What are the Sabbaths of the Old Testament?

Studying the Sabbaths of the Old Testament might seem like an odd question, but knowing the Sabbaths, and the customs that the Jews had behind them helps to clarify the gospels, which themselves have many references to these special Sabbaths. In the purposes of God, he deemed these Sabbaths important enough to go over several times, and we study them being observed during the Old Testament times, spectacularly so, particularly when Israel was undergoing a period of revival.

Perhaps the average Christian is aware of but one Sabbath, but the Bible presents many more. Several times I have found Chafer referring to the fifteen Sabbaths of the Old Testament, but I have not found him listing those fifteen anywhere, so I am sticking with the ten obvious Sabbaths the Bible presents, and then will follow those up with two more that do not quite fit the formula, but which were both probably treated as Sabbath days by the Israelites.

God presents the list of the original Sabbaths in two places: Leviticus and Numbers. Presenting them he usually gives three descriptions of them. The name Sabbath is often given to each, but not always. Secondly, it is referred to as a “holy convocation”. And third, the command is given that “you shall do no work”. All three go together and show that God was very insistent about the holiness of these Sabbaths. I will list the ten Sabbaths first, and then I have two that do not perfectly fit these definitions, so I will discuss the eleventh and twelfth Sabbath days last.

1. The seventh day of the week
This is the most common Sabbath, and the one Christians sometimes assume to be the only Sabbath. All three characteristics listed above are used to describe it. It commemorates the seventh day of Creation, when God rested.
1). Called Sabbath
Keep the sabbath day to sanctify it, as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee.
Deuteronomy 5:12
2). Told to rest
Six days shall work be done: but the seventh day is the sabbath of rest, an holy convocation; ye shall do no work therein: it is the sabbath of the Lord in all your dwellings.
Leviticus 23:3
3). Holy convocation
Same verse as above

2. and 3. The Feast of Unleavened Bread
This feast starts the day after Passover and is a week long, with Sabbath days being on the first day and the last day.
1) Not called Sabbath
The name Sabbath is not applied to either the Passover or any of the days of the feast.
2.) Told to rest
In the first day ye shall have an holy convocation: ye shall do no servile work therein.
Leviticus 23:7
But ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto the Lord seven days: in the seventh day is an holy convocation: ye shall do no servile work therein.
Leviticus 23:8
3.) Holy convocation
Same verses as above

4. The Feast of Weeks (also called First Fruits)
This feast is to observe the Lord who provides the harvest.
On the day of firstfruits, when you present to the LORD an offering of new grain during the Feast of Weeks, hold a sacred assembly and do no regular work. (Numbers 28:26)
1). Not called Sabbath
2). Told to rest (same verse)
3). Holy convocation is in the words “sacred assembly”. Also holy convocation in:
And ye shall proclaim on the selfsame day, that it may be an holy convocation unto you: ye shall do no servile work therein: it shall be a statute for ever in all your dwellings throughout your generations.
Leviticus 23:21

5. and 6. The Feast of Trumpets
This feast may be a commemoration of the return of Christ, and ends with the all-important Day of Atonement. There are two Sabbath days observed, on the first day, and the Day of Atonement.
1). Called Sabbath
(First day)
Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, In the seventh month, in the first day of the month, shall ye have a sabbath, a memorial of blowing of trumpets, an holy convocation.
Leviticus 23:24
(Day of Atonement)
It shall be unto you a sabbath of rest, and ye shall afflict your souls: in the ninth day of the month at even, from even unto even, shall ye celebrate your sabbath.
Leviticus 23:32
2). Told to rest
(First day)
Ye shall do no servile work therein: but ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto the Lord.
Leviticus 23:25
(Day of Atonement)
And ye shall do no work in that same day: for it is a day of atonement, to make an atonement for you before the Lord your God.
Leviticus 23:28
3). Called a holy convocation
Leviticus 23:24 (above)

7. and 8. The Feast of Booths (also referred to as the Feast of Tabernacles)
In this feast, the Israelites were to go outside of their city and were to build booths. There are two Sabbaths associated with this feast, the first and the last day.
1). Called Sabbath
(First day)
Also in the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when ye have gathered in the fruit of the land, ye shall keep a feast unto the Lord seven days: on the first day shall be a sabbath, and on the eighth day shall be a sabbath.
Leviticus 23:39
(Last day)
Same verse
2). Told to rest
(First day)
On the first day shall be an holy convocation: ye shall do no servile work therein.
Leviticus 23:35
(Last day)
Seven days ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto the Lord: on the eighth day shall be an holy convocation unto you; and ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto the Lord: it is a solemn assembly; and ye shall do no servile work therein.
Leviticus 23:36
3). Called a holy convocation
(same verses as above)

9. The Sabbath Year
But in the seventh year the land is to have a Sabbath of rest, a Sabbath to the LORD. (Leviticus 25:4)
1). Called a Sabbath
(verse above)
2). Told to give rest to the land
(verse above
3). Not called holy convocation

10. The Year of Jubilee
Then have the trumpet sounded everywhere on the tenth day of the seventh month; on the Day of Atonement sound the trumpet throughout your land. Consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you; each one of you is to return to his family property and each to his own clan. (Leviticus 25:9, 10)
The fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you; do not sow and do not reap what grows of itself or harvest the untended vines. (Lev. 25:11) (This was to be the year of rest for the land.)
1). Not specifically called a Sabbath
2). Rest to the land
Leviticus 25:11
3). Holy convocation is not used. (Maybe because a year was not to be a convocation?), but holy is used.
For it is the jubile; it shall be holy unto you: ye shall eat the increase thereof out of the field.
Leviticus 25:12

Before I comment further on the Sabbaths, there are two more to add to the list. The first is the Passover. Passover is unusual in that it specifically is not called a Sabbath (in the Old Testament), neither is it a day of rest, or a holy convocation. I believe that the day itself, a commemoration of the day that the Israelites began to leave Egypt, did not lend itself to any of these special marks of a Sabbath. The Israelite was told to, “And thus shall ye eat it; with your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and ye shall eat it in haste: it is the Lord's Passover” (Exodus 12:11). The day itself commemorates a time when the Israelites had to flee the Egypt presence, a time when the hand of God has gloriously delivered them, but a time when they had to run. It did not lend itself to being called a day of rest. Neither does it lend itself to being called a holy convocation, since the Lamb was to be eaten in haste, while each family was home. Perhaps it is not called a Sabbath for the same reason, though it is evident from a study of the gospels that this day was so commemorated.

The Passover is a picture of the Paschal Lamb being sacrificed for us, as the very moments, centuries later, that the Israelites were to be killing the Passover Lambs, our Christ was giving himself to be crucified on the cross. Interestingly, the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which follows Passover the next day, is not called a Sabbath either, though the gospels again present it as a high and holy Sabbath day. These two days are the only days to occur next to each other, symbolizing I think the days that Christ was to spend buried in the earth.

Besides the Feast of Unleavened Bread, there is one more Sabbath to be considered, The Feast of Purim. Like some of the other feasts, Sabbath is not used to describe it, but it is a time when the Jews were given rest. It is the feast of Esther, a time to commemorate the deliverance of the Jews from their enemies, and came much later in the history of the Jewish people. It is described thus, “On the thirteenth day of the month Adar; and on the fourteenth day of the same rested they, and made it a day of feasting and gladness. But the Jews that were at Shushan assembled together on the thirteenth day thereof, and on the fourteenth thereof; and on the fifteenth day of the same they rested, and made it a day of feasting and gladness” (Esther 9:17,18). Thus it fits the definition of a Sabbath, being a feast, and being told to “rest” all three days of the feast.

During my next post, I will try to discuss more fully the meaning of these feasts and try to make some sense of what they might mean to us as Christians today.

What kind of afterlife can we expect?

Sigh! I guess these sorts of questions are on my mind—I just retired and am looking for a long retirement, yet I am mindful of how fleeting life can be. By the time a man has gotten into his sixties (as I am), he has generally lost his parents, various friends, and perhaps many others of his family. A generation comes and goes, and so the inevitable tide of death and life washes over us, and if we do live to be older we are doomed to see most of our loved ones pass away before our lives. Many of us live and die without any expectations of afterlife, and think the course of these things is just the way it was meant to be. I think it could be called the what-you-see-is-what-you-get philosophy of life. In computer-eze , it is shortened to WYSIWYG.

WYSIWYG refers to the idea that what you see on the computer screen is actually the product that is going to be produced, whether it be a slide show, a document, or something coming out of a printer. For those who are using computers, it is a very useful feature. But not so much when considering afterlife. The Bible says that God banished us from the Garden of Eden, and we can no longer have the visible fellowship with God that we had under Adam and Eve. We have lost sight of what fellowship with God is like and only have the Bible and our vain imaginations to tell us what it might be like. Our vain imaginations do not tell us much and I for one, frequently have had to reteach myself about what heaven might be like when my conceptualization runs counter to the Word of God. I am not the only one with misconceptions and when researching the answers to this question I came across this gem from David Lloyd George: “When I was a boy, the thought of Heaven used to frighten me more than the thought of Hell. I pictured Heaven as a place where time would be perpetual Sundays, with perpetual services from which there would be no escape.”¹

I will be using Randy Alcorn’s Heaven to answer many dimensions of this question, and I commend its reading to those of you who want a through and Biblical treatment of the subject. What I like about Alcorn is his carefulness to present what the Bible says, and when he is forced to speculation to make sure that the reader knows it is speculation, even though that speculation may have Biblical roots.

