Notes of Faith May 18, 2020

Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. — Genesis 3:7

I often hear preachers and evangelists talk about how the goal of our Christian life should be to get back to the way things were in the Garden of Eden — back when God walked and talked openly with Adam and Eve in the cool of the day and when things on earth were exactly as they were in heaven.  But of course, those two numbskulls went and screwed it all up for the rest of us and here we are, stuck in the middle of a cosmic war with no end in sight.

But that doesn’t mean we aren’t going to fight.  Of course, with God’s Kingdom everything is a little topsy turvy, and our weapons of warfare aren’t exactly normal.  We’re not welding swords or catapults, and the only super soldier serum we’ve got is the Holy Spirit (which is actually way better than anything Captain America might have had).

One of our greatest weapons rests on a choice we have to make every time we approach the throne of God.

How broken are you willing to admit you are?  How naked are you willing to get with Him?  As much as we say we want things to be like they were before sin entered the picture, don’t forget that Eden was a nudist colony.  There was no sin, therefore there was no shame, and their diet was about as healthy as you can get.  I’m assuming Adam and Eve both had rock hard abs as well.  I guess it’s no wonder they didn’t mind walking around butt naked.

We have a curious habit of wanting to cover ourselves up when approaching God.  Maybe it’s because we’ve been trained by church to make sure we always look our best when it’s time to get religious, but while this habit may make us feel some semblance of security, hiding our nakedness to God only creates a wall that keeps us from true transformation.  I have spent much of my life in utter denial of my own depravity and sin because something inside of me needed to feel that I wasn’t a complete failure at this whole spiritual thing.  I believed all the right things, but my behavior was selfish, lazy, and sinful.

What’s so crazy about all this is that God sees everything, nothing is hidden from Him.  So we’re trying to hide our true selves from Him even though He knows us better than we do!  I think it’s time to call a spade a spade.

When we dress ourselves up, or avoid bringing our authentic, broken selves to God everyday, we are not trying to hide from God, but rather ourselves.

Think about your own sin, your own brokenness, your own bad habits and thoughts and general unholy behavior.  It’s not a fun experience, admitting to the cesspool of your heart, because we all want to be better than that.  But if you want to have a relationship with God, you’re going to have to get naked.  He’s the only one who can lift you out of your depths, but He doesn’t deal with hidden things.  He only deals with exposed ones.

So what does it look like to get naked with God?  There are many things in our lives that we don’t mind bringing to the Lord — things we know are wrong or areas we know we need to improve on — that aren’t particularly difficult to do.  Those are like wearing a bathing suit at the pool; you may not be super happy about it, but there are worse things in life.  But then there are the things in our life that we don’t want anyone to know about, things that feel shameful, dirty, or painful.  It could be things you’re dealing with now, or it could be things from your past that you’ve stuffed down, but you know that by not dealing with them they still affect you today in negative ways.  We’re talking about the equivalent of being at the pool and having to take off your bathing suit.

Yet God is in your garden, calling out to you.  “Where are you?  I want to see you, spend time with you, help you.”  And you have a choice to make.  Either stay hidden behind the trees, or step out in your nakedness, in who you really are and what you’ve really done, and stand before your maker.

It may be terrifying, yes, but don’t forget.  He already knows it all anyway.  So you might as well present it to Him and let Him clean you up.  When faced with Adam and Eve’s sin and shame, God did something extraordinary.

He clothed them.

He is your Father.  He comes to take away your shame.  So go ahead and give it to Him.

 Written for Devotional Daily by Darren Wilson, author of Chasing a God You Don’t Want to Catch.

Are you hiding or do you let yourself get completely naked with God? He doesn’t want you to walk around with shame, so let it go!

And

How to Ask Forgiveness

by John Piper

He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins. (1 John 1:9)

I recall hearing one of my professors in seminary say that one of the best tests of a person’s theology was the effect it has on our prayers.

This struck me as true because of what was happening in my own life. Noël and I had just been married and we were making it our practice to pray together each evening. I noticed that during the biblical courses which were shaping my theology most profoundly, my prayers were changing dramatically.

Probably the most significant change in those days was that I was learning to make my case before God on the ground of his glory. Beginning with “Hallowed be Thy name” and ending with “In Jesus’s name” meant that the glory of God’s name was the goal and the ground of everything I prayed.

And what a strength came into my life when I learned that praying for forgiveness should be based not only on an appeal to God’s mercy, but also on an appeal to his justice in crediting the worth of his Son’s obedience. God is faithful and just and will forgive your sins (1 John 1:9).

In the New Testament, the basis of all forgiveness of sins is revealed more clearly than it was in the Old Testament, but the basis, namely, God’s commitment to his name, does not change.

Paul teaches that the death of Christ demonstrated God’s righteousness in passing over sins, and vindicated God’s justice in justifying the ungodly who bank on Jesus and not themselves (Romans 3:25–26).

In other words, Christ died once for all to clear the name of God in what looks like a gross miscarriage of justice — the acquittal of guilty sinners simply for Jesus’s sake. But Jesus died in such a way that forgiveness “for Jesus’s sake” is the same as forgiveness “for the sake of God’s name.” There is no miscarriage of justice. God’s name, his righteousness, his justice is vindicated in the very act of providing such a God-honoring sacrifice.

As Jesus said as he faced that last hour, “Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name” (John 12:27–28). That is exactly what he did — so that he might be both just and the justifier of those who trust in Jesus (Romans 3:26).

Heb 4:16
Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. NKJV

 Pastor Dale

Notes of Faith May 17, 2020

Do you believe it is biblical when some pastors in America continue to hold services even though the government has instructed them not to?

Very important question and a very important biblical answer… let me make very clear this question because it keeps coming up. If the government told us not to meet because Christianity was against the law, if the government told us not to meet because we would be punished, fined for our religion and our religious convictions, we would have no option but to meet anyway. And that takes you to the fifth chapter of Acts where the leaders of Israel said to the apostles, “Stop preaching.” And Peter’s response was very simple. He said, “You judge whether we obey God or men,” then he went right out and preached.

If the government tells us to stop worshiping, stop preaching, stop communicating the gospel, we don’t stop. We obey God rather than men. We don’t start a revolution about that; the apostles didn’t do that. If they put us in jail, we go to jail and we have a jail ministry. Like the apostle Paul said, “My being in jail has fallen out to the furtherance of the gospel.” So we don’t rebel, we don’t protest. You don’t ever see Christians doing that in the book of Acts. If they were persecuted, they were faithful to proclaim the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ even if it took them to jail; and that’s been the pattern of true Christianity through all the centuries.

But this is not that. Might become that in the future. Might be overtones of that with some politicians. But this is the government saying, “Please do this for the protection of this society.” This is for greater societal good, that’s their objective. This is not the persecution of Christianity. This is saying, “Behave this way so that people don’t become ill and die.”

Now you may not think that you’re going to have that impact on somebody, you’re not going to be the one that becomes a carrier and causes something to be passed on to somebody else down the road and somebody dies. You may think that’s going to be you. But you cannot defy the government. And I don’t think pastors should do this. You cannot defy the government and say, “We’re going to meet anyway because God has commanded us to meet, no matter what damage we do to people’s lives.”

I mean, what should mark Christians is mercy, compassion, love, kindness, sacrifice. How are you doing that if you flaunt the fact that you’re going to meet; and essentially you’re saying, “We disregard the public safety issue.” You don’t really want to say that. That does not help the gospel cause.

What helps the gospel cause is to say, “Of course, we don’t want to be the cause of anyone’s sadness, anyone’s sorrow, anyone’s sickness, and certainly anyone’s death. So we will gladly comply. This is consistent with what Scripture says, that we are to live quiet and peaceable lives in the society in which we live. We don’t rebel, we don’t do protests, we don’t fight the government, we don’t harass and harangue, we don’t march, we don’t get in parades, we don’t stop traffic; we lead quiet and peaceable lives, and we pray for those in authority over us, and we submit ourselves to them.

In Romans chapter 13, Paul says, “You submit yourself to the government, the powers that be.” But Peter adds to that, “You submit yourself to the governor and the king,” whoever that personal authority is. I’ve heard people say, “Well, this isn’t constitutional.” That’s irrelevant. That is completely irrelevant. When you’re told by an authority to do something and it’s for the greater good of the society physically, that’s what you do because that’s what Christians would do. We are not rebels and we’re not defiant, and we don’t flaunt our freedom at the expense of someone else’s health.

How do we back out of that to communicate the love of Christ? Look, Jesus came and basically banished disease from Israel. He was a healer. The last thing the church of Jesus Christ would want to be is a group of people that lived in defiance and made somebody sick, caused somebody’s death. So you restrain yourself from that.

Again, the issue is so clear that even going back to Richard Baxter back in 1600s, Richard Baxter has a great section in one of his books where he says, “If the magistrate,” as he calls it, “asks you to refrain from meeting because of a pestilence, you do not meet. On the other hand, if the magistrate tries to force you not to meet because of persecution of Christianity, you meet anyway.” I think that’s the dividing line.”

Pastor John MacArthur

I’m pretty sure if Daniel was alive today, he wouldn’t be logging into Facebook to complain about Walmart being open while the church is closed. He just prayed. Nothing special. Nothing fancy. He just prayed. That’s it. There is no evidence that he got all worked up when King Darius decreed a law making prayer illegal. He just prayed. He didn’t share videos about government conspiracies. He just prayed. That’s it. Nothing special. Nothing fancy. He just did what he had always done. He just kept praying. Read the book of Daniel. You won’t find a single shred of evidence that he shared memes comparing Nebuchadnezzar to Belshazzar or Darius. He just prayed. That’s it. Nothing special. Not one word of complaint about the ban on prayer. Not one complaint about the government going too far. He just prayed. Nothing special. Nothing fancy. Not once did Daniel accuse Darius of corruption. Not once did he complain because he couldn’t hang out with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. He just prayed.

God help me be like Daniel. God help us to stop complaining! Help us to to pray!

God has promised that the hearts of kings are in His hands.

There is NOTHING- absolutely NOTHING that has taken God by surprise. And I can’t help but wonder what would happen if we stopped sharing our complaints and just started praying like Daniel did.

Please pray … and let your heart and mind be guided by the Spirit within you to glorify God.  In all circumstances we belong to Him, to love Him and serve Him.  Though some of our freedoms have been curtailed, not just government’s decisions about the Corona virus, but throughout our lifetime we have seen God’s sovereign movement toward the completion of His eternal plan.  Jesus said, these things must take place…but have no fear, I have overcome the world!

Pastor Dale

Notes of Faith May 16, 2020

You sit in an ER waiting room, surrounded by an anxious family. You rushed here the moment you learned of the accident. The teenage son of your neighbor was injured in a car wreck. He is in surgery. Your friends are in shock. You’d do anything for them. But what can you do?

You try to conceal your shock at the news. Your friend’s teenage daughter is pregnant, confused, and considering an abortion. Your friend blames herself. “If only… ” What can you do?

