Fail-Safe

Water heaters and furnaces that use natural gas are all equipped with a failsafe mechanism. By using a thermocouple or similar device, the main gas valve is prohibited from opening unless there is a pilot flame. “Failsafe” conditions are established in many areas such as bank accounts, gasoline pumps, dam engineering, rocket science, etc.  A failsafe approach is a fairly common perspective in many areas of our lives.  However, its application is quite often curiously missing in our theology. 

Consider for a moment the concept of pre-trib rapture.  A failsafe approach would be to ask, “What if this theological assumption is incorrect?”  Notice that, by definition, the safe approach is the one that assumes that there is danger ahead. The pre-trib perspective assumes that there is no danger and even teaches people to ignore danger; the danger of being unprepared for the greatest trial the church can endure – relentless deception (Matthew 24).  The pre-trib position would build water heater gas valves without a pilot light, thinking that, “everything is going to be okay for those of us who are favored.”  Notice as well that anyone who assumes that they will have to go through tribulation will certainly be pleasantly surprised if pre-trib turns out to be true.  However, how quickly can you prepare for tribulation if you’ve been skylarking along in your pre-trib assumption that ignored the danger, only to find the devil uncloaking in full power?

What happens if we apply failsafe theology to Calvinism?  Doesn’t the safe route take every individual though the methodology established by the church that you must believe and act upon your belief and understand that Jesus joins you in your belief through the power of the Holy Spirit?  Surely this procedure eliminates the danger of having to come to an understanding that you were preselected in some place and time where you don’t have access to the records.  Unless some angel has visited you with a Xerox of a heavenly papyrus that has your name written from before God decided to make anything (sounds dangerously parallel to baloney of Moroni that Mormons believe...), then you Calvinists would certainly be better off with your beginning place at the cross and your understanding of God’s will for you as something that was written after the foundation of the world.  Come to the cross.

"This thing was not done in a corner . . . " Acts 26:26

Building blocks. 

Of course these are fundamental to any small child’s toy chest.  

When was the last time you saw a child build a house of blocks? Did he suspend the roof in mid air? Were the walls floating above the floor?  Was the foundation the last thing that was put in place?  Obviously none of this is possible.

Even on the most basic level of construction, the foundation is laid first.  When we are looking at a biblical picture of a structure made of stone we are constrained to evaluate the cornerstone; Jesus is the cornerstone.  This cornerstone was promised in Isaiah 28:16 and set in place according to 1 Peter 2:6.  Notice that this cornerstone does not get set in place at the foundation of the world or before the foundation of the world.  It was promised and predestined before the foundation of the world but not made effective until established in time.  That time, according to true Christian doctrine, was the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

 

There appears to be some confusion in this area of Christian doctrine because of what I would call a flirtation with Pharisaism.  A renewed interest in Judeo-Christian ethics and the idea that the Ten Commandments are the cornerstone of a great society has a powerful appeal, but is truly a house of cards.  The inspired picture in Revelation 21:10-14 gives us a different perspective on God’s view of how the house is built.     The Apostles are not set in place before the cornerstone.  The Apostles are not set at random without the cornerstone.  The cornerstone is set in place first.  The twelve building blocks of the foundation are established in relation to the cornerstone.  The gates of the city, though older material, are not of greater importance, they cannot be established on a foundation of sand nor suspended in mid air.  All the houses and apartments above the first floor level are part of the promise of John 14:1-4 (You Calvinist make what Jesus says here nonsensical, if he already knows who will be living in the house and how many there are, then there is no need for preparation).  It is often hard to remember that Jesus did not care a fig about building a great society but gave his life to save every individual soul.  Pharisaism , we must always remember,  is the favored formula of Satan and his promised method of deliverance. Never mind that what he promises is always based upon lies (John 8:44) and the only deliverance that he is capable of is special delivery straight to hell.

Notice that one of the cardinal difficulties of Calvinism is that it pictures a building with Jesus at all four corners.  Again, their perspective is problematic in that their building is all on one level: limited in size and scope.  Small hearts demand small horizons . . . fueled by the parochial power of Pharisaism.   Jesus promises to erase our horizons when he says, “If I be lifted up, I will draw everyone to me” (John 12:32).  What difference do our human limitations make to us when he is offering us eternal life from the cross?  

