It's Day By Day

Note to reader

I lived this story. I wept as I wrote it a number of years ago, and even now I cannot read it without the tears welling in my eyes. The editor who published it a number of years ago said it was “How a boy—with the help of a loving dad and a loyal dog—learned about war, work, and the costs of freedom.”

At an early age I had a fascination for cameras. I used a couple of dollars of my cotton-picker money to order a little Donald Duck camera from The Johnson Smith Company. Incredibly, it took good pictures. I still have all the pictures I took with it, with the negatives! Among them are some precious shots of my dog, the hero of my story. The photo illustrations are from my Donald Duck camera, except the artists rendering at the beginning.

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My Daddy was wounded in the Argonne, so he already knew about war. Now, with four motherless sons beside a mountain of troubles he had anyway, here loomed the hardships of a bigger one.

He looked to the promises of the American West. Some said the farmers out there had cotton patches hard to see across, producing up to four bales to the acre. A vast country, they said, with plenty of elbow room. Why, out there, he reasoned, a man might break some of his fetters.

The Japanese bombs of far-away Pearl had fallen on every American. Like chain leashes they fell on our necks and anchored each of us to unpleasantries or led us away to worse. Remember Pearl Harbor stickers were yet on windows when Daddy gathered us four boys and left Oklahoma in an overloaded worn-out sedan.

Nine years old and youngest, I faced with every American those savage years. Everyone suffered in some way; for us it was living in board shacks, flea-infested sheep stalls, tool sheds and adobe cockroach hovels, besides the cotton patches, fruit orchards and expansive garlic fields.

Our more respected occupational title would have been Migrant Workers; local citizens frequently castigated us as “fruit tramps”. All of these negatives were more than my proud, steel-structured father could equate. Like every other American, I needed a counterbalance. I was too young to realize it, but Daddy knew.

So one memorable day in my life while Hitler was wasting Europe and the Japanese were enslaving the people of the Pacific where my oldest brother now served below the water line of an embattled aircraft carrier, a friend came over leading a lively puppy on a cotton-cord leash and said I could have him. I fell for him immediately. Oddly then, though no mystery now, Daddy agreed to it–with the understanding that, “He’ll be your dog, so you gotta look after ‘im”.

I asked my friend if he had named him yet, and he said, “Yeah, I call ‘im Possum”, whereupon the pup cast me a pitiful glance. So I renamed him Tip for the sprig of white on the tip of his tail.

We became fast friends from the start, and he quickly became an indispensable part of our belongings. Strangely, our separate lives and individual hurts somehow found strength in this bit of canine. Yes, he was my dog, but he was our common interest. We all missed my brother a lot, especially Daddy who knew the risks of combat. As a family, we would each pet tip’s gentle head from time to time and anticipate a grand reunion after the war.

The war months and years rolled and Tip grew, but our difficult and often close-quartered lifestyle burdened him with something he would never outgrow: That little cotton cord leash grew with him to become his chain. It took a chain to curb his insatiable appetite for chasing cars. The school grounds were forbidden to him. The only answer to his insistence on following me there was a chain. The complaints of close neighbors invariably resulted in a chain. If dogs can hate, I saw it in Tip for that terrible chain, although much of his lifetime would be tethered to one.

Increasingly, moves wearied my aging father. A farmer at heart, he was tied to the pull of other men’s harvests. No doubt the homing instinct rose with his years, and he longed for the Oklahoma hills to where he would finally return. But when the time would come for us to move to new harvests, the question never came up whether Tip was to accompany us. Car, train, bus, no matter how we traveled, Daddy made sure Tip was properly cared for. He became proficient at building transport cages.

Full grown, Tip was medium size, resembling a small Coyote, with the sleekness and speed of a Greyhound. Regardless of heavy feedings, his ribcage showed. His breath was atrocious, his bark was deafening, but he could run like the wind. I was an ambitious boy and he was a lively dog. Our mutual friendship intertwined until we were inseparable.

True to the times, he was a fighter. In fact, that was the only thing about him in which he chose to totally ignore me. I suppose he reckoned a good scrap as simply great sport. He positively loved it. His unexpected tactic of sudden withdrawal and quick re-engagement always took his opponent by surprise and got him the victory every time. I honestly don’t recall that he was ever defeated,even by some much larger dogs. I worried that he might be injured seriously by indulging in such hazardous sport, especially so frequently, so I chained him as often as it seemed necessary. But it never waned his fighting spirit for his victory medal to be only those dreaded links of iron.

Sickness and casualties were common in the lifestyle we led. Boils, flu, cuts and bruises were daily fare. Tip suffered severe injury once by a car as he bolted across the highway to engage a large canine opponent who trotted along proudly as if Tough was his name. I have no doubt Tip could have licked the dog, but not the car.

I told Daddy about it when he came home from the field. He always seemed instinctively wise about ailments in people or animals. He diagnosed his own bronchial condition as a reaction from cotton dust, but I now suspect it was from breathing poison gas on another field. He examined Tip and said he was badly battered, but he would probably be all right. Sure enough, Tip was his old self in a few days. But sick as he was, I had to curb his thirst for adventure by chaining him until he recovered.

The war finally ended and a devastated world turned again toward peace and order. Weary lives were released to won freedom, families reunited. We were all relieved when my brother returned safely from the Pacific, but Daddy seemed especially eased.

In the springtime we moved to Maricopa, Arizona where Daddy contracted with a cotton grower to hoe what seemed to me at the time to be half the state of Arizona. It was a wide, flat country with blue mountains in the distance. Our “house” was a small tool shed made of corrugated iron which barely held our few belongings. We lived, ate and slept outside under the stars. Fetters no longer held us; we all ran freely, laughed a lot, earned our wages and wagged tails. That’s where Tip found fulfillment with a shaggy haired female with whom he left six pups. Yes, we lived life to the fullest out there, having learned indelibly that the good things of life can be fleeting.

In March of 1947 one of my brothers married, and they decided on Fort Worth, Texas, as the place to rear their family. The rest of us were to follow when school was out, so Tip was sent with them to avoid Daddy having to build another transport cage. The last time I saw Tip was through the back window of a 1937 Ford sedan as it pulled away. Leashed to the doorpost, he looked at me solemnly as the car turned onto the highway and disappeared from view.

Two months later I read the sad contents of a letter from my brother; Tip, unhappy with his city chain, caused such disturbance they had to release him. He ran freely for two weeks then disappeared. That had been a month ago and he was still missing. They were sorry, but felt certain we would not see him again.

Somehow I realized then that Tip’s chain would not have been necessary for a farm dog in Oklahoma. Tip was another casualty. Now he was gone forever, and I sorely missed him. I rode my bicycle to a quiet place in the park and wept over the loss of a very dear friend.

When I gave Daddy the news, as I now recall, it seems a little more of the frustration of those four violent years eased out of him. He just looked quietly out the window for a minute then said, “They did right lettin’ him go, Son. Out here it was yours and his chain, but without you along it warn’t nothin’ but cold iron. Tip died a free dog. Nobody oughta settle for less.”

I suppose that was the lesson those flaming years forged into my generation: Some chains are necessary, but there are chains that must be steadfastly resisted at all costs.

Tip was running freely on instinct when he fell victim to the dangers of the big city. The ravages of time finally overcame Daddy, but not without resistance; he died at the age of ninety-one, and nearly to the end he was on his feet and on his own.

Dear to my heart will ever be the discipline of those Arizona cotton fields and Tip and my Daddy and America. Nobody oughta settle for less, chain or no chain.
–DA

Years ago my upholstery shop also served as a home repair center and jammed storage room, the perfect haven for spiders, almost the only menu of the mud daubers who discovered the trove and moved in. I couldn’t bring myself to fumigate them, mainly because I was among them, so the whole bunch took full advantage of the impossibility of keeping them out.

This weakness involved me in a comedy. I worked while mud daubers whizzed by my ears, over my head, close under my nose and between my legs. They collided with me, dropping their mud balls or spiders on my clean upholstery. Meanwhile, two or three might be perched on an upturned chair, another sitting on my shoulder, another riding my arm, another my stomach, all of them twisting their button heads this way and that, watching me work. They seemed to be trying to understand this alien intruder who chose their quarters for such odd goings on. Changing shifts occasionally, they continued their miniature investigation until all seemed satisfied that my presence was permissible.

