The Bloggy Pulpit of Lindsy Stephenson Jr.

Rita and Our Fears

2005-09-25T21:38:00.000-04:00

In the hours before Rita struck, Perry warned of a catastrophe and asked the nation, "Say a prayer for Texas."

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/349675p-298277c.html

It now appears that the College of Intercessors convened again, and that Texas was indeed spared.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5302263,00.html

SABINE PASS, Texas -- As Texans watched Hurricane Rita _ at one point a terrifying Category 5 storm _ spinning in the Gulf, they didn't see a best-case scenario. The storm was on track to slam Galveston and drench flood-prone Houston.

If it moved north, the Golden Triangle of the petroleum industry would get a direct hit.

But the storm weakened slightly and made landfall in a tiny, evacuated shrimping village surrounded by marsh and a wildlife refuge, perhaps the best place to avoid deaths and economic damage.

"Even though the people right here in Beaumont and Port Arthur and this part of Orange County really got whacked, the rest of the state missed a bullet," Gov. Rick Perry said.

It strikes me now that God may have allowed the worst that happened during Katrina so that He could spare the many more who where in danger of Rita. Without Katrina, I think it was possible many more would have perished during Rita then did. It is with prophetic wisdom that William Cowper wrote:

God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform;
He plants His footsteps in the sea
And rides upon the storm.
http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/g/m/gmovesmw.htm

And William Cowper knew where of he spoke. Cowper’s life was blighted by depression, but by that means, also infused with poetry and genius.

When I mention the “College of Intercessors,” I am, of course, joking. But only a little.

Yes, there are websites dedicated to intercession, and there are persons who have the ministry of intercession. But by the expression “college of intercessors,” I mean all those who, at a given point in time, are moved to pray for a specific event and a specific group of people concerned with that event. Anyone, anywhere, at anytime may matriculate. But the Dean chooses who He will assemble and when. The governor of Texas asked the nation to pray for his state. And the Dean almighty assembled His college, person by person, as He willed. And Texas, on that day, and at that time, was spared the worst.

What put me in mind of using that expression was an actual college of intercessors that existed during World War II.

Some time before W.W.II, Rees Howells, the famous Welsh intercessor, founded the Bible College of Wales. From its founding, the faculty and students of the college were very deeply involved in intercession. Eventually, much of this intercession became about world evangelism, and then became strategic.

Every Creature must hear; therefore, the doors must be kept open. Their prayers became strategic. They must face and fight the enemy wherever he was opposing freedom to evangelize. God was preparing an instrument - a company to fight world battles on their knees.

http://www.byfaith.co.uk/paulreeshowells.htm

And so there were many battles of W.W.II in which this College of Intercessors became an invisible participant.

For more on this obscure band of prayer warriors, see Norman Grubb’s Rees Howells:Intercessor.

Katrina and Our Tears

2005-09-06T17:47:00.000-04:00

“Be still, and know that I am God” Psalm 46:10

“Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was.” Job 2:13

“Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints.” Psalm 116:15

I will admit to being a bad blogger. I had all this time to fill these pages with all kinds of Biblical bloviations. Indeed, my usual problem is shutting up when it comes to spiritual things. I had planned on putting a post a week on this blog - or even a post a day- and there by keeping my link to Twenty-Seven Metaphors to a Grasp of Happiness alive and kicking. But instead, the Lord decided that, after writing Concrete Christian Prayer, I should be still for awhile.

Now the time for truly being still has arrived, and the Lord bids me now to speak.

As I write this, there are babies in Louisiana that are dying in their mother’s arms from dehydration and hunger because they cannot be reached by anyone in time enough to save them. When I speak of stillness, I am not speaking of physical stillness. In all the bureaucratic confusion brought on by Katrina, there has been enough of that.

I speak rather of stillness of the tongue, and reflection on the mystery of God’s ways upon the earth. If there are events that can cast doubt in our minds about God’s intentions towards man, it is surely events such as we have seen this week in Louisiana. If there are events that can tempt us to “curse God and die,” (Job 2:9) it is surely these that we have seen in New Orleans.

Those of us who interceded with God over Katrina’s approach to New Orleans saw our prayers answered in that the worst was averted at the last possible moment:

Katrina Costly, but Not As Big As Expected

By MATT CRENSON, AP National Writer Tue Aug 30, 7:26 PM ET

Devastating as Katrina was, it would have been far worse but for a puff of dry air that came out of the Midwest, weakening the hurricane just before it reached land and pushing it slightly to the east.

The gust transformed a Category 5 monster into a less-threatening Category 4 storm, and pushed Katrina off its Big Easy-bound trajectory, sparing New Orleans a direct hit — though not horrendous harm.

"It was kind of an amazing sequence of events," said Peter Black, a meteorologist at the Hurricane Research Division of the federal government's Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050830/ap_on_re_us/katrina_how_big

But then our jubilation was turned into sorrow and agony as the reports of dying babies, perishing elderly, and declining sick came to our eyes and ears in real time - and continues to, even now. We who are sitting behind our newspapers,in front of our television sets, and at our computers agonize over this because we know that even the people who know what to do about it, and are doing something about it, will not able to reach them all in time.

Sean Penn, the actor, is being laughed at right now because he had taken a launch out to Louisiana to see who he could save, and instead needed to be saved himself when his launch turned out to have a leak. Why are we laughing at him? He is one of the few people who have taken seriously the point of Christ’s parable of the good Samaritan: “Go, and do Thou likewise.” (Luke 10:25-37). But even those who are doing “likewise” are being hampered.

