Hope Springs Eternal
It is amazing to me that hope can spring
forth from tragedy. The recent shootings
in Charleston, SC made me more aware than ever that hope does in fact spring
eternal. It will defeat darkness in the end. The forgiveness offered by the
victims and the coming together to remove the symbol of hate shows the power of
good over evil. Jesus himself said in the end time it would be as “in the days
of Noah.” If you take the time to read the 6th Chapter of Genesis it
is a perfect description of the times we are living in today, just as Jesus
warned us it would be.
We all have unforgettable memories in our
lives. The Kennedy assassinations, the Martin Luther King assassination, 9/11
and a couple of personal events have imbedded in my mind the fact that evil
exists. However, the events in
Charleston made me realize that sometimes goodness can and will in fact defeat
evil.
The recent act of domestic terrorism that
happened in Tennessee is definitely nothing new to America. In the course of my
life there has been plenty of that.. Murder and mayhem are nothing new. Over
15,000 people are killed every year in America, 11,000 of them by gun
violence. That is equivalent to a small
city every year. The media try to slant one event as more important than
another. The only change is we now have people encouraged by outside sources to
commit acts of terror. Sometimes people are even convinced to kill themselves
in the name of religion. The Jim Jones massacre is a classic example. Evil comes in many forms. Serial killers take many lives. It is America’s own unique contribution to evil,
though I am sure it happens elsewhere also.
Many people point to same sex marriage and
homosexuality as the signs of our moral decay and weakness in America, but to
me the Bible has several other things that God hates far worse than gays. When God lists the seven evils he hates, gays
and adultery don’t even make the list. In fact three out of the seven deal with
issues of the tongue. Reading Proverbs
6:16-20 is enlightening. Obedience to our
parents can keep us from evil. That
point is reinforced in Joshua 1:8. It makes clear that success and prosperity
in life are dependent on knowing God and obeying His Word.
Another place in the Bible it describes who
will be punished in the “Day of the Lord’s sacrifice.” It says all those who wear strange apparel
will be judged. Great now what we wear can get us killed. The question is what is strange apparel? The only basis I know to figure that out is
to look at the clothes they wore in Biblical times. If that is the standard
most of mankind is doomed. I pondered
over this for years. Then when reading a
parable by Jesus in Matthew 22 the light came on for me. The people bidden to the feast did not come
and they were killed. Then the king sent
his servants to gather new guests off the street and bring them to the wedding.
They bought both good and bad, that was the key that unlocked it to me. They were
all brought off the street. None had
time to change into special apparel. So
what did the king see that upset him?.
The verse states that when the King showed up one of the guests was not
wearing a wedding garment. That guest was cast into outer darkness.
I always thought that was unfair and then
I figured out in my own mind what the wedding attire was. The first people who did not come were the
Jews. The second group was those who
followed and believed on Jesus. Their attire was washed in the blood of the
lamb. To me that meant baptism. The reason I believe that is because he was
cast into the outer darkness, which is hell.
Later after much reading I found another verse
in Revelation 11:18 that said the time of judgment of the nations had come. The
last sentence kind of stunned me. It placed judgment on and destroyed those who
had destroyed the earth. In this day of global warming it is easy to blame it
on mankind. When I read that verse as a
semi-environmentalist I had to wonder if it meant all the roads, cities, canals
and changes mankind has made to alter the earth to his needs. The dams, the stripping of the forests from
the land, the oil pollution, nuclear pollution, and oceans stripped of the fish
and polluted with trash.
Having found the solution to one threat of
destruction in a parable I took another look at the parables in the Bible and
came to the parable of the talents. The issue in that parable was stewardship
of what the servant had been given. The final one was a bad steward and was
cast into outer darkness. It made it
pretty clear to me that we are responsible to properly use what we are blessed
with.
If
we want to keep digging we will find that getting tattoos is not permitted and
puncturing our body to wear jewelry is not allowed. Even trimming our beard is a sin. How much greater is the sin of not even
having a beard. We can get as far out there as we choose to do, but really it
is pretty simple. Micah 6:8 lays out the
whole duty of man. I am sure there were
gays and every other form of degenerate
behavior at the time of Christ, but he did not rail on them.
In
James 1:27 it makes pretty clear what God does expect of us,’ Pure religion and
undefiled before God and the Father is
this. “To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep
oneself unspotted from the world.” That
sounds pretty simple really. The only
problem is that we have fallen so far away from God many do not know what it
means to be undefiled. We have reached a
point where if anything feels good we feel entitled to do it. However many of the things that feel good in
the moment, will destroy us and our lives in the end.
Simply reading the first and second chapters
of Romans makes it pretty clear what is wrong with the world today. It says God will eventually give man over to
evil choices and they will come into judgment for their actions. It does not take a rocket scientist to see
that we have reached that point. A
person who does not wish to be judged has only one option and that is to live a
good life and pray God delivers us from the evil around us.
God does not hide what is right and wrong
from us. Anyone who will take the time
to read the 28th chapter of Deuteronomy can clearly see what God
says he will do for those who follow him and those who don’t. While America may
have been on the Blessing side of the page at one point, it is easy and clear
to see that we have slid to the cursed side.
The sad part is that judgment is just around the corner and most do not
realize it.
Most of those living lives of corruption
admit they are living wrong, but choose to continue doing so. I have not pity on those people while I do
pray for them. The ones I do have pity on and feel for are the children who
will be swept up in it all. When a tsunami hits, or a Katrina, or even a 9/11 situation children are swept
up in the destruction, but it is often
because of the bad choices of their elders.
My heart goes out to them and my prayers that God will spare them. God will do what is just and what is right,
regardless of how we see it. What
befalls most of us is by the decisions and choices we make in life.
My only purpose and hope in writing this is
that someone who does not know what they are doing, or someone who does, will
open their eyes and see they have the opportunity to make the choice that can
change their life. It is solely up to each of us to do so.
So what makes me think we are near the
end? In Luke 24 Jesus is laying out what
will happen after he is gone. In verse 6 he says they will hear of this and
that, yet when you get down to verse 33 he changes from hearing to seeing. I do not think it was a grammatical
error. It was an intentional change that
could clearly be seen by those willing to look.
Are you looking up.
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