It's Day By Day

God invented words to be the most effective tool there is to move people in a desired direction. God’s word itself proves it. In fact, another name He gave to His beloved Son is “The Word.”

All of civilized history has gone forward on knowledge of truth, but has always stalled on lies and ignorance. Dr. David Noebel spoke truly, “If you’re going to be a leader, you have to be a reader.”

Any advocate of truth must also communicate truth. There is a difference. If one’s manner of speaking is crippled by a form of speech limited to a narrow segment of listeners, then only that narrow band will hear the truth while all words to the other hearers are wasted.

One’s speech must therefore be carefully crafted to be heard and understood by all hearers in a given audience, from the very young to the very old, from the educated to the ignorant, the rich to the poor, male to female.

Each and every audible word must be carefully chosen, diligently pronounced by the tongue, the lips, the facial expressions, honed razor sharp for the listeners’ ears.

Content must be true to the human condition and made real to each listener through examples or parables. This is what made Jesus Christ the absolute Master of all communicators.

Satan has always aimed at counteracting the truth of this with deceptive images for our eyes, sweetness for our tastes, and false words in our ears. But speakers of truth should pay this no mind; humans, you see, are endowed with a God-given bent for identifying truth, an instinctive recognition of it. Theologians call it a “rational intuition,” a permanent wrinkle in our natures.

Speakers have but to communicate the truth. God does the rest. And that particular truth cuts across all lines of religion and politics. It is who we all are. May we all learn to speak the truth. –DA

Jesus Christ Himself said we should humbly offer the other cheek if someone slaps us (Luke 6:29). If Christians are not careful to understand what Jesus meant, all of Christianity would park on a church pew and wait for God to wreck his enemies so He could tell us, “Okay, you can come out now.” Such a concept is loaded with nonsense. Like Old Testament swords and arrows, New Testament guns and bombs can be for a righteous cause before God. If that were not true there could never be an honorable peace.

The notion that “The righteous shall inherit the Earth” without resistance is a fantasy. The clash between good and evil has always involved bloodletting. We need look no further than brothers Cain and Abel.

The Book of Acts tells the ironic story of one Cornelius (Acts 10), a very high ranking Centurion officer in the Roman army who “Gave much alms” to the despised Jews. This, although he commanded a large contingent of hardened, brutal Roman soldiers who had a reputation for despising Jews. But that isn’t all: Cornelius became a Pentecostal tongue-talking Christian at the laying on of Peter’s hands. It is unlikely that he gave up his command but, as best he could without violating his faith, served God where he was.

I am reminded of one ironic account during World War I in France, before my father served there in Pershing’s army. The opposing forces were entrenched either side of a strip of no-man’s land. One Christmas Day they ceased shooting at one another to honor the holiday and began celebrating. Before long their festivities joined friend and foe in a mutual Christian celebration out on the killing fields. At the next day’s dawn, though, they went back to bloodletting. The irony was that the belligerents were thoroughly Christianized at the grass roots, but their felt differences were sharp enough to kill over. What difference? What each perceived to be right or wrong. We might say the “good guys” won, but unforgiveness on their part led to far worse. It was called Hitler.

Twenty-three years later a large airborne strike force led by one Mitsuo Fuchida devastated Pearl Harbor, killing more than 2000 men. World War II began. A river of blood ensued in order to secure peace and freedom. Black wreaths draped the doors and windows of half a million American homes alone. Two mushroom clouds were necessary to prevent that many more.

My oldest brother worked on the bottom deck of a thin-skinned baby aircraft carrier in the Pacific when it almost sank from the crash dives of two desperate Kamikaze pilots. The irony of the Pacific war was that the Samari code was all about aggressive power and dominance, while the Christian ethic that birthed the American Constitution was about peace and freedom for all, as taught by Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace. Manning the military ranks of both, however, were multitudes who claimed neither religion but fought for their ideals. Reality, though, cared little about that–the blood was just as red. My brother escaped, but as irony would have it, he came home, married, fathered a baby daughter, but had a sudden brain hemorrhage at the age of 28, and died. It is not known whether or not he became a Christian before his passing, although he had shown serious interest.

In 1953 I joined the U.S. Air Force and saw duty abroad twice, one to England, another to the island of Guam. I became a Christian during my tour of duty, the irony of which was that General Paul Tibbets was for a while my Wing Commander. Tibbets was the man who piloted the Enola Gay, the B-29 which dropped the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima, ending the war.

As irony would have it, perhaps 15 years after I joined the U.S. Air Force, I went to our church one Sunday morning and saw on the platform sitting next to our pastor a very well dressed, composed oriental gentleman. He was to be our surprise speaker that day. The pastor introduced him as none other than Mitsuo Fuchida, the man who led the raid on Pearl Harbor! He presented a rich Christian testimony of humility, having received forgiveness for his great sins. I was one of many who shook his hand after the service, welcoming him into God’s family. Ironically, my brother who fought for a Christian nation might have missed Heaven, whereas Fuchida lived, a man who fought as a Samari warrior, but became a Christian and made Heaven his home.