You sigh at the images on the TV screen. Yet another tornado strikes another city. Schools are demolished, houses destroyed, and lives lost. Such devastation. But what can you do?

What can you do? When the challenge is greater than you are. When the hurt is palpable. When you feel helpless and impotent. Where can you turn? I suggest you turn to one of Jesus’ most intriguing teachings about prayer.
 

Suppose you went to a friend’s house at midnight, wanting to borrow three loaves of bread. You say to him, “A friend of mine has just arrived for a visit, and I have nothing for him to eat.” And suppose he calls out from his bedroom, “Don’t bother me. The door is locked for the night, and my family and I are all in bed. I can’t help you.” But I tell you this — though he won’t do it for friendship’s sake, if you keep knocking long enough, he will get up and give you whatever you need because of your shameless persistence.

And so I tell you, keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives. Everyone who seeks, finds. And to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. — Luke 11:5-10

That’s you ringing the doorbell at midnight. The neighborhood is quiet. The streets are still. The sky is dark, and so is your friend’s two-story house. But still you ring his doorbell, not once or twice but three times. Ding-dong. Ding-dong. Ding-dong. It’s a big house, so it has a big chime. His Chihuahua wakes up. He has this snappy, who-do-you-think-you-are bark: “Ruff, ruff, ruff.”

You envision what is happening upstairs. Your friend’s wife is giving him a kick beneath the blankets. “Hank, get up! Someone is at the door.” Poor guy. One minute sound asleep. The next, kicked out of bed. Doorbell ringing, dog barking. He’s not going to like this.

The porch light comes on. The door opens. Boy, does he look like a mess. Boxer shorts. T-shirt. Bed hair. Face lined with pillow creases and covered in whiskers.

“What in the world are you doing here?” he asks.

“A friend of mine has just arrived for a visit, and I have nothing for him to eat,” you answer. The home owner grumbles and complains, but you insist. “Come on, Hank, please.” Finally Hank acquiesces, invites you in, and takes you to his pantry. You fill a basket with food and take it home. And your surprise guest doesn’t have to go to bed hungry. All because you spoke up on behalf of someone else.

This is intercessory prayer at its purest, a confluence of paucity and audacity.

Father, You are good. They need help. I can’t, but You can.

“I can’t heal them, but, God, You can.”

“I can’t forgive them, but, God, You can.”

“I can’t help them, but, God, You can.”

This prayer gets God’s attention. After all, if Hank, a cranky, disgruntled friend, will help out, how much more will God do? He never sleeps. He’s never irritated. When you knock on His door, He responds quickly and fairly.

Jesus never refused an intercessory request. Ever!

He heard so many requests that at times the disciples attempted to turn people away (Matthew 15:22-23). Yet Jesus would not let them.
 

Great crowds came to Him, bringing the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute and many others, and laid them at His feet; and He healed them. — Matthew 15:30

He never grew impatient at the requests. But He did grow impatient at the lack of one.

A father once brought his demon-possessed son to the disciples of Jesus. They attempted to help the boy but failed. When Jesus learned of their failure, He erupted in frustration.
 

O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you? Bring him here to Me. — Matthew 17:17

Such an outburst! Jesus is so über-patient that any sign of impatience is disconcerting. What was the oversight of the disciples? Simple. They never took the boy to Jesus. Not in person and apparently not in prayer. They attempted to heal the boy without calling on Christ. He had to command them: “Bring him here to Me.”

Jesus had a strong word for this: unbelief. “Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, ‘Why could we not cast it out?’ So Jesus said to them, ‘Because of your unbelief’” (Matthew 17:19-20).

Unbelief: attempting to help others without calling on Jesus.

Belief: pounding on God’s door at midnight. Doing whatever it takes to present people to Jesus.

À la Moses on Sinai. When God saw the golden calf stunt, he was ready to wipe out the nation of Israel. They were eyewitnesses to ten plagues and one Red Sea opening. Their bellies were full of God-given manna and heaven-sent quail, but did they remember their Deliverer? No, they danced the night away in front of a homemade statue. God was not happy.

Then the Lord said to Moses,
 

Go down from this mountain, because your people, the people you brought out of the land of Egypt, have ruined themselves. They have quickly turned away from the things I commanded them to do… I have seen these people, and I know that they are very stubborn. So now do not stop Me. I am so angry with them that I am going to destroy them. Then I will make you and your descendants a great nation. 
— Exodus 32:7-10

Dry grass on Mount Vesuvius stood a better chance of survival. Their only hope was their octogenarian leader, who’d met God, possibly on this same mountain, some years earlier. If Moses had any clout, this was the time to use it. He did.

[Moses] begged the Lord his God and said,
 

Lord, don’t let Your anger destroy Your people, whom You brought out of Egypt with Your great power and strength. Don’t let the people of Egypt say, ‘The Lord brought the Israelites out of Egypt for an evil purpose. He planned to kill them in the mountains and destroy them from the earth.’ So stop being angry, and don’t destroy Your people.
— Exodus 32:11–12

Look at the passion of Moses. On his face one minute, in God’s face the next. He’s on his knees, pointing his finger, lifting his hands. Shedding tears. Shredding his cloak. Wrestling like Jacob at Jabbok for the lives of his people.

And how did God react?

So the Lord changed His mind and did not destroy the people as He had said He might. — Exodus 32:14

This is the promise of prayer! We can change God’s mind! His ultimate will is inflexible, but the implementation of His will is not. He does not change in His character and purpose, but He does alter His strategy because of the appeals of His children. We do not change His intention, but we can influence His actions.

After all, we are ambassadors for Christ (2 Corinthians 5:20). Ambassadors represent the king. They speak with the authority of the throne. They carry with them the imprimatur of the one who sent them. If an ambassador sends a request to the king, will the king listen?

If you, God’s ambassador in this world, come to your King with a request, will He listen? By all means. You actually have a “seat with [Christ] in the heavens” (Ephesians 2:6). You don’t have a seat at the Supreme Court or in the House of Representatives. You have one far more strategic; you have a seat in the government of God. Like a congressman you represent a district. You speak on behalf of your family, neighborhood, or softball team. Your sphere of influence is your region. As you grow in faith, your district expands. God burdens you with a concern for orphans, distant lands, or needy people. You respond to these promptings by prayer.

Father… they need help.

You are Moses in your cul-de-sac. Moses in your workforce. Moses in your classroom. You plead with God on other people’s behalf.

Intercessory prayer isn’t rocket science. It acknowledges our inability and God’s ability. We come with empty hands but high hopes. Why? God “is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think” (Ephesians 3:20). He “will supply all [our] needs according to His riches” (Philippians 4:19). When God gives, He gives a gift that is “pressed down, shaken together to make room for more, running over, and poured into your lap” (Luke 6:38).

Nothing pleases Jesus as much as being audaciously trusted. When we bring people to Jesus, He opens the pantry.

Go ahead. Make the midnight knock. Stand up on behalf of those you love. And, yes, stand up on behalf of those you do not.

Pray for those who hurt you. — Matthew 5:44

The quickest way to douse the fire of anger is with a bucket of prayer. Rather than rant, rave, or seek revenge, pray. Jesus did this. While hanging on the cross, He interceded for His enemies:
 

Father, forgive them; they don’t know what they’re doing.
— Luke 23:34

Jesus, even Jesus, left His enemies in God’s hands. Shouldn’t we do the same? You are never more like Jesus than when you pray for others. Pray for those you love; pray for those you don’t. Pray for this hurting world. Present their case to the Giver of bread.

And bring a grocery basket. God will give you plenty of blessings to take back to them.

Excerpted from Before Amen by Max Lucado, copyright Thomas Nelson.

Who are you praying for? Are you pounding on God’s door at midnight? Who are you leaving in His hands?

Pastor Dale

Notes of Faith May 14, 2020

Is the Calvinist-Arminian debate overblown? It’s a question today from a young man, a listener to the podcast who writes us this: “Pastor John, hello! I’ve argued about predestination and free will with fellow believers for years. I’m a five-point Calvinist. But lately these conversations have grown tiresome to me. No amount of debate seems to settle all the questions. And I recently read a letter by C.S. Lewis where he called the Calvinist-Arminian debate pretty much pointless because it only answers questions about this life, answers meaningless in eternity.

“He wrote, ‘Both the statement that our final destination is already settled [Calvinism] and the view that it still may be either heaven or hell [Arminianism], seem to me to imply the ultimate reality of time, which I don’t believe in. The controversy is one I can’t join on either side, for I think that in the real (timeless) world it is meaningless’ (Collected Letters, 2:703). I think Lewis raises a fair question: Is this whole debate time-bound? And even within time, I find myself more and more asking, What is the real-life fallout? Is the practical and spiritual value of Calvinism for this life significantly better? If so, how?”

Oh, Lewis, Lewis, Lewis! My friend! My mentor! Let’s start here. There is a huge difference between saying, on the one hand, that fruitless debates have grown tiresome — which I can totally understand and would not encourage — and saying, on the other hand, that I’m not seeing the real-life fallout or the practical spiritual value of Calvinism in this life. Those are radically different sentences and the last one is tragic — tragic. And I hope such a theological, personal malaise doesn’t fall on me, and I hope it can be lifted from our young friend.

Philosophy and Exegesis

So, first let me say a word about Lewis — bless his heart and rest his soul in heaven — and then about Calvinism and time. That’s the issue that he raised: time. And as I go along, I will try to show for our friend the preciousness of these things.

I have read more of C.S. Lewis than any other author on the planet except Jonathan Edwards. I love C.S. Lewis. He has made a great difference in my life. But one thing you will look for in vain in all the writings of C.S. Lewis: careful, serious biblical exposition. We have no idea how he did it (I presume he did it); we have to guess how C.S. Lewis read his Bible because he does not show us, which means he comes at biblical-theological questions more philosophically than he does exegetically.

This is certainly the case when it comes to Calvinism versus Arminianism. As far as I can tell, he simply sweeps aside dozens of specific, clear biblical sentences with the philosophical wand of timelessness. Nobody who reads the Bible carefully, and seeks to submit to the Bible’s own logic — not an alien philosophical presupposition — will be content with Lewis’s way of handling the issue of Calvinism and Arminianism. It cannot satisfy if you’re a Bible-saturated person who takes sentences — real, live, meaning-carrying sentences — seriously when you read the Bible.

Let’s just pretend that I’m now talking to C.S. Lewis about the five points of Calvinism. Here’s what I would say to Lewis. Four of them, Mr. Lewis, do not address the time issue at all. And the fifth one addresses the time issue because God made it address the time issue. God put the pre- in predestination. Man didn’t decide to do that; God did that, and he had good reasons for doing it — not to be swept away by the wand of timelessness. So let me take them one at a time.

