The Beginning is the End

The Beginning is the End. By this I mean, that what existed before the knowledge of evil will one day be what is considered “normal” again. Where we find ourselves today could hardly be considered normal when viewed through the looking glass of eternity. Ages, eons, decades, centuries, and millennia passed by before the first dark day appeared on the radar of time. It is hard for a human mind to grasp how much of our time passed before evil raised its head in perfection. Some think God created evil, but this is untrue. As life was always founded in our God, so death was always found in the opposite of Him. But ages passed and none chose to deviate from life, from love, from perfection. Till one day, the third most exalted being in the Universe broke trust with God, and decided to follow his own wisdom instead of that of the Almighty, and rather than serving others He asked the seemingly innocuous question – what about me?

When the focus of our existence is moved from making others happy to serving only our own needs we rediscover the knowledge of evil in our souls. Every act of malice, of neglect, every atrocity committed by one person against another can trace its roots back to a motive of serving self. Indeed it is trying to please the man in the mirror that requires our legal system of laws, edicts, and punishments to deter me from acting on my own interests at the expense of another. Serving another requires no such restrictions. Loving someone else requires no limits to my imagination. But me loving me must have definitive restrictions or all those around me will suffer for my cause. It is heaven’s irony that we can only find true fulfillment when giving all of ourselves to serving others. And it is heaven’s mystery that any sentient being would willfully turn away from life and love and consciously choose misery, pain, and death. Yet this is our reality.

In a time before it was measured, Lucifer turned away from God and became Satan. The transformation was not immediate, but it was deliberate. Lucifer’s argument that “different” did not by nature have to be “wrong” was illogical but persuasive. Offering an alternative to a dichotomy of only good and evil, Lucifer tried to position his alternative as just another choice. But how does one deviate from the source of all good things and find yourself anywhere you would choose to be? Straying from life can only by conclusion lead to death. Straying from happiness can only by nature lead to misery. Straying from fulfillment can only leave one hungry. So it was with Lucifer who became Satan. He strayed from all things good until what is evil consumed his every impulse. Evil is not to be trifled with. More than an aberrant concept, evil is addictive by nature, self-destructive by action, and causes any who embrace it to kill everything they love before finally seeking the peace of release only found in death.

Evil takes no responsibility or accountability for what it impacts or affects. And so Satan blames God for his very existence, and any action he may undertake. Satan places his own characteristics on God and tries to shift the focus from the evil he does to a perfect Father God. Satan’s reasoning is that since God has the power to stop evil or destroy it before it even ever existed, the fact that it does exist, makes God responsible for not stopping it. This argument as well lacks the logic of free-will. Free-will is not just the ability to make choices without being forced, it is the fundamental building block of love itself. If we are not free to love, or not love, then we cannot be said to love at all. Love is based on a choice, we choose to love, or not. Had God created sentient life with the ability only to love Him, but never choose not to, the love would be a lie. Sentient beings must have choice to love, in order for the love to be real at all. This choice has always been with us, and it will always be with us throughout the eons of time yet to come.

But then, how does the Creator of all life get rid of evil once it springs into existence? This question is further complicated by the fact that at that time, no other beings in the universe had any knowledge of what evil is truly like. They were blissfully ignorant that any choice outside of following God existed at all. They knew only peace, they knew only love, and they knew only contentment. These were not aspirations for the creations of God prior to our existence; they were what were considered the norm. Happiness was the way of life; no-one knew what sadness was firsthand. But they would learn. For the first time sentient beings saw what happened when love was rejected. The pain of rejection was one of the first forms of knowledge for the universe to encounter about the nature of evil. For you see evil is inherently connected with pain, they cannot be separated. The longer the pain of evil is delayed from the acts of evil, the larger the pain becomes. But it always comes.

So to rid the universe of evil, time must be allotted for all sentient life to witness what evil is like for themselves. “Proof” must be offered that alternatives to God end in evil, and all evil ends in death. Now that trust had been broken, choices must be made about where to place one’s faith in ideology. Lucifer was not stupid, and the effects of evil had only begun to take hold on him. Over time he would be more marred by what he embraced, but at the outset of this conflict of ideas he was universally known and appreciated as the third highest being. God sat on His throne, Christ at His right hand, Lucifer at His left. This was an honored position. The one who now only thought to serve himself had recently been known as a chief among servants. And so a third of the angels took heed of the cunning words of Lucifer and joined with him in breaking trust with God. The sadness multiplied.

Where once power was only valued in how it could be applied to improve the lives of others, now power was sought to rule in the stead of one’s enemies. Even Lucifer was aware there was no way to exceed the power or divinity of God, but if he could equal it, he thought to demand the attention and worship of the remainder of God’s creation. Where God was worshipped from hearts of love, admiration, and gratitude until now – Lucifer would be happy to be worshipped from hearts of fear, or minds bent under his control. What Lucifer wanted was the absolute control over life and death in order to keep his subjects in line. After all, what choice did he have, no one could love what he proposed, for his very proposals of serving self would conflict with worshipping him. People would love only themselves in his government and therefore have no incentive to worship Satan unless based solely on the fear of pain or non-existence. None of this could God allow.

But evil does not value reason, nor will it listen to the pleas of love. Evil demands domination and speaks only in terms of power and consequences. And so the unthinkable happened, in the very center of the universe, near the throne of God himself, there was war in heaven. War is not debate. War is not merely an argument. War is not just based on a battle of ideas, it is also founded in a physical struggle for supremacy between two opposing forces. Where once a city in perfect harmony existed, the invention of weapons would soon be another byproduct of the existence of evil. There was war in heaven. Christ and his angels, pushed out Satan and his angels. And Satan began looking for another base of operations he could call home. He went out to each world where God created sentient life and presented his arguments for an alternative to the kingdom of God. He was heard. But he was not accepted.

It was during this time, that the idea of creating man was presented within the Godhead. One could argue that it could not have come at a worse time. One could argue that Satan’s exclusion from the planning for our existence was one factor in his jealousy over the distinction he now recognized in Christ’s role over his own. Christ was always the Son of God, Lucifer only the archangel or highest of the created angelic hosts. But in an environment based on the outpouring of love this distinction was not nearly as pronounced until Lucifer was omitted from the discussions about man. Had his trust remained in place, this exclusion would not have been necessary. But as he had free-will to rebel against God, and fully intended to execute that will, he had to be omitted. Man would suffer enough under the rulership of God’s enemy without him having the inside knowledge on what was to come. But why now? Why under these condition? Is there no limits on free-will?

Love has no limits. And true love must always come from the choice to embrace it. So to delay our creation until evil was exterminated was to “load the deck” and risk that man too might someday choose to turn from God on his own. There was no reason to delay our creation if one truly believes in the power of love over evil. And God firmly believes in this premise, and has been proven right many times over. So in the middle of the greatest conflict of the ages, man was brought into existence.

Those Christians who say man was made to worship God have no understanding of what they say. If all God needed was more beings to worship Him, he could have simply made more angels, or any other assorted sentient being that he made before us. We were not created to fill a void in the ego of God. We were not created with a worship or die mantra tied to our necks. Rather, we worship God for the same reasons that all other life does – from a heart of love, admiration, and gratitude what He does for us all the time. Our worship is a voluntary reaction to our love, not a prerequisite of His approval. We cannot buy His affections, and yet cannot help responding to them. It is because we are loved that we love. It is because we are already loved that we respond. We are not looking to secure love with our responses, it has already been given to us. Anything we do is in recognition of what He has already done, not what He will do. For the end is the beginning, we already know He loves us, and will love us, for it is already so.

