Magnificence

O yes, He cares, I know He cares,

His heart is touched with my grief;

  When the days are weary,

  The long night dreary,

  I know my Savior cares.

The place called Calvary!

(John Stott, "The Message of Galatians")

"When they had come to the place called Calvary, there they crucified Him!" Luke 23:33

Every time we look at the Cross, Jesus seems to say to us,
"I am here because of you! It is . . .
 your sin that I am bearing,
 your curse that I am suffering,
 your dept that I am paying,
 your death that I am dying!"

Nothing in the universe cuts us down to size, like the Cross! All of us have inflated views of ourselves--until we have visited the place called Calvary. It is there, at the foot of the Cross, that we shrink to our true size.

"When we were utterly helpless, Christ died for the ungodly!" Romans 5:6

Addition Dr. Morris: 

It has always been interesting to hear the uninformed talk about religious subjects. One woman said, "Golgotha was the giant who slew the apostle David." There was nothing pretty about Calvary, Golgotha, where crucifixions occurred. There were flies, still parts of crosses, sniffing dogs roaming around, and it was there our Blessed Lord was put to death.

Every day of this writers life, I thank God for what Jesus did for me at Calvary... salvation of my soul and the healing of my body. "By his stripes we are healed," (Isaiah 53:5) and Peter looking back, "By his stripes we WERE healed," (1 Peter 2:24). The cross is at the epicenter of all creation and civilization. Those on the other side of the cross look forward to the cross, we, on this side of the cross, look backwards to the cross. Just two pieces of timber. The vertical piece of wood points towards heaven, the horizontal piece of wood points east and west around the world. There are many symbols in the world, not one of them compares to the cross.

We sing, talk, even wear crosses. but is the cross the centerpiece of our life, the constant remembrance in our church. I can remember going to so many church houses and never seeing a cross (this was back when I had sight). There are many things with which I cannot agree in Catholicism. One thing which I can agree on is their emphasis on the cross, in their cathedrals, hospitals and schools. There are many things with which I cannot agree, in recent years, attempting to please young people, the beat and clatter of modernistic music in the church house... I like the old hymns which remind us of the cross... "Jesus Keep Me Near The Cross", "Beneath The Cross of Jesus" etc.

The soil is level at the foot of the cross, just as available to the poor as for the rich, the ugly as well as the beautiful. Too many stumble at the foot of the cross. Not depending on it's complete fulfillment, wanting to cling to a denominational belief, some book or some interpretation of man. The cross is complete, free, glorious. We are expected to deny self and take up his cross (Matthew 16:24). Jesus chooses the cross for us to bear... even disability, even poverty, even blindness.

Must Jesus bear the cross alone, 

And all the world go free? 

No, there's a cross for everyone, 

And there's a cross for me.

Bullet Proof

Bullet Proof

Any man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee

-- John Donne

            God wanted this writer, though early in life disabled by blindness, to travel and sense His world.  So, eight round the world trips, passport stamped in 157 countries, using my remaining senses to study the world...the impoverished, the decadent, the prosperous.

            Man is the only animal who knows he is going to die, man is the only animal who can blush. So many men spend their lives thinking of dying.  Not as much now as in the past, because men have learned to preserve health through technologies which have led to longer life spans, but no real change in human nature.  It breaks my heart that people so blessed with long lives think they are bullet-proof... that nothing is going to affect them.  

             

            Many live thinking they will live forever, the perils of life (disease-accidents) are no respecters of persons. There was a time when life was very simple, just food, shelter, and exercise.  With prosperity the three big ones, heart attack-cancer-stroke, are taking their toll.  Few human beings escape cancer, it is just a matter of how long your immune system can prevent its diagnosis. Like the fear of dying, the fear of disease cannot control our living, yet we should never forget that death is just one breath away.   

            Almost daily I hear a last name, a city, which brings back the memory of someone I have known, like wonderful memories of wonderful people.   I have learned to understand unbelieving real men who have gone through the trials and trauma of raising families, building businesses, cultivating farms, defending a nation, who do not want to hear preachers or politicians who have never done anything.  It is like listening to a catholic priest tell you how to raise your children.  Some of the best men I have ever known did not possess ancestral genes, had never gained anything from family wealth and position.  Like all of us, the race was theirs, and they had done the best they could with it.  I remember two great generals who could not read nor write (Nathan Bedford Forrest of the American Civil War and Pablo of the Spanish Revolution) they did their best with what they had.   How many of us have done as much?  

            We get so tired of hypocrisy, a word not allowed in the U.S. House of Representatives. Friedrich Neitzsche (of 'God is dead' fame) said, "You do not challenge Christianity for its truthness, just Christians for their unhappiness".  If Christians really believed what they profess to believe, they would have a perpetual smile on their faces, they would be the happiest people in the world.  Christians are the only people on earth who are truly bullet-proof. 

