nothing to truly build that someone has not already fouled up beyond all hope of redemption, and men are expected to fix it as spare time volunteers, without anything but pizza and a soda for lunch. Is that why so many men would rather watch the Seahawks, who have built a winning team, or the Mariners, who are rebuilding a winning team, rather than watch from the sidelines of church which really doesn’t seem to be doing much at all.

I have never attended what I would call a “megachurch” for any reason that I can remember. I would call a megachurch that somehow claims attendance in five figures. I suppose in a megachurch their would be the possibility of worldly career networking which would be a type of manly building. However, many of these churches have a different gospel than by which Jesus is truly building His church, but that definitely is a sermon for another time.

Larry mentioned that at the Rio Grande Bible Institute they have a Winter Worker Program where retired people from the north head to Texas each winter to help them build the Institute’s facilities. There of course are similar building programs for retired people throughout the church, both locally and abroad. The merit of all these programs is that these people, in their later years are finally able to build something visible and tangible for their Lord and Savior, and the Christian leadership wherever, is genuinely thankful for the help.

Most Christians would confess that a building does not make a church, people do. In the context of our original questions, is there any people things that men can do within the context of modern evangelicalism to facilitate Jesus in His church building. The one word answer is no! . . . . What part of no don’t you understand?

And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. Matthew 16:18

In modern evangelicalism you can talk about a lot of things, be part of any number of worthwhile programs, give all your money to the church, eat pizza and drink pop until you look like Santa, but you dare not discuss the “D” word. That “D” word is related to damned, but is really “doctrine.”

There is a lie within evangelicalism that doctrine divides and plastic love and music unites. The truth is that true doctrine unites, and plastic love and music, is plastic love and music.

The context of Matthew 16:18 above is the confession that Jesus is Messiah. That is the basis by which Jesus has, does, and will build His church. Water that down with programs, plastic love and music, and I would say that the context pretty much states as a pastor, leader, or pew setting Christian, you are not working with Jesus, but with the powers of Hades.

Bear with me for a moment, the basis for church is not what Jesus would do, it is what Jesus did. That doctrine is repulsive to the very nature of all humanity, except of God’s elect in Christ. Any concept of election by God is un-American, at least in contemporary America and the rest of the world for that matter. Election is what the Bible teaches, however. We don’t even begin to understand it, but we say we do, and that is where doctrine begins to get it’s divisive handle. But as apparent the problem is not really the doctrine, the problem is the way WE interpret the doctrine in the context of our sinfulness, public and private mores, the need to be cool and accepted by others.

The point is however, we don’t know what type of church the Lord would build in America if preachers did not preach anything but Jesus Christ crucified and raised for our justification. I would suspect that men would then find something they could build upon in church that relates not only to their real lives but also facilitating church growth beyond building walls and ceilings. In other words Jesus Christ would set them free to build the church not just watch from the sidelines, while wondering what the Seahawks or the Mariners were doing. The Supersonics, they took their boring game to Oklahoma.

In that freedom in Christ and His church is the basis for changing the world in short order. Continued separation of the visible church from the true gospel gives us more of the mess that is leading this world more rapidly to Hades door.

Our latest Chronicles:

Creation Speaks; PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/creationspeaks5-10-6.pdf
It’s all about time; PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/abouttime5-17-6.pdf
Rootless in the world; PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/rootless5-24-6.pdf
Unity in Diversity; PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/unitydiversity5-31-6.pdf
Evolved Units; PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/evolvedunits6-7-6.pdf
Chaos Economics; PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/chaoseconomics6-14-6.pdf
Christian acquiescence; PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/christianacqui6-21-6.pdf

21 June 2006; Volume 8, Issue 21

PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/christianacqui6-21-6.pdf

The world in which we all live is no longer a world of peace and tranquility. I suppose for most people throughout history it really has never been a world without continual stress, a lot of that just plain survival stress. But we in western culture and especially in the United States have for many years lived a life of relative prosperity and security.

