It's Day By Day

-QUALIFIERS-

(1)  Since the very fact of male and female was a creative act of God and saturates the whole of Scripture and reality to this very day, this article is wholly and without apology Christian. Mutual attraction of the sexes toward love, marriage, and the bearing of children is a creative fact predating and superseding all peoples, all religions, all classes, all history, all continents, and all ages, until it is patently absurd to compare it to modern Hollywood models, which rarely has anything to do with purposely favoring Judo-Christian morality.

(2)  Readers whose minds are pregnant with the Hollywood model may deem this article worthy only a good laugh. So be it, but if such a reader thinks that model will bring enduring happiness, the laugh is on them instead, and not funny at all because of this indelible rule: Only the Christian model has ever worked properly, but only if it was faithfully followed. All other models are guaranteed one or all of the following: Marital unhappiness, regret, mental anguish, troubled children, verbal or physical abuse or both, bondage, ill health, separation, divorce (with all its unbelievable confusion of right and wrong in re-marriage), and perhaps even the loss of one’s soul.

(3)  The topic here is not a teen toy to be treated frivolously or recklessly, if one’s aim in pursuit is to enjoy a life of marital happiness. Just one youthful fling cannot begin to equal the many decades of regret for having squandered the first two. Needless to say, of all the twists, turns, and decisive landmarks of life, one had better get this one right the first time!

(4)  Contrary to Hollywood, any guy whose hormones drive him after girls as his primary pursuit is likely to be in for a self-inflicted beating! God never created His females with a view to have males put them before Himself. (Girls should also remember that). No, in fact God openly admits that He is a “Jealous” God and will not share His glory with another. ( Deuteronomy 5:9, 6:15). Guys, if you get that reversed even a little you are in for some unhappy reaping. Putting God first in your pursuit of a mate is not optional, but a requirement with guaranteed consequences. The simple plan of God is that men pursue  God first, then, in supplying their needs, He in His infinite wisdom and ability sends along a worthy candidate for their consideration. No other rule applies! Get that wrong and you will go wrong—every time! Again, men, if you are in a hormonal drive after skirts you should brace yourself for a great deal of trouble.

(5)  The modern generations, in a society catapulted out of the Hippie Anti-establishment generation, which is heavily promoted by Hollywood and the public school environment, has made heroes and know-it-alls of our children and reduced parents and elders to “out-of-touch” and “old-fashioned” unimportant relics of the past who should “get with it.” Such youth think they have all the answers and that everyone else is just in the way. Consequently, they foolishly engage in their own counsel as they cold-shoulder and spit poison at those whose years of experience in a brutal world has made them wise. Instead of humility, today’s youth possess egos in which pea-size wisdom is inflated to the size of a beach ball. How foolish is that? Such was not the case in former generations. Our mighty America itself was built brick-by-brick by parents and elders who commanded their children after them, not by an undisciplined, disrespectful, bratty generation.

The point is this: Christian guys, if you want to escape a world of hurt in your pursuit of a girl, you’d do well to make it a point to shut your mouth and sit open-eared at the feet of those who have been there and done that and are able to give you insights into how to avoid a Titanic disaster in your young life. Do not be like king Rehoboam and go to the counsel of the youth for answers ( I Kings 12:6-11), but to the counsel of the elders where you can be directed to wisdom. Take heed, young men, come out of your ego-driven, self contained, know-it-all world and ask questions. Lots of them! Especially of those adults in your life who love you, but most especially of God. There is wisdom. If you would be wise, then heed the Lord’s counsel and that of your godly elders and no others, especially your peers, who speak the same language of inexperience of your own little world. King Solomon said, “With all thy getting, get understanding,” (Proverbs 4:7), and the Apostle James said, “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God.” (James 1:5).

Now, with those qualifiers in place, we can deal very pointedly with how Christian guys should pursue girls.

-THE RULES-

RULE 1.  Make it a point to carefully study the Scriptural Genesis model. Get that first rule wrong and you are off to a flying crash dive on the rocks of life. God set the man’s created stage by providing him a female helper equipped for that purpose, and then He set the female’s stage by giving her a male provider equipped for that purpose. That Divine arrangement is the touchstone of humanity which Hollywood hates. Guys, be very careful and cautious to understand this clear base of pursuit, and the logical guidelines it entails. Adam was designed in every way to be the strength, head, and comforter of his family, not the head-ache! Note carefully, that it is his logical place to inspire his chosen female to be his “helper,” exactly the same way a corporate head must inspire his employees to give him their very best. He cannot, must not, brow-beat them into it. He must wisely “inspire” it! He dare not attempt to attract, recruit, and hire an employee by showing and telling them the work is lousy, the boss is a self-centered tyrant, and the pay is not worth it. The word, “inspire” is vital to the entire corporate goal. A better word for our purpose is “courting.” Guys, if you think to pursue that special girl for the purpose of making her your helper, you should understand that to “court” her is indeed the process of “inspiring” her to be your helper, and not someone else’s. And that is exactly what guys do quite naturally. The whole idea is to turn her head your way. If then she says yes to your proposal, SHE THEN BECOMES YOURS TO LOSE! But most guys seem grossly ignorant of the fact that, if after the marriage they stop the “inspiration” that won her in the first place, that lack of inspiration convinces her that you either don’t want or don’t care to have her as your “helper” anymore. If that happens, guys, you’re going to know about it from an unhappy wife! Want proof? Just you let your boss stop the pay raises, becomes unhappy with your work, never inspires you to work for him anymore, and you’ll get a full load of what that helper of yours is feeling. That’s pretty simple to grasp. God made it simple. You’d do well not to start up anything during the courtship that you do not intend doing from then on, and then just see if she’ll agree to be your helper. Don’t blame her, she’s simply being the female God created. Stop watering your rose and it will simply wilt and die right in your hand while you’re holding it—unless she decides to change jobs, if you get my drift.

Your role then, guys, in your pursuit of the girl of your dreams, is to aggressively turn on the inspiration! This is done many ways: Cards, letters, flowers, words of praise for her beauty and abilities, showing intense interest in who she is, her family, and things all about her. Do not talk about yourself unless she asks you. You should persist in this with a view of turning her affections toward you and no one else, and to keep them there. If she shows the tiniest spark of interest in you, even if she is serious about another guy, you are on your way. Remember, unless she flatly tells you to get lost, or she marries the other guy, she is fair game for winning. “All’s fair in love and war” is a true saying. Don’t hold back and be shy, be aggressive. Girls respect that, and are even attracted by it, especially if she’s currently interested in a deadbeat. When you are trying to turn her interests your way, pay no attention to the other guy so long as she responds even a little to your overtures. It is her attention you’re after, not the other guy. Listen carefully, guys; even of that girl is wearing an engagement ring while she is definitely responding to you positively, you are not violating honor to attempt to win her affections. If she is supposed to be yours and not his, you could be saving her, and him, some future heartaches. The guy might not like what you’re doing, but hey, if she were yours now, he’d be watching her, not you, especially if she used to be his. If he threatens fisticuffs because “she’s mine!,” but she is responding to you, tell him to convince her of that. Don’t worry about his fists. All he’s going to do is turn her head more your way. After all, if he makes such threats because he isn’t a Christian and she has lowered herself to date such a man, you should ask if you should pursue this girl in the first place.

