INVISIBLE INK IN THE BIBLE

 There must be invisible ink in the Bible, at least that seems to be a possibility. Take for example an erudite author and speaker whom we'll call Didi. Didi is not a Democrat nor is she a Republican. She used to be a Republican, but left the party a decades ago. She trusts no political party and makes no bones about her distrust of both. She considers herself to be a constitutionalist, one committed to the Constitution whose principles do not change with the times. Good for her.

Didi is an author whose booklets and books have sold in the millions. She's written on the Federal Reserve, the income tax, education, Medicare, SS, the critical, and the fraudulent ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment Good for her. Those subjects consume 400 pages of facts and solutions. She's been interviewed on various radio programs  around the country and is a professional journalist. She's of interest to us, not because of her political views, but because of a Christmas essay. 

In her essay, she writes about the birth of the Savior and she quotes the most familiar verse in the Bible, using the KJV to do so. Here's what she writes: "Know what one of the things I think about today [Christmas Day]? I think about the Blessed Mother and her pain of bringing forth a child into the world knowing that one day she would see her son die in the most horrific manner because that is what Almighty God intended." It's here that she quotes the familiar verse: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved."

Two paragraphs later is the place where the invisible ink enters the picture as she writes: "Our Heavenly Father promised us through his son, Jesus Christ, that if we lived by his commandments and repented of our sins, our reward when we leave this human body would be greater than any earthly riches. As I am fond of saying, eternity is a long time. God commands us not to sin: Kill, lie, cheat, steal, commit adultery, worship false gods, honor our parents and so on."

Just a scant two short paragraphs earlier, Didi quoted the words of John 3:16-- "whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life." Is invisible ink involved here? Can she not see the word "whosoever believes in Him"? 

There's not a word about "if we live by his commandments and repent of our sins" in John 3:16 nor is eternal life conditioned on living by God's commandments or repenting (in the sense in which she's using "repent"). In every instance in the Gospel of John, eternal life is conditioned on believing, not doing. 

So there must be invisible ink in use when it comes to the word "believe." Many sadly can't see it; their conditioning won't allow it. It's invisible. Our call is to make the invisible ink visible to those whose minds the god of this world (Satan) has blinded lest the light of the  glorious gospel shine unto them. (II Cor. 4:4)  

CHRISTMAS: THE ONE VERSE THAT SAYS IT ALL

 There's one sentence in the New Testament that says it all when it comes to Christmas. Interestingly enough, it's not in Luke 2 or anywhere in Matthew, but it's in one of Paul's letters. To make it more interesting, it's in one of Paul's letters to a collection of churches who are, at the very moment Paul is putting quill to papyri, defecting from the by-faith way of salvation that saved them in the first place. It's there that we come across a sentence that says it all about Christmas. 

Here's the verse: "But when the fullness of the time came, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law." There it is. It has "Christmas" writ large all over it.

God sent His Son: there is the statement of the deity of the Christ child. God  sent His Son.

Born of a woman: there is the statement of the true humanity  of the Christ child, as well as an implication of the Virgin Birth.

Born under the Law: The Christ Child was born into the human race a Jew. 

There's one other thing of interest, an excursion from the subject at hand, but haven't we  noticed that there are an array of what are called "Christmas Movies," but in our secularized society none of them deal with the Christmas of Galatians 4:4. 

They chronical a boy's desire for a B-B gun, a boy left in his home alone, a Hallmark movie soaked in sentimentality along with Dicken's famous story of the change from being a stingy man to a generous man, and even an elaborate crime's being committed during an office Christmas party. These we classify as "Christmas Movies" none of which have to do with the truths of Galatians 4:4. 

The plots of the movies take place during a time of year called "Christmas" but there's no explanation of the significance of the word or season. 

The secularization has become ingrained. We hardly notice. 

PRESIDENT BIDEN AND THE PERFECT STORM II

In Finland, a 49 year-old Lutheran pastor described as "unassuming and gentle," will go on trial January 24, 2022, to face charges of  “hate speech” for writing and publishing a 24-page 2004 booklet that explains the Christian theology of marriage, which can only consist of one man and one woman, for life. 

Charges are also being brought against a fellow Lutheran for tweeting a picture of a Bible verse. (Yes, you read that correctly.) Coupled with those outrages is the fact that the police publicly admitted their interpretation of Finland’s law would make publishing the Bible a hate crime. (You read that correctly too.)