Our agony over this tragedy is our temptation to curse God and die. To curse the Ground of our being. To curse the one Who is “the upholding of all things by the word of his power” (Hebrews1:1-3) - which “things” include even our very selves.

This brings me, of course, into the territory of theodicy, as theologians have called it in their dry studies and very neat categories.

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=theodicy

the·od·i·cy n. pl. the·od·i·cies

A vindication of God's goodness and justice in the face of the existence of evil.

There it is, in neat print, suitable for a seminary class or a sunny Sunday’s sermon. A word for what there can be no words for. A word suitable for a seminary class, or a sunny Sunday’s sermon, but not for those sentenced to smell rotting human flesh, see their loved one’s perish slowly before their very eyes, and hear the sound of insects swarming over neighbor’s bodies.

No, for these - and those of us who agonize with them - definitions, categories, and words on a page will never do. What we are left with is a profound and bitter mystery.

Profound enough to tempt us in the deepest recess of our being: our relationship with God. And mysterious because a mystery is what is dark to our understanding, and few things are darker than these events happening now. It is as if the whole of Louisiana has been turned into one vast, open-air death camp. A holocaust, not of fire, but of water, mud, heat, decay, and insects.

I am not here going to use the Bible to attempt to dispel this darkest of all dark mysteries. And I have no liking for those who do. In the Bible’s book of Job, there is no attempt to do that. God, in the end, never told Job why he let Job suffer so horribly. A.W. Tozer has remarked on the fact that even if we know everything there is to know in the Bible, there will still be mysteries we will never penetrate in this life. David A. J. Seargent summarizes Tozer as follows:

In Tozer’s opinion, spiritual truth is one and the various truths revealed in Scripture are various facets of this one truth. The Christian is called upon to embrace them all, even to the extent of accepting equally what, when examined by reason alone, appear to be contradictory statements. By faith he is to accept that these only appear to be in opposition, and that the contradiction may not be resolved until the next life. There is a hint here that a truly complete system of theology, and therefore the temptation to pride in intellectual accomplishment that such would bring, is an idle hope. The teaching of the Bible is not totally comprehensible within the boundaries of the human mind. We cannot understand its message totally by thinking. It invites us to stretch our thinking to the limit and then shows us that even this limit is not nearly far enough. Beyond lies the deepest of all Mysteries, dark to the intellect, frequently paradoxical to the reason, but radiant to the heart and spirit. One's Biblical theology is overtaken by the Mystical before it reaches the Systematic!

David A. J. Seargent,Lamps On The Candelabrum: Five Evangelical Mystics

http://www.ebookmall.com/authors/dajseargent/

What I am instead going to do here is give you a few planks to tie together and hang onto if your faith in God has suffered shipwreck (1 Timothy 1:19) by what has happened this week. These are the bloviations of a long term reader of the scriptures. I am turning forty-nine this month. And the subject matter of theodicy, and I, have had a long acquaintance.

When I was a small child watching cartoons on television, I changed the channel one sunny Saturday morning and encountered a documentary on Adolph Hitler that had a brief clip of the operations of a death camp. I got to see the body of a child concentration camp victim going down a slide into a pit of hundreds of other bodies. When I was in high school, I was kicked out of the National Honor Society because I couldn’t complete an Honors English term paper on the poet Shelly. This was because I had seen a cover of Newsweek magazine that had a picture of an Israeli soldier holding the body of a small child who had a bullet hole in its head from a Palestinian terrorist. When I was thirty or so, I suffered a major episode of depression after seeing a clip on Nightline about boating safety in which a state trooper had briefly lifted a tarp on the body of a young teenage girl which was wearing a bright festive green bathing suit. Yes, you may have seen, or even experienced, worse things, but I assure you that I am familiar with the territory of the subject matter of theodicy.

So here are some planks I’m giving you that I have salvaged for my own faith.

“we spend our years as a tale that is told.” Psalm 90:9.

How so? How are our lives like a tale that is told? Well, like a tale, our lives have a beginning, and middle, and eventually an end. And at the end, there is a point, or a meaning, or a lesson. But the point, or meaning , or lesson may escape us, while being plain to someone else.

The hare in the fable of “the Tortoise and the Hare” did not realize that he was giving a lesson about over-confidence. The grasshopper in the story of the “the Grasshopper and the Ants” did not know he was giving a lesson about imprudence.

Likewise, none of us really knows what the true lessons of our lives are going to be until our lives are ended. At the judgment seat of Christ, all Christians will give an account of their lives. (2 Corinthians 5:10). They will tell their tales. At the Great White Throne judgment (Rev. 20:11-15), “books” shall be opened, and the lives of all those set for judgment, “great and small,” shall be broadcast for all to hear. It is then that the point, meaning, purpose, and lessons of our lives on earth will be made plain, whether that is for well or for ill.

And our lives are also like a novel. Like a big, baggy, long novel, like War and Peace. There are many characters in it. There are a lot of subplots and twists and turns. And it is easy for the point of our lives to be lost in all the things that go into them. But unlike a novel, our lives on earth also have a lot of clutter and random stuff in them that do not serve to advance the plot or clarify the meaning of what our lives are for. One of the differences between art and life is that art is an attempt to sort and sift the junk out of life so that life’s meaning may be glimpsed, however fleetingly.