But where would humanity side in the conflict that raged on beyond our world’s domain? Would we be faithful to the God who created us and remain trusting in Him, or would we like the one third of angelic host decide to break trust with God and put it in ourselves. It is in this time that the story of our existence begins. It is set against this conflict that we sprang into existence. It is important for us to look back and study where we came from, value the lessons of our past, as we face the choices that will no doubt end our world. While we live in the closing chapters of our human species as we know it, there is still value in studying how it began. What the intent of our God was for us, where we went wrong, and why it will never happen again. All of this can be found in the first few chapters of the first book of the Bible. There is much in what Moses penned that we still have not learned, but can.

It is these lessons that evolution would undermine. As from the foundation of time, Satan wishes us to believe there is still an alternative to the dichotomy of good and evil. He presents us evolution as a scientific theory that can safely deny his own existence as well as God’s. Man is free to exist under the power of his own wisdom. Good and evil can then become subjective concepts left up to the conscience of each person if they have one. No need to seek to find something more, no need to try to fill the hole in our soul that cannot be quenched outside of finding our maker – only empty and vain pursuits that leave us with nothing. It is not the weak mind that embraces creation; it is the mind that hungers for something more than serving self can ever deliver. It is the enlightenment of His Spirit that can take us back into the love letter that is our Bible and begin again, reading what Creation has yet to teach us. This world is not our home. We were meant for something more. Let us return to the beginning and find out what it will be like past the end of time as we know it …

The 144,000 ...

There is a final prophecy that occurs at the end of time that sparks much interest and debate. It is a description of precisely 144,000 of God’s servants who are special in some way. Given the cryptic nature of this prophesy much discussion, study, and theorizing has occurred as to what its fulfillment might look like. Ever wonder if you could be a part of this special group of God’s servants? What would it take? In times past in the Bible, the biggest criterion for selection by God, was willingness to be selected. I wonder if it will be so again, or if this special reward will be granted based on another type of criterion.

References to the 144,000 can be found in Revelations chapter 7 and again in chapter 14. In both instances the 144,000 are seen in heaven surrounding the throne of God. Some of the verses describe their work as never ceasing, always close to God, able to sing a song only they are allowed to learn. The composition of the 144,000 includes 12,000 from each of the twelve tribes of Israel. We might have interpreted from this that they were 144,000 literal Jews who served God throughout Old Testament times, but later verses describe them as have had victory over the beast, faith in Jesus, and commandment keepers. They are further described as “virgins” having not been defiled with “other women”. Perhaps this means they were born into serving Christ, and have never served any other God than He in their entire lives (this view based on women often representing a church in the book of Revelations). There is no guile in them and they walk blameless before God. As all of us have sinned, perhaps this might refer more to our teachings about God being more accurate and less mixed with error than those we find around us.

The first references to the 144,000 is made as God tells the 4 angels holding back the winds of strife to hold on a bit longer until the 144,000 can be sealed. This would imply they are alive and well at the end of time, waiting to be permanently marked of God for His service. If so, I hope to be among them. But perhaps I have not thought that through completely  I base my desire to be in that number on a singular belief I hold; proximity is everything. Remember when you were a small child and were uncertain of the world around you. At times like those if you could see your parents around you, perhaps down the hall, or in the next room, your comfort level increased. You knew that even if they were not immediately at your side, they could be in seconds should the need arise. That made you feel good. Now take that feeling and amplify it a trillion times. Imagine what it would have been like to hear the words of Christ from His own mouth while He was here on earth. This is why the disciples argued over who would be closest to Him (apart from their own pride), being close to Christ was always the most enviable position.

Mary Magdalene had no issue hanging out at His feet. Let’s face it Christ was in human form, and human feet that walk long distances over rough terrain in nothing but leather sandals are not going to look or smell too good. This is why the practice of washing feet is still considered an ordinance of humility. One must humble themselves, to take on the service of such a dirty job for someone else they know. But in Mary’s world, Christ’s feet were more than enough – anything to be close to the Savior, even the less savory parts. Another woman who suffered of a lifelong disease felt the same way, she did not dare to even speak to ask for healing believing she need only touch the hem of His garment and she would be healed; and so she was. Being close to Jesus was life altering.

Now here we have a picture of the very throne of God Himself, where 144,000 people are selected and sealed to serve Him throughout all eternity, ever at His throne. They do not need sleep. They do not need food or water. They exist on serving Him, and doing as He asks. This is the highest ambition of any citizen of Heaven is to be able to do the will of God as He requests. To be useful in His purposes, to be needed, to be asked; this is the highest hallmark of service everyone there can ascribe to. And for 144,000 blessed individuals this is their life’s calling. I wonder if any of us can truly grasp the significance of this opportunity while still living under the curse of sin, in our current gloomy, self-centered world?

In heaven this kind of proximity to God on a full time basis is like icing on the cake. But in our world, we still pause to consider what full-time service to God might deny us from experiencing on our own. Being honest, we think about flying from world to world, talking with past Patriarchs like Moses and Noah, and Abraham. We think about eating fantastic fruit from the tree of life, and swimming or skiing in the river of life. We dream of petting animals that on earth would easily eat us, and wonder what our homes or mansions will be like. We fantasize about romantic relationships with a spouse from earth that can now be lived in the perfection of heaven. If we served God full time, would we still get to experience all that, or would it go away. More to the point, would we value in heaven what we think we value while still here in this condition. Or like the gold that is used as concrete in heaven, would all our earthly aspirations of heaven fade away in 10 minutes when placed against the prospect of being close to God forever.

Perhaps our minds are still clouded by the fog of our sin. Perhaps we have yet to learn that doing the will of God is the ultimate prize in any life including this one. This world does not make it easy to know what God’s will is for us while here on earth. It is clouded in the ambiguity of our iniquity, the fog of our sin, our selfish nature at war with His will. At least in heaven we can ask Him that question directly. But for me, I am taken back to when I was very very young, and quite content to play with my toys under the chair of my mother. I was fine and happy there knowing she was sitting directly above me. If I am so blessed, I hope to play with my toys under the throne of God Himself, fully contented to know He is sitting directly above me. Hoping to get some snuggle time in His lap if that is not asking too much. For despite being an adult, I recognize my infancy when confronted with the awe and majesty of the creator of ALL worlds. In the presence of the Father God, I am taken back to being two years old, hoping for His affection, and content to be close to Him in the same room, under His chair if needs-be. After all, I know He will be busy working above me, and I can’t figure to interrupt Him too often with my demands for attention.

I think we underestimate what being close to the source of ALL love might do to us. We have experienced love here only in such a limited capacity, sometimes afraid to embrace it fully for fear that an imperfect world will wound us greatly for showing a vulnerable side to another person. But when risk is gone and when perfection reigns, will our freedom to love without hesitation or limitation bring our entire existence to a new plain of consciousness? What will it do to the human mind and soul to be only feet away from the source of infinite love? Will it be like standing near the reverse of a black-hole instead of pulling light in, it shines light and love outward with equal force, or perhaps even greater force. Could our transient frames even expect to hold up in such close proximity to the source of all power, all love, and all grace?

