More Murder, More Mayhem, More Questions…

It seems that barely a day goes by when our news-feeds aren’t lit-up by news of the latest mass-shooting, but why aren’t we equally-concerned with the unabated epidemic of fatal traffic-crashes? How many people are permanently-maimed in traffic-crashes compared to those who are permanently-maimed by gunshot-wounds? Nobody is proposing that we ban all motor-vehicles…

My baby-brother is a semi-quadriplegic because of a motorcycle accident on a gravel road. What if that road had been paved instead of gravel? Wouldn’t it have been more cost-effective in the long-run to pave that road rather to pay his long-term medical-bills and his disability-compensation, but because of where that road is, out in the country, in rural Arkansas, it is a safe-bet that fifteen years later, it STILL isn’t paved? What is even more striking about his accident is that he was a volunteer firefighter and was responding to a call…

We are also faced with an opioid crisis. People are dying from drug-overdoses at an epidemic-rate. Newer, and stronger drugs, such as Fentanyl, are getting into our mass-distribution system which were never intended to be used outside a hospital or doctor-supervised environment. Enough Fentanyl to kill tens of millions of people has been seized at our southern border. Prescription and hospital-use-only drugs have found their way into uncontrolled-distribution channels. What is our government doing about that? Stopping it, or aiding and abetting it…

What about the epidemic of medical-malpractice and mistakes? Medical-malpractice and mistakes kills more people than all the other causes combined, with the exception of abortion, which is deliberate-medical-murder. Another younger brother was an inmate in a medical facility, hospital or rehab, for almost ELEVEN MONTHS. All because of a wound on his foot that wasn’t treated properly. The medical mistakes and malpractice he experienced over that last eleven months contributed to over NINE MONTHS of his most-recent medical-incarceration. Would you believe it if I told you that this whole mess started over seven years ago – with a spider-bite, that wasn’t treated properly and got infected? The antibiotics he was given to treat THAT infection destroyed both his kidneys and his liver, exacerbating all his other problems. And now, he’s gone, never to go home to his wife and daughter. Rest-in-peace Brother.

Was this skimpy, sub-standard care deliberate? Was he considered “unfit“, “unproductive“, and therefore “undesirable“, and thus “disposable“? Did the fact that he was no longer “fit for duty“, thus, no longer “useful“, factor into the treatment-decisions that were made on his behalf? There is no doubt that his medical-bills were over a million dollars. Did that make him “unworthy” of better care? Did what he had contributed to society over the previous thirty-years not “matter“?

We are fallen, sinful people, and we demonstrate just how fallen and sinful we are by our actions, or inaction. Failure to properly-treat a wound may be a death-sentence for the patient. Don’t medical care-givers know any better? Of course they do, but they don’t DO better. WHY???

Recently, a sick little boy in England was “allowed“, no, REQUIRED to die because his doctors said “There is no hope“, and a Court refused to allow his parents to take him to another country where care had been offered, at no cost to his parents. After he was taken off a ventilator, he continued breathing on his own, but then he suddenly died. WHY??? It is suspected that he was EXECUTED by “lethal-injection“. WHY??? Was he no longer “worthy” of living?

Have we come to the point in time when we are starting to see a plan, shown to us by the novelist Lois Lowry, in “The Giver“, starting to be implemented? The government would decide who was “allowed” to have children, and who would be involuntarily-sterilized. Have we come to the time when all the “unfit“, “unproductive“, “disabled” and “undesirables” will be “weeded-out” of our society? In “The Giver“, people who make “grave-mistakes” or are no longer “worthy” of taking up space in that society, are “released“, put-to-death by lethal-injection – murdered. Babies who aren’t “perfect” are likewise executed and their bodies thrown in the trash. In parts of Scandinavia, autism and Down’s Syndrome have been all but eliminated by ABORTION. Who will be the next targets of abortion or euthanasia? Is this kind of “utopia” all it is cracked-up to be? Is it really a “utopia“?

China had a “one-child” policy for many years in an attempt to slow-down their population-growth, but that often resulted in girl-babies being aborted, because, if couples could only have one child, they wanted a BOY. There was one “minor” problem with that policy, it created a society with a large surplus of men without enough women to go around. To put it simply – men couldn’t find wives because there weren’t enough women. The result was that their population started shrinking, creating a labor-shortage. What if they hadn’t used selective-abortion to control their population-growth? What if they had created a culture which values both boys and girls, keeping their “one-child” policy intact, but encouraging parents to keep that little girl instead of aborting her? Population growth would have still slowed down, but they wouldn’t been left with an exaggerated gender-imbalance. One “solution” created another problem…

Have you heard of Agenda 21? It is a United Nations (UN) initiative, adopted in 1992, to make Earth, its environment and and population “sustainable” again. They believe that will require that the Earth be DEPOPULATED by 95% – by 2030. How will they accomplish that goal? Who will be “allowed” to live? Who will make that decision?