Meanwhile, the shocking news reached the dense spider population. Terrified, they cowered back into corners, built webs in obscure places, or left outright. The brave hangers-on who previously ambled nonchalantly across open spaces, now took exposes in a flash. Overcome with curiosity, I decided to research the subject. Our set of Encyclopedia Americana got caught in the overflow from our tight-quartered mobile home and joined me in the shop. My fingers ran along the spines, K… L…”M” for mud daubers. Grasping the volume, I… but it was stuck tight. A flashlight revealed that a huge mud dauber nest had it welded to the rear of the bookcase! It loosened stubbornly and I turned to my subject: “Any one of a number of nonsocial wasps of the genus Scelipheron of the family Sphecidae. The females work up ­mud with their saliva, forming a clay with which they build tubular cells which they attach, sometimes on top of one another, to the woodwork of buildings or to stone. When a tube is completed, they paralyze small spiders or insects with their stings and fill the tube with them. laying their eggs in the spiders so that the larvae will have fresh food. The males apparently die soon after mating.” (1961 ed.)

Interesting. I could have researched further, but since by now I was so personally involved with them, I wasn’t sure I wanted an entomologists cold explanations. Early death of the males meant my friends were all widowed mothers. Knowing who was building where, I doled out names for each . The one in the bookcase became Mildred. While doing paperwork at my makeshift desk, I sat squarely in her path to the window. “Buzzzzzz” right under my nose.” Whizzzzzz” past my ear; “peck” into the side of my head, dropping her mud ball on my paperwork. Honestly, it seemed she was distracting me every minute. Deciding to time her, I looked at my watch as she flitted by me and out the window for another mud ball. I looked again when she whizzed by my ear. Exactly sixty seconds. Again I checked her. Sixty seconds. Thinking it coincidental, I checked her several times that day, but each time at exactly fifty-nine seconds I could simply look up and, with absolute precision, she’d be there! I checked some of the others too, and though their trip lengths were individually different, each was equally precise to the second. Oh, how I envied such discipline!

Our crowded quarters meant courtesy was the order of the day. If I met Hazel or Maxine in the line of duty, a moment of hesitation came before courteously moving around each other. Often I would open the door to leave, only to meet Hazel face to face with no more than a few inches between our noses. Usually we would have the standard sidewalk mix-up, both of us moving left or right at the same time. We finally settled on a system where Hazel would hover, I would stop, then she would fly slowly and carefully around my head. She left no doubt in my mind that her unstartled movement as she passed my ear said “Thank you!”

A closed window created frenzied terror for other insects. They couldn’t cope with a see-but-can’t-go situation, so they would thrash themselves all day long on the glass and end up as carcasses on the ledge. But not Mildred; lighting gingerly on the glass, she would immediately head for the nearest hole. This led to my discovery that these shrewd little females could, apparently by sheer intuition, shortly find the most obscure hole in a closed room, even if it was the only hole!

Christine surely brought concern to her peers. By some freak of nature she failed to posses initial know-how for building a nest. Not that she didn’t have courage to try. Picking a grand spot for it in an obscure corner, she then proceeded to smear mud all over everything. She strung it up the wall, built silly nodular topsy-turvies, flattened some out like pancakes thrown against the wall, she even tried to build a bazaar little nest on the end of a string I left dangling from the wall! Evidently the rumors fairly buzzed about her. I think they took her aside and instructed her in the fine art of mud molding, because she finally got it together in late August and built a fine little pod, poked a few spiders in it, laid an egg, and left. I couldn’t fault her on such ineptness; that’s about how I started my upholstery business..

On to Cleo. If Christine was inept, Cleo was downright strange. Her flight was weird, nervous, even sounded different. High pitched, it matched her other eccentric behaviors. Once established, mud daubers always fly an indelible route, no matter how odd it might be, but Cleo’s was purely ridiculous, just no reason for it. She would whiz through the window with her mud ball (skimming my hair, kicking it up in her wake), fly to the middle of the shop, hover, settle to the floor like a tiny helicopter, then set out on foot! Although she had ample room to fly the distance, she ran at breakneck speed about ten feet across the floor and vanished under a chest of drawers. This antic never failed to put a smile on my face. During the dash she leaned sharply forward, her tiny legs pumping like pistons, wings held high in dignity as though she was a proper lady holding her skirts tidily aloft while she engaged in a somewhat undignified sport. Reappearing, she would immediately take flight, spiral upward, then dart out the window. This illogical absurdity went on all summer.

But there’s more on Cleo. Some sort of comical fly waited on a ledge for her to appear, then he launched himself like a shot, tailing her across the room about two inches directly behind her. When she hovered to the floor he landed on a shelf and politely waited for her exit. Again he tailed her, landed on the window ledge and waited for her return. It happened at great speed, for Cleo was no slowpoke. In fact, I had to be quick to observe it, usually held to only a glance; but when I was quick enough, there flew the little booger, zipping along behind as though water skiing on an invisible hair. Why? Beats me. I’ll bet an entomologist would say he was an egg thief or something. Maybe. But I like to think he was simply enthralled with her beauty, the most glorious creature he’d ever seen, and he simply couldn’t help himself. But it was a short-lived affair; he failed to show up one day. I figure he broke his neck chasing her.

By mid-October we had all seen a busy summer. A sad time as well, for mud daubers live only a few months. I was sitting at my desk when Mildred landed on the desk just inches in front of me. Quite naturally, as though she were a person, with chin-in-hand I began a line of small talk.
“How are you today, Mildred?”
“Weather’s getting colder, isn’t it?”
“You’re looking tired, Mildred; better slow down.”

During my discourse, her little head would turn toward me, then she would turn it the other way as though looking longingly out the window, toward me again, now back to the window, then back to me, as though listening to every word. Suddenly she settled her full body to the desk, breast to tail, stretched all of her legs straight out, and gently laid her head forward until her mouth rested on the desk. How very strange! There she lay totally relaxed while I rattled on. At first I thought it a little ill mannered, her going off to sleep while I was talking, but I decided not to disturb her, knowing that in those few moments we were savoring both fellowship and kinship, both enjoying a wonder of our native planet–the breath of life pulsing in each of us. But hers grew short. Then, as though sensing the end of our warm encounter, she quickly drew herself upright and flew out the window.

A few days later I found her little body on the floor by my desk. I picked her up and turned her over in my palm. What a beautiful, fantastically designed tiny creature! Yet she had seemed so personally close to my own existence.

In self-surprise, I realized that I loved these little friendly, obscure creatures. Suddenly I remembered Mildred’s apartment house. She had bequeathed to my trust her progeny, perpetuating our friendship! Excited, I collected all the nests I could find in hazardous places in the shop and stacked them together on a high shelf, forming an enormous condominium complex.

The following spring, out burst my little friends in fresh life, chasing spiders and filling my day with friendship and entertainment, all over again.

You know, I would be remiss if I failed to point out the spiritual lesson in this true story. Acts 1:8 says, “…and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.” Some believe God Himself will mysteriously get this done in His own good time and Providence, forgetting that these words were His command to His church to get it done by going in the power of His Holy Spirit. If we name the name of Christ, we have a Divine commission He expects us to keep, even as we sit idle waiting for Him to do it. He waits for us to obey, as we wait for Him to do our job for us, instead of inviting Him into our lives to get it done through us.

The lesson is this: Inadequate as we all are in our own strength, God expects us to take Him into our separate, distinctive personalities and do the singular task of telling every willing soul on earth the glorious truth of Divine salvation through the Lord Jesus Christ. No one is exempt. We may feel inept, like Christine, and smear our little ball of mud in crazy ways, or be like Cleo who wastes much time crawling when she could fly the distance. We might be like Hazel or Maxine, whose courtesy to a fault prevents them from forging ahead into the unknown, or like so many who sit on the pastor’s arm, or shoulder, or stomach, listening to and observing interminably as to who he is and what he’s about, but never putting what he says to use. Yes, and like Mildred, who glued the Book to the shelf, never finding out what’s in it.

