Integrity, Love and Grace

I have often seen the question on the Internet and have, from time to time, been asked the question, "Why does God allow evil?” Folks dislike the answer and few are the Christ Followers that will answer and maybe that even know the answer. The answer is much like the Exhaust Manifold of an Internal Combustion Engine. The final output must come from several sources and yet there is but one answer. The final answer is that we, Christians, will learn the depth and length of grace. For reference you'll need to read First Corinthians 1, all of it. Paul dealt with this issue which burns down in the purification process to Integrity in the handling of "Grace.”

God sent His one Son into the world to pay the debt He did not owe in order that God might be able to extend His grace to us and right there is the stopping point for the average Christian. And yet that is not the aspect of grace that God wants us to plug the entrance to our Learning Processes at. Remember the Manifold? An R985, radial aircraft engine, has nine cylinders and one exhaust manifold, all the cylinders put their used gas into that one piece of equipment to get it out of the way.

In, exactly the opposite manor God extends His grace to each of us but it does not just dump out and fade away at that point. Now we, the Christ Follower, are in need of a "manifold” to exhaust into. Remember that brother that stumbled in the faith, last year, and we removed him from fellowship? WRONG! This is evil, but this is no more evil than the ten girls we dated and slept, in the back seat with, before we were married. That man or woman was and still is an exhaust port for God's infilling of His grace in our lives. God never meant for us to secret His grace away to keep it until we burst.

Well what about that rapist/murderer? God even loves Him! That's why so many of us are found in prison on Sunday morning and evening, to extend grace to them. God doesn't, so much, "allow” evil as, instead He forgives us of devising it. And if God has given, not just extended, grace to us, "How can we ever do less to our fellow man and claim to be students of Christ?”

Now, be careful here, this lesson is not about our right to bear arms but neither is it a litany against protecting our mothers, wives, children or home. We can love a man and still kill him to protect ourselves and our loved ones, I know, that was my profession for eight years when I was a young man. A better example is Harvey Wright. I hired on with a Japanese company and I negotiated a good starting wage to kick in on my 13 week on continuous employment and being a new Christ Follower I did not avoid the question when he asked how much I made, nor did I feel inclined to lie to him.

Harvey had been there long before I showed up for him to train me and I was making a good bit more than he was. Now Harvey was a Baptist Sunday School Teacher but every time I turned around I found Harvey's knife in my back. I had heard Pro. 25:21, 22 preached from the pulpit by Bro. Richard Clark, so I did not retaliate because I also knew that vengeance belongs to the LORD. Instead I began to pray, every day, for Harvey's spirit to be healed. I will not give the details but when God poured those coals onto Harvey's head both our spirits were changed. There were great tears in my eyes as I attempted to comfort and to lift Harvey up, only to be rejected.

You need to be careful praying for someone, your love for their spirit and eternal welfare will magnify itself beyond all belief. So I pray that all will understand what I am teaching in the morning and that none of you have chosen to make deposits in the Grudge Bank. I do my very best to keep my account there empty.

God bless!

XP Notice

While it will not kill your computer it is worthy to note that the support for Windoze XP from MS has, officially, been pulled. In a Tech Paper from ZD Net I learned that, while MS had promised to support XP until the summer of 2014 but they lied! What this means to you is that the system will no longer receive security updates and thereby become more and more vulnerable to new viruses, trojans and worms.

For those of you that are smart enough to avoid the dangers built into vista and 7 but would like to continue running your XP and still be safe, there is, indeed, a manner to accomplish this. You can download a free Live CD image called Ubuntu 10.04 from ubuntu.com and use the Burn Image to CD function of your cd burning software to produce a Live CD.

Then you can install Ubuntu and you have two methods to choose from. You can automatically duel boot the systems or you can use the entire disk for Ubuntu and then install XP inside Ubuntu. If you have the XP CD the second method is to be preferred.

