Rot in Hell: How a Secular Newspaper Can Teach a Christian Pastor

One thing is certain: Osama bin Laden is NOT the Antichrist.

This article was not exactly what I had in mind for part two of Is the Islamic Antichrist Among Us?, but it is funny how the news events of the day can change one's course.

My sister called me this past Sunday evening to ask me if I were watching TV. She does a good job of alerting me to things I should be aware of, like an approaching tornado, because most of the time we don't have the TV turned on. This time, though, it was not a weather report she was making me aware of; instead, it was the earth-shattering announcement that our military, particularly the cream of the cream of the crop, the Navy Seals, had taken out Osama within a 40-minute time period within his compound in Pakistan.

It was either Good Morning, America or the Today Show the next morning that held up the New York newspaper headlines announcing the death of this terrorist mastermind. One of the New York City newspapers had this for their big caption on the front page--ROT IN HELL. Beside that was the picture of Osama bin Laden.

How strikingly odd that a secular newspaper in New York City would admit in this "eliminate-all-hell-talk" postmodern religious environment that hell must be a real place after all. True, it is only a place for the really, really, really bad folks, like Osama, or other mass murderers, or serial rapists, or child abusers, or former spouses, but nonetheless, the world still has a place for hell, besides just in our cursing. We can't shake off hell, as much as we are told that we must, in this new age of coexistence, full tolerance and positive feel-happy spirituality where all roads lead to heaven. . .except that one road we must keep in tact that leads to hell.

What is the explanation for all this dichotomy of how we should not believe in hell, yet how we should believe in hell? The Preacher in Ecclesiastes says that God has set eternity in the heart of man. Man has been designed by its Creator to think of eternity, that this life is not all there is. The new atheists or the run-of-the-mill advanced secularists can try all they want to rub this "archaic" thought out of our craniums, but it simply will not go away. We have a list of people that we want to see rot in hell. It is more than just a death wish, and it is more than just a hell wish too.

This is because we know that justice is never fully served in this life. It is not right that Osama had a quick death for one time, when how many people did he kill, many of them very painful slow deaths, on 9/11? Even if we could kill Osama many times over, we still would think he did not fully get what was coming to him.

We demand that there be a fuller justice out there beyond this life, something that is more exacting and more definite by a Judge that is completely able and willing to do the right thing in every case. Justice delayed is justice denied, which is often the case in this life; but that sticky unresolved issue could be more than overcome if justice determined is justice divined in the next life.

Of course, a normal man's thinking has all those people "worse" than himself getting their just desserts before God one day; he never stops to consider that Gehenna will be populated by people that were not as "good" as God. That should strike another kind of terror in the mind of every man. How can anyone be as good as God, and how can I then be removed as a prime candidate for residency in hell myself?

Justification is the heaven-sent solution whereby man can avoid being sent to hell. Since all our righteousness is like filthy rags (menstrual cloths, literally), we need the perfect Righteousness of Another to be transferred to our account. Jesus, the God-man, through His death on the cross, has made it a reality that a believing, repenting man can have all his sins removed and God's righteousness be put in its place. What better deal could man hope for--this is real hope and change--God gets all our sin, and we get all His righteousness. Man comes out on the better end of that arrangement.

This is where the New York City newspaper falls short. All will "rot in hell", apart from God's saving grace.

But at least the secular media recognizes there is a hell of some sort. Maybe they can teach a few things to people like Rob Bell, a Christian pastor and author of Love Wins, who denies the reality of hell.

What a strange world we live in, where we are asking the world to teach a Christian pastor some sound theology. How foolish could we be for expecting it to be the other way around!

Living with eternity in mind,

Chris

Is the Islamic Antichrist Among Us? (part one)

In February 1989, the Ayotallah Khomeini delivered his infamous fatwa (the formal opinion of a Muslim canon lawyer) against Salman Rushdie, the author of Satanic Verses.

As a quick historical review, during the prophet Muhammad's days in Mecca, before he was run out of town and took his flight to Medina, Muhammad was sitting with some eminent men of Mecca next to the Kaaba, the cube like building in the middle of the center of the mosque at Mecca. There he began to recite sura 53, which describes Gabriel's first visit to Muhammad and then goes on to the second visit:

He also saw him (Gabriel) another time

By the Lote tree at the furthest boundary

Near to which is the Paradise of rest,

When the Lote tree covered that which is covered,

His sight turned not aside, neither did it wander

And verily he beheld some of the greatest Signs of his Lord

What do you think of Lat and Uzza

And Manat the third beside?

At this point we are told that Satan himself put into Muhammad's mouth words of reconciliation and compromise:

These are exalted Females

Whose intercession verily is to be sought after.

The Meccans were overjoyed at this recognition of their deities and are said to have prayed with the Muslims, the early followers of Muhammad. But supposedly, Gabriel paid another visit to the Prophet, scolded Muhammad, and told him that the true ending to the verse should have been:

What! shall there be male progeny unto you, and female unto Him?

That were indeed an unjust partition!

They are naught but names, which ye and your fathers have invented.

Muslims have always been uncomfortable with this story, unwilling to believe that the "monotheistic" Prophet could have made such a concession to idolatry. Actually, this was not a slip of the tongue by Muhammad. This was a calculated attempt to win the support of the pagan Meccans to Muhammad's eclectic religion. When the Meccans failed to follow in line, Muhammad reversed course, and blamed Satan for inspiring him to say the original lines.

If Satan truly had been these words in Muhammad's mouth, how can anyone put faith in a man so easily led astray? How could God allow that to happen? How do we know if there not other passages in the Koran where Muhammad had not been led astray?

For Salman Rushdie to pursue this line of thought and state the obvious from Muhammad's inglorious past, he was deemed as good as dead. Mr. Rushdie became a fugitive on the run from the long reach of the Muslim law.

At the same time, a glaring inconsistency existed, even to this day. Christian end-time soothsayers in our country have recently nominated Libyan President, Mu'ammar al-Qaddafi, as a possible candidate for the post of Antichrist. Other candidates have come and gone through the years, but the nominations will keep pouring in until somebody will finally get it right, supposedly.

But the surprising thing about al-Qaddafi is that he is anything but a faithful Muslim. His public statements on the Prophet, the Koran and Islam in general amount to a blasphemy far greater than anything written by Salman Rushdie. He changed the Islamic calendar, mocked Meccan pilgrims as "guileless and foolish", criticized the prophet Muhammad, and claimed that his own achievements in Libya were far greater than those of the Prophet. He has shown extreme skepticism about the truth of the Koran and even about the details of the life of the Prophet. Though religious leaders found al-Qaddafi anti-Islamic and deviant, and condemned his "perjury and lies," there were no calls for his death, nor were any of his writings banned.