But God made each of us separately, and He will judge us the same way. We used to sing an old Gospel song entitled, “Right In The Corner Where You Are.” May we all ask ourselves that question: What am I doing in my own little corner?
–DA

How casually Christians mention God’s law of sowing and reaping (Galatians 6:7)! Nevertheless, how solemnly we owe this law our undivided attention, for this universal law of God is an astonishing phenomenon. It is anything but casual! Treating it so loosely before our Creator is a telling measure of our true spiritual condition before Him.

The trap is in how we think about it. We want to treat it in a straight line of past and present without mixture. How often have we heard the saying, “The past is the past, so let’s forget the past and look to the future”? Such is the stuff of New Year’s resolutions. We fail to consider that our past behavior is the very reason we resolve to behave in a different manner. Worse, we fail to seriously consider that as we launch and practice our new behavior we have to deal with last year’s behavior! It is by no means a simple matter.

It is also erroneous thinking to assume sowing is something we consciously work up and execute, as if there was a choice of whether to sow or not sow. No, just being consciously alive is sowing. Dead people no longer sow; the living cannot avoid it. We all sow. God has created time for us, a parenthesis in eternity, if you will, wherein the one and only option given us is the “what” of sowing, not “whether” to sow. Sowing and reaping, after all, is a God-created fixture of nature. It is the scientist’s cause and effect. It is our Creator’s process of natural selection by humanity’s gift of free choice. There is no better example of this than our modern grocery market. Every edible item in there is the product of sowing and reaping, with the heaviest emphasis on the chosen quality of what to sow, with a view to please those who judge it for desirability. It is phenomenal that people shop there amid such an illustration, but fail to apply it’s vital principles to our own lives.

Perhaps the reason is that thinking of it in depth strains our mental processes. You see, when it comes to God’s law of sowing and reaping, we would do well to bear in mind that God’s law fixes it so that the past and the present join hands in a perpetual meeting. As we daily live our lives, our past refuses to be left behind, and after we pass it, then, just when we thought we were through with it, it races by us and meets us from the future! The result is that in the identical time element that we are sowing, we are also reaping! Such is the stark realism of God’s law of sowing and reaping.

Quite naturally, detractors will object that when God forgives our sordid past He “casts it into His sea of forgetfulness,” they say,  to be remembered against us no more. Yes, that is an absolute truth of Scripture, although that quote is not a Scripture (there are many others with that meaning, such as Psalm 103:12). However, let us understand this. He is speaking of our sin against His Person. Yes, through salvation He wipes the slate clean of what separated us from His favor, but we go wrong in failing to consider that God’s forgiveness does not negate His established physical law of sowing and reaping. That might surprise many saints of God. However, I think we can all see that past recklessness in sin can create conditions that extend past salvation, all the way to our deathbed. A drunken spree can kill innocent people, resulting in a lifetime of regret. A poison tongue can make a lifelong enemy. Children, aborted, born out of wedlock, or maimed for life out of uncontrolled anger, is a painful memory. We only fool ourselves if we think our past sowing of thorns will not produce thorns to torment us, even if we cease sowing thorns and begin sowing wheat. Thus, with the blessings of the wheat, we must also deal with the thorns. Things will improve with time, of course, as we sow good seeds, but some thorns can needle us for a lifetime.

However, there is far more to this than we seem to think. You see, even though we receive God’s forgiveness for past sins, as we live in His forgiveness we may purposely or unknowingly sow questionable seeds. However, the manner or quality does not matter at all to God’s law of sowing and reaping, any more than it makes any difference as to the degree of our disobedience to His law of gravity. He causes His rain to fall on the just and the unjust alike (Matthew 5:45). Perhaps the deadliest seed Christians sow is pride, preventing us from rising to faith, but forcing us into alternate explanations to justify a lower level of faith. One familiar quote coming from this is, “If it be thy will,” which in itself is bad seed that must be reaped. We cannot reap from the God of the impossible what pride has determined that He denied us. We must therefore live with that lack. This same God promised His people, Israel, that if they sowed righteous seed, He would give to them, “As the days of Heaven on earth” (Deut. 11:21). Instead, they chose to sow bad seed and so reaped thorns—even as they claimed favor with God!

Another aspect of God’s law of sowing and reaping is the misconception that it is an individual matter. Perhaps it will emphasize that error if we see sowing and reaping from the purely physical law of cause and effect. A violent storm, for instance, is not just an individual matter, although it is that, but a city matter, or a state matter or, as it was with hurricane Katrina, a national matter. However, the difference between the law of physics and that of the spiritual is in the cause of it. The direct cause of a tsunami is not human ingenuity, but the devastation of war is. Adolf Hitler came to power at the will of the German people. A devious mayor can wreck a city; a corrupt father can bring a curse to his family, and a minister’s bad doctrine can poison the minds of one church or a whole denomination, and more. Yes, sowing and reaping blesses or curses individuals, families, cities, states, and nations. It can change a whole lifetime, national history, and even the final record of accomplishment of the entire planet. All of this through God’s law of sowing and reaping where the whole process balances on our own choice of the quality of what we sow. Again, we must sow, and what we reap depends exactly on our own choice of what to sow. So states the law, “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”

Another objection surely to be mentioned is Paul’s statement that when we accept God’s offer of salvation, we are then a new creature and, “Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2nd Corinthians 5:17). Yes, this is absolutely true of our spiritual being, but certainly not of our physical existence here in God’s world of sowing and reaping. Otherwise, at our salvation our new creature would spiritually and physically, instantly be perfection on the same order of Adam and Eve before they sinned. No, even Paul never made such a claim. In that verse, then, Paul meant a rebirth of our spirit, soul, and body, but our bodies must wait for the physical resurrection before we realize complete perfection. Until then, our redeemed spirit must make the perpetual decision to sacrifice our physical body to righteous living as we daily walk in the Spirit and not in the flesh (See Romans 8).

For these very reasons Christians of the past separated themselves from the world, even as they lived and worked among them, so as to sow good seed and to perpetuate it by teaching it to their children. Any person, family, church, city, or nation who fails at this have sown bad seeds and must reap thorns, as surely as gravity will grab the feet of anyone who leaps from a great height under the false notion that they can avoid the fall.

Therefore, in light of these things, how, exactly, should one sow and how should one reap? In answer to this question, never let it slip that we do not have the option of “if” we sow. If we have a pulse, we absolutely must sow and we absolutely must reap.

Sowing must be the first consideration because if we would change the quality of the harvest we must alter what we are sowing. What, exactly, is the one and only existing key to sowing good seed? It is this: We can only change our sowing by coming to recognize good seed. Friends, that is no easy matter. Back to the grocery store example: Just how do we think those quality, salable products reached those shelves? Like this: Hard work, dedication, study, diligence, testing, patience, careful observation, and plain old hard-earned experience. That’s how! It doesn’t happen overnight. It doesn’t happen through loose living, compromise and absenteeism. All of that is required for the walk in the Spirit instead of the flesh. We must force ourselves to sow against fleshly appetites for sensual pleasures. That walk does not come naturally, and so we must “Study to show thyself approved unto God, rightly dividing the Word of truth” (2nd Timothy 2:15). As Dr. D. James Kennedy wisely observed, “If you don’t study God’s Word, then I don’t know what you’re doing in church, for that’s what the church is all about.” We can sow seed that pleases God no other way at all, and only that seed produces a desirable crop.

How then should we reap? Again, bear in mind that reaping is not an option. We absolutely must reap even as we sow. Of course, reaping the fruits of good seed is a joy, but there are always those bad seeds we sowed earlier, which we must reap along with the good. Jesus called the bad crop “tares” which grew along with the wheat. He explained that they must grow together until the final harvest (judgment day) when they will all be reaped together, the wheat to be saved but the tares to be burned (Matthew 13). The lesson He taught is that both wheat and tares are a reality of life with which we must live. The context from which he drew this speaks of the importance of always sowing good seeds regardless of the tares that trouble us.