RULE 2.  Ask yourself how much it is worth to you to find that dream girl “helper” with which to spend more than half a century. Which would you rather have, the right girl to bring you both joy, or the wrong one to bring you both regret? Or perhaps none at all, to leave you unfulfilled? Well, there is only one way to be assured of finding the right one. LOCK YOUR FULL ATTENTION ON THE PURSUIT OF GOD FIRST, not second or third or not at all. If you by slim chance wind up with the right one without making the pursuit of God first, then you will be one of those extremely rare guys who became the object of God’s mercy. Always, “a marriage made in Heaven” is one where both boy and girl were pursuing God first, whereupon God simply stepped in and beautifully merged them toward a blessed end. Yes, you can be reckless in your pursuit; God will simply allow your own choice to freely function, but you will run blindly into the negative side of the law of sowing and reaping. It’s a law you cannot escape. You simply reap what you sow. All of us do, with absolutely no exceptions. Not even God will prevent the consequences of your stubborn foolishness.

RULE 3.  Give serious, earnest heed to the counsel of your elders who love you. Remember, they are the only ones besides God Himself whom you can trust to tell you the truth! Frankly, ignoring them for the counsel or philosophy of  your young peers is the very height of childish frivolity. You will find no quicker shortcut to sowing, and reaping, bitterweeds. Such reckless behavior can literally end generations of a family who  have traditionally served God. Parents know their own children and what makes them tick. If that is ignored, you have sentenced yourself to discovering it the hard way. Guys, seek counsel about that girl who lights your eyes. Check you pursuit until someone besides yourself evaluates her. If you fail at that, you should brace yourself for some jolting surprises. The biggest fault in today’s youth is to overrate their wisdom. Don’t fall into that trap.

RULE 4.  There is one final point of caution that must be made. The accessibility and availability of virtually anything at all on the Internet has naturally lateraled over to become a huge shopping center for mates. It has become a virtual minefield for predators of every sort, especially sex. Please hear me very carefully, guys: The use of this tool for finding the right girl slams broadside into the highly personal nature of the courtship guideline promoted throughout Scripture. The very first violation is that it eclipses the primary rule of  pursuing God ahead of the girl. That fact makes it a blind, impersonal, back door, sidestepping, shortcut beginning toward an act of exploration. It skips the family interaction that ought to be up front. Emotional ties may be set prematurely, making it difficult to reverse, setting up a temptation to sacrifice one’s standards to own something forbidden. Such a tool is in keeping with the modern convenience of  time-saving curb service, a quick-check brevity that curses the time-tested beauty of romance. It has a falsehood to it, while the real thing has 3-D roots, branches, connections, feelings, emotions, touching, seeing, hearing, person-to-person interaction in the flesh, not merely images, icons and written words. In a word, an internet pursuit bypasses reality. There are just too many ways to fool one another, including the expectations of whole families. It simply is not right. Leaving in the shadows the very ones who love you most cannot be God’s will, and will ruin the innocence in the pursuit. Ours is a cluttered world anyway, but the convenience contrived by our society and the Internet has imprisoned us in lives of solitude even as we exist shoulder to shoulder. Such conditions are a tremendous aid to separation and divorce. Guys, if you wish to find the right girl, you dare not participate in society’s solitary confinement against those who love you, and care what happens to your future.

The subject matter of this article could easily expand into a book, but we must end it. Let me conclude with something Roy’s old sidekick, “Gabby” Hayes might say: “Now listen here, you young whipper-snappers. If you’re gonna catch a young heifer, you better learn how to rope ‘er first!”

DA

“…Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth” (II Timothy 3:7).

There is a line in the movie, Love Comes Softly, in which little Missie says to grown-up Marty, “How did you get to be so old and not know how to do nuthin?” In this metaphor is an amazing human truth. Here we are existing in a world of overwhelming phenomenon of displays so vast, so high, so deep, so complex, so magnificent, bewildering, awesome, altogether a place where we are born, grow to live most of a century, all the time ever learning in an environment sufficient for a thousand or more learning lifetimes, and yet, despite such a fact, most of us are “never able to come to the knowledge of the truth!” Pray tell, how is that even possible?

This is crazy! Besides all the mind-numbing things mentioned above, Christianity alone possesses and promotes the Holy Scriptures, God’s revelation as to who He is, who we are, where we came from, where we’re heading, and precisely how every scrap of reality we hear, see, and experience came to be in the first place. And yet we read that many of us, not a few, are “ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth!” Imagine it! Truth’s reality is so present, relevant, and persistent that it leaves us as road-kill on life’s highway, and yet, for all our learning we still exist in stone ignorance of it! It just seems too bizarre to even think about!

This article will be published on an Internet blog where potentially millions of eyes and ears of all walks of life all over the globe can see and hear life-transforming truths which, applied, would bring peace, joy, and happiness in this life and finally in Heaven itself. And yet all but a tiny fraction of them will say something like, “Hmmmm, interesting. Oh well, off I go to another opinion.” Even that comment itself is very interesting. You see, such a person reads my articles as a gathering of information, much like a carefree person merrily going through the countryside picking flowers,eating berries, sniffing this and that in fascination of the world around them in a sensual experiment of existence, all with a view toward satisfying their inquisitive senses. Perhaps among all the things they touched, smelled, and tasted in such a process, was one item of deadly poison such as hemlock or

some other threat. But having sampled them all, their cluttered mind prevents them from having a clue of which one brought them to ruin. In a very real sense such a person would be “ever learning,” but if just one sampling was deadly, it could also be said they were stone ignorant after all.

Consider, for example, the enormous, impossible complexity of just one American Space Shuttle. Just imagine every tiny screw, rivet, gear, wire, component, panel, and tile, plus all the man hours expended to design and build it, the years of planning, the mountain of paperwork, all the training of the crew, the special fuels to operate it, and on and on. Regardless of all of that, it takes just one tiny flaw in one tiny tile to incinerate it all in a split second in a fiery streak across the night sky. All is lost because of just one tiny mistake, perhaps by a worker who foolishly took a shortcut in workmanship in order to get off early and attend a party.