The texts describe God as wiping away the tears of their eyes. I will need this. My unworthiness to even be saved is beyond comprehension. But to be rewarded as one of the 144,000 is a reward well above my pay-grade. I should be content to live in a rat hole along the south wall of heaven itself, locked in isolation after the life and deeds I have done. But to stand with the select few, is too great a reward for me. The level of love that would even consider this is too much for even a perfect being to comprehend. It would break me. It would break the perfect heart He created in me, even in the perfection of heaven. To be so undeserving and yet so rewarded would require constant wiping away of tears from my eyes. To daily witness the Lord and my God His Father, and to know the pain I caused them from my selfishness while in this life – this would cause me immense embarrassment, shame, and pain in my now perfected heart. An addict may not be fully accountable for the nature of his disease, but he remains fully aware of his actions while under its influence. My sin would haunt me for eternity, if God did not remove it from my memory. I believe this final gift of healing will be required to maintain sanity in the face of such love.

Then there is the work to consider. What will the 144,000 do that keeps them so busy? Will it require travel away from the immediate presence of God? Will we assist in the creation of new worlds and new life? Will we be a part of some sort of governmental or bureaucratic committee to take care of the ins and outs of running a multidimensional set of universes? I believe our minds are presently too limited to begin to guess at what He would have us to do. But to do the work of service will remain our reward for eternity. In this I am confident.

For those of us who do not merit inclusion in the 144,000 – God’s love for us will be no less. I imagine we will all find work, purpose, and fulfillment in our existence in the perfection of heaven. To simply experience fully the relief from slavery to sin will be reward enough for me. To be saved, once and for all time, to be made perfect by His grace – this is my highest ambition. Should I be fortunate enough to be selected to be within the 144,000 I will magnify His name for yet another of His gifts. But should I not merit inclusion in this number, I have equal confidence in His love and ability to save me, from me. And for this alone I can be eternally grateful.

The Purpose of Beliefs ...

It is an amazing phenomenon that while each Christian should be submitting their will to Christ and thus be led by Him to His truth, in His time, in His way – there are as many as 38,000 different denominations of churches who claim to follow Christ. At heart all Christians should be united in principles of love for each other, service to others, and submission to Christ – yet there remain differences that keep us segregated. Past the basics of salvation, could anything else be important enough to keep us apart? The call to preach the gospel to the entire world consisted of the teaching of Salvation (i.e. Christ’s death and resurrection on our behalf). It was combined with specific instructions to love one another as a witness to the world. On these principles most Christians seem to agree, so what remains to keep us so differentiated?

Doctrines appear to be the culprit. Doctrines are the accepted statements of belief of a given religious organization. They are designed to illuminate truth and make it clear to understand. They are usually constructed around a single topic or similar set of ideas and are put together to help both new and older members of a church to understand why a church teaches what it does. In fairness, Salvation itself is a doctrine of most Christian Churches. So of course not all doctrines are wrong by design. But then how do so many variations develop, and why do they persist over time? If Christ leads, why do doctrines differ? It is a conundrum not easily answered. It gives an Atheist a plausible response to a call from Christianity, to say – which version is “the” version?

Of course the simplistic answer is that whatever church I belong to is the “one” being led by Christ, with “all” the others simply mistaken in their interpretations of doctrines. But this logic quickly falls apart as no consistency can be applied with it. Many churches share doctrines with each other. It is not as if all 38,000 churches have completely unique applications of scripture. Many share history, traditions, philosophies, and ideas about God that inevitably leads to shared teachings or doctrines. But the ones that differ tend to be the ones that make a denomination distinct.

History and tradition play a role in this. New churches seem to spring up over differences in doctrines with a parent organization. The differences may be subtle and seemingly meaningless over a long term, but nonetheless they are an effective catalyst to see new denominations spring up. Catholics like to claim that they are the original Christian church, descending from the Apostle Peter himself right through to today. They credit their mere longevity as a sign from God that they are the “one” true church with every protestant Christian denomination as merely erring children who refuse to come home. Catholics maintain that salvation can only be found through membership in its organization, though this exclusionary teaching can be found in many other organizations as well.

Of course just because a church claims something to be true does not make it so. The Catholic Church formally began in about 300AD under Emperor Constantine who blended Roman pagan traditions of the day into the current Christian religion and formed a singular religious belief system later titled Catholicism. Constantine therefore would have been the first formal Pope, although Bishops existed in Christianity prior to Constantine and Catholicism. In point of fact, upon Christ’s ascension, the head of the early Christian church was based in Jerusalem until its destruction. The destruction of Jerusalem pushed Christianity into Asia Minor and around the Middle Eastern world, including both Rome and Constantinople. Later the leadership of the early Christian church seemed to divide into factions based in Rome in the West, and Constantinople in the East. Eventually this eastern group split from those in the west forming the first splintering of Christianity.

But at the same time a group of believers carrying the name Waldensians copied scripture by hand and disseminated it to the people in native languages. This practice was severely forbidden by the Catholic Church and as such, they hunted the Waldensians to exterminate them over hundreds of years, but without success. After more than 1200 years, the reformation began in earnest with leaders like Huss and Jerome, and Martin Luther. They split from the Catholic Church over the basic doctrine of Salvation itself. Protestants would have remained Catholic if the church would have revised its view of how Salvation is obtained (through Christ alone, not through the purchase of absolutions). But as the Vatican believed itself to be infallible, it would not accept change on matters of doctrine, and tried hard to extinguish the lives of these early reformers. They failed. And Protestant churches began springing up all over Europe.

It took many centuries of persecution to enjoy the religious freedoms we have today. When the Catholic Church held both religious and political power, it used this power to attempt to enforce its version of morality on the rest of the world. It killed millions during the inquisitions, and persecuted by practice anyone who challenged its ideas on faith, science, or morality. This object lesson would be well spent on today’s Protestant churches who continue to seek political power to unite with religion once again. Power does not help a Christian church, it corrupts it. Men are not equipped to wield power very well, when combined with religious fervor; it is a recipe for the murder of millions.

Sometime later a doctrine arose within many protestant churches that Christ would return in October 1844. The teaching of the cleansing of the temple prophecy carried worldwide acclaim and was taught with regularity in many different versions of Christianity. A great religious revival preceded the target return date for Christ’s second coming, but when it failed to materialize, most left their respective faiths, or resumed a nominal relationship with Christ and the church. Out of this great disappointment, members from the Methodist, Lutheran, Baptist, and Presbyterian churches continued to study the prophecy to determine where they were wrong. The results developed into yet another new church entitled “Seventh Day Adventists”. This example of believers coming from different doctrinal backgrounds and holding to new teachings has been a common phenomenon in Christianity and is why we see so many denominations today.

Credit where credit is due, Catholics recognized that the multiplicity of Christian Churches does not reflect well on Christ and so started a movement back in the early 1970’s to reunite churches back into the fold. This Ecumenical movement was based on uniting Christianity around its basic common denominator (Christ) and leaving doctrinal differences as much less important. This effort has had some success, but the sheer number of remaining Christian denominations is a testament to the segregating power of doctrinal ideas.