So here is the lesson we must learn if we expect to live the Christian life successfully: Our first and most crucial task is always to continue sowing good seed in the face of a bad crop which is always in the way and cripples us. We are to press forward in faith, calling upon God for strength and healing to overcome evil with good, and do it in all areas of our lives. Fainting at that is to discontinue sowing good seed, and to fall back on sowing bad seed—all of which we must reap! This can never be done through doctrinal compromise, or going along to get along in any way. It is a fight to the death until death, all the way, and never lets up. We must, as a godly pastor once said, “fight the Devil as long as I have strength, then bite him as long as I have teeth, then gum him until I die!” We must go ahead and take the beating, but then get up from the mud and go right back to sowing and reaping.

One final aspect of sowing: The planting of good seed is always self-sacrificing and blind. We sow for the purpose of reaping a good crop, but we ourselves might never see its fruits in this life. Therefore, we should simply sow out of love for God just because it is the right thing to do for Him, even if it appears that we sowed in vain. After all, God only equipped us to sow, not to germinate the seed and make it grow. God Himself will see to that in due season (“…but it is God that giveth the increase.” 1st Corinth. 3:6,7). It is especially important to keep these vital rules of sowing in mind when we sow into our youth activities, into our romances, into our marriage, into our offspring, into our health, into our employment, or into our politics, for therein lies the greatest potential for reaping ruin—usually sooner than we think. —DA

The following is a devotional by Dr Henry M. Morris from the ICR publication, Days of Praise. I have posted another devotional by him under “Tragic Ignorance.” The one below seems so very appropriate for Christians today, considering the recent tragic turns toward evil America has taken. We Christians should take courage from this devotional, and while as citizens of this God-given land we should resist evil and stand on righteous principles, we should find rest in knowing that one day God Himself will lift the veil. DA

The Veil over the Nations

“And he will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the vail that is spread over all nations. ” (Isaiah 25:7 KJV)

Many people feel that every nation should be encouraged simply to practice its own religion. God’s Word, however, makes it plain that all nations are blinded, cut off from the truth by a deadly covering. This is true of the Jews, for “even unto this day, when Moses is read, the veil is upon their heart” (2 Corinthians 3:15). It is also true of the Gentiles, who have “the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart” (Ephesians 4:18).

The veil that keeps them in such darkness is a Satanic blindfold. “The god of this world [i.e., Satan] hath blinded the minds of them which believe not” (2 Corinthians 4:4). And how did the devil ever gain such control over human minds? “Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened…. Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator” (Romans 1:21, 25).

So today, men and women almost everywhere atheists, Communists, humanists, Buddhists, Confucianists, animists, Hindus, Taoists, Shintoists, occultists, “New Agers,” and even the “liberals” in the monotheistic religions (Judaism, Islam, Christianity)–really all believe and practice the same religion, rejecting God as Creator and worshipping instead some man or manexalting evolutionary philosophy.

Someday, God will destroy this pervasive veil over the nations. In the meantime, we must reach everyone we can with the true and everlasting gospel of Christ, for that “vail is done away in Christ” (2 Corinthians 3:14). —Henry M. Morris

May I tell you something personal? I figured out on my own when I was only a kid that I was just passing through. You see, the times of my youth were not friendly to sissies, so Mother gave birth to just four hard headed boys to work the fields. I was the youngest, so I was always the tag-along. Her health broke and crops failed along with the economy, so Dad had to leave her in a state facility and take his workforce west to keep from starving. We left our farm and became “tramps.” We didn’t know that’s what we were until we got to California where residents laid it on us: “Fruit Tramps!” Not today’s politically correct “Migrant Workers,” or “Farm Workers.” No we were just a bunch of tramps looking for food and everyone knew what we did—we were just passing through.

I used to watch freight trains whistle by with hobos hanging on them. I envied them because they got to travel and see the world free of charge. Me? All I saw was jungles of fruit trees, endless deserts of garlic fields and cotton patches, and I had to work! We lived in storage sheds, tents, board shacks, cockroach hovels, and once lived in a flee-infested sheep shed with a roof only five feet off the ground. Hooves had beaten the dirt floor into dust powder that puffed with every step, which we breathed without dying. We didn’t mind the fleas, but our backs ached from walking in the humped over position. We didn’t care. We just laughed and joked our way through it all. Why? We were just passing through.

The states we passed through passed a law that kids my age had to go to school. Fine. I passed through as many as five of them per school year. Make friends? Are you kidding? I must have worn those holes in my ragged pockets from ramming my fists into them with anger at the kids making fun of this tramp. I once played hooky for three whole months without anyone knowing it except my dog. That kind of tricky skill was probably why I later worked for the IRS for over a decade. Anyway, Dad dusted my britches for it, but I got over it quick because I knew we were just passing through.

I think we brothers sprouted from diapers with guitar genes. None of us got healed from it because we couldn’t quit picking at it. I once had the lofty notion of becoming a hillbilly star, and even made a dent in the effort, but just when stardom blinded me, my good old Uncle Sam tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Sorry, bub, but I want YOU!” Oh well, all that glitter was only a passing fancy, so I decided to go with Uncle Sam—especially since the law backed his claim for my body and soul for four long years, which seemed in my young mind to be forty. So I set my sights on the end instead of the middle and told myself, “It’ll be a long trip, but I’ll get there because I’m just passing through.”

Smack in the middle of it the Good Lord cornered me at the altar of an evangelistic church. I tried to put Him off with, “But Lord, I’m too young for this. You see, I probably won’t hang around here for long because, well, I’m just passing through.”

He shot back immediately, “You don’t know the half of it. The WHOLE WORLD is just passing through! What you’ve got to decide is where you’re passing through TO!”

It was a no-brainer. Since I wasn’t the only one passing through, I figured I’d be better off to fix on the “TO” part. So that’s what I did.

That done, it’s as if the Lord stepped to my side and said, “Here, I want you to have this.” He gently slipped something into my hand. I lifted it and looked. There in my palm lay the most beautiful, sparkling diamond one can imagine!

My jaw dropped to my chest. “Lord! I can’t accept this! Who am I to merit such a priceless treasure? I’ve always been a bone-poor country boy. I haven’t done anything in my life to deserve it.” So I tried to hand it back to Him.

He just waved His hand and said, “No, I want you to have it. It’s true that you don’t deserve it, but I assure you, you’re going to really need this for what you’re about to pass through.”

So we were married on December 15, 1955.

Sure enough, the Lord was right. Numerous were the times when that diamond bailed me out of scrapes where I’d been beaten bloody. But she never left my side, not once. You see, as I said, I was a poverty-stricken country boy from Oklahoma, but she was a poverty-stricken country girl from Arkansas. So we simply joined our poverties into one poverty big enough to last a lifetime. We never had anything, lived on nothing, and retired on the results. But that diamond never once complained. Now don’t take that wrong. She is a spirited woman. She keeps needle claws, stands firm on righteous principles, and can spit hard enough to put out a fire. She always did. In fact, she spat on me quite a bit. We got through the scrapes because we not only joined poverties, but because we joined mutual aims—Heaven. It made poverty fun because we both knew that we’s just passing through.

Two baby girls sprung out of us, so we told them from the cradle what they could expect from us, that we were only sight-seeing on the way Home, and that they should also relax and enjoy the ride. Well, those two little angels have hit the half-century mark, but they’re still bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and, yep, like us, they’re just passing through.

Our little family has seen a lot of sights go flitting by: Life’s mountain peaks, Grand Canyon gorges, shaky bridges, long tunnels, thick forests, and lots of desert, but the best part of seeing them was that we were only traveling, and that when we finally got tired of it we knew there was no place like Home.

You know, I found out in the Bible that everyone in there was just passing through like me. Take old Abraham: It says he was a “Sojourner,” a fancy word describing a guy passing through a strange land, living in tents, because he was looking forward to a City whose Builder and Maker is God. Come to think of it, that’s what I’ve been looking for all along. It reminds me of an old Gospel song nobody sings anymore that I haven’t heard since I was just a young squirt:

“This world is not my home, I’m just a-passing through.
My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the Blue.
The angels beckon me from Heaven’s open door,
And I can’t feel at home in this world anymore.”

So that’s how it is. You can have all this fancy stuff they call glamour, luxury, convenience, security, stylish, thrilling, and comfortable. Give me my tent, walking stick, and camel, ‘cause I’m just passing through.

