Apology to My Readers

I try to get these posts out on a fairly regular basis (weekly), and at times it is difficult because I am also doing whatever I can to help prepare for the birth of my first child. My wife is in good health and good spirits, though she does seem to be one of the minority of women who apparently experience morning sickness throughout their pregnancies, so she is not quite as positive as she could be. (She once said to me, "How would you feel if your penis were constantly growing in size over 9 months so that you could pass a baby through it?" and I have never since had a problem understanding how uncomfortable and frightening pregnancy has been for her.)

However, the two week interval between my previous post and this one stems from something more serious: namely, a spiritual struggle I have had during the past week or so. I have never been secretive about the fact that my sexual mores before marriage were questionable at best--I was emotionally promiscuous, I dabbled in pornography (soft- and hardcore), and I even had transexual fantasies--and my wife and I have worked hard to establish a very safe, open, and honest mode of communication between us, knowing that we both came into the marriage with these issues. I still have the temptation to "protect" her by keeping things quiet--she said a couple of days ago that I have, in her words, a "real secretive streak"--just because it's the way I chose to deal with the turmoil inside of me for so many years.

Last weekend, I had some fantasies that, while pretty conservative, did not involve my wife. They were unexpected, they did not result from exposure to pornography, and they revolved around a real person (female) toward whom, until last weekend, I had no inkling of desire. I was so overwhelmed (I felt like I was being spiritually assaulted) that I had no idea how to respond, and I did not, unfortunately, refrain from masturbating.

I know that some of you reading this blog are probably shocked at the extent to which I describe the above situation so graphically--perhaps others of you are rolling your eyes, as I would have a few years ago, thinking "come on, you didn't do anything serious"--but I want all of you out there who are husbands and fathers to know that sin, even if it appears to be light sin, will be destructive to your family. I have said before that the sharing of bodies between two people also involves a sharing of spirits, and if you are masturbating about a woman who is not your wife, you are inviting spiritual turmoil into your family, and yes, you are cheating on your wife, even if only in your imagination. By allowing myself to fall, even when the spiritual assault was so great, I allowed the temptation--and the evil spiritual energy behind it--to gain a foothold inside of me, and it has taken far more effort on my part to quench it than I would have had to expend if I had refrained from giving in to it 6 days ago.

My wife knows about everything I am revealing in this post (with the exception of the identity of the person--and if I haven't yet had the heart to say it to her, I am sure not going to say it on the internet), and we have talked about how she and I can communicate better so that she can help me in times of temptation. It is, I will say, difficult to have a very strong desire for your wife and not be able to fulfill it (to the extent you want) because she is pregnant. To me, it is not a matter of "getting my leg over" as some would crassly phrase it--I love my wife, and my sexuality is truly motivated by a desire to please her, especially now when she is going through so much discomfort in her pregnancy. I take solace (most of the time) in the thought that (1) the suffering we are both going through will only last 9 or 10 months and (2) that a little personal agony is worth going through for my wife as she embarks on what is, for women, the most difficult period of their lives.



Some of you may think I am taking too much liberty in revealing so many details about my personal life and the sexual dynamics I have encountered in marriage, but the Christian community in the United States seems completely insensitive to the need for young men and women to learn from their spiritual and physical elders about sexuality and about raising a family. So few "mentoring couples" talk about their experiences in a personal way that, I fear, an entire generation of men and women will be doomed to spend their lives over the next 20 years learning lessons the hard way, lessons that could have been learned through the counsel, wisdom, and inspiration of their elders.

As a result, it falls to me and others like myself to write from a personal perspective about matters that our culture has said are best left private--even though we are not elders, even though we have, at least in our own eyes, so little to give.

Commandment 3: A Distressing Sign of the Times We Live In

Jessica and I are still working hard, and I am very happy to report that I now have access to some income for us, which will be very important as we move closer to our time of delivery. Ladies and gentlemen, I must confess that it is very humiliating to see the fruits, wrought upon my dear wife, of my negligence with money. I spent many hundreds of dollars when I was living alone in Texas on my own entertainment and selfish pleasure when I could have been storing it away so that my new family could have something to live on, and that fact haunts me every day as my wife and I struggle to make ends meet.



Our post will center on Exodus 20:7, and I think that more than anything else in the Ten Commandments, this verse is an overwhelming indictment of our time. Every age has seen its share of liars, thieves, adulterers, and murderers--the street gangs in London during the thirteenth century were just as vicious as the street gangs in New York are in the twenty-first--but no age has ever seen such a universal display of open disrespect toward God in everyday speech as we currently see in Western countries. And once again, at the forefront of this utter departure from the love and fear of the Lord . . . is the church.

I'll be honest, ladies and gentlemen--I struggle with the use of profanity and even with taking the Lord's name in vain. I learned to do both of these things when I was only 11-14 years old, and I became quite skillful at it, to the point that one of my fellow grad students at JMU (who herself was no angel in this regard) actually said to me, "Hey, you watch your language!" It has only been during the past 8 months that I have really been convicted about the effect that my words have on others--and more importantly, the effect that my words have on myself.

The Lord, however, makes his view on our use of language quite clear:

You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.

I know that some of you, having read this blog, were expecting a metaphorical sermon pinpointing the extent to which people claim to be Christian in our culture when their words and actions testify that their heart lies somewhere else, and yes, I think that to claim the name of Christ without accepting Him into your heart is a grievous sin (on the order of Ananias and Sapphira--see Acts 5). However, I believe that it is in the use of profanity--often among faithful church attenders--that we most frequently display our lack of love for the Lord, and for others.

Let us take a look at another passage, Leviticus 24:10-23, which illustrates the extent to which the Lord takes the use of His name (and by extension, the use of our words) very seriously:

Now the son of an Israelite mother and an Egyptian father went out among the Israelites, and a fight broke out in the camp between him and an Israelite. The son of the Israelite woman blasphemed the Name with a curse, so they brought him to Moses. (His mother's name was Shelomith, the daughter of Dibri the Danite.) They put him in custody until the will of the LORD should be made clear to them.

Then the LORD said to Moses: "Take the blasphemer outside the camp. All those who heard him are to lay their hands on his head, and the entire assembly is to stone him. Say to the Israelites: 'If anyone curses his God, he will be held responsible--anyone who blasphemes the name of the LORD must be put to death. The entire assembly must stone him. Whether an alien or native-born, when he blasphemes the Name, he must be put to death.

" 'If anyone takes the life of a human being, he must be put to death. Anyone who takes the life of someone's animal must make restitution—life for life. If anyone injures his neighbor, whatever he has done must be done to him: fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. As he has injured the other, so he is to be injured. Whoever kills an animal must make restitution, but whoever kills a man must be put to death. You are to have the same law for the alien and the native-born. I am the LORD your God.' "

Then Moses spoke to the Israelites, and they took the blasphemer outside the camp and stoned him. The Israelites did as the LORD commanded Moses.