Friends, when it comes to the human soul, though, all of the above pales in comparison to the eternal loss of just one of them, due to a simple failure to act on just one vital spiritual truth. It matters not one whit what the reason for the failure may be. A loss is a loss, and in this case one cannot shrug, get over it, and go on. The loss is a fiery streak across eternity that never burns out! So declare the Scriptures in plain language for all to read and consider. Those truths are not optional nor negotiable in any degree. It is just one way or nothing. As one minister puts it, “God is not saying, ‘lets make a deal.’ He’s saying, ‘This is the deal.’” If he’s right, then nothing else matters. It is time to quit sampling, smelling, tasting, and feeling, and start eating something in which there’s nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Having made that point, let us ask why there are so many “ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.” The answer is in the context of that passage of Scripture. II Timothy 3:1-9 speaks of a “last days” list of human characteristics. I urge the reader to read them. We see there utter selfishness at work. “Lovers of their own selves…unthankful, unholy…proud…without natural affection…despisers of those that are good…lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God…having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof…” But the striking truth here is that Paul is addressing the character of troublemakers that have invaded the church! Look around us; never in all church history was this more true than right now!

How, then, does this play out in reality before our very eyes? Here’s how: Consider first of all that “Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall” (Proverbs 16:18). Such selfish vanity feasts on the craving to be seen and heard. The global movie industries, especially Hollywood, enjoy a flood of wealth in offering icons for viewers whose vanity is unfulfilled, and so they identify vicariously with trained fakers. Identical to this, sports venues also offer vicarious fulfillment to those addicted to the games. This belongs to those “Lovers of pleasures” in Paul’s epistle to Timothy.

Today’s society is glutted with couch potatoes, movie goers, video gamers, book-aholics, faithful followers of the television Discovery, News, and Education channels, besides rabidly absorbing their lives with computers and the world wide Internet. A favorite among them is every form of pornography, readily available. Truly, this is the epitome of “ever learning,” but of things that can never bring them “to the knowledge of the truth.” Instead, such venues contribute heavily to being “lovers of their own selves,” to the mind of being, “unthankful, unholy,” to being “proud,” to being, “without natural affection.” A multitude in the church are guilty of these, and so sit in church with, “a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof.” Sadly, especially the church youth through such exposure and peer pressure become well educated to be “despisers of those that are good,” meaning serious Christians, elders, parents, and anyone else who try to maintain a standard of godliness and holiness in a wicked world, and so suffer persecution from the very souls they care most about.

And so the secret of ignorance exists with those who engage in one or all of that, then sit around jawing about it in an egotistical “form of godliness,” without having humbly dropped before God’s throne as dead in a pitiful heap! This in spite of the fact that every last one of us have absolutely nothing to brag about when we consider who we are, where we were dragged from, and just how utterly helpless we were until God in His mercy had His only begotten, holy, spotless Son brutally slaughtered on our behalf, and delivered us from an eternal doom in Hell. There is absolutely no place in God’s Kingdom for starched britches, fused spines, nor prideful, selfish, debating boneheads! We must be humble, clean, repentant. We must be meek, lovers of God, and really, I say REALLY, feel ourselves to be as Paul put it, “Less than the least of all the saints” (Ephesians 3:8), in which Paul, in the Greek, stacked the comparative case on the superlative case to describe how utterly low-down he felt before God.

So let me ask this: Do you honestly know enough about the secret of ignorance to avoid it? Or are you one of it’s practitioners? You cannot hide the answer to that question—God is listening carefully to YOU!

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

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

These are not three sisters, but three very vital Biblical concepts.

GRACE: God’s marvelous gift of a measure of grace (I Corinth. 1:4) actually comes down to the simple truth of our God-given freedom to choose for ourselves whether or not to serve God or to thumb our noses at Him. God’s grace built and maintains the living existence of our fleshly house, but He parked His control at the door because He allows US to LIVE in it. He leaves it to us to bless Him for the privilege, or curse the landlord if we think we can get by with it.

FAITH: The essence of faith is simply the free choice to believe the truth of God’s Word and promises, or to doubt them or reject them altogether. He made it starkly clear that “All things are possible to him that believeth,” (Mark 9:23) and that He is ready to give us “Days as of Heaven upon the earth” (Deut. 11:21), but He made it just as clear that the recipients have to be only those who believe Him (exercise faith) for it.

HOPE: Hope exists where something good is yet unrealized. It is born of faith, made possible by grace. GRACE is essentially God’s created image in us to think and decide for ourselves. FAITH is the belief for the receipt of God’s provisions, and HOPE is our patient waiting for the product of God’s grace and our faith. Grace is our endowment of free will, Faith is the activity of free will, and hope is the free will in waiting.

When we subject these three subjects to careful, merciless scrutiny until we arrive at their bare essence as they relate to our humanity, we finally arrive at the simple, obvious, self-known reality of our God-given attribute of free will. That part of us is a vital, essential, core quality of who all humans are. It is there by God’s gift of grace upon His decision to make man in His very own image of freedom. So long as God is free, we are also free. In fact, if we ever in this physical world cease having that core attribute, the entire human race will suddenly die in a pile! We can live with one leg or one arm, or even without good sense, but freedom to choose is a piece of our being just as much as our soul or spirit. Without God’s image within of free will we are all corpses—instantly!

It follows, then, that if we get the notion that once we use that freedom to accept God’s gracious gift of salvation but that we then lose the will to reject it, we have foolishly mocked the reality of God’s gift of freedom that makes us who we all are. It also follows that a natural by-product of such an erroneous concept is the “God is in control” misapplication that flourishes in Christendom today. Yes, God is in control of His natural laws, including the maintenance of His image in us, but He has made it starkly clear that He has put ourselves in control of our own freedom to choose. We truly reap what we sow. When we as a nation elect a madman to rule us, we turn God’s stomach when we justify it with, “Well, God is in control, so I guess this is God’s will.” Such a doctrine moves God even closer to letting us have our madman.

Without free will as an essential part of who we are all our natural lives, there is no such thing as “Come now and let us reason together, saith the Lord…”(Isaiah 1:18), since all He would have to do is press a few buttons and we would automatically obey His own choice of whether we were to be a Paul or a Hitler. If God predicated our fate upon His own fore-ordained will, there would have been no reason for a Savior, since He declared openly in His Word that, “God is not willing that any should perish” (II Peter 3:9).