Then enter the fanatics. In an effort to preserve the hierarchical power structure of a given religious organization, parishioners are taught to both live and die by their adherence to the specific doctrines of the church. The concept of Salvation itself is broadened to include obedience by its membership to ALL of the teachings that a particular church espouses. Thus what was originally designed to bring people closer to God by revealing truth, become tools to maintain a power structure within a religious organization. Why does this occur? The same reason it occurs in countries, governments, and companies, because it is usually accompanied with significant financial implications. Power and wealth are huge human motivators that work on our frailty, appealing to our base nature to serve self. When done in a religious construct we rationalize that the greater good is served by maintaining the “good” work of the church. Even if maintaining it, means adopting a dogmatic, if not fanatical approach to teaching its doctrines. We can rationalize almost any behavior including murder when done for God’s glory and honor. Though in reality, it is nothing more than our rationalization for self-service done in the name of our God – a blasphemy of every basic Christian teaching clearly taught in our Bibles.

So which religious organizations are guilty of participating in this kind of behavior? Unfortunately, almost ALL of them. And while you may take the word “almost” as meaning that “your” church as never done anything like this; consider that is how every Christian responds, and we know that this cannot be true. Any Christians who doubt this idea, should go talk to a Native American Indian such as the Mohawks, Mohicans, or the hundreds of other tribes wiped out in the name of “civilizing the savages by bringing them Christianity”. Those that still doubt, ask yourself this question – if obedience to ALL of your churches teachings is NOT so important why does your church never seem to evolve its doctrine? Why does it take the creation of a new church or the splitting of an existing one to embrace “new” truth? Hierarchies tend to have highly developed self-preservational instincts even if not by specific intent. While the financial rivers flow, denominations seem to defend their distinct identities.

So how do we fix it? How do we teach truth without compromise, yet break down the barriers between Christians that carry different sub-names? It begins with absolute humility. It begins by looking in the mirror and telling that person just how little he/she really knows. It begins by recognizing the folly of human wisdom, and need for divine instruction. All of our history must be placed in the trashcan, along with traditions that color our ideas of God and scripture – if we are ever to learn truth. We must become willing to accept the concept of being taught by God, of being led, rather than doing the leading. We must be humble enough to accept instruction in the methods He chooses to offer it to us. We sometimes think of ourselves as “above” learning from those who are not as “smart” as us, or not as “experienced” as us, or not as “spiritually mature” as us. In short, we put ourselves on a pedestal and make us unreachable by the plain truth He would have us learn. We can learn GREAT lessons from those whose IQ is far below average, by the disadvantaged, by the poor, by the homeless, by those we think to be “crazy”. We can learn great truth from those who DO NOT SHARE our denominational beliefs. But not while we hold on the arrogance of believing we already know it all.

So often we approach studying the Bible with the idea of gathering texts that support our preconceived ideas. Rather we should pray to be led, and remain humble as we read, open to His influence, and the teachings of others. Not everyone you encounter can offer you priceless gems of wisdom, but not everyone you encounter is always wrong or in need of being taught either. It is the “truth” we should be evaluating on its own merits, not the mechanism of delivery. The Bible was written by sinful men, and the gospel is spread by weak willed sinners such as you and I. It is not the men who were to be judged against perfection, it was the message. Under the influence of the Holy Spirit, an Alcoholic can build a boat to save the world, a hot-tempered murderer can part the Red Sea, a philandering womanizer can become a man after God’s own heart, and a simple fisherman can write a book of Revelation that is still a matter of relevance and study in our day in age. Under the influence of the Holy Spirit a young girl can call entire congregations to repentance, you or I could reach that unbeliever put in our pathway, and a sinning pastor caught in a moment of weakness can find redemption and still preach piercing truth. None of us are beyond His influence, or above being taught by someone else whose sins we may be aware of. It is not the messenger it is the message that counts.

It is arrogance to believe that your doctrines are complete, and perfect, and in no need of a deeper understanding, or perhaps complete revision if led by God. It is unbridled pride to cling to church doctrines that have been passed down as absolute merely due to their age. Truth is a process. Truth evolves. If we are to truly let Christ lead, we must be willing to adjust our thinking on every topic, not just the ones we’re not sure about. To truly let Christ lead us into His truth, means to abandon the idea that our truth is His truth. He must show us this, we cannot assume it. If Christ is truly to be our leader, we must be humble enough to realize we NEED to be led, as we do NOT know it all. Our comparative knowledge is very very little. If we can admit this to ourselves, we are ready to begin the study of doctrine.

Measuring Results ...

Like anything else, when we try something we want to know if it worked. When we give up control of our will to Christ, we look with expectation to see Him finally conquer something in our lives that we simply could not do. But sometimes in the looking, we affect the outcome, and not well. It works when we truly let go, and to a degree avoid even thinking about the problem we had, allowing Christ to fix it without us looking over His shoulder offering our advice. Our witnessing efforts are similar. We sometimes observe the lives of those we come in contact with, to see if our efforts have yielded a positive result yet. We measure our own success by the amount of perceived change we see in the life of someone we tried to touch. But in the looking, we sometimes affect the outcome, and not well.

So the basic question we face is … what does it mean to be “saved”? Does it mean that we are free from ALL sin, and can only claim salvation when perfection is achieved? Before immediately responding no, consider that those who have forestalled their hopes until they go to heaven, have long held this belief as the ONLY possibility. Does being “saved” mean that we have merely started the process and remain diseased with many sins, only attaching ourselves to the theoretical knowledge of Christ? Before immediately responding no, consider that the Bible states we only need to believe on Jesus in order to be saved (it does not say we need to have accomplished anything with our belief). Or does it mean we have reached some sort of process point that includes an experimental knowledge of salvation, while relying on forgiveness to cover the remainder of sin in our lives? Before responding yes or no, consider that perfection is something that is attained by the righteous few who live to see Christ return.

The idea that we have a hard definition of being saved is clouded by the personal nature of salvation, and the fact that it is a PROCESS more than merely an end-state of being. It is similar to the question of when is a child ready for baptism? Catholics believe we should not prejudge an infant and deny it opportunity to come to Christ in baptism. Protestants believe we need to understand the meaning of the tradition before we can participate in it. But then the debate arises, when is the age of accountability. You can argue it varies with each child, and you would be correct. But then too comes the question of the depth of understanding involved. When I come home and find the dirty napkins from my trashcan shredded on the floor, I look and speak sternly to my dogs, usually the guilty party has her ears go down, tail go down, and head bows a bit to the left as she looks at me and licks the air hoping this will serve as an apology. My dog knows she has done wrong. But she is a dog. How much can a dog really know? Is she sorry I am mad, or sorry she made a mistake, or does she even know what “sorry” really means?

Again the problem with trying to evaluate the quality of our knowledge of God, is that we are attempting to apply metrics from a fixed point in time to a moving event. A devout 5 year old who loves God may be as ready for baptism as a cynical 40 year old who is taking all of this “knowledge” on faith that it is correct. For what I knew about God at five is every bit as relevant as what I know about Him now, albeit I have learned so much since then. But my learning is at His hand. However close to God I may be experiencing now is not due to an achievement on my part, it is has been His work effort, His direction, His leadership that makes this possible. My efforts have led only the wrong way. It is His waking me up to this, that allowed me to give up the idea of control, and finally experience what He wanted for me for years. All of it, His doing, none of it mine. We are not capable of evaluating the quality of a relationship with Christ, EVEN when it is WE who are the subject of our evaluation. Christians cannot even do an effective self-exam.