—DA

The following is an article appearing in Days of Praise, a devotional periodical, by the late Dr. Henry M. Morris, creation scientist extraordinaire, founder and former president of Institute for Creation Research (ICR,  www.icr.org ). During the last half of the last century, this man transformed the way Christian society handled the onslaught of godless evolution. His colleague, Dr. Duane Gish, championed debate with evolutionists until they began warning one another against debating him because he always won. It was bad PR.

Dr. Morris was also an extraordinary Christian, Bible teacher, and theologian. He published The Defender’s Study Bible, the main commentary against evolution, a tool for Christians to defend themselves. This writer is a proud owner of one. While I sharply disagree with Dr. Morris in his Calvinist-slanted theology, he was and is a man I greatly admire as truly one of the great Christians of the Church age.

THOUGHTS OF THE HEART

“And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.”
(Genesis 6:56)

These two verses, describing the incurable wickedness of the antediluvian world, which finally brought on the global Flood, contain the first two of over a thousand occurrences of the word “heart” in the Bible. Note the contrast: man’s heart was evil; God’s heart was grieved.

Both the Hebrew and Greek languages treated the heart as the center of a person’s being, the seat of all feelings and thoughts, and we do the same in English. The writers knew that the heart was a physical organ, with its function of circulating the blood as basic to physical life. Leviticus 17: 11, among other Scriptures, notes that “the life of the flesh is in the blood,” but only rarely was the word used thus in Scripture. Nearly always the word is used symbolically in reference to the deep essence of a person’s being. It is also used occasionally to refer to the innermost part of physical objects (e.g., “the heart of the earth,” as in Matthew 12:40).

In this first occurrence it refers to the “thoughts” of the heart. Somehow, before one thinks with his mind, he thinks with his heart, and these deep, unspoken thoughts will determine the way he reasons with his brain. Jesus confirmed this in Mark 7:2 1: “For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts.”

How important it is, then, to maintain a heart that is pure. In fact, in sharp contrast to the first occurrence of “heart” in the Old Testament referring to man’s evil thoughts, the first occurrence in the New Testament is in the gracious promise of Christ: “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8). —Henry M. Morris

Here is a message America needs to hear, but almost no one is telling her. Great Christians of many faiths founded America on Christian principles. All Washington D.C. edifices give witness to that fact, as well as all the founding documents. It was a time when God was honored by the hearts of God’s people, the heart of the nation. Imperfect though we were, our hearts pleased God, and so He blessed us against our enemies. Time and again when we should have lost, God saw that we won against formidable odds.

But Dr. Morris’ text is very troubling. Man’s sin against God in the Garden of Eden “grieved Him at His heart.” Here is where we have gone wrong as a nation. America has grievously sinned in so many ways it is breathtaking! And this even to the point of thumbing our noses at Him and spitting in His face, or ruling Him completely out of existence with atheism! A few preachers paint God as a merciless, Holy God standing ramrod and stern toward everyone. But the great majority of preachers present Him as all mercy, extraordinarily tolerant of sin, a mixer-mingler with sinners, and that virtually every person naming the name of Christ, regardless of their conduct, is going to Heaven, while Hell virtually doesn’t exist, so it isn’t worth mentioning in the pulpit.

But there is far more to God being humanity’s Creator and God than we are giving Him credit for. The balanced view of Scripture shows God as the essence of pure equality. He is instantly standing ready to rejoice with those who bless Him and to “give them as the days of Heaven upon Earth,” (Deut.11:21) as well as Heaven hereafter, but also just as instantly ready to show His Holy rage by giving to us the days of Hell upon the Earth, as well as Hell in the hereafter! This is true from individuals to nations to the world.

America’s people of God who once properly blessed and honored Him have, through compromise watered down our doctrines, surrendered our offspring to godless teachers, generally cast ballots toward prosperity instead of righteous Christian principles, and have given birth to generations closer to barbarians than Christ followers. Yesterday’s Americans dumped sewage into underground septic tanks, but the ugly picture today is of elevated septic tanks that back-flush into American living rooms! It takes no Scriptural intelligence at all to see God’s reaction to this ugly scene. We have greatly offended Him and “Grieved Him at His heart,” to say the least, until He would have to apologize to ancient Israel if He were to simply bless us and fight for us.

In fact, we would do well to brace ourselves for Isaiah 63:10, “But they rebelled, and vexed His Holy Spirit: therefore He turned to be their enemy, and He fought against them.”

WAKE UP, AMERICA!
—DA

(Romans 8:29-30)

PART ONE

The subject of predestination can only be in reference to the supernatural; it is foreign to atheism, except in terms of imagined space aliens, which drums up even more nonsense than religionists do. In reference to Christian theology, words such as predestination, Divine foreknowledge, and foreordination must be seen in perspective to the Divine, sovereign character and ability of the triune Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, three separate and distinct Persons, yet only one God operating in three capacities while remaining the composite whole of oneness. This truth is how the Scriptures throughout presents God to us, knowing that we finite creatures of His image cannot possibly comprehend it without becoming equal to Him in his Divine attribute of omniscience (all-knowing). That was exactly the Serpent’s temptation of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, “Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3:5). We creatures of God’s creative hand must therefore always reason from a position of utter humility rather than the prideful vanity of our own intellectual prowess. This is true especially in handling such Divine expressions as the words in question.

Also vital to the understanding of such expressions is the truth that God’s triunity is expressed very early in Genesis in direct reference to the creation of Adam, and thereby the entire human race, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Gen. 1:26). Note most carefully the “US” and “OUR.” The balance of all Scripture reveals their identity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It is so very vital to note that in perfect unison they decided to create by Divine fiat a finite creature patterned after their own triune image of authority, fore-planning, and personal freedom to live and move and have individual being (Acts 17:28), all of this with the specific Divine purpose of having another person, though finite, with whom God could share His fellowship outside His Holy Self. And so it happened exactly that way, and Adam and Eve walked in perfect fellowship with God in the Garden of Paradise. Until, that is, they exercised their image of individual freedom to disobey God’s clear directives against God’s perfect will in what He had planned for them.

Contrary to much erroneous doctrine, that disobedience did not annul man’s created image of authority, fore-planning, and individual freedom to live, move, and have being.
That image, dear Christian, IS us! It is who we are, and will always be, for what God created us to be lasts eternally one way or another. That truth is as certain as God’s image in us. Frankly, if we ever cease to possess that identifying Image, we will simply cease to be at all! But let’s be clear: That eternal Image in us is the very thing that will make for us Heaven Heaven or Hell Hell. We will either eternally realize the perfect use of that Image in Heaven or else suffer eternally the never-ending agony of being denied it to escape the flames of the judgment of God’s eternal wrath against His enemies. It is our choice. The image of freedom He put in us guarantees it. Hell without it would be like a lifeless granite statue under water that could never drown.

One aspect of this Image in us bears directly on our interpretation of what the words in question mean. You see, instinctively humanity, designed to enjoy eternal happiness with our Creator, quite naturally enjoys hearing the Heaven part of our eternal image, but just as naturally we want to turn a deaf ear to the bad news of Hell. As a result, we have a natural corrupt bent, knowingly or unknowingly, to construct doctrinal sidesteps, loopholes, and deflections against God’s fiery missiles of warnings against ungodliness, so as to persuade us to flee from the wrath to come. Such doctrines of convenient escape from bad-news warnings seem always to aim not at ditching worldliness and the cleaning up of our risqué indulgence and the practice of holy living, but are rather constructed to soften the bad news of possibly winding up in Hell. Always, the convenient slant is to the false notion that God is more tolerant of sin than we seem to think. That notion aims at allowing us to engage in worldliness but still enjoy the prospects of going to Heaven instead of Hell. It envisions God as throwing wide open His big, compassionate, merciful arms to a wide range of saints and deviants alike, allowing us to have Heaven’s cake and eating it too. Such convenience doctrines have taken many and varied forms down through the ages of history, such as Purgatory, the sale of indulgences, the notion that there is no Hell at all, or that Hell is temporary, after which we all go to Heaven. Of course, atheism gets rid of Hell by getting rid of God altogether!