Today there is an uprising in Libya, as there is in other parts of the Middle East. The protesters in Libya have discovered, though, that it is a much harder job to dislodge their leader than in the case of Egypt's Mubarek, another previous candidate for the post of Antichrist. This has led many to assume that the protesters are a more radical group of Muslims who finally want to instill an Iranian-type Islamic state. NATO has gotten involved, along with American air forces, and the time may come when ground forces will be sent in to remove the Libyan leader from power. The question remains, though, why has it taken so long for Muslim leaders to take al-Qaddafi to task for his anti-Islamic rants through the decades?

One explanation is that in Islam and in Muhammad's own life there are a countless number of inconsistencies and contradictions, all because "the end justifies the means."

Ibn Warraq in his book Why I Am Not a Muslim reminds us we need to distinguish three Islams: Islam 1 is the what the Prophet taught as contained in the Koran, Islam 2 is the religion as expounded, interpreted and developed by the theologians through the traditions (Hadith), which includes the sharia and Islamic law, Islam 3 is what Muslims actually did do and achieve, or to put it in other words, Islamic civilization. (Do you see the familiarity with what Jesus had to face in His day with his ongoing confrontations with the Pharisees and scribes?) Trying to reconcile all three strands of Islam will cause any critical thinker to have unending migraines.

For starters, Muhammad did not invent a new religion. He was basically jealous that his tribe in Mecca did not have a monotheistic religion like the Jews and the Christians. Inside the Kaaba there were 360 idols, for instance. What Muhammad did was draft the moon god "Allah" into becoming the One Supreme God, and then from there he borrowed pagan practices left and right, much of it from Zoroastrianism, to fit them into his home-brew concoction of Islam.

Islam does not allow for critical analysis. Everything is to be accepted by blind faith. When one dares to question anything about Muhammad's life, his sayings, the Koran or Hadith, or the religion of Islam in general, that person becomes a marked man, ala Salman Rushdie. In contrast, Christianity invites critical thinking and probing investigation, because the truth has nothing to fear.

Because Europe and the United States have been swept off her feet by growing secular humanistic ideology the past two centuries, they no longer have the stomach and mind to recognize the danger that Islam imposes. The United States is not far behind Europe in so many ways. Have you ever wondered why since 9/11 there is the inexplicable attempt on the part of the political, academic, media and religious establishment to defend and even promote "peaceful" Islam at all costs? How can the National Organization for Women remain silent, for example, about how women in Islamic countries are treated? Such is the case, though.

I have often wondered about the "COEXIST" bumper stickers I see on vehicles. Is it just by accident that the first letter C represents Islam, whereas the last letter T represents Christianity? Hmm. But more to the point, what are the chances that we would find a COEXIST bumper sticker on a vehicle in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, Bahrain, Yemen, Jordan, Turkey, et. al.? A rational person would have to conclude that we don't have much problems with "coexisting" in the United States. (How many Muslims have been persecuted, beaten, imprisoned, killed in this country, and how many mosques here have been bombed or burned to the ground? Compare that number to Christians and churches in Islamic countries.) It seems that the Islamic countries didn't get the memo yet on peaceful, tolerant coexistence.

In the United Kingdom, where Prince William got married today (finally!), there are more Muslim mosques than Methodist churches. Islam is the fastest growing religion in Europe. Many European leaders are afraid to make a move due to how it may upset the Muslims in their respective countries. Witness how Spain quickly withdrew its armed forces from the Iraqi war, all because of a terrorist attack on a train.

Where did this "bend-over-backwards-to-appease" Islam attitude develop in Europe? In the sixteenth century, when Europe began to explore other parts of the world, the notion of the "noble savage" was first fully developed. That included Muslims in Africa, the Middle East and the Far East. The seventeenth century saw the first truly sympathetic accounts of Islam. Compared to the Catholic Church, for example, Pierre Bayle would comment: "The Muslims have always had more humanity for other religions than the Christians." The Crusades, going back several centuries, were the Catholic Church's attempt to outdo the Muslim jihad. This had a lasting negative hangover in the minds of the intellectual class in Europe.

George Sale in his translation of the Koran in 1734 firmly believed that the Arabs "seem to have been raised up on purpose by God, to be a scourge to the Christian church, for not living answerably to that most holy religion which they had received." In other words, Islam was a means of divine judgment upon the Christian church. Had the church lived up to its ideals, then Islam would not have succeeded so much. That was the estimation of many at the time.

It was Voltaire, the French atheist, that got the pro-Islamic, anti-Christian ball rolling at full speed. To Voltaire, the God of Christianity was a "cruel and hateful tyrant" who "surely cannot have been born of a girl, nor died on the gibbet, nor be eaten in a piece of dough" and nor could he have inspired "books filled with contradictions, madness and horror."

By contrast, Voltaire found the dogmas of Islam very simple: there is but one God, and Muhammad is his Prophet. There were no priests, no miracles, no mysteries. This appealed to the anti-supernatural bent of people like Voltaire. The historian Gibbon, who wrote The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, painted Islam in a favorable light, especially as contrasted to Christianity. The anticlerical Gibbon jumped on Islam's bandwagon because it provided more ammunition is his own disdain for the doctrine of the divinity of Christ. Gibbon's deistic view of Islam as a rational, priest-free religion, with Muhammad as a wise and tolerant lawgiver, enormously influenced the way all Europeans perceived their new sister religion for years to come.

A familiar pattern was emerging in Europe in the late 1700s and into the 1800s--Islam was being used as a weapon by a growing number of movers and shakers in European society to mock and to attack Christianity. Many of the European apologists of Islam had not proper acquaintance with the Arabic sources of Islam; most had only a superficial knowledge of their subject. They simply used Islam as a convenient weapon against intolerance, cruelty, dogma, the clergy and Christianity.

This is where we are today. Christianity is the whipping boy; Islam is the whipper.

So. . .is the Antichrist an Islamic religious-political figure who may be on the scene now, or who will appear soon? It is reported that Glenn Beck has suggested as much. The 12th iman will reappear, and in Islamic theology his likeness is comparable to the Antichrist we read about in the New Testament. So the reasoning goes. But what does the Bible say about the Antichrist? Surprisingly, the Bible paints a totally different picture of the antichrists or an antichrist than that that has been popularized through evangelical or even Mormon circles.

