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July 01, 2008 |
You perhaps recall the lyrics of a song that says, “ Killing Me Softly With His Song.”  I suppose that it is possible to kill someone with music. I often feel like I am being killed loudly when I hear rock music, whether hard-rock or soft-rock. Obviously my prejudices are showing. I am a classical and semi-classical music man. Plus the fact that we must not expose our children to the unwanted and depraved elements of the modern rockers!
But what I am even more certain of is that it is more than possible to kill the human spirit softly with watered-down and diluted theologies. In fact, it is not only more than possible, it is a fact today that entire generations are having their consciences being softly and slowly killed by a comfy, cushy but lethal amorality on a massive scale. |
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June 01, 2008 |
The first of these questions has interrogated my mind for years to this very day.  The second question frightens me, because people are people, and religious people are religious people. What one is capable of, we all are capable of. Of course, we will never grasp the answers to the first question in its deepest depths, no matter how many passion plays we see, how many sermons we hear, or how many books we read. So much hatred for such incredible love! So much venom for such tender compassion!
Someone once said, “To be a saint is not to be good, or even to do good, but to be overwhelmed by the goodness of God.” How could they treat someone so very badly Who was the very essence of goodness in their midst? We read in Acts 10:38 about our Lord, |
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June 01, 2008 |
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5. JESUS GETS DEEP UNDER THE SKIN  It all goes much deeper than the traditional explanation that we have just examined to sufficiently understand the Jewish loathing of Jesus, valid as that argument seems to be. Haven’t you ever heard somebody say of someone else, “He’s really starting to get under my skin!” In other words, “He is starting to bug me, bother me, get to me, annoy me, and irritate me.” But Jesus wasn’t just getting under the Jewish skin. He was getting way under, even to the marrow of their bones!
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May 01, 2008 |
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This will be a most significant study, and I am sure that each of us will find ourselves in it. It goes without saying that the miracle in Luke 17:11-19 is one of the most astounding miracles ever performed by Jesus Christ.  But even more astounding were the reactions in the lives of those who were once ten dying men, but suddenly became ten healed men and now fully alive! One moment they were facing death, and then having been gloriously healed, 9 of the 10 turned their faces away from and their backs on Jesus their Healer. The setting was this! Ten men were living together in a leper colony cut off from society. The public was afraid of their shadows, let alone their touch. Their plight – all of them had the deadly and contagious disease called leprosy. Today we have the awful “C” word – cancer. Back then, they had the awful “L” word – leprosy. Frankly it was a death sentence. The flesh rotted off from the leper’s bones, and the bones from their bodies.
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May 01, 2008 |
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6. Mr. Disappointed Second Thoughts  “I Really Don’t Like Being Whole. I Miss The Compensations
of Unwholeness” Oh, oh! We have quite a case here. We ask Healed Leper #6, “Why didn’t you go back and lay down your life in thanksgiving, and express your deepest gratitude to Jesus of Nazareth for this miracle deliverance that He gave you?” He shockingly responds, “You hardy and healthy types may not understand this. To you, health is an unquestioned advantage. But I wonder if you ever thought of this – I don’t want to be healed anymore, strange as it may seem to you. Oh yes, with the others I did cry out to Jesus for mercy, but now that I am whole, I am not so enthused about it. Now I have to get back into the hurly burly and the rat race of life. I no longer can shuffle off the responsibilities of life. A job to find and hold down, scheduled hours and all that! I have discovered that there are compensations in permanent invalidism.”
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April 17, 2008 |
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The Fool Has Said In His Heart, “There Is No God….” Psalm 14:1  When we think about atheists, our minds tend to go back into history to the likes of Francois Voltaire, Frederick Nietzsche, Julian Huxley, and more recently Madelyn Murray O’hare and Michael Newdow who is on a crusade to remove every trace of God from American society. There is an aggressive atheism in the world today that is being showcased on television documentaries, for instance on the likes of the Discovery Channel, that are completely atheistic and evolutionary in their philosophy. The Christian Faith is constantly being maligned by comedians such as George Carlin and Bill Maher, just to name a couple of the better known comic atheists.
It wasn’t that long ago that John Lennon of The Beatles flaunted his atheistic songs such as God and Imagine. In them he sings, “I don’t believe in the Bible. I don’t believe in God. I don’t believe in Jesus. I just believe in me, Yoko and me, that’s reality.” Or again, Lennon sings, “Imagine there’s no heaven…no hell below us, above us only sky…no religion too. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will live as one.”
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