However, some doctrines of convenience are far more subtle and extremely complex. Such was and is the sophisticated notions of the famous John Calvin. His definition of absolute predestination had (and has) God decreeing before creation to build two categories of humans, one to go to Heaven, no matter what, and the other created to go to Hell, no matter what. Despite Calvin’s explanation that the Heaven-bound should nevertheless live holy lives, in actual practice they are prone to live loosely simply because one cannot help being saved anyhow. A modern splinter of that aspect of Calvinism, operating in the mode of the Perseverance of the Saints, opts instead for what they call “Free Grace” in which holy living is not even a necessity. Modern teachers of the Free Grace idea are championed by such popular preachers as Dr. Charles Stanley.

Other theologians concluded that pure Calvinism was too severe, so they softened it to mean salvation is provided for all fallen humanity. However, those who opt to receive salvation believe the last half of Calvin’s notion kicks in: Meaning, once one does make the choice for salvation, it is Divinely decreed that it must remain that way forever, no matter what, including our free choice to back out of it. And, of course, this opens the black door of convenience into imagined Divine toleration, by which we can be saved, live as though we are going to Hell, but at last quietly do a flip-flop into Heaven. How convenient! In truth, though, any Christian who turns to sin, lives in sin, and dies by sin will find no mercy at the throne of our absolutely Holy God who judges us in light of what we do with his beloved Son. To excuse such travesty by saying that if they died in sin, then they were simply not saved to start with, is like plugging a gaping shell hole in a concrete bunker with cheese cloth and claiming it’s fixed. It flies in the face of common sense.

PART TWO

No one can deny that the great John Calvin was one of the most intellectual giants of the church age. Next to Martin Luther, he was perhaps the most influential as well. When studying the theological strains of this man we should carefully consider that he lived during the arrival years of the Renaissance, the era of the rebirth of the old Greco/Roman culture of intellectual humanistic thought. Calvin’s wealthy contacts allowed his father to send his young son to the best, most up to date, schools of his time. At a very early age young Calvin was meticulously taught the humanist culture until it was who, what, and how the patterns were to be in his gray matter all of his life. It became the powerful tools he employed to form and argue his later theological points of view of the Scriptures. In fact, his conversion to Christianity by all accounts was simply an intellectual decision, void of any fanfare or emotion. So much so that, of all his writings, he makes only one passing reference to it in his Introduction to the Book of Psalms. Even so, it still leaves intellectual heads scratching as to whether or not that was even what he had reference to, or if he was simply referring to his turning away from the Catholic Church. Whatever it was, from that moment he began formulating his rigid, logical, philosophical system of theology, which he described with the acronym, T.U.L.I.P., the meaning of which we will not go into here. Once formed, his formidable intellectual prowess challenged and won every debate by the sheer science and art of his mastery of debate, whether he was right or wrong in his theology.

However, Calvin, together with all who approach the Gospel through the power and pride of their intellect, run aground in truth by the sheer brute force of their own law of intellect. Inadvertently, he brazenly imposed himself into God’s own forbidden mysteries, and pressed on until he had a “perfectly” logical answer for Divine secrets which even Paul himself said was impossible for a man to utter (2 Corinth. 12:4). Paul also mentions the thing formed saying to it’s Creator, “Why hast thou made me thus?” (Rom. 9:20). Scriptural inference there says we can just as well ask, “WHEN (Divine Decrees) did you form me?” Or, more intrusively, “HOW LONG was it between your idea (foreknowledge) to create me and when you actually did it?” Further, “WHAT WAS YOUR REASONING behind making a decision (ordaining, predestinating) in the infinite past to create a batch of saved humans and another identical lost bunch for…come to think of it, when did you come up with the awful notion of Hell, anyhow?” Paul’s grand point of making his observation was the utter futility of even engaging in such useless intrusions into the Divine mind, the answer to which we in our fallen state cannot possibly comprehend now nor perhaps never will. In fact, the entire exercise in even attempting it can only be an indulgence of intellectual pride of one’s own mental powers. The intrusion amounts to the proverbial bull in the china closet horning around among precious things, which a bull’s nature knows nothing about. The same still applies today.

It must also be pointed out that Calvinism in any degree must in some degree hang its hat on the old Westminster Confession of Faith, which states unequivocally, “God did from all eternity, by the most just and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass.”

But whether the Calvinistic theology be Absolute, Modified, Reformed, Presbyterian, Neo-Calvinist, Congregationalist, Particular Baptist, Reformed Baptist, Strict Baptist, Free Grace Baptist, Southern Baptist, Neo-Orthodoxy, Church of England, Church of Scotland, or even modified, rectified, qualified, certified or dignified, and whether the Divine Decrees were Sub-lapsarian, Anselmic Sub-lapsarian, Infra-lapsarian, Supra-lapsarian, or any other lapsarians, when all of that intellectual collection of theological ramifications of cranial speculation falls out to the man in the streets, he finds it overwhelming and meaningless to his own perceived reality of everyday living. All he knows for certain is that riding atop his shoulders is a sphere with the ability to decide for himself what he jolly well pleases, no matter if he is an atheist, serious Christian, an agnostic, or a nothing. He just knows for certain (what theologians call a Rational Intuition), that something is mysteriously missing in his soul, and he knows for certain when he hears some good news that will correct it. He knows for certain that he can accept it now and, if he wants to, can change his mind later and toss it out; he also knows he can reject it now and change his mind and accept it later. He is just naturally NOT confused at all about that part of his humanity. Why? Because it is something he does all the time, day in and day out, and that anything else is purely a figment of the imagination. How simple can THAT be? Any old John or Jane Doe seems to know those things about themselves by sheer instinct, and believes and behaves as if anyone who disagrees with that common sense has been standing too close to freeway fumes!

Such words as Divine predestination, foreordination, foreknowledge, decree, and others, although legitimate words of Scripture, have been pounced on by spoiled human intellect as a reflex to escape God’s long, holy, accusing finger at our guilt for disobedience. We have tried many dodging maneuvers in the past, but finally centered on a sophisticated system whereby we blame God by extolling His sovereignty over even our own free wills. It is unique in that while we laud and honor His greatness, we think we found lodging once for all, and warts and all, from further guilt by disappearing our finite wills inside His sovereign will where we can always excuse ourselves with “God is in control.”

It won’t work. Cover to cover, from Eden to the New Jerusalem, Scripture is a flashing billboard along life’s freeway telling every soul who ever lived that God longs to restore fellowship with every soul He breathes life into, none excluded. Each one is a very personal thing between that one soul and God Himself for the express purpose of intimate closeness and fellowship. It is a Divine love and longing strong enough that He would give His own Divine Son to make it possible. Lost people get saved, not because of Calvinist theology, but in spite of it. Once joined, the Infinite God is not there to be intellectually analyzed, but to be accepted at face value and worshipped as one’s Creator and Lord. The joining of Almighty God and a finite creature always leaves a Divine vapor trail of utter mystery, and He is shortchanged when we run behind Him to fix on the vapor trail instead of simply falling at His feet in worship and personal fellowship. If that is not what we do when we encounter Him, we have deceived ourselves in a false encounter. God created us as emotional creatures to emotionally react to Himself first of all. If we get emotional listening to The Grand Ol’ Opry, rock concerts, football games, soap operas, and comedy shows, but show up in God’s presence with dead-pan faces with starched shirts, and a two-by-four down our collars, then we missed our first purpose by a country mile!