Yours in Christ,

Chris

Earthquakes in Pulpits and Pews

Tim LaHaye was in Hawaii at a Bible prophecy conference (at what other conference would he be attending or speaking?) when the 8.9 earthquake rattled parts of Japan. When asked about the news in Japan, the first thing out of his mouth was along the lines that the Bible says there would be earthquakes in various places before the Second Coming of Christ. Where is all that Christian compassion for the victims and survivors of that catastrophe? Nothing seems to matter more than to hope that this crisis or the next crisis fits into our end-time scheme. Just like Jonah. (See earlier blog post, Have You Been Gypped about Egypt?, and especially my P.S.)

Let us set the record straight. Jesus is coming again. There will be a second bodily coming of our Lord. There will be a future bodily resurrection of believers and unbelievers alike. There will be a new heaven and a new earth. There will be an eternal lake of fire.

But there is absolutely nothing in the Bible that says that earthquakes, famines, wars, or whatever else would increase in frequency right before Christ's Second Coming. This may come as a shock to many, especially those who have been fed dispensationalism all their lives. And I may be branded as some sort of kook heretic, but so be it.

It was the improper interpretation of God's Word that led the religious leaders in Jesus' day to miss the boat on his First Coming, and it is the improper interpretation of God's Word that is leading many Christians today to miss the boat regarding the Second Coming. (See John 2:18-21 and Mark 14:55-65 for one such example.)

There is ONE passage about earthquakes or wars or other catastrophic events that have been used over and over again by countless preachers and authors who relish in sensationalizing over national or world tragedies. This passage is found in the Olivet Discourse, which is found in Matthew 24, Mark 13 and Luke 21. Many assume right off the bat that this whole discussion between Jesus and His disciples was about the signs leading up to the Second Coming of Christ. That is where people go wrong.

The disciples were not thinking about the Second Coming of Christ. They did not know fully yet about the First Coming of Christ, and they would not know all about that until after Christ's resurrection. So why would they bother to ask about the Second Coming now thousand years removed from them, when they did not even have at the time the slightest clue about Jesus' death just several hours away?

What was the burning issue on their minds? Luke 21:5-7 tell us, so does Mark 13:1-4, and so does Matthew 24:1-3. Jesus made it so clear to them and to us, how can we miss it? Jesus pointed to their beautiful Temple in Jerusalem, which all Jews took enormous pride in, and said that building would be leveled to the ground. Naturally, the Jewish disciples were astonished to no end, and they wanted to know when the end of their Temple would occur.

Jesus proceeded to answer their question. He gave the signs leading up to the end of the age, not the end of the world, but the end of the old covenant age, when Jesus would come in judgment upon that generation that rejected the Messiah. When the Temple is destroyed, there are no more sacrifices, priests and Levites are out of a job, and the old covenant nation of Israel ceases to be. Plain and simple. The disciples were not asking about the signs leading up to the Second Coming of Christ (why would they be concerned about that since it was going to be such a long way off, two thousand years and counting now?). They were asking when the Temple and their nation would come to a screeching halt.

Wouldn't that concern us if someone with impeccable credentials and authority told us today that our nation's capital would be overthrown? Would our normal, natural reaction be, "When will a rebuilt nation's capital be destroyed some hundreds or thousands of years later?" How preposterous. That flies in the face of reason. Or would it be something like this, like what the disciples asked, "When is our country today coming to an end? Tell us, give us some clues, give us some time indicators, when will the D.C. we have now be Destroyed Completely?"

So Jesus answers the disciples' question. He doesn't answer a question that they didn't ask. He doesn't give answers that would be totally irrelevant to His disciples. Jesus knew what the disciples were asking, the disciples heard what Jesus had said, and the question before us is this: Will we hear Jesus, or will we hear some popular preacher/author instead, who will take advantage of an earthquake in Japan, in order to prove a point that Jesus never made? Do we know more than our Lord?

Bottom line is this--everything Jesus said in Mark 13:5 and following (and in the other synoptic gospel accounts) is about historical events that would happen leading up to the destruction of the Temple in the first century. And in Mark 13:30, Jesus wraps up everything in a nice pretty bow by saying, "Truly I say to you, THIS (not THAT, as in a future distant generation) generation will not pass away until ALL THESE THINGS (all the things he talked about from v.5 on) take place."

Was Jesus right? Jesus spoke these words in 30 A.D. Guess what would happen in 70 A.D., forty years later, within a generation of time? The Temple was destroyed by an invading Roman army. The old covenant age came to an end. The nation of Israel ceased to be. Jesus came in judgment, like when God came in judgment numerous times in the Old Testament (Isaiah 26:21, Micah 1:3, etc.).

There are many passages in the Bible that speak concerning the Second Coming of Christ, but Matthew 24, Mark 13 and Luke 21 are NOT one of them.

What about the earthquake in Japan? Or Hurricane Katrina? Or Haiti? Or 9/11? Or Mt. St. Helens? Or the Vietnam War? Or the San Francisco earthquake? Or the Chicago Fire? Or the Black Plague in Europe? Or the Crusades? Or any other disaster that has been used to justify the nearness of Christ's Second Coming?

Rather than go to Mark 13, we should go to Luke 13, like verses 1-5, for insights on how Jesus handles man-made or natural disasters. "Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish." Jesus said that twice in fact. He didn't jump on the leading news stories in His day in order to hype them for some end-time scenario. He preached repentance to those who were still alive. There is a far greater "fate" than dying in a tsunami; it is dying without Jesus.

Maybe the real earthquake that needs to happen today is the one in our pulpits and pews. Maybe we need to shake loose of some bad teaching that has grabbed hold of us for so many years and has distorted our view of prophecy and of the gospel.

Living in the blessed hope of Christ's coming,

Chris

Dear John, Your Uneducated Peasant is The Intelligent Being

In a letter to the editor at The Oklahoman newspaper, dated March 12, 2011, a John D. Sargent of Oklahoma City wrote the following in response to an earlier letter to the editor:

". . .First, the Bible is too incomplete to explain the 'how' of practically anything. If the entirety of human history, much less the cosmos, can be demonstrated by the amount of water contained within the Pacific Ocean, then the Bible represents the historical equivalent of a one-gallon pitcher. In reality, the Bible is religio-political propaganda, created by tribal shamans and first-century clergy, to explain the 'why' to their adherents.

