Padded Pews

On my second trip to China in 1980, I visited the famous Mogao Caves (a system of 492 temples in which thousands of Buddhist statues are located) where statue of Buddha and other Buddhist art is located. It is a treasury of Buddhist history and one of the many phenomenal aspects of Chinese life as affected by art and religion. The thing I remember most about the visit, four Chinese men walked up to me and said in English, “Are you a Christian? We are Christian.” This was the last question I ever expected to hear in a godless, communist country, by men dressed in the usual Mao uniforms and who looked no different than the zillions of Chinese men and women everywhere. I said, “Yes, praise God. I am thankful you are able to recognize a fellow Christian. I wished there were some way I could express to you how much God loves you and how much the Christians in the world are praying for you.”

Knowing the prying ears of government agents, including my guide, I made their photograph, shook their hands, gave each of them my card and retreated. The first words out of my guides mouth were, “What did those men say to you?” I said, “They were anxious to practice their English. I told them how much I was enjoying the caves.” The Chinese Christian church is growing because, like the early Christian church started in Antioch. Life is not easy for the Christian there, they are suffering persecution, but always, under persecution, the church grows. I understand that in spite of the starvation and degradation of the people in North Korea, the Christian church is growing even though 100,000 Christians are in prison. If you can imagine the absolute depravity of existence outside prison, can you even imagine life inside a communist North Korean prison.

My son, my only child, (Dr. John M. Morris) after all his years of education, microbiology, medicine, theology, (2 doctorates) spent many years, along with his wife and children, on the mission field in South Korea. He said, “The new Christians are so sincere in their faith that even in sickness, they believe in the power of prayer which comes even before the doctor.” The most sickening matter of 21st century liberal Christian thought in this country at present, is that even in a case of counseling, the modernist pastor will send a Christian church member to a godless psychologist for help.

Other than visiting homes of many ambassadors in world travel, I always tried to visit missions and churches because like healthcare, soul care is the interest of my life. I was embarrassed before the holy spirit of almighty God to witness the simplicity of faith in impossible situations with mission churches around the world. (They do not have padded pews)

In the Cameroon’s, I attended a worship service under a large “brush arbor” with crude benches and many worshipers just sitting on the ground. They would spend much time in prayer with their knees and heads on the ground pleading for God’s mercy and thanking God for their blessings. There were no musical instruments just timing type drums to which they would sing with great gusto. Their worship did not include any of the voodoo type activity I had witnessed in voodoo festivals much of which had extended to the catholic services. These people had been taught the difference in true worship than just pretending with God on padded pews. It is not my purpose here to describe the mosque found in Muslim countries, the Zongs and temples of the Buddhist and Hindu religions or even the state sponsored religious houses found in secular countries such as Scandinavia.

You find about as much passion and faith in a state sponsored secular worship activity as you do in an American civic club or TV pseudo entertainment mockery. (Benny Hinn, Jimmy Swaggart, Robert Schuller, etc) I define faith as a verb, action based on belief, sustained by confidence. There are many definitions of faith in God’s inerrant word. I understand the word faith is defined as the safety under the wing of a mother bird or in the cleft of a large rock. “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1) We are saved by grace through faith and nothing more.

A blind person depends on faith much more then a sighted person. We truly walk by faith not sight and, I HAD RATHER WALK IN DARKNESS IN MY BLINDNESS WITH GOD THAN TO WALK IN DAYLIGHT WITH GOOD EYES ALONE.

We exercise our faith in other things everyday. We put a letter with a stamp on it addressed to a certain place with faith believing it will get there. We buy a can of food at the grocery store with faith believing the can is correctly labeled. We put a pill from a bottle into our throat with faith believing that some half drunk or drugged pharmacist did not mix up the pills with ones of poison. We could give thousands of examples of using faith everyday in our daily activities, starting the car, or turning on a light switch.

The tragedy is that too few young people have experienced farm life where expensive seeds and fertilizer are put in the ground and we have the faith to believe that God in his omnipotent mercy will send the rain and sunshine essential for plant growth. It is too bad that young people cannot see the incubation of eggs, the hatching of small chicks with the innate knowledge of how to drink water. Or hear the definite sound of a mother hen different from any other hen. The sheep recognizes their own shepherds voice.