Come to the cross.

They sing the Bohemian Rhapsody in Hell.

Romans 4:25
Judgment.
Justification.
Here is a topic about which Paul wrote many words in the letters sent out to the earliest churches. This topic took hold of some of the large personalities of the 16th century such as Luther and Calvin and, what is known in church history as the Reformation was launched. "Justification by faith alone" became the battle cry of men against a church system (the Roman Church) that was fat with wickedness and evil practices, not the least of which was putting salvation up for sale.
500 years later, many people still honor the words and works of these men such as Calvin. They consider that he had a great capacity to understand God and scriptural truth. However great Calvin's intellect and organizational skills may have been, none of these attributes can compensate for the fact that he was not "heart smart." All of his intellectual skills did not keep Calvin from becoming so stupid in his thought processes that he dared to blaspheme the Holy Spirit.
One of the ways in which the Reformers such as Calvin did damage to the truth of God's word was through their emphasis on an inadequate justification. Propelled by the foolishness of an ex nihilo perspective of creation, the dead wood of Calvin's heart led him to propose salvation by fiat. Being a lawyer and in love with the Roman form (that eventually became the European and American form in refinement) of written law, Calvin saw God as speaking things into existence and writing decrees. Calvin's explanation of the process was that if someone was justified by God, then God spoke it into existence. Afterward, some exalted creature like Jesus would come and make a show of submission so that there would be a holy lesson plan. Calvinism denies that Jesus is God and that his death on the cross was effective in bringing about forgiveness of sin. Calvinism is as unholy as Mormonism and is the basis of Mormon doctrine, reducing Jesus Christ to a status that is less than God Himself.
Justification.
David comes upon a scene (1 Samuel 17) where the sons of Abraham - friend of God, mighty in faith - are trembling before a son of foolishness (Psalm 14). Goliath is champion for the god of power and modernism and worldliness. David accepts the role of champion of the true and living God, creator of heaven and earth. The clash between them defines the term "justification." The god of Goliath is left laying with him in the dirt. The God of David and Abraham and all who will join them, prevails. You can truly decide for yourself who you will serve.
Romans 4:25 is beautiful in brevity; "(Jesus) who was delivered for our offences, was raised again for our justification." Get the bad pictures of American courtroom battles out of your feeble, Calvinistic minds and enlist with Jesus - the true and living God (Hebrews 2:14) - at the cross. The battle is not paper and pomposity, it is trusting a champion and joining an army which is determined to "make darkness break camp" and flee (James 4:7). Come to the cross.

Dying to be green.

Winter has some spiritual advantages that are not available at other times of the year. When I drive by a pasture and see an oak tree on a hill that is covered in green leaves, I know that the tree is unhealthy since it is impossible for it to have its own greenness until Spring. Mistletoe has so invaded this tree that it has become a dominant feature; one that cannot be ascertained in any other season.
There are many people who talk as though Calvinism is a good thing: a godly doctrine. They don't want to admit that it is Mistletoe Theology. It never was any good (not even when Augustine proposed it or King Solomon flirted with it...read Ecclesiastes: interesting how the king gets truly wise when he is old), and the only reason good people are deceived by it is because they have never held a mirror in front of them when the days outside are frosty, yet revealing.
Someone needs to ask a Calvinist why Total Depravity only works where they want it to work (they want to use it to gain "Theological Power" over you and appear wise in their own eyes) and ignore what the Apostles teach about "corruption."
Oak trees are still oak trees even though they share in the corruption that is common throughout creation. The corruption of mistletoe does not make the oak tree into some other decrepitated entity. It is not the agent of "Total Depravity." It latches onto the good thing that has a name dating back to Adam. Romans 8:19-27.
You Calvinists stupidly (using a technical term here..."stupid" ("bete" in French which translates as "beast") means using the analytical capabilities of an animal) insist on impossibilities in the same way as do evolutionists. You join them in professing that Total Depravity is in operation in the universe and that the thing infected will become something new and good by advancement. You like to jabber about being devoted to biblical creation but you lie to yourselves if you hold the blasphemous doctrines of Calvin.  Your God is the universe of everything.  I have good news for you. Jesus IS God.
The oak tree is an oak tree. Infected with mistletoe, it can give up its goodness to the infection and, eventually, both oak and mistletoe will die...a second death. Humans, infected by sin/and/death, can get spiritual surgery if they visit another tree. There is still an old rugged cross for anyone who is alive and willing to kneel there.