1. Dead in Total Depravity

The issue is: At the point of my conversion, was I dead? Was I dead? Was I utterly incapable of seeing or savoring Jesus Christ as my supreme treasure? Answer: yes, I was. I was dead, blind, spiritually incapable of believing on Jesus. First Corinthians 2:14: “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God.” No way. I’m stiff-arming them totally in my deadness and fallenness and blindness. They are folly to me. I’m not able to understand them. They are spiritually discerned, and I don’t have the Holy Spirit. I hate God, and I love myself, and I am in bondage.

The question is not one of time. And the answer makes all the difference in the world about whether you praise yourself or praise your God in speechless wonder that you are now a lover of Jesus — that you can see the light of the glory of the gospel (2 Corinthians 4:4). John Piper now sees the light of the glory of the gospel.

How did that happen? If you think you were only partially incapable of faith, and just needed a little divine nudge, your amazement, your humility, your worship, your reverence will be hindered. How dead and how helpless were you when God saved you? Come on, Lewis. Come on. Talk about 1 Corinthians 2:14, talk about Romans 8:7, talk about Ephesians 2:4–5, talk about 2 Corinthians 4:4. Don’t give me your philosophical wand of timelessness. Talk to me about the deadness of the human soul.

2. Awakened by Irresistible Grace

The question, Mr. Lewis, is, What happened on that bus ride that you described in Surprised by Joy — the one that you began as an unbeliever, and to your own amazement, you ended as a believer? What happened?

The Bible is not silent about what happened. It is not left to your philosophical speculation. It goes like this: “God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6).

God did a creative miracle in your life, Mr. Lewis — just as much as when he called the universe out of nothing. He took out the heart of stone and put in the heart of flesh (Ezekiel 36:26). He raised you from the dead and seated you in the heavenly places with Christ (Ephesians 2:4–6). He opened your eyes to give heed to the truth, and in the very moment when you passed from death to life, God was decisive — not you. You did not impart life to your dead self. This is not an issue of time, Mr. Lewis; this is an issue of worship. To whom will you give glory for your decisive passage from unbelieving death to believing life?

3. Purchased by Limited Atonement

Here the question is not time. The question is whether the new-covenant miracle that happens to every Christian when their dead heart — our dead heart — is replaced with a new heart was definitely purchased for them by the death of Christ, but was not so purchased for everyone. That’s the issue. Everyone would have a new heart if it was purchased the same way for all.

Jesus called his blood the “blood of the covenant” (Matthew 26:28). Jesus called it “the new covenant” (Luke 22:20). And what the new covenant promised was that the old, unbelieving, rebellious hearts of C.S. Lewis and John Piper would be sovereignly replaced by God with a new, soft, believing heart, and that the law of God would be written on that heart so that we do from the heart what we’re called to do, like believe and obey. We don’t write it. He wrote it.

This was all secured when we were purchased by the blood of the new covenant. When Christ died, he secured a perfect, complete redemption, including the undeserved mercy of our conversion and faith. This is not a question of time; this is a question of what Christ achieved for his people on the cross. Did he lay down his life for the sheep (John 10:11)? Did he ransom the children of God (John 11:52)? Did he ransom for himself a people scattered among the peoples (Revelation 5:9–10)? Or didn’t he? That’s the issue.

4. Secure in the Perseverance of the Saints

This is not a question of timelessness or time. This is a question about whether you and I will wake up a believer tomorrow morning. Will I? And I cannot imagine for our young friend who wrote in this question anything more immediately relevant to me when I go to bed at night or think about it all day long, than the answer to the question, Will I wake up a believer, heaven-bound, tomorrow morning, or won’t I?

Jude is so blown away by the glory of God’s sovereign keeping that the greatest doxology in the Bible is crafted to extol this work of God’s sovereignty over our fickle, so-called “free will.” If God left me to my fickle free will, I’d be out of here. “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it — prone to leave the God I love. Here’s my heart, oh, take and seal it” — chain it, bind it, keep me.

Here’s what Jude says: “Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless . . .” He’s going to keep you and present you blameless because he is sovereign. If he doesn’t do it, it isn’t going to happen. And then he says, “. . . to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen” (Jude 24–25).

That’s how amazed Jude was that God would not let him go. God wouldn’t let him fall into unbelief. God would not let his vaunted free will have the last word. This is not a matter of time; this is a matter of sweet assurance that tomorrow morning I will wake up with a heart for God.

5. Awestruck by Unconditional Election

Here we meet time. Ephesians 1:4–6:

He chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace.

Paul’s aim here is to inflame the praise of the glory of the grace of God. That’s his purpose. That’s the goal of Ephesians 1:4–6. The sovereign saving grace of God that is based not on our so-called “free will,” but on “the purpose of his will.” Paul intends to put God’s saving grace outside our control so that, when all history is said and done, the song of the ages will be to the praise of the glory of God’s free, invincible grace, so that no human might boast except in the Lord.

And I would just say in closing that if these five realities are not humbling, emboldening, stabilizing, worship-inflaming, sacrifice-empowering, joy-igniting, what we ought to do is not ignore them, but get on our knees and cry out for the eyes of our heart to be opened.

What I say to you now you do not understand, but you will understand …

Some things of God we are not given understanding until God wants us to see, hear, and know.  Lean into the faith you have been given as a free gift and believe that God loves you, you are His, and He will keep you in the palm of His gracious and almighty hand.

Pastor Dale

Notes of Faith May 13, 2020

The emperor of China had a problem. Something was destroying his mulberry trees. So he did what any brilliant man does when faced with a problem he can’t handle: he turned it over to his wife!

When Empress Ce Ling Shee looked at the trees, she noticed a moth laying eggs on the mulberry leaves, eggs that of course hatched into caterpillars. After a few days, each caterpillar spun a thread that it wrapped itself in, forming a cocoon. The empress plucked one of the cocoons from the leaves and dropped it in hot water. Slowly, the delicate and beautiful thread began to unwind. It was a half mile long when the empress stretched it out and measured it! Then it occurred to her: perhaps this thread could be woven into cloth.

And that was the moment the silk trade was born. An empire of extraordinary beauty and wealth began with an emperor’s garden disaster!1

Sometimes it’s difficult to envision a positive outcome when we’re in the middle of a mess. We look out onto the garden of our lives, find it in ruins, and feel helpless. We don’t even know where to begin to make things right. How could the emperor have ever imagined — and how could we imagine — that unfathomable beauty and blessing could rise out of the thing that seemed to be his destruction?

But making beautiful endings out of impossible situations is God’s specialty. He never wastes a single trial. He transforms it all for our good and His glory. Read these words from 1 Peter 1:

In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith — of greater worth than gold… may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. — 1 Peter 1:6-7

If we keep following the light of God’s presence through this dark and difficult world, we will see God turn around our impossible messes! That’s His promise! Nothing can stop the amazing redemptive power of our God.

So come. Bring it all to the Weaver of beautiful endings… The worst heartbreak… The most difficult failures… The most painful days…

The Enemy may throw every weapon he has at you, but he is not the one who gets to write the end of your story.

It’s amazing what God will do with a broken life if you give Him all the pieces.

Five Minutes in the Word

We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose. — Romans 8:28

The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me… to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. — Isaiah 61:1, 3

Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. — James 1:2-4

I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten. — Joel 2:25

Blessed are you when people hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in Heaven. For that is how their ancestors treated the prophets. — Luke 6:22-23

1. Robert J. Morgan, Nelson’s Complete Book of Stories, Illustrations & Quotes (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2000), 744.

Excerpted from 5 Minutes with Jesus: Quiet Time for Your Soul by Sheila Walsh, copyright Sheila Walsh.

Give Him all the pieces of whatever has been broken. God is the only One who can make something beautiful out of it.

Something beautiful, something good,
All my confusion He understood;
All I had to offer Him was brokenness and strife
But He made something beautiful of my life.

Pastor Dale

Notes of Faith May 12, 2020

I did not have internet access the last few days as I was helping my children move into their new home in Bagdad, Kentucky. (This is not a joke) I hope that you will read today’s “Notes of Faith”, and then as I post, backwards, to catch up, read those as well. , ,

When God spoke, he ensured that it would be preserved through a process of writing, collecting, copying, translating, and printing. After thousands of years, the Scripture that began with the breath of God now comes to us in the Book that is worthy of our supreme trust.

Countless lives are changed by the preaching of the word of God. Since human beings tend to look at the outside and not at the inside, we often attribute the power of this transformative teaching to the preacher. We all know on reflection, though, that the real power does not rest in humans but in God’s word itself.

Reading Scripture is the most immediate exposure to the word of God. In practice, this means picking up a physical book and opening it to a specific page, or opening up an app on our phones and scrolling to a specific location. In either case, we trust that the word has not been corrupted and that the message of the Bible we hold in our hands was not changed or lost altogether. We believe that we are reading the actual words that God spoke.

What happened to the Bible between the earliest times and the twenty-first century? How did God bring his word to us? The reverse of this question — how he brought us to his word — is part of our individual testimony. But the way in which God brought about the Bible is the story of his providence in history, played out over thousands of years. And by understanding what God had done over the ages, we will see that it is reasonable and justified to trust that the Bible in our hands is a translation of the trustworthy words of Scripture. We could talk about ten reasons why to trust the Bible. But it may be more effective if we understand the larger narrative of the history of the Bible.

From God’s Breath to Israel’s Books

Because the Bible is the word of God, it naturally starts with God speaking, both in practice, as in Genesis 1:3 (“And God said, let there be light”), as well as logically, as in John 1:1 (“In the beginning was the Word”). And since we are talking about an infinite God, it should not surprise us that he uses an array of ways to communicate with his creatures.

God spoke directly to Moses from a burning bush (Exodus 3:2), and immediately after the exodus to the whole people from a burning mountain (Exodus 19:18). God speaks through the inspired recording of the history of his people, and through his prophets who heard his word — sometimes directly, but also through visions and dreams. We find personal reflections on the futility of life under the sun (Ecclesiastes), which is also part of God speaking to his people. And this in addition to the book of Proverbs, a collection of divinely crafted wisdom. In the New Testament, we have the records of how the apostles taught about Jesus and about what Jesus himself taught (the four Gospels). And we find the responses by the apostles to various situations within the churches, as well as positive teaching about the salvation that Jesus brought about.

There are many ways in which God spoke his word, and there are many ways in which it was written down. God shows his character even in the diverse ways that he used to form the Scriptures. And the Scriptures themselves testify to their formation.

‘Write This in a Book’

Of all the named authors in the Bible, Moses is the first. Immediately after the exodus, and still before the giving of the law at Mount Sinai, God tells Moses to start writing God’s words down (Exodus 17:14). Amalek had come out to fight Israel, and Moses commanded Joshua to lead the army while Moses would lift up the staff of God. It is after this fight that God speaks to Moses (the text does not tell us how) and commands him to write down what God’s ultimate judgment over Amalek will be as a memorial. The first command to record God’s words in a book comes in order that this book would become a memorial, a testimony, to the acts of God and the fulfilment of his promises. An interesting detail is that already this first Scripture is to be recited to Joshua. The future leader is to be formed by the word of God from its very beginning.

