ONE WORD THE BIBLE STUDENT SHOULD NEVER SAY

 There is one word the Bible student should never say and it's all because of the Roman emperor Hadrian who ruled from 117-138 AD. He had the effrontery to go into Israel and rename it! The name he chose was because he wanted to mock the Jews. He wanted to rename the land to de-Judaize it. 

The new and insulting name he chose was "Palestine" because it's a derivative of "Philistine" who were the ancient enemies of Israel. He chose he name both to mock and to humiliate the Jews. Let's call what he did what it is, a slur. 

The Bible never uses the word "Palestine." Threfore we should not use it of the land of Israel.

Now you know. 

THE OBSESSION

 People can have all kinds of obsessions--heroin, alcohol, the New York Yankees, a celebrity, the royal family, or they diet to the point of anorexia.

But there's one obsession that's worldwide and outstrips all the others. That obsession is Jew hatred. Such a hatred has it's own technical term:antisemitism. Henry Ford had it. So did Bobby Fischer, Charles Lindbergh, Martin Luther, Charles Dickens, and Mel Gibson who ranted,  "The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.'" 

We can show that ancient hatred to be irrational by looking at some statistics which show us the percentages of the population of Jews living in various countries:

America: 2.3%

France: 3/4 of 1%

The United Kingdom: 0.5% (Yet people think they control the world and have started every war.)

Another fact: there is only one country in the world in which the Jewish population is the majority (Israel). 

Let's turn our attention to the percentage of Jews in relation to the world's population: 0.2%

Yet, the world is addicted to Jew hatred. Antisemitism has been called "the oldest hatred." Israel faces more criticism and condemnation in the United Nations than any other country. The UN passes more resolutions against Israel than any other country.

University campuses are also addicted to hating 0.2% of the world's population; students riot, take over buildings, lead chants over bullhorns they don't even know what they mean, and attack and harrass Jews on campus to the extent that a rabbi advised Jewish studets of one Ivy League college to go home for their own safety while the administrations of those schools did nothing to protect them. 

All this, while N. Korea, Cuba, China, and Russia have murdered millions of their own people and are ignored.

There is an evil supernatural component at work, promoting this addiction. Only the Bible informs us about it in Revelation 12. 

DRONES IN AUSTIN, TX

 Would it be safe to say that America has rejected God and His Word? I believe that's true. So the question what happens next, that is, it creates a vacuum and, as the saying goes, "Nature abhors a vacuum." Therefore, a vacuum creates, automatically, the necessity to fill it. The question is what has filled it?

I think we could use one word to describe the "filler:" irrationality" The reason for the filler is because, as Proverbs says, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." If there is no wisdom, irrationality prevails.

Let's look at some examples of irrationality. 

1. The idea that how I feel determines reality. If a male "feels" that he is not a male, then, he isn't. This irrationality has led to all kinds of collateral damage too evident to mention. 

2. The feeling that marriages and families don't  matter. Vows mean nothing; children don't need a father. A relationship within the bounds of marriage is not sacred. But the family is the place where children learn to be trustworthy, to share, and and to have boundaries. The family is a nation in miniature.  

3. The idea that diversity is strength. Yet, as history has shown, a nation needs a common language, a common body of literature, a common law, and a common enforcement of that law, et al. If it does not, the nation breaks into various tribes, each seeking power over the other.

4. The feeling that each person has his or her own truth. The deduction from this is that everyone else MUST accept the other person's truth. Man has become his own god. 

5. The feeling that man, through government, can build Eden on earth. So when their candiate doesn't win the election, they become hysterical. A correlary of this is that since making the bulding of Eden their goal, they can use political power to force others into their belief because "it's for their own good.

6. Another result of irrationality'filling the vacuum is violence.

And this leads us to the reason for the title of this blog: drones in Austin, Tx. I was on my way to my secular meeting, now on Wednesdays, listening to the car radio. "It's back to school time," the annoucer said and, "A poll has been taken that asked the question, 'What is a parent's biggest concern for the start of schoo?'" My alert mind came up the the answer: the cost of getting a child ready for school--new clothes to stay up with the Joneses; school supplies, things like that but, boy, was I ever wrong. 

The numbe one concern among the polled parents was school shootings. To say it another way, their number one concern was that their child might be gunned down and killed at school!