In John 14, Jesus tells us that he goes prepare a place for us, that I will come back and take you with me. The first place that we shall be taken to is the home of God the Son, heaven. Christ will return first for his church and carry his bride back to show off to his Father. I know some do not believe in the Rapture, but for the purpose of this piece, let us leave off of that disagreement, and focus on what the Bible tells us about heaven, no matter when we may get there. What is heaven like? I opened this passage with a reflection on growing older, and I am growing older, in my sixties now. But I am in good health, and hope to be around for a bit longer. Still I cannot help but notice my parents passing, and many others, some indeed in an untimely manner, and it makes me think about the better place that Christ has prepared for us. I have an idea in the back of my head, most likely similar to yours, that the crippled or aged or infirm or blind might at last have a better place to go, but the Biblical concept of heaven goes far beyond that. “No wonder Satan doesn’t want us to learn the truth about Heaven. If we fall in love with the place and look forward to the future that God has for us, we’ll fall more in love with God, and we’ll be emboldened to follow him with greater resolve and perspective.”²

In heaven, likely though not absolutely clear, we will have the marriage supper with the Lamb of God. Conservative Bible scholars are unsure whether the marriage supper is during the tribulation, while we are in heaven, or whether it is just after the tribulation, when Christ returns with his saints to the earth. In either case, we will drink anew with him from the cup, which he promised he would not drink from again until we were together. He will have clothed us, not as I might imagine, with his righteousness, but he will clothe us with white robes, representing the righteous acts of the saints (Rev. 19:8). This does not negate our being made righteous by his sacrifice for us, as that is one of many things that happens to us at the point of conversion. Instead, he uses the righteous acts of the saint to clothe us—meaning I think that everything that we did in the power of God to advance his kingdom will adorn us then. The bride of Christ will be beautiful in God’s sight beyond all of our imaginings.

I am come that you might be free, and you shall be free indeed, proclaims Jesus. Our freedom will be evident on that day, when we are at long last taken from the presence of sin, of our own corruption. We shall become like him, says the scripture, for we shall see him as he is. And it will be complete with new bodies. Scripture says we will have new bodies; Plato did not like the idea of the body “imprisoning” the soul, and so he taught that one day the soul would be free of bodily restraint. However this is foreign to the idea set forth in the Bible; we are to have new bodies, and for a period of time, we will actively reign with Christ on earth. What does that mean? I am not sure, but am willing to be pleasantly surprised. Often people are surprised at the verse in Revelation 22:5, “And they will reign for ever and ever.” Alcorn has met people with this attitude, who say, ““But I don’t want to rule. That’s not my idea of Heaven.” Well, it’s God’s idea of Heaven.”³

I am not sure at all that I should be able to tell you what heaven is like—but I can say this much, you will still be you, be in a completed way. You and I, as long as we are in this life, are unfinished works of God—in that day we will be made complete. I will still have my family—my eight grandchildren will still be my grandchildren, my daughters will still be my daughters. But all of us will belong to God, in a complete sense, made what we were meant to be, and perhaps for the first time completely free.

My wife and I were talking about this very thing once, perhaps because my thinking tends to be rather far-sighted, and looking off ahead to the coming of our Lord I commented to my wife that I couldn’t imagine myself not wanting to be her best friend. I know the teaching of Scripture where Jesus tells us that we neither marry nor are given in marriage, and that I think I can understand. This time is the time for making more people, for building families, and for making marriages. The time to come in heaven will look past that and I believe perhaps that every believer we are caught up with will be exceedingly precious, and that deep relationships will abound. But that does not mean that my daughters will stop being my daughters, nor will my wife stop in being my closest confidant. Everything and everyone will become so much more meaningful to us.

I think for me, anyway, the pull in our world about socialism is putting the wrong ideas about heaven in my head. When I think of that many saints (one billion is a very conservative guess) being altogether, I think of the sameness of socialism. I remember an old episode of Star Trek, where the population is severely overcrowded, and the people are nose-to-nose bumping into each other, and to make it worse, later we learn that all the people come from the same few prototypes. But, if I know anything about heaven, trying to impose that image from Star Trek would border on blasphemy. We have a God who created us all so differently, and we love and worship him acceptably in so many different ways. We all bring so many talents that are so different with us, of course given by the Giver in the first place.

I am quite looking forward to spending time talking deeply with many great people that I just wonder about now. Did you ever want to sit down in a one-to-one with Billy Graham? I certainly have. We will have all of eternity, time without end, to do that. It doesn’t matter that the line to see Rev. Graham is ten miles long. It’s eternity we are talking about! I also have many favorite musicians that I look forward to listening to. (I am trying to refrain from listing them here so you do not find out how hopelessly quaint I am.) Do you think they will all lose their talent in going to heaven? No! They have been given their precious talents from God, and laying them at his feet, will he not allow them to continue? I have quite made up my mind about which concerts I will want to hear. Keith Green concerts will probably head the list. (Oops! I wasn’t going to mention any.) Can you imagine the celebration that we saints will through when we are finally there? I can’t. But in thinking about it, my heart is stirred, and I know that God has more than we can imagine or think.

How then shall we approach our thinking about heaven? First, I would highly recommend Alcorn’s book, Heaven, as it is an honest attempt to bring out all that the Bible tells us about the time to come. In the end, though, you may be like me, and that won’t be enough. Our hunger and thirst for a better place, at the side of our Lord, ought to be a consuming fire within us. For me, the only thing that works when I am wondering about that time to come, is to remember just how precious and personal the love of God is for me. I think being older helps a bit here, because I have walked a long path with him beside me all the way, showing consistently how deep and wide, and how absolutely unfathomable his love is toward me. He tells us that his thoughts about each of us outnumber the sands on the seashore. Do you trust him enough to believe that when Jesus said he goes now to prepare a place for us that it will be better, and indeed more right, than anything we might vainly imagine? Keith Green, in one of his concerts long ago, pointed out that God spent six days and nights making the earth, but when Christ told us that he was going to leave us, but to make us a place, that where he is we may be also, he has now had over two thousand years to make that better place!

Tolkien perhaps has the spirit of it when Sam returns home from the Grey Havens after saying farewell to his best friend: “But Sam turned to Bywater, and so came back up the Hill, as day was ending once more. And he went on, and there was yellow light, and fire within; and the evening meal was ready, and he was expected. And Rose drew him in, and set him in his chair, and put little Elanor upon his lap. He drew a deep breath. ‘Well, I’m back,’ he said.”⁴ When we get there, there will come a moment, sooner rather than later, when we realize that all we have done, all that God did in our busy worlds, everything that happened us, both evil and good, has been bound into that moment when we step into eternity, sit by the warm hearth in the chair made for us, and say, each of us, to our own wonder, “I’m home.”

Perhaps you are as me and think it cannot get better than that. Well, we are wrong. It is just the beginning of a fairy tale, if you will, that was no ending other than that which every small child knows to be true, “And they lived happily ever after.” The wonders of God will not cease to amaze and thrill us. And the real fairy tale we will find has no end. The “ever after” will not ever stop, is without end. Even so, come quickly Lord Jesus. I just want to go home.

1. Alcorn, Randy (2011-12-08). Heaven (Alcorn, Randy) (Kindle Locations 1449-1450). Tyndale House Publishers. Kindle Edition.
2. Alcorn, Randy (2011-12-08). Heaven (Alcorn, Randy) (Kindle Locations 3122-3123). Tyndale House Publishers. Kindle Edition.
3. Alcorn, Randy (2011-12-08). Heaven (Alcorn, Randy) (Kindle Locations 4105-4107). Tyndale House Publishers. Kindle Edition.
4. Tolkien, J.R.R. (2012-02-15). The Lord of the Rings: One Volume (p. 1032). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Kindle Edition.

Can we trust the Bible?

Wow! Sometimes I sort of regret the questions I get, and this question would be one that I do regret. Not, as you might think, because it is so difficult; rather the opposite is true. It would be difficult for anyone to suggest more evidence for the trustworthiness of the Bible than there is.

I suppose it is true that we do not hear a thunderbolt when we open the Bible, and in that sense it is not verified, but I am not talking about that so much as the reasonable proof that we might expect from history. There are some simple facts to present that within the scope of this short piece should show that the Bible is, indeed, supremely trustworthy. Written by over forty authors in the space of over fifteen hundred years, the Bible has a vibrant unity. The forbidden fruit is eaten in Genesis to the death of mankind, and the fruit of the tree of life is eaten by the redeemed of mankind in Revelation. Thus sin enters in Genesis and is forever taken away in Revelation. Man is separated from God in Genesis, and restored to fellowship in Revelation.

The times of the Gentiles is foretold in Daniel, is continuing, but will be taken away with the restoration of Israel in Revelation. Thus, there is a completeness to the Bible which is amazing when we consider 40 writers were composing the book over 1,500 years. “Even scholars and critics who don’t believe the Bible is historically accurate acknowledge there is a uniqueness to it. There is a similar theme of agreement running through the Bible’s entirety, even though it was written over fifteen hundred years by more than forty authors.”¹ And again, “Lewis Sperry Chafer, the founder and first president of Dallas Theological Seminary, put it well: ‘Without violating the authors’ personalities, they wrote with their own feelings, literary abilities, and concerns. But in the end, God could say, That’s exactly what I wanted to have written.’”²

But, you may ask, how reliable are the copies of the manuscripts? Total variations of manuscript are less than 1% of the total. In other words, most fights over the texts are involving 1% of the whole manuscript. Most of these variations are simple spelling variations. And in no case, not one, is a major doctrine affected. There are plenty of other places, not disputed, that establish major doctrine beyond reasonable doubt. Just how many manuscripts are we talking about? ”There are now more than 5,300 known Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. Add over 10,000 Latin Vulgate and at least 9,300 other early versions (MSS) and we have more than 24,000 manuscript copies of portions of the New Testament in existence today.”³ McDowell compares this to Homer, something that most of us would consider to be in concrete as to provable, “No other document of antiquity even begins to approach such numbers and attestation. In comparison, the Iliad by Homer is second with only 643 manuscripts that still survive. The first complete preserved text of Homer dates from the 13th century.”⁴ Homer is the one manuscript that we have so many copies of, but compare it, 643 manuscripts to 24,000. Sometimes when we are talking of famous classical writers, we are basing our knowledge of them on the basis of one manuscript. Hardly comparable to the Bible!