I recently became aware of the “The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement“, whose motto is “May we live long and die out”. Their goal is “Phasing out the human race by voluntarily ceasing to breed will allow Earth’s biosphere to return to good health. Crowded conditions and resource shortages will improve as we become less dense.“

Did you notice the similarity of purpose of both Agenda 21 and TVHEM? Both are driven by crass environmentalism, and both seek to solve the “problem” by depopulating the Earth. Agenda 21 would do It by force, TVHEM voluntarily. Did God create the Earth for mankind, or did He create mankind for the Earth?

Are we getting closer than we realize to the implementation of this plan? Why else would a sixth-grader be given ten pages of rules to memorize their first day of school other than to create a compliant cog in the system? NO school “needs” ten pages of rules to create a safe, productive learning-environment, but to get them used to “following the rules” without question…

I am sure that, along with already being “disabled“, being the independent-thinker that I am, I am a prime-target for “elimination“, along with many others like me. My brother and I were pretty much “two peas in pod“. We thought a lot alike. There is no place in this globalist “utopia” for people who can think and analyze things for themselves. Only “compliant-subjects” stand a chance…

I hate to be an alarmist, but I call things the way I see them, and I DON’T like what I am seeing these days. Do you have serious questions about what is going on in our world today? I sure do…

Down To Earth

From his lofty cosmic-view in John 1:1-5, the Apostle John brings his Christology down to earth, that the eternal Word, very-God of very-God, the Creator and Sustainer of all there is, took upon Himself not only our human-flesh, but our very humanity. He became one of us. He is, at the same time, BOTH God and Man, and while each nature remains distinct from the other, they are perfectly-united in one Person, Jesus Christ. Jesus’ humanity did not reduce His deity, nor did His deity reduce His humanity. He was 100% God and 100% Man.

The Word Made Flesh
And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. 15 John testified about Him and cried out, saying, “This was He of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me has a higher rank than I, for He existed before me.’” 16 For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace. 17 For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him. (John 1:14-18)

Up to this point, we know that the Word was with God and that the Word was God; the “Word-God” We have also seen John refer to this Word-God as “He”. Now, for the first time, John identifies “him” as the Son of God, Jesus Christ. Yes, for it was none other than Jesus who became flesh and made His dwelling among us at the incarnation, it is of Jesus that the Hebrews author asserts, “and through whom also he made the universe” (Hebrews 1:2) which is parallel to John 1:3; there can be no doubt about whom it is that John is referring to here. It is Jesus who is the Son, having come to us from the Father.

Now that we are certain of just who John has been talking about, we can look at the attributes John mentions about Him, He was full of “grace and truth.” Notice the balance between those two; how many of us maintain that kind of balance between grace and truth when we are interacting with others? Some of us have a great deal of grace, so much so in fact, that we can overlook almost anything; we might even make the truth hard to find. Others are so strong on truth that we find ourselves pointing fingers at those around us, seldom displaying love or compassion or understanding.

The core of the Apostle John’s Christology is that Jesus Christ is both the Eternal Word, who he affirms as being our Creator, and a man, displaying all the hallmarks of being human. No one was closer to Jesus than John. John had spent over three years with Jesus. They were cousins, and Mary lived with John and his family after the crucifixion. While none of the stories of Jesus’ childhood made it into the Gospels, nobody knew more about Him, in His humanity, than His mother, Mary. John will go on to defend Jesus’ humanity against the heresies that were already raising their ugly-heads in the church by the time he wrote his first Epistle, 1st John. Notice his wording in 1st John 1:1-3:

What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of Life— 2 and the life was manifested, and we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us— 3 what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.

Heard”, “seen”, “touched”, the three pillars of evidence which would have been decisive in a Court of Law. The Old Testament required that there be three witness in order to convict a person of murder. If John were testifying today of the humanity of Jesus, he would bring pictures, audio-recordings, and even video taken during His earthly ministry.

What is the significance of the Word becoming flesh?

What does it mean by “dwelt among us“? Why is this important?

How did Jesus reveal God’s glory?

Did grace exist before the Incarnation? Did truth exist before the Incarnation?

How could John the Baptist say “He existed before me” when he was older than Jesus?

How did Jesus model grace? How can we model grace?

What does “only begotten” mean?

“Only begotten” is one of the great mysteries in the Bible, because it would imply, to us, that the Word had a beginning, however He could not have been Eternal if He had a beginning. It is our language and word-usage which trips us up, because, while the Old Testament is chock-full on genealogies, and Matthew’s Gospel begins with Jesus’ human genealogy, that cannot be the sense of how “begotten” is used in this passage. It would make more sense to us if “only begotten” had been rendered “unique“, because Jesus IS “unique“. Nobody before or since has had His “uniqueness“.

