Too Good to be True

On Christmas Day in 1974, having spent Christmas Eve at a hotel in Bethlehem, I went through a very small opening in the front door of the Church of the Nativity. The great doors to the church had been boarded up many years previously because the Muslim hoards, so despising the infidels, rode their horses into the cathedral, forever scarring the edifice built over the cave where our Blessed Lord was born. As I went down some steps to the small cave in the side of the hill and stood at the place where the greatest event in the history of the world had taken place, the onrushing thought came over me, which I now share with you, “IT IS JUST TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE.”

This thought because, in my opinion, belief in Christ takes a supernatural thought process, and most people, even those who are church-going pretenders, just do not have the mental capacity to comprehend it. It is almost beyond the comprehension of the average mind that the very majestic God of Glory, the one who threw the millions of stars into space (Genesis 1:16), the one who can hold the oceans of the Earth in His very hands, on whose hands the names of those He has chosen to believe in Him are written, the One who can measure the height of the Himalayas with His fingers, Who can put His toes into the Marianas Trench of the Pacific, Who has designed every snowflake that has ever fallen, designed every life that has ever lived, even to the sound of the voice, even to the iridial flex in the iris of every human eye (Psalm 1:39), the God of Glory who numbers every hair on your head, who knows your every thought, who keeps perfect score of every plus and every minus in your existence, who selected a 14 year-old girl to bear His only Son, putting on a tent of human flesh to dwell among us and give us a perfect example of living, to atone for all the sins and diseases of mankind on a cruel cross, total redemption for the world of sin, despair, depression and disease, who rose from the dead (the second greatest event in the history of the world), went back to the Father and will come again for His own...for which His own patiently awaits (Revelation 22:20).

When I have heard the atheist college professor ridicule Christian faith, I think of the mosquito on the railroad track shouting at the approaching locomotive, “I don't believe in you!” When I have heard the “Doubting Thomas” preachers and television evangelists barking out pre-contrived sociables, a prosperity gospel, a feel good-be good, everything is love, “there are many paths to the same destination”, theology (mostly towards the selling of books or the asking for “ministry” help), I think of the difference between the external and the internal convictions of belief. Those who think that faith is expressed only in magnificent buildings with beautiful interiors contrasted with beautiful compassionate, convicted and convinced lives.

In my lifetime, I have seen the world of science opened up through the discovery of DNA in 1953, “supposed” travel to the moon, a takeover of the media by the state, and the despising of Christianity on every level. I have seen a watered down gospel preached, pedophile priests, gay preachers, homosexual bishops playing church by many denominations, taking sin's ruin and Christ redemption, the blood atonement, the spirituality of the Trinity, hundreds of new denominations hatched in order to put forth some new dogma or doctrine.

About 200 yards down the road from the country church where I was raised (church built in 1874 by the great grandparents of both my mother and father), Mrs. Eliza lived. Every Sunday morning, rain or shine, cold or hot, you would see her walking down the road to the church in her Sunday dress and her Sunday hat. I don't believe she ever had anything to say inside the church other than greeting everyone, but she was always there moving her lips in prayer as the preacher preached and the people sang.

Her husband's funeral was the first funeral I can remember as a small child. It was all so strange to me; an open grave, a gray coffin, wreaths of flowers. Mrs. Eliza's daughter was my mother's best friend. Long after he had died, long after my mother's friend had died, she told my mother just how mean her husband had been to her. At that time in the life of this state, a man's property went to his children. At best, the widow usually got a child's share. So, all the property went to her surviving children but they did allow her to stay in the family house. She survived on a few dollars a month (this was before the time of social security or government help of any kind) derived from selling chickens and the gifts of friends. She told my mother, “what I go through on this earth is nothing, I just want to see the face of my Blessed Savior.” Her faith was real, an attitude impossible with men, too good to be true.

When God created man, He breathed into him a living soul. In the Original Sin involving free will, you do not have to train a child to be evil, it comes very naturally. Psychologists have tried to renounce the truths of the Bible by saying that all people are good, but nature and history tells us otherwise. You see, we believe in life after death, we believe in Heaven and Hell. There is more in the Bible (Answer Book) about Hell than Heaven. We know that no sin will enter Heaven, Christ is the propitiation for every sin. Through His cleansing we start living the eternal life before our clinical death. This is real Christianity. The truth that God forgives sin through the blessed atonement of His only begotten Son, born in a lowly place, prophesied 700 years before birth (Isaiah 53), fulfilling every prophecy and promise made by the Creator of the Universe (John 1) to His creation, you and I. As believers we are called, we are elected, we are conformed, we are justified, we are glorified (Romans 8:28-33).

It is just too good to be true, that in Him we have life and have it more abundantly (John 10:10). It is just too good to be true that unlike the unbelievers, deceived by Satan, the “religions” of the world, depending on idols and other man-made fakery, we have within our very being the Holy Spirit of the One Who created us, Who created everything around us, Who offered His only begotten Son for our priceless redemption as a joint-heir in life now and in eternity. The puny, midget mind of man just cannot understand or comprehend the goodness and greatness of God. “Rejoice in the Lord always: [and] again I say, Rejoice” (Philippians 4:4). It is a gift! “To know him, the power of His resurrection, the fellowship of His suffering” (Philippians 3:10).