She weepeth sore in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks: among all her lovers she hath none to comfort her: all her friends have dealt treacherously with her, they are become her enemies. (Lam 1:2)
About three blocks from my house, very large, very old, First Presbyterian Church. This was year's ago when I had a shatter of vision in one eye. I decided to walk there to church having never been there previously.
This old church had slate floors, a wide middle isle. I was sitting at the end of a pew. Just before the opening hymn a young woman strutting down the mid-isle more out of her dress than in her dress, a sundress open totally down the back, wearing clicking heels so that everyone was aware of her entrance. And, of course, she went all the way to the front. A member of that church (his funeral was held there), former college president, had said to me in a telephone conversation, “We are about one decade from barbarism.” Such spectacles as this told me why. The Tabernacle in the Wilderness, built by Moses to God's specifications, was where God met man (4 chapters in Genesis describes God's creation of the universe, 20 chapters describe God's specifications for the tabernacle, (Exodus 25 – 45). When our blessed Lord was crucified “It is finished”, (John 19:30), the veil of the temple was rent top to bottom...not almost all the way, nothing man can do, read the Mormon or Christian Science book, man can go directly to God.)
Who do we think we are, the pastor, the members of that church who have no more respect for the church or God than to allow half naked people into a worship service? God has a CLAIM on His church, on His chosen...those who worship Him in spirit and in truth. What type Bible do you read? It was not His perfect life. His crucifixion on a cruel cross. This would have been for naught if He had not kept the faith promised Him through is Father in resurrection. In worship services, baptism, the Lord's table, it is not us, but Him. The worship service is for believers. Paul tells us that we know the genuineness of our belief by our living and giving (1Cor 15:17).
The road to Hell is paved with religion. We want a “shortcut”, a bell-hop God, just there when we beckon Him. We want to believe that God will forget and forgive anything – everything.
The world has a shortcut mentality, we have become shortcut monsters. We see this in the recent bubbles, many thought they would get rich with the dot-com bubble, the real estate bubble, the bailout bubble, now, every other advertisement, mixed in with those about testosterone, the gold and silver bubble. Everyone will get rich buying and selling gold and silver. What will they do with the fiat currency when they sell their gold or silver?
Perhaps they will buy a Face Book IPO (initial public offering of a stock, millions of shares offered at a certain price, in this case $38.00 per share. Usually, the stock immediately makes a big leap and this is when the insiders, big boys, make tremendous profits.), which we know now was much spin...festered with lawsuits. These “take a chance”, “gambling” monsters do not realize that as long as any investment product has the resolution quote “you can lose all or part of your investment”, nothing can be done and, as most “seasoned” investors learned early the “big boys” always have the advantage. The monsters always win...in this world.
There is a new science – genetic affray, the geneticist going backward in gene manipulation – mutation expecting to finally “evolve” a dinosaur. Why laugh? We have an imposter President whose mind evolves, even to the extent of the marriage of two males or two females. Strange how all animal life got here. Strange, magnetism. Strange, the balancing of chemical equations. Obviously, pluses and minuses mean nothing anymore.
I never ceased to be amazed in a world of universities and advanced technology, the ignorance around us whether Wall Street, K-Street or the most ornate pulpits.
We get hung up on Sabbaths. Saturday is the Jewish Sabbath, now, as always. Some denominations hatched from Sabbath worry. There are many Sabbaths. To the Christian, every day is Sabbath. The Sabbath of First Fruits, Feast of Trumpets, Feast of Atonement, Feast of Tabernacles. How else do you figure Christ's 72 hours in the tomb? The Jewish day went from sundown to sunrise. Christ was crucified sundown on Wednesday, raised from the tomb at sundown Saturday which would be sunrise on Sunday. And so it is with Christmas, I have been in Bethlehem on Christmas Eve, such a cold place, shepherds would not have sheep in the fields. Christ was born in late September or early October but, the date is a part of our heritage, the important fact (and faith is fact, not feeling) that we, those who are His, celebrate His birth and his death. Let the monsters take the shortcuts, cash registers ringing, Santa Claus climbing, rabbits laying chocolate eggs. The greatest distance known to man, not the millions of miles to the moon, the 14” from the brain to the heart of man...the righteousness of God in the heart after the hearing through the mind.
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