“For there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the tender branch thereof will not cease.” (Job 14:7) The trials of life is such that most would not want to continue without hope. For the Christian, our hope is in our salvation and the many promises and prophecies of God’s word that until this very minute have been fulfilled and He has never forgotten. In knowing this, the disabled, the disenfranchised, the depressed and the despondent keep going with the “blessed assurance” that God will “never leave us or forsake us”. We are told that without vision the people perish, without hope, those with vision or without vision cannot long survive. Hope is found in encouragement and accomplishment. Why else would anyone strive to do better? We live with the blessed hope of our eternal salvation, enduring, life’s problems and disappointments.

God is love and our one commandment is to love one another. (John 13:34) Even if I were not sure and assured by the omnipotence, omniscience, and inerrancy of God’s infallible word, I would have to be convinced of God’s love and faithfulness by one great story in the Bible.

Abraham, the first Jew, perhaps one of the wealthiest men in the world, was living in Ur of the Chaldeas, was instructed by God to leave to an uncertain place, six hundred miles north. His father Terah, a worshiper of idols, died on the trip, near Damascus. But, in a long story of faith and promises, women and sons, he was instructed to offer his son of promise, Isaac, as a sacrifice. In a marvelous story, a type of Christ before Christ, the son of promise, about the same age as Christ when he was crucified, carried the wood for the fire on his back, up on the mountain, and Abraham, in complete obedience, just before killing his son in the sacrifice, was told by God not to kill his son, but rather a lamb. One of the most remarkable things about this story, a father knowing he would sacrifice his long awaited son of promise, they arose early in the morning.

All this happening 4,000 years before the sacrifice of God’s only Son, who likewise carried wood on his back, was killed to redeem both you and me. God showed once and for all with the rending of the veil of the temple, top to bottom, that the supreme act of love had been demonstrated for eternity. Sad to say, from then until now, people are still partial to thieves. Today, more than ever, Barabbas, the thief, would still be selected. “And now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” (1 Corinthians 13:13) Christianity has become so comfortable, padded pews, drama and drums, bells and smells. If Christians lived their faith before the world, the world would be changed. Instead, in the comfort zone of wanting to be accepted by the world, the world has changed and converted the church.

Apology to Sodom

#458



Two thousand years, on the other side of the cross, Abraham, whose name means “father of a great multitude”, left the area of Iraq which we now call Babylon, one of the wonders of the world known for its famous hanging gardens and being restored by Saddam Hussein, even to the Palace of Nebuchadnezzar, and the great amphitheater nearby. But God directed Abraham to travel 600 miles north to a completely unfamiliar country which we now call Canaan or Israel. On the way, God seeking to rid Abraham from the worship of idols (Abraham's father, Terah, was a worshiper of Idols), made arrangements for his father to be buried near Damascus. Abraham's great problem was his nephew, Lot, who selfishly chose wickedness for himself and his family. Lot, the only believer in the great city of Sodom, as sinful as he was, escaped. But his wife, still in love with the sins of Sodom, turned and looked back, as do most sinners, at the excitement of sin and she became a pillar of salt...a lesson for all...for time and eternity. Dr. Luke, wanting the world to always remember, hid in his gospel, and it is found nowhere else, “Remember Lot's wife.” (Luk 17:32).