Let's turn our attention 5,171 miles from the Finns and look at San Francisco where a Nordstrom store in the San Francisco Bay Area was overrun by 80 looters who tore through the place, grabbed merchandise, and fled in waiting cars. Because of Proposition 47 in California, thefts under $950 will not be prosecuted, so the police won't bother showing up.Because of that law,  two men casually walked out of a Los Angeles TJ Maxx with piles of stolen goods and no one stopped them. 

 What has happened in the US of A and in Finland to cause such insanity? And that brings us to Joe Biden and the perfect storm, the storm which had been developing, but has now hit our country as well as others during his administration. 

 As with any perfect storm, the factors are many and they took a while to build, but build they did and did so right before our very eyes. The atheist German philosopher Frederich Nietzsche (1844-1900), of all people, saw the perfect storm as it began to build. 

What he saw as an idea, the idea that human beings could secularize morality, that is, divorce ethics from Christianity and there would be no problems. And with that, the perfect storm began to form. The philosopher wrote, "What these moral fanatics don't realize is how conditional their morality is on the basis of the religion [Christianity] they profess to discard.And it is only because of the persistence of that religion that, for the English, morality is not yet a problem."The word, "persistence" is important.

We can visualize it this way: a country, such as the U. S. has a history of being Bible-soaked. We named our towns with names straight out of the Bible: Salem, Massachusetts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Palestine, Texas, et. al. Our politicians could quote and allude to the Bible without having to explain the reference such as Lincoln who said, "A house divided against itself cannot stand." We hear an allusion to "the prodigal son,"" a David and Goliath situation," or "giving the widow's mite," or referring to "a good Samaritan" and we understand the mention immediately. We were a people who read and knew our Bibles and the morality it contained.

But then came the aforementioned divorce: prayer removed; the Bible removed; the Ten Commandments removed. The so-called "separation of church and state" became the standard for by which we systematically removed all references to God and His Word in the public arena. 

So, as the storm built, the divorce papers were served and morality was cut off from its foundation: Christianity. Darwin made his contribution to the storm, and man became one more animal taking up space on the planet. Divorced from the Bible, situation ethics (right and wrong depended on a person's situation at the time) thundered over the land. Not only the situation, but feelings, dictated morality, how each person felt became a standard of right and wrong, so we have the situation of "each man does what's right in his own eyes," a statement of relativism.

We must recognize that the storm we're seeing today took a long time to make landfall, that is, it took a long time for morality to become a problem in a Bible-soaked land. And why is that? Leo Tolstoy said it loud and clear: “The attempts to found a morality apart from religion are like the attempts of children who, wishing to transplant a flower that pleases them, pluck it from the roots that seem to them unpleasing and superfluous, and stick it rootless into the ground. Without religion there can be no real, sincere morality, just as without roots there can be no real flower."

The perfect storm in which we live today, does not have its roots in political parties; our educational system, our mass media; it has it's roots in that idea that we can divorce morality from Christianity and there will be no problems. So, what do we see? Insanity: "The fear of the Lord (a positive response to God and His Word) is the beginning of knowledge."

It takes a while for cut flowers to die, but die they do and then comes the perfect storm. Our leadership, starting at the top, are now part of the continual root pulling. Once the roots are gone, there are no rules and chaos descends upon us.

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN AND THE PERFECT STORM PART 1

Let's begin with a question and an answer: what do we mean when we say, "The perfect storm?" The answer is, "The perfect storm is an unusual combination of events or things that produce an unusually bad or powerful result." Therefore, it would be proper to say that we have finally arrived at a perfect storm in the presidency of Joe Biden. It's taken a long, long time to get us where we are, but, the perfect storm has arrived. 

This perfect storm contains that unusual combination of events or things that produce unusually bad or powerful results, as the definition states. Regarding those unusually bad and powerful results, who would have imagined that a local mayor could stop citizens from worshipping while a casino could still operate? Who would have imagined that federal, state, and local leaders could punish Americans for living according to the objective truth that we are created male and female? Who could have imagined that adoption agencies would be punished for living out their belief that marriage is between a man and a woman? Or that a baker, a florist, or a web designer could be ruined for their Christian beliefs and practices? 

Who would have imagined that a New Hampshire high school student was suspended from playing football for one game after a conversation taking place off-campus in which he insisted there are only two genders. Who would have thought that a law in Colorado prohibited Lori Smith from stating her biblical beliefs about marriage on her business website and that law also forced her to design websites promoting same-sex weddings since she promoted traditional weddings. (John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) wrote that to punish a person by depriving him of his livelihood is the same as sending him to prison.)

