Everyone has an Opinion…

…and we all love to express it. This page is sort of a "companion page" to The World According to Billiard. The difference is that I will run this page more like an Op Ed column, rather than a collection of permanent opinions about the world in general.

Here, I will also respond to comments or questions that you, the reader, choose to send. You can email me at billpenning@thebilliardpage.com. (Please include something in the subject line that indicates that you are responding to this web site, so that I do not simply erase it as spam!)

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The Measure of a Man

January 2, 2012

This is going to be just a short post. But what I have to say is not really that complicated. I'm sure that you have heard the saying at some time in your life: "How could a loving God send anyone to Hell?" I know I have. And for a long time, that used to bother me. In a way, it still does. Nobody likes the idea of burning in a Lake of Fire forever, whether or not you happen to believe in eternal punishment or not. Just the idea itself is frankly quite frightening.

Now let me ask you: Why on Earth should a just God ever let you into Heaven?

What makes you think that anyone deserves to go to Heaven?

"Oh, but I've never killed anyone!" you might proclaim. "I don't steal, and I only drive a little bit above the speed limit. I'm not a bad person!"

Says who?

Okay, by human standards, you are probably not a bad person, for the very reasons I just mentioned. You have never done any really bad acts, you try to live a good life, and after all, doesn't the Bible say that God is love?

Sure it does. But it also says that God is just. And perfect.

So maybe by human standards, you're okay. But by God's standards, you stink.

And He is the one who decides who goes to Heaven and who goes to Hell. If you do not believe in God, then you obviously do not believe in either Heaven or Hell, but if you do believe in Him, then it logically follows that He is the Judge. Not you.

The Bible says, "…there is no one who does good, not even one." (Ps. 14:3b)

By God's standards, you stink. By God's standards, I stink. We all stink.

So the next time someone says that a loving God wouldn't send anyone to Hell, think about this: By His standards, we all deserve to go straight to Hell. Do not pass Heaven. Do not collect eternal life.

Instead of complaining about how unjust things are, get on your knees and give thanks that they aren't much, much worse.

You see, that's grace. Because in addition to being just, God really is love. That's why He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to pay the vast, unpayable penalty that we all owe Him. Instead of getting the sentence of eternal Hell and damnation that we all deserve, He is giving us a chance.

To any who will repent of their sins and turn to Christ, He will forgive that immense debt and allow you into Heaven. But you've got to do it His way, and the only way that He offers is through Jesus. That may sound exclusive, especially in a culture where inclusiveness is the accepted ideal, but I did not invent it. God did. And being God, He has the right to do so.

So I encourage you to accept God's incredible gift of eternal life in Heaven through Jesus Christ. If you've been complaining about an unjust world and your lot in life and wondering why God would punish you and possibly even send you to Hell, well, here is the answer. He doesn't want you to go to Hell. He paid the greatest sacrifice possible to give you a way out. Instead of rejecting Christ because of some sense of being offended, swallow your pride and grab onto the life ring that God is tossing your way!

Human pride is not worth the price of being tormented forever in Hell! Think it through and use your head. If you've got doubts, then ask God to open your eyes and show you the truth. He will be happy to do so, if you would only approach Him with an open mind and heart.

I really don't have anything more to add to that, except to urge you not to put it off. You may think that you have years left ahead of you, but can you be certain that you won't be killed in a car wreck or something tomorrow? Can you?

No, a loving God does not want to send anyone to Hell. That's why He sent Jesus.

God is not Convenient

November 13, 2011

Has it ever occurred to you that God is not convenient?

Maybe you are wondering just what I am talking about. On the other hand, you may already have a pretty good idea. If so, then congratulations. You are someone with both a conscience and an awareness of the shortcomings of the human race. The cold, hard truth is that there are many times when I find God just a bit inconvenient. Are you shocked?

Maybe you should be. Yet on the other hand, maybe it is just a confession that I am human, that I am prone to doing things that God does not approve of—or at least, wanting to do things that God does not approve of. But because I know that He is there and that He is aware, either I find the self-control not to do them, or if I go ahead and do them, I end up having to confess and repent afterward. Very inconvenient.

Perhaps that is the reason why atheism is so popular in Western societies these days. If there is no God, then the inconvenience disappears. If there is no one to set a standard that goes against the self-willed grain of every human being on the planet, then we can just forget about that so-called "standard" and do whatever we want.

Oh, wait. If everyone does whatever they want, then society is going to break down, because anyone who decides that their neighbor is getting in their way will just go get a gun and blow their head off. So I guess we've got to have some standards, even if we have to make them up on our own. Now if we can just get everyone to agree on what those standards should be… I think you are starting to see some of the implications of being left on our own, without a loving Heavenly Father to guide us in how to live.