The politically correct spin continues, “All that changed after 9-11!” After which it is appropriate to chime in, “Amen, brother, or sister, preach it.” As soon as possible thereafter we speak to (not about) how we now have to walk all that distance to the bus stop, through the rain, wind, and terrorists alerts, when we used to just drive from our home’s secure garage to the secure parking garage. Well, we still do drive from garage to garage, but at least now we think of the price of gas. “Thank God, the price is coming down, it was getting close to the price I pay for bottled water.”

In America we have really bought into the line that stuff brings security. But we really are unwilling to commit anything, except money to maintain that lifestyle. Let me explain.

I was working this week in a place that has NPR (National Public Radio) continually playing in the background. One of the things I learned, is we can all go to a Summer Solstice event this weekend celebrating the Summer Solstice that happens today. How American is that, we have to make our paganism fit our narcissistic schedule, with no concept that there is a real world, sunrise, and longest day that we missed.

Furthermore, I learned that in the State of Washington we are soon going to have toll highways and bridges to pay for us to develop the infrastructure to collect tolls and user fees. This is required because, we no longer can collect sufficient revenues from car license tabs probably even to pay for the licensing system. Someday some of this money might get down to really paying for something required, but that is doubtful, because infrastructure and maintenance is always funded after it breaks, with capital bonds. That is more expensive in the long run, but it makes us feel good about union construction workers getting paid to build something new, rather than union governmental workers getting paid to keep something working. The private sector functions at its best through government grants and handouts.

I also finished Ann Coulter’s book, “Godless: The Church of Liberalism.” It was a really funny book, except for the underlying truth, that we really do live in a evolutionary godless country. Reading between the lines I got the feeling that Ann was an “Intelligent Design” creationist. However, if you consider your profession to be a Conservative pundit, being a young earth creationist, would probably get you black listed from all appearances anywhere on the pundit circuit.

Christian acquiescence, I wondered how I was going to get to that Segway (sic) from my introduction. I do know that Ann’s book was designed with intelligence. Whether she is just an intelligent designer, or whether she really believes the Bible from Genesis to Revelation is between her and God, in which she truly believes. Before we can really have a debate on whether intelligent design is really all that is required to be a Christian, or just an evolutionary development within Christianity, you must first establish that evolution is bogus religion, philosophy, and it therefore follows bogus science. Hopefully, this book is a public first step toward removing the religion of evolution from our schools and public institutions. A real series of monkey trials in the making, but evolution is all about “inheriting the wind.”

This brings us to Christian doctrine. Traveling through Ballard last week I had the opportunity to stop at a store that handles all sorts of trashy merchandise and kitsch. Sure enough I was able to buy a bag of “warm fuzzies.” I got the bag of big warm fuzzies, rather than the big bag of little warm fuzzies. The point being the world is such a place today, that a little warm fuzzy probably is not adequate to provide you with the emotional support you require.

While I only learned this partially from Ann’s book, I suspect that warm fuzzies are more a guy type of thing, women really need a hug from another human personality when times are really bad. A ping pong sized ball of fluff is more than adequate for a man, especially if the warm fuzzy is in a bright color. I wonder if this has anything to do with feminization of the church? Aren’t men and women all just an evolved mass of primal ooze?

I suppose I worked for too much of my life around engineers and scientists. As I said last week, I am content to not be a good engineer or scientist, because I never really could develop enough faith to believe in evolution as a component of true science. However, a little cause and effect type of reasoning from self proclaimed good professionals has rubbed off.

Except in the case of evolutionary development, the more design information within an entity, generally the more predicable the entity when facing certain (environmental) factors. This is generally true in computer programs, tomatoes, and people. Emotions may be cataloged, but they really cannot be quantified, or at least I think a guy engineer would say that. Doctrine however, is information that can be crunched and either adopted or rejected.

