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| Ephesus |
The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I
fear? the Lord is the strength of my life; of whom
shall I be afraid?
When the wicked, even mine enemies
and my foes, came upon me to eat up my flesh, they stumbled and fell.
Psalm 27:1-2
You must know the redeemer in order
to be redeemed. You must know the redeemer in order to worship. Churches’ pews
are full of the unredeemed. Too many pastors do not know our savior-- the bed
is too short and the blanket is too narrow; something is always going to stick
out. The latest poll found that 67% of Evangelicals believe that one can
reach heaven through other means-- that God was not serious when he said,
"I am the way the truth and the light. No man comes to the father, except by
me." (John 14:6)
Have you ever looked around at a
morning worship service, at the pretenders, the onlookers? They sing the old
hymns, actually throw a few tips into the offertory plate, but none of it means
anything to them-- just going through the motions.
I had graduated from the university,
fought the battle of atheist professors and fellow students. Some actually went
to church. One third of today’s young people have had no real supernatural
experience with religion. In graduate school, I was speaking before a Southern
Baptist young people’s conference. I said then, and nothing has changed since,
“If Satan had wanted to invent something to make young people just as mean and
sinful as possible, he would have invented a television set.” As an eye doctor,
I can tell you without, fear of contradiction, that images entering the eye
(and the eye acts as a camera), traveling through the cella turcica of the
brain and then registering in the calcarine cortex of the brain, at the very
back of the head, are there forever and influence every neuron of your body.
In this world of fluff-- everyone
wanting to please everyone with political correctness-- it is most unpopular to
face the facts of life-- certainly not the facts of your own eternal life. Most
want to believe that there is just nothing to it-- this matter of God’s plans
and actions in the affairs of men. Those who are spiritual, want to create God
in their image. Those who hate God, hate those who believe in God, desperately
want to believe that whether Christianity, Budhism, Islam, Zoroastrianism or
any other religious belief, it is just a matter of “checklist,” to keep the
less intelligent human beings under control-- you do this and don’t do that.
The apostle Paul, under
the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, has for time and eternity given God’s
message to the atheist.
Because the foolishness
of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
For ye see your calling, brethren,
how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble,
are called:
But God hath chosen the foolish
things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things
of the world to confound the things which are mighty;
And base things of the world, and
things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to
bring to nought things that are:
That no flesh should glory in his
presence.
But of him are ye in Christ Jesus,
who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and
redemption:
That, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in
the Lord.
1 Corinithians 1:25-31
Early Egyptians were not stupid. This writer has been inside
the great pyramid at Giza
(thousands of blocks of stone, weighing many tons each, joined together so that
even a human hair will not go between them). Three thousand years ago, you
could not have convinced the wisest man in Egypt
that God could turn every drop of water (the Nile,
every well, every rain barrel, and urn) into blood. History is punctuated by
the miracles of God-- God always talking to man. The increase in natural
disasters (earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, droughts) is 800% .
In the brokenness of our culture, morality, political and
spiritual person-hood, we know that there are infiltrators-- educated, paid
pretenders-- gaining access to many churches in an effort to destroy them one
by one. Over 1,000 churches, for one reason or another, go out of business
every year. In many places, one atheist group, Sunday Assembly, is having
meetings every Sunday, just like a denominational worship service. They get
together, much like many of our evangelical services, sing some jive music (drums
and drama), read some well-meaning stories, and different speakers, with
psychological jargon, appeal to the inner man-- which in the past, sought the
Christian fruit of the spirit.
This writer has walked the streets of ancient Ephesus. Have you ever
considered what it must have been like for the apostle Paul to go into such a
city, writhing with paganism-- sin of every description-- and present the
Christian message: sin's ruin and Jesus Christ's redemption. We marvel that
early Christians did bring a message of Christianity to a lost and dying world.
This writer so remembers meeting and talking with Christians in communist China, learning
of their trials, as the sought, by faith, through grace, to trust and serve
God. What makes the 21st century Christian think that we will be immune to
trials and conflicts? It may be closer than we think: "Yea, and all that
will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution." (2 Timothy 3:12)
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