Oooh, but it feels soooo good to do some of the things I like. Sex without limit, drink myself blind, steal what I want, etc.

There was a time when those who acknowledged God's rule in human affairs had an answer that unbelievers really could not counter. We exist, therefore there must be a Creator to whom we are responsible. While even that argument did not always restrain bad behavior, it at least gave the majority reason to pause and reconsider, and allowed the Word of God to have a strong influence on society.

Then along came Charles Darwin, and the unbelieving world rejoiced. Free at last from the shackles of an unwanted morality that restrained men from doing the things that they wanted just because Someone very inconvenient did not approve!

Never mind that origins cannot be proven, and that Darwinian evolution is nothing more than a model that purports to explain the observed facts, and on a scientific level is on par with any other faith-based account of where life and the human race came from. It is a convenient "religion". Convenient because it does not require God. Convenient because, if you do not have to believe in a Creator, then you do not have to believe in a Judge.

The fact is, life itself is not always convenient.

We live on a world that we share with over seven billion other human beings. That is seven billion other intelligent, self-aware, self-willed beings that may or may not want the same things that each of us wants. Many times that brings us into conflict with one another, and whenever that happens, someone ends up being inconvenienced. When two people want mutually exclusive things, both cannot get what they want. One or the other has to yield.

Furthermore, there are numerous laws of nature that we may or may not find convenient. Most of the time, gravity is our friend, holding us on the ground so that we do not float away, and holding the atmosphere here so that we do not suffocate in vacuum. But if some necessary support gives way, or a bridge collapses, or any of a number of things happen, we may find ourselves silently wishing that we could just suspend the law of gravity, at least temporarily and locally. Unfortunately, that is one law that Congress cannot repeal.

It's the same with God. Either He exists or He does not. What you believe—what you want—is irrelevant. That is another law that Congress cannot repeal.

Now I cannot prove that He exists, any more than you could prove that He does not. Blaise Pascal once described a situation where a person could choose to believe in Jesus Christ or not, and what he/she stood to gain or lose either way. If I choose to believe and I am right, I gain eternal life. If I am wrong, I die, cease to exist, and neither gain nor lose. If I choose not to believe and am right, then when I die I cease to exist and neither gain nor lose. But if I am wrong, then I spend eternity in Hell, and have lost everything. Just from that alone, it would seem to me that the rational choice would be to believe.

Let me add to that a bit. If there is no God, then the world will continue the way it is from now on until the end of time. Maybe the human race will survive. Maybe we will reach the stars and find other worlds and other sentient life forms. Maybe everything will turn out like in Star Trek, with a wonderful interstellar Federation and everyone living happily together. On the other hand, maybe Earth will end up getting hit by a comet. Or some other race with absolutely no morals recognizable by human beings will happen upon our planet and exterminate us like ants. Sound implausible? If there is no God, how do you know?

On the other hand, if there is a God, and if Jesus Christ is His Son, then He will return someday as He promised. This will happen whether or not any particular person chooses to believe that it will. In other words, my faith does not make God or the Gospel real. They are facts independent of what I happen to believe. I can either be ready to welcome Him as my Savior and Lord, or I can refuse to be ready—and be destroyed by His coming.

But, you say, what if all that is just a myth?

Are you willing to take that chance?

In this day and age, God has not chosen to write His Name in flaming Hebrew letters hundreds of miles wide across the face of the moon, or give us any other clear and incontrovertible proof that His Word is real and not just a collection of fables. Now as a Christian I believe that this will change someday, as I have described above, in a very dramatic fashion. But for now we are left with faith. We can choose to believe in Someone that we may personally find inconvenient to the way we want to live our lives, or we can reject Him. Yet He is not silent. He may not shout from the heavens with a megaphone-like voice, as He did for the ancient Hebrews, but He can still speak to us. We only need be willing to listen. And I cannot tell you in what manner He will speak, for it is different for different people. "Diversity" is a popular buzzword these days. Well, God is the King of Diversity, although it may not be the kind that modern thinkers have in mind.

So no, God is not convenient. But He is still God. If He is who He says He is, then He is not there for our convenience. Rather, we are here for His. So if you already know Him and follow Him, please keep that in mind when faced with day-to-day life issues. Keep it in mind when confronting unbelievers. Keep it in mind when teaching your children. If, on the other hand, you do not believe in Him, then try a little experiment. Open your mind and heart, and just ask Him to reveal Himself to you, if He exists. I dare you.