We are as blind to our own sin, as we are blind to how much He succeeds with us despite our interference with Him. We are like blind referees at an NFL Super-bowl for our souls. We stumble out on the field during the middle of play, making calls that have no basis in fact, or relevance, and calling the whole process “spiritual growth”. We want credit for our accomplishments, instead of realizing we have none. The faith we brag about / cling to – even our faith came from Him first. Our faith, like our salvation, was also a gift. Our ability to choose freely was a gift. Everything about our salvation is a gift from start to FINISH. When even one cherished sin can cause a man to lose his own salvation, choosing rather to embrace evil than be with God Himself one-to-one personally – how do you assign a value to a life free from 3 sins, yet suffering from 2 more? Does the equation change when it is a life free from 10 sins only clinging to one left? Adam lost our entire world over a choice to be with Eve instead of God – no matter what.

The point of this is simply to restate – Christians are not capable of judging (themselves or others). The role of judge was never supposed to be ours, despite our fondness for it. Therefore you cannot ever conclude that your efforts in someone else’s life have succeeded or failed. Your measurement is based on a point in time that may not be relevant to the final disposition of the one you are trying to evaluate. And what is more, your measurement criterion is subjective, based on your own life experiences rather than on the ones that matter to the person under scrutiny. Bottom line, you will simply not know. You are not supposed to know. A person’s salvation is between them and God, as your own salvation is between you and God.

Knowing this can bring you freedom. Sow your seed everywhere. You are not capable of determining the quality of the ground you are planting so plant everywhere you walk. It may look like concrete to you; dry, infertile, hot, arid, with no chance of success – but to God that ground may be ready to be broken up, rototilled by His hands, and your casual superficial seed spreading may be kneaded deep into the soil by His Spirit. You do not need to believe your efforts will work, but do them anyway. Answer the questions of atheists as if they will someday believe. Be kind to conservative religious folks who spout hate in every word, and would mean to do you harm for your knowledge. Love your enemies. For you never know what effect your witness may have when combined with the Master of our salvation. Remembering always that salvation is a road that ALL may travel, few being on the same place at the same time, yet ALL bound for the ultimate prize. Be a faithful witness, and leave the saving up to our Savior.

Our Testimony ...

In effect we will all have the same testimony in that Jesus Christ saved us from the evil in our lives. And yet each one of us will have a unique testimony of just what happened in our lives, under what conditions, and unique to us, like the DNA strands, and fingerprints that singularly identify us today. It is interesting that the themes of our testimony may be quite similar, a weakness for greed, or lust, or appetite, or power. How many of us suffer from the same weaknesses the devil has devised over the centuries.

There are worse things than not having had a personal experience with Christ bringing victory to your life. One would be the idea that you need no victory; that your life is “fine” just the way it is. The devil works hard to make people believe the meager existence they experience is all that life has to offer. He denies them the desires of their hearts long enough to convince them that no hope exists. Once people begin to compromise their goals, the rest is easy. People settle for the mediocrity the devil provides, without ever tasting the freedom and exhilaration that is possible ONLY through the liberation Christ can bring. Ironically the devil presents the Kingdom of God, as a prison of restrictions, or rules and regulations that must be kept on pain of death. Yet the “rules” or principles of God’s Kingdom define what freedom and fulfillment are all about. They do not constrain us from that which would make us happy, but rather are there to provide a buffer against that which would seek to destroy us and leave us completely empty.

This is tried technique of the author of all evil; Satan acts with malevolent intent and fierce actions and then blames God for “allowing” him to do so. It is why God is so often blamed in the face of tragedy; when in fact, the tragedies themselves come directly from the one who would see everyone suffer with him. Satan seeks only to spread pain however he can. Whether it be a denial of what is truly possible, or an infliction of horror itself, Satan wishes no human escape his wrath. This is his last avenue to hurt our Creator and so he works incessantly to achieve that singular goal.

Another fate worse than a lack of a personal experience with Christ, is a lie about a relationship that truly does not exist. There are those who claim more than just personal victories over sin worked in their lives due to the power of Jesus; they claim divine inspiration, revelation, or authority to speak on God’s behalf. So how do we sort out testimony of truth, from lies told by wolves in sheep’s clothing? For if truth can be found in any vessel of God’s choosing, how do we know He has not made a choice we simply do not understand ourselves. It is easy to get caught up in pre-judging the avenues God is allowed to reach us within. We close ourselves off to obvious sinners (those whose sin is known publicly), and generally do not want to associate with them, or listen to what they say. We stay away from places we deem inappropriate and believe truth is only given in church. We prejudge Christian music we do not enjoy as being evil, and therefore incapable of relaying the Holy Spirit of truth to us. And by all this prejudging, God is effectively excluded almost every avenue from reaching us with His intentions and word.

To treat those who claim direct divine revelation like they are all nut-balls is to err on the side of caution. But to treat all those who claim direct revelation of authors of truth, is to invite apostasy and deception into the mind and heart. So how do we tell the difference and sort the truth from the error? First, we must examine their language and actions in an attempt to know them by their fruits. Those who claim direct interaction with God SHOULD be the most loving of all Christians you have yet to encounter. It is an automatic side effect of being in close proximity to the source of all love. If they come across as critical, condemnatory, judgmental, obsessed with sin and not the savior, they are probably misstating their interactions with the divine. But just because someone is full of love, does not automatically make them full of truth.

Next, we must examine what they say against what we know of scripture to date. To directly counteract scripture is a very dangerous proposition. It may be truth, but requires very close scrutiny before adopting a position we believe to be 180 degrees different than what we know today. To directly counteract a fundamental of scripture is to simply be a mouthpiece for the evil one. Claims like there is no God, the Bible is untrue, Christ is not the messiah, or God does not care what we do. All of these kinds of nullifications of what God wants for us (a permanent escape from evil and the pain that comes with it), are plainly not true. They are lies meant to weaken or destroy faith. They do not make logical sense, if the claims of these people encourage evil they should be avoided.

We too should be conscience of the leading of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Just because we are blessed with a supernatural comforter who is capable of working great works in our minds and hearts, does not free us the influences of other much more malevolent supernatural beings with evil intent. God does not mind being challenged. To ask a supernatural presence “in the name of Jesus Christ” to identify itself is a quick effective method of determining right and wrong in a world beyond our eyes. Satan is not allowed to lie when asked this question in this form. Most of the time evil angels succeed by avoiding being asked this question at all. They present themselves as beings of light that would be insulted to be asked such a meaningless question at all. They may even exhibit anger at the idea you would “show so little faith” in them. But God is not insulted. He understands our need to avoid danger and receive only truth, and He will be faithful to accommodate us.

So what will be your testimony? When walking down golden streets that never dim, will you testify that our Lord saved you from the pain of evil’s counterfeits regarding sexual expression? Or will it be that the Lord freed you from the consuming fire that is greed and avarice? Was it your lust for power and control that drove you to the brink, only to be pulled back by the mercy of Christ? Or was it simply that your eyes were opened by Jesus to the apathy of your own existence, and now you know what it is like to live in freedom with Christ. What can God say only through you? What will be your testimony?

Our Goals ...

