Apologia

The frailties of mankind never cease to amaze me, the sins of pride, envy, greed. The world, the flesh, the devil, have shrunk to the size of your pocketbook. The stores already decorated for Christmas before Halloween, everyone searching for an escape.

I was never a sportsman, never an athlete. Still I'd prefer to be in any type of game, rather than the sidelines or the bleachers. Because of total blindness at such an early age, I never watch such games. In College, 1949, I first came into a realization of big money sports, until then, I thought people were just playing games, not big business. From then, 1949, until 1989, 40 years, World Series games did not always result in a full seven-game series. But, with increased television revenues, increase money at every level, you seldom have a 5 or 6 game series, remarkable, always seven. It's the same with all athletics, advertising revenues in proportion to everything else involved in the game. Our games, races, gambling, elections, all fixed. Isn't it strange that polling and election results can be so accurately predicted ahead of time, that gambling defies mathematics. That the great Las Vegas hotels are built by losers.

The word apologia was not widely known or used by the ancients, they apologized for very little, because they had the common sense to do what was right. Nor was the word apologetics recognized, they knew what they believed, the Grecian warrior, so convinced in his beliefs, either came back a victor, or carried on his shield. Today's religionist, not refined in the fire of personal conviction, just dilly-dally along the fringes of their belief, easily tainted and demoralized by defense, not self-equipped to give a good offense. As the disciple Peter said, your offense has got to be “the hope within you.” (1 Peter 3:15)

It is not love, certainly not love as taught by God when we support anything outside the truth. Pilate asked Christ, “what is truth?” (John 18:38) Christ is truth (John 14:6), and the truth is the truth whether anyone believes it or not. God does not care what we think, he only cares about belief in the faith of His Son. The honor of His Son is important to God, one cannot profess belief in Christ and not be changed, to keep on doing what they were doing before repentance. We are new creatures (2 Corinthians 5:17); transformed, not conformed. (Romans 12:2) The unbeliever, the atheist, the backslider, always identifies Christians in their image of hypocrisy; don't compare anyone with another Christian, make your comparison with the scripture.

A business never advertises sales at a 20% increase, always a 20% discount. The world looks for cheapness, there is nothing cheap about God's workmanship (Ephesian 2:10): God's gift to the world in the form of his only begotten Son (John 3:16), or the price one must pay as a follower (Matthew 16:24).

Converted, convinced, the mind and heart working together...the soul in the blood; blood, the essence of life. The light-bulb in the lamp, the filament in the bulb, all just dead molecules until connected to power with the infusion of electrical impulses, called electricity, into the filament in the bulb, we then have life, light, heat. Such is what happens when God breathes eternal life into us, as he did with the first human being, Adam. It is a relationship between spirit and matter. The manufacturer's handbook, the Bible, tells us we are his when we are spirit-filled.

There is almost no limit to the stories of lives that have been changed by the infusion of God's power through Jesus Christ. Some so convinced, so inspired, willing to suffer anything to reach the lost. Early missionaries never expected to return home, I saw this twice in Africa. At Kenya, at the airport in Nairobi, a young man leaving to go to America and prepare for the mission field. His family were there, weeping because they never expected to see him again. Landing in the Cameroons, an old man left the plane, got on his knees and kissed the ground having told me it was the first time he had been home in 50 years. He had come home to die. He too was weeping as he went inside the terminal, family there to meet him, neither had ever seen one another before, but as he told me, he was coming home.

Acts of God will make nuclear warfare look small. In apologetics, we try to defend our faith; our faith does not need defense! Without God, you cannot know God. To know him, the power of His resurrection, the fellowship of His suffering (Philippians 3:10), is sufficient. Present the Word, and God will do the rest.