That is one prayer that He is happy to answer, for those who earnestly want to know the truth.

A Mental Disease, or a Spiritual Problem?

September 24, 2011

In recent years, a couple of conservative authors have written books claiming that liberalism is a mental disorder. On the surface, it is easy to agree with that. Any way of thinking that ignores reality and continues to push for the same old failed ways of doing things—and expecting a different result—certainly qualifies as insanity by one popular definition. In a sense these authors are right—yet at the same time, I believe that they have completely missed the underlying issues involved.

Liberalism is merely one of many modern "isms" that so thoroughly permeate much of the world today. Others include socialism, communism, Marxism, Nazism, fascism, and so forth. Some are more popular than others. Some have bad names and are only promoted by a few fanatics. But although many adherents to these various philosophies would deny to the death any relation with any of the others, the fact remains that they all have a number of things in common.

Most of it can be summed up in a simple sentence: They elevate man to the place reserved for God.

This is nothing new. The first humans on Earth were told that if they would just disobey God, then they would become like gods themselves. We all know where that went. Human history, both secular and sacred, is filled with examples of what resulted. King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon ended up grazing with the critters for seven years as an object lesson in how God views this type of pride. Fortunately for him, he repented.

People act according to what they truly believe in their hearts. This is often called one's "worldview". It is what you believe about the fundamental aspects of man and nature. Where did we come from? Where are we going? What is the meaning of life? These are the kinds of questions that affect a person's basic behavior, because they will define what you believe about morality and the value of human life.

And this is the biggest factor in the proliferation of what we commonly call "evil" in the world today.

It used to be that most people believed in a Supreme Being. After all, mankind existed—the world existed—and there really was no other explanation for their existence apart from some variety of God, be it Jehovah of the Jews and Christians, or Allah of the Muslims, or Brahma of the Hindus, or whatever one's concept of a Creator. And along with belief in a Creator came a sense of responsibility before that same Being.

I am not trying to pretend that there has not been great evil done throughout the history of mankind. Amoral leaders have risen to power and twisted whatever their beliefs were about the Divine Being in order to justify unspeakable atrocities. Much evil has been done in the name of various concepts of God, and I do believe that the perpetrators of such evil will someday have to answer before the Judge for their misuse of His authority. Nevertheless, if you take a look at the past hundred years, it becomes clear that by far the greatest slaughter has been committed by those who refuse to acknowledge any Divine Being whatsoever. People such as Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and other dictators were atheists who placed no value on human life beyond how it could serve their own personal desires.

Even in America we are not guiltless. There have been no purges, or ethnic cleansing, or Holocaust, but what about the 50-60 million or more unborn children who have been murdered in the name of "reproductive freedom"? They, too, are victims of a belief system that places no value upon their life, relegating them to the status of "tissue blob" or worse. And today we see more and more senseless killing in the streets of our cities, as young people who have been educated to believe that there is no Creator or absolute value to human life commit murder, and then are honestly puzzled as to why it is such a big deal.

We are in the middle of Political Campaign Season, and every day I am inundated with words by politicians, pointing out the dreadful problems caused by excessive government spending and regulation, or by illegal immigration, or by activist courts that spew forth ruling after ruling that undermine the moral foundations of our nation, or whatever the Bogeyman of the Day is. Conservatives blame liberalism—the current "ism" that infects the United States of America—and then proclaim how if they are elected, they will fight to reduce spending, close the borders, etc.

All of these promises sound good on the surface. And I can't argue with the fact that we need to deal with the problems that are destroying our nation. But as welcome as conservative political action might be, it would basically amount to putting bandaids on broken bones.

For the true underlying problem in our nation is spiritual. Indeed, this is the problem with Western culture in general, with the entire world. I tend to focus on Western culture because historically, it has been based on Judeo-Christian principles taken from the Bible. This foundation is one of the reasons why Western culture has achieved so much. I know that many people might disagree, but history makes it clear that the greatest advances that have led to the improvement of the human condition have come from Western civilization. Because living according to Biblical principles—God's principles—enables human beings to function as they were created to function. In other words, following the "manufacturer's handbook" makes the product work right.

But for the most part, we have forgotten that.

The principles of humanism, liberalism, Marxism, etc. are destructive, not only to society, but to individuals as well. So why do we embrace them as a culture? I could point out some of the modern philosophies that have provided the excuses that humanists use to reject God and Scripture, such as Darwinism, Freudian psychology, etc., but that would merely be pointing to the tools. The real source is a being as malevolent as God is good. I am talking about Satan.