But the very essence of our God-installed freedom of will is our ability to choose for ourselves APART from God’s own will, and so freely suffer the consequences. It is the same whether our will is individually, corporately, a family, a church, a city, a nation, or a world of people. If this were not true, God would have had no inspiration to urge the Apostle John to even write the Book of Revelation, which describes the consequences.
DA

A compliment is the act of verbally expressing sincere respect to another, either in their person, or in their ability, or in their position. Scripture is quite clear about this. Therefore:

~Show me a person who will not freely praise God, and I’ll show you a person who will not freely compliment others.
~ Show me a church who does not compliment their pastor, and I’ll show you a weary pastor.
~ Show me a supervisor who will not compliment his workers, and I’ll show you a company in trouble.
~ Show me a politician who will not compliment his constituents, and I’ll show you a candidate in trouble at the polls.
~ Show me a person who will not reward their animal, and I’ll show you an animal you cannot trust.
~ Show me a man who will not compliment his wife, and I’ll show you an unhappy wife.
~ Show me a wife who will not compliment her husband, and I’ll show you a struggling husband to return the favor.
~ Show me a person who compliments in order to receive praise, and I’ll show you a person soon without friends.
~ Show me youth who will not compliment their parents and elders, and I’ll show you youth hard at work building their own unhappiness.
~ Show me parents who will not compliment their own offspring, and I’ll show you offspring being taught to wound their own.
~ Show me the head of a home who never compliments, and I’ll show you a home turned on its head.
~ Show me a nation that refuses to honor God, and soon there will not be a nation there to show me.

Why are all of these statements true? It’s because their foundation sits squarely on the human ability to be selfish, or to be unselfish. It’s as simple as that. Selfishness always demands an in-flow of personal backslapping praise, while non-selfishness always requires an out-flow of sacrificial respect for others. Stated in brief, it is the old truth of James 3:10 of blessing and cursing coming from that same hole under our noses. Meaning, persons who will not humble themselves to give compliments is completely immersed in their own selfish pride, and instead expects that pride to be fed. Conversely, a person who does compliment is one who steps away from cursing by blessing others. The first instance we find true to our carnal nature; the second we find unnatural unless we purposely choose to reflect the love of God.

Giving is not a natural act with human depravity, which is totally grounded in selfishness. One can give, yes, but what for? A compliment is a gift, but Jesus pointed out that if we do “good,” or “lend,” (same as giving) for the purpose of receiving back in kind, then we are no better than sinners and enemies. Rather, we should give “hoping for nothing in return,” if we expect to be called God’s children (Luke 6:32-35). Frankly, if we go through life failing to give honor where honor is due, refusing to give praise to those we love, then Scripture itself calls into question our very loyalty to God Himself! It behooves us, then, to cease cursing by inflow, and begin blessing by outflow; to stop receiving and start giving, and this in obedience to God because it is simply the right thing to do, whether or not we even want to or feel like it. And if we buy the old John Wayne image of “It’s not my way,” we’d better dump that wimpy excuse and stand tall as Christian stalwarts.

Again, a true compliment is an unselfish act. Once delivered, it should be left alone, expecting no return of any kind. The Bible calls the giving of praise the fruit of our lips ( Heb. 13:15). It is a sacrifice of one’s self, and the expectation of a return is to retrieve the sacrifice from the altar and to consume it ourselves. All humanity is told, “In Him we live and move and have our being,” (Acts 17:28), that is, the air we breathe belongs to Him. Therefore, “Freely ye have received, freely give” (Matt. 10:8).

But some will surely say of the person to be complimented that there is nothing there worthy of compliment. This is ludicrous. The Hippie culture had only one song with even a grain of truth in it: “Everything is beautiful, in it’s own way.” Why? Because each person exists by the creative hand of our PERFECT God, even if they are born in sin. Try telling a Hitler’s mother she just gave birth to a murdering demon. On a milder note, a husband might compare his wife to a Hollywood super-model and decide in his warped mind that there’s nothing to compliment. Well, how about, “Honey, you must be a woman of pristine character to choose to marry the likes of me.” Or, if she is truly homely, try, “Sweetheart, you might not be the most beautiful woman in the world (which she already knows), but you are certainly the most beautiful woman in MY world.” If she isn’t, that man needs to stop negotiating with her and let God turn him right side out, since his own homeliness is a disgusting sight.

I suppose we should not be surprised at our present unthankful generations. After all, they were born and nourished in a society whose very music itself is a protest to common, quiet Christian decency. Music in one’s face is going to miss the heart. Shattering the eardrums deafens one to God’s “still, small voice.” Screaming and yelling chokes the “sincere milk of the Word.”

Certified barbarians graduate daily from our public schools and universities, diligently trained in godless evolutionary brainwash where Christian thought is banned—barbarians, because godlessness equals Freudian egoism of self-centeredness. This produces Hollywood sitcoms closely related to the sport of dog fighting, emulated in the viewers of such trash, all surfacing in children with firearms that turns schoolrooms into execution chambers. Even our welfare children grow fat on free delicacies, eat like royalty, wear designer jeans, afford expensive hairdos, own i-phones, are never denied, always receiving, never thankful, and instantly ready to curse anyone who dares withhold it from them. Such a society had better remember that God does indeed grow weary of such selfish, foolish people, and turns over those tables of delicacies and unfurls his dreaded whip. Many an affluent people have learned the hard way how to dig in the garbage heaps while in rags. Some of those were people claiming His name, but shaming His righteous standards.

Is it any wonder his Word tells us that in the last days would come a generation who were “unthankful,” and “unholy?” I must point out quite candidly, that anyone, Christian or not, contributing to such a spoiled, brattish society by denying them the Christian refinement of compliment will one day have to survive a social pig sty, and finally be hauled into God’s court of justice for such neglect. Therefore:

~ Show me a world who thumbs its nose at God, and I’ll show you the world described in The Book of Revelation.

So how does one give a compliment? Actually, there’s no long, complicated secret to it. All one has to do is open one’s mouth and let it go. But I must warn you in case you’re not ready for this: First you have to swallow that big wad of chewing gum called PRIDE!

Please note that title: It does not say, “HOW TO STUDY SCRIPTURE,” or “THE BIBLE.” While all three may be seen as the same, some may perceive them differently. The word, SCRIPT, means writing of any sort and would be called scripture. A compilation of scriptures by different authors is a bibliography, and may be called a bible. Christians, of course, commonly call God’s Word The Scripture or The Bible.

To be clear, the reader should know that this entire article assumes there to be one absolutely holy God, eternally existent in three distinct Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It assumes that this God created all humanity, and that we violated His holy nature through willful disobedience; that He nevertheless loved us enough to redeem us through His Son, whom He calls The Word, and that this Word speaks to all humanity of God’s plan of redemption; that we aliens from our Holy Creator are invited to this full redemption through the Word of God made available to us.

It assumes, then, that when our Perfect, Holy Creator spoke The Word to us, He did not stutter or double-speak in impossible riddles so as to play with us and laugh at our stupidity. It assumes that He is the eternal Upright, but we are the miserable down-fallen, giving meaning to the fact that He truly hates our selfish pride above all. Meaning, if we parade around with a high look, a snooty attitude, and a personal strut, then He will make it a point to see the day when we slink away dragging twisted tails and our ears flopped. It is healthy to remember that He has never come out second best in any contest and He solemnly promises that He never will. He has never lied, and never will.