How did Jesus reveal God in His person and work?

How could John the Baptist say “This was He of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me has a higher rank than I, for He existed before me.’”?

Let’s not forget that John the Baptist was of the priestly-line of Aaron, so he was very-well versed in the Old Testament, and particularly in the prophesies concerning the coming Messiah. We see that in John 1:23, where he said “I am a voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ as Isaiah the prophet said.” (from Isaiah 40:3) God had also revealed to him that he was the “prophet who was to come”, the forerunner of the Messiah, as revealed in Malachi 4:5-6.

John’s text continues as he mentions that John the Baptist testified concerning Jesus in verse 15, and then in 16-18 gives his own testimony about Him.

Out of his fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known. (John 1:16-18)

John’s first statement is about the abundance of grace that we have received through relationship with Christ. Then, John expands on his statement, pointing out that while the Law was “given” grace and truth “came.” I think that’s worthy of a little thought, for as John has structured this, the Law is a rather top-down thing. The Law was handed down by God to Moses, and then from Moses to the people; the people could take it or leave it. They took it, and then for the most part, they left it; there was no relationship with Law, for Law just is. The result was that that very Law became their condemnation, not their salvation.

The author then contrasts Law and Grace by contrasting its authors. Moses was the great law-giver, but keeping the law never brought-about a righteous life. We have all experienced religious-legalism, and the Scribes, Pharisees and teachers of the law had raised religious-legalism to a fine art. The problem was that even if a person kept 99% of the law perfectly, they were still condemned by that 1% they didn’t get quite right. Another problem was that the law only exacted penalties for failure to keep it but it didn’t have any rewards for compliance. A person may have a perfect driving-record for twenty years, but when they finally get a speeding-ticket, their otherwise-perfect driving-record doesn’t diminish the penalties for that ticket. Even though my only speeding-ticket was over thirty years ago, that ticket, and that I paid it, is still on record somewhere in Illinois. I would never get inducted into the “Safe-driver Hall of Fame” because I don’t have a perfect driving-record.

That is where Grace comes in. God gives us what we don’t deserve, a right-relationship with Him, rather than what we DO deserve, eternal-punishment. Christ has the perfect record we could never attain, and through His perfect life, shed-blood and finished-work, God gives us what He earned for us. Grace goes far-beyond just keeping us out of Hell. Grace also gives us a place in God’s eternal kingdom, with all the rewards that go with that blessed state. I would get inducted into the “Safe-drive Hall of Fame” based on His perfect-record, not kept out based on my flawed-record.

And then, grace and truth came to them…

Grace and truth came to them in a person; they could talk and laugh and cry and walk together; there is relationship with grace and truth, for grace and truth become a part of who we are as human beings; there is no fear in grace and truth.

In the remainder of this text, John reveals to us that through Jesus, God can be known to Man, for Jesus is Himself God. Through Jesus, therefore, we can have relationship with God, the Creator of everything: Grace and Truth.

Would you like to know God?

Get to know Jesus. Would you like to know Jesus?

Get to know the Word who “became flesh and dwelt among us“.

You may wonder why I am relentless in my emphasis on Jesus’ humanity, which wasn’t doubted during His sojourn on earth. If fact, it wasn’t His humanity that was challenged, it was His claim to deity. He was crucified because He, obviously a man, claimed to be God. It wasn’t until after His ascension that the first challenges of His humanity came along. Greek Docetic and Gnostic philosophy, which demeaned the body and emphasized the spirit or soul, began to infiltrate the church. Debunking that heresy was the purpose of the opening verses of 1st John, which we looked at earlier. Even the church today is infested with “Docetism-lite”.

Why does it matter?
The penalty for rebellion against God was death (Genesis 2:17), so while Adam and Eve’s rebellion against God didn’t bring immediate physical-death, it DID bring spiritual-death, and physical-death would become a part of the human-experience. The only atonement for sin was a blood-sacrifice, death, so it took a perfect human-being’s death to atone for the sins of His people. It took a perfect “seed of the woman” to “crush the serpent’s head” (Genesis 3:15). That perfect “seed of the woman” was Jesus.

That is why it matters that Jesus is fully-human, and why I have written and taught about it so much. His humanity is the basis for our salvation.

Beloved, this is really too simple for us to miss! Out of all of the knowledge that has come to humanity over the ages, this is all we need to know to receive forgiveness and eternal life; grab onto it and hold on tight, never let it go…

Sola Deo Gloria!

Welcome Home!