Many people do not even believe in the devil. Even some liberal Christians do not believe that he is an actual being. They think of him as merely an "evil principle", or some other fancy combination of words. But according to Scripture, he is as real as God. In fact, one of his greatest triumphs of deception is convincing people that he does not exist. He does not care if you believe in God, as long as you believe in his twisted view of what God is. Or that maybe God simply started the whole thing off in the beginning, then went away on a celestial fishing trip and left the world to stew in its own juices. Any of these ideas will make him just roll on the floor laughing, kicking his feet in the air.

Still, we cannot merely shrug our shoulders and say, "The devil made me do it." He is evil and a deceiver and comes to kill, steal and destroy. But his power is for the most part limited to whispering in our ears. God gave man dominion over the Earth, and in spite of much popular theology, there is no actual scriptural evidence that that ever changed. We are still stewards of God's creation—and of our own lives—and in the end we still have the responsibility. Indeed, I have wondered at times if that is one reason why God often requires us to pray before He will act, when He obviously already knows our needs and desires and they are within His will.

So how does this relate to the problems facing our society?

Does this mean that God requires us to pray that we will choose leaders that will govern in a godly fashion? Of course we should do that. Does this mean that we should be active in our communities to oppose policies and actions that are in contradiction to His Word? Again, of course we should do that. But there is more. These actions, while good in and of themselves, are merely dealing with symptoms.

One of the most powerful types of prayer in existence is the prayer of repentance. "If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land." (II Chron. 7:14, KJV) These were words that God spoke to the people of Israel at the time when Solomon dedicated the first temple, but they are eternal. They are just as valid today as they were when they were spoken. And if there were ever a people who needed to repent, it is our modern culture of today.

And I am not just talking about the unbelievers among us. I am talking first to the Church. Instead of being salt and light and adding flavor and illumination to the culture in which we live, we have instead allowed that culture to transform us. The divorce rate among believers is no different than among unbelievers. Pornography is rampant. Behavior which God calls sinful—abortion, sodomy, acceptance of false doctrines, and so forth, just for starters—are common in our churches and seminaries. Grace has become cheap. Paul's words in Romans 6 about not "continuing in sin so that grace may abound" are ignored, as so many modern believers live lives no different than those of the people around them, and don't see anything wrong with it.

People, God is not going to bless us while we continue to live in disobedience to His Word. We can pray until our kneecaps fall off and it will just bounce off the brass heavens if we continue to cherish sin in our hearts (Psalm 66:18). Do we want to see our society changed and restored? Then we need spiritual revival. And it must begin at home. God does not change, and His principles remain the same forever. Just because society decides that sin is no longer sin does not make it so. He will not compromise His holiness just to accomodate us. He is the Creator, and we are the creation. It is we who must accomodate Him. He has already done far more than we can think or imagine in sending His Son to die for our sins. We must respond in gratitude and repentance for this incomparable gift, instead of treating the sacrifice of Christ as "just another activity in our lives".

I have probably stepped on a few toes with this posting. If so, I do not apologize. Maybe some toes needed stepping on. We are far, far past the point of worrying about offending people who are uncomfortable with what the Word of God says. The very future of our nation is at stake.

And maybe, the very future of your soul.

A Book Review… and a Warning

March 19, 2011

Much has been said in recent years about the Last Days, the period in history when Jesus Christ will return to rule the Earth. Indeed, this has been a topic for discussion among believers ever since the Book of Revelation was penned by John the apostle, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. There has been much speculation as to the actual identity of certain prophetic figures, such as the Antichrist and the Beast of Revelation. Various historical figures have been named, and to date none of them has proven to be correct.

It is not my purpose to try and name a figure and say that thus-and-such person will be the Antichrist. Indeed, just as with the first coming of Christ, I do not believe that we can actually foresee the manner in which Biblical prophecies will be fulfilled until it actually happens. However, in recent years I have come to see some interesting parallels between certain End Times figures in the Bible, and certain apocalyptic figures anticipated by another major world religion—Islam. And I recently read an on-line book which not only lent credence to this possibility, but actually pointed out a number of parallels that I had missed. The name of the book is Will Islam be our Future? by Joel Richardson. (This same author has also recently published a print book called The Islamic Antichrist, which is an expanded version of this on-line book. I have not read this yet.)