Fundamental to all humanity is the desire to belong to a family, a group, a community. We are belonging creations. We can’t evolve that way, we were created that way. Virtually all the time we belong to groups that make us feel good, we reject groups that make us feel uneasy. To feel accepted we generally adapt to the group rather than try to change it into our own likeness. As I was once lectured, if we both agree on everything, then one of us is not needed, which is a harsh evolutionary statement, but to a certain extent there is a manner of truth within. We keep our true thoughts to ourselves to find acceptance, or maybe even just to keep our job. Carry this joining and falsifying our emotions in order to belong to the extreme, can make us mentally ill, but to a lesser degree, allows us to acquiesce to group reasoning, when a stand on the facts (information) is required.

Christianity in America has acquiesced to the evolutionary world to keep our jobs, and as a result we have lost our voice. As Ann’s book states this is really godless liberals against everyone else, but the crunchable facts state that there is very little discernible difference between the Church and the world, except for legalistic issues. Legalism is not morality, legalism is morality without context.

Radical Islam (to a lesser extent all Islam) practices it’s religion during the week. Godless evolution practices it’s religion continually, and Christians go to church on Sunday. Even the practice of celebrating the Summer Solstice is evolutionarily OK for the following weekend, because we are still evolving toward permanent situational Nirvana. However, true Christianity is built upon the foundation of law and gospel, not just law. Any good Lutheran or Calvinist will tell you that. They may not be able to tell you what that means, but at least that will give you enough information to begin to overcome your acquiescence.

Christians are not supposed to evolve, they are supposed to develop. Ask your pastor, or any pastor, about his (or her) development plans, and you will probably get a list of all sorts of huggy, warm fuzzy programs to win the lost. But think about it for a moment, the church never was, nor never will be called to win the lost. The church is called to preach the gospel, in the context of an unattainable holy standard of God’s righteousness. If the gospel is only presented as a Sunday thing, as you work your way through the Bible, or in a context of acquiescent sensitivity, it really is not the gospel presented in the requirements of the New Testament.

Scribes and Pharisees were the religious leaders of Jesus time. When he walked into church he was not greeted with a warm fuzzy and a hug. In fact, he was responsible for throwing them out of the temple. Law and gospel cannot be proclaimed in a seeker sensitive huggy fuzzy way, because it was designed, not by a great designer, but by God to be offensively offensive. Sometimes the truth hurts, but the truth also saves.

The Bible was also written in an offensively offensive way. In the beginning Elohim created the heavens and the earth. Between that and a chaotic description of that creation, is no slightest inkling of a gap of millions of years, or the fall of satan, or starting again because you didn’t do it right the first time. Stretching the seven day week of creation into millions and billions of years through theistic evolution is also a figment of a creative exegesis to worldly acquiescence.

I’m not against hugs and warm fuzzies, what I am saying is truthfully hugs and warm fuzzies are a waste of time and resources unless they are built upon the information of Absolute Truth. Now what is the greater problem in life, getting a hug from a hypocrite who thinks he is a saint, or getting a hug from a saint that knows he is a hypocrite?

What passes as evangelical Christianity today is the former and is a type of acquiescence that not only allows evolutionist to think that they are not religious people, but also makes many of those raised within the church question the whole of the Christian message when they realize reality is not fostered by what would Jesus do, never knowing that true Christianity is built upon what Jesus did.

What Jesus did, is what must lead the parade of all our human attempts to love and be loved. Therefore, much of Christianity today will not stand the test of time because of its acquiescent nature. Christians must be living symbols of God’s grace in human form for that is the truth by which we find reason and hope in life, it is not in acquiescence to the world of evolutionary materialism. Get over it, the world does not love you, the world never will love you until you become one of them. If you acquiesce to those desires you become as Esau, trading your Christian birthright for a single bowl of lentil stew.

Our latest Chronicles:

Creation Speaks; PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/creationspeaks5-10-6.pdf
It’s all about time; PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/abouttime5-17-6.pdf
Rootless in the world; PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/rootless5-24-6.pdf
Unity in Diversity; PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/unitydiversity5-31-6.pdf
Evolved Units; PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/evolvedunits6-7-6.pdf
Chaos Economics; PDF link: http://www.wondersprings.com/2006pdffiles/chaoseconomics6-14-6.pdf