I understand that some of you are doubtless shocked at the extent to which the Lord was willing to go in order to cultivate an attitude of respect for His name, but I'd like to go back to the beginning of the passage for a moment:

Now the son of an Israelite mother and an Egyptian father went out among the Israelites, and a fight broke out in the camp between him and an Israelite.

We live in a society that encourages its people to swear, to curse, to use profanity, and yes, to use the name of the Lord as an epithet whenever they are angry, frustrated, or (in the vernacular of our culture) "just need to blow off some steam." In the process, an entire generation has been taught to use their words as weapons, stabbing each other with the viciousness of their curses with the same energy that ancient men would have used in stabbing their enemies with swords, daggers, and axes.

I am very concerned at the extent to which we are training the future leaders of this nation to use their words to hurt others--and I am also concerned at the extent to which churchgoers are, whether they realize it or not, training their children to disrespect God. It seems that all we hear in churches these days is a mixture of political correctness, psychobabble, and (to me) mindless recitations of what one can only assume to have been the pastor's favorite reading while in seminary. In this environment, no one is taught to respect (and revere) the name of the Lord as it should be respected (and revered) because no one even understands the name of the Lord.

Ladies and gentlemen, I know that you may not believe that blaspheming the name of the Lord is a serious matter--after all, I felt that way myself for 15 years--but perhaps if you understood the nature of the Lord, you would think differently. After all, the Bible says that Christ Jesus is "the Word," that He "was with God," and that "He was God" (John 1:1). The Bible also says that through Christ Jesus, "all things were made" and that without Him, "nothing was made that has been made" (John 1:3). The apostle Paul, speaking under the revelation of Christ through the Holy Spirit, wrote to the Colossians that Christ Jesus "is before all things" and that "in Him all things hold together" (Colossians 1:17). And of course, it is the name of Christ Jesus which is the only means of salvation for the human race.

It is the same Christ Jesus--the same "only begotten Son" of God (John 3:16), the same Christ who was with God in the beginning and who was God (John 1:1-2)--who was part of the Godhead speaking to Moses and to the ancient Israelites at Mount Sinai.



Let that sink in for a moment.



I understand that Christ Jesus was not "begotten" in a sense that we would recognize until the first century A.D., but if He is part of the Godhead, and if He was with God (and was God) at the dawn of creation, then the children of Israel heard His voice as surely as the first century apostles did. And if that is the case, do you think that He looks upon our callous use of His name as something less serious now than it was approximately three thousand years ago?

Ladies and gentlemen, if you feel shame as you are reading this post, it is because the Holy Spirit is convicting you about the importance of choosing your words carefully. Believers in Christ are called to speak the truth, to be kind and gracious to others, and to revere the holy name of the Lord in their speech as well as their actions. I know that some of you out there may have believed that it was okay to use profanity because it enabled you to "relate" to people who were not Christians, but the fact is, people who are not Christians need to see that those who claim the name of Christ also cherish the name of Christ in their hearts--and they need to see that when you adopt Christ Jesus as your Lord and Savior, it means more than simply buying a Bible and going to church every Sunday.

If you revere the Lord, if you really revere the Lord in your heart, then wouldn't you naturally want your speech to reflect that? I know that when I was a nonbeliever, in every case when I knew I was in the presence of a believer in Christ, that person was someone whom I could not imagine swearing, tearing others down with their words, or spitting out the name of the Lord as a curse. There was a holy reverence for the Lord that was exhibited in their every word and action--as if it were part of their very being.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the kind of reverence that convicts the lost and dying of their sins, and it is the kind of reverence that turns unrepentant liars, thieves, adulterers, and murderers into holy men and women of Christ.

So many of us have fallen from a life of true purity in Christ--our words, our actions, our thoughts are so unrepresentative of the character, gentleness, and integrity of the Lord--and when I consider the extent to which my heart, soul, and (yes) mouth betray the committment my wife and I have made to Him, I cannot help but grieve for the abominable lack of heartfelt devotion inside of me. If there is anything, any sin in this world for which believers in Christ need to repent, it is our almost universal disobedience of the Lord's third commandment, and I fear that many of us, when we reach the throne of Christ, will find that we have spiritual blood on our hands.

Commandment 2: God's Barometer of a People's Spiritual Priorities

It has been a week and a half since my previous post, a week and a half in which my wife and I have received a lot of direction (and redirection) from the Lord, for which we are both very thankful. At this point, we are preparing for our future (the coming of our child and other things as well) and managing two dogs which my in-laws bought a couple of weeks ago. I am also working heavily on my dissertation, in hopes that I can graduate from the Ph.D. program within the academic year.



Our text in this post is Exodus 20:4-6:

You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand {generations} of those who love me and keep my commandments.

A lot of churches focus on the last 2 verses--God's curse on the sinful generations and God's blessing on the faithful generations--without taking them into their proper context. You see, ladies and gentlemen, the Lord was not sitting on His mountain saying to the Israelites, "Hey! I'm a fun God! I'll give you wonderful rewards for worshipping me!"

No, there was a very specific reason for God's promise of love to a thousand generations of those who love Him: to provide reasonings and incentives to obey a command.

Your next question should be, "Why this command?" After all, it is not as if the Lord provided anything that could be called an "incentive" or "reason" for following the other commandments (with one exception, which we will cover a few posts from now), so why would He have done so here?

I think it is because the Israelites had lived in generational slavery to the Egyptians--a people who made a practice of constructing statues and monuments in the (presumed) shape of their gods: birds, dogs, and even the sun. The Israelites were used to interacting with spiritual powers and principalities via images . . . and ladies and gentlemen, so are we.

I know, we live in a culture that does not cast gold, silver, or other metals into statues like the ancient Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Greeks, and Romans did, and let's be honest: when you hear about people around the world who still do that sort of thing, doesn't part of you inside just snicker a little bit? After all, we are a scientific people, and we know that cast images can't talk or sing, and they certainly don't merit the word "god," do they? Think about it: Don't you just find yourself smirking at the thought of people in India going to temple and worshipping little statues of their gods? Don't you automatically dismiss them as idiots for doing something so obviously ridiculous?

Or perhaps they are being a bit more honest than we are.

Let us look at the King James Version's translation of verse 4:

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

(italics mine)

Puts things a little more into perspective, doesn't it? You see, the Lord is not wanting the Israelites simply to abandon the practice of constructing god-statues like the Egyptians did but to eliminate the idea of associating God with an image altogether. This is, by the way, what ultimately became the ancient Israelites' undoing--they simply could not handle worshipping the Lord in a way that would require real trust, real faith, by abandoning the quest to associate the Lord with anything in the heavens or on Earth or in the seas of the Earth.

Ladies and gentlemen, we live in a society of images--the overwhelming majority of which are constructed by human beings for, I believe, some form of worship. Think about it: when was the last time you had to be told what product Mr. Clean, the Keebler elves, and the Pillsbury Doughboy represent? All of us know who George Washington and Abraham Lincoln look like, not because we're good students of history (by and large, Americans seem to have dismissed the idea that they should concern themselves with the affairs of the past), but because their faces are engraved on our money. Indeed, the city of Washington, D.C. is a city of images--the Washington Monument, the Vietname Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, the Pentagon--as are many other cities across the United States.