In brief, the author describes three prophetic End Times figures anticipated by Islam: the Mahdi (or Islamic Messiah), the Islamic Jesus, and the Dajjal (the Islamic "anti-Messiah"). The Mahdi is supposed to appear at the end of the age and unite Islam and head a restored Caliphate. After a period, Islam predicts the "return" of their version of Jesus, who is not the Biblical Christ by any stretch of the imagination. Instead, the Islamic Jesus will be a devout Muslim, will work miracles on behalf of the Mahdi, and will abolish the jizya, which is the tax that non-Muslims can pay to avoid being put to death for failure to convert. Lastly, Islam predicts the arrival of the Dajjal, who to them is a powerful figure of evil who claims to be Christ, whom Jews will recognize as their Messiah, and who will defend Israel against the Mahdi and the Islamic Jesus.

The author then draws parallels with Biblical prophecy, showing how Islamic prophecies about the Mahdi correspond fairly well with Biblical prophecies of the first Beast of Revelation, and how the Islamic Jesus correlates very well with the second Beast, also known as the False Prophet. Lastly, although there is considerable distortion, he shows that a case can be made that the Dajjal is actually a misrepresentation of the actual return of Jesus Christ, presented in such a way as to deceive followers of Islam and the Mahdi into believing Him to be evil.

Now the author does not propose that Christians put their trust in the prophecies of Islam, since according to the Bible, it is a false religion invented by Satan, who is the father of lies. Nevertheless, it is interesting to see that there are definite parallels, and the possibility exists that the Islamic prophecies—which may foretell the same figures, but assign totally different roles to them—could have been given in order to deceive the unwary into following a false Messiah.

Richardson does not claim that these parallels are proof that the Antichrist and the Islamic Mahdi or Islamic Jesus are the same. He merely points out the numerous parallels as evidence for a possibility that believers should be aware of, especially in this day and age. The important point is that believers be familiar with what the Scriptures say about the return of the true Christ, so that we will not be deceived by a false one. And we should also be familiar with the prophecies about End Times events and figures, so that when they do appear—whoever they actually do turn out to be—we will be able to recognize them and take heed.

Lastly, I wish to mention the author's chosen response to Islam, in light of all of this. He emphatically points out that Muslims are not the enemy. The true enemy is the devil, and Muslims are human beings created in the image of God just like the rest of us. Jesus died for them, just as much as He died for us. Muslims are under a terrible deception, and our response should be to reach out to them and pray for them, that the Holy Spirit would open their eyes to the true Jesus and that they would be saved. I found this position to be particularly gratifying, since it demonstrates the love of God and lends credence to the idea that the author is truly listening to the Holy Spirit.

In brief, I was very impressed with this book and the ideas outlined in it. Although they are not proof of an Islamic Antichrist, they do present possibilities that believers in Christ should not ignore. On the technical side, the formatting leaves a bit to be desired, and there were a few places where I thought that a proofreader could have caught some grammatical and spelling errors. But overall, I highly recommend it. It contains a message that at the very least we should be made aware of.

Solving Problems – The Good and the Bad

September 16, 2010

It has been a while since I posted a commentary. Since the last time, I have traveled around the country, visited people, and seen a lot of things both good and bad. One thing that happened during my travels was that a portion of the fuel line on my car ruptured while driving through Colorado, and I had to have it repaired in Steamboat Springs. Now my car is twenty-two years old, and it turned out that the part was no longer available, so the mechanic had to figure out something else. Fortunately, he was able to remove the original fittings and build a new unit by connecting them to a section of high-pressure hose using fuel injector clamps. The result worked as well or better than the original part.

In short, he solved the problem in the right way, by facing the reality of the situation and applying valid methods to deal with it.

Life is full of problems. Problems are as old as the human race, ever since our original ancestors chose to flip their middle fingers at God and go their own way. As a result, dealing with problems is also as old as the human race. Sometimes we do it the right way—with good results—but many times we do exactly the opposite. And although a so-called "solution" may appear to work, in the long run the result is often disastrous.

Our country may be pretty good, but it is not perfect. It never has been; no country has. We have had our share of problems throughout our history. And being human, sometimes we have worked to solve them in right ways, and at other times we have tried solutions which, in the end, made the situation worse. Sometimes we learn from those mistakes, other times, we do not.

Today, we still face issues. Everyone knows that. Unfortunately, now more than ever we are allowing these issues to divide us as a people. And even more unfortunately, too many of those in power are applying "solutions" that are actually no solution at all, but in reality accelerate the downward spiral. More and more among us are coming to recognize this. The debate rages. Those on one side continue to point fingers at our problems—often exaggerating them way out of proportion—and insist that we keep letting them implement their disastrous non-solutions. On the other side, altogether too many pundits either deny that there is a problem, or try to sweep it under the rug, or else just offer a bigger, better band-aid to put on the broken bone.