Second, considering that he was an uneducated peasant, Jesus could not have known even a portion of what a modern person knows second hand about the cosmos or germ theory. Christianity is a multimillion-dollar business and its sustainability relies upon an effective marketing program (fear, uncertainty, doubt). Bible literalists/fundamentalists must wake up and realize that the clergy's livelihood and position within their respective organizations is dependent upon their ability to convince consumers of the effectiveness of their product.

Using the Bible in support of intelligent Design is a a fool's errand"

Here is my Dear John letter:

With all due respect to John Sargent's vacuous, worn-out arguments, his last statement is a remarkable example of evolutionary hypocrisy: "Using the Bible in support of intelligent design is a fool's errand."

Now did John Sargent use his intelligence to come to the conclusion that we all came from non-intelligent matter?

And as a famous philosopher once said, "If there is a God, nothing is impossible; but if there is no God, then everything is permissible", then how can we make any value judgments of what is foolish and what is intelligent in the first place? Would it be foolish or wrong for me to kill someone I don't like, or would it be an act of intelligence to speed up the process of the survival of the fittest? No one can say, because everything becomes permissible.

The inspired, inerrant Bible never makes the claim of being a "scientific textbook"; neither do William Shakespeare's works nor any other great work of literature. We don't use the Bible to teach calculus, business law, architecture, civil engineering, interior design, computer technology, German, or any other worthwhile pursuit. We can be educated to learn how to make a living, but we need Something or Someone to tell us how to make a life.

God gave created man a dominion mandate in Genesis 1:26, and involved in that is the discovery of God's wonderful creation. The human body is wonderfully and fearfully made, so says the psalmist. If God told us everything how He did it, then that would put scientists out of a job. So it would be intelligent not to bite the Hand that feeds you and made you. "It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out." (Proverbs 25:2)

Just last night I was watching a science program on PBS, hardly a Bible fundamentalist mouthpiece, and I learned that scientists do not know what 95% of the universe is made of, because it is mostly dark invisible matter. If scientists only know 5% of the universe's composition, then how can they tell us with such certainty what did or did not make the universe? That would be the fool's errand.

Whom John Sargent calls "an uneducated peasant", Jesus Christ has done more to change people's lives for the better now and forever than all the John Sargents and Chris Humphreyses in the world put together. If Jesus were just "an uneducated peasant", then why do secular works, such as encyclopedias, still devote more time and space to His life than to any other person in the history of mankind?

Maybe John Sargent can use his intelligence from non-intelligent matter to figure that one out for us.

Respectfully yours,

Chris Humphreys

Have You Been Gypped about Egypt? (with all apologies to Libya, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Yemen, Bahrain, and all the rest)

Sure enough. It happened. Sermons, Bible studies, prophecy conferences, books, articles, you name it have poured out about how today's turmoil in the Middle East is a fulfillment of prophecy. It seems that eager beaver Christian leaders are ready to capitalize on any crisis to prove something that you and I can't figure out on our own. In the New Testament day, that elitist idea of special knowledge granted to a few was called gnosticism; today it is called dispensationalism. With our Scofield Bibles in hand, and with our note pads ready to jot down the latest "insights" from our prophetic gurus, we are confident again that "this" today in Egypt is "that" foretold in Isaiah.

Not long after the unrest in Egypt erupted, I came across numerous instances where Christians were flocking to hear how the latest leading news story was all there written down for us thousands of years ago. The Bible is more of a crossword puzzle, where the word cross has been marganilized to make room for our imaginative prophetic puzzles to be solved. We come out looking smarter than God Himself, all the while looking more foolish again in the eyes of the world.

Have you noticed that all the prophecies mentioned by these dispensational experts about Egypt are in the Old Testament, and none are in the New Testament? That should tell us something big. Why are there no prophecies in the New Testament, which covenant is said to be superior than the old covenant (Hebrews 8:6-13), about the current Middle East situation? Why is there no mention of Egypt in prophecy in the twenty-seven books of the New Testament? Not even one in the book of Revelation, the largest prophetic book in the entire Bible. (Interestingly enough, first century Jerusalem is identified as Egypt in Revelation 11:8.)

If all the experts today want to take us entirely to the Old Testament to prove their cherished theories, then are they willing to live under the Old Testament's dire warnings of what should happen to those whose prophetic insights don't come to fruition? (Deuteronomy 18:20-22) Death is the only option for any prophecy blunder. As a way to escape any responsibility, like Pontius Pilate who washed his hands of any guilt, modern day dispensational preachers will say they do not consider themselves as prophets in the Old Testament sense of the word. Therefore, they conclude, this Deuteronomy passage is not valid concerning them, since they are only trying to teach what the prophets foretold.

However, such reasoning does not stand up, especially if these modern preachers twist and distort Scripture out of context to their own profitable liking. In that sense, they are creating new prophecies which God never said in the first place. If their teaching applications do not come to pass over time then, they are demonstrating themselves to be false prophets. But alas, very few will see it in that regard, because dispensational preachers and teachers are banking on people's short retention span. (The words "profitable" and "banking" are not just financial metaphors!)

Haphazarding a guess, I am inclined to believe that many sermons have been preached out of Isaiah 19 recently, where the connection has been made between what we read there and what we read and hear today in Egypt. For example, v. 2 says, "And I will stir up Egyptians against Egyptians, and they will fight, each against another and each against his neighbor, city against city, kingdom against kingdom. . ." Aha, some would say. Isn't this what we see going on in Egypt today? Civil unrest, and Egyptians fighting against Egyptians, right? So, therefore, the conclusion must be that all this today has been prophesied right here in Isaiah 19.

Another verse I am sure dispensationalists will latch on to is v. 4, "and I will give over the Egyptians into the hand of a hard master (President Mubarek, or his successor?), and a fierce king will rule over them, declares the Lord God of hosts." So the guessing game begins who will be this hard master, this fierce king, who will take over the reigns of Egypt today, and how will he be the missing cog on the road to Armageddon?

It is a high crime not to believe the words that come out of God's mouth. It is also a high crime to put God's words in His mouth where we try to force Him to say something that He never meant.

If we want to go down this dispensational road of imaginative speculation and fanciful interpretation, then we better be consistent all the way. Let's read the rest of Isaiah 19 and not just pick and choose a couple of verses that seem to fit any preconceived end-times scheme.

Where is the Lord riding on a swift cloud to Egypt? (v.1) If we are to be strict literalists, as dispensationalists insist we must be, exactly when did that happen recently, or when will it happen?

