Post 65-Thanksgiving, Wonder Woman, and One

11/23/17

Hey Dana

 

            It’s Thanksgiving Day and we’re in Wisconsin at Carol’s son’s house. All of Carol’s family is here (except for one grandson serving in the Marines and deployed to the Asia Pacific region.), or on the way, for Thanksgiving dinner—four generations: Carol, children, grandchildren, and now great grandchild.

 

            Their home is a very cute, Cape Cod like house, but it’s not built for 19 people, 4 dogs, and 1 cat. There are at least 11 vehicles in the large parking area with licenses from California  to Pennsylvania and states in-between. It’s just what people think about when they think of family coming home for the holidays.  Lynda has already made, from scratch, a cherry pie with latticed top, a pumpkin pie, and an apple kuchen. The dinner today will be a combination of vegan and traditional, as well as gluten free and non gluten free (with two chickens and a brisket rather than turkey).

 

            You would like Jim and Lynda. They are back-to-the-land sort of people—growing much of their own food, including fruit and vegetables, chickens (Australorp breed) which lay brown eggs, and white geese. She also puts up jellies and jams. They live out in the country on thirty plus acres, with very few neighbors. And on Thanksgiving night, on television, we watched one of Jim’s favorite shows, on the History Channel, “Forged in Fire,” about bladesmiths who compete making edged weapons for a $10,000.00 prize.

 

            I really admire Lynda that she can accommodate this many people with three or four different food tracks (vegan, non-dairy, regular, and I don’t know what all else), the dogs, and four generations and friends all swarming throughout her home without going bonkers. She’s got a dinner menu, in addition to a veggie tray, five kinds of cheese (this is Wisconsin), three dips, multicolored cherry tomatoes, multiple vegan and gluten free and regular chips and crackers.

 

            Last night, Wednesday, after the first wave of families arrived, some of us watched the movie “Wonder Woman.” This movie received almost, universally, positive reviews. One of my young grandchildren stayed up to watch it. She had a number of questions about the movie (especially when it got into the World War I scenes and the finale scene between Wonder Woman, and the English Lord who had been masquerading as Ares, the god of war). It is a classic good vs evil movie where good triumphs in the end, but only after a bone crunching fight to the death. (I used to read the DC Comic Wonder Woman, along with the Flash, Green Lantern, and others of this genre comics as a kid.  I guess they have now evolved into the Justice League of America.)

 

            Wonder Woman, after believing that love can be victorious and that good wins, is confronted with the horrors of war and how both civilians and soldiers suffer and die. She discards her civilian clothes, and then, in her Wonder Woman “uniform” charges across the battlefield which starts a rout against the Germans, and then she almost single-handedly takes a Belgium town held by the Germans, and finally at a German munitions factory, fights Ares (really the devil personified) to a final victory of good over evil.

 

            My young granddaughter was asking questions about the war, why people are not only bad, but want to see evil prevail, and finally, when after an Armageddon-type  fight, good finally prevails. I said to her about the Wonder Woman victory, this will be how God and Jesus will finally prevail at the end.

 

            So at the dining room table amongst all this familial, holiday chaos, I started to read Revival by Martyn Lloyd-Jones.  In Chapter 13, “Prayer and Revival,” I was reading how in the history of revivals, according to Lloyd-Jones, God often uses one man or a small group to help bring, or be the conduit for the Holy Spirit, revival. He writes about Luther, Wycliffe, John Huss, Jeremiah Lanphier, James McQuilken or Humphrey Jones (see page 163). Specifically, writing about Luther, he says,

 

And it so burdened him that he was led to do something about it (my comment—feel the Holy Spirit’s burden to begin praying, and then they actually pray). Just one man, and through that one man, God sent that mighty movement into the Church.

 

            I must confess that this is taking me back to our recent private communication about our blog, repetition of subjects, and continuing or stopping. As a former, professional writer, I am geared to publication and quantity readership, i.e. numbers, as well as quality, or value.. In the critique group to which I belonged, I was the only person who regularly wrote for secular publications, rather than writing for just God, as most of the Christian writers said they were doing. So I have been frustrated by the small number of our readership.