Who would have thought that this quotation inscribed in the Jefferson Memorial in Washington DC would be rendered null and void by any state in the Union: "Almighty God hath created the mind free. All attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens...are a departure from the plan of the holy Author of our religion...No man . . . shall suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, but all men shall be free to profess and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion. I know but one code of morality for men whether acting singly or collectively."

Who would have thought that our Founding Fathers would become controversial, even vilified; who would have thought that "The Star Spangled Banner" would be controversial; who would have thought that an elementary school in Connecticut would require its students to engage in its "Social Justice Lesson Standards," which includes transgender content being exposed to children as early as kindergarten? And who would have thought that libraries would promote a story reading time for children with stories read by men dressed and made up as women? And who would have thought that approving parents would take their children to such perverted events?

Leaders lie. Leaders know they lie. The people to whom they are lying know they lie. The leaders know that people know they lie. They lie anyway. Who would have imagined that a TV news reporter would stand outside with a city being burned in the background and call what we're seeing  "a fiery, but mostly peaceful protest."? 

Enough already. Those are symptoms of the perfect storm, but the question is, what has caused the storm? The perfect storm has been building for a long time; we've observed its thunder and lightning in the distance for decades and now, in the presidential administration of Joe Biden, its fury has hit land and that fury cannot be said to be its full wrath. . 

TO  BE CONTINUED

THE TRUE TO THE TULIP CALVINIST

 There's a famous statement from the 19th century by C. H. Spurgeon, aka "The Prince of Preachers." (No, the prince of preachers isn't Joel Osteen.) C. H. S., in a dogmatic frame of mind, wrote, "Calvinism is the gospel." So, if anyone should doubt that Spurgeon was a five point Calvinist, those four words answer the question. 

OK. Let's weigh that statement on the biblical scale and see if it's found wanting. We'll begin by using the literal meaning of "gospel," i. e. "good news." And, in so doing, we'll let an unembarrassed Calvinist define their hallowed five points aka according Spurgeon as "the gospel." However, since bullet points are boring, let's put them into a narrative, into a conversation in which a follower of Calvin is witnessing to an unbeliever and giving him the "good news." That conversation, based on a summary of Calvinism, should go something like this:

The unembarrassed Calvinist: "The first part of the good news that you need to understand is that you can't independently choose God. You can't can't save yourself. God must intervene to save you. By "intervening," I mean that God must have already chosen you before you were ever born, chosen you to be saved. 

"To further explain the good news, here's what happened in eternity past--God elected certain people to go to heaven. We  call these people the elect. By choosing some to be the elect and bound for heaven, this would mean that God did not choose others and those people, billions ad billions of them, are therefore chosen to be the damned, damned to Hell before they were ever born. They have no choice in the matter of their salvation.   

"Let's go further and hear more of the good news. The good news is that  that Jesus Christ died only for the sins of the elect, those people God chose in eternity past to go to heaven. The flip side of that is that Christ didn't die for the sins of those God chose to go to Hell. And, I must tell you, to be honest, I really don't know if Christ died for your sins or not, I can't say to you, "Christ died for your sins."

"You have to understand that those God chose are powerless to resist the good news. They have no say-so or choice in the matter. They cannot say, "No."

"Now these people called the elect, will be faithful to the end of their lives, but it's not really they who will persevere in faith, God is the One who will. They have no choice in that either."

"In all of this, God gets the glory. He's glorified in sending people to Hell who had no choice in the matter, that is, He created men, women, and children for the purpose of sending them to Hell forever so that He could be glorified. I also admit to you that even John Calvin confessed that this was a horrible and dreadful doctrine. He called it, "God's horrible and terrible decree."

"Now if you ask me, "How in the world could God be glorified by sending men, women, and children to Hell who had no choice in the matter and how could He be glorified by saving people who had no choice either?" We have an answer to that question--it's a mystery. We don't know."

How should the unbeliever respond to such a gospel presentation? The only answer is: "If that's good news, then it's only good news to the elect, but it's bad news to every one else, so how can we call it a gospel for the whole world?"

Does any Calvinist witness to the unbeliever that way? If so, it's a very small percentage, which makes you wonder, are they embarrassed by a God like that?

 

THE BALLAD OF JOHN BOOKMAN

John Bookman has come to a point in his life where he's tried everything, but senses a spiritual vacuum that nothing and no one has been able to fill. Mr. Bookman has begun his spiritual quest that he hopes will bring his restless to an end. John figures the best way to do this is to start digging into books about Christianity and to learn what his wife has been nagging him about: "How to be saved," as she calls it.