Soon after the fight with Amalek, Israel arrives at Mount Sinai. Here God speaks directly from the mountain, but the people cannot bear it (Exodus 20:19–21). Therefore, Moses goes up the mountain alone and receives the two tablets (Exodus 31:18; 32:15–16). The first set is made and written by God himself, but Moses breaks them in anger because of the idolatry of the people (Exodus 32:19). Moses then brings up a second set so that these can be inscribed with the same words of the covenant (Exodus 34:1, 28; Deuteronomy 10:4). It is also at this occasion that Moses is commanded to write down all the words, “for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel” (Exodus 34:27).
Numbers 33:2 teaches that Moses did not just write down the laws God gave to the people, but also the historical account of the journey of Israel.
In the book of Deuteronomy, at the end of Israel’s time in the wilderness and just before the entrance into the Promised Land, Moses addresses the people and reminds them of what had happened, what God had told them, and what it meant to be the covenant people of God. As expected, the written basis of the covenant is again mentioned. In Deuteronomy 10:5 we learn that the two tablets are kept in the ark. Deuteronomy 31:9 adds that the whole law is given to the Levites who carry the ark, but that it is also given to the elders of the people. The actual book that Moses wrote is to be kept near the ark “for a witness against you” (Deuteronomy 31:26). This is the beginning of the tabernacle, later replaced by the temple, as the place where the word of God is kept and preserved.

Deuteronomy gives us one unexpected insight into the actual practice of copying the law. We read about the stipulations for the future kings in Deuteronomy 17. Once the king sits on his throne, he has to write for himself a copy of the law “from before” the Levitical priests in order that he may read in it all the days of his life (Deuteronomy 17:18–19). The expression “from before” has been interpreted as meaning “approved by,” which is certainly possible. However, there is a more direct interpretation. It seems likely to me that the king is allowed to make his personal copy from the master scroll that Moses deposited with the Levites. This was a true privilege for the king, but also a serious responsibility. The king is supposed to be a faithful scribe. And as with Joshua, the leader of the people is supposed to be formed by the written word of God.

Authors and Compilers

Many of the books in the Old Testament remain without a named author, which is significant in itself. Apparently, the circumstances of their production are not necessary for their interpretation. We also read about books that were in existence but have not been preserved — for example, the book of the rights and duties of the king, written by Samuel and “laid . . . up before the Lord” (1 Samuel 10:25) — that is, put in the tabernacle together with the Scriptures.

We know David mainly as king, yet he was also the author of many psalms. He is called a “prophet” (Acts 2:30), and he calls himself “the sweet psalmist of Israel” (2 Samuel 23:1). Other authors of Psalms are named too — Moses, Solomon, Asaph, Heman, and Ethan. When considering the book of Psalms as a whole, however, we hit another boundary to our knowledge. Who collected all the individual psalms into their canonical order? Was this a gradual process that happened over time? When did this book gets its final shape?
The same questions are raised by the book of Proverbs. Solomon is presented as the source for the wisdom tradition in the book (Proverbs 1:1), but the final two chapters name two other persons, Agur and Lemuel (Proverbs 30:1 and 31:1). In addition, Proverbs 25:1 adds a fascinating detail, as it says that the men of Hezekiah brought together the content of the following chapters — several hundred years after Solomon! Like the book of Psalms, we do not know who gave the book of Proverbs its final shape. But in this case, Scripture tells us that it was centuries after the oldest parts were produced.

Books such as Proverbs seem to be the exception, though. Most books do not give us explicit information about how they came into being. Scripture tells us, however, that later authors were often very much aware of what had been written before. Psalm 119 assumes the presence of the law, the prophet Hosea refers back to Genesis (Hosea 12:3–5), Zechariah alludes to prophets such as Isaiah and Jeremiah, and Daniel reads the prophet Jeremiah (Daniel 9:2). Throughout most of this period, the tabernacle or the temple would be the central location for the preservation of Scripture. It is not without reason that when Josiah restored the proper worship of the true God, it was the temple where the Book of the Law was rediscovered (2 Kings 22:8–11). But as would be expected, it was not just the temple that was active in the preservation of Scripture, but also faithful kings such as Hezekiah, and possibly the schools of prophets, which were not necessarily connected closely to the central sanctuary, played a role in the transmission of God’s word.

Israel’s Book Culture

If, however, the temple is of such great importance, what happened when the temple was destroyed and the people went into exile? Interestingly, around this time we see more and more signs of the book culture that we know must have existed. Jeremiah writes a letter to the Babylonian exiles (Jeremiah 29), and dictates his prophecies again to Baruch the scribe after the king burnt the first copy (Jeremiah 36:1–4). Only a little later, Daniel had a copy of Jeremiah’s prophecy in exile (Daniel 9:2). The prophet Ezekiel is ordered to eat a scroll (Ezekiel 3:1–3), and just after the exile Zechariah sees a flying scroll (Zechariah 5:1–2). Texts, scrolls, and scribes are part of the religious world and religious imagery.

Perhaps the capstone of this development is found in Ezra and Nehemiah. Here we find the scribe Ezra repeatedly expounding the Law that Moses had written. (See the expression “as it is written” in Ezra 3:2, 4; 6:18; Neh. 8:14; 10:34, 36; 13:1.) Nehemiah 8 especially is a glorious description how the people of Israel have now become a people gathered around the written word of God.

The biblical history is by and large silent about the period between Ezra and the New Testament. But when the New Testament tells us about the birth of Jesus, it mentions faithful believers who were expecting the salvation of Israel (Luke 1–2). The only story about the growing up of Jesus tells us about him questioning and answering the teachers of the law in the temple (Luke 2:41–51). Later, Jesus would say of these teachers that “they sit on the seat of Moses” and that the people were to do what they said, but not do as they do (Matthew 23:2–3). Throughout Jesus’s ministry, not only does he teach from the Scriptures (Luke 4:16–30), which were available in the synagogues, but he also fulfills prophecy by his actions (Matthew 21:4). Even when the evangelists record what Jesus had done, they use language directly derived from the Old Testament (compare, e.g., Luke 2:52 with Proverbs 3:4). Yet now we have arrived at the finale phase in writing God’s word, because all of the New Testament was written after the death and resurrection of Jesus, even though it extensively deals with the ministry of Jesus before the arrival of the new covenant.

Stewards of the Gospel Story

The four Gospels teach us about Jesus: what he said, what he did, what he taught. Each of the Gospels helps us also to see the significance of the One who died and rose again. Matthew does this openly by explaining how Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament. John teaches the eternal and divine truth about the Word who came down from heaven and returned to the Father. Mark shows the depth of Jesus’s obedience by not even mentioning the name Jesus as he is mocked, stripped, spit upon, and crucified (Mark 15:16–33), until his final moments and last words (Mark 15:34). The Gospels teach us about Jesus, but told from after the resurrection (John 2:22), from after the moment that the witnesses had received the power of the Holy Spirit. It is the Spirit who enabled the apostles to be his witnesses (Acts 1:8), and who reminded them of everything Jesus had said (John 14:26). The apostles had two powerful impulses at their disposal: the Spirit-sharpened memory of Jesus’s teaching and the Spirit-taught understanding of the existing Scriptures (Luke 24:44–45).

In the time immediately after Pentecost, the apostles started their teaching ministry (see Acts 4:2; 5:21, 42; 11:26; 15:35; 18:11; 28:31). There are some differences but also some similarities with how the old covenant started. At Pentecost, there was a loud sound (Acts 2:2), as in Exodus 19, but this time it did not strike fear into the hearts of the listeners. There were also flames, not on top of the mountain but on the gathered believers. The words of the law, the first covenant, were inscribed on stone tablets. But, just as Jeremiah 31:33 foretold, the new covenant was written directly on the hearts of people. The primary place of God’s word was now internal, written on hearts by the Spirit.

So what was happening to the teachings and events recorded in the Gospels between Pentecost and their writing down? When were the Gospels written? Scripture is not silent about this time, but we have to read carefully. In short, the apostles taught the content of the Gospels, the life and ministry of Jesus. And this teaching was remembered and shared among the churches. Therefore, initially the main source for knowledge of Jesus was found in the oral teaching of the apostles, rather than in a written record of this teaching.

We find a good example of this in 1 Corinthians 11. At the beginning of this chapter, Paul commends the church in Corinth for maintaining “the traditions just as I delivered them to you” (1 Corinthians 11:2). Both the words tradition and to deliver have the same root in Greek, having everything to do with handing down. Paul comes back to this language a little later: “I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you” (1 Corinthians 11:23). The words of the institution of the Lord’s Supper are a “tradition” that Paul received and had taught to the Corinthians. Later, these words would be written down almost word for word in Luke’s Gospel.

In fact, Luke at the beginning of his Gospel tells Theophilus that his book is “just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us” (Luke 1:2). The resemblance to Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 11:2 is striking.

There are other references to the teaching of Jesus in 1 Corinthians. That Greeks seek wisdom and Jews seek signs goes at least partly back to Jesus’s words later written down in Mark 8:12. Jesus’s teaching about divorce is mentioned in 1 Corinthians 7:10–11, distinguished from the apostolic teaching in the next verse. That is, there was no explicit teaching of Jesus on the situation described in 1 Corinthians 7:12, and the Corinthians should not think that there was some saying they had missed somehow. And elsewhere in the New Testament, it pays off to read the letter of James side by side with the Sermon on the Mount. The similarities are clear, and it is not difficult to see how James’s teaching has started out from the words of Jesus himself.

Tradition Becomes Scripture

The apostles had a special ministry and authority. The traditions they had taught and the letters they had written, combined with their physical presence, contained all the guidance the churches needed. However, apostles would not be around forever (John 21:22–23), and they were faced with the question of whether the traditions they had taught would be remembered “just as they had delivered them.” In 2 Peter 1:15, Peter shares that this consideration was a real concern. This brings us to the closing stages of the formation of the New Testament, the writing down of the Gospels.

Luke knew about many others who had attempted to write a Gospel (Luke 1:1). Likewise, John wrote his testimony down after having preached its content for a long time. He had the benefit of looking back and being able to select those parts of the story that are sufficient for a saving knowledge of Jesus (John 20:30–31). For each of the four Gospels, the church retained the tradition of how they were linked to apostolic authority, directly (Matthew, John) or indirectly (Mark to Peter, Luke to Paul).

Entry into the new covenant remained an inward work, the word of God written on hearts by the Holy Spirit, yet the written accounts of Jesus’s life and ministry, and the teaching of how his salvation shapes the life of his people, were now entrusted to paper and ink — sometimes almost reluctantly (2 John 12), yet ultimately in the expectation that the apostolic writings were sufficient to make our joy complete (1 John 1:4).