I have skeptical friends who belittle the Bible, saying that they cannot honestly know from the Bible whether Jesus actually said something. In other words, they are assuming that we do not have great reliability when it comes to the scriptures, and as we have seen, that assumption is shaky at best. We have every reason to have supreme confidence that what was written was exactly what was said.

Other people raise the opposite objection, saying that if Jesus himself did not come out against something then God must really be sort of benevolent towards that something. Not true—listen to the words of Jesus, “Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me” (John 5:39 Italics mine). Now, it is true that the New Testament was not yet written when Jesus said these words. He was pointing to the Old Testament, that which we often think was not much about Jesus; instead he tells us that the Old Testament is full of testimony about himself. The gospel of John begins with some of the most famous words of all the Bible, saying, in the beginning was the word, emphasizing the message part of the gospel being in Jesus himself. John goes on to say that the word was made flesh and dwelt among us, testifying further that the word of God was sanctioned by God to do exactly what God intended it to do—to tell us about God’s Son, Jesus Christ.

Further, we have the testimony of eyewitnesses, over 500 proclaims the Bible. Jesus did not hide his resurrection from people. It was not done on the sly. Over the years critics have purposed a large variety of explanations, trying to explain away the resurrection. One such theory is sometimes titled “the swoon theory”. It tries to suggest that Jesus recovered while buried in the tomb. There is no coherent explanation as to how he unwrapped himself from the grave clothes, or how he moved the stone on the front of the tomb, or how he got past the guards. In addition, such a theory neglects the Roman spear in the side, and the verification by the guards that Jesus was dead. Another theory suggests that the disciples came in the middle of the night and stole his body. Yet, that explanation does not cover how these disciples got past the Roman guard which Pilate had placed upon the grave. And all those witnesses, 500 and more, are testifiers that Jesus indeed came, did, and said the things written in the gospels.

Conan Doyle, not known for any belief in God, made his character, Sherlock, say to Watson (in my own paraphrase), “First we remove the impossible and then what remains, no matter how unlikely, is the explanation.” That principle should be applied here. I do not suggest that miracles like rising from the dead are highly improbable—they certainly are improbable, but having said that, there is no other conceivable explanation that fits the facts as we know them. His body was highly unlikely to have been stolen, and recovering from ordeals that he faced we know that it is impossible that he should have recovered. The only facts that fit the case must accommodate the miraculous. Why do I say that?

Look at these witnesses. Their every utterance was put on the line, that they should be held accountable to all for what they were saying. Some of them directly told the Sanhedrin that they could not be quiet about these things, but that they had to freely proclaim them. Eventually, most of the apostles came to be martyred for their testimony, giving their lives for what, as witnesses of what happened, we have to conclude they deeply believed.

And then there is the testimony of the millions who have come afterwards. Believing God and believing he sent Jesus to die on the cross for our sins. Men like Saul of Tarsus have consistently converted in almost every generation, testifying to that generation that they ought to pay close attention. Unlikely conversions such as happened in Whittaker Chambers or Charles Colson serve as a powerful suggestion that the claims of Christ presented in the Bible deserve closer attention. But beyond the enigma of such men is the salient testimony of untold millions who testify of changed lives upon meeting Jesus, and all give credit to the truths made evident in the Bible.

It is to be admitted, and I freely confess, that a book which portends the many miracles that it does, is a book designed to raise our eyebrows in questions. But it is the very miracles that are told about that make the Bible more likely to be true. In books which the church has rejected, many miracles are accounted there, but it is obvious from an initial reading that the whole piece is suspect, as the miracles are too convenient, and too easily made up. When we come to Christ and his miracles, we are left with miracles that even the enemies thought were true. Notice the people over and again who were healed on the Sabbath. For the Jew work on the Sabbath was an anathema—something that no good Jew would entertain the idea of. But Christ, the Lord of the Sabbath, deliberately did these miracles of healing on the Sabbath as a sign that someone greater than the Sabbath was here, and that they would do well to listen and watch what he was doing. Well did the leaders of the Jews watch, for after his healing on the Sabbath, they sought to kill him. They accepted the fact of his healing—it was demonstrated clearly—to their raised ire, and not at all to their recognition of his Lordship. It is hardly likely that, someone, making up a story would include such miracles in the first place, for miracles performed on the Sabbath would automatically be excluded.

Look at the ones whom he raised from the dead. First, a little girl who had already been pronounced dead, and certified as such by the mourners. Scoffing and laughing and jeering at Jesus, who proclaimed that the little girl was sleeping, they were astounded by the miracle which occurred. Hardly a story which was contrived, for the living witnesses had only to suggest the whole thing was a made up story, and it would collapse under its own weight. The living girl was a proof they could not refute. The silence of hostile witnesses screams of the very validity of the miracles. Lazarus, the one whom John tells us about, is a detailed story, and Lazarus was from a well-known family with many mourners who came to the funeral. Dead four days, and Jesus walks to the tomb and says, “Lazarus, come forth.” The miracle is plain for all to see, and again the silence of the many hostile witnesses screams of the validity of the miracles.

Miracles in themselves cannot be denied on the basis of experience, which many try to do. They say since I have never seen a miracle, therefore miracles must not happen. Even in the Bible, miracles are rare outside of the Son of God, and their very rarity speaks at least of their remarkableness. I have never seen a dark star, yet if I were to deny their existence, no doubt there would be many to correct me. Lewis reminds us, “Those who assume that miracles cannot happen are merely wasting their time by looking into the texts: we know in advance what results they will find for they have begun by begging the question.”⁵ God spoke audibly about his Son three times during the ministry of Jesus. Some heard an audible voice; others heard thunder; still others heard nothing at all. A great deal of the world that we see about us depends entirely upon our own viewpoint. A favorite quote of mine from the infamous atheist, Bertrand Russell, says that “It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.” I find that I do quite agree with Russell about this, at least. Man is not rational; all the so-called rational arguments that he produces comes from his prior emotional state.

Thus we see, in Darwin’s visit to the Galapagos Islands, he came back with an explanation for what he saw to be godless, while the captain of the ship that went with him, being a believer, came back testifying that the wonders they both saw declared a Creator. Afterward, they famously held debates all over England many times, but my point is this, that they both had made prior decisions which drove their rationality. Man is a very complicated creature, and almost so deep as to be beyond understanding; is this not what the whole scope of modern psychology teaches us? Thus, I think the miracles of Jesus only suffice to convince those of us who would be believers, and seldom not those who assume miracles cannot happen. Thus, I come back to those in our generation, and even prior generations, to the John Newtons, to the Whittaker Chambers, and to the Charles Colsons, all men with prior convictions that God could not be true. And yet they became convinced otherwise, and the skeptics of our generation should pay attention.

Not believing in the miracles of the Bible hardly suffices as a charge against it; any rational person bases his outlook on what he or she sees, and a miracle is supposed to be something that occurs rarely, something that perhaps few of us would ever see in a lifetime. Indeed, an accounting of the miracles of Elijah gets us somewhere in the neighborhood of eight, depending on how we might count them. Eight times over the lifetime of the prophet who performed the most miracles is hardly enough to be seen, even by most in Elijah’s time. The testimony of those who were formerly skeptical is then double the effectiveness of those who were already open to belief.

Remember the naturalist, the one who does not believe in miracles? He is only parroting what he already believes, putting it in the clothes of rationality, but with, if you will, undergarments of emotion. In reality, he only parrots that which he already feels. “What Naturalism cannot accept is the idea of a God who stands outside Nature and made it.”⁶ That is why I say it is the former naturalist to whom we must look and seriously take his changed testimony, for he is one who has been on both sides.

So perhaps, the question that we are really looking at is not, “Is the Bible really trustworthy?” Instead, the question that we ought to look at is whether our preconceived bias prevents us from seriously looking at the claims of the Bible. Are our preconceptions keeping us from seeing the claims of Jesus? If I know miracles cannot be true, then I will naturally dismiss the rest of what Jesus says as nonsense. Jesus stated this clearly, if somewhat backwards to my illustration, saying, “If you will not believe me, then believe the miracles which I do.” He clearly tells us then to pay attention to what he has said, and then to the miracles which are given to demonstrate the validity of the message.

The Bible does claim to be the only word of God. It claims that we are lost, bereft of all hope, and in a state of rebellion against our Creator. Historically the veracity of the Bible should not be questioned, but as we have seen, men are naturally disposed not to believe it just because of miracles. Thomas Jefferson famously retranslated all of the New Testament, taking out all of the miracles. I think that is our natural tendency—to believe that only which we have seen. But if God really does exist—if he really cares about us individually—if he has chosen to communicate to us through his Son and his Word, then we neglect the message of Jesus at our own peril. Ought we not to at least begin by learning that message, and then, having learned, to let the testimony of miracles convince us that the message is indeed true?





1. McDowell, Josh; Dave Sterrett (2011-01-01). Is the Bible True . . . Really?: A Dialogue on Skepticism, Evidence, and Truth (The Coffee House Chronicles) (Kindle Locations 436-438). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.
2. McDowell, Josh; Dave Sterrett (2011-01-01). Is the Bible True . . . Really?: A Dialogue on Skepticism, Evidence, and Truth (The Coffee House Chronicles) (Kindle Locations 504-506). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.
3. McDowell, Josh (1992-09-01). Evidence That Demands a Verdict, 1: 001 (pp. 39-40). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.
4. McDowell, Josh (1992-09-01). Evidence That Demands a Verdict, 1: 001 (p. 39). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.
5. Lewis, C. S. (2009-06-03). Miracles (Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis) (p. 4). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
6. Lewis, C. S. (2009-06-03). Miracles (Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis) (p. 11). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

Is our faith in God reasonable?

Naturalism as a philosophy pervades our world. What is naturalism, you may ask? Naturalism is the philosophy that what you see is the only thing that is. Naturalism has pervaded our world for many thousands of years, but its focus on our society sharpened considerably after the Reformation. As men learned things like germ theory and watched the star’s march through the universe they came to appreciate that many things heretofore unknown, were actually following regular and definable laws. Some improperly declared that all things must be observable, else they would not be true. People who are a lot smarter than I am have taken that statement: All things must be observable to be true, and asked is that statement observable? Since we cannot see that statement in our world and have no way of testing it, it cannot have the validity of its own words. It collapses totally as a philosophy since we cannot demonstrate its truth using our observations.