If you select my preference you will have the ability to permentantly keep your XP free of viral problems. You’ll need to install the VirtualBox, available free from the repository with just a point and click or you can browse to virtualbox.org and download the latest version, also free, and have USB support. (I’m betting that you already know which one I’m running.)
Now you can, intuitively create a Virtual Hard Disk and install windows. Activate it and never touch the Internet with windows again. After you have installed the Windoze and start it running you will be immensely dissatisfied so look at the top of the window frame holding Xp and click on devises. Now click on Install Guest Additions… After they are installed you will discover that you now have seamless mouse integration and if you will look for the Window expand button at the top right, if you have not yet chosen to go to the Windows left config, and on clicking it your window will not only maximize, sowill your Windoze screen.

Now install your Windoze apps and live happily, ever after.

Are You Following God?

Do you follow Jesus? That's not a trick question and it is a question whose answer holds your eternal destiny in it's context! (John 14:15)

In the afore mentioned verse Jesus was very clear in His statement. There are others that allude to our responsibility to God also, both in the Old Testament and the New. Paul was so clear in his teaching on the point that folks have become so uncomfortable with Romans 12:1 that they have made a joke about it to draw away some of it's sting.

People have so exaggerated Biblical slavery to the point that I have been rebuked and threatened with posting privileges being removed if I did not retract my post and apologize for offending some unstudied New Testament Christians. I've read the Bible for the past twenty years to learn all that I can about God before I go home to be with Him. I've sat under several good teacher and preaches and they have, all of them, agreed with my understanding that we (Saved Men) are purchased away from our lives of sin and the price paid for our purchase is the death of Jesus, the Christ, on the cross.

So when Jesus says, “If you love me...” He's not making a footnote for the average Joe to ignore. No, and Paul is on the same page as Jesus when he tells us it is our duty to live as Holy a life as we possibly can, with the aim that we will be worthy of being a living sacrifice to God. My great grandmother was an Irish immigrant and thousands of them, at a time, would sell themselves into slavery to get to America. This was happening long after the conclusion of the American Civil War and many of them were Share Croppers with the aim of purchasing there freedom, they were Bond Slaves just as the follower of Jesus are.

If you are following Jesus the task is very simple and yet there are very few in the Worship Service on any given Sunday that have and are submitting their will to the will of God. When we are submitted to the will of God we use the Word of God, the Bible, as our governing agent in every decision we make.

I am often asked how to determine the will of God for one thing or another and I must admit that it perplexes me that folks are serious when they ask this question and they, often, are disturbed with me when I explain to them that God's will for every circumstance is covered in the scriptures. The problem arises when people ask specific questions, such as but certainly not limited to, “What does God say against going fishing on Sunday Morning?”

Well, God did not have it recorded as Commandment number eleven that “Thou shall not go fishing until after Worship service.” This is actually a poor example of this situation because it is covered in Hebrews 10:25 where we are exhorted to not forget to assemble ourselves together to exhort one another. You see, it says not a single word about fishing or not but the principal is very clearly stated.

A a teacher of the Bible with a very advanced case of RRMS I have learned to rely on God to speak through me and the Holy Spirit has led me to prepare more carefully thet I might be ready with an answer as quickly as possible and I have three volumes I rely very heavily on besides my NASB giant print Bible. The first, the Naves Topical Bible I purchased in my second year as a Christian. It is very useful to study any topic in the Bible and it is alphabetically arranged for a simple search.

My next purchase was about five years later and being an Amateur Christian Apologist, I have found it essential. This volume is the Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics by Norman Giesler ad finally my newest essential tool for the weak minded is a paperback titled Where To Find It In The Bible. With the first and the last volumes, about thirty-eight dollars on the net, there is not a question to e asked that you cannot give an answer to in less than a minute. If you only purchase one, I urge you to make it the Naves and if you have a computer go to e-sword.net and download the free basic program ad them the Naves from the Dictionary section.

Christians and Guns?

Luke 22:35-38 (King James Version)

 35And he said unto them, When I sent you without purse, and scrip, and shoes, lacked ye any thing? And they said, Nothing.
 36Then said he unto them, But now, he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip: and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one.
 37For I say unto you, that this that is written must yet be accomplished in me, And he was reckoned among the transgressors: for the things concerning me have an end.
 38And they said, Lord, behold, here are two swords. And he said unto them, It is enough.