I will not be stupid enough here to say that television is the sole culprit for our dependence on images--we had an image-heavy print media decades before film and television were invented--but I do believe that Americans mediate their opinions, their cultural tastes, and yes, their spirituality through television. I think I can even go so far as to say that in general, Americans get more moral, philosophical, and spiritual teaching from their televisions than they will ever receive from the pulpits of their churches, and if you do not believe me, here's a simple test:

1. Can you recognize the name "Bart Simpson" and what it stands for without prompting?

2. Can you tell me, on cue, who Jerry Seinfeld is?

3. Now . . . can you say, without racking your brain, who Judas Iscariot was (without going back and reading my blog)?

4. Do you know what the word "messiah" means?

If you answered questions 1 and 2 without thinking but found yourself floundering through questions 3 and 4, you're not alone. Studies over the past 2 decades have shown conclusively that Americans, in general, are far more adept at naming television and film characters and celebrities than they are at identifying key historical figures and events such as Stalin, Kruschev, and Kristallnacht. These are the kinds of things that earlier Americans would have been ashamed not to know--and ladies and gentlemen, there was a time when almost every American would have known what the word "messiah" meant and who Judas Iscariot was. For them, those would have been questions as basic as "Who is Bart Simpson?" would be to Americans today.

I am not interested in making people feel condemned because they have a television in their home--my wife and I live with my in-laws, and they have a full home entertainment system proudly displayed in their living room--but I am very conscious of the fact that, when it comes to the prospect of allowing the Lord to restrict how much we watch the so-called "boob tube," many of us are as adept at finding excuses as the cocaine addict is for continuing his habit.

I used to hear the following line whenever someone would talk about censoring or protesting certain material on television that they found offensive for spiritual reasons: "If you don't like it, change the channel or turn the television off." Ladies and gentlemen, let's be honest--how many of you turn the television off or change the channel? Come on, don't you do what almost every American does when you get home from work--surf the channels and watch whatever is interesting for at least 20 minutes before switching to something else?

I think that before we criticize others for vocally opposing what we have accepted as normal, we may want to consider whether or not they may have a point.

I know this is a hard message for some of you, and I can only say that it was just as hard a message for me. My wife and I were both convicted during our courtship regarding the extent to which our spirituality was being mediated through music and television, and it was very difficult, in particular, for me to say goodbye to interests that I had found to be, in my perspective, innocent. It took a long time, for example, for the Lord to convince me that my addiction to sci-fi television was an addiction to false teaching that was interfering with my ability to listen to the Bible and to the Holy Spirit. I thank the Lord that I have stopped watching it, and I have seen the benefits of living without those interests, particularly in the wonderful answers my wife and I are receiving to our prayers.

Let me ask you this: If you claim the name of Christ Jesus and call yourself a Christian, then would you seriously entertain the thought of going to a mosque or Hindu temple or Buddhist shrine for instruction about the God of the Bible?

If not, then may I ask you . . . why are you doing exactly that when you watch television every day?

You see, the vast majority of television celebrities and producers are not Christians--some are non-Christian Jews, some are Muslims, some are Christian Scientists, and some are secular agnostics--and so, when you sit down in front of your television and turn on your favorite channel, chances are that you are watching a product constructed by someone who is not a believer in Christ. I am not saying, as others have unfortunately said before, that there is some sort of conspiracy by television producers and actors to destroy America's Christian institutions (it is obvious to me that money, more than anything else, is a motivation for the industry), but I will say that a nonbeliever is not going to create something that does not reflect their spiritual and emotional beliefs. Devout atheists, Muslims, and Rastafarians are not going to convert nonbelievers to the Gospel of Christ Jesus . . . and if a television producer or actor is not a devout atheist, Muslim, or Rastafarian, he or she is probably a devout capitalist.

Television, ladies and gentlemen, is not the only avenue of image worship, but it is by far the biggest, and if we who are in Christ are to have any impact in this world for the kingdom of God, we need to seriously examine our dependence on television. I am not saying that we should get rid of the television completely, but I am saying that as our society departs more and more from the Judeo-Christian traditions on which the original 13 colonies were founded, we are going to have to make a decision about whether or not we are more willing to be an irritant to our neighbors or a disappointment to our Lord.

As I have been saying over and over in this blog, I believe the Lord is calling those who claim the name of Christ Jesus to conduct themselves differently from other people, and I believe that in the matter of entertainment, we are falling woefully short of that mandate. We have given ourselves over to the images of our culture as readily as any pagan in ancient times would have given himself over to the worship of graven statues, and it is time for us to repent before the God we claim to serve.

If we do not, I fear, the Lord may use the winnowing fork of history to make us repent.

I know that some of you must think I am some sort of crackpot for saying these things--maybe I am--but Christ Jesus was not slain because He was nice to lepers, blind people, and demon-possessed madmen. He was slain for Who He was, and because everyone around Him knew in their spirits that every word that came out of His mouth was truth. I might add that He was slain publicly--beaten and tortured in full view of onlookers and led to the Place of the Skull, a hill overlooking the city of Jerusalem, so that His crucifixion could be seen by witnesses from miles away.

Some of you out there have this mindset that you can "go undercover"--that if you cuss, watch all the wrong TV shows, and listen to "cool" music, you can get under the world's radar and sort of sneak your friends and associates into the kingdom of heaven. I hate to tell you this, my friends, but speaking as someone who was a nonbeliever most of his life, I have to say that the Christians who made the most impression on me were the ones whose devotion to the Lord was open, real, and unadulterated. The "undercover evangelist" routine, as far as I (or anyone else who is not a believer in Christ) am concerned, is simply a rhetorical dodge created by people who simply don't want to be rejected by others.

People will reject you, ladies and gentlemen--it happens all the time.

Wouldn't you rather it was because they saw in you something that was not of this world?

Commandment #1--No Other Gods

Before I begin this post, I would like to take a moment to apologize to my readers for the disjointedness that appeared at times in my previous post. As I mentioned in that post, my wife and I are currently going through a very difficult time as we adjust to the surprise child that the Lord has given us in our first year of marriage, and I am afraid that some of that struggle may have played itself out in the more jumbled and ridiculous-sounding areas of my post.

In particular, I would like to apologize to anyone who, for whatever reason, was sidetracked by my discussion of ways in which separating ourselves from the world may manifest itself in our daily lives. Yes, my wife and I are restricting our intake of television, and yes, we are planning and preparing to homeschool our children--and yes, we do see these things as a form of separating ourselves from the world. However, I do think, on reading that post again, that the section in which I articulated the necessity of not depending on institutions could have been better worded, and I am afraid that to some, the shoddy wording may have distracted from the real message that the Lord was trying to convey to them.