So if you read this article with a view of God’s Word as being something we can reprocess and apply to a new generation where “old, outdated standards” of Biblical morality need “fresh ways of interpretation,” then this article in your view will be a waste of time. I must warn you, though; you’re in that other long line to get a Divine tail twisting.

The Word of God was not designed as a textbook on science, geology, history, geography, politics, economics, psychology, mathematics, chemistry, adjudication, medicine, nor any such thing, although what it says about those things is absolutely perfect, and drags a long trail of embarrassed nincompoops who doubted it. No, God’s Word was designed and built to be each individual human’s Divine, personal X-ray machine for their soul, so as to expose precisely and exactly what disease is in there, with the added feature of revealing exactly what the remedy is if we expect to live over it. God’s X-ray has never missed giving an exact diagnosis.

Anyone—I say ANYONE—approaching the Word of God with a mindset of intellectual prowess to critically examine it in support of a doctrinal presupposition will find fool’s gold. Why? Because an approach to examine God’s Word stands God’s approach that we BE examined on it’s head! Out of that may come uncanny geniuses in many respects, but all too often among them genius comes trotting out with third-grade logic. It’s as if they overlooked Hebrews 4:12,13: “For the Word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in His sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.” We are talking about humility here. Billy Graham’s interpretation of Biblical evangelism says it best: “Evangelism is one beggar telling another beggar where he can find bread.”

What’s more, anytime we examine God’s Word with the purpose of setting others straight, even as a minister or teacher, it is an exercise in futility because God’s way is for His Word to straighten OURSELVES out so we can show them where we got ourselves satisfied. Only then can we in true humility be a help to others. After all, in God’s view we are all beggars, whether poor and uneducated, or credited geniuses. Paul admonished Timothy to study with a view “approved unto God,” not his peers, the elders, the teachers, nor his parishioners (II Timothy 2:15; 3:16,17).

Today there is a very vital issue regarding the study of the Word of God: The question of other translations. Frankly, the best approach to that question is to ask ourselves another question: WHICH ONE IS GOD BLESSING? First, there are passages which seem neglected about this subject. Actually, God has made it clear in such passages as Matthew 5:18, Luke 16:18, John 1:1-5 and others, that God, not ourselves, guarantees to oversee and preserve the truth of His eternal Word through the generations. It is therefore impossible that God’s pure truth to humanity can ever be stamped out, falsified, or burned out of existence completely. He will take care of that, not our own imperfect recklessness. As a result, all we need do to see which one His blessings are on is to take note of which one glares at us.

Well, statistics show that most Christians are reading the NIV translation. But wait! Before we sit down and brush our hands, we’d better take another look. The KJV translation is a close runner up to the NIV, but the statistics showing what Christians are reading also includes the NKJV. The NKJV is NOT A NEW TRANSLATION, but a correction to the KJV. It should be considered that if we today attempt to read the original issue of the KJV of 1611 A.D., we come away with a headache from trying to decipher the Old English. No, the KJV has gone through several CORRECTIONS, not new translations, so that we can read the 1611 translation today. And so when we combine the KJV and the NKJV as the same translation, we see that the KJV translation of 1611 is yet the favored translation of the people of God, and has been, by the way, for half a millennium! Obviously, God is not yet through with having the KJV translation as closest to the preservation of the purity of His Word. Also, we should not miss an important part of the Preface of the NKJV: “In faithfulness to God and to our readers, it was deemed appropriate that all participating scholars sign a statement affirming their belief in the verbal and plenary [Full in all respects or requisites; having all power] inspiration of Scripture, and in the inerrancy of the original autographs.” Such a belief is absolutely vital to any approach in clarifying the precise meaning of God’s Word.

Finally, with those basic concepts in place, we will find the study of God’s Word becoming far less challenging. There is a vast difference between digging ditches in granite and feasting on the Bread of Life. When we read any and all passages of Scripture, regardless of how deep they are, with the paramount question leading us, “How will this passage personally nourish ME and draw ME closer to my God?” it is the same as crawling onto God’s X-ray table and lying still for Him. In fact, if we do it any other way, we will go out the door dragging a crooked tail.

Assuming, then, that we will approach God’s Word correctly, allow me to point out a vital method of study that we should always apply. It is based on the bedrock fact that this is GOD’S Word that we are consuming. As such, every single little word and phrase, down to every “jot and tittle” [Hebrew punctuations], are also Divinely inspired and vital in truth. This includes such little words as the, and, it, I, this, and that—every word!

A young man less than half my age made this truth indelible to me. I am a retired tax examiner from the Internal Revenue Service. I had a young friend named Mark who was also a work leader and somewhat of a genius at the business. I consulted him often on many difficult cases. Very often with problem cases he would ask me, “What does the IRS Code book say?” I’d open it and read it with him looking on. Then he’d ask me what I thought it meant. I’d tell him, and then, as he did many times, he’d say, “But that’s not what the Code said.” So I’d read it again, but with the same outcome. Then he’d point at a single little insignificant word buried in the text, such as a THE, or an AND, and tell me I had overlooked the meaning that simple little word brought to the text. Often the entire sense turned on such a word. Then he’d tell me, “You can’t overlook even one simple word in there. This is the legislated law we must rule by, and every single word counts.” Indeed, some cases went to court, and often the case was won or lost because someone overlooked the meaning of a simple word or phrase in the law.

If that is true in a court of human law, then how much more so in God’s perfect Word, the LAST word in what is right and what is wrong in God’s Divine economy. If anything at all is perfectly plain in God’s Word, it is this: Classes or groups of people do not go to Heaven or Hell. No, only INDIVIDUALS go there! That is why our study of God’s Word must be personal, one-on-one with “Him with whom we have to do” apart from anyone or anything else in life. Should we fail to get that priority right—and keep it right—then we stand to suffer great loss, perhaps even our souls. —DA

PART ONE

Many will see that title, shrug, and move on, assuming the subject is simplistic and burned over. But it isn’t simplistic at all, and it has endured the flames of assumption, yet  stands there before us an unfazed monolith. In that title, you see, hangs Heaven or Hell for every soul ever born. We owe it to our own destiny to GET interested on purpose. The Scriptures even say of themselves, “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path” (Psalm 119:105 KJV). Without this Word, and properly understood, our path is dark and our feet aimless. We will most certainly stray from that path without its true light.

There is a philosophical science in our world so unimaginably complex that only minds of genius can deal with it in depth. It is so comprehensive that no other science can even be processed without it. Basic to who we are and all that we do, without it we would have never left Eden and attempted to make any sense of our fallen world. What is it? It is the science of logic. It is a part of our God-given nature, but, alas, neither did that part of us escape human depravity as a result of our sin against God. Reason though we may, our power of logic also fell to ruin at its base.