Many of our forefathers embraced the idea of strict observation to understand the world around them. Studies of the lives of Franklin, with his many inventions, as well as that of Jefferson, who I understand in his towering intellect, wrote some original calculus that is still admired today, show that we had forefathers who embraced observation of the world around them as a main means of understanding it. Nevertheless, such men, not renowned as Christians themselves, were also men to declare that we have “certain unalienable rights” that are derived directly from our Creator. They were by no means captive to naturalism; instead they boldly stated something never stated before: Man is endowed by rights that come from God, and government has no right to interfere with them. We do not understand the scope of this statement until we realize what it was implying—that justice and liberty come from God, and not from government. It was a statement that implicitly challenged the right of any government to govern apart from due regard to these unalienable rights. For the first time in history, a government was to be built on the premise of God-given rights. Whatever else they may have thought about Christianity becomes eclipsed under these unalienable rights. They were basing the foundations of our very government on the theme of rights coming from God, not rights granted benevolently from our government. Thus, the philosophy of our government was totally against the philosophy of today, that of naturalism.

When we look at many of the things government is trying to do to, and for, the people today, we can see just how far wrong the government has come in commanding what we “ought” to do. But that, as interesting as it is, is not the question I am seeking to answer. Is our faith in God reasonable? The answer to that question might come from naturalism, one of the biggest beliefs of our day. But naturalism has no place at all, properly speaking, since it is illogical and, as we saw above, collapses under its own weight. Life is certainly much more than what we see, and scientists are just beginning to understand how unique we are, in all of the universe. It used to be, in the time of C.S. Lewis, that men thought we were just one of a multitude of worlds, yet now, that idea is being seriously challenged. Our universe cries out for the hand of a designer.

Recently I did some repair work on my driveway, and a new patch of concrete was carefully laid. The name, Dwayne, appeared in a fresh piece of concrete repair to my driveway. When I looked and saw it, I did not assume that accident and mutation and chaos had created the name, “Dwayne” in my concrete. I knew that my grandson Dwayne had scrawled his name in it. I saw a design and correctly presumed a Designer. Similarly, when I was a young man of 17, in my third year of biology, I first observed something which struck me as unique, and perhaps not possible apart from being designed. I did not know it then, but I had been struck by the first cause argument. The first cause argument is one that draws us back to see something that has caused the event to occur. So it was when I was 17, and I first considered the general properties of water. Water, with its freezing point of 32 degrees, and a boiling point of 100 degrees, just fit the world in which we live. Though I did not fully understand the consequences, I could see that a five degree variation in the properties of water would have enormous, if not lethal, consequences on the world. Where would our water cycle be? Rain could become enormously more or less, according to the properties of water. What if water froze at 50 degrees? It would appear mostly as ice in our world, and most likely life as we know it would not be possible. It was the first time, as an adult, that I had looked at something simple in our world, the water molecule, and wondered how it came to be. It was screaming to me that design was in the properties of water—for it was simply incredible to me that it all happened by accident.

I have been reading an excellent book, “I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist”, one of the very best books on Christian apologetics I can remember reading in my lifetime. In it, the authors give an excellent quote from Philip Johnson, “Phillip Johnson serves as the sharp edge of a steel wedge that is now splitting the petrified wood of naturalism in the scientific community. He correctly points out that “Darwinism is based on an a priori [prior] commitment to materialism, not on a philosophically neutral assessment of the evidence. Separate the philosophy from the science, and the proud tower collapses.””¹ Materialism, being another synonym for naturalism, is assumed by its believers, and cannot be proved. The evidence, even in the simpler blocks of cell life, screams for a Designer.

It takes much more faith to believe that an accident, with the right chemicals, with just the perfect situation, and with a precise measurement, was what started life on the earth. We have so much in our world, just as I wondered about the properties of water above that screams out that it has been designed. It can therefore be concluded that our faith in a Creator is perfectly reasonable. Notice that I have not got as far as Biblical revelation yet, and so I have not established that the Christian God is indeed reasonable. At this point all that can be concluded is that the evidence of the beginnings of life suggest a complexity that appears impossible for accident and chaos and mutation to work together and randomly create life. At this point, our intelligent scientists are still struggling to create anything like the beginning of life—it appears impossible. But even if it is possible, and they succeed at long last in creating some of the simplest forms of life, all they have done is proven that it takes intelligence to create life.

I have been overly simplistic for the sake of brevity, and again I point you to the book as being well worth your time if you have ever wondered about these basic questions. In my next post, I will try to show that the Bible can be reasonably taken as our sign from this Creator God, and that we can rely totally on its message.

1. Geisler, Norman L.; Turek, Frank (2004-03-12). I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist (Foreword by David Limbaugh) (Kindle Locations 2352-2354). Crossway. Kindle Edition.

What does the Bible mean when it says you are saved?

Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.
1 Timothy 2:4
The word saved is not at all foreign to the New Testament, and is used scores of times, but what does it mean? The Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which is lost, says the Scripture. To understand the meaning of lost, we have to go back to the place where man first got lost, the book of Genesis. In Genesis, Adam and Eve are tempted by the serpent, and both give in to that temptation. It is at that point that the “deed” of mankind is turned over to the tempter. Perhaps the whole of earth is included in the transfer, for we know that Jesus refers to Satan as the “prince of the power of the air”, and we certainly know from Paul that the whole of creation is groaning because of its lostness. Isaiah tells us that one day, when the earth is restored, everything will be so different. He tells us that the child will play next to the snake and not suffer harm, that the wolf and the lamb will lie down together, and that the lion will come to eat straw.

Earth will have to undergo radical changes for these things to happen; and there is a plethora of other things that will happen in the final judgment of mankind, the time when Satan will at last be judged for his folly. If you are at all like me, you have to be wondering why all of this unfolded the way that it did, but we are not exactly told the why. We do have a bit of information on what happened, though. If I may speculate a bit, I would guess that we have been used as an instrument to foil the plan of Satan, that God took us, the least of beings, and made us to be that which brought the folly of Satan to light, that all of heaven may see it plainly. In other words, God is using the least of beings to confound one of the highest of beings, and wants to at the same time, put on a demonstration for all to witness. Certainly, the scripture says that “you shall bruise his heel and he shall bruise your head”. From the beginning of time man has waited for the Redeemer, seeing him come at last and allow himself to be put on a cross, to die for all who should receive him.

Receiving him will lead to being “saved”, for we were under the indictment that had stood from the time of Satan’s Garden temptation, and were to be judged. When we accepted the temptation, we became the mirror image of our new father, but what does it mean to be in the image of our father? In Isaiah, Satan purposes for himself five “I wills” that seem to give us a glimpse of what we became. Let’s look at those five “I wills”:

1. I will ascend into heaven (Is. 14:13).
2. I will exalt my throne above the stars of God (v.13).
3. I will sit on the mount of the congregation (v. 13).
4. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds (v. 14).
5. I will be like the most High (v. 14).

Heaven must have shaken on the day that it heard these five “I wills”, and I am not going to look at each of them and try to figure out what they might mean, but this much is evident. The “I wills” are statements of pride lifted up against the Most High. In transferring our ownership from God to Satan, we transferred our likeness from being like that of God our father to that of Satan our father. I would guess that our biggest folly has to do with imitating the last “I will” which says I will be like the most High. In the case of Lucifer, the shining one, there was at least some reason behind the pride. He held the glory of God and was responsible to make it shine for all to see. In the case of men saying I will be like the most High, it is utterly ridiculous, for compared to God we are nothing.

And yet there is a basis for the claim. Somehow when we were created, God breathed his image into us, and we are forever stamped with something of his nature in us. And that image has become horribly marred with our sin. God chose to judge that sin, our sin, in the body of his own Son. “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Cor. 5:21). Thus, we are “saved” from the wrath of God, just as we were all condemned in sin through Adam, so we are all made righteous through believing God. Not everyone is saved; only those who believe. “To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved” (Eph. 1:6). God has saved us from wrath and judgment through faith in what Jesus, his Son, has done.

So in mankind, God has chosen to rescue those from judgment who will believe. But, what, you may ask, does God do about those who do not believe? “He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God” (John 3:18). Thus, the saved are those who believe God. In the instant that you first believe, then the wonderful processes of God are put into motion, sealing you forever to Christ. Chafer says it this way: “Being in Christ, they are one in each other in a mystic union which is both incomparable and incomprehensible—a unity like that within the blessed Trinity (John 17:21-23). They are already constituted citizens of heaven (Phil 3:20). These blessings are not only as exalted and spiritual as heaven itself and eternal, but they are secured apart from all human merit at the instant one believes on Christ to the saving of the soul.”¹ At the point of belief, the work is all God’s, and none of ours.

In giving the gospel, which means literally “good news”, to all of mankind, men have been cunningly creative in missing the message. There is not any “saving” available to any, except to those who will believe. Men and women famously put off this important decision; others when they hear the claim, consider it well, and then go on with their lives, forgetting all about it. That will simply not do. Men and women have thought over the centuries that somehow God will “fudge” things in their favor, and they think that they will not be condemned, because they know of many who are behaving more wickedly than they are. That will simply not do. We are not in a contest, vying with one another to see who is better. Rather, we are all condemned under Adam with the same death penalty. Unwittingly, we placate ourselves with platitudes, thinking that someday we will work it out, and frequently we go to our graves without ever having worked it out. That, too, will simply not do. The day of choice is here and now, and the claims of Christ are the most important claims you will ever consider. Listen to the very words of Jesus, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6). No one—not one person will ever come to God under his own power, with his own deeds. We are under a blanket condemnation that can only be removed by accepting the sacrifice of Jesus—sometimes referred to shortly as “accepting Christ”. That is what it means to be saved. Simply, it is the only thing that will do.