Ladies and gentlemen, I do believe that it is time for believers in Christ to choose whether they will continue to depend on the institutions of this world or depend on the Lord for their welfare. As I have said before in this blog, even if the United States were to remain a nation and government friendly toward Christianity, the social and economic situation in which we currently find ourselves is fragile at best. The governmental and corporate structures--things such as "retirement" or "credit" or "social security"--are tottering on very unstable legs, and eventually, as the baby boomer generation claims its retirement benefits, the economy will become increasingly strained.

I think that believers in Christ, under the circumstances, should not trust that the systems and structures of yesterday will remain in place tomorrow, and this, in part, is what brings me to the first of what we in the western world have come to call "the ten commandments."

In our first series of posts on the Lord's commandments to the ancient Israelites, we covered the Passover and its significance for the people of the Old Testament and the converts of the New Testament--and now, after covering the Lord's outlining of blessings and curses to the ancient Israelites in the desert, we come to what is arguably the most well-known, yet misunderstood, section of the Bible.

Let us begin by reading the account given to us in Exodus 19, leading up to the Lord's words in Exodus 20:

In the third month after the Israelites left Egypt—on the very day—they came to the Desert of Sinai. After they set out from Rephidim, they entered the Desert of Sinai, and Israel camped there in the desert in front of the mountain.

Then Moses went up to God, and the LORD called to him from the mountain and said, "This is what you are to say to the house of Jacob and what you are to tell the people of Israel: 'You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself. Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.' These are the words you are to speak to the Israelites."

Here in verses 1-6 we have a beautiful promise--the Lord wanted the nation of Israel to be "a kingdom of priests and a holy nation." What does that mean? It means that he wanted Israel to be a nation that was striking testimony to the world of the reality of God--and ladies and gentlemen, the Lord succeeded in this regard . . . but at great cost.

You see, Israel was never supposed to suffer the things that she suffered during her history after the exodus from Egypt--Israel was never supposed to be divided into two kingdoms, or destroyed, or led into captivity. However, all of these things happened, and the Bible tells us that they happened because the people of Israel refused to obey the Lord and because they looked to other gods.

Nevertheless, the Lord did (and does) have a living testimony of his existence in the words of the Bible--he indeed was glorified through the nation of Israel, but not in the way that, I believe, He would have wished.

Exodus 19 tells us that the Lord called the people of Israel to Mount Sinai so that they could hear--as Moses heard--the voice of the Lord speaking to them . . . and indeed they did hear it. Verses 16-19 describe this experience in vivid, frightening detail:

On the morning of the third day [after they had purified themselves for two days] there was thunder and lightning, with a thick cloud over the mountain, and a very loud trumpet blast. Everyone in the camp trembled. Then Moses led the people out of the camp to meet with God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain. Mount Sinai was covered with smoke, because the LORD descended on it in fire. The smoke billowed up from it like smoke from a furnace, the whole mountain trembled violently, and the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder. Then Moses spoke and the voice of God answered him. [c]

Now, what was the very first thing that the Lord said to the entire people of Israel? What message did He first want to convey to them?

We find out in Exodus 20:1-3:

And God spoke all these words:

"I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.

"You shall have no other gods before me.

This is the basis of the Bible--of the Old and New Testaments--and it is sad that in today's world, so few people who claim the name of Christ Jesus for themselves actually heed it.

The sin that brought the Israelites into disrepute and destruction and the sin that pervades so many of our churches today are, I am afraid, one and the same: syncretism. Merriam-Webster defines syncretism as "the combination of different forms of belief or practice," and the American Heritage Dictionary defines it as "the reconciliation or fusion of differing systems of belief" . . . but I have a less euphemistic way of defining syncretism:

Syncretism is, simply put, an attempt by man (and woman) to have his/her cake and eat it, too--to have the vitality and blessed assurance of salvation that comes with recognizing the one true God and to have the comfort and riches of this world as well.

Some of you may find this to be a bit uncomfortable, but ladies and gentlemen, the God described in the Bible is a "jealous" God, meaning that He "jealously" guards what is His--and Christ Jesus Himself said, "He who is not with me is against me" (Matthew 12:30). Do you think He looks upon your worship of money or sex or upward social mobility as simply a "viable way" to "combine different belief systems"?

Or do you, as so many people in our society often do, assume that He understands that sometimes situations call for compromises?

You won't hear this kind of talk in most American churches today. Most prominent pastors and televangelists are more concerned with being popular than with telling the truth, and so they will not tell you that repentance, not a few simple words muttered at the front of a tent or chapel, is what the Lord ultimately desires from each and every one of us.

If you have not put the Lord first in your life, my friend, than no matter how many Bibles and devotionals you have, no matter how many times you uttered the "sinner's prayer," and no matter how faithful your attendance at church has been . . . you are sinning against the Lord, and you must repent of that sin if you want to be right with Him.

I understand that you may find those words very difficult to accept . . . just as I once did.

I wasn't a very Christian or holy man for most of my life--in fact, I even went so far as to delve into some very dark spiritual things--but for much of that time, I was a faithful church attender.

I could even quote Bible verses . . . at least the ones I had taken in from my years at a Christian liberal arts college in Virginia.

I had other gods, however--gods that, in my heart, came first. One of them, as you may have gathered from reading my original Sabbath Breakers blog, was sex--I wanted endless sex and endless pleasure, any way I could get it, and I didn't care what kind of harm it was doing to my life, and my relationships with my family and others around me, and I didn't care what my obsession was destroying inside of me.

Another god, however, was freedom.

Freedom has become a very popular word in our culture today, but I wonder if we understand to the extent to which we abuse this concept in our daily lives, using it as an excuse for socially (and personally) destructive actions. Abortion is undertaken in the name of freedom, divorces often occur in the name of "liberating" one spouse from the other, and of course, the United States has waged a number of wars in the name of preserving freedom.

I wonder if we truly understand Paul's words to the believers in Rome when he said,

Every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities for there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God.

Romans 13:1

These words, of course, were written in a time when "the governing authorities" were military generals who ruled by force, using fear, intimidation, and cruelty as instruments of order.



More to the point, I wonder if we understand the words of Christ, as recorded by Matthew:

A student is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master. It is enough for the student to be like his teacher, and the servant like his master. If the head of the house has been called Beelzebub, how much more the members of his household!

So do not be afraid of them. There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known. What I tell you in the dark, speak in the daylight. What is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the roofs. Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don't be afraid--you are worth more than many sparrows.

Whoever acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge him before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before men, I will disown him before my Father in heaven.

Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn
'a man against his father,
a daughter against her mother,
a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law -
a man's enemies will be the members of his own household.'

Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me, and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

verses 24-39

Most megachurch pastors and televangelists will quote the softer-sounding portions of this passage, such as "the very hairs of your head are all numbered" and "what is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the roofs," without providing the context. Unfortunately, what many people are then left with in our society is a "Christianity" in which Christ can exist in the same room with "career" or "materialism" or even "my own political beliefs."