So why is it that so many otherwise intelligent human beings consistently fail to come up with valid solutions? Or come up with "solutions" that end up making life hell? The answer lies in the underlying philosophy by which they view the world.

The vast majority of those in power today, both in the public and private sectors, view life from a humanistic perspective. Man is the center of the universe. God does not exist, or if He does, He started the show at some time in the distant past and then went off on a celestial fishing trip and left it to sink or swim. There is no absolute right or wrong. Human life is no more valuable than the life of a garden slug. And so forth and so on…

For those who want to eat, drink and fornicate and get rich selling stuff to others who want to eat, drink and fornicate, this sounds like an absolutely wonderful philosophy. Live now and don't worry about later. No Creator, no Judge. (The part about a Judge scares the willies out of a lot of people, by the way.) Sit and contemplate your navel, then go out and save the whales and the whole world. If it feels good, do it.

Only one little "gotcha". It doesn't work. And neither do solutions to the world's problems based on this kind of philosophy.

Whether one likes to admit it or not, man was made in the image of God. And after finishing the job, He did not go off on any celestial fishing trip. Instead, He has been actively involved with our lives ever since the first man and woman walked the Earth. And we were made to function in certain ways. We react to given situations in fairly predictable manners. We have this thing called a "conscience", which no amount of denying will make go away.

And any solution to any of the world's problems that has any hope of actually working must take all of this into account.

Can we solve our economic problems? Yes, if we do it by God's principles. Can we solve racial problems (which are actually worse in most other countries; America today is one of the most tolerant societies in history)? Yes, if we view the issue from God's perspective, that we are all made in His image and equally valuable in His eyes. Can we solve issues like crime, pollution (the ancient Jewish laws promoted clean communities, which was a revolutionary idea at the time), poverty, social issues, etc.? Certainly, if we follow the principles laid out in God's Word. It won't be easy—we all struggle with the selfish nature to sin—but in the end it will provide a better, longer-lasting solution than anything that humanists can come up with.

Will our society ever turn from its propensity to seek self-centered, humanistic, throw-God-under-the-bus solutions to our problems? Or will we turn back to our Creator and seek His answers instead? I really don't know. At this point, I confess that I am skeptical. I fear that we may have gone well past the tipping point and are on a road to national self-destruction. But remember that what is impossible with man is possible with God. If enough of us humble ourselves and pray and seek His face, then He still might pour out His Spirit and send a revival. I hope and pray that this happens, because if it doesn't, I don't see any hope for America. We can vote conservatives into Congress this coming November and maybe even toss Obama out on his ears in 2012. But unless we also rebuild a solid foundation for our society based on God's Word, it will just be putting more band-aids on broken bones.

Will you humble yourself and pray?

Judgment is Here

March 23, 2010

Last Sunday, Americans stood and watched as their elected "representatives" proceeded to thumb their collective noses at the unwashed masses and ram a highly unpopular piece of legislation down our throats. Among those who haven't allowed themselves to be brainwashed, there is little doubt that the so-called "Health Care Reform" bill will do exactly the opposite of what the liberal propaganda machine claims. If allowed to stand—if it is neither repealed or declared unconstitutional—this legislation could be the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back and reduces the United States of America, once the greatest nation on Earth, to a Third World hellhole.

But maybe we deserve it.

As I have been saying repeatedly in earlier postings, we as a country have lost our moral compass. We have thrown out the Word of God as the foundation of our society, even to the point of denying that it ever was. We call good evil and evil good. We murder the unborn and call it choice. We treat marriage as a convenience to be thrown aside when no longer convenient, and we have redefined what remains into an unholy perversion. We have spat in God's face and declared that we no longer need Him or His laws—or that we even still believe that He exists.

And the most frightening thing is that perhaps God hasn't even begun to actively raise His hand against us.

There is an old saying—one drawn from the Bible, actually—that says, "as you sow, so shall you reap." Another way of putting it is to say that there are consequences to our actions. Society is made up of individual human beings, in a way similar to how matter is made up of individual atoms. And just as atoms determine the behavior of the material that they make up, so human nature has a direct bearing on how society functions. God created man to function according to certain rules. Some of them are obvious: we breathe oxygen, not chlorine. We drink water, not sulfuric acid. Gravity keeps us on the ground. And so forth and so on. Much of what we do is heavily influenced by the natural laws that we are subject to.