1. Chafer, L. (1947). Systematic theology (Vol. 4, p. P.16). Dallas: Dallas Seminary Press.

How do we follow God?

I am on the eve of finishing my study of the four great awakenings of America, and I am struck how one theme seems so prevalent in every awakening. But as I am not charismatic, I find myself hesitating to mention what I found. However, I am becoming convinced, that if we wish to see another awakening of God, that we will see this one theme repeated yet again. In every awakening, there was present an effort to seek a blessed experience with the Holy Spirit.

Before I talk frankly about what might dismay those of us who are not charismatic, let’s examine some of the common traits of this blessed experience. In every awakening this experience was something which aroused controversy. Jonathan Edwards had to defend much of the revival in his church for years afterwards, and several of the books that he has written deal with these defenses. He would take those who came forward, pray with them, and wait, often for hours, sometimes for all night until what can be described as the blessing and peace of the Holy Spirit would come over those making decisions. His own wife become one who experienced this blessing. Charles Finney taught about a second experience where one’s life became Spirit-filled. This was true during the Second Great Awakening, and by the time of the Third Great Awakening it had been named frequently as the “baptism of the Holy Spirit”. Even D.L. Moody, upon hearing about this, sought the blessing for himself. During our latest awakening, the Fourth Great Awakening, the record is clear. Many waited on the Lord, not so much calling this the “baptism of the Holy Spirit” but rather seeking a deep and meaningful experience with God. I just read an account this morning on a youth pastor from Sacramento who held a prayer meeting where most of those who prayed were overcome completely by the Spirit.

In discussing how we might follow God, I cannot in good conscience pass by that which is so obvious: there is a greater life to be had in walking with the Spirit. My own church just finished a series on the theme of Romans 12:1&2, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.” If we are to follow God, we definitely want to present our bodies to God, that we might be transformed into a Spirit filled life, where we might regard God’s will in all that we say and do. That means, whatever else it means, that we are to look and pray for a deeper walk with God. Do we expect God to answer? Yes, again and again. These answers mean that we can and ought to experience many renewed visitations of the Holy Spirit.

Thus our lives should be filled with all sorts of second, third, and fourth experiences. We ought to be diligently seeking to present ourselves to God, that the Spirit might take us and help us to live a life filled with his blessing. In no way does that mean that we will escape problems; we are in the world, and will face wars, disease, persecutions, and death, but as Paul reminds us to do we need to count all of that as naught as we look to what glorious things God has bestowed upon us.

But back to the awakenings. As far as I can tell, the waiting on the Spirit’s blessing done in the First Great Awakening by Jonathan Edwards was the most scriptural. That is, by the measurement of the Bible, this seeking of a visible answer to prayer, one in which the Holy Spirit might flood the soul and overwhelm the penitent with joy and tears. As the awakenings progressed into the Second and especially the Third, the emphasis became something called “the baptism of the Holy Spirit.” Properly speaking, this does not measure up to Biblical standards. “For by one Spirit were we all baptized into one body” (1 Corinthians 12:13). The Bible makes it clear that all believers are baptized into the body at the point of belief—it is not a subsequent experience to be sought for, but rather something every believer is given by the grace of God.

Having pointed out the Scripture, and that many were simply wrong in seeking a “second-only” experience with the Holy Spirit, what can be said for these beliefs in the awakenings? I would point out that the doctrine is errant, but not all that far from the true ideal. We should be seeking more from God all the time—do we not want to walk closer to God each day? But they who believed in this doctrine began also believe that once you experienced this baptism, you would begin to live a “perfected life”. That is also errant, departing far from the struggle that Paul describes in Romans seven. Nevertheless, there is more than a germ of truth in the idea of a Spirit-filled walk. As we begin to walk with God, we do indeed begin to leave our sinful practices behind, and we do indeed press onward toward the high calling of Christ Jesus. We do become better, but to the mature Christian who is looking inward at his own life sees the inward pull of his life ever there, and he even becomes more mindful of its pull as he is walking with God. Thus Paul could honestly describe himself as the “chief of sinners” because he could see the constant pull of his inward life. He knew that he was not nearly what he ought to be—far from perfection—and yet one of the greatest of apostles at the same time.

That is sort of our problem in following God. We are to take on the Holy Spirit because that is indeed the only way that we have to possibly follow God. Anything else is doomed to failure, for we cannot walk in our flesh and ever please God. But as we grow and mature in Christ, hopefully having many experiences with the blessings of the Holy Spirit, we are at the same time ever more cognate of the fact that our hearts are so far from what they should be. We ought not to make the mistake of our forefathers here, coming to think of ourselves more highly than we ought, but we ought, as the Bible says, to always consider others better than ourselves. We are called to serve, but serve in all humility, knowing that if it were not for God’s deepest grace, we would lose ourselves totally.

It is a puzzle to me that we who have been saved can forget so quickly what we were saved from, but this even goes deeper than that. If God had not graciously given us his own Spirit, even after we are saved we would be nothing but despicable. Despicable me. Despicable you. But our thanks be to God, who graciously pours his Spirit out without measure, that we may find the power to live and walk with him. Without him in us our pride and arrogance would well up, and no one would see Jesus living in us. But thanks be to God! He has poured out his Spirit, and called us to live with the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law (Galatians 5:22). The hymn says it all, “If you want to be great in God’s kingdom, learn to be the servant of all.” Our Lord, the greatest of all, gave us the example in humbling himself and washing the feet of the disciples. Let us humble ourselves in following him, and get busy by washing one another’s feet. But as we do it, hadn’t we ought to be seeking the Spirit?

What does the Bible mean when it says you are lost?

1 And Jesus entered and passed through Jericho.
2 And, behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus, which was the chief among the publicans, and he was rich.
3 And he sought to see Jesus who he was; and could not for the press, because he was little of stature.
4 And he ran before, and climbed up into a sycomore tree to see him: for he was to pass that way.
5 And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up, and saw him, and said unto him, Zacchaeus, make haste, and come down; for to day I must abide at thy house.
6 And he made haste, and came down, and received him joyfully.
7 And when they saw it, they all murmured, saying, That he was gone to be guest with a man that is a sinner.
8 And Zacchaeus stood, and said unto the Lord: Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have taken any thing from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold.
9 And Jesus said unto him, This day is salvation come to this house, forsomuch as he also is a son of Abraham.
10 For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.
Luke 19 (KJV)

One of the most beautiful things found in Scriptures is the willingness and love of God for those of us who are lost. Though this passage above is written about a time before the church, and I do notice that Jesus is offering salvation to one who is a son of Abraham, which means he is speaking to someone from the house of Israel, this passage yet has application for the common man today. I do recognize that its primary application must be in the period in which it was written. Who was he speaking to? A man named Zacchaeus, a hated tax collector, a man not worthy to be called a Jew. And what did Jesus represent at the time? He was the king, rejected of Israel, but at this point, still reaching out. And yet Jesus looks upon Zacchaeus, sees his heart, and issues a clarion call to him. “Come down,” he says, “and entertain me as your house guest.” Zacchaeus, probably longing in his heart to be noticed of Jesus, for why else would he climb a tree, was overjoyed and thrilled to entertain the man who claimed to be the Son of God.
I think there is an unmentioned important word here which eclipses the story itself. Elsewhere in the Bible, and repeated numerous times in the New Testament, is the phrase, “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned unto him as righteousness.” Nowhere do we see these three words, “believed”, “faith”, or “trust”, and yet the story would not be able to stand without understanding that Zacchaeus based his response deeply in belief. Jesus, seeing that, remarks that today salvation had come to his house. As the church age unfolded, salvation offered from God did not change. What did change was that the focus was no longer primarily upon Israel. Now it was upon the rest of the world, referred to in the Bible as the Gentiles. Salvation has always come by faith, for those who trust God.
Jesus tells a parable of a wedding feast where the invited guests refuse to attend, though they are bidden to freely come. The head of the wedding party, seeing that most are refusing to come, sends out invitations to the all who are available, both good and bad. Mostly I deem the bad. That is the church today, you and me, called to a wedding and Paul tells us somewhere else, that our presence might arouse Israel to jealousy. We Gentiles have gotten ourselves invited to a wedding which was not to involve us at all, and there is no merit whatever in our being saved.
For Israel rejected their King, wanting nothing to with him, and instead, in the sovereign plan of God, a suffering Savior was sent. Israel rejected the Savior, that the Gentiles may be offered the Savior. God, who is long-suffering, has not replaced Israel with the church, but has broadened the offer of salvation to all who will simply believe. But what is the offer of salvation? And the more important question, the topic of this short piece, what does being lost mean?
If I start from the basic meaning of lost, someone who does not know his way, that pretty much is the meaning of lost here. But when the Bible talks about the lost, it goes a bit deeper. Being lost, according to Scripture, means that one is blind to the fact of one’s “lostness”. Being lost is bad enough, but it becomes much worse if one cannot even see that he is lost. Part of what happens when God begins the work of redemption in the heart is conviction of sin. The blind person simply has not believed that God the Father sent his Son to be a propitiation for his sins. But when he starts being convicted he begins to see somewhat that he is in desperate need—in other words his eyes are being opened to his plight and he is becoming aware that he are lost. For the first time the lost person begins to see the work that God has done in offering him redemption. He begins to see that Christ died personally for his sin, that God did this without compulsion, freely and graciously, and often times that person becomes overwhelmed with emotion as he is struck with the magnitude of love that God has demonstrated toward him.
Notice the usual order: first there is hearing the good news that God loves us, and sent his Son to die for us, and then second comes the realization (with the aid of the conviction work of God) that we are utterly sinful. Paul proclaims somewhere that he is the chief of sinners. Utter conviction had taken place in his heart as he realized his need for salvation, but it usually comes after hearing the good news of redemption. Many people make the mistake of evangelizing their friends by first telling them that they need to repent, and that will have little effect on them. Instead, more people would listen if the good news was proclaimed first, that they might see that they indeed have been blind. Repentance follows the realization of the gospel always, and seldom does it work the other way around. Indeed, the danger of early repentance is that the person comes to believe that his repentance has earned his salvation—a thought utterly foreign to the process of salvation. It is God’s revelation to us, his working upon our hearts with the message of the gospel that compels us to see our need for repentance.
In reading Greg Laurie’s autobiography, I found this testimony from just after he received Christ that seems to apply: “I’d been raised without many moral guidelines, but deep down inside I knew right from wrong. All the wrong I’d done—but more than that, the wrongness of my selfish heart—had accumulated into a heavy weight of guilt I’d never even known I had.”¹ The pattern of people receiving Christ is remarkably similar; the need for one to repent is not really noticed until the point of belief. Thus when we believe, and only then, we become aware of our lostness.
There are many things that happen to new believers; Chafer has identified over 33 things that happen at the time a person receives Christ. But the divine order does seem to be believe first and then repent. Until one sees his need to believe, until the scales are removed from his blind eyes, he is utterly unable to come to God. Thus the timeless hymn, Amazing Grace, gives us these lines: I once was lost, but now am found, Was blind, but now I see. Still the enigma remains; you will not know you were lost until you are found, sort of like moving into a house that you did not realize was to become your home and a part of you. “Oh, you might say when arriving, “I did not realize it, but I have never been home until now.”So the new Christian who realizes that he is seeing himself as he was for the first time might exclaim, “Oh my, I was a lost fellow, wasn’t I?”