Where are the idols of Egypt today? (v.1) Islam is a false religion, but can anyone show us where the carved idols are in Egypt today?

Where are the sorcerers and mediums and necromancers in Egypt today? (v.3) If Isaiah 19 is about today, then should we not expect to see v. 3 clearly in view today?

Where is the king who will rule Egypt? (v.4) Will he take that title upon himself? Mubarek was President, not King, of Egypt. We must be literalists, say the dispensationalists.

Where and when will the Nile River and all other waterways be dried up in Egypt? (v.5-7) We should all be waiting for that to happen any day now, right?

According to v.8-10, what are going to be the principal occupations in today's Egypt, if Isaiah 19 is about today's headlines? Does Egypt today depend on fishing as its main source of income?

Where are the capital cities of Zoan and Memphis today? (v. 11-14) I thought Cairo was its capital today. Are we to believe then that Zoan will overtake Cairo as the new capital of Egypt?

Also, will the new king in Egypt today take over the title of Pharoah? (v.11) Has there been any suggestion on the part of anyone that the new leader in Egypt or any future leader will be called Pharoah?

In v.16-25, we read that Egypt, Assyria and Judah will join forces in a spiritual way. Where is Assyria today? Where is the tribe or nation of Judah today? Syria today is not Assyria; and Israel today is nothing like Judah of the Old Testament days.

Where are the five cities in Egypt today that will speak the language of Canaan? What is the language of Canaan? And where is the Old Testament altar going to be built in Egypt today?

If dispensationalists try to spiritualize all the above, then they are destroying their own literalistic theories.

How about this for a novel idea. . .novel to dispensationalists? Why can't Isaiah 19 be a prophecy about events that would happen in Isaiah's lifetime? Not something thousands of years down the road, but something more immediate. Does not Isaiah 20:3 indicate a three year period of time? Why do we think that every prophecy, or even most of the prophecies, have to concern us and our times? Are we that egotistical? Do we think the world of biblical prophecy revolves around us? Are we better than all those Christians who lived before us, who evidently had nothing said about them in their times, if indeed dispensationalism is true? Where do we get off thinking that God made us kings and queens while Christians in previous generations and centuries were nothing but paupers in comparison? (Judging by the state of Christianity today, a person may be inclined to believe the reverse is true instead.)

Isaiah 19 uses the names of people, places and events to describe what would happen during that day, not during our day. How can we be so blind to miss the obvious?

A text taken out of context is a pretext. I have even heard dispensationalists use that catchy phrase. Okay, let's take them at their word. If we start at Isaiah 9 and read on, we see that all the nations mentioned in prophetic judgment were nations at the time of Isaiah himself: Assyria, Philistia, Cush, Babylon, Moab, Tyre, Sidon, and last but not least, Egypt. Why do we have to suppose that all the nations mentioned in those chapters before and after chapter 19 deal with nations back then, but in chapter 19, God throws us a curve ball, and talks about a nation way off in the distance, like in the 21st century A.D.? How exactly does chapter 19 then have any relevance to the original hearers of Isaiah's prophecy?

It is true that only the nation of Egypt in the Middle East, outside of Israel, carries the same name as what we find on the map today, but what does that really prove by itself? A text taken out of context is still a pretext.

I feel sorry for Libya, Jordan, Syria, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and other places in the Middle East who are experiencing as great as an upheavel and maybe more so than what Egypt has encountered so far. Not a word is being said about them from our leading dispensational spokesmen. Of course, those nations are relatively new nations, and it may be hard for even the most creative, imaginative interpreters of Scripture to find their names in the Old Testament. We may owe these nations an apology for slighting them and focusing all our time on just one country.

Have no worry though. All the latest sermons on Egypt will soon be forgotten; they will be collecting dust in file cabinets along with all the hundreds and thousands of other sermons in the past on prophecy where the interpretations have never panned out. We will move on to the latest news story of the day and just depend on the short memories and shallow theology of all our devoted followers.

Jonah was the reluctant prophet. The last thing he wanted to do was go preach to the hated Assyrians. After a brief submarine ride, Jonah got the message though, and he preached the message to Ninveh. To Jonah's disgust, the Ninevites got disgusted over their sin, turned from their sin, believed in Yawheh God, and God did not send punishment their way. The once praying, preaching prophet became a pouting prophet in Jonah 4. All his prophetic dreams, charts and diagrams were in the ash heap. The gripes of wrath is what we find Jonah doing outside the city limits of Ninevah. He was only out there to see if God would somehow change His mind and vaporize Ninevah within forty days. He was a prophetic speculator and spectator.

He could have stayed inside Ninevah to help disciple all these new converts. He could be in there preaching and teaching them more about the true Yahweh God that they had come to believe in, and he could have been in there praying with and for them. Nope, he would have none of that. It was more to his amusement to see if his preconceived prophetic wishes would come true whereby he could rub his hands in glee over the destruction of Ninevah.

Sometimes I get the feeling that we Christians in America are so consumed with doom and gloom that we rub our hands in glee when a new worldwide crisis comes on the scene. We seem so eager to pounce on the latest catastrophe and try to prove to others and to ourselves that this is what God said would happen in the last days. We have moved in with Jonah outside of Ninevah. We have become prophetic speculators and spectators. We eat it up, and we can't buy the latest prophetic books fast enough.

Imagine for a moment two churches in town: one church has recently advertised a big special sermon and Bible study on end time events and how Egypt today is a direct fulfillment of this or that prophecy in Scripture; another church in the same town at the same time has gotten the word out that they want to have a very special prayer service for the Christians in Egypt and the Middle East during this upheaval, and to pray for some missionaries they know are serving over there. Let's say that both churches have put out the word equally through different avenues about what would be happening this coming Sunday at their respective churches.

Now which one do you think would attract a bigger crowd?

We know the answer to that question, don't we?

We would rather be outside of Egypt, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, or Ninevah, where we could safely speculate or watch with bated prophetic breath. How many would want to go on the "inside" and spend our time instead lifting up fellow persecuted believers in prayer and for the gospel to make more inroads into the hearts of Egyptians or Libyans?

Are we more like Jonah than we care to admit?

Yours in Christ,

Chris

P.S. An 8.9 earthquake has rattled Japan and left hundreds dead. Are our hearts broken over the lost of many lives, or are we nestled in with Jonah outside of Ninevah, somewhat giddy on the inside, because "there will be earthquakes in various places" (Matthew 24:7)?