The goal we seek is to share the joy we have found with everyone we come in contact with, and especially those we love. The gospel message as we have discussed earlier is one of hope, joy, peace, love, and immediacy. We do not need to wait for heaven to experience His victories over sin in our lives. We are free to begin the process of perfection right here and right now. This changes us. Being born again from the inside out, being remade in His image once again is life altering. It is transformational. It remakes our characters. In short it is the purification process God has been longing to give to us. Only waiting for us to accept His gift, and humble our stubborn will to allow it. With the absence of “self” comes the beginning of His victories over our sins.

Because many in Christianity have yet to experience what it means to have His victories over the sins they still fight against, they seek withdrawal from the world. Those that call for us to come apart, to clear away from the lost, so that we do not unite with them in their evil purposes – do not understand the freedom of victory through Christ. Sin and evil are nothing but pain. They are not goals to be sought after, they are a curse we are finally freed from by Christ in us. Having been made free from the chains of sin, we do not seek to return to bondage with others in the world – rather we seek to see them freed as well. This is the burden of those who have tasted freedom, and something that those who have not simply do not understand.

If Bill Gates randomly decided he liked you, and thought that you deserved to receive one billion dollars tax free (he would take care of all of that), just to make your life better – what would you do with the money? Sure, most of us would pay our bills, get out of debt, buy the home, cars, college education for the kids we may have always wanted. But then what, one Billion is a lot to spend. The interest alone could easily be 50 million dollars a year with conservative investments. Would you keep every cent for yourself? Would you share it with no-one you are related to, no-one you love, no-one you know? Would you seek to move into a cave somewhere in the mountains away from the entire world so as to avoid the risk that someone may try to wrong you? The real benefit of a gift of this magnitude is in our ability to change our lives, and the lives of those we love for the better. Outside of that, the money would be a curse. The same is true of the Gospel.

We treat the gospel as if it were some horribly distasteful medicine taken only when on the verge of death. Instead of sharing how Christ has made your life so much better, we put up walls to keep “the needy” away from us, so as not to get us dirty with their uncleanliness. Sometimes, we fear the ridicule of family members, and so do not bring up the subject of the gospel, thus trying to keep our light hidden like in a cave somewhere. This embarrassment over being a Christian, this hesitation over bringing up the subject of Christ, is a sure indication that you have not felt His freedom or His victories yet for yourself. You still have nothing of value to offer. For when you do, it is very much like receiving MORE than one billion dollars; you simply HAVE to share what you have found. You just cannot contain the good news, once you realize just how good it is.

When you begin to see people through His eyes of love, you realize just how precious they are. You begin for the first time to rightly value the uniqueness and worth of the individual. You begin to see how Christ works so personally, so one-on-one with each of us to save each soul to Himself. And as such you begin to share His burden not to lose even one of them.

There is no soul, no person who is not worth saving. There is no-one that heaven’s streets would be better off without, including you. It is not because we deserve His rewards, or His gifts, but it is because He loves us just that much. When you begin to love like this, you simply cannot sit still, with mouth closed, and silently witness the pain your brother goes through. Not while you could speak out, and show them the way to freedom. Not when you could point them to Christ and in so doing, connect them with the source of freedom from sin and pain.

There will come a day, when by His grace, we finally see the home He has prepared for us from the foundations of the world; a day when we walk his golden streets and eat at His fine banquet tables. But perfection is much better shared. I wish to sit next to those who I knew here on earth, not find them missing for my silence. I wish to learn to love my enemies even better in that perfect place, not lament their absence over my foolish pride on earth, over my apathy on earth, over my inaction on earth. If my family is not within the perfect realm, my first question will be directed into the mirrors of heaven, could I have done something more? Was it me who might have made the difference in their lives, to encourage them unto salvation? Was it my silence or inaction, or apathy that has seen them miss the opportunity to find Christ and be saved.

When our Lord wished to use me in His service of redemption, When He wanted me to just share what I knew, will I be found too busy, too embarrassed, too hesitant, too reluctant, too afraid of human ridicule? And if so, will I not have all of eternity to realize my blunders? The text in which God has to wipe away the tears from our eyes, even in heaven, is aptly applied to this dilemma. I wish not to be counted as unwilling, uncaring, and inactive. I wish to be able to say I did everything I could, I left no stone unturned, I tried until I was dead to make a difference. God will still have to wipe away my tears, because despite my desires, I will have made substantial mistakes in His cause. But from now to then, how will I live? How will you? How much is enough in the cause of redemption of His people, and your family?

Those in darkness do not need compromise to be led away from it, they need the light. They need to see us live His victories, not share with them their pain by participating with them in their errors. We do not need to condemn them for their wrongs, nor try to identify all their sins to them. We need simply to live the victories He wishes to bring us in our own lives. By this we show them a light that is not tainted with compromise, but pure in His victory. We show them that we share their weakness, but are made whole through His strength. It is not by our own will that we are made free from sin, it is by the submission of our will to Christ. This is the light the world needs to see in living example. Words alone will have little effect. We are called to witness from firsthand experience.

Adam faced this choice in the garden and chose poorly. After Eve had eaten the forbidden fruit, and before Adam did, he was faced with a choice. Trust God, even in the face of her certain death, or break trust and choose to embrace death with her. He chose poorly. We should not repeat his mistakes. We may have loved ones who do not wish to know Christ. If faced with a choice of uniting with our erring loved ones, or trusting God in the face of their apparent death, we must choose to trust our God. Had Adam done this, God could have enacted a plan of salvation for Eve alone, and perhaps the legacy of our world would have been different.

In our cases, though our love for our family may be strong, we must look to God to save them in spite of themselves, as sometimes He has done with us. We must trust that the strength of God’s love is greater than our family member’s ability to resist it. We must remain true to our submission of our will, our decisions, our desires, and our love to Christ that He may continue the work He has begun in us. This ALONE is the only hope our family members may have. Their last chance at seeing what a connection to Christ and His victories is all about may be through us. We must not abandon our course and doom them as well as ourselves to the fate of evil and pain. Rather we must remain faithful, and constant, and consistent in our pointing them to the source of the joy in our lives. Love is a hard thing to resist.

Christians, who have seen no personal victories, sometimes fall into the trap of searching out sin everywhere around them. They believe to call sin by its right name, and point out the errors of the world is the only way to avoid the dangers of evil. This is misguided thinking and focus. It puts our emphasis and our focus on sin, rather than on the cure for sin, in Jesus Christ. The point of the Bible is not to define sin; it is to define how love conquered sin on our behalf. The Bible is a love story, of how God reclaims his erring children. It is His victory story of how love conquers evil and that ONLY love could. It is the story that love and mercy are greater than justice. And it is why we are able to live in His victories, though we deserve them not. For our value is measured in how great He loves us, not what we have done to earn that love. Salvation is His gift to us. Let us remember to keep our focus on how we heal from the pain of evil and sin, not on the sin itself. Let us behold the cross, and the victory it represents. Let us keep our focus and our eyes upward and towards the work of redemption and encouragement to Christ. Let us remember to see the world through His loving eyes, and His tender mercy, and show the world what unconditional love really means – a way of escape from the pain of evil, not a prolonging or participation in it. The work of redemption and reclamation must remain our goal, until breath leaves our bodies, or we are translated into the skies of glory for an eternity with Him and those we may help along the way.

Widows & Orphans ...