If we understand our lives this way, then we may find it maybe a little easier to understand why tragedy is sometimes allowed to come into them. The chief thing that tragedy does is concentrate our attention. The actual quote Dr. Samuel Johnson is famous for saying is "Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully."

But more satisfying than that is what writer Anne Lamott has to say about tragedy. She once went through a time when it was unclear whether or not her son had a fatal blood disease or not (It turned out to be an allergy). She had this to say about the experience of parents suffering through tragedy striking their children:

I have noticed that the people I know whose children are sick have had so much stripped away. And I've been watching them survive, with mostly enormous grace. I shake my head slowly in wonder. I've seen them get immersed against their wills into the very seats of their souls. They've been pushed down into the depths so entirely, in surviving something that can't be survived, that it left them wide open. Then one by one their friends showed up and stepped into that opening, wide as the mouth of a cave, and that helped them hook into something so big. I don't even know what it is. Maybe it's the stripped down moment of it all, so much bigger than the grasping, crying; maybe it's being hooked in to so much more of the life that surrounds us, and shimmers. The common denominator was that, little by little, all of them found themselves stunned and humbled by their friends' love. Their friends' love turned out to be the word of God. Their friends' love was God passing by. Traveling Mercies

This, in a nutshell, is why I believe God allows tragedy to strike. It’s a way of causing us to sort and summarize everything in our lives down to just one question: Shall I curse God and die, (Job 2:9) or shall I bless Him and live? (Job 42:5,6).

“One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question:

"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."

Matthew 22:35-38.

And this is what the lessons of our lives will be about when we are judged either at the judgment seat of Christ, or at the Great White Throne. It is one of the reasons why we cannot now understand what lessons our lives are teaching. The lessons our lives teach are about something, or rather Someone, who is a lot higher and more substantial then all the other things that have been in our lives.

“And whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple, verily I say unto you, he shall in no wise lose his reward.” Matthew 10:42.

“Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?' Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!' “ Matthew 7:22-23.

There will be many pleasant and unpleasant surprises at these two judgments days. It is to spare us from some of these surprises that God sometimes takes us through tragedy. We must, at some point in our lives, sort the loves of our lives into some kind of order. Tragedy takes the bulk and clutter of our lives, which can be spread out over many years or few, and boils them all down into one question: God, or not God? Heaven or Hell?

And instead of this question being asked and re-asked over months and years and decades, it is instead asked in weeks, days, hours, or even minutes or seconds. The thieves crucified with Christ had only a few more excruciating hours to live after a life of wickedness. One of them asked Christ to remember him when He came into His kingdom. The other did not. Christ took the one who asked into paradise with Him. The other He did not. The Columbine martyr, Rachael Scott, had only seconds to re-affirm her faith before she was murdered.

It is for such a final showdown and cut-to-the-chase that God brings tragedies on us, speakable or unspeakable. It is, as C.S. Lewis once told a man whose much beloved wife was dying, “a severe mercy.”

The testimony of history is that from time to time, these kinds of tragedies can occur on a massive scale that involve hundreds, or thousands, or millions of individuals. And it is the testimony of history that they can occur within the time frame of either seconds (as a result of a bomb) or years (during a war). In the years I’ve been on this planet, I’ve come to realize that mankind seems to get seized by these paroxysms of mass tragedy both repeatedly and seasonally.

The Black Death. The Inquisition. The Witchcraft frenzy. The French Revolution. The Armenian Genocide. World War I, The Influenza of 1918. The Soviet Collectivization. World War II. The Bataan Death March. The Nazi Holocaust. Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Chinese Communist Famine. The Cambodian Genocide. AIDS. The Balkan ethnic cleansing. The Rwandan Genocide.

These mass tragedies can come from nature (a plague, a flood, an earthquake) or from man (as a crime, a war, a mass frenzy). But the Bible assures us that they all ultimately come from the hand of God and are His instrument in dealing with the souls of men. “When a trumpet sounds in a city, do not the people tremble? When disaster comes to a city, has not the LORD caused it?” (Amos 3:6).

In many ways, these mass tragedies are like a seaonally re-occurring harvest. A full dress rehearsal for that final harvest that shall one day come:

Matthew 13

24 Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field:

25 But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way.

26 But when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also.

27 So the servants of the householder came and said unto him, Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy field? from whence then hath it tares?

28 He said unto them, An enemy hath done this. The servants said unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up?

29 But he said, Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them.

30 Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn.

36 Then Jesus sent the multitude away, and went into the house: and his disciples came unto him, saying, Declare unto us the parable of the tares of the field.

37 He answered and said unto them, He that soweth the good seed is the Son of man;

38 The field is the world; the good seed are the children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of the wicked one;

39 The enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels.

40 As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire; so shall it be in the end of this world.

41 The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity;

42 And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.

43 Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.

But does God cause these mass tragedies directly? No. He lets human free will, and the free will of fallen angels, have their way. Consequences come of that. And from those consequences, many, many individuals, in a short space of time, are harvested and sifted like wheat as Satan sifted both Job, and the apostle Peter (Luke 22:31).