1. Laurie, Greg, and Ellen Santilli Vaughn. Lost Boy: My Story. Ventura, Calif.: Regal, 2008. 90. Print.

Thoughts from God's famous promise in Chronicles

Let me transpose 2 Chron. 7:14 from Israel's terms to the church's terms. I realize the interpretation belongs to Israel, but I think its application is valuable for the church:

If my people. . .
God’s people, chosen of him, given the promise of new life, forever with his Son.
. . . which are called by my name
Called Christians, because we are called to take up our cross and follow Him
. . . shall humble themselves
Shall throw our faces on the floor in contrition for not living the life, the new life He has called us to live, to confess before him that we are utterly and completely unable to do so
. . . and pray
Talk to the Almighty God as if he were really there, listening, and caring for us, not praying for things as much as for him to begin using us for his purposes.
. . . and seek my face
Reading and memorizing and treasuring the word of God as the personal message that God has given us.
. . . and turn from their wicked ways,
Not by our power is this possible, but by the wonderful power of his Spirit, which is the only way we can turn from our wickedness.
. . . then I will hear from heaven
Our prayers are a sweet smelling savor to our God, treasured and kept, listened to and answered, in the mysteries of God, even before we ask them.
. . . and will forgive their sin,
This part is different for the Christian, for we have been already forgiven of all of our sins when we met Jesus at the cross, and that is the wonderful grace of God, which we need to remember as we step into our new life.
. . . and will heal their land.
The promised land, by application, is that which we look forward to, for God has made no promises for our land to be healed.

“If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.” 2 Chronicles 7:14

What can the righteous do?

If the foundations be destroyed,
What can the righteous do?
Psalm 11:3

I am retired one day now, and during this past year I have often found myself shaking my head in incredulousness at where our general society is headed. I am an old man who has watched the Fourth Great Awakening turn into what I call the Great Slide, one of many in our history in which we seem to go so far from our Christian heritage. We seem to be moving off base more and more each day, with the very foundations of what we have counted on as basic virtues. But, I remind myself, there are a couple of things that have brought us to this viewpoint, and I want to write a bit about that in this post.

It is generally true that we are losing our fundamentals, and our foundations are being destroyed, and one only has to read the provocative piece (I am, after all, a public school teacher) from Cal Thomas, recommending that all Christians consider desisting from the public schools until the school administrators “wake up”, to realize that many Christians are rightfully alarmed. But we have been several lifetimes getting here, and I would like to point to a couple of particulars that have helped bring us this awful point.

Says the scripture, sin is a reproach to any people, but righteousness exalts a nation. In our eager pursuit of righteousness, we have erred mostly in our unwillingness to acknowledge sin as sin. Instead, we have attempted to exalt tolerance as the cardinal virtue, allowing it to become the primal lens with which we view ourselves. Tolerance has gained its prominent place largely because of the sins of prior generations. For hundreds of years our nations endured racism and a system where people often were categorized unfairly solely by the color of their skin.

As a fourth grade teacher, I have watched the last decade of kids routinely accuse one another of “racism” with nearly every innocent remark. At the age of nine and ten, they have little understanding of the term, but their very remarks suggest that our society is hyper-acutely aware of this thing called “racism”. Teaching children to tolerate and respect one another is now harder than ever, if only because we have so much to unteach. In that same Cal Thomas article I linked above, Thomas refers to a stand-up comedian who routinely refuses to speak to college groups because they are so charged up with their misunderstandings of tolerance. Evidently the comedian has come to understand some of the veil that is blinding our hearts.

Biblical tolerance was taught during Roman times, when women were seldom included in anything important, and nearly one-half of the population was enslaved to the other half. During these troubled times, Paul penned words which have echoed down the halls of history, and still ring so soundly today. Paul, interestingly enough, has been hated by various groups for his teaching of the place of women, but those who interpret Paul in this way have little understanding of his important declarations. These declarations, properly understood, were against everything the Roman Empire stood for. “For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit” (1 Corinthians 12:13). Here he, a jewel of Jews, makes Jews and Gentiles to be equal, both slave and free. In another statement he goes even further, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). When we look around ancient literature, or ancient societies, there is little that would or could compare with this epic statement of equality, and it is on that basis that much of our modern republic is based. And therein is the problem.

Early American Christians conceived of a society which would tolerate all beliefs because we believed devoutly in this commonality of man. We declare, as a nation, that “all men are created equal”, and though slavery was a glaring inconsistency in our history, in time these words came to have fuller meaning, based, I think, on these same great statements of Paul. But that is exactly the problem! Paul is applying these great statements to Christians, evidenced in the Galatians statement that we are all one in Christ Jesus. It is our common faith which makes the equality, and equality without that faith I fear we are learning to our dismay is license to flee from godly things.

And so we come to a place where the American experiment de Tocqueville so admired, and who wondered whether it would last, is finally coming to an end. And perhaps it is. We much depended on the Christian influence of our democracy, and if that influence fades we will lose those cherished freedoms also. Look at the other democracies of the world, and nowhere will you find any democratic republic which has tolerated so successfully such a diverse people. In the end, though, diversity is not to be celebrated as the end—rather all are measured by the same yardstick, and all must answer the question to God, “What have you done with my Son?” The battle is not over yet—for our history teaches us that miracles of renewal and revival can happen again and again. The question of focus is whether the Christians of the next generation will boldly speak out, or whether they will choose to fade, as so many of the present generation have, into the sunset of false tolerance and diversity.

Historically, our problem is similar to that of the Corinthians. In Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, he remonstrates the church because they are “tolerating” the sin of a man choosing to live with his father’s wife. The church of Corinth, even as the nation of America, was quite proud of their tolerance. Did they not love? Did they not have the very love of God for every situation and every relationship? Paul reminded them of their obligation to live and walk in purity, and with that holiness in mind, Paul commanded them to put this man out of the church, that they might attend properly to the things of God. In the next letter, the man evidently repenting of his sin, is still being condemned by the church. After all, had not the apostle commanded them to put him out? Yet, in this letter Paul commands them to have mercy and forgiveness for the same man, lest the church be used of the devil and fall under condemnation. There is forgiveness for every sin to those who find faith, and repentance surely brings the mercy of our heavenly Father.

The analogy of course breaks down, for I am comparing a church to a nation. One was supposed to be full of those who had faith in the Son of God; the other is full of many who hate God, or who are blinded by this world, and do not see. And yet we of the nation appreciate the fact of our fall, for who can believe that our new sexual freedom is going to bring us closer to God? It is only our renewal to the things of God, and revival from the Spirit of God which will renew us as a nation toward the things of God. But it was never meant to be complete, as the church is complete. Rather it was a place where we tolerated those with the wrong faith, hoping, often in vain, that they might find a better way.
Most of my generation became afraid of offending someone and so we kept quiet, one testimony at a time, and that more than anything, has led to the Great Slide where our nation has moved and forgotten its roots. We are given those cherished freedoms as an “unalienable” rights, but we have forgotten the Giver, and when we forget the Giver we also forget all proper use of his gifts. It is to be expected that all sorts of deviant behavior is tolerated, and even encouraged, for our people have forgotten their Giver.

I am reminded of Tennessee Ernie Ford who so bravely insisted to Hollywood that he close his famous show each night with a Christian hymn. Hollywood, horrified at the controversy, was reluctant to give him permission, and Ford was able to win his case only by his persistence. He made a famous moment in history, where the things of God were able to be sung, and most of America came to Ford’s side against the common wisdom of Hollywood. In that generation a great battle for Christianity was won, and perhaps the Fourth Great Awakening was prepared in part on the basis of that battle. If Tennessee Ernie Ford won a battle it was temporary, and I suggest that we have lost the war for the hearts and souls of America because we are so afraid of “offending” someone, or we are so afraid of appearing “intolerant” that we scarcely whisper, let alone sing, the glorious freeing gospel of Jesus Christ.

Jesus reminds us that we are given the Rock of offense, and he would remind us that he is not come to bring peace, but rather a sword. The next generation of American Christians will surely be put to the test—will they be willing to offend in order that they may share the truth? Revival may yet come for Christians, if they will but hunger and thirst for righteousness. We need to remember the often admonition of the Psalmist, who said, “I shall not be moved.” Look and learn the things of God, and declare to a lost generation, “I shall not be moved”.

What does it mean when it says God loves us?