Note, in particular, the words at the end of the passage above: "anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me." These are among my favorite words of the Bible, and whenever I hear them, my soul is stirred with a longing for the Christ who took up His cross for me. So often, we hear in our churches today that the "cross" Christ is talking about is metaphorical--it can mean anything from problems at work to difficulties in the home--but when Christ said those words, they had a very concrete meaning to those who heard them.

The cross was a public method of execution designed to humiliate and torture its victim--and everyone in ancient Judea knew the kind of suffering Christ meant when he said "anyone who does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me." You see, Christianity is hard (as I have said before), and very few people can meet with the real suffering, real persecution, and real pain that comes when we fully allow Christ to shine in our hearts. We live in a world, after all, that is cruel and heartless--and love, real love, is often tinged with tears.

I wish, ladies and gentlemen, I could have relented and listened to this message sooner--I wasted so many years of my life attempting to seek fame and fortune--but the Lord has been very gracious, and with His help, my children won't have to learn the hard way as I did . . . and, I hope, neither will you.

Listen to your heart. Do you have other gods? If so, I believe the Lord is asking you to lay them aside.

I have said at numerous times that I believe that we are increasingly seeing a spirit in this nation that is hostile to Christianity and to Christ, and that one day, if believers in Christ are not willing to make their loyalties clear, we may see a time when the Lord will use the persecuting hand of non-believers to winnow out those in the ranks of Christendom who never really held Christ first in their hearts. Please, ladies and gentlemen . . . let's not make that kind of hard hand from the Lord necessary.

In Christ, we have a redeemer--one who cleanses us from all sin.

Let us not allow the pressures or pleasures of this world so great a place in our hearts that we fail to see our need for that redemption.

The Lord Who Heals: Promise to a Lost Generation

Things have been busy at the homestead as of late. My wife is in the middle of her first pregnancy, and I am in the process of finding us some income as we recover from our recent move to South Carolina. I wish I could say I knew what I was getting into as a husband and (now) as a father, but the fact is, I am overwhelmed most of the time at the weight of responsibility that the Lord has given me. Jessica and I are in the unique position of having to trust in the Lord for every resource, every insight, every bit of character development we need in order to handle what was, to us, a very unexpected pregnancy, and during the past several months, we have had, I admit, our share of good days and bad days.

The Lord, however, has been very gracious, and every day we are thankful that in His wisdom, He put the two of us together. I wish that every couple could know the oneness of mind, body, soul, and spirit that Jessica and I share, and I must thank God for it, because without that, it would have been very difficult for us to make it through the summer without a great deal of marital conflict.

(Yes, conflict does happen even in the best of marriages--those of you out there who view wedded bliss as an oasis of sex, pleasure, and self-gratification will, I fear, find yourselves immensely disappointed after your marriage vows have been taken . . . )



Our text in this post is Exodus 15:22-27, but I'd like to begin with Matthew 7:13-14 because I feel that this passage has, for us, a very strong message. Listen to Jesus' words from the Sermon on the Mount:

Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.

To some of you, I know, this probably sounds a lot like sandpaper grating in your ears, but given the context of the rest of the Sermon on the Mount, I think you will find that this passage offers a very hard-hitting diagnosis from the Lord concerning a problem common not only in first century Judea but in twenty-first century America. You see, not very many people in our society are interested in truth anymore--only in how to get ahead, how to gain more pleasure for themselves, and how to prevent other people from getting in the way of those two pursuits. Divorce is now "no fault," the killing of unborn children is "abortion," and sleeping with a member of one's sex (as one would sleep with a member of the opposite sex) is termed a "viable lifestyle choice."

People like me who would point out the major sin issues within our culture have a hard time fitting in at social gatherings--we're not very popular. My wife and I once listened to a "Lake Woebegone" segment in which Garrison Keeler recounted a time when he was offered (by the Almighty) the position of prophet, and he turned it down because it would have meant that he would spend a lifetime telling people the truth--and most of the time, people just don't want to hear it.

I don't blame him for making that decision.

Being a Christian is hard, ladies and gentlemen--and one of the first things we must be willing to sacrifice, I'm afraid, is our popularity. The fact is, we are not part of this world, and no matter how much we try to camouflage ourselves, those who are nonbelievers know, instinctively, who the real Christians are. If you were under the impression that you could be in Christ and still slip under the world's radar, I can tell you from personal experience as someone who was "of the world" most of his life that you are deeply mistaken.

What does all of this have to do with Exodus 15:22-27? I believe that in this passage, we see the essence of the narrow road that Jesus later describes--and a promise for those who are willing to walk that road.

Immediately after the songs that Moses and Miriam sang in praise of the Lord for leading the people of Israel through the Red Sea (and after all of the other miracles that the Lord performed in order to deliver the Israelites from the bondage of slavery), we find the following passage:

Then Moses led Israel from the Red Sea and they went into the Desert of Shur. For three days they traveled in the desert without finding water. When they came to Marah, they could not drink its water because it was bitter. (That is why the place is called Marah.) So the people grumbled against Moses, saying, "What are we to drink?"

Then Moses cried out to the LORD, and the LORD showed him a piece of wood. He threw it into the water, and the water became sweet.

Isn't it amazing?

The Israelites, after experiencing the mighty hand of the Lord in freeing them from generational slavery, actually grumbled when they came to a place where water was bitter. Shouldn't they have expected that the Lord would provide for them in spite of their lack of water--and frankly, shouldn't they have been a little more respectful of Moses since he was the instrument the Lord chose to free them from the Egyptians?

Well . . . I guess we shouldn't be too hard on them. After all, as I will demonstrate later in this post, we are no better than they were.



After the account of the Lord's deliverance of the Israelites from thirst at Marah, we find the following 2 verses (25b-26):

There the LORD made a decree and a law for them, and there he tested them. He said, "If you listen carefully to the voice of the LORD your God and do what is right in his eyes, if you pay attention to his commands and keep all his decrees, I will not bring on you any of the diseases I brought on the Egyptians, for I am the LORD, who heals you."

Clearly, the Israelites were presented with two alternatives: (1) Obey the voice of the Lord and really live, or (2) disobey the voice of the Lord and suffer the same fate as that of the Egyptians. We will cover those alternatives in more detail during future posts, but I would like for us to link this verse (26) together with Jesus' description of the broad and narrow ways.

As we have seen from Matthew 7:13-14, the broad way "leads to destruction" and "many" undertake it. I believe that the broad way of Matthew 7 and the way of disobedience from Exodus 15 are one and the same: disrespect for the Lord.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am not talking about the kind of disrespect for the lord that we see in the peoples and nations of this world today--the kingdoms of the world do not honor the Lord, and never have. Moreover, as we can see in Exodus 15, the Lord is presenting these two alternatives not to every man, woman, and child on the face of the Earth but specifically to the people of Israel, a nation already in a very real sense commited to the Lord.