This is where Austin enters the picture. A local company has developed drones that will fly over some of the Austin schools during the school day and will be able to report to the authorities if it sees a student or anyone else approaching the school with a weapon. Our schools have become places where we have to fly drones over them to protect the students from being murdered.

Now, granted, this is in the experimental stage for the school year but it does show us one thing: there are serious consequences for irrationality that automatically comes from rejecting God and His word. 

The price of rejecting God and His Word is indeed heavy. 

HE SAID "THE CHURCH IS LYING TO YOU"

 He's popular on YouTube, a Pastor, Author, and University Dean. He has an unusual name: Voddie Baucham. He has a sermon on YouTube with a title meant to attract: "Christians, You've Been Lied to about the Rapture." 

A summary of his sermon is that heclaims in no uncertain \ terms that the rapture is a false doctrine invented by a man named John N. Darby in the first half of the 1830s and no one ever heard of such a thing until then. He speaks with a dogatic dogmatic and forked tongue. What he says is nothing new; the rapture has been under attack for a long, long time and Darby is usually mentioned in every attack. 

But I wonder if such authors and speakers on the attck have consided these facts:

1. In the last decade, classics scholar Francis X. Gumerlock has researched the approximately 500 volumes of the writings of the church fathers, (those who lived after the apostles) that have never been translated into English. He once told Mark Hitchcock in an e-mail over a decade ago that he had three file drawers full of rapture statements from throughout Early and Medieval Period of church history. 

2. Gumerlock found a significant number of pre-tribulational rapture statements throughout the history of the church well before the time of Darby. The earliest he has cited thus far is from The Apocalypse of Elijah. Scholars date the sermon around 285 AD. coming from somewhere in Egypt. The rapture passage is as follows:

At that time the Christ will have compassion on those who are his. He will send his angels from heaven, sixty-four thousand in number, each having six wings. Their voices will move heaven and earth, when they praise and give glory. Those upon whose forehead is written the name of the Christ, upon whose right hand is the seal, both small and great, they will be taken on their wings and removed from the wrath.

2. Here is another one, a sermon consisting of 1,500 Latin words preached on the end times as early as the 300s AD:

"Why therefore do we not reject every care of earthly actions and prepare ourselves for the meeting of the Lord Jesus Christ, so that he may draw us from the confusion, which overwhelms all the world? . . . For all the saints and elect of God are gathered together before the tribulation, which is to come, and are taken to the Lord, in order that they may not see at any time the confusion which overwhelms the world because of our sins."

This should suffice to prove that John Darby didn't invent the rapture of the church. Paul revealed it in I Thessalonians 4:13-18 (q. v.) and I Corinthians 15:51ff. What I have brought to your attention is only two examples from three file draws full of the pre-tribulational rapture infomation way, way, way before Darby in the 1830s.

Dr. Tommy Ice summarizes: "Recent research has unearthed plenty of pre-trib rapture advocates before Darby, which are now available when someone brings up that tired, old argument that “No one held to pretribulationism before 1830.” That tired, old argument is now on YouTube.

RAGING FINGERNAILS

 We are witnessing an excercize of unbelievable pain. Let's look at the backstory which normal people would say, "That's insanity."

We're all familiar with the dispicable event but here's a summary: "On October 7th, 2023, the Palestinian Islamist militant group Hamas launched an unprecedented terrorist attack on Israel, killing some 1,200 people (mainly civilians). 240 Israeli citizens and foreigners were taken as hostages and taken into Gaza." The reason: they were Jews. It's on the hostages that we'll focus.

In America and, I suppose, elsewhere, the friends and relatives of the hostages began to post pictures of them in public places and on the grounds of university campuses; photos of men, women, children, and babies, now in the hands of savages who beheaded and burned alive their innocent victims. Again, why? Because they were Jews.

The posted pictures were a lest-we-forget gesture. These 240 hostages are not to be forgotten; they are trying to hang on in a hell on earth. They are somebodys' sons and daughters; comeone's wife;someone's father; someones' mother.

It's inconceivable but it's true; the posting of their pictures ingnited a rage among antisemites. It was a rage from head to toe, infecting even their fingernails. The Jew-haters began to tear down and destroy the posters, tearing them from where they had been afixed.