But we should give careful thought to each Scripture regarding the Divine Word of God, the light it gives, the direction it points us to. Why? Because the synonym for what we do with the Word of God is DOCTRINE, a product of our logic. We hear or see a thing, reason about it, and then decide what we believe about. That is called DOCTRINE. It’s what you personally have believed is the truth. Simple as that.

One day when Jesus preached to the multitudes, his words were so exclusive that many of his listeners walked away and ceased following him. He turned to his disciples and asked, “Will you also go away?” But Peter spoke powerfully: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:67,68). In Peter’s staggering words stands also the truth of Jesus shocking statement regarding the Kingdom of God: “Few there be that find it” (Matt.  7:14). The Greek word there for “few” means puny, little. It does not mean anything like a third of humanity, or even a fourth. It means only a pinch of it!

Now, this truth is startling. Jesus came, died, and was resurrected for the entirety of humanity, and yet he foresaw that only a smattering of us will escape the Hell prepared for those who reject their only source of redemption. That, friends, should sober us all! What we believe about the Word of God is lighted dynamite in our hands. We don’t play with a lighted stick of dynamite, and we’d better not play with Bible doctrine. DOCTRINE IS EVERYTHING when it comes to spiritual truth.

Ministers of God’s Word who fail to emphasize sound doctrine each time they mount the pulpit, and fail to carefully point out false doctrine, are failing at their task before God. The truth is that simple and uncomplicated in its logic. This is difficult if ministers are comfortable fellowshipping inter-denominationally with ministers who preach false doctrine from their pulpits under the compromising belief that God called them all to different purposes, so who are we to say they are wrong? This is erroneous Biblical logic. God’s church is not a cyclopes with 700 heads pulling in 700 different directions of so-called Biblical truth, all of them right. No, the lost human race desperately needs the pure truth once for all delivered to the saints, and anything else will lead to no good in the end. Oh, yes, we can have our civic responsibilities in common, but we’d do well to part company with doctrinal error, and keep a safe distance.

Nevertheless, the science and logic debate is ever with us. Thank God for it. Unfortunately, very early the church backslid away from the pure truth once delivered to it and failed, as she still is doing today, to repent and do her first works over again (Rev. 2:5). So, the natural human compensation for the loss gave rise to the need for the philosophical sciences to come forward in the defense of the Christian faith on the platform of debate. This sends a glitch into Christianity. You see, Ancient Greeks and Romans such as Plato, Aristotle, Socrates and others virtually cut their teeth on the science of logic and debate. With the cooling of the church’s original zeal for God, there emerged a gradual blending of Christianity with the culture of the ancient world. It never left us. Most early church fathers adopted it, including the great Saint Augustine. Perhaps the greatest champion of it was the famous John Calvin, who was meticulously schooled in it from his youth.

Today, church leaders, ministers, theologians, and professors pride themselves in their skill of logic and debate so as to prove Christianity and shut the mouths of scientific atheists and agnostics. But this emphasis overlooks an important fact: In accommodating such non-Christians, the church has entered an arena of scientific skill where both sides have equal intellectual footing in the science of debate. The best man at the skill wins, even if he is wrong. This points to a vital Scriptural truth often overlooked: It is found in Ephesians 6:10-17. Paul admonishes Christians to “Put on the whole armor of God.” Of that armor, he tells us which pieces of it are most vital to us: The Shield of Faith, the Helmet of Salvation, and the Sword of the Spirit (VV 16,17). Look very carefully at this. The shield of faith does not exist apart from our deliberate willingness to HAVE faith. That belongs to US. The helmet of salvation does not exist without, again, our deliberate willingness to have faith to receive it. That also belongs to US. But note most carefully that the Sword of the Spirit is NOT ours. The Greek is genitive. Put another way, the equivalent expression of “The sword of the Spirit” is “The Spirit’s sword”, not ours, but His! We take OUR shield, we take OUR helmet, but we take the SPIRIT’S sword. This is vital to see. We can hold the sword (The Word of God) in our hand, yes, but if we start wielding it in our own strength, genius, wisdom, and skill, we have seized the sword from the Spirit’s hand and lit out on our own prideful vanity. It is a good way to get butchered! We can never win, but the Spirit can never lose.

The Apostle Paul, in his zeal, dealt with the intellectuals on Mars Hill (Acts 17). One wonders if it was time well spent, considering the meager results. For every intellectual on Mars Hill, trained to doubt, the streets of Athens and other gentile cities were flooded with hungry, simple souls eager to believe some good news. Paul seemed to realize this later, for he refrained from such future engagements.

Indeed, logical geniuses have come to realize that logical debate finds it impossible to “study the genesis or the sequential order of time of man’s beliefs and cognitive activities.”* Why? Because “logic is not a positive factual science of nature…” because “its principles are rules for evaluating or criticizing the validity of arguments.”* That is, because both deductive and inductive reasoning merely ANALYZES the arguments, it does not itself argue, because it is only a tool in the hand of he who is believing something, right or wrong, and is engaged in arguing for it or against it. Do we see this truth? This is what Acts 17:21 means in saying these intellectuals spent their time in merely either telling or hearing something new. You see, only humans intellectually reason on evidence, and assume a posture based upon it. We have heard the saying regarding debate, “A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.” All of us are fully aware of that fact, and act it out. How? Our depraved nature prompts us to shrink from correcting ourselves from something erroneous which we came to believe, only to discover we were in error. Instead, we stubbornly blunder on anyhow, refusing to change courses, knowing inside that we are blundering. Pride is the culprit.

A classic example of this truth is Bible Prophecy. You see, a study of it cannot be resolved with deductive nor inductive reasoning because of the universal fact of the God-given human free will’s ability to change direction in order to avoid the trouble prophecy predicts. Example? If an angry man is bearing down on you with an ice pick drawn, despite the fact that a policeman just told you that was impossible under his watch, would you calmly stand there trusting the policeman, or would your feet take over? I’d place my money on your feet. If you ran it would be perfectly natural. God made you that way. Logic, then, is not a “positive factual science” of Bible doctrine, because it is operating in man’s beliefs, not in the laws of nature.

This brings us to Part Two, the heart of our subject matter, interpreting Scripture.

*Dr. Ernest Nagel, former Professor of Philosophy, Columbia University.

PART TWO

The Apostle Paul admonished Timothy to rightly divide the Word of Truth (II Tim. 2:15). We should see this not as a tool to debate, for we must remember that in any arena of combat one of the opponents is left bleeding in the sand, vowing to return and win another day. This is not what the Gospel is about. The idea is not to hack our way to victory and walk over the backs of our opponents, but to let the light within us awaken the hunger in the lost for restoration with their Creator. As Billy Graham so aptly put it, “Evangelism is simply one beggar telling another one where he can find bread.” There is no better definition.