This transition from remembered traditions to written accounts is reflected in Paul’s letters. As we have seen, Paul praises the Corinthians for keeping the traditions as he had delivered them. Later, however, in 1 Timothy 5:18, Paul introduces a double citation with the phrase “for the Scripture says.” The first of these, “You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain,” comes from Deuteronomy 25:4. The second citation from Scripture is “the laborer deserves his wages.” These exact words are found only in Luke 10:7, with a less exact parallel in Matthew 10:10. Therefore, by the time 1 Timothy was written, the Gospel tradition as written down by Luke was used — and approved — by Paul as being Scripture. (Alternatively, it is possible to read “for the Scripture says” as covering only the first of the two citations. But this reading is somewhat forced; the most natural reading is to apply the phrase to both citations.)

The implications of 1 Timothy 5:18 and its use of Luke are considerable. Just as in 1 Corinthians 11, again we have a link between the preaching of Paul and Luke’s Gospel. Moreover, though Paul must have taught the content of Luke 10:7 as part of the “Jesus tradition,” he decides to appeal to the written form, the Gospel, and by doing so Paul signals that there has been a transition from the remembered tradition to the written form. Scripture now includes the gospel and is part of all Scripture that is God-breathed (2 Timothy 3:16). Also, the use of Luke in 1 Timothy seems to indicate that the Gospels were written earlier rather than later, and mostly before the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70.

Scripture Copied and Translated

When the time of the apostles was over, scriptural revelation was also complete. Because of the wide acknowledgement that the apostles, brothers of Jesus (James, Jude; see also 1 Corinthians 9:4), and those who recorded their teaching were a special gift to the church, their writings were rightly accepted as the word of God, in the same way the Old Testament was. There are some indications that certain memories from the time of the preaching of the first generation lasted well into the second half of the second century, but more and more the writings of the New Testament became the sole authoritative link to the apostles. In the absence of special revelation, our knowledge of what happened in the transmission of the New Testament text after its completion can only be inferred from the surviving manuscript evidence and from what is said by church fathers.

Some things had changed in comparison to the situation under the old covenant. No longer was there a central sanctuary. The apostles may have formed the figurative pillars of the spiritual temple that is the church, yet after their passing away there was no authoritative central location that could function in the way the temple in Jerusalem did. Jerusalem functioned as the center where approved copies of the Scriptures could be obtained (compare Acts 7:27–28). Yet the early church was spread out all over the Roman Empire and beyond, and everywhere the Scripture was copied. It is telling that in these early centuries no church claimed to have an original letter or Gospel in their possession, even though it is clear such originals must have been sent at some point.

Comparing Manuscripts

Printed Bibles have been in existence for a little over five hundred years. For the preceding centuries (1,400 years for the New Testament, and much longer for the Old), the original Hebrew and Greek were copied by hand. For those who are used to a printing culture, the idea that a copy is not necessarily identical to the original is somewhat disturbing. Yet for the early church, this was part of everyday reality. We have examples from every century of church fathers who discussed the difference in wording that existed between manuscripts.

It is important to distinguish between the transmission of the text of the Hebrew Old Testament and that of the Greek New Testament. Quite early on in church history, the main text used for the Old Testament was a Greek or Latin translation (or further translations made from these versions). The transmission of the Hebrew text was carried out in rabbinic circles. The Masoretic text of the Middle Ages reflects the text preserved in the temple in great detail and accurately records not only how the text was pronounced but also differences that existed between the major scrolls kept in the temple before its destruction.

As we have seen, the Greek New Testament does not go back to a temple text or to a single, central location. And manuscripts of the New Testament differ in their wording of the text. Sometimes these are big differences, sometimes small. Already in the late second century, the church father Irenaeus discussed the issue of some manuscripts of Revelation giving the number of the beast as 616 instead of 666. These discussions give us insight into how the problem of differences in wording was dealt with at the time. One important argument for Irenaeus was that 666 was used in the “oldest and approved” manuscripts (even though “oldest” could not mean more than 100–120 years or so). The term “approved” suggests that, already by the end of the second century, some places or some churches were in possession of manuscripts that functioned as normative. But most of these normative manuscripts have perished, either because of age or violent destruction. So what sort of manuscript do we have left?

There are about four hundred manuscripts that come from before the big transition in Greek writing from individual capital letters to a joined-up cursive script in the ninth century (majuscule script and minuscule script, respectively). The majority of these manuscripts are incomplete or even fragmentary. The three manuscripts that are often dated to the second century are all single fragments from a single page from one of the Gospels. We would need hundreds of these to form one complete book. However, we do have manuscripts that are more extensive, and from the fourth and fifth century we even have manuscripts that have a near-complete New Testament in Greek. What we learn from these manuscripts is that in the early centuries the copies were not always made very carefully, to the extent that sometimes one wonders if some of these were written from memory rather than copied from an existing master copy. What we also learn is that the vast majority of differences are easily resolved because they are obvious errors. The more difficult problems require deeper consideration.
Here it helps that we have so many manuscripts, because now we can look for the type of thing that can go wrong (and likewise the type of error that is rarely made). So it is much more common to make the wording of one Gospel similar to that of another, than to do the reverse. For example, Luke tends to abbreviate citations from the Old Testament, while Matthew gives the longer version. As a result, later manuscripts of Luke often have expanded citations that resemble the longer versions found in Matthew. The King James Version is based on such later manuscripts, so its longer wording in Luke 4:4, 5, and 8 (compared to, for example, the ESV) is all due to influence from Matthew.

The discussions of church fathers of some of textual differences shows that most of the important differences have been talked about over the last sixteen or seventeen centuries. It also shows that the existence of such differences was never a reason to give up trust in the Scriptures.

Evaluating Variants

There seems to be a tension between God preserving his word and the existence of differences between manuscripts. How can we trust our English Bibles if they are the result of comparing the manuscripts that have, in places, a different wording of Scripture?

First, the existence of textual variants often makes little or no difference to the wider meaning of the text. For example, in Romans 1:1, there is a question whether Paul wrote “a servant of Jesus Christ” or “a servant of Christ Jesus.” If someone specializes in particular details of Paul’s language, he or she may be very much interested in solving the problem. Yet on a wider scale, say if we look at Romans 1:1–7 as a whole, the issue has no effect on our understanding of what is going on. In general, this is true of all communication. We can cope with noise in the room and still understand perfectly well what our conversation partner is saying.
Second, of all the textual variants in existence, the vast majority can be resolved with relative ease. It is clear how the error came into being and also why it managed to survive in the textual transmission.

Translating the Word of God

The final step in that long journey from the moment that God inspired his word to us reading his word is that of translation. Translation is not easy. One language (English, for example) tends to use grammar and syntax differently than Hebrew or Greek, which are also quite different languages from one another. It is good to realize that any translation has made choices as to which features of the original to represent and which to leave out. For example, it is traditional to represent the Greek name Iakobos (the Greek form of the Old Testament name Jacob) with James, and as a result we lose something of the feel of this name (Iakobos writes his letter “to the 12 tribes” [James 1:1]!).

Also on a sentence level a translator needs to make difficult choices. How we do present the focus of a sentence in Greek into English, which uses different techniques to show which part of the sentence is prominent? How do we represent the repetition of the same word but used in different shades of meaning? To what extent is the translation intended to be understood the first time of hearing, and to what extent do we expect the reader to make considerable effort to dig deeper into the text? And how do we present some of the bigger issues in the different manuscripts? Do we simply ignore them and choose one text to translate, or do we add the occasional footnote? Translations have to make difficult choices, and different translations make different choices.

How can we trust our translations if a single translation cannot give us the full glory of the original? We may fall into the trap of thinking that because we do not have all the knowledge and insight into what God exactly said, we have nothing at all.

Yet we should not be sucked into such a false opposition. It is important to distinguish carefully between two different words: being accurate and being exhaustive. For example, if we look at a map that gives us only the capital cities of each state, we can learn a lot. This map can be of great benefit in learning the lay of the land. It is accurate, but not exhaustive; there is more to tell. We need a map with more information when we are planning a car journey, also accurate but with more information. And think also of the different map we need when preparing for a long hike; a road map will not get us very far. Each of these maps is accurate, but each also gives a different level of detail.

A good translation will render the Scriptures in the original language accurately into English, and will therefore be the word of God, able to teach, to rebuke, to correct, to build the church up. But the level of detail will be different from translation to translation, and will again be different when we read Scripture in the original languages.

For almost all purposes, our translations give us all that we need to study God’s words and to meet him in his word. Yet it is good to know that many of our pastors and other scholars are also reading Scripture in Greek and Hebrew, as it helps them to understand God’s word more precisely. It is as if they are zooming in with a higher magnification and resolution. As we have seen, sometimes the circumstances prevent us from zooming in as far as we would like. This happens when there are some remaining problems in the wording of the Greek and Hebrew originals. We can see the lay of the land, but the fine detail is less clear. But again, these textual problems are mostly small, and none of them influences what Scripture teaches as a whole.

The Word About the Word

The story of how the Bible came into being is largely told in the Bible itself. Perhaps we would like to know things that are not revealed. There are limitations to our knowledge. Yet the Bible is God’s revelation that tells us in great detail about the whole of salvation history, about the coming of the Messiah and his death and resurrection, and about the great hope of glory that is revealed in the Word who became flesh, the Lord Jesus Christ. And this word is fully trustworthy.

Keep reading and meditating on God's Word. May 21 brings us to the Ascension of Christ. It also is the day that we should have completed listening to the New Testament having started on Resurrection Sunday. I hope to have completed my 5th journey this year and want to continue as God is feeding my soul each day with Truth! May God bless your journey, in an ever-growing relationship with Him and understanding and obedience to His Word!

Pastor Dale

Notes of Faith May 11, 2020

I know that this is a day late.  I pray that you will read these encouragements as I catch up due to no internet access.

Notes of Faith May 11, 2020

The cross of Jesus Christ is a watershed point for so many issues in theology and ethics. So, was the cross a tragic event God turned for good? Or was it a loving event God planned for good? Which side of the watershed you choose to kayak will decide the trajectory of your entire theological system of beliefs. It’s that important, as John Piper explains in a sermon clip from his 2011 sermon on John chapter 11. Here’s what John Piper said:

God did not just turn the national crisis for Israel’s good and our good. He was in it from the start planning it. See the difference?

• Does God see a difficult situation and fix it, turn it?

• Or is he in it from the start managing it, planning it?  
  
  I am arguing that is the case, because of what this text says. So notice carefully what John says about Caiaphas’s words: 
  
  “It is better for you that one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish.” (John 11:50)
  
  And then John says something amazing:
  
  He did not say this of his own accord, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad. (John 11:51–52)
  
  Now think that through.
  God brought these words out of Caiaphas’s mouth. God put them there. God has a meaning. At one level these are Caiaphas’s words. And his meaning is one thing. At another level these are God’s words and his meaning is another thing. And the point I am making here is: These words sealed Jesus’s death. These words were the death warrant of Jesus. God spoke these words. Caiaphas wanted Jesus dead and out of the way, so he spoke these words. And God wanted Jesus dead and risen and reigning and triumphant over the world and he spoke these words. 
  