The greatest problem with both believers and non-believers: looking back at the enticement of sin. Most Christians have never realized the difference between “Believe God” and what most say, “Believe IN God”...there is all the difference in the world. When you believe God, you do not look back. Anyone...Catholics, Jews, Mormons, etc...who is not an absolute atheist, will say, “I believe in God.” Some, like the Mormons, hold onto the Book of Mormon because they believe that Moroni and Joseph Smith determines their faith. Some, like the Christian Scientists (not Christian, not Science) hold onto keys to the scripture by Mary Baker Eddy, thinking this will make a difference in their salvation. Some, like Seventh Day Adventist, hold onto Ellen White, etc. It is truly sad that the sovereign word of God, penned by men when God was clutching their hand, is not sufficient. One might ask, “Why the written word?” Just recently, from 10 BC, King David's era, a Hebrew written inscription has been found. Most know about the Dead Sea Scrolls found by a shepherd boy in a cave near the Dead Sea. But the atheists have always said the Hebrews were illiterate at the time of King David...a time when David's son, King Solomon, built the most expensive building ever built on earth (est. $14 billion). A time when craftsmen and mathematics were so exact that the entire building of cedar wood, brass, silver and gold, was built without the sound of a hammer or saw. At the dedication, a choir of thousands sang, 22,000 oxen were sacrificed as well as sheep too numerous to count. The hypocrisy, I will never understand, is why the Christian world will not DEFEND their blood bought faith. Like Lot, most are just along for the ride, and as a black preacher said to me, “Just in case there's something to it.” If you have any doubts or fears about God belief, just look at the Jew. Study Abraham, God rid him of idol worship with the death of his father. God gave him, and us, every prophecy, every promise, on which we can depend. There are 8,887 promises in God's word, to this minute, all have been fulfilled. America, the most blessed nation, has become a hypocritical cauldron of disbelief, pretending, a masquerade party.

Someone said, “Christians are so far removed from 'Christ-like' activity that Baptists no longer speak to one another when they go in and out of the liquor store!” G.K. Chesterton, famed writer, said, "All men thirst to confess their crimes more than tired beasts thirst for water...” A Catholic to the priest, a Christian to a psychologist.

Yesterday, on the mall in Washington, DC, thousands of women gathered to memorialize the 52 million babies murdered during the past 37 years since the infamous Supreme Court Roe v. Wade decision of January 23, 1973. Most of these women knew the horrors of having a baby killed in the holocaust of abortion. We lament the destruction in Haiti...where $530 million have been given in disaster relief...an escape door for the people living there, a cash drawer for many begging for the funds. How much of the largess do you really think will ever reach the needy? Most of the money will go into the pockets of the greedy. Imagine the Red Cross asking you for money when, in 2005, the president of the American Red Cross was paid a salary of $650,000. In 2003, the president of the United Way was paid $470,000...God only knows how much now. At a reception in Manhattan, a former United Way official mused to me at the gullible Americans who shell out these funds for the organization's opulent lifestyle. One man told me, just yesterday, how he was constrained, even at the loss of his job, by one local company to give in order to make that company 100% givers to United Way. Last year America gave Haiti 500 million in tax dollars (foreign aid) but under Bill Clinton only 12% can be accounted for. Your America, like Lot's Sodom, will appeal to God for mercy at the very time that 3,000 babies are murdered each and every day (the same number murdered on 9/11). $10 million given to the nation of Israel each and every day. $500 million each day for the two wars going on at present. When, at the same time, Americans working two or three jobs, when they can be found, are having their pockets picked by every conceivable tax. Not satisfied with the “hope and change” of Obama Abomination, now, this messiah of the Democrats, wants to enslave Americans with the infamous Copenhagen international tax. Not satisfied, the only security and privacy left for a naked scanned, bail feared, homeless scared, diabetic diagnosed (too much sugar from politicians and preachers), Satan enthroned residuals, is to hide in the closet and pray, “When will Happy Days be here again?”

Scripture refers to us as sheep. On the way to the slaughterhouse, led by the new Judas donkey, sheep are as dumb, and their brains as hard, as the rocks on which they walk.

The most diabolical evil, more diabolical than terrorism, is the evil of murder. Terri Shivo had a name, had a family who loved her (this does not include her husband who wanted his new lover and children). The nameless children of abortion, God gives a special name (as I told one college student, who told me how many abortions he had paid for, “At least you have some children in heaven.”). At least presidential candidate, John Edwards, admits to all his children. At least Tiger Woods admits to all his mistresses.

One by one, hearts of women must be changed to love the children in gestation.
One by one, patriots must have the courage to defend this Republic. One by one, Christians must have the raw courage, to defend their faith. One by one, humanity must become better than the people of ancient Sodom. Surrounded by beautiful flora and fauna, God's chief creation is better than decadence. God will apologize to Sodom if America escapes her tirade of evil.