To us, an individual can get lost in something that happens to millions and millions of people. But not to the eternal God, who is outside of time and space, and is in fact their creator. “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered.” (Matthew 10:29,30)

My older brother was one of the last of the Army’s draftees after the Vietnam War was over. He told me that when your are put into an extreme situation like being taken into an army, you will go to either one extreme or another. What you are will truly come out. If you are really a Christian, you will really become a Christian. If you are not a Christian, then you will really become the opposite of one who knows Christ, whether you want that to become apparent or not. What you really are will become manifest. (My brother later went back to Germany to run a Christian serviceman’s center there).

In the Nazi concentration camps, there was concentration indeed. There were those inmates, who for the promise of a few more days to live than their neighbors, voluntarily helped their captors in their work of wickedness. But there was also Victor Frankel who constructed his philosophy of Logotherapy and wrote “Man's Search for Meaning.” And there was also Corrie Ten Boom, who was able to forgive one of her captors when the weight of his sins finally brought him to Christ.

In the Japanese civilian prison camps of WWII, there were “respectable”allied women who eventually prostituted themselves to their captors for the sake of better treatment. But there was also Darleen Deibler Rose, a lady missionary who endured even torture and overcame all in Christ.

These re-occuring tragedies are the alembic of eternity that distills the substance of individuals and brings forth who and what they truly are for God and to God.

Jeremiah 24

3 Then said the LORD unto me, What seest thou, Jeremiah? And I said, Figs; the good figs, very good; and the evil, very evil, that cannot be eaten, they are so evil.

4 Again the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,

5 Thus saith the LORD, the God of Israel; Like these good figs, so will I acknowledge them that are carried away captive of Judah, whom I have sent out of this place into the land of the Chaldeans for their good.

6 For I will set mine eyes upon them for good, and I will bring them again to this land: and I will build them, and not pull them down; and I will plant them, and not pluck them up.

7 And I will give them an heart to know me, that I am the LORD: and they shall be my people, and I will be their God: for they shall return unto me with their whole heart.

8 And as the evil figs, which cannot be eaten, they are so evil; surely thus saith the LORD, So will I give Zedekiah the king of Judah, and his princes, and the residue of Jerusalem, that remain in this land, and them that dwell in the land of Egypt:

9 And I will deliver them to be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth for their hurt, to be a reproach and a proverb, a taunt and a curse, in all places whither I shall drive them.

This, in my opinion, is what has happened, and is still happening in Louisiana right now. The day’s news has just now supplied me with but one example of what I am talking about: here:

Some evacuees see religious message in Katrina flood

By Adam Tanner

HOUSTON (Reuters) - In the last week, Joseph Brant lost his apartment, walked by scores of dead in the streets, traversed pools of toxic water and endured an arduous journey to escape the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in his hometown New Orleans.

On Sunday, he was praising the Lord, saying the ordeal was a test that ended up dispelling his lifelong distrust of white people and setting his life on a new course.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050904/ts_nm/church_dc_1

“It is good for me that I have been afflicted; that I might learn thy statutes.”

Psalm 119:71

“Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground, and worshipped, And said, Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.’ In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly. Job 1:20-22

Are there those of us who do not care for this? Do we charge God foolishly, as Job’s wife did? Yes. But what are we complaining of when we do that? We are complaining that God is “playing God.” And the illogic of that should temper us somewhat, but rarely does. We are emotionally involved with the outcomes that occur, and we believe that God has no “skin” in them, Himself.

But that is not true.

God does not merely “play” - as the account of His labor in creation seems to suggest when He calls His creation “good”, “good”, and even “very good.” He is also at “work” in His creation. His sabbath rest on the seventh day has been disturbed ever since the first man sinned and fell away from His fellowship. And He has completed a labor which He is bringing to ultimate fruition in due time.

“For God is my King of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth.”

Psalm 74:12.

Matthew 12

38 Then certain of the scribes and of the Pharisees answered, saying, Master, we would see a sign from thee.

39 But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation [adulterous for loving other things than God] seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas:

40 For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

It is here now that I possibly take a small step from the sublime to ridiculous in an illustration I will use, but I think it is an illustration that gets my meaning across until I can think of a better one.

The illustration is this. Human beings have sub-created worlds of their own on the personal computers they now have. Some of the worlds, or “sims” are wargames. In some wargames, the value of a military unit is derived within the game by how much game time its takes for the unit to be “built” in the game. A “warship” in the game that takes six units of elapsed game time has more “value” and “strength” in terms of the game, then a “warship” that takes one unit of time to create. In the game, the lost of the six time unit warship will be “felt” more keenly then the one time unit warship.

But with all computer games, there is something called a “cheat code.” A way of circumventing the game’s own programming that the developers of the game use while they are creating the game. When a player decides to use a “cheat code” to suddenly create a six time unit warship in one unit of time, the felt value of that unit is tangibly reduced by the player doing so. The lost of that warship in the game is felt less keenly. Indeed, the play of the entire game is felt less keenly. It seems less “real” to the player when the cheat code is used.

In another analogy, it's like playing checkers and suddenly deciding you will crown all your peices whether they have reached the end of the board or not. The value of the particular game being played has been destroyed by doing that.

The point I am making by this illustration is that when God created us and then entered our world (or "sim") in the person of His eternal Son, Jesus Christ, He did not at any time use a “cheat code” that caused any one of us to lose value to Him. The proof of this is in both the garden of Gethsemane where He prayed before giving Himself up to the crucifixion, and in the crucifixion itself:

Matthew 26

36 Then cometh Jesus with them unto a place called Gethsemane, and saith unto the disciples, Sit ye here, while I go and pray yonder.