  God didn’t arrive on the scene here late and say: Oh my, what will I make of these words? He spoke these words. That is amazing! My whole life is based on things like that. Do you think in your troubles God says: “Oh no, what will I make of that? That horrible mess. I will figure it out”? That is not my God. 
  
  Caiaphas prophesied, that is, he spoke God’s words and God said: “It is better for you that one should die for the people and that the whole nation should not perish.” God said: “Better that he die.” God said: “Better that he die.” God said: “Better that he die.” Better, indeed, better than any plan in the universe, infinitely better that he die. I love God. I love God. He did this with you in mind.
  

• 
  Therefore, the death of Jesus was not mainly a tragic set of events which God turned for good. It was a loving set of events that God planned for good. God himself served the death warrant on his Son. He didn’t just predict it. He unleashed it. This word of prophecy tracked Jesus down to Gethsemane and put him under arrest. There was no escape because God had spoken.
  
  Listen carefully: Inside the universal offer of salvation, which we know from John 3:16, God has a particular design in the death of his Son to convert the elect, the scattered children of God, and bring them to himself. So within the glorious open door, whosoever will may come (see Revelation 22:17), for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes may not perish, but have eternal life. Within that glorious proclamation, which we should announce everywhere we go, there is a design as well.
  
  Don’t limit Christ’s purposes in the cross to providing an opportunity for all to be saved. Don’t limit the work of the cross to that. That is true and gloriously so. It unleashes us in the neighborhood. It unleashes us among the nations to look into every eyeball and say: “He loved you and gave his Son so that if you will but believe you will be saved.”
  
  But he did more than that. And that is here. The more is here. And the more is: “By your blood you ransomed people” (Revelation 5:9). You are gathering a people called the children of God who are out there chosen before the foundation of the world for adoption (Ephesians 1:4) and you have died to bring them and you will do what you died to do in regard to your elect. You will get that done. And there will be one people infallibly.
  
  Christ died not only to offer the world salvation. He died in order to bring His people to Himself, to overcome their rebellion and gather them omnipotently to Himself.
  
  Through all things, God is in control working His will for our good and to bring glory to Himself!  Continue to grow in His grace and wisdom.
  
  Pastor Dale

Notes of Faith May 10, 2020 "Mother's Day"

You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
— Psalm 139:13-14

Father, you are the creator of all. You knew me before I was born, and you know me intimately still.

My identity is so wrapped up in my job as a mom that when I fail, I feel as if I am a failure as a person. But you know every part of me and still accept me. Remind me of this throughout my day.

May my children know that they are loved not only by their parents but by you. May they find their worth in you and not in what others say about them.

Thank you for creating my family and loving them even more than I do. Thank you for the simple joys and the extravagant love that abound in our home. Thank you for surrounding me with such an amazing family.

In Jesus’ name, amen.


Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us. — Titus 3:5
 

God, you are worthy of our praise and our gratitude. With everything in me, I praise you.

On days when I feel that I am at the end of myself, remind me that I don’t need to be perfect. When I strive for perfection, I fall short. When I rely on you and not myself, I see how great you are. Teach me to focus on you.

Be with my kids today, and teach them that they must rely on you. Give them exactly what they need to get through today.

Thank you that I can rest in your promise of grace. In Christ’s name, amen.


You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You. — Isaiah 26:3

Dear God, your ways are perfect. Your will is good. You deserve all praise.

You have promised perfect peace to those who focus on you. Help me to keep my thoughts on you. When I rush ahead to the next plan or responsibility, bring me back to you and your goodness.

Help my children to fix their eyes on you when they experience fear or anxiety. Show them who you are, and grow their trust in you.

I am grateful for the gift of peace we have in you. Thank you for the example of faith that I see in my children’s lives.

In your precious name I pray, amen.

Excerpted from Pocket Prayers for Moms by Max Lucado, copyright Max Lucado.

The Bible is full of amazing women and mothers who set such a good example for us to follow. I love reading about the moms of the Bible who had real struggles in their midst and yet showed such a faith and endurance.

That’s where the example is for me – where the stuff of real life meets us and gives us the opportunity to walk out our faith. Here are three of my favorite moms of the Bible and why they inspire me.

Eve - Genesis 1-5

Let’s just start at the beginning with Eve, shall we? After God created man and woman, he saw that it was good. However, even in Paradise, Eve gave into temptation and ate the forbidden fruit. She sinned. Her sin could have drove her down a deep path of depression and death, but instead she still chose to continue with the task given to her by God in Genesis 1:28, to be fruitful and multiply. Even through some mishaps along the way with their son, it still resulted in a pretty amazing lineage.

Bathsheba - 2 Samuel 11

I can’t imagine what Bathsheba was feeling when she was summoned to be with the king. David’s indiscretions with her led to much heartbreak as she found herself pregnant, then widowed, then married to the man that caused all of this. Despite all of that, she learned to love King David and kept strong for her son, Solomon. Did you know she’s one of only five women mentioned in the Messiah’s genealogy in Matthew 1? Instead of letting her heartache lead to despair or walking life as a victim, she decided to live life fully with a heart of love.

Mary, mother of Jesus - Luke 1

Sometimes I wonder just how Mary felt when the angel Gabriel appeared before her to tell her that she was going to give birth to the Messiah. The Bible tells us that she was afraid and asked how it could be because she was a virgin, a legitimate question. Even through her fear and wondering, she accepted the overwhelming task to carry the Savior of the world, risking whispers behind her back, criticism, and judgement, to name a few. Mary was real about her emotions, but she pushed through how she was feeling because she had an awareness about laying down her life. She knew the risk and the uncomfortable stares were worth being obedient to God.

I struggle with trying to attain perfectionism, but as that struggle to be the “perfect” Mom seems to be ever present around me, I’m remembering this Mother’s Day that my precious kids aren’t looking for perfection. They are looking for a mommy who will love them right where they’re at. They are watching and observing the way I handle the difficult situations of life and learning invaluable lessons. Being real and not trying to create a perfect facade is what brings me closer to my kids.
 

Her children will rise up and call her blessed. – Proverbs 31:28

Happy Mothers’ Day to all our moms! We are thankful to God for you!

Pastor Dale

Notes of Faith May 9, 2020

Does God Still Speak Through Signs of Nature?

I have become convinced that the coronavirus is a remedial judgment of God upon the whole world to call the people of all nations to repentance before the return of Jesus. God in His mercy never pours out His wrath without warning. We know from the signs of the times revealed in biblical prophecy that we are on the threshold of the Tribulation.

And we also know from the book of Revelation that the Tribulation will be a time when God will focus His unmitigated wrath on the rebellious nations of the world, including our own. Bible prophecy tells us point blank that societies worldwide will become as evil as in the days of Noah, and that when this happens, we will know we are in the season of the Lord’s return. If you will read Genesis 6, you will see that the two fundamental characteristics of Noah’s society were violence and immorality. That is the world we live in today. Worldwide, violence is overwhelming due to the terrorism that has infected all societies. And the degree of immorality has become mind-boggling. In our nation, which was founded on Judeo-Christian values, we find our leaders surrendering to the demands of the Sexual Perversion Movement. Our schools have become battlefields, and we are currently raising a whole generation of moral pygmies. Also, we continue to murder babies in their mother’s wombs. The Bible says that when we reach this level of societal debauchery, people will ignore God’s prophetic voices and His remedial judgments, like the man pictured on the cover of this issue of our magazine (Matthew 24:36-39). Most people will simply go about their business as usual, ignoring the fact that God is warning of His impending wrath.

Let’s pray for people’s eyes to be opened and for their hearts to be impacted by their sins, motivating them to turn to God, to repent of their sins and to accept God’s Son, Jesus, as their Lord and Savior. In the meantime, for those of us who know the Lord, the Holy Spirit is calling us to holiness and evangelism. We need to prepare ourselves and others for the imminent Rapture of the Church and the horrible period of the Tribulation that will follow. And as we face the remedial judgments God is inflicting upon the earth, let us keep in mind the comforting words of Psalm 91: 1) He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. 2) I will say to the LORD, “My refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust!” 3) For it is He who delivers you from the snare of the trapper and from the deadly pestilence. 4) He will cover you with His pinions, and under His wings you may seek refuge; His faithfulness is a shield and bulwark. 5) You will not be afraid of the terror by night, or of the arrow that flies by day; 6) Of the pestilence that stalks in darkness, or of the destruction that lays waste at noon. 7) A thousand may fall at your side and ten thousand at your right hand, but it shall not approach you. 8) You will only look on with your eyes and see the recompense of the wicked. 9) For you have made the LORD, your refuge, even the Most High, your dwelling place. 10) No evil will befall you, nor will any plague come near your tent. 11) For He will give His angels charge concerning you, to guard you in all your ways. Hallelujah!

“Natural Disasters An Increasing Reality” San Francisco Chronicle, October 3, 2018.

“Is The Pacific Ring Of Fire Getting Ready For The End-of-Days?” BreakingIsraelNews.com, December17, 2018.

“With A Surge In Tornado Activity, Scientists Want To Know Why?” Washington Post, May 29, 2019.

“Very Unusual Seismic Activity On The West Coast Has Experts Extremely Concerned” Zero Hedge.com, December 26, 2019.

“Locust Plague of Biblical Proportions Threatens African Famine” TheEconomicCollapseBlog.com, January 31, 2020.

“World Economy Projected To Shrink For First Time Since 2009 As Coronavirus Plays Havoc With Global Supply Chains” TheEconomicCollapseBlog.com, February 13, 2020.

“Historic, Unprecedented Flooding Swamps Southern USA” USAToday.com, Febuary 17, 2020.

“Global Crop Failures Continue” TheEconomic CollapseBlog.com, Febuary 19, 2020.

“Astronomers Discover Eleven Dangerous Asteroids That Could Impact the Earth” SciTechDaily.com, March 6, 2020.

These headlines are enough to make you think that all of nature is spiraling out of control. And that, in fact, is exactly what is happening from a human viewpoint. But spiritually, the Bible assures us that God is in control, and what we are witnessing is the fulfillment of end time prophecies.

Even secular writers have recognized the phenomenon. Take, for example, Michael Snyder who maintains a blog called The Economic Collapse. He recently wrote:
Over the last several decades, have we ever seen a year start as strangely as 2020 has? Global weather patterns have gone completely nuts, large earthquakes are popping off like firecrackers, it looks like the plague of locusts in Africa could soon develop into the worst in modern history, and a massive plague of bats is severely terrorizing parts of Australia. On top of all that, African Swine Fever is wiping out millions upon millions of pigs around the globe, the H1N1 Swine Flu is killing people in Taiwan, there have been H5N1 Bird Flu outbreaks in China and in India, and the H5N8 Bird Flu has made an appearance at a poultry facility in Saudi Arabia. And then, of course, there is the coronavirus outbreak…

Those of us who specialize in the teaching of Bible prophecy, refer to all these natural disasters as “Signs of Nature.” They constitute one of six categories of signs that the Bible tells us to watch for in the end times.