The keenest loss in human history is felt when a marital partner of many years succumbs to the death we all dread. We were not designed for such an occurrence. It is the pure cause and effect of sin, a byproduct of evil itself, that death or non-existence must enter our realm. We were created with the idea of living in perfection forever. Our marriages were intended to last forever. Thus a union of three should never be taken lightly. The phrase “until death” is a recognition of our earthly condition, and the weakness of our loneliness upon losing a beloved spouse. It was not ever intended in the schema of heaven or perfection. Adam and Eve our original parents will one day be united in heaven to live for eternity as husband and wife. There is no reason for them to live otherwise.

What is permitted for us due to our weakened condition in sin, and the horrific environment of evil we reside in, is not necessarily what was intended for us in the light of perfection. For instance, evil brings death upon us, and there are those who are truly emotionally unable to continue the remainder of their lives alone. They need, crave, and must have companionship. So the idea of remarriage is permitted to satisfy this basic human need. It is only even considered because of the effects of evil, but because evil is part of our reality, so is death, and therefore remarriage. Evil can cause divorce as well, we will focus on that idea in a later section. For those who require a remarriage after the loss of a spouse there is neither condemnation nor judgment. But there should be a recognition that healing will be required in the world to come. Marriages remain based on the idea of 2 people and Christ uniting as one. Should a husband or wife encounter two or more former partners upon entering heaven, it will take our Lord to alter the feelings of our hearts as He sees fit to enable us to continue to live in harmony there without pain or regret or jealousy.

I believe some couples may be reunited, some redirected, some perhaps allowed to be single, there is no one answer for every person. However, the one consistent item among all those who enter heaven with cloudy prospects or commitments with multiple partners is that a healing solution from Christ will be the only way to sort out what must be sorted. Those who enter single may still find a mate, and will have the added blessing of not having to consider widowhood or divorce. Unions aligned in the perfection of heaven will remain so as it was originally intended, forever and ever, amen.

It is particularly difficult to lose a part of yourself. When facing the loss of a beloved partner, particularly when the wills have been submitted to God, and the marital relationship is richly blessed with His favor, it can be emotionally debilitating. The surviving spouse is deeply weakened by the loss. It is not for doubt of the eternal status of the missing partner. They may have every assurance that our God is faithful to save His children from their well deserved fates. The survivor may KNOW with certainty that upon the morning of resurrection their fallen spouse will rise to greet our savior face to face, and spend eternity in the perfection of heaven. This knowledge is comforting, but may not be enough to heal the keen loss that is felt in the mean time between now and that day. Widows therefore should be considered a “protected class” within the church (our community of believers).

It is our responsibility to lend aid, comfort, and love to those who have lost so precious a resource. It is our honor to help protect them from the wolves-of-the-world who would use their weakened condition to prey upon them. The sudden loss of intimacy can devastate the human soul. Again it is the reason why having Christ in the marriage is so utterly important. Only He will fully understand the loss that has been incurred. Only He has been privy to the private moments and shared experiences of the couple now parted for a while by death. Only He can offer real comfort, but only if we have learned to allow Him access to our marriages while still within them. There is great healing that Christ can offer us, when we know we can trust Him to do so. We can take comfort under His wing. We can rest and let Him do the work of protecting the survivor, and comforting those that remain after the fallen. As brothers and sisters of the widows and orphans we should take extra special care in how we deal with them.

In older less developed days, society was unkind to surviving women after their husbands passed away. Without a male provider, a female may even be left to starve. Property rights were not well developed, nor did they reflect the intentions of fairness God would have required. Selfish men made selfish laws, and as such women suffered greatly. Under this time of great duress the church was given special instructions NOT to ignore the plight of widows or orphans. Second only to the keen loss a spouse feels, is the loss a child feels upon losing a parent. Even fully grown mature adults, mourn the loss of aged parents, it is something none of us truly outgrow, prepared or not. And the closer a parent is to the source of Infinite love, the keener the loss felt by those who remain. As church family, we must remain on guard to go beyond what is expected, beyond the normal, beyond even what we may believe we are capable of, and reach out to these precious hurting souls. While we can never replace the love they have lost, we can do our best to shower our love upon them. At the very least, the hurting can know from our demonstrations, they are truly NOT alone. Christ remains with them. And as His servants, we remain at their side as well.

For those who have suffered this loss and wish to try again with another spouse, it is important to allow enough time to pass by so that not every waking thought is consumed by the lost love. That spouse can never be replaced so the goals in finding another should not be so. As each of us is unique, each relationship will be unique as well. Your loss may one day be erased in the comfort of another person, but cannot be duplicated, nor should that ever be the expectation. The valuation of people, and dating practices we have already described must be re-employed to find another mate to join the precious union of three. Love is resilient in this way. Love is healing in this way. And one day, love will be resolved as only Christ could resolve it. We can have faith and trust in Him in matters that transcend the boundaries of our lifetimes. This is the point of faith itself.

A New Perspective ...

You do not know what you do not know. We are finite creatures who have been conditioned to accept less than what is possible by an evil that is bent on our misery and ultimate destruction. It was never God’s intent that any sickness, blindness, disease, or addictive disorders would impact our lives and our souls. All of these maladies are a byproduct of evil. Death itself is a natural consequence of evil, as life is a natural consequence of God. But freedom from the shackles that have bound us, vision to see truth and beauty in a world that sees neither, and love poured out without measure are the hallmarks of a changed life; a life that has finally humbled itself and submitted its will to our Lord Jesus Christ.

Chemical additives (by this I mean recreational or even misused prescription drugs), cannot come close to offering you the experience of a liberated mind, heart, and soul. Endorphins that your body produces when you exercise strenuously are a mild alternative next to the feeling of freedom to the unbound heart. This is something new. This is something unheard of. This is truth and knowledge we have not had, for we stood in our own way of obtaining it. This is the experience and exhilaration that only comes when Christ sets you free from the chains of evil that have so long governed your life.

We spend so much time consumed with our sins. Either we are trying hard to avoid doing them again, or consumed with guilt after recently committing them again, or cleaning up the mess they cause – our lives, minds, and even prayers are consumed with living in bondage. In so doing, we have focused on the disease and not the cure. By turning them over to Jesus, by admitting that we actually like sin and evil and that without Christ changing our wicked core, we are doomed to continue in it – we are MADE free. Note that the work still belongs only to Him, but the freedom is far more liberating than you can imagine if you are still bound in sin. This freedom of the mind offers you an entirely NEW perspective.

There is an old computer axiom that states – “garbage in – garbage out”. Its meaning is that if you put in bad data or bad coding practices, you can expect to get inaccurate, misleading and false results. Evil has fed us nothing but garbage our whole lives and has told us we were eating cake. Take the scriptures for instance; the Old and New Testaments are considered by a great many believers to be very different from each other. Bill Maher’s famous joke line that … “having a kid seems to have mellowed out God” in the New Testament; is tacitly agreed to by many. This of course is not logically possible. God does not undergo a personality change, nor would we ever want Him to abandon the Good that He is for any alternative. So why the perception difference? It is because we view things with blurry vision, and prejudiced minds. The truth of God’s infinite love is all through the Old Testament writings, but is ignored in favor of the blood, guts, and errors of man that are so vividly described.