Sadly, it seems, the disrespect that most grieves the Lord does not come from those who never gave their hearts to him at all but instead from those who, for whatever reason, gleefully accepted him only to spit in his face when the road he wanted them to travel does not seem as easy as they thought it should be . . .



Ladies and gentlemen, we live in a world that does not want to be convicted of its sins--and frankly, why should it be, when those who are supposed to be examples of Christ are, in many ways, some of the worst purveyors of sin, rebelliousness, and hypocrisy? As I have noted on numerous occasions, the divorce rate within Christian circles is actually higher than the divorce rate outside Christian circles--and the number of abortions commited among Bible college students is, according to a recent article in Relevant Magazine, one of the dirtiest secrets postmodern American Christendom has ever kept. Though almost all so-called conservative Christians agree that homosexuality is a sin, it is very rare that a homosexual will find him-/herself in a Christian environment which is safe enough to promote the confession of sins one to another (James 5:16).

And these are only the highlights, my friends. What a sad state of affairs Christianity has fallen to when the proposition of charismatic speakers, flawless choral singing, and various pseudo-gospels of wealth and success and social acceptability draws more people into the walls of a church than the hard-hitting, soul-winning, heart-convicting power of the Holy Spirit?

Are we that spiritually bankrupt?

I am afraid we are, ladies and gentlemen--and I am afraid that because of our lack of enthusiasm for the Lord, we will find ourselves one day in a nation that will use very unpleasant means to make us decide once and for all where our loyalties stand . . .



I would like to suggest 3 areas where the narrow road of Christ-obedience may touch our everyday lives, so that at the very least, some of you will be prepared for what Christianity may one day mean for you and your families:

1. It may mean that you will have to restrict television's impact on your life.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the television which brings so many wonderful channels of entertainment into our homes 24 hours a day is, I fear, an increasing engine of hostility to the Christ of the Bible. I am not talking specifically about the relentless glorification of sexual perversion (or at the very least sexual immaturity), violence, and materialism--those things have been glorified long before humanity invented television--but instead, I am talking about the extent to which we have come to rely on television as a teacher. Television teaches us about a great many things, it seems, particularly regarding the expectations we should have about God, about the world, and about ourselves, and the doctrines it most often professes are very clear: There is no God, we are capable of greater wonders than we ever thought possible, and what we gain in this life (for ourselves or for others) is of paramount importance.

These doctrines may ring in your heart as inspirational and true, but they are not the doctrines that the Bible teaches. It may be, my friend, that you will one day have to choose between the Bible and your television set if you want to have a clear idea of where things stand--both in this world and in the world to come.

2. It may mean that you will have to revise the way you approach sexuality.

Our society, it seems, has tossed aside almost every restraint in its exercise of sexual intercourse for the sake of personal pleasure--and virginity is increasingly regarded as a sign of childhood rather than a stance taken for reasons of physical, mental, and spiritual well-being. Unfortunately, as I can attest to you, the union of bodies under the sheets is also a union of souls and spirits, and if you think you can switch partners without suffering serious personal and psychological repercussions, you are deluding yourself.

I know that a lot of bad teaching (in the name of good morals) has confused many people about what the Bible says regarding the exercise of sexuality, and we will cover this topic in more detail later, but what I want you to understand right now is that if you share your body with someone, you are sharing your soul with that person as well. Therefore, it is of the highest importance that, if you value your soul, you will only allow it (and your body) to be shared with whoever Christ would have you share it with.

3. It may mean that you abandon some of the institutions of this world.

Jessica and I are going to join the growing ranks of homeschoolers across the United States, simply because we will not commit our children to an institutional regime that (1) does not recognize Christ Jesus as the Son of God and (2) cares more, in general, for its own self-perpetuation than for the students it is designed to teach. We are, after all, only stewards of the beautiful human beings that the Lord has given us, and since the Lord has given us the responsibility of raising them, we do not want to leave that charge to the care of strangers.

Our departure from the institutions of this world may occur in other areas as well, however:

Finances--Jessica and I may find ourselves lead to create home businesses rather than depending on multinational corporations for what seems to be readily available jobs and income.

Medical care--Jessica and I may be forced to choose between a dietary and health lifestyle that prizes good personal health habits over prescription drugs, and a lifestyle that will see us visiting doctors and hospitals over and over and over again.

Church--Jessica and I have essentially abandoned the practice of attending a congregation of strangers for 2 hours a week and instead are focusing our attention on a congregation that has far more personal significance . . . our family.



Let us look at Exodus 15:26 again.

There the LORD made a decree and a law for them, and there he tested them. He said, "If you listen carefully to the voice of the LORD your God and do what is right in his eyes, if you pay attention to his commands and keep all his decrees, I will not bring on you any of the diseases I brought on the Egyptians, for I am the LORD, who heals you."

Now, why in the world would the Lord end his statement to the Israelites with something as dopey-sounding as "I am the Lord, who heals you?"

I researched this verse using Strong's Concordance, and I found that the Hebrew word translated "heals" means more than simply healing a wound or healing non-functioning organs. In short, the Lord is saying, "I am the Lord, who is capable of healing you of every disease and making you completely whole."

As I said earlier, believers in Christ are not citizens of this world, and so they will receive none of its promises or benefits--but they have something better in store for them. They will be "whole"--completely healed of every sickness, disease, and imperfection, and they will be far happier for it than anyone ever could be in this life. As Paul once said, those of us who are in Christ are being changed every day, our bodies and souls and spirits brought closer and closer to Christ's ideal, and when our Lord comes, we will be forever united with Him, and never again will we stumble, or walk blind . . . or sin.

Isn't that worth a little heartache in this life?

Ladies and gentlemen, I am not directing this post to the millions and millions of nonbelievers out there who have never considered or accepted Christ Jesus as their Lord and Savior--I am instead directing it to those who at one time accepted Christ but who now find themselves attracted, for whatever reason, to the things of this world. I want you to know that I understand where you're coming from--sometimes it seems that the road Jessica and I are on in Christ is a very hard road indeed, and we've both wanted to get off--but I also know that you will get nothing of lasting significance or enjoyment from this world. Pleasure--whether it comes from popularity or entertainment or physical highs--is fleeting, and it leaves you always cold and always, always barren inside.

If you are in Christ, you can't love the things of this world--and moreover, the world can't love you. As a nonbeliever, I was automatically (for reasons I would not have been able to explain even to myself) hostile to anyone and anything that bespoke Christ or Christianity. I was open to other religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, and Rastafarianism, but I hated Christ and everything He stood for--and so did all of my companions.

Make no mistake, my friend--if you accept Christ as your Lord and Savior, you are from that point on an enemy of this world, and this world will do whatever it can to demolish you. If you pursue what it has to offer, you will be tolerated but (in secret) laughed at and ridiculed as a hypocrite, and if you pursue the Lord at the cost of the things of this world, your very existence will be a stench of death to those who have not given their lives to Christ.