 

            So that is why when further down on page 163, Lloyd-Jones continues his thought on the importance of one man, one person, to be used by God to Bring revival, I was convicted.  He wrote

 

I dare not pass lightly over a point like this because somebody reading this book (or this blog), whom I do not know, may be the person that God is going to use. And that sort of thing can only happen in the Christian Church....The world looks to the leaders and the great people, but God, as the Apostle Paul say in 1 Corinthians is constantly confounding the wise by taking hold of the foolish. He ‘brings to nought the things that are’, by using the things that are not. It may be anybody. There are no rules about this matter.

 

            So this is why what Lloyd-Jones wrote is so scolding. He challenges the Church (and me) to look past the world’s view of what and who is important. The world looks to the handsome, the well-known, the popular, the important, the famous, the successful, the bottom line. God doesn’t. This is a hard concept for me to grasp. But Lloyd-Jones is very direct, straight forward, in his attitude.

 

11/27/17

 

Hey Dana

            I’m back in PA after an “easy” 12 hour drive from Chicagoland. Easy in comparison to the grueling 13 plus hour drive in rain storms and low visibility, on the way out.

            A buddy, a very committed Christian, stopped by the house today. I had to take time off to get some things done after being out of town for a week. I hadn’t seen him in about a month. We were sharing on numerous topics, many of them dealing with the church. He and his family several years ago went through a very trying time at his former church. He has since attended several churches in this region, and is now looking intently at why he has been so committed to regular church attendance in the past. He and his family have begun to attend more on-line services than put up with “the hour and fifteen legalized format church” of today.  During our conversation, he made this distressing, yet almost humorous, statement, “I am an American Christian attempting to recover from American Christianity.”

 

Your friend

John

Post 64-Thanksgiving

          This week, remember to give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good—all the time. And thank Him for family and friends, your job, your various situations, and for the heaven that is in our futures.

Post 63-God Wouldn't Go With His People

John wrote on 10/31/17 at 10:43

Hey Dana

            I can’t believe that tomorrow is the first of November. What happened to February, May, July and September? Carol’s office is still busy so I’m still helping out there, after my day job. In my day job, I stand all day long, and do a lot of walking. Whew!

            I’m still reading Revival by Martyn Lloyd-Jones. I’m close to finishing Chapter 12 “How Revival Comes.” Lloyd-Jones uses the reference of Exodus 33:4 to introduce this chapter,

⁴ And when the people heard this bad news, they mourned, and no one put on his ornaments. NKJV

            Lloyd-Jones believes this is one of the great chapters of the Bible because he says it shows the people in a time of “aridity and dryness, and then comes into a period of re-awakening and of revival.” (pg 148) God tells Moses to take the people and go into the promised land. He (God) would send an angel to wipe out the enemies:

 

33 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Leave this place, you and the people you brought up out of Egypt, and go up to the land I promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, saying, ‘I will give it to your descendants.’ ² I will send an angel before you and drive out the Canaanites, Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. ³ Go up to the land flowing with milk and honey. But I will not go with you, because you are a stiff-necked people and I might destroy you on the way.” Ex 33:1-3 NIV

 

            The interesting thing about this verse that I never noticed before is what else God says in it, “But I will not go with you, because you are a stiff-necked people and I might destroy you on the way.”  Whoa!! Is He angry, or what? “...and I might destroy you.” I’ve heard messages on how He’ll drive all –ites out and give the children of Israel the land of milk and honey, but He is not going with them. Why? Earlier the Israelites grumbled and complained and backslid. They became impatient and worshipped the golden calf and called on other gods, and as Lloyd-Jones goes on to say, “...they proceeded to open sin, and vice, and evil. They danced before it (the golden calf), and behaved themselves in an utterly and thoroughly disgraceful manner.” pgs149-150

            Then Jones fast forwards to today and how the Church is no different than those Israelites. “They do not believe in miracles, therefore, they say miracles did not happen and that these accounts are but myths....They deny the virgin birth...(and the) resurrection.” There are gross immoralities today. He ends with how in the church today there is: “False worship, false religion, false gods, and an appalling state of evil, sin, and vice.”

John continues on 11/8/2017

Hello again Dana.