            We hear much about accomplishment and heroes.  In my book, the real heroes, people of accomplishment, those who have run the race of life with integrity, gone through the trials of raising-protecting families, able to recover after financial and other setbacks and still have a sense of humor, to be able to laugh.  It breaks my heart that gifted men, so accomplished in every way never know the transforming-redeeming power of the Holy Spirit of God, after such a productive life here on earth, stumbling at the Cross of Christ, will die and spend eternity in hell... men blessed with so much, the gravitas of survival skills here on earth, will simply throw it all away, never knowing or believing, that their most important decision in life is making sure the welfare of their eternal soul.

            It has been this writer's unforgettable, marvelous experience to view from the outside many of the world's great cathedrals and churches.  The church exterior does not escape the smut and smog of a great city, the walls look dreary, but, going inside the church or cathedral, sun invading the great stained glass windows, the building has an entirely different appearance.  Our bodies are the temple of God, they get very smeared with smut and the debris of living on the outside, but it is the inside that makes the difference.  It is so important to treat your body like a temple, not a dumpster.  20% of the world's population have never known good potable drinking water.  It is what we eat and drink that determines our health.  Like good food, good mental processes determine our mental health.  It is from the interior of a man that defilement takes place. (Mark 7:15 "there is nothing outside the man which can defile him if it goes into him; but the things which proceed out of the man are what defile the man".)  The mortality rate is still 100%, all of us will experience clinical death.  But, for the Christian, we do not experience spiritual death, bullet proof, living forever.

"For whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord: whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord's."

- Romans 14:8, King James Bible "Authorized Version", Cambridge Edition

Anglicans to Rome

On Tuesday, October 20, 2009 Pope Benedict announced that the Catholic Church was making it easier for disenchanted Anglicans to enter the Catholic Church. The 77 million Anglican denomination, known in the United States as the Episcopal Church, the largest denomination in Africa, has been split by the impossible problem of female priests, homosexual pastors, homosexual bishops and gay marriage. Particularly in Africa, many Anglicans feel their denomination has gone the way of Sodom. The Pope is evidently making it easier for Anglicans to become Catholics. It is reported that the Pope taking this road is a matter of vocation, not enough Catholic priests. Perhaps Anglican ministers entering Catholicism will give more Catholic churches pastors. The great problem with many Catholics is that many of these Anglican ministers are married; nearly 100 in the United States who have become Catholic.

Another problem with the Anglicans is their attitude towards the communion table, and their lackadaisical attitude towards abortion. When Catholics read such statements as those made by Dr. Rev. Katherine Hancock Ragsdale, who received much publicity in her speech in Birmingham, Al on July 21, 2007 when she said that “abortion is a blessing”. We'll find little comfort in knowing this is the attitude of most Episcopalians. Even the Bishop of Canterbury, Rev. Williams, seems to have compromised entirely with the satanic Episcopal/Anglican concept of acceptance of the culture of death provided by abortion and the inconceivable attitude towards homosexual bishops and pastors. There are probably more gay marriages in the Episcopal organization than any other “church” group.

We wonder if the Catholic Pope will offer a shelter of refuge to Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, who can no longer stomach the liberality of the gay agenda in their denominations. There are certainly Protestants and even Baptists who seek a solid rock on which to cling and even stand in this time of denominational liberalism and modernism and the attacks of the world against the Christian Church.

The word is “transition”. Born again, blood bought Christians believe that we are already experiencing the reward of heaven through our redemption in Christ. We are joint heirs, already experiencing eternal life through the sacrifice of our blessed lord. One thing I can support in any non-Catholic going toward the Catholic Church, I cling to the belief that the crucifix (Christ on the cross) should be a valued part of the Christian experience. I am convinced that the empty cross often leads one to forget the actual atonement. Perhaps not as much as the Episcopalians, but most Protestant and even Baptist memberships are as negligent in preaching and teaching, sins ruin and Christ's redemption as a local civic club. In fact, you can find about as much joy of salvation in any gathering as you can the nouveau-raison “church” membership. With a Rick Warren or Joel Osteen gathering of laughing and clapping, drums and drama, bells and smells, the circus attitude, bringing the world into the church, is the chief cause that the world has lost its respect for the worthiness of the church, Christ's bride.

The Ecumenical movement, like the United Nations in all countries, has globalized denominations as much as nations. The mantra that all governments and all religions are basically the same has so lessened the worship attitude, the grace through faith of the redemption of our blessed Lord. Young people just look upon the church as a place of hypocrisy with all the sovereignty and deliverance of a “Santa” mythology. I can understand the hunger real Anglicans and others have for the veracity and values of sacred text (John 10:10).

As with American-Russian relations during the time of the Cold War, we supposedly celebrated détente. There were photo opportunities, smiles between enemies, flowers were tossed at one another, but the Cold War still existed. The war still exists between God's promises and Satan's phonies. The caricature of worship, the pretending of posterity and prophecy prevails in a vacuum of deceit. The child of God, born anew, a new creation in Christ, seeks homage with real believers not masqueraders.