At the same time, we are more than merely physical bodies that breathe, consume nourishment and reproduce. We have minds. We have the human soul, the human spirit. (Many people choose not to believe in these things because they cannot see them; we cannot see electrons, do we refuse to believe in electricity?) Just as human beings are subject to physical laws, we are also subject to what we might call moral and spiritual laws. And I am not talking about commandments such as "Do not murder" or "Do not commit adultery". I am talking about cause-and-effect laws, the ones that say if you do thus-and-such, there will be such-and-such a consequence. Consequences for breaking moral and spiritual laws may not be as clearly delineated as the consequences for ignoring a physical law such as gravity, but they are no less real.

And that is why I can say that we may already be under God's judgment, yet believe that He may still have not actively lifted His hand against us.

As our society has progressively thrown God's principles out the window and substituted them with our own replacements (and if you believe that the devil is a real being, as I do, then there may even be a worse source of these replacements than man), we have been operating more and more contrary to the way we were designed. For example, modern progressives are trying to train our society to accept homosexuality as being perfectly normal. However, if you describe the gay lifestyle to any child who has not lived long enough to become brainwashed, who still bears much of the innocence that God created us with, the response you will invariably get is "Yuck!" Man was simply not designed to operate that way.

And that is a fairly simple example. As we throw off God's moral standards, we lose our grounding as to what is right and what is wrong. Without a belief in an absolute standard—God's standard—to guide us, moral behavior becomes optional. If it feels good, do it. If you can sponge off society instead of working to make an honest living, then do it. If there is nothing to restrain your greed in the way you operate your business, then what is wrong with lying, cheating and stealing to get what you want? Our massive increase in government has come as a result of a large segment of our population who think this way and demand entitlements at the expense of others, and from those who do not recognize man's inherent sinful nature and refuse to admit that people could behave this way if given a choice.

And that is why I believe that it is entirely possible that America is already coming under God's judgment without Him actually lifting His hand against us. We are simply reaping the consequences of our own immoral and rebellious actions.

And this is truly frightening.

Why do I say that? Because if things are getting as bad as they are right now without God actively raising His hand against us, just imagine what could happen when He finally does act, when it becomes more than just the natural consequences of our actions. If we think it's bad now, just wait.

Looking around, I see a lot of anger against our government for what they did on Sunday. I see a lot of promises that we can "take our country back". Now that is all very fine and well, but the fact is that if we do not return to God and repent of our evil ways, in the long run it isn't going to make a bit of difference. At best, it will be a temporary reprieve, just as ancient Judah had several temporary reprieves under godly kings. Just look at the book of Isaiah to see how much of an effect a good king like Hezekiah had on the people as a whole. Although he feared God and restored proper worship in Judah, the hearts of the people did not change one bit. When an evil king succeeded him, they were more than ready to follow him back into sin and rebellion.

Our country needs to turn back to God, and from the heart. We have had strong spiritual revivals in our past, and God can bring one about again. However, one of the main problems today is that the rot has spread deeply into the Church as well. Greed, sexual immorality, denying the Word of God and other sin is rampant among so-called "believers". Yes, there are exceptions, the "seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Baal", and I thank God for them. But the majority of people in churches around America are hardly distinguishable from unbelievers. And this is a stench in God's nostrils.

And so I am calling on believers everywhere to pray. Pray that God will pour His Holy Spirit out on the Church to convict it of sin. Pray that He will call us to repentance. I have written about this before, but in recent days—even before the health care atrocity was passed in Congress—I have sensed the need for this more than ever.

Because only if God's people repent and truly seek His face and put away their sin, will revival be possible.

And only then will be truly be able to restore our country.

Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely

January 21, 2010

Just when you think you've seen it all…

Watching our elected so-called "representatives" meeting in the middle of the night to pass a monstrous piece of legislation that a majority of the American people don't want and that won't solve anything was bad enough. And to be quite honest, it came as no surprise. Remember, these are the people who hid under their desks last summer during the town hall meetings, the people who refer to anyone who disagrees with them as "Nazis" or worse, the people who bring in union thugs to intimidate—and in at least one recorded case, physically attack—those who dare to stand up against them. So I had predicted long before this "health care" bill came to a vote that it was going to be passed. After all, it won't affect the elites ruling over us, and they have for the most part ceased to care what We The People think.

It was when the power-hungry thugs in the Senate started spending yours and my tax dollars to bribe the few semi-principled Democrats who were holding out on them that I really tossed my cookies.

Yet, was that really any more of a surprise than the simple fact that these people were willing to ram it down our throats in the first place, regardless of what is really good for the country? (And believe me, this bill is not good for our country!) To be quite honest, no.