You may be almost nothing besides mistletoe, but,
if your body can still hold breath,
you can inhale the air
of a land that is breathed into you by its king,
maker of humans and trees and every good thing.

Meet Jesus at the cross.

Only One Cross

Have you ever noticed that, in Luke 23:33, there are two thieves, one on the left and one on the right of Jesus?  One thing rather interesting about this part of the crucifixion story is that here are two men who have taken up their own personal crosses and are executed at the same time as Jesus.  Is anyone foolish enough to believe that their personal crosses had any value in regard to their salvation?  Verse 43 points out that one of the thieves made a good end while the other apparently went to Hell.  Obviously their own personal crosses had no meaning and no validity as an instrument of salvation yet, Jesus, in Luke 9:24 promises that taking up a cross and losing your life for His sake results in salvation.  How do we resolve this apparent difficulty in the scripture?

It has become common place for many people to describe their personal difficulty as "bearing their cross."  Trials and tribulation abound for humans.  Christians are not exempt but are promised strength and a status of overcomer (Romans 8:37-39).  However, trials and tribulation in any form do not qualify as ones personal crosses to bear.  If this were so then all humans would receive salvation since at one time all humans experience trials and tribulation.  The Bible does not teach Universalism anymore than it teaches random selection (Calvinism).

There is no real difficulty in resolving the issue of taking up the cross.  First of all it is a daily thing and as such coincides with the daily bread of The Lord’s Prayer.  Since The Lord’s Prayer is connected to “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us,” then there is no doubt that bread and forgiveness refer to Jesus’ work on the cross.  This being true, there is no other cross to look for.  If I can manufacture my own personal cross, I have no strength within myself to provide daily bread or forgiveness.

Daily bread is available at the cross.
Forgiveness is available at the cross.
Salvation is available at the cross.

Only one cross is available for you and me and for all of us to take up, to follow after our Savior. That is the cross of Jesus Christ.  Come to the Cross!

Slithering covetousness

Why is it that we never hear any preaching or teaching on the topic of covetousness?  It is a good source for plenty of discussion and exposition.  After all, who is exempt from this nasty little sin? 

Ooops!! Maybe I have found my answer.

Maybe it is TOO common and we prefer to pontificate on the sins we are not presently committing.  I hate to admit that the guy I work for has it made and I would love to have his easy job doing very nearly nothing and getting paid fat money.  Of course, the only thing that makes his job so easy is that I am so all-fired good that he can coast. 

Uh-oh! I felt that slithering begin around my feet and thought I heard a hiss of pride from somewhere.  Something wicked is proud to hear me agreeing with his favorite topic…the proud me.

Maybe this side of coveting is too easy to detect and turn to forgiveness.  I can tell you the side that is more difficult.  It is the side that is prompted by an overactive sense of justice.  I call it the Calvinist facet.  It works like this.  Joe Blow works in a factory and has a difficult job that he detests because it feels like a prison.  In walks a Barry Lewis who has the job he wants but Joe could never be qualified to do.  Suddenly, he is Barry’s worst enemy and joins forces with P.D. Coker (a guy that works for the same company as Barry) and they begin to feed each other “the poison of asps” that they tuck into their lips like a disgusting dip of snuff (Romans 3:13).  The problem with Blow and Coker is that they can never recognize that they are doing anything wrong.  After all, they are justified in their inferiority complex and the fact that Barry is too good (or smart or healthy or successful or powerful or connected or________) for them.  The Calvinist facet tempts them to set up exclusive parameters as to who is really “in” and who is out.  If you are in with Barry, then you are out with them.  Basically, the covetousness here doesn’t want what the other has…it wants the other to not have it because he does not deserve it.  Hidden from this Calvinist facet mentality is the devilish sleight of hand that Blow/Cokerism is measured by the smallness of its adherents and not by any truly objective standard (like, maybe, the cross?).  The deceitfulness works because we should all be quick to champion a just cause…and what more just cause is there than tearing down Barry and all those damned upstart Lewises.  There is no mere foot-rubbing slither in action here.  When I look in the mirror I see my snake’s forked tongue licking sin/dust and loving its lack of flavor!

