Hallucinations

The hearts of believers were thrilled with the delivery of 33 coal miners from the depths of the earth in Chile. One miner said, “there was not 33 but 34, Christ was with us all the time.”

Thrown in my face many times, unbelievers, a man of my intelligence believing in fairy tales. The fact of the matter, those who do not know anything about anything else, those who are not smart in any other way, know all about religion. Most unbelievers have never spent 20 hours studying why they disbelieve, the most important matter conceivable to the mind: what happens after inevitable death? They have never looked at the evidence of God, care nothing for looking at the evidence of God, only want to believe in their own warped wisdom. So afraid to believe in a power greater than self, because they do not want to be responsible.

The Jewish disciples, those who knew Christ best, knew the resurrection was real. They talked with him, ate with him, saw the empty tomb. They left to take the message knowing that they would probably never see each other again. Traveling, believing as if they were the only ones to give the great commission, glad to proclaim their experience. If they thought it was a dream, their lives a hallucination, each could have disappeared into history, no one else would ever had known. An experience shaped their very mind, changed them totally. Thomas, the “hard head”, the doubter, walked across the Himalayas to India where he was martyred. Mark, earlier, would not accept his responsibility to Paul, killed in Alexandria. All Bartholomew had to do was deny, but he was skinned alive in Armenia. Luke hanged from an olive tree in Greece; Peter, crucified upside down in Rome; Paul, beheaded.

Just as today's agnostics, those playing church, the unbelievers just wanted a denial of the real, they wanted to believe that the disciples stole the body to preserve their testimony. That the Romans stole the body, that Christ was resuscitated (no one resuscitates a Roman-crucified body), that the women and others were hallucinating, weeping, lost in a cemetary. The truth, one on which 2000 years of Christian testimony relies, He came out of that tomb, and those of us who trust in God's Word, have no reason to be embarrassed by a Godless world who have never been touched by His glory. We know that without God you cannot know God, and God has mercy on those who live in chasm of unbelief.

Last week, I was told of a local pastor who told his congregation that the first books of Genesis were allegorical, that they could not rely on them. We have all heard this type academic gibberish before, don't these people know that Jewish and other scholars have explored every word in God's Word. That there have been have thousands of pages written about every doubt. No matter how many doubts, no matter how many “tares” have tried to “tear” God's Word, it stands forever.

Two things you must deal with: Christ is either who He said He was, or you must deal with the greatest fraud that ever lived...a “nutcase”. You atheists and agnostics are wasting your time, God did not give His Son to die such a despicable death in order for the snakes and scorpions of unbelief to enjoy any admiration or justification. God's justice is quick and sure, He told Adam and Eve not to touch one tree, the children of Israel were told not to touch the Ark of the Covenant, in transporting it, against the Laws of God (it was supposed to be transported by men with staff run through holders not by ox-cart). One of the oxen stumbled, Uzzah dedicated to the Ark of the Covenant, touched it against God's Law, and he was struck dead.

There is nothing ambiguous about the Bible, Peter would have tried to cover his weaknesses in denying Christ. Mark would have tried to have covered his weaknesses in leaving Paul. Weaknesses as well as strengths are recorded, records and traditions. The last apostle to die, John, who Christ told to take care of his mother, was a loud mouth, self-seeker, even asked his own mother, to intercede with Christ about the #1 seat in the kingdom, but wrote the epistle of love.

A lie will change things, but not for the better. The truth is the truth whether anyone believes it or not. God has given us truth and the truth will make us free. (John 8:32) Thomas Aquinas says that, “just as the disciples suffered martyrdom alone, even their denial would never have been known. Today's believers will endure their own martyrdom through unpopularity and self-denial.”

Today, it is easy to concoct a denial through threats of prisons or by financial “pay-off”. There is more evidence that men did not go to the moon than that men did go the moon. Cover ups are a matter of American history: Pearl Harbor, JFK assassination, Oklahoma City bombing, and even the 9/11 knock down of three buildings in NYC. There is much evidence that nuclear bombs denoted under the three buildings. But, just as the Gulf of Tonkin, just as the Wellstone, Bono, Waco assassinations, cover-ups will continue, because there are no such things as investigative reporters anymore, and most people with inquiring minds are immediately shut down as “nutcases”...conspiracy theorists. It is ludicrous to deny evidence, we might as well shut down the courthouses. Have you becomes so jaded, so Pollyanne-ish, so wanting to believe just in goodness, that you cannot face the real facts of the real world? Who is hallucinating?