Either way, they will hate you.

Wouldn't you rather they hated you for the stand you took than for your lack of interest in following the Lord you profess to serve?

The Firstborn Covenant: Symbol of a Broken Church

In Exodus 13:1-2, shortly before the account of the Israelites' deliverance from the hand of Pharaoh, we read this:

The LORD said to Moses, "Consecrate to me every firstborn male. The first offspring of every womb among the Israelites belongs to me, whether man or animal."

Why would the Lord have given Moses such a stern command, and what, if any, significance does it have for us today?

In Moses' recorded remarks to the people of Israel before setting out from the land of Egypt, we hear God's reasonings clearly stated:

In days to come, when your son asks you, 'What does this mean?' say to him, 'With a mighty hand the LORD brought us out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. When Pharaoh stubbornly refused to let us go, the LORD killed every firstborn in Egypt, both man and animal. This is why I sacrifice to the LORD the first male offspring of every womb and redeem each of my firstborn sons.'

Exodus 13:14-15

I wonder if those of us in the body of Christ understand even a hint of the significance of these passages. You see, the blood of the Egyptian children was precious and real--and I do not believe it was something the Lord wanted to shed.

Think about it for a moment. In Matthew 18, we find Jesus (the Son of God) saying that "whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me" (v. 5), but "if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea" (v. 6). Why? Because "their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven" (v. 10).

Do you think that God loved the children of ancient Egypt any less than He loved the children of first century Judea?



The firstborn of every womb in Israel was, in light of God's great sacrifice, the very least that the people of Israel could give back in return for their freedom . . . just as the heart, body, and soul of every believer in Christ is the least that you and I can give back in return for the freedom we have through the sacrifice of Christ Jesus on the cross. If children were so dear to God, and if it was such a heartbreaking act for Him to kill so many of them in Egypt, how much more heartbreaking would it have been for Him to sacrifice the Son of God on the cross 2000 years ago? I don't claim to know all the mysteries of the Trinity, ladies and gentlemen, but I do know this: The Crucifixion caused God pain.

That is why Paul writes so eloquently in Romans 12:1, "Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship." Note that Paul does not say, "Offer your time to God," or "Offer your best wishes to God," or "Offer your most honorable intentions to God"--he says "bodies" . . . your hands, your feet, your physical strength and manliness, your physical beauty and femininity, your eyes, your nose, and (yes) your reproductive organs.

We live in a church culture today that would have Americans believe that they are, in Christ, free to pursue all of the material vices of the world--with some socially unacceptable exemptions--because, it is presumed, the crucifixion represents one giant meal ticket for believers. Just say a prayer, mumble all the "right" words, and you can have a life of "freedom" in which you can do, essentially, everything you did before, with the possible exception of drugs, alcohol, or criminal activity. The postmodern church has, it seems, ditched the hard message of the Gospel for a theology that uses the cross of Christ Jesus to allow parishioners to pursue socially acceptable sins.

I hear it all the time on the Christian radio.

"Did you get a divorce? That's covered by God's grace--you can go on with your life now, free as a gazelle."

"Did you teach your children all the wrong things? Don't worry--God's grace will cover that, too, and you can go on with your life in the knowledge that God doesn't hold you accoutable anymore."

"Did you sacrifice your family for a business promotion? God feels your pain. Here, just hold fast to God's grace, and you won't have as much trouble looking at yourself in the mirror when you get up tomorrow."

Ladies and gentlemen, our Lord calls us to a higher standard of holiness than the rest of the world--and I believe that if you are really committed to the Lord, then you feel a stirring inside of your heart as you read this post, knowing that yes, there is a deeper Christianity than the Sunday/Wednesday tradition of superchurch attendance, nice sermons, and shallow lives. The believers in first century Judea were holy men who led lives that would drive any one of us to shame: healing dirty, poverty-stricken men and women with sores and moans and pressing needs as great as any suffered by a denizen of the Third World, fending off crowds of hungry people starving for a loaf of bread and yearning for spiritual insight, and hunted day and night by people who had the authority to imprison, torture, and kill.

I wonder where their spiritual descendants lost their fortitude?

When my wife and I were living in Fort Worth, Texas, we noted that it seemed every city block had at least one church building on it, if not two--and with so many churches (and presumably so many Christians), Fort Worth should have been an oasis for the poor and the homeless, right? Sadly, Fort Worth has as many miserable, starving, and desperate homeless people as any other city does.

It often seemed to my wife and me that if you had money or power, you were looked upon by many superchurch attenders with respect--but if you were poor, you were looked upon as an inconvenience or a project . . . when you were looked upon at all.

Our bodies are what the Lord is asking for--not simply our songs, our church buildings, and our prayers--and I believe that a day may well come, ladies and gentlemen, when the Lord holds the church in America to account for its lack of humility and love.



Healing the sick, bringing love to the poor and outcast, visiting those in need--these are standing orders in God's kingdom, and Christ Himself uttered them. If we are not doing likewise as the ancient disciples did (either before or after the Resurrection of Christ) then it is not simply because we are "weak" or because we live in a world that makes it "hard to follow Christ's commands."

It is because we have sinned.

Disobedience is sin, my friends--and it is only atoned for when, by God's grace, we are willing to turn away from it.

If we are to become part of that remnant which will meet Christ in the air someday, we must be willing to obey Christ in every respect--whether He is speaking to us from the Gospels or from the book of Leviticus. I am not saying that we must be utterly sinless--we are redeemed, after all, not perfect--but I am saying that we must be willing to pursue lives that, while socially vile to the rest of the world, exhibit the love and the power of Christ's kingdom on Earth. If we are at least willing, that is enough in God's sight.

You may feel secure in knowing that you gave God your time and your prayers--but it is also your body that God wants.

Will you give it to him?

Antichrist: The Spirit of This Age

I know that many of you reading this blog may have been convinced, as I was, that the word "Antichrist" in the Bible simply referred to a person connected with what many Christians have called the "last days." This man, it is believed, will bring devastation unheard of to the ranks of Christians through a worldwide system of economic, military, and political control.

However, I would like to propose something to you that will, I think, open your eyes not only to the depth of scripture but to the ever-present reality of a spiritual warfare that is, I am afraid, far closer to home than you and I would like to admit.

Let me begin with a passage from Paul's letter to the Ephesians:

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

Ephesians 6:10-12

This is a favorite passage on the Christian radio and in many Christian sermons, but sadly, it is rarely understood. What, for example, does Paul mean by "our struggle is not against flesh and blood?"

I think that we will find part of our answer in another passage that is often quoted amiss by the institutional church:

Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.

Romans 13:1-2

"Wait a minute," some of you may be saying. "Wasn't Paul saying in another letter that our struggle is against authorities?"