The Problematic Parable that Puzzles Prophecy Pundits

While doing work with a fellow believer in Christ some years ago, he commented to me that his pastor was preaching through Revelation and he made the observation (which I have heard countless times before) that the word "church" does not appear after chapter three. His conclusion was that the church would be raptured after chapter three and will not be here on earth during the seven-year great tribulation period, which is the topic of conversation from chapters four on. I listened to my co-worker explain with excitement how this truth has made such an enlightening impact on his understanding of the end times and the book of Revelation in particular.

Maybe I should have said something, but considering the circumstances, I didn't want to get into any sort of debate with my fellow Christian, and I didn't want him to have any sort of lowered opinion of his pastor. This common misinformed deduction from the book of Revelation, though, has more going against it than for it. The word "church" also does not appear in Revelation 21 and 22, so does this mean that the church will not be in heaven as well? A second line of argument is that the word "saints" appear throughout the book of Revelation, from chapter four on, and the word saints is not a reference to a football team in New Orleans; it is always used as a synonym for God's people, the church. Thirdly, I might add, to the surprise of many, that the word "antichrist" appears nowhere in the book of Revelation, but that doesn't seem to stop dispensationalists from talking about an "antichrist" adnauseam.

At another event some years back for the Gideons, my wife and I were sitting at a table with some others whose subject matter turned quickly to the book of Revelation. This time the remark was made by someone that the United States was not mentioned in the book of Revelation; therefore, the obvious lesson from that was that our beloved country will not be around in the "last days". I tried to keep my mouth from dropping open too far, but I sat there with total incredulity. We are trying our best these days to find things that are not listed or mentioned in the book of Revelation, be it the church of a nation, that is no wonder many Christians struggle with expository teaching of God's Word these days--the kind of teaching/preaching that bring to light the things that are there in God's Word. As one unbelieving past popular American author said, "It is not what I don't know or don't find in the Bible that troubles me; it is what I do know and find in the Bible that troubles me."

From A to Z, I started to list in my mind all the countries of the world that are not found in the book of Revelation either, from Australia to Zimbabwe. What about them? Maybe the ugly American characterization is justified at times. Where do we get off that the United States has received God's Favored Nation Status? Isaiah 40:15 says that all nations in God's eyes are but as a drop in a bucket, and are counted as small dust on the scales. Without a doubt, the U.S.A. has been providentially blessed, but the Lord God of the universe was able to get His will done prior to 1776.

Dispensationalism is that fairly new end-time belief system that has filled too many Christians in this country for too long with so many faulty notions (like not finding certain words here and there in Revelation), erroneous predictions (at last count there have been at least 666 guesses who the Antichrist is supposed to have been), doom-and-gloom scare tactics (someone somewhere is writing a book on the riots in Egypt now and how all that fulfills an obscure passage in Ezekiel or Daniel), and terrible hermeneutics and theology (like a secret rapture of Christians, that is so secretive that Christians for eighteen centuries knew nothing about it, to be followed by seven years of tribulation, the appearance of Antichrist, the rebuilt Temple in Jerusalem and a return to the inferior old covenant system, an Armageddon war between Israel and Russia(?), or China (?), or Iran (?) or ________ (?), a physical 1000 reign of Christ in a modern Jerusalem with a rebuilt Temple where old testament sacrifices will supersede his death on the cross and where people will die during this 1000 reign on earth after Christ has abolished death at his second coming, etc.) It is hard to keep up with dispensationalism, because it is newspaper exegesis that rules the day, and they keep moving the goal posts.

I don't know of anyone who would keep taking his car to a mechanic or keep taking his body to a doctor who has proved himself wrong in every situation with his analyses and diagnoses. Yet, dispensationalists keep restating their prognostications, keep writing new books that contradict earlier writings, keep preaching new sermons about shifting current news stories, and nobody seems to be bothered by it all. When are the dispensationalists ever going to get it right? Only one time. That is when they repent from their mental strongholds and sensational arguments. (2 Corinthians 10:4-6)

Dispensationalism is a money-making sacred cow to be sure, but it is about time to sacrifice that cow on the altar of biblical faithfulness. It is no accident that sensationalism rhymes with this man-made theory that was birthed in England in the first half of the 1800s. The key players were a man by the name of Darby, Edward Irving and Margaret McDonald. It was brought to America's shores where a lawyer by the name of C.I. Scofield picked it up and ran with it, and as Paul Harvey was fond of saying, "now you know the rest of the story." It is the predominant best-selling viewpoint out there in mainstream conservative Christianity. Most pastors out there probably adhere to a certain form of dispensationalism. Most books written on eschatology come from this angle. I would venture to say that most Christians out there probably have not heard anything or read anything but dispensationalism in one form or another. I will admit it is most popular, but when does something that is popular make something right, especially when it comes to biblical truth?

I used to believe that differences in eschatology were no big deal, and it is best to let dead dogs lie, so to speak. I have come to see things differently. Since one's eschatology flavors and colors so much of his understanding on so many other key biblical mattes, it can not be quietly pushed aside or relegated to the area of the non-essentials. To hear classic dispensationalists talk and write, the church is nothing more than a hiccup from God, or a speed bump on the road to something more glorious, which is the modern state of Israel. According to consistent dispensationalists, the cross was an afterthought from God, a Plan B that went into effect after the Jews rejected Jesus' offer of the kingdom. The atonement of Christ and the assembly of God's people are not minor issues at stake. Ephesians 1-3 by themselves should put to rest any idea that there is something better out there yet than the church. The book of Hebrews, Galatians or Romans should forever silence any false inkling to return to the days of the old covenant now or anytime in the future. It makes far better sense for a person to trade in his brand new Apple computer for a 20-year old computer dinosaur than for anyone in the new covenant days to desire a return to the old covenant, and that includes a reinstated sacrificial system in a rebuilt Temple that duped Christians are funding to build hopefully one day in Jerusalem.

Part of the reformation of the church today would involve, in my humble opinion, an eradication of dispensationalism. It needs to be yanked up by the roots. It needs to be LEFT BEHIND.