37 And he took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be sorrowful and very heavy.

38 Then saith he unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me.

39 And he went a little farther, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.

40 And he cometh unto the disciples, and findeth them asleep, and saith unto Peter, What, could ye not watch with me one hour?

41 Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.

42 He went away again the second time, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done.

43 And he came and found them asleep again: for their eyes were heavy.

44 And he left them, and went away again, and prayed the third time, saying the same words.

Luke 22

44 And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.

Matthew 27

45 From the sixth hour until the ninth hour darkness came over all the land.

46 About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?"—which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

The metaphorical “cup” which Christ begged the Father to let pass from Him contained the consequences of all human free will, for all time, that are in opposition to what and who God is. In His crucifixion, Christ drank it to the last bitter drop, “that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.” (Romans 3:26).

If God from time to time subjects great masses of people to the alembic of eternity, it is only because in the person of His Son, He has under gone it first, Himself, and knows experientially what it is like to be there.

I said before that God never explained to Job why He allowed Him to suffer as he did. And one consequence of that is the long season of reasoning Job and his not-too-helpful friends engage in for most of the book of Job.

That reasoning is followed upon by many, many others who read the book of Job - for the book of Job is one of two books in the Bible that appeals to the secular mind as it does ot the spiritual mind. (Ecclesiastes is the other.) In all the secular commentary on the book of Job, there has always been this commentary on the fact that God never explains the why of Job’s suffering to Job. Instead, the secular mind points to God’s visible manifestation in the form of a whirlwind (a tornado!) and God’s majestic speech to Job, and calls this “brow beating.” For in that majestic speech God made to Job, God says, in affect, “I’m God! What right have you got to ask me questions?” But it is an assumption that God had not answered Job in the end. Job states plainly that he finally did understand the why of all his sorrows.

“My ears had heard of you

but now my eyes have seen you.”

Job 42:5

The supposed brow beating Job got in of the last chapters of Job was not in fact a brow beating. It was in fact the LORD God of all existence doing Job the inestimable favor of presenting Himself to Jobs’ very hungry eyes as the Supreme Object of worship.

The defect of Job’s religion, that the LORD God wanted to get at and change, was that Job’ religion was a religion. It was something he had heard, and picked up second-hand from others. God wanted Job to have the reality of Himself as a Presence that could be seen. That could be sensed, that could be felt.

“Blessed are the pure [unadulterated ] in heart, for they will see God.” Matthew 5:8

The purpose of any alembic is to purify. And the testimony of all those who have gone through the alembic of eternity and come out the other side is that being through it was the first time they ever experienced God’s presence in reality. And that is because He always precedes us there. If we are His, then when we are put into the alembic ourselves, we will find Him to be present there with us in someway tangible to our being, and nourishing to our spirits, even as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego did when they were cast into Nebuchadnezzar’s fiery furnace. (Daniel 3).

“Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, Looking unto Jesus the author [ originator ] and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.” Hebrews 12:2

So be it!

Lamb of God! when we behold Thee
Lowly in the manger laid;
Wand'ring as a homeless stranger
In the world Thy hands had made;

When we see Thee in the garden
In Thine agony of blood,
At Thy grace we are confounded,
Holy, spotless Lamb of God!

C.M.

Little Flock 1881 Edition

Internet Evangelism Day, April 24, 2005

2005-04-24T11:01:00.000-04:00

[ I have advanced the date of this post to keep IED on top.]

I am gearing up for Internet Evangelism Day, April 24th, 2005. I should have my book on Concrete Christian Prayer available by then. My Twenty Seven Metaphors is already out there, as you can see.

Why internet evangelism is becoming vital.

It appears right now that there are not many people who even know about IED, even in Christian circles.

http://ied.gospelcom.net/ is the main website for IED as far as I can tell. All other web mentions of IED refer back to this site. Other bloggers have mentioned the lack of awareness of it.
http://www.e-vangelism.com/2005/02/internet-evangelism-day-whos-talking.html
Jesus Tribe
http://www.theooze.com/blog/index.cfm

And that is supported by this website ranking website:
http://chart.crossmap.com/website/internet-evangelism-day-awareness-day/135.htm

Here's other bloggers mentioning it.
http://www.prodigalgod.com/blog/
http://www.technorati.com/cosmos/search.html?rank=&url=ied.gospelcom.net&fc=1
http://livingsacrifices.blogspot.com/2005/02/waste-not-want-not.html

Here's a forum discussion on it that shows how well its going to be received by those concerned.
http://www.belowtopsecret.com/thread120069/pg1

Other websites mentioning IED with more than a blurb and/or offering resources.
http://www.crosswalk.com/faith/pastors/1315530.html
http://www.acl.org.au/home/browse.stw?article_id=2293
http://www.pechurchnet.co.za/calendar/int_evangelism.htm
http://www.churchexecutive.com/News.asp?Article=2072
http://www.americandaily.com/article/5942
http://www.avitw.org/
http://www.strategicnetwork.org/index.php?loc=kb&view=b&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;fto=2530&&sf=Y

Misconceptions and reactions to IE day.
It's not necessary to ...