In recent years our church has had a quiet yet friendly, very elderly, dignified gentleman attending our church. One Sunday a few weeks ago his visiting daughter and son-in-law sat beside him. They were casually dressed, her husband wearing a sports shirt. To my great surprise the pastor recognized him as none other than Admiral Vern Clark, recently retired chief of all U.S. naval operations around the world! While this humble man had a very devout Christian testimony, he had been Chief, under only the U.S. President, of the greatest naval war machine the world has ever known! I was unable to shake his hand that day, but I did shake the hand of his delightful wife. Since his retirement he is heavily engaged in Christian endeavors. Indeed, here was a classic life of irony between a great warrior and a peace maker occupying the same body, both of them in the service of God! Here was a man who well knew both how to turn his cheek, but also how to make war like no other.

It is easy to miss the middle ground in Jesus’ admonition to turn the other cheek. For many reasons necessity turned the cheek but bore arms as well. Perhaps it would not have been necessary had humanity at large rose to faith in their Creator. But we didn’t, did we. I am reminded of the farmer trying to plow with an obstinate mule. He used a two-by-four up side the mule’s head, but only to get his attention so as to perform a task necessary to feed them all–including the mule.  –DA

Imagine being on the top deck of an Amtrak vista car as it speeds through the mountains. For a long stretch of track the trip is mostly through a series of long tunnels with only a sudden peek of daylight now and then between tunnels. In the distant we catch a fleeting glimpse of a magnificent snowcapped peak , high and breathtaking, with each quick flick of daylight in passing from tunnel to tunnel. At last the track turns away and heads down the mountains, the mighty peak now out of sight behind us.

This is a perfect picture of the mighty Apollos recorded in the Book of Acts, Chapter 18, verses 24 through 28. I have written extensively about this towering champion of truth in a much longer unpublished article titled “The Alexandrian.” What follows are only a few thoughts stemming from that article. The Scriptures have very few words of this great man, but what they do say tell us of a mighty man of God indeed.

In fact, enough of him is seen through the lattice of Scriptures and history to tell us that in his time he stood on equal footing with such giants as Paul, Peter, John, James and others! What’s more, many ancient scholars such as Tertullian, Eusebius, as well as a growing body of such scholars today, conclude that it was Apollos, not Paul, who wrote the masterful Book of Hebrews. I agree, based on compelling evidence in the Book of Hebrews itself. A careful study of Apollos led me to conclude that the character and content of Hebrews matches the character and content of the person of Apollos perfectly. In fact, I strongly believe that the beginning of Hebrews is missing, lost due to the early flames of persecution and book burnings to stamp out Christianity. I would not be at all surprised if one day, through modern methods of archeology and analysis, an ancient manuscript of the book of Hebrews surfaces showing the beginning salutation that once existed, one that bore the name of the mighty Apollos himself.

Luke, in Acts 18:24-28, describes Apollos by using such strong terms as “boldly”…”eloquent”…”mighty in the Scriptures”…”fervent in the Spirit”…”diligently”…”helped them much”…”mightily convinced.” Such terms fit perfectly in describing the nature of the Book of Hebrews. They also describe a giant of the faith on the order of Paul, Peter, John and others. The knowledge of such giants was passed to us because those men themselves wrote, or someone wrote for them, or wrote about them.

But be careful here; we mustn’t be so naïve as to think only those who are recorded were the only giants of the faith who were contemporary with them. To put this fact into modern perspective, imagine a modern movie theater with its wide, panoramic screen. The viewer sees a broad spectrum of action, together with surround sound. Suppose it has a width of, say, fifty feet, but then the theater manager curtains off all but a three foot section for our viewing. Not much to see, considering there’s another 47 feet of action we never see.

But if we are going to make the illustration truer to real life, imagine a theater with not only surround sound, but surround screen! There we sit in the middle, action and sound happening all around us, not just in front of us. At the rate of real life there is no way we could keep up with it all. Well, that’s our individual selves buried in the action of billions of other individuals in a real world of live action all over the planet at the same instant.

Now let us bring the illustration home: Suppose we are called upon to relate just one aspect of all the bewildering number of events in play all around us at the same time. With that weight of truth, let us remember that the Gospel hydrogen bomb detonated there in Jerusalem. The mighty shock wave from it stormed out in every direction simultaneously, north, south, east, and west. Fantastic events were happening at the full circumference of it as it began its Divine purpose of filling the whole earth with its power.

But most of today’s readers of the account are guilty of thinking that only the tiny sliver of the Book of Acts was all that was happening on the Christian scene at the time. Of course we know better out of pure instinct, but we fail to act like it in our personal treatment of Scripture. But it behooves us to realize that Scripture by no means records all the giants of the faith at the time, just as it is today where silent, invisible male and female giants of faith roam the earth by the multitudes, known only to God Himself.

Through the lattice we see Apollos as just such a giant who, compared to Paul, Peter, John, James, and others stood no less in stature. Only when we absorb this truth of reality into our reasoning are we able to view such great men and women in their true perspective of imperfection, instead of flawless icons of virtual worship, who made no errors of judgment. It pays to heed this truth, lest we take our eyes off the real Hero of the Divine account, the Holy Spirit Himself. –DA

One of the best humorous stories I know of to illustrate the importance of Biblical words and meanings is one about two brothers who got a job driving railroad spikes. Neither of them were “raised” by their parents, but were jerked up by the hair of the head. The youngest one didn’t have a lick of sense, and the older one’s good judgment went south long ago. Being oldest, he assigned his little brother to operating the sledge hammer, fearing he couldn’t hold the spike steady. So the older one carefully planted the spike in place and said, “Okay now, Joe, when I nod my head, hit it.” -DA