C.S. Lewis said it best, “a man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse.”
This writer is tired of dealing with those who profess Christ and yet, by every word from their lips, every action, show that they do what they do because they believe what they believe. They believe that they can fool God, and certainly by fooling God, they can fool one another. God is real, worth everything or nothing. If one believes that God is real, that the holy spirit of Christ dominates his life, then every fiber of his being, every cell of his body is separated and consecrated to God. There must be a purity of spiritual expression.
John Bunyan, writer of perhaps the world's greatest book, A Pilgrim's Progress, refused to submit to the world. He was told that in order to preach, he must sign his name, asking for a permit. He refused to do so, spending years in prison squalor. He could have left at any time if he had yielded to the dictates of man, the piece of paper it was necessary for him to sign was just outside of his cell door. Instead, he wrote one of the greatest pieces of Christian literature.
Modern man is increasingly secular. Black liberation theology focuses on equality, but it has fallen because the Christian church does not maintain any type equality/fairness. Skin color is not mentioned in the Bible; rich, poor, smart, or ignorant, we hang our very bodies and souls on the mercies of God, He is boss, He demands trust. Many enter the baptismal pool and do not realize what has happened in their life. Many partake of the Lord's supper and have no idea of what they are doing. Many enter the prayer closet, and do not understand the power involved. In the prayer closet, labels on your clothes manufactured and made all over the world, you learn about missions. Many never learn concern for others, even love of neighbor, even love of one's own family.
I have written several times about assisting my best friend, another Army medical officer, with his obstetrics duties at an Army hospital where we were stationed. It was with him that I saw the horrors of abortion, the most sickening sight the eye can behold. Late one night, one of his patients called, in labor. He did not think there was time to get her into the hospital, so he took me along with the ambulance to the house. It was this 22 year-old mother's first child, and the labor went on for a long time. I, more or less, watched these two trained medics work amid her screams. The thing that amazed me most, and I will never forget, her young husband, sitting the adjoining room, watching a bloody, murder mystery on television. His whole interest was in the movie, never paid one second of attention to the painful birth of his child. I thought, God must have a stockpile of vengeance in His arsenal, not only for this world, but for the one to come.
Truth is the determining factor in our lives. How do you convince anyone that it was not necessary for Christ to die on the cross, that the dynamism involved in any seed is not necessary? How does anyone study secular or temporal history without knowing that life revolves around sowing and reaping?
You fool yourself with tales of biblical mythology at your own risk. History, geography, prophecy, to this very day, is built around the blood of any innocent lamb placed around the door at the first Jewish passover. Some might laugh at the Nile turning to blood, flies covering everything, frogs covering everything, but the death angel passing over the doorposts of the homes with the blood, the first born of man and animal otherwise being killed. This is not a matter of juxtaposition or compromise. Real Christians understand ruin and redemption.
My experience, those who doubt, those who refuse to believe, God does not react according to their plan...why should the wicked prosper, good people suffer? Through trials and tribulations, we are brought closer to Him. Once you make your decision for Him, you can be sure of your testing. If you have not been tried yet, just wait, your tribulations/testing are on the way. The church always progresses in times of trial, persecution. The church in communist China is growing faster than in any other place in the world because of persecution.
This doctor, who worked his way through school; this veteran, who lives every day, totally blind knows about dependence on God. I must have been around 8 years of age, raised in poverty on a eastern North Carolina tobacco farm. We had the genes from old, established families, owned wonderful farm land, but went through the trials of drought like everyone else. It was one very dry year, the crops had dried up in the fields, there was no water in the wells. I remember hearing my hard-working, God-fearing, taxpaying father, the hardest working man I have ever known, leader in the church, leader in the community, on his knees in the corn crib talking to God, “Lord, you know how bad we need rain, the crops are drying up, the animals in the woods are perishing. I see rabbits and birds lying on the ground, dead from thirst. You know how hard Sally and the children have worked in the fields. Without rain we will have nothing. Please send your showers and relieve this drought.”
The rains came, they always came after prayer and destitute need. At the university, I was totally out of money, hungry. God told me in words I could easily understand that there was loose change which had fallen out of pockets in the large chairs in the Medical School library in which I was working.
The time for raising the indifferent toward Christianity, spirituality, prayer and God's mercies is now. Many people have said that old people always thought that times were bad. History tells us that times have never been worse than now. Traveling the world, the difference in the poverty-stricken countries and America: in America there was always the opportunity for improvement; in the destitute countries, always destitution, never any chance for improvement. But, even the destitute were not indifferent