Yes--but if you reread the entire passage from Ephesians 6, you will find that Paul goes on to describe the authorities he is talking about as (v. 12) "the powers of this dark world" and "the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms." You see, the "government" in Paul's time was not a democracy--it was military rule, a style of government that the Romans had established shortly before the birth of Christ in order to stabilize their society. Furthermore, this military rule was, in the eyes of Paul's people, an occupying regime since its soldiers had subjugated the land of Israel, relegating it to an outer province of the Roman Empire called "Judea" (or, as it should have been called by its own residents, "Judah").

This military regime punished its enemies by ruthless means. After all, the Cross, an instrument of death designed to prolong the life of its victim for days or sometimes weeks, was a unique invention of Rome--as was the Coliseum, and the deadly games that would seal the martyrdom of so many Christians in centuries to come. And yet Paul goes on in Romans 13:3-5 to say

For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and he will commend you. For he is God's servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God's servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also because of conscience.

How, indeed, could Paul say these things about an empire that had humiliated his people and subjugated the known world by inventing methods of cruelty formerly unknown to humankind? Because, as Ephesians 6:11 says, his battle was not "against flesh and blood."

I am afraid, ladies and gentlemen, that in its zeal to "reform" the rest of the world according to the principles of representative democracy, our society has lost any sense of a Christianity that could look a dictator squarely in the eyes and say, "I believe you are a servant of God to bring order to my nation." The United States goes to war these days, it seems, not out of concern for the welfare and defense of its people (a legitimate reason for any government to go to war) but out of a desire to "improve" the nations around her. The governments of Afghanistan, Iraq, North Korea, and Iran are "immoral" and "corrupt," and yet, except for Afghanistan (which was an anarchy that did strike first at the United States), all of these governments had, as their aim, to bring law and order to their people and to achieve some semblance of national cohesion and stability.

I realize that this is an unpopular assertion, given the times that we live in, but remember, ladies and gentlemen, that the body of Christ exists in more countries than the United States and its allies. There are Christians suffering and dying by the thousands in many nations around the world, including the Middle East, and I am sure that almost all of them would tell you that they are not dying for the benefit of a "free people" or "democracy" but simply because their allegiance to the Lord outweighs their allegiance to their governments.

Ladies and gentlemen, for 300 years Christianity was persecuted by the Roman Empire, and for 300 years, Christians submitted to the swords, axes, and fires of their executioners without duress--not because they were weak but because they knew that their bodies and souls belonged to another Ruler who would resurrect them, as He resurrected Himself . . .



It is my belief that postmodern Christians come to concepts such as "Antichrist" in the Bible with an understanding that is firmly rooted in the perspective of this world. Instead of understanding "Antichrist" as a spirit, a "power of this dark world" and a "spiritual force of evil in the heavenly realms," we instead understand him as some sort of evil dictator who rules the world in the same way that evil dictators in the movies do: through military force. And it is because of this understanding that we fail to see Antichrist at work in so many of our churches.

The first reference we see in the Bible to "Antichrist" appears in 1 John 2:18-19:

Dear children, this is the last hour, and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us, but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.

Note that John's main focus in this passage is not on the future but on the present. Antichrist "is coming," but "even now" Antichrist is active and at work--not in the military and political affairs of John's world but within the church.

John clearly identifies Antichrist as a spirit manifested in certain people, a spirit that is active within the church. He says that those who operated in the spirit of Antichrist "went out from us" but "did not really belong to us," signifying that one of the traits of this spirit is to do something "good" or "beneficial" in order to present itself as godly or God-driven. John says further that if they had been real Christians, they would have remained with John and the other apostles rather than going out on their own, but instead, they went out on their own, without the permission of the apostles.

1 John 20-25 outlines the specific qualities of Antichrist, and of the believer in Christ:

But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth. I do not write to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it and because no lie comes from the truth. Who is the liar? It is the man who denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a man is the antichrist—he denies the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also.

See that what you have heard from the beginning remains in you. If it does, you also will remain in the Son and in the Father. And this is what he promised us—even eternal life.

John says specifically here that those who deny that Jesus is the Christ (the Messiah) are "Antichrist"--but how do you deny that Jesus is the Christ? Not simply through words, it is clear from 1 John 2:18-19, but through lack of submission to His apostles.

You see, Christ submitted Himself to the Father, even unto death, as Paul so eloquently writes in Philippians 2, and hence, the mark of the believer in Christ is submission as well--to Christ and to the word of God.

Those who are not submitted to Christ and the word of God, we can infer from the above passage, do not have eternal life.

1 John 2:26-27 ends the discussion by articulating John's purpose in coining the term "Antichrist":

I am writing these things to you about those who are trying to lead you astray. As for you, the anointing you received from him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about all things and as that anointing is real, not counterfeit—just as it has taught you, remain in him.

Again, John identifies representatives of "Antichrist" as operatives within the church--in his words "those who are trying to lead you astray."



I think that by now, ladies and gentlemen, you can see my point. It is the same one I have been making for several posts now: A believer in Christ does not long for anything in this world because he or she is a citizen of a better one. It only remains for believers to share with others the truth they themselves have received, and to win souls for Christ.

We live in a church culture today that would, I fear, prefer to win souls for itself. Pastors, radio talk show hosts, and televangelists center their sermons on non-confrontational topics such as grace or legalism (without defining very effectively what these terms mean) in order to attract more parishioners, more listeners, and more viewers. The result is a generation of people who have trouble seeing the difference between loyalty to their church and loyalty to Christ . . . and who are becoming increasingly apathetic toward both.



My wife and I are believers in Christ . . . but we do not attend church. We tried several churches in the Dallas-Fort Worth area before moving to Lancaster, South Carolina, but all of them exhibited the same spirit that John was describing in his letter--the unsubmissive spirit of Antichrist. The one congregation we found that evidenced the Spirit of Christ was, oddly enough, a small Orthodox Christian church--there were clear lines of authority, and it was obvious that the priest of that church was submitted in his heart to the Lord, Christ Jesus. It was the first time in a long while (years) that either one of us felt truly free inside a church building.

I know that some of you will read this and think I am endorsing Orthodox Christianity as the solution to America's spiritual problems. Unfortunately, it seems that Orthodox Christianity has its share of dead churches and equally dead parishioners as well (as my wife and I discovered when we researched the denomination further).

All I am saying is that the search for a real, vibrant group of believers in Christ who are really and truly born again is increasingly taking people like us in directions outside the realm of traditional Protestant Christianity. I wish I could say this was a good thing, but the fact is, it only evidences the sad reality that many, if not most, American churches are repositories of doctrines that John and the other apostles would have found dubious, if not repugnant.

There is a lot of bad teaching going on out there, just as there was in John's time, and believers in Christ need, more than ever, to find good resources. In the next few weeks, I will add a few that my wife and I found to the "links" section of this blog--and I would appreciate any feedback from other bloggers on Christian resources for new believers as well. Part of the reason I started this blog, after all, was so that other people wouldn't have to struggle quite as much as my wife and I did when we received Christ.

Our hope, ladies and gentlemen, is not in this world.

The life and possibilities we can have in Christ Jesus are truly endless.