Why Internet Evangelism is Becoming Vital

2005-03-28T13:21:00.000-05:00

While prepareing for IED day, I have become aware of just how vital internet evangelism is becoming in the high-tech, muli-cultural, conglomerated world of today. As I was trying to post flyers for IED day, I discovered that:

1.) Public libraries are becoming more and more resistant to posting "religious" bulletins on their bulletin boards. Libraries are supported by public tax dollars, and are therefore becoming subject to "separate of church and state" regulations.

2.) The large food store chains that used to have public bulletin boards have now removed these boards either because they wish to either look more upscale, or to avoid litigation, or simply to avoid offending their customers with bulletins they may not care for.

3.) malls are private property and do not allow solicitation of any kind, let alone religious solicitation.

4.) a lot of the old time "mom and pop" stores that used to allow local bulletins to be posted have now been taken over by regional chains that have corporate policies against political and religious solicitation.

5.)Eating establishments and places of entertainment are private property and now usually run by a chain. These chains have corporate policies against the use of their permises for evangelism.

6.)College campuses have been enacting "hate speech" regulations that exclude Christian evangelism from their bulletin boards and platforms.

7.)People today mostly drive in their cars to and from work, or to and from malls and places of entertainment. The street preachers, while still allowed to preach on the street, are mostly being ignored.

The future is pointing to the day when the only evangelism that will be possible will be internet evangelism.

Comments can also be sent to tbpflsj@comcast.net.
There is no need to ...

Misconceptions and reactions to IE Day

2005-03-28T13:07:00.000-05:00

I'm seeing some little comments here and there. One person said he was going to "stay away from anything that has to do with electricity" that day. Another was concerned that IED was about a lot of SPAM being sent out.

Well, no IED is not about sending SPAM out. That is the one thing IED is NOT about. But I cannot speak for every Christian on the web and, lets face it, different Christians are at different stages of growth in their relationship with Christ. Some will do very immature things. Frankly, I'm more concerned about IED becoming a day for denial-of-service attacks on Christian websites.

As to the other comment, what can I say? The other possibly is that IED may see a catastrophe drop in web traffic along with Starbucks seeing an inexplicably giant bulge in sales. Not everybody goes to church on Easter.

But I think the likelier outcome will be that IED will come and go without too much friction and Christ will have some new friends and disciples. :-)

There is no need to ...

It went well.

2005-03-28T00:26:00.000-05:00

The boys were happy with their camoflage duct tape wallets. The girls all wanted custom design features unique to each of them. ;-)

For those of you who do not like my blog, here's a link to a very satisfying way of harmlessly expressing yourselves. The "Mars Attacks!" option is the one that most has the look and feel of vindictive graffiti. Knock yourselves out!

http://www.netdisaster.com/

Comments can also be sent to tbpflsj@comcast.net.
There is no need to ...

Duct tape wallets for Easter!

2005-03-25T22:12:00.000-05:00

Not my usual spiritual preparation for Easter, but a nice one for the five young nephews and four young neices I have. From the 3m company's helpful page I have learned how to make duct tape wallets. And from Lowes I have gotten white, black, grey, camo, and multi-colored duct tape. Tomorrow I'm going to knock myself out making each of these little people a colorful duct tape wallet. Hopefuly, I'll come up with something nice like these. You all have a happy Easter too. Try not to eat too much candy.
It's not necessary to ...

Internet Evangelism Day updates

2005-03-21T12:14:00.000-05:00

update 3/21/05

I've sent out about 171 notices to different churches in New Jersey and a few in Penn. I have received no reply from any of them. Is this possibly a case of Not Invented Here? Maybe not. It could be that they are waiting for someone to give them a Round Tuit. I have been given permission by ied.gospelcom to use their website URL in my flyers, but now I'm not sure if I should continue this, since nobody is responding.

update 3/16/05

I have been sending fliers out to various churches in NJ (to start with). I am not an official of ied.gospelcom, so I am only mentioning the date and referencing my Twenty Seven Metaphors blog book. About 127 have gone out so far. In addition, I'm sending them out to local libraries. At least my little neck of the woods will be somewhat covered.

There is no need to ...

What happened to Dot Bar's blog?

2005-03-16T06:01:00.000-05:00

What has happened to Dot Bar's blog? Her blog, The Bitter Christian looks like it's been hacked ...

UPDATE: It appears I've been overly imaginative and alarmist. Dot has simply restarted her blog at http://bitterchristian.blogspot.com instead of http://thebitterchristian.blogspot.com/
The ASSumption that her old blog had been hacked was mine. Sorry about that chiefs! :-)
Comments can also be sent to tbpflsj@comcast.net.

There's no need to ...

Hey, I'm a Schroeder!

2005-03-05T01:04:00.000-05:00

You are Schroeder!

Which Peanuts Character are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

How'd they find out about the neurosis bit? :-o
Doesn't matter anyway. I think anyone who keeps a blog going any length of time at all is going to score as a Schroeder, just like a lot of the them score either INFP or ENFP. It's the writing thing.

My Bloginality is INFP!!!

See! See!

Got the sign out!

2005-03-01T19:32:00.000-05:00

Whew! Got the sign out, now. That was a lot of work for an amature HTMLer.

The sign itself is courtesy of http://www.churchsigngenerator.com/ plus my own limited skills in Photoshop elements.
The free image hosting is courtesy of http: http://imageshack.us/

Are you all able to comment ok, or should I go to Haloscan? Let me know.