My inspiration for writing this blog article comes from an excellent sermon I heard last Sunday at our church from Bro. Ron Andrews. His text was from Matthew 13:24-30, the parable on the wheat and the tares. That parable by itself throws all sorts of monkey wrenches into dispensational preconceived plans. It is only one of two parables that Jesus told wherein He fully explained the meaning. The first one was earlier on in the same chapter, the parable of the sower. Now for the second time, this time at the request of His disciples, He takes the time to explain every part of this parable of the wheat and the tares. (Matthew 13:36-43)

The kingdom of heaven is a present reality, even though it is yet to be fully consummated. Christ has established His kingdom through his death, resurrection and ascension. He reigns at the right hand of God the Father now. As He told Pilate, "My kingdom is NOT of this world." A seat on a kingly throne in an earthly Jerusalem would be a serious and downright blasphemous reduction of His glorious position in heaven. During this kingdom reign over all the earth, He is sowing His good seed in the world (the field is the world, not the church), and His elect are being saved and bearing fruit. At the same time of the growth of the kingdom between now and Christ's second coming, the final harvest yet to come, Satan is out planting his tares in the world. God has His people during Christ's reign now, and Satan has his people as well. Sometimes it may be hard to tell the difference, since tares initially may have a similar appearance as wheat when it is growing. We have no business as the church by physical force to pull up the tares. Christianity is the only world religion to advance the cause of religious freedom. Other religions may use the physical sword to convert, but we use the sword of the Spirit and not physical coercion or intimidation.

Jesus says we are to let the wheat and the tares grow together until the final harvest at the end of this age when Christ will come back with His angels. According to dispensationalism, the next step will be that Christ will gather His people first to Himself, and they will escape the seven year tribulation period, after which the tares will be gathered and be assigned to their eternal destination, the eternal lake of fire. Somebody forgot to tell Jesus of the plan and to show Him all our neatly drawn diagrams and charts.

In this parable, and how can anybody can miss this is a mystery, Jesus says, "first, gather together the TARES (not the wheat) and bind them in bundles, but gather the wheat into my barn." In case anybody misses the point, Jesus would take three verses to explain what would happen to the tares FIRST (v. 40-42), before He explains in just one verse what would be the glorious outcome of the wheat (v.43). Jesus has it backwards from the dispensationalists, or should we say that the dispensationalists have it backwards from Jesus? The wheat are not raptured or secretly carried away first into his barn, only to be followed much later by the burning of the tares. The tares are gathered first and will be cast into the furnace of fire. Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.

John the apostle heard every word Jesus said. He with the other apostles got it, as Matthew 13:51-52 bring out. We are not surprised then to find John the apostle writing about this final harvest in Revelation 20-22, where first, the tares, those whose names are not found in the Book of Life, are judged by Christ in Revelation 20:11-15. This is a judgment strictly for Satan's tares at the great white throne judgment. Then next up is Revelation 21-22. The holy city, the new Jerusalem (why put all our focus on an earthly, old Jerusalem?), the bride, the church, are with God forever and ever in a new heaven and a new earth. Part of the description of their eternal dwelling sounds really familiar to the parable of the wheat and the tares. . .about the righteous shining forth as the sun.

"But I saw no temple in it (so why all this attention to a rebuilt Temple on earth?), for the Lord Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city had no need of the sun or of the moon in it, for the glory of God illuminated it. The Lamb is its light. . .There shall be no night there: They need no lamp nor light of the sun, for the Lord God gives them light. And they shall reign forever and ever." (Revelation 21:22-23, 22:5)

All this may be new stuff to those who have been force-fed dispensationalism all their lives long, and I certainly can relate when as a young person this is all I heard. But if we are going to be Berean Christians (Acts 17:11), then we should not take anything we read (including this blog article) as the gospel truth. We should take the gospel as the gospel truth. If a pastor is preaching dispensationalism, and if it is not the truth, then there is a decision a Christian may have to make in good conscience and in a spirit of humility. What that decision entails may be different in various circumstances. There are books in our library that may have to go. There are changes in our theological outlook that will occur. Change is sometimes hard, but if it is a good change, it is a necessary change. Sanctification is a lifelong commitment to change toward godliness in belief and behavior.

The thing about wheat is that it has to be crushed in some way for it to produce edible bread. Dying to self and being crushed is a painful enterprise, but before the truth is worth dying for, it has to be worth living for. And it can only be worth living for, if we know it and want to know it more and more, whatever changes that may involve in the process.

Yours in Christ,

Chris

Undercover God (continued)

It's an oldie goldie. A little boy is drawing a picture at home. His mother walks by and sees him drawing and asks him what he is drawing. He replies, "I am drawing God." To which his mother tries to correct, "Well, that is good, but no one knows what God looks like." Quick on his feet, the tot rejoins, "But they will after I get done."

One of Vance Havner's often used illustrations has a guest preacher at the pulpit one Sunday. The guest preacher was only 5 foot 5 inches, rather shorter than the 6 foot 3 inch pastor of the church, who was away on vacation. Behind the pulpit in the baptistery was the familiar artistic rendering of Jesus in a picture frame. A little boy had never seen the picture before because their tall pastor blocked the vision of it, but the shorter guest preacher made it visible for the first time to this boy. After it dawned on him just a little way into the guest preacher's sermon, the boy tugged at his mommy's dress and asked in a low whisper, "Where is the man that stands in the way so that we can not see Jesus?"

We know Jesus had a beard, and we know he had a dark olive complexion in all probability, but that is about it when it comes to his physical appearance (outside of the fact He also would have nail prints). The rest is just fanciful human imagination. No one knows what Jesus looked like, and no one for sure knows what God looks like, because God is a spirit, and He is invisible. (John 4:24, 1 Tim. 1:17) Mormons have it all convoluted, regardless of their new slick advertising campaign. They say God is physical and Jesus is not God. The Bible says God is spirit, and Jesus is the true eternal God (1 John 5:20). And furthermore, Mormons, men do not become gods; the gospel is that God became man.

Yes, in language we can understand, the Bible often describes God in human-like terms, like the fact He has eyes, feet, hands, etc. But the Bible also says "He covers us with his feathers", and that he is a rock, a fortress, a mighty tower, as well as some other metaphors. God is not Big Bird, nor is he alongside the Rock of Gibraltar, nor does he live in Fort Knox (although he does own it) or the Eiffel Tower. How can one describe God who is indescribable to the race of people who depend on descriptions so much? The wise God uses all sorts of literary devices that are commonly understood and used by the created species called mankind. That is how it is done. That is what we read in the Bible. God knows it all, therefore He has a "mind." God sees it all, therefore He has "eyes." God gets all things done in His created universe, therefore He has "hands." God is not static; He is always on the go, therefore He has "feet."