This one gets us all…even preachers, teachers, deacons, ministerial types…maybe especially so.  The gravitational pull of “Pharisee” is working from another dimension! 

Meanwhile, perhaps it is too easy to turn to the other sins that I don’t commit and remind myself of how good I am, masking the fact that I am far too focused on me and my results instead of having the cross at the top of my eye chart.  If the cross is the place where I lay my burdens down, then I should shed my burden of wanting to be important and take up His cross of reconciliation. 

Numbers of Numbers

I began a study in the Old Testament book of Numbers this week and did something I don’t ordinarily do. I opened a commentary from a good Commentary series and began to work through some of the author’s ideas about the book. Everything seemed to be going along rather well for the first verse and I was hopeful that the work would be helpful.

Bam! Verse 2 and the author goes off into a long explanation of the inflated numbers (from his perspective and that of most credible scholars) in the census of chapter one. I started laughing out loud at the inability of scholars to read and understand what is being said. Somehow, the author (and his scholarly forebears) got hung up on the notion of the census as being primarily to enumerate the men who would be available to serve in a military capacity; signing them up for the draft, if you will. However, the best clues as to what is happening here begin with the instructions in verse 1.

Clue 1 = Moses and Aaron are given the task of numbering those eligible for the army.  This number is not revealed. The total numbers that are being counted (and recorded) relate to the households (Hebrew = toledah, a technical term that points to the first ancestor in a group. Numbers 1:20…KJV is “generations”) and is extensive. It extends all the way back to the 12 patriarchs.

Clue 2 = God instructs Moses to enlist particular men, called out by name (1:5-15), to stand for the poll (KJV…those of you using other translations may have difficulty here since most of those versions are inaccurate at this point). “Poll” is a good old word that means “skull.” The Hebrew here (1:18) is familiar to those who know their New Testament rendering of the crucifixion = gulgoletham…Greek transliteration = Golgotha, the place of the skull (John 19:17…by the way. You Calvinists who inaccurately think that you were enumerated in some magical Manicheean/Zoroastrian “spark of divinity” pre-existence before God made the stuff of creation need to understand that you must show up at the “place of the skull” to be numbered with Jesus. Come to the cross!). Why count skulls? Literally. The numbers of the census are predicated on the records (“…the books were opened…” Revelation 20:12) brought from Egypt along with the firstborn males that are standing before the Lord when the leaders of the tribes begin the count.

Clue 3 = The story continues to discuss the unique case of the daughters of Zelophelad (Numbers 27:11) who demanded an inheritance in the land. This part of the story stands in direct tension with the sidebar mention of Er and Onan (26:19) who died in Canaan…thus no inheritance allotment of land is ascribed to them. It is easy to see that the point of the census is primarily to establish the boundaries of the lands and the amount given to the families: the census is frozen at this juncture strictly in relation to the tribal allotments. You cannot go into the past and count anyone beyond the 12 and there will be no future adjustments in the allotments; no encroaching on the weaker clans.

Clue 4 = The scholarly difficulty in any story such as this comes when they forget that the rest of the story is already a known commodity. At the point of takeoff in Numbers 1, the people standing in front of Moses and Moses himself have no idea that they are about to fail a crucial test and follow the stupidity of democratic influence (10 spies vs. 2) instead of the direction of faith in the Lord. They are not aware of the report of the spies and their own foolishness that will result in 40 years of wandering and all the males over 20 years that have just been counted becoming gulgoletham on the last day of the 40 years. The numbering establishes what households receive property and, with the exception of Joshua and Caleb (26:65), who will be dead in 40 years…NOT who will serve in God’s army to invade the land.