Now, having done all that, I'll tell you now that I am working on
a companion blog-book to Twenty Seven Metaphors to a Grasp of Happiness. http://twentysevenmetaphors-graspofhappiness.blogspot.com/
It is a book about prayer which I believe will be a little off the beaten path, but very eye-opening for people who don't believe prayer does much (of whom I used to number). I'm hoping to have it ready by Internal Evangelism Day, April 24, 2005.
http://ied.gospelcom.net/

So that is why I haven't been posting as often as I should to really get this blog going.

But at least I got the sign out!

Google's Autolink - a non-biblical bloviation

2005-02-27T06:27:00.000-05:00

I take a look at Blogdex.com to see what news and blogs all the other blogs are linking to, and today I saw the link to Yoz's post on the Google toolbar autolink option. "Hmmm," I said to myself, "Google's browser toolbar lets you press a button that adds its own hyperlinks to the text of any website the toolbar user is looking at."
I immediately had visions of Google turning The Bloggy Pulpit into a version of Beliefnet.com. (You know, having a line of text about the evils of Satanism on the left of the screen and then right next to it on the right are comments from a Satanist to the effect that "this xtian idiot doesn't know what he's talking about. etc, etc." That kind of thing).

So I did the next logical thing and loaded the toolbar to see what it did to the Pulpit.

The first thing it did was administer a swift kick to my ego by showing a PageRank box with absolutely NO green in it at all. Talk about being condemned to insignificance!

And then I clicked the Autolink button, only to see ...
a very dumb and meaningless mistake.

The dim bulb had taken "22. The cross" out of

has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation. Colossians 1:19-22.

The cross of Christ - both the one he took up and the one he bids us take up and follow him with - is for our Yugo-ishness It is so that

and turned it into a link to a goggle map address at "22 The cross,Buxton, Town Of,ME 04093." Which appears to be an address of no place in particular that I could complain about.

So at least the Pulpit is safe for now from impending beliefnetization. But what about in the future? The above dim bulb mistake is characteristic of the infancy of a new technology. What happens when other techniques like autolink begin to be implemented and refined by other vendors of information technology?

What if one day I posted a reference to Romans 1:24-27 and then find that various technologies have added to my post links to various dialogues of Plato on the subject of homosexuality, followed by links to Gay and Lesbian websites, followed a link to the North American Man Boy Love Association (NAMBLA).

I'm sure there are people who would consider some of that a good thing. But they should also consider that it cuts the other way as well. A Gay or Lesbian blogger could make a post to his or her site and later find out that besides links to Plato's dialogues, links had also been added to Bible quotations like Romans 1:24-27 as well as links to NAMBLA.

The technology of autolinking may indeed lead us one day to a beliefnetization of just about everything. It will truly be a complete and competitive "marketplace of ideas." Everything will be hawked from the all the concession booths. But it will be everything hawked from the same concession booths.

So we will have to ask ourselves, do we really want the marketplace to be that convenient?

The Practical Value of Extreme Theology

2005-02-21T23:48:00.000-05:00

I suppose my last post would be called an example of “extreme theology.” Certainly Christ’s statements, taken at human face value, could be considered extreme. And whether anything that might be called “theology” can be practical or not is certainly open to debate. But on reflection, I’ve come to see that it is in the extreme situations that Christ’s words, and what we make of them, become of the highest import to how we live our lives, and end them.

The fact of the matter is that all the tyrannies that now exist, and have ever existed, have all been based on the single simple idea of
holding hostage from us what ever it is that most of us hold dear in this world. Our own lives and well being. The lives and well being of those we love. The comforts of life that a good job or a good position give. The good opinion of our neighbors and friends. These are all earthly, temporal, and can have any tyrant’s hand laid on them, be that tyrant the ruler of a country, or a street gang on the corner. The hand of the tryant is the hand that can make us commit any sin under the sun if it is applied vigorously enough, and if we love anything else more than we love God (and take refuge in Him.)

It is in these extreme situations that the practical value of extreme theology becomes apparent. There is the story of the German headmaster who expelled his most brilliant Jewish student because he was afraid his Nazi bosses would take away his pension and throw him and his wife into poverty. There is the Sophie of Sophie’s Choice who let a Nazi soldier force her into deciding which of her two children would be allowed to live. More recently (in fact and not fiction) the Rwandan genocide showed us a bishop, some nuns, and a pastor of a church, who took part in the genocide for pretty much the same earthly reasons I’ve mentioned above, and because of an over-investment in their own ethnic identity that led them into a hatred for another ethnic group.

http://www.ebeneezer.net/main/special/christian/xtian.html

http://www.ictr.org/default.htm

And there was even more recently Saddam Hussein, Stalin’s most avid modern pupil. He was able to get his fingers on the throats of all those who loved their lives (and those they loved) more than they loved the God of Justice. Hussein threatened his enemies with the lost of all they loved, while bribing his friends with more of what they loved on earth than they could ever have used up. This is the true basis of tyranny and enslavement.

The German headmaster and his wife presumably ended up citizens of a penniless country destroyed by war and laden with ignominy. Sophie ended up committing suicide. Some of the members of the Rwandan clergy have been brought to trial. And Saddam Hussein and his friends are awaiting theirs. Those who have hoarded all their earthly loves to the exclusion of the heavenly, have ended by losing all.