How is it, though, that "no man has seen God at any time" (John 1:18), and if one could see God, he would be obliterated in a flash (Exodus 33:20), and yet Moses saw God in a burning bush in Exodus 3, and the text says "Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God." Did he see God or not? It is written that Jacob saw God face to face in Genesis 32:30, and that Manoah and his wife had "seen God", so that later we read Manoah saying in Judges 13:22, "We shall surely die because we have seen God." Manoah knew about the death penalty. How can we reconcile these and other "appearances" of God to various people in the Old Testament with the verses that say that God is spirit, He is invisible, no one has ever seen Him, and if they did, they would be goners.

This passage in Philippians 2:1-11 and other passages as well do the reconciliation for us. God can not be seen, but Jesus can be seen. Jesus is the "form of God" (Phil. 2:6, "being in the form of God" refers to his eternal unchanging state). What Moses and Manoah and Jacob and everyone else saw (old King Neb in Daniel saw one "like a son of man" in the burning furnace) was Jesus, about whom it is said "being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person (Heb. 1:3)." Jesus gives form, as it were, to the invisible God. No wonder Jesus did say, "If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father." (John 14:9) Moses & Co. escaped death because God revealed Himself to them in the pre-incarnation appearance of His Son. Does God save us from Himself? Yes, that is what substitutionary atonement is all about. That is why Jesus is our propitiation, the God-man who dies for man's sin and saves man from God's wrath.

Next up in Philippians 2 is the matter of what did Jesus empty Himself of when He left heaven to become a man? Some translations have verse seven reading, "but made Himself of no reputation." Skipping over the centuries of lengthy debate among scholars of what this consisted, we can cut to the chase by stating that the emphasis has been wrongly placed on what Jesus gave up when He left heaven. Instead, the focus here in this passage is not on what Jesus gave up, but what he gained. It is not a matter of subtraction; it is a matter of addition. He did not cease being God, He did not lay aside some attributes temporarily, He did not handcuff Himself so to speak; instead, Jesus gained or obtained a new outward appearance and all the experiences that go with it.

To illustrate this, if I take a big jug of grape juice and pour all the contents of it into a very large drinking glass, has the grape juice changed at all? No, the content has remained the same. What has changed? The container. If we take it a step farther, what if the new container is dark, and not a see-through container. From a distance, a person could not tell what the contents are in that container. Is it iced tea, Pepsi, Gatorade, milk, what?

What we have in Jesus is a concealed container. The content is the same. His identity has not changed. We could say that He emptied Himself of "heavenly glory" when He became man, and there is some definite truth in that. (John 17:5) Later on, Jesus would say in that same prayer, though, "and the glory which You gave Me I have given them. . ." Yet again, we read, "Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me."

John Calvin probably summed it up best: "Christ, indeed, could not divest himself of godhead, but he kept it concealed for a time, that it might not be seen, under the weakness of the flesh. Hence he laid aside his glory in the view of man, not by lessening it, but by concealing."

To those whom God revealed Himself (Matthew 11:25-27) in the person of Jesus while He was on earth, these chosen eyewitnesses could write, "and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." (John 1:14) They were able through God-given eyes of faith peek into the darkened container to see the content. Later on in Matthew 17, a few of the disciples saw with bigger eyes what Jesus would look like in fuller glory on the Mount of Transfiguration, like a sneak preview of more to come. Peter, one of those few, would write about that experience in his second epistle, chapter one, verses 16-18.

Philippians 2 is not then about what God gave up, but what God "gained." It was a series of the biggest step downs ever that led all the way up to the highest exaltation ever. First, He took the form of a bond servant. Well, an angel would qualify for that categorization, and if God took on the outward form of an angel, that would be a serious step down. But the passage does not stop there. Second, He came in the likeness of men. Not an angel, but a man. Wow, what condescension! He became a human bond servant, and not an angelic one. He really was a man, but not a sinful man. The likeness of sinful flesh, as some translations have it, refer to the fact that "he was tempted at all points, yet was without sin." Well, he could live a pampered life here on earth, born and raised in royalty or aristocracy. Still, that would be an incredible step down from what He once enjoyed. But the story continues its decline.

"And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself. . ." His life was the very opposite of plush royalty or sheltered aristocracy. From the account of His birth to His upbringing to what Jesus said about foxes and birds had it better than Him, He volunteered Himself to put Himself so low that He had to look up to see the bottom of the proverbial ladder. Isn't that good enough? Hasn't Jesus done enough, stepped down enough, emptied Himself enough?

He could live the rest of His life on earth in poverty and ridicule, being a hunted man, but He would have nothing to worry about because He had done nothing wrong, so therefore there would be no wages of sin for him. Death would elude Him. He was the Fountain of Youth; He was Life Eternal. He was blameless, spotless, pure, undefiled. Jesus has not gone down far enough yet, though.

He humbled himself to the point of death. The only one who ever lived that did not deserve to die died. He must have paid somebody else's wages. But, we can come up with a sanitary death, a painless death, a death in old age, a death in one's sleep, a peaceful departure from this life. Jesus would have none of that. He must go down farther. He must gain something more than just dying by itself.

The last step down is that he became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Jesus was willingly obedient to carry out the Father's intent all along, and it was not just a peaceful, painless death. It would be the most hideous kind of death ever invented by man, but it was far more than the torture and excruciating pain. Mel Gibson's controversial movie could only pretend to show that side of the cross. Cursed is every man who hangs on a tree, as Galatians 3:13 puts it. He became cursed for our sake. He took the full brunt of God's wrath against sin. "My God, my God, why have you forsaken Me?" No sedatives, no nurse by his side, no hospice care, no around-the-clock medical attention. It was the death of the cross.

He had to die this way, because no other way would reveal the depth of man's depravity and the greatness of God's mercy and grace.

Jesus could not have gone down any further. He made the last step down. He "gained" the cross, the purchased redemption of His people. He "added" to His resume the title, the Good Shepherd who laid down His life for His sheep.

How low can God go? How low did He go? Philippians 2 informs us. But it also tells us how high all these step downs took "the form of God", a name above every name. So high, that every knee should bow, of those in heaven, of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. No greater humiliation, no greater abasement, no greater lowering. Yet, no greater exaltation.

The form of God was emptied into a new container, and now we know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for our sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich. (2 Cor. 8:9) Now look what we can gain!

While we can not draw or paint a caricature of God Himself, and while we do not know what Jesus looked like (for many obvious reasons), we can take heed from what the second little boy said. After all that we have gained due to grace, we should not stand in such a way so people can not see Jesus .

Yours in Christ,

Chris