The biggest underlying question to be looked at before we examine God’s love from a Biblical perspective is, if God loves the world so much why does he allow so many to perish? To put it another way, if God sovereignly and only elects, as some would maintain, how is it that God claims to love the world, and yet allows so many to perish? A God of love who allows most people to perish is a God whose love becomes a love that is not understandable. John Wesley, so famously wrong about much doctrine, perceived at least this—a God who puts people into Hell without any chance of redemption is an evil God, and Wesley famously denied that we had such a God.

The logic of the difficulty is irrefutable. To state it briefly, the first premise is that God alone sovereignly chooses to save some. The second premise comes from the first, God deliberately excludes some—most of mankind—and makes it impossible for them to be saved because he sovereignly has excluded them. The difficulty of what is being suggested is obvious—God’s love for the world must include a plan to put or allow, if you will, most people to go to Hell, and that is hardly a good definition of what we understand love to be.
The premises can be stated thus:
1. God is a God of love.
2. God sovereignly chooses to save some.
3. God sovereignly chooses to damn most.
4. Therefore, God’s love is expressed in the damnation of most of the human race.

Yet, stated so starkly, I doubt there are many who would really hold to these glaring contradictions. Indeed, many Christians, upon hearing this strict interpretation, have noted that that if they really believed in that sort of God they would turn away from Christianity. The definition of love becomes so distorted that they cannot understand how God could be a God of love. Some have pointed out that under this belief system God and Satan at least agree on the general aim that both want most people in Hell.

Chafer, no Arminian himself, refers to this difficulty when he points out, “The fact indicated in this text, that the one ground of condemnation is the failure to believe on Christ as Savior, confirms the truth, restated more than one hundred times in the New Testament, that the one and only condition of salvation is faith in Christ as Savior.”¹ Thus, the difficulty is overcome when we realize that while all of the above premises may be true, salvation in every case is dependent on faith. It is very true that conviction and calling must come from God, but it is also true that no one gets there apart from faith. Indeed, the lack of faith is what separates us from a loving God, for it says that he is not come to condemn the world, but that the world, through him, might be saved.

Thus we have the complete sovereignty of God in each of our salvation, without exception, but we also have a hundred percent response of faith. Sovereignty and the choice of man works together in a way that we cannot, in this lifetime, understand. But we can understand the goodness of a God, who in his mysterious purposes, has elected some to be saved, and still holding everyone to account for not having faith. It is not a complete answer, I am afraid, but it seems to be what the Bible leaves us with, and is the best that I can do.

It is only with man being given responsibility for his faith, or lack thereof, that the love of God becomes evident. First, he loved us enough to send his son to die for us, that as the Scripture says, “whosover will may come.” Jesus, going to the cross, famously laments over Jerusalem over and again, saying, oh Jerusalem, oh Jerusalem. The lament itself only makes sense if we clearly see that when he says how often I would gather you and you would not, that when he says that he was holding Jerusalem responsible for their poor choices. Choices are somehow always folded into the sovereign plan of God.

I always think of the rich young ruler, whom Jesus loved (says the gospel), whom was given the choice of laying aside his riches and following Jesus, or following his riches. He chose wrongly, following his riches, of which he had many. Jesus was saddened by his choice, and uses his choice to remark that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get to heaven. At least in this case, we see someone loved of God, invited by God to follow, and refusing to do that which he knew was right. I think that the many of the lost souls can fit into this same category, loved by God, invited to follow, and yet finding some excuse not to follow. I do not know for certain, but I picture God saddened by the choices of so many for whom he died, but who for one reason or another, never have faith. God, fully justified, and yet still loving, is perfectly righteous to judge those who were given every opportunity to escape their judgment. Can there be anything more tragic to the lost to know that they have died and been judged, and yet still are loved by God? I can think of nothing worse to happen to me than to know I have missed the love of God, and because of justice an eternal wall now separates me from his love.

The discerning reader may note that I have avoided the common arguments of election. I think these arguments are argued far too much, and I think that we are not to know the complete picture of God’s election, much less be able to explain it coherently to anyone (something no one has ever done). At every point we see the word of God, we have one obligation, and that is to believe. Therefore when the scripture points to his sovereignty and election, as it does in so many places, our obligation is to believe. When he tells us that we must believe, then it becomes our responsibility before God to believe. Let the theologian work out how God does it; it is my plain duty to believe God, and that I fully aim to do.

Back to the question, what does it mean when it says God loves us? The perfect definition of love is what it always will be: Jesus. If fact, if I may borrow from an old saying: “Know Jesus. Know love.” “No Jesus. No love.” In the end, it will come down exactly to that. God has already judged the sins of the world, being borne on the back of our Savior, and if we persist in not believing that, we place our souls to be judged justly—something that not one of us can ever bear, and condemnation will always result.

God loves us enough to send his own Son to die in our behalf. We may think being old and experienced that we understand what love is all about, but until we meet Love we know nothing about it. Our worldly experiences, both disappointments and victories, will always pale before the love of God. And everything we think we know about worldly love will change irretrievably once we know Jesus. The best love experiences will serve but as preludes to the main act; the worst experiences will dim and be forgotten as we get to know the one true love, Jesus.

I leave with one devotional thought. Is there anything more that a loving God could give to free men other than that which he has freely given? In the cross which Jesus willing endured God literally gave his all. I find it such a wonderful harmony that each of the early Fathers was asked to give his child. Abraham literally was asked to sacrifice his son. Jacob watched his sons fight, and Joseph fled for his life, having stolen his father’s blessing, but his curse was to never see either his mother or his father again. Jacob’s favorite son was lost to him for many years but was at last restored, giving us a picture our Son who will one day be restored to us. In all three cases men were tested, being asked of God to give up their own sons, and giving us a picture of what, one day, God would do for us. Greater love hath no one than this—that Jesus should be freely offered that we might have the forever love of God. It is the ultimate gift of God. It is impossible that God should do more.
1. Chafer, L. (1947). The Convicting Work of the Spirit. In Systematic Theology (Vol. 2, p. 218). Dallas: Dallas Seminary Press.

What does the Bible mean when it says we should train up a child in the way he should go?

Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.
Proverbs 22:6

Jesus said to suffer the little children to come unto him, and forbid them not, for such is the kingdom of God. I have spent a lifetime working with children, mostly nine and ten year olds, and I am still a bit amazed by the readiness with which a child receives the gospel. I have eight grandchildren, and each of them I found wonderfully open to things which would help them to know God. I believe that this openness, this readiness is what our Lord refers to when he says “for such is the kingdom of God.” Elsewhere, the Lord reminds us, “Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:4).

As a society, I think we often recognize this preciousness of the young child, and though the nine and ten year olds that I teach have begun to lose their “very young preciousness”, there is still much to see and appreciate that is just so wonderful. As a teacher in his last weeks, I am grateful to God that he allowed me to spend so many rich years in the company of young children. They have kept me young in so many ways (I learned to solve the Rubik’s Cube this year!). The Bible gives us much direction in raising children, but what specifically does it mean when it says we ought to train up a child in the way he should go?

As a teacher, my heart aches when I deal with children of split custody homes, or worse, homes broken completely, without the benefit of a mom or a dad. The children often are finding an equilibrium in my class, and some wonderful adaptations happen all the time. Still, I look down the road for those children, and my heart aches for the basic fundamental way that they perceive the world. Without regard for finding fault, or attaching blame, children of motherless or fatherless families, or children with an abundance of three fathers or mothers, will never gain a “normal” view of relationships.

Often we in the church teach that we should appreciate our heavenly father as we appreciate our earthly fathers. More than once I have had adults come to me explaining that their earthly fathers were horrible abusers, and asking how to gain a good view of a benevolent Father in heaven. It is not that salvation is not offered to all such people; if I read my Bible correctly salvation is offered to all. But those with a severely distorted image of their mother or their father will have such a more difficult time in coming to Christ, in seeing the goodness of God.

It would seem to me to be a fundamental mistake to talk about this verse without mentioning that it is so important that the essentials be met in the family. My heart aches for the parents who have experienced divorce and are trying desperately to give some sense of normal to a child in that context. It is not uncommon for me to see children who go to two different homes, with one home supporting the school homework model, and the other neglecting it. Often these children have to manage two different backpacks, and made decisions several days in advance anticipating their schedule changes. It is a wonder to me that some do it so efficiently! Yet many struggle. I have had situations with children in more than two custody situations—often with a loving grandmother in the background. Home rotation is an excuse for late homework, or long term assignments are left at the wrong home. When I as a teacher ask the right questions I realize the responsibility of such children is at least double that of the ordinary child. They must find strength from themselves, at an age when most of them have barely mastered the ABCs, or the multiplication tables.

I wonder what the outcome will be for these children, but then I look at forty and fifty year old adults who reflect deep distrust of long term relationships that originates in the decades past problems of their own mothers and fathers. They seem to have problems maintaining long term relationships themselves, and thus the weakness of the parents is endowed to the children. It is because of family decline that many prophecy the complete decline of American society.

How would I advise such parents? All such parents often reach the same conclusion. They must begin with the basics. Find that relationship with God. Make it fundamental—strip all priorities aside and begin living with Christ as the Lord of your whole life. Often I see someone bereft of their spouse with everything already stripped away. They are hurting—hurt bad enough to jettison a lot of the baggage that stops us from following God. But that is just the beginning of perhaps a decade of rebuilding the broken.

The children are understandably broken when families fracture. Often we teachers see children lose a year or more in education. Instead of paying attention to the classroom and the lessons being taught, their little heads are filled with all the confusion and trauma of what has happened to them. They begin to fall behind, and do not take the time to absorb the new steps, and sometimes do not have the reinforcement that is so important coming from home. This is the time for “acting out”, expressing the frustration that is filling their hearts. Parents readily get this without having to be told—I see situation after situation where a compassionate parent is working to shore up the deficiencies showing up in the child. Often well-meaning school counselors intrude at this point and diagnose the child with ADD, when the parent should know it is the frustration of their life which is not unfolding in the way they had expected. Many millions of children have been diagnosed thus, when a central focus on the basics of life is what their little hearts are really crying out for.