It behooves us to reexamine the words in question as they appear in Scripture, and reinterpret them in light of literal and Scriptural reality of who God made us to be, instead of an intellectual construct of debated positional statements and humanist hatched ecclesiastical checkerboards of mathematical vanity. Ancient Israel tried it, but their faith became legalism and wound up crucifying the very Thing their entire system was supposed to be about. Paul, speaking prophetically to the Roman Christians in regard to God cutting off the Jews (the branches of the olive tree) and turning to the Gentiles (who had been grafted in), put it this way, “You will say then, ‘Branches were broken off that I might be grafted in.’ Well said. Because of unbelief they were broken off, and you stand by faith. Do not be haughty, but fear. For if God did not spare the natural branches, He may not spare you either. Therefore consider the goodness and severity of God: on those who fell, severity; but toward you, goodness, if you continue in His goodness. Otherwise you also will be cut off” (Rom. 11:19-22 NKJV). It behooves us to remember that the Jews’ rejection of their roots crucified their Messiah, for which God discarded their branches; Paul’s solemn warning against our failing to continue in His goodness is the identical reverse: we also crucify our Messiah if we fail to stand by faith. We fool ourselves if we think He will not also break off our branches, leaving only the roots available for His further consideration. As we serve our gracious God and Creator, let us fear Him as we adore Him.
—DA

“For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” ROMANS 8:38,39

The base plate of truth underlying our understanding of this Scripture may be illustrated using the following inane story:

Muscles Rockdale, a muscle-bound caveman shuffled toward his cavernous lair with a billyclub in one hand, dragging his happy chosen female, Mooneyes, by the hair in the other. She had fallen for Muscles because he was strong enough to kill a dragon, and owned the biggest cave around. She felt safe with him because he offered her lifetime security and she didn’t have to worry about a gorilla stealing her.

Skidding along on her back, Muscles pulled her right past the lusting eyes of his biggest rival, Hairy Chimpson, who gave her a beckoning wink. Hairy wore the latest fashion in leopard skin, slicked his hair with monkey grease, wore a diamond nose ring, and took the cave girls on frequent flights over the nearest volcano on his pet Pterodactyl. There he stood, handsome, dashing Hairy, with his streamlined club in one hand, a stalk of bananas in the other.

Mooneyes’ eyes lit up like geodes! “Whoa! Wow! Where did YOU come from, handsome?” Her heart palpitated like a lizard’s throat.

Hairy took advantage of the opening. “Hey, babe, why don’t you ditch this stick-in-the-mud and come away with me for a rollicking time of fun?”

Mooneyes looked at Muscles and what he offered, then back to Hairy. Security with Muscles, or excitement with Hairy? Ignoring the fact that Muscles had what it took to give her all the excitement she could handle, she still couldn’t refuse the dashing sparkle, the colorful leopard skin, the monkey grease, and especially the thrill over the mouth of a smoking volcano. Caught up in the moment, she reached inside her sheepskin, whipped out the newly invented pair of scissors Muscles gave her to make her happy, and clipped off her hair which Muscles used to drag her. Free now, she leaped on Hairy’s back and they disappeared on a grapevine into the trees, Hairy yelling his victory.

Yes, Muscles had truthfully shown himself to be Mr. Security with all the amenities Mooneyes could ever want. He could truly say that nobody, but NOBODY, was big and bad enough to whip him and take what belonged to him. But—Muscles overlooked one small detail: That gorgeous little gal had that trusty pair of scissors he gave her to make her happy.

So, Muscles, heartbroken, shuffled back to his big cave. He knew he couldn’t have her against her own will, unless he locked her in his cave and walled it in so she’d be a prisoner for life, scissors or no scissors. She was no good to him that way. She had to be free and his, or he couldn’t have her at all. Maybe someday she’d come to her senses and come back to him, but it would have to be her own idea, not his. Until then, there she was in the woods with Hairy because, well, that’s what she wanted. Hairy beat Muscles time, but not without Mooneyes’ free consent.

However, Dr. Piltdown Humpover, science professor at Gravelton University of higher learning, a man much higher on the evolutionary ladder than normal cavemen of his time, developed a complex formula requiring six whole banana leaves to record it—a formula so advanced that it contained very difficult two-syllable words between grunts, such as “Con-trol” and “Un-known,” comparable to our modern words like Supralapsarianism, and Supercallafragilisticexpeallidocious. His formula proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that even though Muscles gave Mooneyes those scissors for her use, Muscles, according to all those banana leaves, still owned and was in full and absolute control of those scissors all the time. Even though by all appearances Mooneyes did it, no way could she clip that hair on her head unless it was a mysterious plan cooked up by Muscles himself, not Mooneyes. No cave person could ever understand how that could be, but Humpover assured them that, no, it makes no sense now, but it will someday. Meanwhile, they should not trust what they on their lower evolutionary scale had evolved into calling “common sense.”

However, Dr, Humpover met an unfortunate end. You see, he developed a companion formula even more complex, using ten banana leaves to record it. Unbelievably, he also proved beyond a shadow of a doubt—are you ready for this?—that he could fly! To test his figures, he hired Hairy to take him for a ride on his pet Pterodactyl. At a great altitude, Dr. Humpover bravely dived off! But suddenly a mysterious force grabbed him and pulled him downward.  Hairy said he disappeared into the jungle below, still flapping his arms. He was never heard from again. His wife, Lucy, missed her Piltdown so much she never remarried.

It confirmed Mooneyes’ and Hairy’s belief that Humpover was completely out of touch with “common sense.” Nobody has ever been able to convince her that those bright scissors in her sheepskin are not her own, and nobody else’s. She just seems to know, banana leaves or no banana leaves.
—DA

“I just wanted to finish well.”
—Actor Alex Kendrick in movie, “Flywheel,” after he obeyed God and it looked  like he was bankrupt financially. But God hadn’t finished blessing him yet.

“All of us will one day leave behind all that we have…and take with us all that we are.”
—Rev. Larry Hatfield, in The Pentecostal Evangel.

“Pain is temporary, quitting is forever.”
—Lance Armstrong, eight time winner of the Tour-de-France bicycle race.

“People who have a Bible that’s falling apart have a life that’s not.”
—Rev. John Hagee.

“It is impossible to waste time; we only waste ourselves.”
—Unknown.

“Opportunity is missed by most people because it comes dressed in overalls and looks like work.”
—Thomas A. Edison, inventor of the light bulb.

“It ain’t where you’re at, it’s where you’re going.”
—Evander Holyfield, world heavy weight boxing champion.

“Be one of the ‘few’ [of Matt. 7:14].”
—My daughter, Trinette Gray.

“The key to knowing God’s will is a willingness and determination to follow it before knowing it. (John 7:17).”
—Dr. Henry M. Morris, creation scientist.

“It isn’t what you’re made of that counts, but what God is making of you.”
—Rev. Phil Woods, December 8, 2002.

“It is best to have less thunder in the mouth and more lightening in the hand.”
—Old Apache proverb.

“You gotta know where you’re going; otherwise you can’t know where you’re at.”
—Jesse Duplantis.

“Insanity is when you think that doing more of what you are already doing will lead to a different outcome.”
—Albert Einstein.

“My son, if God called you to be a missionary, your Father in Heaven would grieve to see you shrivel down into a king.”
—Dr. Charles Spurgeon.

“There’s a reason the rearview mirror is smaller than the windshield.”
—Dr. Tony Evans.

“Good men today who stand up for right, regardless of the cost, are maintaining, strengthening, and reestablishing all the good things good men did in the past.”
—Patsy Coker.

Finally, an ironclad rule for future success, happiness, safety, and contentment for individuals, families, cities, states, nations, the world:
“Trust in the Lord, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed” (Psalm 37:3).

According to the Word of God there will be at least three categories of people who wind up in Hell’s eternal flames, such as those who understood the message of salvation but rejected it, or those who never heard the message but ignored their natural intuition to seek more truth. But by far the greater category will be those who allowed themselves to be deceived into thinking they were bound for an eternal Paradise, even as they were heading for an eternal Hell instead.

If we are going to understand how that happens, we must accept two vital peculiarities about the Word of God:
1.) God’s WORD is perfect because,
2.) GOD is perfect.
Perfection means absolute purity, righteousness, and holiness. As such, He cannot remain perfect if He tolerates the imperfect in any measure without a perfect Advocate between Himself and the opposite. Jesus Christ is that Perfect Advocate.

This immutable truth falls out to us this way: God’s truth, being absolutely perfect, cannot  be progressive. It never adapts to changing human society, but rather demands without apology that humanity adapt to His own immutable, inflexible standard of what is right and what is wrong. He even said of our relationship to Him, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in Heaven is perfect” (Matt. 5:48). No matter what it is that humans do, whether in word, deed, custom, dress, artistry, poetry, music, occupation, politics, and especially church, they must conform to God’s holy, righteous, and perfect standards, or else it will miss the aims of His will every time.