The problem the church has fallen into is the lack of light within. How can we ever shine our light in a dark world when we have cloaked it in pride, selfishness, and a bent to be right in the face of detractors? So here is the heart and soul of this article: Friends, the correct perspective on the Word of God is to stop figuring out how to interpret Scripture, and see the cold truth SCRIPTURE MUST BE ALLOWED TO INTERPRET US! When we absorb ourselves in full attention on how to interpret it, we plug its own flow into our souls with its purpose to examine and change us instead. Never forget this rule: The Word of God will not flow through human pride and vanity, but only through a simple, elusive thing called humility.

This is the true spirit of Christianity and evangelism. The idea is not to run around cornering folks, prying open their ears and eyes so we can shine our prideful lights into them. Rather, it is to simply ALLOW our own lights to shine brightly for all to see. Jesus said a great deal about our lights in Matthew Chapters 5 and 6, as well as in Luke and John. He even mentioned a black light and how intense such a light can be. Read about it in Matt. 6:23.

Perhaps no Scripture speaks so eloquently of our relationship with God’s Word as Hebrews 4:12,13: “For the Word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in His sight: But all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do”(KJV). There is a Scriptural objective in this for us, and we are told what it is in verse 16: “…that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.” That’s the idea. We must not read this Scriptural reference with a mind that we use it on the other guy; rather, WE personally need mercy, and WE personally need God’s grace to help us. Such food is candlepower for our inner light.

So there is the key to Scriptural interpretation: We must cast OURSELVES purposely upon it like sprawling on an X-ray table so that IT may interpret US, not the other way around. Pride uses it for ammunition, whereas humility uses it for food to grow spiritually. If we dare lay the Word of God on a shelf for display; if we take it to church under our arm as though it’s truth will bleed into us without effort; if we only spot read it out of curiosity once in a while; if we think our mate’s dedication to it will sanctify our lack of it, well, such foolishness misses the entire purpose of God’s word—to change US, not the other person! That, friends, is the only way to the narrow way, instead of the broad way. Yes, we should fall on it, eat it daily with prayer, ask God to X-ray us with it, to expose our pride, our stubbornness, to humble us, to make us better by making us more like our Lord Jesus. That, friends, is the true definition of Scriptural interpretation. Any other is a waste of our time and God’s purpose in us. If the Word of God doesn’t interpret us, we do the opposite—we employ pride, foolishness, and plain stupidity in our interpretation of God’s Word of truth, and wind up hollow within.

This is not to say, however, that there is not a legitimate debate in life’s arena in such areas as politics, the sciences, and social/moral issues. Christians should engage in them enthusiastically. God’s people are desperately needed there. But when it comes to formally debating Bible doctrine, we start spinning our wheels. I would say, though, that the church should take note of who is winning the most souls to Christ whose walk exhibits all the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22,23), and come to the logical conclusion that where the fruit of the Spirit is, is where HE is and where His church SHOULD be!

Part of the process of examining Scripture is comparing Scripture with Scripture, “For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, and there a little:” (Isa. 28:10), until we understand its meaning, who said what and why, the Persons of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. To do this we may need the aids of Bible dictionaries, lexicons, concordances, maps, and references to the original languages of Scripture. God has inspired great men to just such purposes. These are the tools we normally use as ammunition to debate and inform others, even to direct their lives. But proper Scriptural interpretation comes with the PURPOSE in doing it: Our aim should be to do those vital things to direct, enlighten, change, transform, even CONSUME OURSELVES, and no one else! Only then can God use us to SHINE HIMSELF THROUGH US, and lighten the lives of others by His mighty Spirit. But remember, He only shines THROUGH a transparent substance called HUMILITY. The countenance of every child of God who does that always glows with God’s OWN presence. THAT is the only thing that will win the lost and light their way to their Savior.

Besides a few other famous names of church history, one in particular stands out: John Calvin, (1509-1564 A.D.). This man, like Martin Luther (1483-1546 A.D.), changed the entire playing field of church history, thereby greatly influencing world history itself. In his shadow came one James Arminius (1560-1609 A.D.), countering Calvin’s influence. Highly intellectually trained from childhood, and skilled in renaissance logic of the ancient pagan Greek and Roman philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle, Calvin one day made a quiet intellectual decision to follow Christ instead. Following that, he put together a sophisticated, ingenious system of Theology based on the sovereignty, foreknowledge, and fore-ordination of God in His creation of the physical universe, including mankind.

That system in it’s purest essence had the effect of conveniently putting the real monkey of responsibily on God’s back and a fake one on ours. How? It simply determined that God foreordained the whole physical scene, start to finish, the good, the bad, and the ugly before He ever even lifted a finger to create anything! We are all just victims of it. No matter what happens, so goes the notion, “God is in control” anyhow, no matter how we behave. No kidding! Why, some of us were created for the express purpose of going to Hell to burn forever, and the rest were created to go to Heaven without a genuine choice in the matter! In fact, the church Calvin founded, the Presbyterian Church, later met together and established a doctrinal confession called THE WESMINSTER CONFESSION, part of 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.”

Well, strains of that confession drifted over all of Christendom like a heavy fog, becoming a vital part of Christian brain wrinkles. It still goes on today. But original Calvinism was so harsh in its approach, many saw need to modify it to be more universal in it’s scope, making more room for greater numbers to be saved. Besides pure Calvinism, there was Hyper-Calvinism and many other splinters adopting some variation of sublapsarianism, supralapsarianism, and other isms, all crossing Theological swords over the Doctrine of Decrees in creation, all of it crawling with pride of intellectual prowess, while all along the good old image of God in them bit the blood from them because, despite their ramblings, their FREE WILLS were doing whatever they jolly-well pleased anyhow, even as the Lord stood away arms akimbo in the shadows shaking his head. Amazing!

One of the most quoted Scriptures by all Calvinists is Romans 8:28 in making the “God is in control” claim. Many non-Calvinists unknowingly also use the same terminology. What they all seem to always ignore is what that verse states exactly in plain language. The meat of the verse that pleases the Calvinist mind is “…All things work together for good to them that love God…” (KJV).

You see, this entire phrase expresses verbal ACTION, including the word “love.” In the original Koine Greek the word is AGAPOSIN. Please be patient while I explain something technical about this Greek word and the grammar in which it is couched. It is in the Dative Case of the Indirect Object. It is a masculine, plural, Present Participle in the Modal (mode) form, signifying the MANNER in which the action of the Verb is accomplished. For example, “Came John the Baptist preaching (Matthew 3:1), meaning John’s preaching was what his coming accomplished.

