What Then?

#673

In 1991 Billy Crystal starred in the movie City Slickers. It is appraised at #73 in the funniest movies of all time. Once, one of my college friends was visiting me in Manhattan. I took him to eat in a restaurant at the corner of 50th street and 1st Avenue. I well remember that Billy Crystal was having dinner in the same restaurant and was being interviewed by a reporter, much to the chagrin to the fellow diners in the restaurant because of the excessive noise and activity.

In the movie, the Crystal character, in which he played a 39 year old male, up adn coming success story, said, it is depressing to think that at 39 years of age you will not get any better looking, any smarter, and healthier. So it is, with all of us, learn to live with your imperfections in an imperfect world. You do the best you can with what you have. Even God does not expect perfection, only obedience.

I want my surgeon to believe in absolutes. I don't want any guess-work, any approximations from someone cutting on my body with a very sharp instrument. I want a pianist to believe in absolutes. Someone who has never had a course in “music appreciation” can recognize a bad note when played on the piano. I want my pharmacist to believe in absolutes. Elements, chemicals, can become deadly when not compounded accurately according to definite synthesizing and formulations and exact calculations.


Our five senses are used in recognizing good work. My father almost drove me crazy because he was so exacting in everything he did. When he built a hog trough, you would think he was building a grand piano. He was raised that way. His ancestors before him were raised that way and, as many of you have said, the older we get, the nearer like our ancestors we become.

My first Sunday school teacher, a lady in our community who had never married or had children of her own, was put on earth to love other's children. Much loved by everyone in the community, she always made a baby cap for each new baby in the church. Each stitch had to be exactly perfect. Blue silk for the boys, pink silk for the girls. Even in the community, regardless of the color of skin, station in life, anything else, she made it her mission to love all children.

If God gave you the job of designing a baby, what change would you make? If God gave you the job of designing a kitten or puppy, what changes would you make? If God gave you the job of designing a rose, petunia, daffodil, carnation, oak tree, pine tree, what changes would you make? Could you improve on the job that God has done?

Can you imagine designing separately every snow flake that has ever fallen on earth, every iris of the human eye, ever born on earth, every voice and vocal cord ever born on earth, every mountain, every glacier found on earth? Do you think you could improve on God's work? If so, “what then”?

Stop anyone on the street, ask the question, what is a Christian? You will always get the same answer from both the believers and the non-believers. Christians do not fornicate, get drunk, steal, dance, smoke drugs … Christians do go to church, do get Baptized, do love their children and their neighbors, and then you would say, “what then”? None of this matters in eternal salvation.

Christ never preached anything but himself. He was either the world's greatest fraud or he was who he said he was. 15 times in the Sermon on the Mount he made it clear that it was he and he alone. “What then”?

Ancient Chinese philosopher, Confucius, had a golden rule. Most of the world's religions believe in the essence of the golden rule, “What then”? Mohammad professed his authority in the Koran as him having a vision. Christ claimed all authority in heaven and earth (Mat 28:18). “What then”?

“Deceptology” is a study of how people are deceived. The German population was one of the best educated populations known to the world. Still reeling from WW1, they were incrementally deceived by Adolph Hitler into believing a psychosis which lead to the extermination of millions of their fellow country men … the disabled by the hundreds of thousands, their Jewish neighbors by the millions … An advanced, civilized nation educated in the arts and sciences. Through mind control, they enabled a monster to bring chaos on the civilized world, destruction to their homeland and a division, East and West Germany which still taints their every activity.

Study the evidence, everyone is an expert in religion, everyone an expert in man's inhumanity to man. Once the killing of babies, abortions, has no effect on you, once the killing of the elderly and the disabled has no effect on you, once the tyranny of the police state, once torture has no effect on you, “what then”?

The entire Christian religion is built on the fact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. How can any thinking human being not study the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus Christ? The factual evidence is built on these things. A cataclysmic act happened to totally change his disciples. They were never the same men again … Willing to die as martyrs, alone, knowing they would never be seen again or heard from again just because their lives had been forever changed (Bartholomew skinned alive in Armenia, Thomas, crossing the Himalayas, killed in India, Luke, hanged in Greece, Mark, dragged through the streets of Alexandria, Peter, crucified in Rome etc.) Millions, citizens in the world but not of the world, have had their lives changed by the life of one solitary God-man (Hbr 11-13). “What then”?

The Disciple Thomas, a hard-headed doubter, the Disciple John, self promoting, Peter, denying rebel, all cataclysmic-ally changed. They, like the martyrs of our faith, serving on foreign fields under impossible conditions, like us, objects of ridicule, would not believe in Christ for a lie. “What then”?

Like those serving in Port Au Prince, Haiti, this very day, where in one area, 350 decaying bodies are still located in one building, where the stench of death, the deprivation of food and water for innocent children is a matter which only God can overcome, “what then”?