SORRY, I DON'T HAVE TIME

 A university professor is encouraging a student to get down and do some in-depth, super-serious Bible study, telling him that an hour on Sunday isn't enough. He admonished him, saying, "Three hours of continuous study, i. e. at one sitting, is a good start."

The student objected, saying, "I don't have time." 

Not to be put off, the professor asks him to keep a record of how much time he spends on Facebook and other social media for one week, then come back and tell him he doesn't have the time.

I thought about that challenge and remembered a 2016 study I'd read and saved a few months ago, but before you read and think about it, beware for reasons that will be evident. The stats are most likely worse today in 2021.

The lifespan of the average person is 78 years and in that average lifetime you will spend:

11,762 days looking at a digital screen which equals 41% of your life.

8, 521 days sitting which equals 29.7% of your life. 

1,951 days socializing with others which equals 6.8% of your life.

98 days exercising which equals 0.69% of your life.

1.5 years looking for lost items.

6 years waiting in lines. 

You will receive 1,000 advertising messages a day.

In that amount of time, you could run the circumference of the earth 2.2 times.

Every day is precious; why waste it on things that are of little value? Most live their lives committing murder; just killing time. 

The moral? Psalm 90:12.

 

 

LET'S DO SOME COMPARING

 
There are courses in college offered called “Comparative Religion.” Comparative religion "is the branch of the study of religions concerned with the systematic comparison of the doctrines and practices, themes, and impacts (including migration) of the world's religions." That's a mouthful directly out of a college catalogue.  

Odds are that a person taking such a course emerges liberalized or even hostile to Christianity. But let’s do a little comparing together of the the one true God of the Jews and the gods of their ancient neighbors.

The Baals of Syria and Mesopotamia were local deities who man made happy if he went about sacrificing his fellow men. In the words of one historian, the Baals were at one and the same time arbitrary and dreadful objects of worship.

Let’s compare the never-ending supply of  the gods of Egypt with the One true God and the Bible, and in the words of Russell Kirk, we find that the Egyptian gods were, in his words, lunatics.

Going over to Greece, their gods were personified forces of nature nobody would think of imitating. Besides that, ancient Israel’s contemporaries deified their rulers; the Jews never turned David or Solomon into gods.

When it came to living out their beliefs, the pagans had their temple prostitutes. It was part of their worship. The gods of Greece and Rome were indifferent to justice and righteousness. They laid down no ethical standards; they were too busy sinning themselves.  

Comparing the Romans at worship, with the Israelites, the Romans had their lares and penates--they were groups of deities who protected the family and the Roman state. Although different, the Lares and Penates were often worshiped together at household shrines. Each family had their own particular lares and penates as objects of worship not to be angered. (In the movie, "The Gladiator," the hero of the film had his little wooden statues with him and those were the lares and penates of his family.)

 Considered spirits of the dead, the lares guarded homes, crossroads, and the city. Every Roman family had its own guardian, to protect the household and ensure that the family line didn't die out.

But the God of Israel was no force of nature or relegated to a single clan. Yahweh had an ethical relationship with the nation of Israel who made eternal covenants with His people. He forbade them to make a molten image of Him. When the Roman army crashed through Jerusalem in 70 AD and rampaged into the Temple, they tore away the veil and entered the Holy of Holies. It was then they were surprised to find no golden images of Israel’s God. That was different.

Rather than ferocious and capricious, Jehovah was kind to His people when they lived according to His Law. He loved them. But no worshiper of Zeus, Astart, Baal, or Molech thought of those gods as the author of any law for man, nor believed that such a one could be loved. Their gods made no covenants.

To live in a pagan world was to live in a world of chance and accidents because their gods were whimsical. They gave no principles or rules for living. They did as they pleased with human beings with no thought of justice, right, or wrong.

Hesiod was an ancient Greek poet who was writing his verse between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer of "The Iliad" fame. Hesiod summed up the ancient religions when he wrote about the chief of the Greek gods:

"Zeus rules the world and with resistless sway
Takes back tomorrow what he grants today."

Comparison? There is no comparison.

AMERICA AT PLAY

 Satan is involving America, its leaders, its elites, its celebrities, its politicians, its opinion makers, its ordinary chaps, and its journalists in his game called, "Let's Pretend." And many are now at play in what's becoming our national sport. 

Let's call the sport, "Let's Pretend." We’re living in a let’s-pretend-culture. For example—let’s all pretend that if a male says he’s a female, we're all to pretend he is, although his DNA and all other scientific evidence says he's not. 