Which brings me back to the question: how are we to train up a child in the way he should go? In these cases the answers are varied with the ages of the children. One bit of advice is that if you make a big sudden change over to following Christ do not expect your child to automatically and quickly follow, particularly if it is an older child. One does not usually change overnight—if you stop for a moment and consider, it took years for you to follow Christ. Give your child time to consider what you are doing and thinking. More evangelism takes place by parent’s examples than we might expect, and it is not here the spoken word that wins, but rather the deed. Take pains to let your faith be known, but also take care not to make your child feel uncomfortable and pressured to change. Be prayerful, for it is the Lord who softened your heart, and it is to the Lord that we must go if we expect to see change in our child.

To those who are blessed with a cohesive family the answer is easier. Never stop doing the things that you are doing—Bible classes, church attendance, and all the rest. Along with it, be sure to fill the house with Bible stories that are read often, with prayer and devotions in which the child participates. Over all, bathe the children in prayer. It was my earnest prayer that both my children come to Christ at an early age, and they both did. It was my earnest prayer that they both meet that someone special who was devoted to God, and they both did. We do have a God who is concerned for us, and when we present our own children to him in prayer, we have every confidence that he loves them more than we do.

I cannot leave this topic without reflecting on a special meaning that some have given to this verse. I do not think the meaning is present in the verse, but I agree with the philosophy behind it. Years ago, I seem to remember James Dobson teaching this on the radio—but my memory being on it is, I cannot say for certain. Dobson taught a very useful meaning to the verse. We should look for things that our child finds suitable, and when we find them, then perhaps we have found a characteristic that needs building. In other words, if we find that the child is particularly interested in scientific things, then we should work to awaken that interest. If he is musically inclined, then we ought to do what we can to see those interests enhanced. In short, child-reading then becomes a life-long process where we help the child to find fulfillment. Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it.

I think the verse studied is not meant to be that wide in its interpretation—but what a wonderful thing it would be to seek to give to our children. In the busy-ness of life, I think the Bible is remonstrating us to take care of the basic teachings that are so important: knowledge of the gospel, a readiness to take things to God in prayer, to respect their fellow man. If we teach them to fear God and love their fellow man, we have accomplished much.

Who do you say that I am? -Jesus

This one question is the most important question to all of mankind. If Jesus is who the Bible presents him to be, then every man’s fate is dependent on whether he recognizes and accepts that which Jesus has done. It is not too much to say that every man’s eternal fate is wrapped up intrinsically with this one man. Who, you may ask, is Jesus, that he should have so much to do with my eternal destiny?

Today is the age of materialism, and it is often believed that what you see is what you get. Nancy Pearcey tells us about the self- contradiction of materialism: “Indeed, the sheer act of asserting materialism contradicts itself. If I say, “Everything that exists is material,” is that statement itself material? Is it merely a series of sound waves? If I write out the statement, is it nothing but marks on a piece of paper? Of course not. The statement has a linguistic meaning. It has logical properties. It has a social function (communicating to others)— all of which transcend the material dimension. Ironically, materialism cannot even be stated without refuting itself.”¹ The Bible proclaims that man is an eternal being, created in the image of God, lost in the throes of sin, and held captive to a blindness that cannot acknowledge their Creator.

There is an empty spot in the soul of man that used to be filled by our knowledge of God, and we have no way of filling it again, but we are continually drawn towards filling that emptiness with anything that we can find; we invent our idols, and sometimes give those idols the very power of a god so that we may fill this empty void. But it is to all no avail. Nothing quite fits the void except the very person whose absence made the void, and man is doomed to an endless chasing after the wind, trying to fill an unfillable hole.

Who is this Jesus that he should act as the winnowing fork for mankind? Investigating what the Bible says about Jesus is a worthy study, and will be the focus of this short piece. But I believe it is very important to recognize the very different Jesus who is presented by the world. Every kind of Jesus is presented from the world, that people might look and receive that which is counterfeit. The lie abounds in the world that Jesus was just a great teacher and a wonderful person, but the Bible sets serious claims for Jesus being God come in the flesh. If we believe in anything less than the picture so clearly drawn in scripture, we are making Jesus out to be less than we ought, and imperil our own souls. Calling Jesus, who claims to be the very Son of God, a great teacher or a good person is the highest of insults. Some teach that Jesus is just an angel come for the mercies of mankind, but even this is insulting to the God, who in his great mercy, came in answer to our critical need.

“That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved” (Romans 10:9, 10). Across the New Testament is broad agreement that we are to hear the gospel and believe, and that believing we will be saved. How is it that Jesus is able to make such fantastic claims? Those very claims preclude any chatter about Jesus being a good teacher—for if he were not telling the truth, then it is obvious on the face that he could not be good. He did not leave that choice as an option for us. Either he must be lying (and therefore an evil teacher), or he must be mad (delusional people are be held not to be responsible for their beliefs), or he must be who he said he was. If he was mad, he would have been dismissed at once, but then what are we to do with his miracles? What are we to do with the masses who chose to follow him, knowing that they would lose their families and membership in the synagogue? Such people give their uttermost, their all, testifying that who they saw was neither a teacher, nor a delusional deceiver. And that leaves us with only one choice—he was who he said he was—and we need to take the utmost care with those claims. It does no good to suggest that since you have seen no miracles that you will not believe in them, for are we not then making the materialist’s objection that he knows that only what is visible is real? Such a claim itself is more than what we can see, and therefore it is self-refuting.

It will do no good whatever to dismiss the witnesses of history, for they were just as you or I and very probably just as skeptical as we would be. Thomas, skeptical to the end, was shown the holes in the very body of the Lord, and his reply should carry great weight with us, “My Lord and My God.” Skeptical of miracles? That is exactly how you are supposed to be—and I submit, it is exactly how many of the witnesses were. Miracles are not supposed to happen every day. They are supposed to shock us when we see them, they are quite out of the ordinary. When one person tells us they see a miracle, we have every right to offer skepticism, but when multitudes over the course of years tell us the same thing, in many times and in many ways, of course it will shock our sensibilities, but by all means it should cause us to stop and behold.

It is no good for us to dismiss the scriptures out of hand. They have been rigorously studied, copied many thousands of times over, and withstand all the criticism of the centuries. The gospels present a four sided portrait of Jesus that is in great harmony, and the differences are no more than a reasonable person might expect from different witnesses. Contrast the recent unrest in Ferguson, and the wide variety of witnesses. We have some “witnesses” who testified what they saw, and yet were proven beyond a reasonable doubt not to be there at all. There are witnesses in sharp disagreement who were there—what they saw and interpreted widely varied. Should we not expect our four writers of the gospel to give us a somewhat different emphasis on Jesus? That is exactly what we find. Men and women who were present and saw these things agreed with the presentation of the gospel writers. Any who exaggerated or stated things that were not true were not accepted as valid. There are really very few “disputed” passages in the gospels, and one could safely remove those disputed passages and still be left with a multitude of plain claims for Jesus that present him as God come in the flesh. Philip Schaff, an eminent theologian of the 1800’s, summarizes the first three gospels this way: “We conclude, then, that the Synoptists prepared their Gospels independently, during the same period (say between A.D. 60 and 69), in different places, chiefly from the living teaching of Christ and the first disciples, and partly from earlier fragmentary documents. They bear independent testimony to the truth of the gospel. Their agreement and disagreement are not the result of design, but of the unity, richness, and variety of the original story as received, understood, digested, and applied by different minds to different conditions and classes of hearers and readers.”²

But what of the Christ, as he is presented in the gospels? We learn that the Son existed with the Father before all time, and from the gospel of John we learn that “all things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made (John 1:3). Indeed, John seems to emphasize Jesus as the Son of God, the Savior of all mankind. Luke, the careful physician, says, “and a voice came from heaven, which said, Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased” (Luke 3:23). Thus Luke records the testimony of those who heard the voice of God; testimony can be no higher. Mark, who spent a great amount of his time with Peter, was most qualified to share Peter’s words about the Messiah, and he did share, saying, “Peter answereth and saith unto him, Thou art the Christ” (Mark 8:29). Matthew agrees with the other gospels, saying, “And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” (Matthew 28:18, 19, italics added). In all the gospels, then, there is a great harmony and agreement. Jesus, the Son of God, has come to redeem a world lost in sin. Schaff concludes this about the claims of the gospels, “He, the humblest and meekest of men, makes these astounding pretensions in the most easy and natural way; he never falters, never apologizes, never explains; he proclaims them as self-evident truths. We read them again and again, and never feel any incongruity nor think of arrogance and presumption.”³

These are the claims of Jesus. The question remains. Who do you say that he is? For if what is recorded is correct, and the historical evidence is very strong that it is, one day each of us will have to answer that question, and we will be held responsible for our reply. God has sent his Son to be a propitiation for our sins, but he will not force himself upon us. His Spirit woos us and convicts us, for he does indeed love us, but in the end, we must decide to believe. It is the only way given among men whereby we must be saved. If we dare to offer ourselves on the basis of our own merit, we shall surely fall. Recently a leader in New York made the facetious claim that when he died he would receive a “fast pass” to heaven, and would bypass all others based on his merit. The man who trusts his own merit is trusting a fool; there will be no good end to such trust. God sees us as we are, and chose freely to die in our behalf, that we might not have to die ourselves. But we must receive the gift of God if it is to have efficacy in our lives. What fools we must look like to the God of infinite mercy who has provided salvation to all when we spurn out of hand his free gift, if we will but receive it. “But as many as received him, to them gave he the power to become sons of God, even to those who believe on his name.” If you have not seriously looked at the claims of the gospels, perhaps today is the day to start looking.

1. Pearcey, Nancy (2015-03-01). Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes (p. 192). David C. Cook. Kindle Edition.
2. Schaff, Philip (2014-01-12). History Of The Christian Church (The Complete Eight Volumes In One) (Kindle Locations 8600-8604). . Kindle Edition.
3. Schaff, Philip (2014-01-12). History Of The Christian Church (The Complete Eight Volumes In One) (Kindle Locations 1815-1817). . Kindle Edition.