Now, these rules of grammar applied to Romans 8:28 tells us love is the manner in which all things work together. But hold it right there: The Greek word for love here is not the noun the Calvinists have made it out to be. No, it is in the verb form, an ACTION word! Put into plain street English of today, the verse says, “Everything in this world work together for those whose love (a verb) has legs!” Friends, simply sitting around IN love (a noun) with God, waiting for Him to work out His sovereign will in spite of your own will, will NEVER get all things to work together for your good. It takes DOING your love. God made His created women to thrive on their husband’s words, backed up by DEEDS to prove it. WORDS only makes her sick; DEEDS only, starves her to death.

And so we Christians at large today PARROT the Calvinists when we do something stupid, but then throw up our hands and sing, “God is in control.” Nonsense! God was NOT in control, WE WERE! That’s exactly why it was stupid. And stupidity is stooped to, not just by individuals, but by churches, cities, and nations. Contrary to Calvinism, the providence of God doesn’t elect evil to office vicariously through our “free” wills, WE do. God doesn’t have some kind of mysterious PURPOSE in mind in ALLOWING wickedness to become law, WE do. God respects every evil our FREE WILLS concoct and put into place by simply stepping back and letting us suffer the consequences for crowding Him aside. No, friends, God is only in control when we exercise sanity and PUT Him in control! Otherwise, His promises, such as He made to Israel to give them “as the Days of Heaven on upon the Earth” (Deut. 11:21) if they would only put Him first, would be absolutely meaningless.

Calvinists can put together a plethora of Scriptures they believe refutes this fact of reality, but the law of free will put there by God Himself bites them like an Adder regardless of their reasoning, with a pure known reality as certain as the law of gravity. No, some were not decreed to be saved; no, once saved does not mean one cannot will to trash it and go to Hell instead; and no, when it comes to the human free will, God is NOT in control unless we put Him there. He Himself guarantees it! That’s why human history is an unbelievable pile of twisted human carnage, and the express reason God will finally say it is enough and catch away His few remaining faithful and judge a whole planet who shakes their rebellious fists in His Divine face. It was the entire human race who purposely abused His holy image within us in order to control our OWN lives, instead of entrusting them into God’s pristine control. It is who we are and where we are FREELY heading, although from the very beginning NONE of it was necessary!

Yes, God did make provision for our redemption through sheer mercy and love for His own. No matter, it is the human race the Lord was talking about when He said, “Straight is the gate, and narrow is the way…and few there be that find it” (Matthew 7:14). That is why the cross of Jesus was, is, and ever will be such a heartbreak for God the Father.

Before you begin, I beg you to review the previous article, “Is God in control?” This will make what I am about to say come together in a meaningful way. The whole idea here is to put our minds into the proper perspective for considering humanity’s role in the subject of control.

What is that other natural law of God? It is this: Humanity’s free will, born of God’s own image He created within us. Now I can just hear the chorus of moans and groans and “Oh, brother! I thought he was going to say something important!” Better cup your ears, folks, because this is indeed extremely important, and grossly overlooked across the board of Christianity. Why so important? Because THAT ONE THING IS WHAT GOD WILL JUDGE IN EVERY SOUL, FACE TO FACE, ONE ON ONE! (Hebrews 9:27). Nobody escapes! If you’re a human, it WILL happen!

You see, that one natural law, unlike all the rest in one very important respect, is not ASSUMED in God’s creation. The others exist externally to us and impose themselves on our whole physical bodies, throughout our physical existence. But humanity’s free will first works within us and then radiates outwardly into God’s physical creation around us, governing in a limited way the laws of nature. That governing, or harnessing, Divinely meant to be constructive, can be either constructive or destructive, according to how we freely will it. The creation of that natural law of God is very explicitly described in Scripture: “…And God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness…” and, “…And God said unto [Adam and Eve]…replenish the Earth, and subdue it: and have dominion…” (Genesis 1:26, 28).

Friends, God’s own image of free will, free choice, a creaturely endowment of a portion of His Divine attributes of omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience, His express image, if you will, was the VERY ESSENCE God used to create humanity! If He had not done that, He would no more bring us into personal judgment than he would a rock or a lowly lizard.

Now here is the crux of the matter: God Himself maintains His image in our creaturely existence! Without it we would indeed be a rock or a lizard. It is who and how humanity is forever. It is who we all are, free-will creatures, with the God-given power to make our OWN decisions, APART, yes, APART from God’s choice. Otherwise, Adam’s choice to sin would have been GOD’S CHOICE, not ours. Such a thing is totally and completely foreign to God’s own revealed pristine nature. To judge us for that would be to haul HIMSELF into His own court of infinite law! The naked truth of this is simply that God is ever in control of seeing to it that our FREE wills operate in absolute freedom, no matter what we choose to choose, good or evil. That’s what He did in Eden, and that’s what He still does. God always honors His own endowed image in humanity, whoever He finds it in, just like he honors the law of gravity, whoever harnesses it for whatever purposes. Hear it, friends: God always honors our own choice whether it is good or evil, even if it shakes it’s fist and curses God to His Divine face!

You see, God’s image in us was a Divine trust from the very beginning. Sin was not part of His prestine image in us. No, God’s image of pure freedom in us exercised its own freedom of freedom and CHOSE to believe a lie instead of God’s sublime Word of warning. Adam himself was in control of WHAT he chose, not God. And once that decision was made, God backed away and respected it. It was going to be what Adam and Eve made it into, not what God was controlling it into. He as much as said, “Okay, you made your bed; now you must sleep in it. Someday I’ll bail you out of the mess you made for yourselves, but until then you can’t live in this beautiful garden I made for you. It’s certainly not what I intended for you; the making of this one is on you, not me. Meanwhile, I warn you: Things will go much easier in the future if you obey me instead of trashing my Word.”

Therein is the sordid story of all human history since then. Sadly, the main ingredient in the tragedy of human sin is the vain pride of blaming someone else for it, God included, instead of our own selfish will. Adam said it was the woman’s fault whom God had given him, thus blaming God. Eve, on the proverbial spot, probably nonplused by Adam’s accusation, simply dodged by blaming the Devil for it. Everyone but the Devil himself claimed innocense and passed the buck, and he would have himself but he had no one qualified to pass it on to. Neither Adam nor Eve simply admitted guilt, repented, and begged God’s pardon. We’re still at that guilty business.

In the third and final part of this three-part subject we will deal with the practical aspects of this “God is in control” business sweeping Christianity. One of the main Scriptures often quoted by those who promote this error is Romans 8:28. We will show that, instead, this Scripture actually plainly says the exact opposite, not only in plain English, but in the original Koine Greek language of the New Testament!