I know that I am forever teaching that there is a sever lack of attention to what is being taught in the Body of Christ today but I cannot cease until I pass over because it is such an important topic.

In my, almost, daily encounters with people, claiming the Name of the Christ for their, very, own, I find such discourse with what the scriptures, the inspired Word of God has to say. While it is certainly not a new concept there is a disturbing concept that is growing in the US by leaps and bounds and that would be the refusal to bear arms against this nation's and other people's enemies.

It seems to me that not only do these “New Testament” Christians, not read the Bible (The Old Testament) that Jesus, not only inspired to be written but, read and used exclusively but they cannot be reading the best life application commentary ever written, the New Testament! In verse 36 of the above passage from Luke Jesus warned His followers, that will be us, to arm themselves for the oncoming events.

Now, there are two ways for a Christian to arm himself and he should be properly prepared in both. The first, and by far, the most important is to place the Word of God in the secret place of your heart. That is best accomplished by daily reading the Word of God. It's really a painless thing and does not require you to become a teacher. It takes fifteen to thirty minutes a day for a year to read the entire Bible... all of it!

The second, although it is a good idea, does not require that you run right out and purchase a semi-automatic rifle. It does however require that a man be prepared to die defending his mother, his wife and his children. Defense, like Christianity, requires commitment.

Christian?

As we, daily, approach the, soon coming, Rapture, it is becoming more and more common for people that have never darkened the door of a Christian Church to proclaim themselves to be

Christian. This condition is so common in the US that it is reported by various survey companies, from around the world, that eighty-three to eighty-four per cent of Americans are Christians. Yet on any given Sunday, the day Christians celebrate the resurrection of our Christ, Jesus, far less than two percent are present for worship service and in honor of the Christian celebration of the Sabbath.

In a survey oft quoted, by me, taken by the Barna Group in the mid-eighties, less than ten percent of the folks that attend church three times or more a week, in America, believe in things like the Virgin Birth, Christ's payment for their sins and that He is returning to rapture them out of here. I'm told that this group, known as the faithful, are most often fifteen to twenty percent of the membership. That means that somewhere between one and two percent of the one to two percent of the population of the US that attend church are among the saved of the world. The actual numbers can be distressing.

For this reason it is safe to say that the field is white unto the harvest and every Christian should be witnessing to the Lost to bring in the harvest for the LORD. This however is not my point here. I'm concerned with the two groups, calling themselves Christians, that are out on the streets doing what real Christians are called to do.

We will begin with what is a real Christian? First and foremost a Christian is a follower of Jesus, the Christ. Please note that Christ is not Jesus' last name, rather it is who He is! I've been taught by a number of teachers that Christ is the Koine Greek word for the Hebrew term, Messiah. This, then, is who Jesus, the carpenter, is to us, He is our Saviour. This point is the defining point for who is a Christian.

This definition is further clarified in John 1:1-3 and places Jesus in the position of the second person of the Triune God, Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. This is also why, no matter how many times they say they are, the Mormons, a.k.a. LDS or Later Day Saints of Jesus Christ and the Jehovah's Witness' are not Christians.

In the Mormon Religion, Jesus is the brother of Satan instead of being a fallen Angel, created by Jesus. Once more the reference is John 1:1-3 where the Bible, the inspired Word of God, teaches that there is nothing that has been created that Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, has not created. (Jesus, the Christ, created the Chief Angel, Lucifer, who sought to overthrow God and to assume His place, was cast out of Heaven and became Satan.) Over the years I've had the opportunity to witness to several Mormons as they sat on my porch and to explain to them that they must never believe they are Christians because they are not saved.

Then there is the oft heard Jehovah's Witness. These folks are well intentioned, very misguided people that show up everywhere I've been, except in Christian Churches. These people believe that Jesus is either a created being of God or that God had sex with Mary and is the off-spring of that impossible coupling, I've been given both mistaken revelations by different JWs at different times. Here, again, the reference I'm using is John 1:1-3.

We need to be very careful and guard the ear gate because there are many in the vein of Jim Jones and David Koresh in our midst today but even more dangerous are the people coming to visit us with these 'new' revelations of God that disagree with what God has revealed in His Word for us to hold to.