Obscurities

On the islands of the South Pacific, in Asia, on many church buildings, you will see a sign which indicates it is a Mormon edifice or a Jehovah's Witness Kingdom Hall. These areas have been subjected to missionaries from these denominations. Once, in the Cameroons, Africa, my vehicle passed a brush covered edifice, a sign by the road said “Sweet Home Baptist Church”. I said, “Stop the car! I want a picture of the only Baptist church I have ever seen outside the United States.”

A member of SBC for so many years, I was well aware of how much money Baptists had given to the cooperative program and to Baptist missions. With so much money given to God's work, I wonder what men have done with it? In Kenya, Africa, I came upon a group putting the top onto a Methodist Church who told me they were about to finish their house of worship. A young missionary was assisting.

At lunch with him, he discussed his life, his calling, and I will never forget his words, “I have learned much in Africa, but I am pretty enough, ambitious enough, articulate enough, talented in music enough and know enough that I can go back to America and become an evangelistic success.” He later said, “One might as well scam for Jesus. If people will line streets in England to cry and clap over an old, ugly lady riding in a carriage drawn by horses, who will shell out millions each year to support she and her family in a lifestyle beyond compare; if thousands will gather in a theatre to clap and praise for a small, disfigured, queer, black boy, Michael Jackson, who lives a lifestyle beyond compare; if thousands will go to an arena and watch young, black and white millionaires bounce a round ball up and down a court, and this is all they are able to do in their life, and have a lifestyle beyond compare; then I KNOW I can return to America, get on the evangelism circuit (television) and be as successful as the young, gay preacher, Jimmy Baker and his ugly wife, Joel Osteen and his ugly wife, Oral Roberts and his ugly family, Pat Robertson and his ugly family, Paul Crouch and his ugly family. All with wealth and lifestyles gained by faking love for Jesus, love for their fellow man and their willingness to bring the troubles and sicknesses of others to God for a price. I know I can be successful in the greatest scam ever perpetuated since Judas.” It was not many years later, that I witnessed his performance on CBN, the Crouch Show, with the painted wife and gold grand piano. Him singing and performing, supposedly, to the Glory of God.

After the year 1535, when the Church of England broke away from the Catholic Church, just after the first African slaves reached Portugal, morality has been in decline. The Pilgrims, real Christian believers, finally escaped the counterfeit, make-believe, religiosity of England. They came to America just seeking religious freedom and opportunity. Slowly but surely, Europe is gone (more caskets than cradles, more mosques than churches) and, slowly but surely, America is on its way down. The blacks, the academics, the bureaucrats, all under the liberal tent of the Democratic Party who sought darkness rather than light, has brought our blessed heritage from the altar of faith and freedom to the sewer of despair and deception.

It has been the same old battle between light and darkness, truth and error, the absolutes of right and wrong. Instead of the Church changing the world, here and elsewhere, the world has changed the Church because even the born again believer wants the world and the things of the world.

In medical research, it has been found that the rat genome is within about 5 percentage points difference from the human genome. Those of us reared on a farm have seen the barn cat, after catching a mouse, tease and pester the mouse for quite awhile before eating. The cat had learned that the mouse is much tastier after the neurological fright, stress and aggravation of such testing. We humans have learned that our testing is not to be compared to the blessing of our full obedience, to the Creator of both man, the mouse and the cat (Romans 12:1-2).

Most Americans, even churchgoing Americans, are much more concerned with conforming to the world and are much more interested in the preposterous, obscurities and stupidities of the world than they are of their life here on earth or their life after they depart this realm of sordid dysfunction. The President should take no satisfaction in the fact that a couple can get close to him, with all the hugging and smiling going on, in the richest house in the world. Mr. Tiger Woods should take no satisfaction in the fact that although he can be the highest paid athlete in history, can be the idol of young people around the world, his wife is still as effective with a golf club as he, himself.

But, Americans are much more interested in these obscurities than they are in being enslaved by a monster health care system, by a monster Cap and Trade system, by terrorism building up around the world with weapons which can easily wipe out the world. Over 50 years ago when I was getting my military indoctrination as a medical officer with some rank, I was shown a bottle of poison. The scientist said, “One drop of this nerve gas would kill everyone in a large theater.” To the uninitiated, everything is obscure. Astronauts travel through space at 14,000 mph. You are destined one day, you don't know what day, to leave the unpredictable harassment of this Earth's relativity adventure into the hallowed realms of heaven or the horrendous vacuum of hell. This thinking, this attitude, is not as obscure as you might wish. Mark Belakovsky of the Russian Space Program, the ancient writings of Nostradamus, nor the Mayan calendar predicting world's end in 2012, will have nothing to do with your eternal welfare. “Only what's done for Christ, His Holy Spirit in your life, will last.”