And, according to the rules of the game, we're to  pretend that such a contention is normal, that we shouldn't bat so much as one eyelash. If boys want to compete against girls in next month’s track meet, let’s pretend that’s fair and all's well to the extent that if you're a father and your daughter is on the track team, if you take her out of the competition and go home, then something's wrong with you because of your bigoted and hateful attitudes, so you should be ashamed of yourself. 

Let's also pretend that we can hit delete on the creation account described in Genesis 1-2 and instead, indoctrinate children from K-12 with evolution and there won't be any untoward repercussions from that replacement.

If a scholar says there are 50+ sexes, let’s pretend there are, even though DNA says there are two. While we’re at it, let’s pretend socialism and communism are much better systems than capitalism. Let’s pretend that Stalin and Mao didn’t kill all those millions and if they did, let’s pretend those murders were necessary to achieve a utopia that, according to the rules of the game, we have to pretend exists out there somewhere. 

Let's pretend that there's no absolute truth even though there is, as evidenced by the absolute pronouncements by those who don't believe in absolute truth, such as, "A woman has a right to choose." That's erroneous, but it's stated as if it were absolute truth. That' about as absolute as you can get, but we notice that they never finish the sentence and say ". . . to kill a baby." They don't finish the sentence because that would be too distasteful and would cast a new light on the debate.

We’re living in an era in which our elected and appointed emperors have no clothes, but let’s pretend they’re fully clothed in sartorial splendor and they're in their right minds as they make insane pronouncements such as "The University of Pennsylvania Dental School should create a fund to identify bias in dentistry." What? Wait. What in the world is going on? The university dutifully obeyed and played the Let's Pretend game.

And then there’s the deeper problem: it’s the idea that everybody must be forced to to play the Let's Pretend game or else. We're passing laws to ensure everyone participates. Or else they face the consequences of ruination politically, educationally, financially, and vocationally which is the latest version of Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace of fire for anyone who refused to bow before that image. 

The Let's Pretend game continues unabated; no end in sight. The rules are set up that way; the game must go on and on and on. We need some Shadrachs, Meshachs, and Abed-negos to stand ramrod straight and say, "No!"

LEGALISTS OUT OF CONTROL: HAMMER AND TONGS

 To many believers today, the fact that the Bible teaches a different way of giving for us than that of Israel under the shadow of Mt. Sinai is a new thought, but there it is in plain sight, in black and white in II Corinthians 9:7, "Each one must do just as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver." 

While under the Mosaic Law, there was no "as he decides in his own heart;" the Law made the decision: 10% of their income which was a flat income tax for the Jews. Then there's I Corinthians 16:2 in which Paul gives further instructions: "On the first day of every week, each of you is to put aside and save as he may prosper, so that no collections need to be made when I come." 

Couple those texts with Romans 6:14, "For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under the Law but under grace," and lo and behold, the tithing system has been abolished! (Some may seek to use this new method of grace giving to excuse their "no-giving," but that's a perversion of the truth, which is another subject.) 

But legalism is a difficult beast to control. Fallen man carries on an illicit love affair with rules, traditionalism, regulations, and laws so that he may inflate his life's resume with pride. And then there's the legalist, armed with hammer and tongs who's flat-out out of scriptural control. One Bible teacher on a foreign mission field reports just such rampaging beasts of legalism.

With hammer and tongs, these pastors go after their congregations hurling soteriological threats from the pulpit into the defenseless pews. How so? They stand behind their pulpits and connect tithing with the gospel, telling their congregants that if they tithe, they keep their salvation, but if they do not tithe, they lose it. By this, the legalist in sheep's clothing guarantees himself a full stomach and an overflowing offering plate. 

But they don't leave it there. They instruct their listeners that tithing will bring them the coveted trio: wealth, happiness, and prosperity. Wait. What? That sounds familiar, very familiar. It's what we hear from television, radio, and CD presentations of the good life that awaits those who give to this, that, and the other ministries. 

It's what we read in the "Your Best Life Now books," and as we play the new "Best Life Now Board Game which "enables players to step beyond the one-on-one nature of the book[s] and feel, touch, and live [the] 7 Steps To Living At Your Full Potential with your friends and family. Your Best Life Now: The Game is an entertaining and educational way to take inventory of yourself and accountability of your actions." It's for 2-6 players, age 16 and above and will take an hour of your time. (It can be yours for $27.95.)

The imposition of tithing for keeping your salvation upon the unwary smacks of John Tetzel's sales of indulgences to help finance the bondage system of the Roman Catholic system; it was Tetzel who promised, "As soon as the coins clink in the money chest, the souls of those for whom the indulgences had been purchased would fly out of purgatory."

The saying is old but true, the more things change, the more they stay the same.