             I like how Lloyd-Jones defines true repentance on page 156. He says

 

Repentance does not just mean that your are pulled up , that you are aware that things are not as they ought to be, and that there is something wrong. No, you go on to a realisation (sic) of the seriousness of what is wrong, and its appalling character....they (the children of Israel) hated the thing (the golden calf they made), they abominated it, they condemned themselves root and branch. Ah, but still more important than that, they realised the seriousness of their sin in God’s sight.”

 

            The realization of sin is what Lloyd-Jones considers to be the first stage of revival, without which there will be no revival.

            A few pages farther on, Lloyd-Jones goes even further to make sure the reader, and me, really understand repentance so they/me don’t try to take the easy way out and copout with just remorse. Again, talking about the Israelites, on page 159  he writes

 

“...they gave absolute proof that they had repented. And against this is one of the differences between remorse and repentance, because repentance is not just a passing, temporary feeling, repentance is something that is so profound that it affects a man’s will. As the Apostle again puts it in 2 Corinthians y it leads to action. ‘You put things right,’ says Paul, ‘you did something about it.’”

 

            Unfortunately, in all the churches we’ve  attended over the past approximately 20 years, we have only been in two where there was an altar call  “Altar call” some readers may be asking, what is an “altar call?” Calling out sin and bringing it face to face with the congregations has become a thing of the past. How often are conversations started that deal with sin, let alone preaching from the pulpit?  

            I went grocery shopping on my way home from work tonight. The market had a brand of potatoes that are locally grown and we know the farmer. His potatoes are of a good grade. They are fresh and firm, with few, if any, internal blemishes or rot. They  cook up well and are tasty in no matter what the form; although we prefer mashed. I bought two 10 pound bags, rather than the usual 50 pounds that we buy at this time of the year. Because the weather is cooling off and is going to get colder, I put them in the garage to keep as a cold storage bin, if you will.

            So earlier this evening, I went out to the garage to get some black raspberry, golden Guernsey ice cream from the freezer. We have a two car garage, a fairly large one. (I’m not deviating from my point. I’m almost there.) As soon as I opened the door from the house to the garage, I smelled it. A rotten smell, A rotten potato smell that I didn’t notice in the grocery store or in the car because the spuds were in the trunk. But to use a cliché, the rotten smell was plain-as–day as soon as I opened the door. I picked up the bag and looked through the netting, but couldn’t see it. But that stinking potato is in there. But I didn’t want to deal with it tonight. Open the bag. Dump all the contents out until I find the smelly, rotten one.

            This is how I believe the Church is generally reacting to sin in their congregations. As Lloyd-Jones says, that once they (church members and attendees) realize it (sin) they must act to get rid of it. That bag of potatoes looked fine on the outside, but something was rotten inside of it and it is literally stinking up the garage, and will ruin the entire bag of potatoes if I don’t dig it out of there.  The Church looks fine on the outside—nice clothes, good jobs, beautiful families but sin is lurking hidden from view and stinking up the Christian’s walk with God, keeping revival from coming. And only through going to God in real repentance, leading to “action”  to get right with God and man, will the Church get clean and will revival come.

            Or will—as the warnings of Amos and the other prophets went unheeded—today’s Church continue on its self-destructive path until God can stand the stink no longer and brings His judgment down on the Church? Remember in Revelation 3 what He told the angel of the church in Laodicea write?

 

15 ‘I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot; I wish that you were cold or hot. 16 So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will [l]spit you out of My mouth. 17 Because you say, “I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing,” and you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked, 18 I advise you to buy from Me gold refined by fire so that you may become rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself, and that the shame of your nakedness will not be revealed; and eye salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see. 19 Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline; therefore be zealous and repent.... 22 He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’”

 

            Or, we, the Church, can continue to claim a form of Godliness but deny the power thereof, and continue to have a silence from God in our churches? 

John

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Dana Replied on Fri, Nov 10, 2017 at 9:13 AM

Hi John,

     While I see your point, the truth is that God did go with His people, He reaffirmed things with Joshua after Moses died, and wrought incredible victories in the promised land. Even when the Israelites became apostate and worse, worshipped foreign gods, God still had mercy upon them, and sent deliverers in the judges, and eventually David, and eventually Christ.