John wants to be thorough and study all he can to answer that question. He goes to a Christian bookstore and buys three books, "The Gospel According to Jesus," "Hard to Believe," and "Faith Works," all by the same author. Every evening, he seals himself off from the distractions of family, computers, and television and, with pen and paper he begins to read, carefully recording the requirements to be saved that he finds as he reads word by word, line by line, paragraph by paragraph, and page by page. Here's what he recorded:

 Follow Christ
Surrender to Christ
Be Willing to Obey
Commit yourself
Turn From Sin
Be Willing to Sacrifice Everything
Give Up All For the Kingdom
Deny Self
Love Christ supremely
Give Up All Your Earthly Possessions if the Lord Should Ask This
Give Yourself Totally to Him
Fulfill the Demands of Discipleship

Have “a transforming commitment to the living Christ” 

Follow Him in submissive obedience
Deny self, take up a cross, forsake all and follow Christ
Repent, surrender and have an eagerness to obey
Obey Christ
Yield one’s life to the Lordship of Christ
Be willing to forsake everything
Commit yourself to obedience
Make Christ the highest authority in your life
Be willing to obey
Repent and follow Jesus
Turn from sin
Forsake oneself for Christ’s sake
Be willing to sacrifice everything to acquire the kingdom
Give up all for the kingdom

Totally abandon self-will 
Exchange all that you are for all that Christ is
Make a full exchange of self for the Savior (“absolute surrender”)
Turn from sin, abandon self and intend to obey God
Repudiate the old life
Turn from evil and intend to serve God
Surrender to Christ and choose to obey Him
Deny self and follow Christ
Love Christ more than your own family members, be unquestionably loyal to Him even above your families
Obey Christ’s divine authority
Submit yourself to God
Resist the devil.
Draw nigh to God.
Cleanse your hands.
Purify your hearts.
Be afflicted and mourn.
Humble yourselves.
Turn to Christ in full self-surrender
Turn from your sins
Surrender heart, mind and will to Christ 
Deny self
Take up your cross daily
Follow Christ
Refuse to associate any longer with the person you are
Be willing to give up all your earthly possessions if the Lord should ask this Be willing to give up as much as it takes
Slay yourself! Refuse to associate any longer with yourself, reject all the things your self longs and wants and hopes for. Be willing to die for the sake of Christ.”
Totally and absolutely deny self
Be willing to hate your father and mother
Be willing to dump all your earthly goods (possessions).
“The complete surrender of all possessions is the essence of salvation”
Give yourself totally to Him which involves self-denial, cross bearing and following Him in obedience  

 Deny yourself and give Him your life
Die to yourself 

 Obey the Sermon on the Mount
Leave all your possessions behind  

Live in obedience and service to Christ as revealed in the Scriptures

These commands were disconcerting to John, and one which stood out was the one that said, "Be willing to give up all your possessions if Christ should ask." 

"Wait a minute," John thought to himself. "What's going on? To be saved Christ asks some to give up all their possessions, but He doesn't ask others? That sounds like two ways of salvation."

Then John thought about his children. How could he tell them all this stuff that they need to do to be saved? How could they do all this, much less even understand all these complex commands, one even involving obeying the entire Sermon on the Mount? 

The author of the books had an answer to that question regarding John's children--he told Mr. Bookman that they couldn't be saved because there's no way they could do or even understand all those commands. But this didn't make any sense to John because he remembered hearing that somewhere Jesus said to "permit the little children to come to Me" and that Jesus said that except you become like little children you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. 

From all those weeks of reading, John was at his wit's end. The book's requirements were impossible to keep and even if he tried, he knew he'd be constantly haunted by the questions, "Have I done enough, all of them? Have done them long enough? What if I stop doing one, two, or three of them? Was I saved in the first place?"

It was then that Bookman asked God to show him how to be saved. He threw the books away and picked up The Book and turned to the Gospel of John where he learned that John wrote the book for people just like he was, confused and lost. 

As he read what John wrote, he noted over and over and over, actually 99 times, John says that gaining eternal life and the forgiveness of sin comes from faith alone that Jesus is God, that Jesus died for John's sins, that Jesus rose from the dead and that if John will trust Him and Him alone, there it is, salvation. 

He also read Acts 16: 31: "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved, you and your household." He liked those words, "and your household." The gospel was so simple, his children could understand it. All those commands piled up in those three books, John now saw them for what they were, works that can never save anyone. 

John Bookman, like the ancient jailer, had asked, "What must I do to be saved?" God had answered.