And this is where their fingernails come into play. Melonie Phillips, a Jew and a British author witnessed people tearing taking down the posters from wooden poles, say like telephone poles by digging their fingernails into the wood in order to tear the the pictures and their messages down. Finger nails embedded into the posts! It's difficul to imagine the pain that would cause, but fueled by the octane of rage, they did it. She and others remarked on the eyes of those with fingernails afixed in the tearing: there was something off and odd about them. They said their looked demonic.

Such hatred against a people who comprise a global population of only15.7 million. Thats 0.2% of the world's population. Their land is the size of New Jersey. Yet, the  fallen world is obsessed with the Jews and with Israel. the UN codemns them with every vote; students in the universitys hound, harass, and assault them rioting along the way.  

This is a supernatual rage from the evil side of the universe; a fury so deep it's in their fingernails.

THE PASTOR AND JOHN 3:16

 I ran across the website of a conservative, Bible-believing church in our area. I came across it because I was searching for something else. The church had a page which instructed the reader on "How to Accept Christ Into Your Life", so I thought I'd ck it out. I did and found "Four Steps" to accept Christ into your life. You and I know that when we read something like that, the article is off in the wrong direction. Here are the 4 steps:

1. Admit your need. (I am a sinner)

2. Be willing to turn from your sins. 

3. Believe that Jesus Christ dies for you on the cross and rose from the grave.

4. Through prayer, invite Jesus Christ to control your life through the Holy Spirit. (Receive him as Lord)

 

We suggest praying the following prayer to accept Christ as your Savior and Lord.

 

"Dear God,

I know I'm an [sic]sinner, and I ask for your forgiveness.

I believe Jesus Christ is Your Son. I believe that He died for my sin and that you raised Him to life again.

I want to trust Him as my Savior and follow Him as Lord, from this day forward. Guide my life and help me to do your will.

I pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen"

If I were to go to the pastor and say, "I'm considering joining your church but before I do, I need to know, do you know and believe Jn. 3:16?" No doubt about it, he would answer with a resounding,"YES!" as he pounded the Bible on his desk. Then I would ask him, "Please tell me, where do you see that I must "be willing to turn from my sins" in Jn. 3:16?

I would continue, "Pray and invite Jesus into my heart?"  Then, politely, I would ask, "Where do you find that I must "pray, and invite Jesus Christ to control my life through the Holy Spirit?" Another question, "Where in any gospel invitation in the book of Acts (or anywhere else) do we find the Apostles telling anyone "to ask God to forgive them to be saved?" Where do we find that the person to be saved has to pray a prayer, even something called "The Sinner's Prayer?"

If he were honest, he would have to say, "I don't see any of them in the verse. I see only one requirement which is, "whosoever believes."

I could reply,  "Then you don't believe John 3:16, do you?"

 

 

HE ACTUALLY SAID THIS?

The philosophical system that is Calvinism can, at times, force the Calviist to say some ludicrous things. 

A case in point is an answer one of the leading Calvinists, R. Sproul, gave to this question: "How can I be be happy in heaven if my mother isn't there but is in Hell?" That's a good question and one we'll answer in our coming study on "Heaven." Sproul's answer floored me.

He said, "When you look down from heaven and see your mother in Hell, you will rejoice!" 

We need to stop here and remind ourselves that oneof the peals of TULIP is "Unconditional Election" which means  "God chose certain individuals for salvation based entirely on His grace, irrespective of their actions or choices. This decision reflects God’s sovereign will, established before the creation of the world."

There it is: God did not chose that person's mother to be one of he elect to be saved and go to heaven. He,  by not choosing her to go to heaven, authomatically chose her to go to hell. 

Why did He chooe her for hell? The Calvinist would have to say, going by their system, that she is in hell to show the glory of God. Keep in mind, that by their system, some babies will wind up in Hell. All this somehow to show the glory of God.

Therefore, Sproul said that when some son ,in heaven, sees his mother or his child in everlasting torment, he will be overjoyed becausse by his mother's being in Hell,she is glorifyig God, He will prasie God thety are there.. 

We say to this, "Really? Is that your answer? Jesus, seeing the rejection of Israel, "burst into tears." (Literal translation.) He did not rejoice.