Brought under God’s scrutiny, if it has even the very appearance of evil, then something is afoul of His standard of holiness. Do we see our reaction to this? Since our very depraved natures are afoul anyway, we are by nature attracted to worldly offers, and find ourselves all too easily led astray by our fleshly appetites, most especially in our taste in vision, preference in music, and quality of speech.

With the understanding that God’s Word is perfect and cannot be progressive with human society, it is reckless, yes, reckless, to dismiss so-called Old School Christians of yesteryear as being outdated, behind the times, and should be put aside now for the modern generations with new innovations for evangelizing. What such reckless mouths forget is that on every occasion when the church had an awakening (three in America alone!), they always had to go back to what former generations had already found out: That is, go back and “Do your first works over.” Frankly, until the newer generations manage to get the quality of results the older generations did, they should keep their mouths shut. After all, if they do get the same results it will be because they also went back to the first works of the perfect New Testament pattern. There is simply no other way, no matter what clamor we hear about New-School, Purpose Driven, or any other such nonsense.

God’s perfect Word is always present in God’s earth to show us the way. Like sheep, we need shepherds who will not only feed us all of God’s pure truth, but who are not afraid to crack rebellious knuckles. But God’s Word is crystal clear: Unlike sheep, even without a shepherd we are personally responsible for how we treat God’s holy Word.

Since creation, the world has always teemed with other books and/or false prophets. But only God’s Book has proven itself beyond measure to be the one and only solution to the voracious, ever-seeking, restless souls of humanity. It behooves us, then, to know and understand exactly what God has openly declared to be the truth about His offer of salvation to every soul. In answering that sobering question of eternal consequence, the direction of this article is to show what salvation is not.

~ ~ ~ Christian Salvation is not a thing of the head. This one perhaps accounts for the greater part of those who miss the truth of it. Here is where many well-meaning souls flake off into deception through intellectually cold calculation. Millions of souls have side-tracked into this stark land of granite monuments of facts and figures. Old Testament Jewry slipped into this legal minefield with the Mosaic Law, and a great host of New Testament Christians are there as well through the same legalistic mechanical treatment. Jesus said, “These things ye should have done, and not leave the other undone” (Luke 11:42), meaning they had missed the very personal spirit of God’s Word.

So often we hear about many coming forward to make “Decisions for Christ,” as though that many actually received God’s genuine salvation. Unfortunately, the actual statistics show only a smattering of those go on to serve God. Yes, many were convicted of sin, but few committed. It is one thing to come under conviction of the truth, but it is quite another to make it one’s own. Why? Because God also demands immediate repentance, a turning away from former sinful practices, and a turning toward a life of holiness. Frankly, few are willing to make that reverse of lifestyle. The lack of it openly declares their sincerity in the whole matter, and so they return to their old ways.

However, if the prospective convert can be convinced that one can be saved while continuing in much the same lifestyle as before, many times they will proceed into the good graces of the fellowship of a church of similar deceived Christians while assuming that God accepts such practices. But a church whose standards of Biblical holiness are lowered to keep saints comfortable will have an atmosphere more common to a community club membership. Such a church is best depicted as the intellectuals Paul encountered on Mars Hill (Acts 17). They were there only to “Hear some new thing.” The second nature of which is commonly called GOSSIP.

~ ~ ~ Christian Salvation is not unemotional! There is no such thing as half a human being, unless it is a corpse. True salvation involves one’s entire being—body, soul, and spirit. It is flatly impossible for one to go from a state of separation from one’s holy, perfect Creator to a state of unity with Him—the imperfect suddenly comes into union with the Perfect—without it impacting one’s emotional state in some way. If a healthy human cannot keep from flinching at a nearby unexpected explosion, or from the sudden news that one has gone from rags to riches, or from a myriad of other such surprising impacts, then one cannot prevent the same reaction to sudden peace and fellowship with one’s holy Creator. Frankly, a simple change of mind in our value system is not enough. Worldly people do that all the time. When we cease being one creature but suddenly wake up a new creature where “Old things are passed away…and all things are become new” (2 Corinth. 5:17), we are going to DO more than casually go on about our business.

If our conversion experience fails to make us feel saved, we would do well to question what we are calling “salvation.” By our very nature the feeling part of our salvation follows the spiritual. If we walk daily with God in proper fellowship, we will radiate peace, joy, and happiness, all of which show up in us as emotional expressions. And if that is not what we are showing, then we have probably left the Lords presence and have foolishly stepped onto the conveyor belt heading in the opposite direction.

~ ~ ~ Christian Salvation has no family ties: not social, tribal, communal, ecclesiastical,  or national; not inner circle, outer circle, political, clannish, marital, regional, ethnic, racial, for the poor, the rich, the healthy, the sickly—none of those things. While it is for all of those, it is not tied to any of them. Just because one may have connections with one or all of them, salvation does not depend on any of them. Instead, it is for individual, solitary persons ONLY, to take place inside the confines of their God-given free wills when he created us in His own image of freedom. Scripture makes it starkly clear that only individuals are judged on judgment day. This free-willed image of God in each of us means a person cannot claim a bad upbringing, ignorance, a tragedy, or holding a grudge against God for anything, as an excuse for not accepting God’s salvation. All of that lame tommyrot is swept away in God the Father’s seeing the sacrificial death of His only begotten Son as the one and only reason He doesn’t sweep all of sinful humanity into Hell anyhow! There is absolutely no excuse whatever He will accept for rejecting that sole sacrifice to save us. Yes, He is aware of human suffering, and has compassion on those who got cheated in life, but to all those who reach the age of accountability, God’s steady finger points at our noses saying something like, “You now freely stand in the land of golden opportunity, thanks to my merciful Son. My question to you demands an answer: What are YOU going to do about HIM?” All too often we fix on doctrines that focus only on His Son’s compassion, kindness, mercy, love, long suffering, and other such qualities in His Son. Sadly, we forget about His Father, who’s base attribute is holiness and justice, which gave rise to the work of His Son. When we consider salvation, we dare not fail to look beyond the Son to see His Father who stands ready to execute judgment on those who reject His dearly beloved Son. There is a very good reason to FEAR GOD. Just as surely as there is eternal life in the Son, there is eternal doom in the hands of His Father! As His Word warns, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of an angry God” (Heb. 10:31).

~ ~ ~ Christian Salvation is not an escape from trouble and persecution. Most Christians will agree with that. But most overlook the fact that it is MORE than NOT an escape from it. If the salvation is genuine, it will amount to a guaranteed SHORTCUT to trouble, especially persecution. The Word of God is specific to this: “They that live Godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution” (2 Tim. 3:12). The word is emphatic: SHALL, not might. The only escape from it is the old adage of “go along to get along.” A stand for right will get you shot in an ally, or your head severed from your body, you and your family eaten by lions, a life of chains in the salt mines, worked to death as an oarsman in a Roman galley, burned at the stake, living life as a slave to a despot, dying of starvation, being burned alive in your church. The fortunate will be merely the object of gossip, peer pressure, finger pointing, whispering, fun poking, even a challenge to fisticuffs.

Why? Again, because of the free will in every human. We fail to consider that evil men have free wills created by God to be just as free in this world as good men. We all have it by natural instinct, and know we have it as surely as we know our head sits on our shoulders. God guarantees the free operation of that gift, whether for good or for evil. The free wills of the evil men of 911 flying that airliner into the twin towers, for a brief instant came eye to eye with the free wills of some Christians in the Tower. They all met in a flame of death and destruction because God guaranteed the free operation of both wills. The spiritual law of humanity’s free will in both brought them both to the ground by another of God’s natural laws which He guarantees to operate—gravity. When God’s people who accept His salvation and purposely put Him in charge of their lives, individually or as a nation, they become a bulwark against evil men. If not, God’s law of free will guarantees that “Evil men shall wax worse and worse” (2 Tim 3:13). Christians get themselves into a heap of trouble under the false notion of “God is in control,” meaning whatever evil takes power must be there because God’s providence pre-planned it and “allowed” it. Such error nullifies God’s mandate to His church to evangelize a lost world with the Good News of  genuine Salvation.
—DA