The reason is quite simple: People are corrupt and sinful. It has been that way since the fall of man, and will continue to be that way until Christ returns and sets up His kingdom.

There was a time when, in spite of our nature, our nation and our leaders at least stood for what was right. They recognized that there were limits to what they could do, and respected those limits. Even though they were just as much sinners as today's leaders, they at least had a healthy fear of God that drove them to obey His law and the Constitution that He inspired our Founding Fathers to give us when they set the country up in the first place.

It has been said that a democracy—and even though America was founded as a republic, the same principle still applies—can only last until the people realize that they can vote themselves money out of the public coffers. Well, that has been true for many years now. I recently read a statistic that up to forty percent of U.S. citizens are on some kind of government dole, which, I might add, the rest of us end up paying for. But whoever said that missed the main point. Money is only one thing that people can vote themselves. It is merely one means of being able to do whatever a person wants, regardless of whether it's right or wrong.

And that's where the problem is. What we have really voted ourselves "from the public coffers" is the so-called right to do essentially whatever we choose. We have thrown morality out the window. Worse yet, we now tell ourselves and our children that there aren't any absolute standards of morality. We tell them and ourselves that God is either irrelevant or that He simply does not exist. After all, didn't the Great Lord Charles Darwin explain it all? Well, that's an entire subject in and of itself which I won't go into, save to say that Darwin didn't prove a thing, save that he could come up with imaginative new ways to deny our Creator.

On Stargate SG-1, Colonel O'Neill once said, "That is just wrong on so many levels." Unfortunately, the same can be said of America these days. The problems exist on so many levels, in so many different parts and aspects of our society, that it is difficult to say what can be done. Yes, people still want freedom and the majority object to the socialist takeover of our government. Witness Tuesday's victory by a Republican in the Massachusetts Senate race. But how many would be willing to give up their "right" to some form of immoral behavior, if that became necessary to restoring our society? How many would be willing to give up their own porking out at the public trough in order to help reduce the staggering national debt? Unfortunately, people remain selfish and sinful. I think you can guess the answers to those questions.

As I have said before and will say again, there can be no real restoration in our country until there is a restoration in our hearts. A free society is dependent on the ability of the people to govern themselves. I'm not talking about the ability to elect representatives instead of allowing a dictator to rule with an iron fist. I'm talking about the ability of each and every individual citizen to govern his or her own life, in accordance with an absolute set of moral standards. That is what we have really lost in America. Instead of recognizing their responsibility to one another—and to their Creator—most people in our country these days are more concerned with their "rights", with what they can get, not what they can give.

The only power known to man that can truly change the hearts of individual people is the power of the Holy Spirit of God, through salvation in Jesus Christ. Yes, I'm talking about that Old Time Religion, that philosophy that so many in our country today find repugnant. And why do they find it repugnant? Because it forces them to have to face their own sinfulness. And in spite of denial after denial, the fact is that God created man with a conscience. And that conscience is what drives them absolutely crazy with revulsion when they hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Again, this should come as no surprise to any believer. After all, Jesus predicted it two thousand years ago. Paul wrote about the last days when people would reject sound doctrine. Unbelievers are acting as unbelievers always have. The only difference in America these days is that the social acceptance of Christianity that was such a part of our culture when the country was founded is essentially gone. The persecution is coming out in the open. Fortunately—at least so far—that persecution is largely verbal and legal, save for the occasional nut with a gun (of which a disproportionately large number deliberately target Christians). But if our country continues in the direction it's been going for the past several decades, persecution such as believers suffered under the Roman emperors, and in more modern times under totalitarian regimes, will come. It's only a matter of time.

So what can we do?

We are still free to do a number of things socially and politically. We can vote for the right candidates and ballot initiatives. We can protest abortion and gay "marriage". We can try to be salt and light in our communities. But the most important thing we can do is pray. This is not something new I am saying on this site. I have said it before and will continue to say it. We must pray. We must pray that God will bring about a true revival, not merely a change in the political winds. Until and unless the individual people of our country are fundamentally transformed in a godly fashion, we will merely be putting bandaids on broken bones.

I don't know if it's already too late. Part of me suspects that if we truly are in the last days prior to the return of Christ, then wickedness will simply continue to increase. But we don't know that we are in that period of history. As responsible citizens of the United States—and as responsible citizens of Heaven—we owe it to ourselves, our country, and our Lord, to pray for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit such as we have not seen in many long years. At the very least, we need to pray that God will wake up His people, the Church. Because altogether too many of us are asleep in the light.

And the light is rapidly turning to darkness.