Now here are the words of a contrary sort of love:

“Should I keep back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offense, I should consider myself as guilty of treason towards my country, and of an act of disloyalty toward the Majesty of Heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings. ...Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”

Patrick Henry, March 23, 1775.

“Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”

2 Corinthians 3:17

Our father's God to, Thee,
Author of liberty,
To Thee we sing.
Long may our land be bright
With freedom's holy light;
Protect us by Thy might,
Great God, our King!

My Country 'Tis of Thee

Comments can also be sent to tbpflsj@comcast.net.
Not getting the context? Click here.

The Lamborghini and the Yugo

2005-02-17T13:00:00.000-05:00

We are in a universe with a seemingly infinite number of objects. I’m using the word “object” in its philosophical sense of “something intelligible or perceptible by the mind.” Let us suppose, for a moment, that there existed a universe that consisted of only two objects.

One is a Lamborghini.
http://www.lamborghini.co.uk/home/
The other is a Yugo.
http://balkansnet.org/yugocar.html

Question : Which is the most worthy and valuable object in that universe of two objects?

Answer: The Lamborghini of course.

Now lets suppose that by some means these two objects in this two object universe were suddenly given the ability to contemplate an object, feel something towards it, and compare and value one object in preference to another.

Question: Would it be wrong for the Yugo to contemplate itself instead of the Lamborghini?

Answer: Yes, it would be wrong. The Lamborghini is the most valuable and worthy object in that universe. The only way the Yugo could attempt in anyway to attain to “Lamborghini-hood” in this universe would be for it to contemplate and hold in its mind, and prefer the Lamborghini. That would be the only way it could attempt to relieve itself of some of its “Yugo-ness.” To contemplate its own “Yugo-ness” would be to prefer the lesser and less valuable object in its universe.

Question: Would it be wrong for the Lamborghini to contemplate itself instead of the Yugo?

Answer: No, it would not be wrong. Again, the Lamborghini is the most worthy and valuable object in its universe. For the Lamborghini to contemplate the Yugo would be for the Lamborghini to aspire to a less worthy and less valuable state. It would lessen its own nature that way. It would descend into
“Yugo-ness” that way.

So what does this consideration bring us to? Very simply, an understanding of one of the harder sayings of Christ:

“Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. “ Matthew 10:36-38

Those who know Christ by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit of God (by grace) know that, as scripture says,

“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him,... “ Colossians 1:15-19

“Before all worlds” (before all created objects), there was the self-existent Godhead of three persons and one essence. 1.) The God the Father, the eternal, absolute, and invisible deity, who is invisible by being unexpressed. 2.) The co-eternal self-expression of the invisible God, God the Son, in whom God "was pleased to have all his fullness dwell." And 3.) the eternal subjective self-awareness of the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit of God. The Godhead existed before all created objects, and was the creator of all objects. Hence the Godhead is more worthy and valuable than all created objects. All created objects derive their existence from the Godhead, whereas the Godhead has eternal self-existence.

The self-existent God brought creation into existence and called it “good” six times and “very good” the seventh time (Genesis 1). He did that because “no one is good - except God alone” (Mark 10:18). Then he capped it by making man in his “own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” God brought creation into being so that it would be a kind of mirror that he could admire and contemplate himself in. This mirror includes the minds of human beings that he creates.

The ability to contemplate an object, feel something towards it, and compare and value one object in perference to another, is, practically speaking, what we call worship. By right of Creatorship, God has preeminence to all we value, hold worthy, and worship. The fact that the eternal Son had to become incarnate to tell us this (“Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” John 14:9) tells us that we have indeed been very “into” our own “Yugo-ishness.”

We have that “Yugo-ishness” by thought, by word, by deed, and by inheritance. It is, for the most part, all we perceive until the Holy Spirit of God reveals to us that:

“God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation.” Colossians 1:19-22.

The cross of Christ - both the one he took up and the one he bids us take up and follow him with - is for our “Yugo-ishness” It is so that we might attain to “Lamborghini-ship by adoption” (Romans 8:15,23). He took on our “Yugo-ishness” for our sake, so that he might give us the blessing of being able to contemplate him, feel towards him, and compare and prefer him to all other things. To love him with all our heart, all our soul, and all our mind, and thereby love our neighbor as ourselves. It is only by “Lamborghini-ship by adoption” that we are even a wit capable of doing any of that. And that was “the joy that was set before him.” (Hebrews 12:2).

“Praise ye the LORD. Praise, O ye servants of the LORD, praise the name of the LORD. Blessed be the name of the LORD from this time forth and for evermore.” Psalm 113:1,2

Have I an object, Lord, below
Which would divide my heart with Thee?
Which would divert its even flow
In answer to Thy constancy?
O teach me quickly to return,
And cause my heart afresh to burn.

Have I a hope, however dear,
Which would defer Thy coming, Lord-
Which would detain my spirit here
Where naught can lasting joy afford?
From it, my Savior, set me free
To look and long and wait for Thee.

Be Thou the object bright and fair
To fill and satisfy the heart,
My hope to meet Thee in the air,
And nevermore from Thee to part;
That I may undistracted be
To follow, serve and wait for Thee.

G. W. Frazer(1840-1896)
Little Flock Hymn book.

Comments can also be sent to tbpflsj@comcast.net.
Not getting the context? Click here.

Tapping the microphone.

2005-01-29T23:59:00.000-05:00

Testing. Testing. One, two, three, testing. ;-)