     But that said, God did not withhold judgment when His cup got full.  God neither winks at sin, nor excuses it. The severe judgments brought down upon His people were well deserved, but there was always left a remnant.  God, even though He sent Assyria and Babylon, and also Rome to execute judgment on Israel, still He didn’t pull a Sodom and Gomorrah on them and wipe them out altogether.

     You wrote:

 

            “Then Jones fast forwards to today and how the Church is no different than those Israelites. “They do not believe in miracles, therefore, they say miracles did not happen and that these accounts are but myths....They deny the virgin birth...(and the) resurrection.” There are gross immoralities today. He ends with how in the church today there is: “False worship, false religion, false gods, and an appalling state of evil, sin, and vice.””

 

     Allow me to track on something different for a second and provide a different view.  I would counter the idea that the “Church is no different than those Israelites,” might be lacking somewhat in clarity.  Now I’m in no position to argue with the good Rev. Dr. Lloyd-Jones, and I’m not.  But I would say that the church that doesn’t believe in the fundamentals of the faith, employs false worship, and worse, worships false gods, and openly and willingly participates in evil, sin and vice isn’t the church at all.  They are heathens masquerading as the Christian church.  If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck….

     In Hebrews 5:9a the author says, speaking of Jesus, “And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him….” (ESV)

     Did you catch that?  The author makes a clear and unmistakable correlation between salvation and obedience to Christ. 

     Jesus Himself said in Matthew 7:21-23

 

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’ (ESV)

 

     Again obedience to the will of the Father is tied to the one who is genuinely Christ’s.

     In Luke 6:46, Jesus says further, “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you?”  (ESV)

     The true Church isn’t apostate, but there are a lot of buildings with steeples and crosses and thousands of unregenerate people darkening their doors every Sunday pretending they are Christians.

     I knew a person once who was preparing to graduate college, and enter an industry which is often peopled by folks of questionable morality.  In one of last classes taken, it was taught by the professor that as soon as said graduates should, upon assuming a new position, quickly join a local church.  The rationale was that belonging to a church gave some credibility and acceptability to an already tarnished and suspect industry.  The students were told that they didn’t have to believe what the church taught, but that they should just attend regularly, drop some money in the plate and be seen doing it.

     Now by saying all this, I’m not giving the Church in this country a pass.  The American Christian church is lazy and apathetic, and needs to be awakened spiritually, but that is a far cry from heathenism mimicking piety.

     That said, I do think it’s time for a Colonel Travis at the Alamo moment, where a line is drawn in the sand, and everyone who claims to be a Christian gets on one side or the other. 

     Churches that “…do not believe in miracles, therefore, they say miracles did not happen and that these accounts are but myths....They deny the virgin birth...(and the) resurrection.” There are gross immoralities today. He ends with how in the church today there is: “False worship, false religion, false gods, and an appalling state of evil, sin, and vice….” aren’t part of the Christian Church at all.  They do not share in the inheritance of Christ, and on THAT DAY, will be told that they were never known, and to move on to a place more in line with their believing loyalty.

Dana

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John adds a short PS 11/11/17, Veterans Day, at 4:52 PM

Hey Dana

            I just watched the Turner Classic Movie Channel movie “Where Eagles Dare.”  It is one of my favorites, and TCM is playing military movies this weekend because it is Veterans Day weekend. “Where Eagles Dare” has good action, espionage, beautiful on-location winter photography, unexpected plot twists, and, of course, the good guys win. 

            But just a quick comment to your introductory sentence, “While I see your point, the truth is that God did go with His people....” In this chapter (12) my point is taken from a long chapter.  Lloyd-Jones leads up to his point on how revival comes by first showing how angry God was by telling His people He wouldn’t go with them because of their pervasive sins.  I couldn’t get into the entire chapter to explain everything he was writing about. But when God told the children of Israel that He wouldn’t go with them, that shocked them to awaken to the reality of their despicable situation and caused them to realize that situation was keeping them from God and His presence and caused them to repent. Remember the Prodigal Son?  In Luke 15 God tell us how when things got so bad for him

 

17 “When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! 18 I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. 19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.’ 20 So he got up and went to his father.

 

            This is the point of the chapter, that unless we, the people of the Church, come to our senses and realize how our sins are keeping us from God and His presence, not only will God , I believe continue to withhold His presence, but He will not go with us.

Your foxhole buddy

John