Many people non-believers accuse God of genocide because of the wars the Children of Israel waged on the inhabitants of the Promised land. But these wars were not God’s plan, they were made by Man’s interference with God’s ideas. God wanted to send in wasps to the promised land (plague style) to drive out the inhabitants of the land so that His people could just walk right in and settle down. No blood, no bodies, no genocide, and no wars that continued because the Israelites did not finish the job of driving their enemies out, instead getting lazy and having to contend with them for generations to come. But God’s idea about using wasps is long forgotten, next to the blood and gore of warring exploits.

People site the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah as examples of the vindictive nature of God. Yet Christ Himself went to these two cities in the flesh before making a final decision of their destruction. And all those who were not guilty of their crimes were spared. This example of the ultimate extinction of evil was designed to remind us that evil is on a time clock. It will not be granted liberty to exist forever. Someday it will be fully consumed and disappear. Think of it, Sodom and Gomorrah are not STILL burning, their residents are NOT still tortured. They were burned up and dead. The place has been grown over, and the evil that existed there is NO more. This is not a story about an Angry God, it is a story about a God who one day offers us the hope of existence without evil, in both this life and one to come.

How you see the Bible depends much on your history with it, your parents views, your pastors views, and your own clouded desires. We often try to use the Bible to justify our decisions, or prove our doctrines are correct. This is a huge mistake. In so doing, we are attempting to lead the learning ourselves, instead of being led to the truth God would share with us in His word. Using the Bible to condemn the actions of others indicates a COMPLETE lack of understanding of the message of the Bible. This book is NOT about punishment and guilt. It is about freedom from pain, about reclamation of addicts, about reconciliation with a God who is suffering from a major case of empty-nest-syndrome. We have a Daddy who wants us home. This book is a love letter from cover to cover. It is real, not dressed up, or exaggerated, it shows the mistakes so that we can learn from them, not learn to repeat them. But this requires a new perspective to see. It requires a freedom from bondage. It requires a changing life, or I am guessing you have NO idea what I am talking about. Why not give up your will to Christ and see what happens in your own life …

Truth Begins ...

A gift is something you cannot earn, you may not deserve, and you are free to return. So it is that the saving of man from his own evil was devised as a gift of God to His erring creations, namely us. It was not because we deserve it. We openly and freely rejected God, we broke trust with Him. Our lives and our actions remain in this state from Adam to me. But love was larger than justice, love was greater than evil. And so Love found a way to redeem us from our first decision and the slavery that would follow. And Love knew it must do all the work of our redemption, for it relied upon us, we would remain doomed. You cannot trust an addict to voluntarily give up his drugs, so are we with our nature to please ourselves.

Evil would not be content to just let God bring us all back to Himself. Far from it, Evil had to find a way to mask the plan of Salvation, to alter it just enough as to keep it from being effective. And given our nature, it was not hard to accomplish this. A simple insidious plan to introduce self into the core of the Christian religion has been slowly introduced over the years. Instead of accepting the gift of our freedom from evil, sin, and ourselves – Satan altered the design by insinuating that the work of removing evil from us, was up to us. Catch phrases like “Sanctification is the work of a lifetime” and mis-applying scriptures like “Faith without works is dead”, have led Christians to believe they too have an important work in the saving of man. Over a period of time, we adopted the idea that we must be responsible for ending our own bad behavior. If we are failing at it, it is because we are praying too little, reading too little, or trusting too little. We were told to try harder. No matter the reason, we would be held accountable for our failures in a coming judgment.

The very definition of Salvation went from saving man from evil and himself, to strictly “going to heaven”. This removes the timing of getting rid of sin until a far future date. It sets expectations of perfection to a far off distant future, and given our abject failure at getting rid of our own sins, it seems more than reasonable. People start getting obsessed with when Jesus will return, because they pin all their hopes on a better life with less pain on “going to heaven”. We have consequently placed self at the core of our religion, and have thus robbed it of both its good news, and its power; time for truth to re-emerge.

Christ said “come unto Me all ye who are heavy laden and I will give you rest.” It was Christ who defeated evil, paid the penalty we deserved, and in so doing won back our chance for freedom. We were condemned to the evil we chose, our guilt was never in question, but remarkably our defense attorney (Christ), upon hearing our sentence decided to take it upon Himself in our place. He would offer us as a gift, what we could never earn. He would do the work it takes to remove the sin from our lives, if we would just let Him do it. We would have to choose to allow Him to save us, but in so choosing, HE WOULD SAVE US. The plan of salvation was not enacted to make us free TO sin, but rather to make us free FROM sin. We do not need another excuse to continue in the pain we choose to inflict on ourselves, we need a method of escaping it. We need a reform of our thinking. We need a recreation of our very nature, of our desires, of our souls. And this is what Christ offers us each one.

His work in our souls is highly personal, as each of us is highly unique. We learn differently, we respond differently, we have different motives and thinking on almost everything. How He removes our sin and changes our thinking is a mystery, but the fact that He does only rests on our willingness to let Him do it. Think of it folks, REAL relief from real pain that has infected your existence since birth. It is available to you right NOW, right here, no matter your condition, no matter how deeply you dug yourself into the hole of pain you wallow in; there is hope and immediacy in the relief in Christ. Stop trying harder to kick a habit you cannot kick. Stop trying to put your own strength in a place God never intended it to be. Instead rely on the only God capable of beating evil, and of recreating the heart of man. You need only take His gift and submit your own will to His.

The key to changing our lives, and ending our pain lays not in how strong we are, but is made perfect in our weakness as He does what must be done in each life. Christ removes our pain. Christ changes what we want, and how we think, so that the nature and causes of our addictive behavior are ended permanently. We begin to wonder as time passes, how we ever wanted the things of the past, and why we did not allow Christ to end them sooner than we did. This level of freedom brings rest. We can give up the fighting, and turn over the battle to the only one who can win it. We need not judge each other any longer, nor condemn each other pointing out obvious flaws in each other, for Christ can fix all of this. Our witness transforms from condemnation and guilt, to redemption reclamation and joy. Our vision is opened up. We begin to see truth on an entirely deeper level. The mis-application of scripture begins to fade as we no longer look for a club to beat people with, we look for love to save people with.

When someone throws the phrase “Sanctification is the work of a lifetime” at me; I respond yes it is, it is the work of submitting our will and our desires over to Christ so that He can change them forever. Even in this, I depend on His strength to cover my weakness, as God is both the Author (creator of) and Finisher of my faith. When someone says “Faith without works is dead” to me; I respond yes it is, and it is like life without breathing in the air. When you have the one, you cannot help but have the other. The works follow the faith, for it is the nature of faith, to redefine our actions, our motives, and our behaviors. This text is merely a statement of the obvious, not a condemnation of those who do not try hard enough.

I can accept anyone in any condition, not because I endorse their particular sin or pain, but because I know Christ can fix it in them, as He does in me. I am free to love without condition or prerequisite. I am not constrained to love only those who think like I do, but to love those who disagree with me, or even those who hate me. I have no need to preach to people, for I have nothing of value to say. But I can answer questions about how my life has improved and why I am so happy being connected to the source of all love and happiness, and how you can achieve it too. The good news of the gospel has returned, for saving us from evil is truly a gift once more. The power of the gospel has returned in that real change can happen right here and right now, by the miraculous redeeming power of Christ’s love. This is exciting. This is the birth of truth.