This category of end time signs is a very important one, and yet, it is the category that receives the least respect. There are two reasons for this — one that is conceptual, and the other that is philosophical.

Problems with the Signs of Nature

The conceptual problem resides in the fact that there have always been signs of nature. So, when confronted with the prophesied signs of nature, many people shrug their shoulders and ask, “What else is new? There have always been tornados, hurricanes, and earthquakes.”

What they overlook is that Jesus said these signs would be like “birth pangs” (Matthew 24:8). That means they will increase in frequency and intensity the closer we get to the Lord’s return. And that is exactly what appears to be happening today.

The philosophical problem many people have with the signs of nature is due to the fact that we have been brainwashed by Western scientific rationalism into believing that for something to exist, you must be able to see it, measure it, weigh it and dissect it.

In contrast, the Bible teaches there is a whole realm of the supernatural that cannot normally be perceived by the senses. This realm includes angels, demons, and the operation of the Holy Spirit. It also includes God’s intervention into history from time to time through supernatural manifestations and natural disasters.

God and Signs of Nature

Sometimes God uses signs of nature to underline the importance of major events. Thus, at the birth of Jesus, God placed a special light in the heavens, probably a manifestation of His Shekinah glory. When Jesus was crucified, the earth experienced three hours of darkness and a major earthquake. And the Bible says that when Jesus returns, the world will experience the greatest earthquake in its history. Every island will be moved, valleys will be lifted, mountains will be lowered, and the city of Jerusalem will be lifted up like a jewel, possibly becoming the highest place on earth (Revelation 16:18-21 and Isaiah 40:3-5).

More often, God uses signs of nature as remedial judgments to call nations to repentance. Both the Bible and history attest to the fact that God has a pattern of dealing with nations. When a nation rebels against God, He responds first by raising up prophetic voices to call the nation to repentance. These are not necessarily people with supernatural knowledge of the future. They simply have the gift of discernment to see where a nation is missing God’s mark. To put it another way, they know how to apply the Scriptures to contemporary events.

If a nation refuses to listen to the prophetic voices, God will then send remedial judgments. These can take many forms. Deuteronomy 28 mentions economic failure, rebellion of youth, an epidemic of divorce, confusion in government, foreign domination and military defeat. The chapter also mentions natural disasters like drought, crop failure and pestilence.

Finally, if a nation digs in against God and sets its jaw against His calls to repentance, a point of no return will be reached — often referred to as “when the wound becomes incurable” (Nahum 3:19, Jeremiah 30:12 and Micah 1:9). At this point, the Lord will deliver the nation from judgment to destruction. That destruction may occur quickly — as with Babylon and the Soviet Union — or it may occur gradually over a period of time, as with the Roman Empire.

Examples of Remedial Judgments

There are many examples of remedial judgments in the Bible that involve natural disasters. Take, for example, the plagues with which God afflicted Egypt in order to convince Pharaoh that he should release the children of Israel from captivity. The Lord sent plagues of frogs, gnats, flies and locusts. In addition, He contaminated the nation’s water, afflicted the livestock with pestilence, struck the people with sores and boils, engulfed the land in a thick darkness and finally took the lives of the firstborn of both men and livestock.

When King Ahab led the Israelites into the worship of a pagan god, the Lord raised up the prophet Elijah to call the king and his people to repentance. When they ignored Elijah, the Lord then put a remedial judgment on the land in the form of a severe three and a half year drought (1 Kings 17 & 18).

The book of Joel tells about a locust invasion that afflicted Judah. This was one of the worst calamities that could befall an agricultural society. It appears that people began bemoaning their “bad luck.” That’s when God sent the prophet Joel to inform them that the disaster had nothing to do with luck. Joel boldly proclaimed that the locusts had been sent by God to call the people to repentance. He warned that if they did not repent, the Lord would send something even worse — an enemy army. The people ignored Joel and the prophets who followed him, and God ultimately sent the army, delivering them from judgment to destruction.

Seventy years later, when the Babylonian captivity ended, the Jews who returned to Judah laid the foundation for a new temple and then quickly lost interest in the project. They turned their attention instead to the building of their personal homes. For 14 years the foundation of the temple stood vacant. Finally, God raised up an elderly, tough-talking prophet named Haggai. He confronted the people by asking them: “Have you noticed that when you plant your crops, they are destroyed by root rot? And when you replant them, they are destroyed again by hail? And when you replant, a wind storm comes? God is speaking to you! He is calling you to repent of your misplaced priorities and give attention to the rebuilding of His temple.” For once, the people listened, obeyed and were blessed.

The Nature of God

God has continued throughout history to use signs of nature to call nations to repentance. Some people say, “Oh no, God doesn’t do that anymore because this is the ‘Age of Grace.'”

Well, the first problem with that statement is that it implies there was a previous time of no grace. The fact of the matter is that there is only one way of salvation that has ever existed — namely, grace through faith (Joel 2:32).

Furthermore, the Bible says God is “the same yesterday, today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). There is no such thing as the Old Testament God of wrath and the New Testament God of grace. God does not change (Malachi 3:6). He is immutable.

The Old Testament God of wrath is the One who showed grace toward the wicked city of Nineveh when its people repented in response to the message of Jonah. The New Testament God of grace is the One who warned the church at Thyatira that if it continued to tolerate a false prophetess, He would “cast her upon a bed of sickness and those who commit adultery with her into great tribulation.” Further, He threatened to “kill her children with pestilence” (Revelation 2:22-23).

Our God is a God of grace, mercy and love. But He is also a God of holiness, righteousness and justice. The balanced view of God is presented by the prophet Nahum. Speaking of God’s grace, he wrote: “The LORD is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble, and He knows those who take refuge in Him” (Nahum 1:7). But Nahum warned that the same God is One who is righteous and holy and who will not tolerate sin (Nahum 1:2-3):

A jealous and avenging God is the LORD;
The LORD is avenging and wrathful.
The LORD takes vengeance on His adversaries,
And He reserves wrath for His enemies.
The LORD is slow to anger and great in power,
And the LORD will by no means leave the guilty
unpunished.

The Role of Satan

Some counter by trying to argue that natural calamities come from Satan and not God. But the Bible teaches that God is sovereign. Satan is not free to do anything he pleases. When he wanted to torment Job, he had to ask God’s permission, and when he was granted permission, God laid down rules about what he could and could not do (Job 1:6-12).

The Bible says God does not tempt us (James 1:13). Yet Jesus taught us to pray, “Lead us not into temptation” (Matthew 6:13). How can these statements be reconciled? The answer is that although Satan is the tempter, he cannot do so unless God allows it.

Again, God is sovereign, and nothing happens that He does not allow, either in His perfect will or His permissive will. That is the reason the Bible attributes all natural disasters to God.

Crucial Questions

Are all natural calamities a product of Man’s sin? Yes, absolutely. The original creation was perfect. Natural calamities are a result of the curse that God placed on the creation in response to Man’s sin. When Jesus returns, the curse will be lifted and natural calamities will cease.

Do all natural calamities represent remedial judgments of God? No — most are products of the natural processes of our weather systems.

How then can we determine when a natural calamity is a remedial judgment? One important factor is the timing of the event as it relates to the sins of the nation. Another factor is the magnitude of the event. Remedial judgments are designed to have great shock value in order to capture people’s attention and force them to think with an eternal perspective. The most important factor is God’s Spirit witnessing to the spirits of those to whom He has given the gift of prophecy. They will be motivated to speak forth with a united voice.

The Example of the United States

We can see all these principles operating in the history of our own nation. We were founded as a Christian nation, committed to Christian values, and God greatly blessed us. But in the 1960s, we began to thumb our nose at God as a cultural revolution was launched. Our society quickly descended into a cesspool of sexual promiscuity, drug abuse, abortion on demand, legalized gambling, rampant blasphemy and a flood of pornography. Our national slogan became, “If it feels good, do it!” We adopted a hedonistic lifestyle, calling evil good and good evil.
God responded by raising up prophetic voices to call the nation to repentance. One of those was Dave Wilkerson, pastor of Times Square Church in New York City. I call him “God’s Jeremiah to America.” In the 1970s he began writing a series of books in which he clearly outlined the sins of America and warned of judgments from God if we did not repent. Like Jeremiah, his popularity plummeted because people — even church people — did not want to hear his “doomsday message.”

When the prophetic voices were ignored, God began to place remedial judgments on our nation — things like our defeat in the Vietnam War, the AIDS epidemic, the plague of sexually transmitted diseases, the scourge of homosexuality and natural disasters in the form of monster earthquakes, killer tornados and hurricanes. We even experienced an unprecedented volcanic eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980 — an eruption so severe that it blackened the sky from Seattle to New York City and as far south as Oklahoma.

The culmination of the remedial judgments seemed to come with the 9/11 terrorist assault in 2001, when two symbols of American pride were attacked: the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. The towers stood as symbols of our wealth; the Pentagon symbolized our military power.

As I have stated before, I believe this event was a wake-up call from God for our nation to repent. Instead, like a drowsy man who doesn’t want to wake-up, we merely rolled over and hit the snooze button on the alarm clock.

End Time Signs of Nature

In Jesus’ Olivet Discourse, delivered to His disciples on the Mount of Olives during the last week of His life, He specifically spoke of signs of nature to watch for in the end times.

Matthew recorded Him saying, “…and in various places there will be famines and earthquakes…” (Matthew 24:7). Luke’s account of the same speech is more detailed. He quotes Jesus in Luke 21 as saying:
11)… there will be great earthquakes, and in various places plagues and famines; and there will be terrors and great signs from heaven…
25) There will be signs in the sun and moon and stars, and on the earth dismay among nations, in perplexity at the roaring of the sea…
We are witnessing all these things today worldwide. All sorts of weather calamities are happening more frequently and causing greater damage — hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes, floods and forest fires.