Western Civilization and the religious history was greatly determined in 1571 at the Battle of Lepanto. It was at that battle that the Christian Church actually turned back Muslim forces. A new Battle of Lepanto, which probably will not be fought on the sea, is forming battle lines around us. It is time for Christians, regardless of denomination, to get “real”, to cleanse our ranks from all impostors: “Who is on the Lord's side, who will serve our King?”.

The fate of one's soul, the fate of God's church, is a matter of God's sovereignty. God does not need “hybrid churchgoers” to carry his cross. Christian discipleship is not an entrepreneurial concept. The nonsensical high church, low church, “we want God on our terms”, is the very sign post giving direction to the broad road that leads to destruction.

One of my friends, an accomplished musician, was asked to serve as organist at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church when their organist went on vacation. The pastor said, “When you play the hymns, we do not want to hear anything about blood”. I can tell you, as a doctor, life is in the blood. You can be sure from everything in God's Word that without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin (Hebrews 9:22). Will the Anglicans and Catholics compromise the precious blood of Christ?

Grow A Spine

In many trips around the world, traveling every continent, I have seen “the good, the bad, the ugly”. My first travel to communist China, just after the reopening by President Nixon, I was late to go with a plane load of doctors and lawyers, mostly from New York City, as a representative of doctors, also as the New York based “Shelters for Children”. China had changed much on my subsequent trips, but on that first trip, I went to a Chinese hospital and in the surgical amphitheater, saw the most horrible sight a human being could observe: prisoners strapped to tables- their mouths and eyes taped shut, and they opened down the mid-section, their organs being transplanted to other patients on tables. The entire communist system of hospital care would make an Alfred Hitchcock movie seem tame.

Never sign an organ donor card. Between the time that hospital personnel stop their life saving procedures, there is a nebulous time where only God can make the decision. It is in this matter of seconds that “The Giver of Life” may decide that it is not yet your time to go. More times than people would suspect, vital signs have brought back to life those thought dead. Recently, it was reported that a man carried his newborn baby home thinking that the child was dead- as he had been told by the hospital- just to discover, at home, that the baby was very much alive.

Literature is replete with accounts of such blessings, fauna, even the human body, are spectacular in their resistance to death. This in some ways supports Darwin's “Survival of the Fittest”. An elderly black funeral home director told me he had been surprised many times by bodies brought from the hospital that were not dead. It is a surprise that there is a large market for organs, not documented or publicized; I do believe that in many cases, death is hastened by the monetary gain of organ retrieval. We know that in some parts of the world, organs retrieval, even from those still alive, to raise money for the survival of families. The leading cause of suicide in India is the that of farmers who, battling water shortages, can no longer survive and provide for families. One will often sell a kidney. If a family is willing to sell a child, as is done with girls, we can understand why the selling of organs, before and after death, is comprehensible. In 2007, there was a total of 28,931 organ transplants in the United States alone- including heart, lung, kidney, pancreas, and liver. There is only so much that a man can do, but there is no limit to what God can do. In life, and certainly before death, we desperately need what god can do.

I realize this is a narcissistic, naval gazing generation, most only interested in “me”. The words concerned and shame are lost words in most vocabularies. We do what we do because we believe what we believe. In a time of political correctness, most do not have the spine to stand up against evil. So, evil continues to thrive because good men do nothing. Even pro-choice individuals consider abortion birth control. In 1995, 60% of those polled in America considered themselves “pro-choice”. In a recent poll, for the first time in history, 51% of those polled are “pro-life”. Having just elected the first pro-abortion President and Congress, it is a direct shame on the Catholic church that 70% of the elected are Catholic; and yet 54% of Catholics voted for Obama. We have stopped expecting Christian virtue from Protestants and even Baptists, but we do expect better from the most pro-life denomination in the world, the Catholic church. Most so-called Christians, like to pick and choose what they believe- cafeteria Catholics, buffet Baptists; only the spirit of God can open blinded eyes of the present world. The apostle Paul's traveling companion, Demas, is mentioned three times in the New Testament; the last time, Paul said, “Demas has forsaken me, loving this present world” (2 Timothy 4:10).

God help the so-called “Christians” who have forsaken him for the love of this present world. Five times in the New Testament, Jesus has said, “Be of good cheer”. We know that our redemption draws near and we shall leave behind, those who have joy within themselves, and are spineless.

To show how spineless this nation is, how evil has taken over right under our noses. The gnostic, ”anything goes”, ”all you need is love” church. Houston, Texas, fourth largest city in America, has a lesbian mayor, the largest abortion center outside of communist China, yet two evangelical churches have a total of 65,000 members, plus 831 baptist churches. Are the church people in Houston, Texas and around the world, so deaf they cannot hear God talking to them?