Is there any place you would rather be than at home? Even though I am sure that there are people with such a wander-lust that they really don’t call any place “home“, but for the majority of us, Dorothy had it right when she said “There is no place like home!“. Even though Toto was by her side, she wasn’t in Kansas. If this reference is unfamiliar to you, Dorothy is the young girl in “The Wizard of Oz“.

We all long for a place to call “home“, and if we do have a “home“, when we are away from home, there is a level of uneasiness that won’t go away until get get back home. Whether it is a mansion or a cardboard box, home is where the heart is.

I traveled a lot during the early years of my working career, and sometimes I was gone for several weeks at at time, but there was no sweeter sight than the faces of my family waiting for me at the exit of the jet-way. Even though the airport wasn’t “home“, Albuquerque was, and the airport was in Albuquerque. Arriving at that airport meant that I would be home soon, to greetings of “Welcome Home Dad!“.

I didn’t spend any of my time in the military overseas, so I can only imagine what it feels like to be HOME from an overseas deployment, particularly from a combat-zone. It must be the most wonderful feeling on earth.

In 2011, I made a 31 day, 5,200 mile odyssey across the US of A. I spent a night with my baby brother, Rocky, on my way west. His daughter spent the night with a friend so that I could use her bedroom. That was very sweet of her. I hadn’t seen Rocky since about 1974, so it was wonderful to be together again.

I spent the next few days at the home of my brother Darrell, or should I say, his former home, because Darrell wasn’t there. Yes, his name was still on the deed, but that wasn’t his home any more. Darrell was HOME!!! Cancer had claimed his body, but his Lord had claimed his soul, so Darrell was in a far better place. All that was left of Darrell on earth was a handful of ashes. The chapel at the funeral home was packed, much to Darrell’s surprise, because even though he thought that he really didn’t have many friends, he had touched the lives of many people, and through our tears, we were there to celebrate his life.

I spent the next few days with John and Sue, dear friends from my time in Albuquerque. John was my traveling-partner for quite a few of those work trips. In Spanish, they say “Mi casa es su casa“, for “My home is your home“, and they sure pulled out all the stops to make me feel at home. They insisted that I sleep in their bedroom while they slept on the sofas in the living room so that I could have private sleeping-quarters. As much as they tried to make me feel at home, I wasn’t home.

I journeyed on west to spend some time with Rich and Phyl. I have known Rich since the early 80’s, so we go WAY back. They don’t have a guest bedroom, so I slept on a mattress on the floor of Phyl’s office. Being with them was more important than where I slept. We had a great time together, but I was still over 2,000 miles from home.

I spent all but one night on the rest of the trip in a motel room. Motel rooms ARE NOT home, as nice as they can be, because that room is only “yours” as long as you pay the “rent“. None of the places I had been or stayed were “home“, because I didn’t have my OWN bedroom or my OWN place at the table.

As I pulled into the driveway of MY home, it was good to be HOME. Mom met me with “WELCOME HOME!“, because I WAS HOME.

Many people would think that the little place I call “home” is way too small, but it is “home” to me. I don’t have to compete with anyone else for any part of the house. It is not that I wouldn’t share it, but at this point in my life, I don’t have to share it.

I go up to see my mom once in a while, and even though her place is technically mine also, it isn’t really “home“. I am ALWAYS ready to come back HOME.

As much as we feel like this Earth is our home, if we are Christians, this is NOT our home. We are sojourners for a finite period of time. As with Darrell, so also with Connie and my own father. They aren’t here any longer. They are HOME. They are in their “FOREVER–HOME“. They have joined a myriad of saints who have gone before them, saints who have left their earthly-dwelling behind, and are now dwelling in a place that was not made by human hands. They have already heard God say “WELCOME HOME!“.

David, in that glorious 23rd Psalm, said “And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever“. The “house of the Lord” IS our forever-home. This “home“, this earthly-body wears out, gets diseased, and ultimately dies, but it is only our temporary home, because God has given us an immortal spirit which lives on even after our body is long-gone. Yes, we WILL get a new body, a body that is not subject to decay, disease and death, a body not-unlike Adam and Eve’s bodies before their fall into sin. We will be restored to our true and full humanity, because being human isn’t “bad“, it is WONDERFUL. We, among all of God’s creation, are the only beings made in His image. Jesus showed us what it is like to be fully-human, and what we should strive for in our earthly-sojourn is to be more like Him.

Sometimes I wish that God would call me HOME, but I know that as long as I am still here, He has more work for me to do. Should we “settle–down” here? I believe that we should only “settle–lightly“, because nothing we accumulate here will cross over with us. Only what we do for the furtherance of His kingdom and for His glory really matters. Those are what will follow us HOME.

Are you ready to go HOME? Are you ready to hear “WELCOME HOME!“?

I am!
Steve