Additionally, famine continues to rage throughout Africa and other Third World areas. Plagues like AIDS, SARS, Ebola and COVID-19 continue to challenge and perplex medical science. A new danger is the return of old diseases thought to be under control — due to the development of antibiotic resistant strains.
And for the first time ever, we are living in a time when we can see incredible sights in outer space due to space telescopes and satellite probes which we have sent to other planets — all in fulfillment of Luke 21:25 which says that in the end times, “there will be signs in the sun, moon and stars…”

The Birth Pangs Effect

With regard to natural calamities, some simply dismiss them in a cavalier manner by asking, “What else is new?” But as I have already mentioned, Jesus said that the signs in the end times would be like “birth pangs” (Matthew 24:8), meaning they will increase in frequency and intensity. And that is what has been happening.
Take earthquakes for example. In the decade of the 1980s, there were a total of 1,085 earthquakes worldwide that measured 6.0 or greater in magnitude. In the 1990s there were 1,492. In the first ten years of this century, the number jumped to 1,591. With regard to monster quakes of 8.0 or greater, in the 1980s there were four; in the 1990s, six; and in the first decade of this century, 13.1

There’s a better way to look at natural disasters than to consider them by category, such as the frequency and intensity of tornadoes, for the number and intensity will go up and down from year to year, although showing an overall increase over a period of time. The best way to view natural disasters is to consider all of them grouped together. When you do that, the statistics show that they are rapidly increasing, from an average of 300 per year in the 1980s, to 490 per year in the 1990s, to almost 900 per year in the first ten years of this century.2

Oddly, one of the reasons for considering natural disasters overall rather than individually is because one type of natural disaster can restrain other types.
Let me illustrate what I mean: In 2012, our nation experienced one of its worst droughts in modern history — with over 61% of America affected. Now, one side effect of that drought is that we experienced the lowest number of tornados in 60 years — after all, you can’t have tornados without thunderstorms. The same was true of flooding.

The chart below illustrates the exponential growth of disasters worldwide. Ron Fraser, the author of the article that the chart illustrates, asserts: “The facts are that statistics prove natural disasters have risen startlingly since 1990.” 3 The Borgen Project (a non-profit organization focusing on world poverty), has labeled the increase in disasters worldwide as “skyrocketing.”4 The fact of the matter is that the severity and cost of the disasters have been rapidly increasing, and “record disasters are becoming commonplace.”5
Fraser presents convincing arguments that 1989 was the watershed year — “a threshold from which natural disasters escalated most dramatically compared to past eras in history.”6

The Message

It seems rather obvious that God is shouting at us through increasing natural disasters that “Jesus is coming soon!” And yet, few seem to be getting the message — even those in the Christian community.
All of which reminds me of the cartoon below about how people in the time of the prophet Haggai seemed to ignore his warnings that the natural disasters they were experiencing were due to the fact that they were postponing the rebuilding of the Lord’s temple.

“Global Warming”

This leads to a frequently asked question: “What is the prophetic significance of ‘Global Warming?'”

The answer is that the whole concept is a political ploy which liberals are using in an attempt to gain greater control over society. The fact that it is a non-issue was pointed out brilliantly in a 2020 article by Jack Kinsella, a writer for Hal Lindsey.7
He observed that 96% of all greenhouse gases and other so-called global warming emissions originate naturally from the oceans that cover five-sixths of the earth’s surface. Thus, as he put it, “That leaves only 4% to divide up between human activity, volcanoes, rotting vegetables, cow flatulence, etc.” It is estimated that the human portion of that 4% is 14%, and 14% of 4% is .056!

Even the advocates of Global Warming have recognized the absurdity of their claim that humans are responsible for the earth’s warming. So, Global Warming has morphed into “Climate Change.” And, as Harold Ambler, writing for The Huffington Post has observed, “the term, Climate Change, is a redundancy because the climate has always changed, and always will.”8
For example, scientific studies have shown the following climate periods in world history:9
1. The warm Roman Optimum (200 BC to 400 AD)
2. The cold Dark Ages (400 AD to 900 AD)
3. The warm Medieval Period (900 AD to 1300 AD)
4. The Little Ice Age (1300 to 1850)
5. The Modern Warm Age (since 1850)
I feel compelled to point out that the Bible does prophesy that a super-hot time is coming when God will envelop the earth in fire to burn away the pollution of Satan’s last revolt, which will occur at the end of Jesus’ millennial reign. Out of that fiery inferno will come the New Earth, which will serve as the foundation for the New Jerusalem where the Redeemed will reside forever.

Conclusion

So, true global warming is on its way! But, more importantly, the Signs of the Times are screaming that we are on the threshold of the Tribulation. And that means, in turn, that Jesus is at the very gate of Heaven, ready to step out on a cloud and come for His Church.
Meanwhile, the Church needs to wake up to the Signs of Nature and all the other signs that are converging for the first time ever. But for that to happen, our nation’s pastors need to get serious about the fact that we are living in the season of the Lord’s return, and they need to start proclaiming that fact from their pulpits.
The Church needs to stop yawning and start yearning for the return of Jesus.

Maranatha!

This is from one of the prophecy people that I follow. I do not agree with everything they say, but do think that current events including the Covid-19 virus COULD be birth pangs leading up to the wrath of God, the time of Jacob’s trouble, the seven-year Tribulation. Which means that we, the church, could soon be out of here, raptured, the bride saved from this time of God’s wrath on the unbelieving world. Look up, for your redemption draweth nigh.

Pastor Dale

Notes of Faith May 8, 2020

As two hundred thousand people pass into eternity, and two hundred thousand families feel the sting of loved ones lost, Moses’s uncomfortable prayer presses itself upon us: “Teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12).

Teach us, O God, to see in these two hundred thousand deaths a foreshadow of our own. Teach us to feel that our lives, however long, are “like a dream, like grass that . . . fades and withers” (Psalm 90:5–6). And do it so that we may get a heart of wisdom. So that we may give ourselves, while the vapor of life still lingers, to the only work that will enter eternity.

  On the other side of the coronavirus, the wisest people will not be those who have diversified their financial portfolios, nor those who have stocked up on masks and toilet paper in preparation for a potential second wave, but those who have learned to say from the heart, “Only one life, ’twill soon be past; only what’s done for Christ will last.”

   Establish the Work of Our Hands

  As creatures who have eternity in our hearts (Ecclesiastes 3:11), we are slow to learn the lesson that life is a vapor. Life in the moment feels sturdy and secure, and we often act as if it might go on forever. And so we rarely see the work of our lives in the bracing light of life’s brevity.

  But calamities bring death close. The previous months have sharpened the words of Psalm 90 into unpleasant focus: “You return man to dust and say, ‘Return, O children of man!’ . . . You sweep them away as with a flood. . . . For all our days pass away under your wrath; we bring our years to an end like a sigh” (Psalm 90:3, 5, 9). After more than 50,000 deaths in America alone (and in just over one month), C.S. Lewis’s words about World War II hold true today:

  The war creates no absolutely new situation; it simply aggravates the permanent human situation so that we can no longer ignore it. Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice. (“Learning in War Time,” 49)

 We have always lived on the edge of a precipice ready to crumble beneath our feet. The destruction caused by the coronavirus is merely a preview of what will one day happen to us and all we hold dear. Nations and economies, health and relationships will succumb eventually to the ravages of time. Moth and rust will destroy the treasure we thought secure. Life itself, which sprouts green in the morning, will wilt by evening.

 No wonder Moses ends his reflections on death with a desperate prayer: “Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands; yes, establish the work of our hands!” (Psalm 90:17). Only God can take this dying seed called life and make it bear fruit that lasts for eternity.

 Labor in the Lord

 When the fullness of time had come, God answered Moses’s prayer. The one “from everlasting to everlasting” (Psalm 90:2) descended into time and robed himself with earth. He tasted the curse of a life cut short, and returned to the dust like all of Adam’s sons.

 But then this man rose up as the firstfruits of a new, curse-free creation (1 Corinthians 15:20, 23). Now, in Jesus Christ, our lives and our labor are not swept away, but established: “Be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:58).

 Outside of the Lord, our most impressive labors are grand nothings — civilizations built on the shores of time, with the tide quickly rising. Careers, bank accounts, reputations, legacies, and families, if built in our name rather than in Christ’s, must vanish in time. They may escape viruses and fires and floods, and perhaps even outlast our little lives, but the day will come when “the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed,” and every work outside of Christ will be “dissolved” (2 Peter 3:10–11).

 But in the Lord, no labor is in vain. Our strength may be small, our lives brief, and our reputation of no account, but if we devote our days to living “in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Colossians 3:17), then God himself will establish the work of our hands.

 Ordinary Radicals

 What will it mean for us to labor in the Lord? We need to ask this question again and again throughout our lives, not only in the midst of a pandemic. But moments like this one throw into sharp relief the choices in front of us. Our days are numbered, eternity is coming, and the only labor that matters is labor in the Lord. What then shall we do?

 Numbering our days will lead many ordinary people to take some radical steps. Perhaps it took the coronavirus to expose just how many trivialities take up our time, and to make us feel the urgency of some good work we have long dreamed of doing. Perhaps now is the time to move toward an adoption, to begin a Bible study for inmates, to loosen ties here in order to move overseas, to get serious about evangelism.

 The radical need not wait until life returns to “normal.” What we call “normal life,” remember, is really life on the edge of a precipice, not nearly so different from life now as many of us imagine. Some Christians, with hearts full of wisdom, have given their days to delivering fresh food to neighbors — free of charge. Others have fostered children coming from homes with domestic abuse. Still others have left retirement to return to the ICU, where they are serving the sick and dying.

 Life is too short, and eternity too long, not to throw ourselves into something that feels big, risky, and packed with potential to glorify Christ.

 Radical Ordinaries

 But life is also too short, and eternity too long, to waste the ordinary moments of every day. So numbering our days will not only lead ordinary people to take some radical steps, but it will also lead us to take all sorts of ordinary steps radically. Our labor need not be grand to qualify as labor “in the Lord.” The smallest act, done through Christ and for Christ, will by no means lose its reward (Matthew 10:42).

 Lewis, in the same address, goes on to say, “The work of a Beethoven and the work of a charwoman become spiritual on precisely the same condition, that of being offered to God, of being done humbly ‘as to the Lord’” (55–56). Much of our labor in the Lord will be of the charwoman variety: small, necessary acts of service that fall in line with the callings God has given to us, yet each dedicated to God in faith.

 We will cook meals for our families, write letters to friends, keep up with shut-ins in our churches, bless our children before bed: forgotten obedience in forgotten moments in forgotten places. That is, forgotten by us — not by God. “Whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord” (Ephesians 6:8). Under God, even the smallest deed done in the Lord can leave an imprint that lasts longer than the skies.

 Eternity in the Present

 In matchless grace, God gives us the dignity of establishing the work of our hands. He takes these “fistfuls of mist” (as David Gibson calls them) and creates something far out of the reach of any virus or calamity. Yet only as we live in light of eternity. And that begins with living today in light of eternity.

 Numbering our days begins with numbering this day: this unrepeatable, God-given 24 hours, filled with opportunities to labor in the Lord. We have not yet gained a heart of wisdom until eternity presses itself down into the present, teaching us to live today in light of forever. It matters little what kind of work we have ahead of us today — radical or ordinary, pleasant or bitter. What matters is whether we do it in the Lord.

 If we do, then God himself will establish the work of our frail and dying hands. Yes, he will establish the work of our hands.

 Praying for you and myself, that our numbered days are filled with fruitful labor even amidst any suffering and struggle that Satan employs and God allows.

 Pastor Dale