“I tell you the truth,” Jesus answered, “before Abraham was born, I am!” At this, they picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus hid himself, slipping away from the temple grounds.
John, Chapter 8

Lately, I have been seeing a lot in the sectarian media that tries to discredit Jesus’ claims to being the one and only Son of the Living God. The main “plan of attack” on Biblical Christianity (also called “orthodox” Christianity) centers around whether Jesus was/is really God or whether He was just a religious teacher and social activist of His time.

There have been fairly popular movies made in recent years that depict Christ as a married man and even as a sinner. There has been much in the media depicting Him as merely a sage philosopher of His time.

The people who perpetuate these myths obviously do not pay any attention to the recorded history about Jesus that is given to us in the Holy Bible, the Word of God.

In the passage of Scripture quoted above,  Jesus made a monumentally amazing assertion to scoffers of His day. He told them that before Abraham was born, that He (Jesus) was already alive.  At the temporal level, this was an absolute impossibility.  Abraham was long gone from this planet.  But Jesus was speaking of spiritual reality. Since He was present as the Son of God with the Father when the universe was created, He had always been…..and always will be.  There is no beginning and end to Jesus Christ.

In His statement to the scoffers of His time, Jesus said something that was/is mind-boggling. In telling the crowd that He is “I am,” Jesus was proclaiming His Lordship over even time itself! He was also bringing full focus to the concept of eternity and eternal life.

So how did His audience react?  With anger and hostility - even to the point of springing into action to try to murder Jesus.

Things haven’t changed much in 2,000 years in some respects, have they? Though they can’t murder Jesus, our modern-day scoffers try to “murder” His message by challenging Christ’s singular claims to divinity and to His mission - which secured the salvation of those who put their trust in Him as a result of His death on the Cross and His subsequent resurrection from the dead.

Amazingly, I know of some Christians who have seen some of these recent movies and have read books that bring into question Christ’s claims about Himself that are documented in the Bible.

Isn’t this really a little bit like handing a stone to a scoffer 2,000 years ago?

We, as Christians, should never succumb to exposing ourselves to sectarian propaganda that seeks to cause us and others to doubt and discredit the truth about Jesus Christ, our Saviour and Lord!

Prayer for today:

We pray for those who have opened up their minds and their hearts to messages that attempt to deny and discredit the claims of Jesus: that He is the only Son of the Living God and of His singular mission to secure salvation for those who put their faith in Him.  We also pray for those who bring heretical messages to the public.  May the love of Christ break through the hardness in their hearts and bring them to repentance and then to salvation. In Jesus’ Name, amen.

Last night, I was watching a television show in which many statements were made to try to discredit the validity of the Christian gospel.

This is becoming increasingly accepted in our culture.  There is much animosity directed publicly towards Christians and even directed towards Jesus Christ Himself.

Recently a famous comedian/atheist made a documentary in which he strongly ridiculed those who have faith in God.

My impulse is to become very angry and want to lash out at those who ridicule Christian faith and even Christ Himself.

But then I remember that, 35 years ago, I ridiculed the Christian faith as an unbeliever.  If these outspoken atheists of 2008 deserve immediate punishment (like a lightning bolt from the sky), then I guess I deserved that fate back before I came to ask Christ to become my Savior and Lord.

As Christians, we are instructed not to judge or condemn the atheist, but to love him/her and pray for him. Man, sometimes that is not always easy to accomplish! Christians are human beings, too, and it is rough for us to see/hear an arrogant-acting atheist publicly ridicule the One who went to the Cross to die for our sins.

My prayer for these people is that they can get past all of the debate and rhetoric to actually EXPERIENCE the reality of God’s love for them. This is what happened to me so many years ago that is recounted in my new book, “My Close Encounter With Jesus Christ.”

Psalm 34:8 - “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good….those who seek the Lord shall not lack any good thing.”

Prayer for today:

Dear Lord. Please give us a heart for those who mock you and ridicule you. Help us to avoid judging and condemning and, instead, respond with love and prayer for people who don’t understand the truth.  We pray that they will “taste and see” of your goodness and mercy and love for them. In Jesus’ Name, amen.

James 2:14-17

What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, “Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

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I don’t watch much “Christian TV” these days. But when I do, much of what I see is disturbing.There is a lot of preaching about “faith” to bring the “faith-full” new cars and homes, but little discussion about “a brother and sister without clothes and daily food.”

There is narcissistic (selfish and self-centered) faith and then there is faith that brings us to a point of service to God and to His people.

Many years ago, I attended a church in an affluent area in the suburbs of a major U.S. city.  Most of the people who attended this church lived in fancy houses and drove fancy cars. In general, most had little interest in participating in the few outreach programs the church sponsored - especially anything that might get their hands dirty.

My personal focus was in the church’s ministry in prisons, not very pleasant places. A small group of us usually went to the prisons once or twice a week and these were the few folks in the church who were the most  passionate about serving Christ.

I would be waiting in the church lobby to get a ride to a prison, with my trumpet in its case beside me, and a member of the church would walk by and ask me where I was going. When I told him/her that I was going to minister in a prison, they would often shake their heads, look at me like I had just said I was going to Mars, and take off with their families to the nearest expensive restaurant for dinner.

I have been encouraged in recent years to see a small, but passionate and sincere group of young people throughout the U.S., become devoted to the idea of “faith with action.” Many are willing to give up most Earthly pursuits in order to lay down their lives in service to Christ.

When we die, what difference will it have made what kind of houses we have lived in or types of cars we have driven?

What will matter then is what we have done for God during a lifetime.

Faith without action: six feet under.

As I get older, I find it interesting that I can better remember things from my past that were pleasant and tend to forget a lot of details about things that were unpleasant. Funny how our minds work that way.

We human beings also do that with the histories of our nations and civilizations, too.

I was watching a program on The History Channel the other night about the life of George Washington. We teach our kids in history classes that he was a war hero and the central figure in the early success of the “experiment” in democracy called The United States of America.

All true, said The History Channel. But then, they told me more. They presented evidence that Washington was a slave owner and not a particularly kind slave owner. He worked his slaves from sunup-to-sundown six days a week. He managed to have kidnapped one of his slave women who had managed to escape his enslavement and who had found sanctuary in another state.  George had all of the teeth pulled out of the mouth of one of his slaves so that he (George) could have some nice “human dentures.” They didn’t have numbing injections back then, so imagine the suffering this poor slave endured!

I don’t know about you, but I was not told about these things when I was in school.

A couple of years ago, my family and I were up in the Cleveland, Ohio, area and we took a little side visit to Kent State University. When I was a teenager, Kent State made national and international headlines because four college students were killed by the Ohio National Guard there and 13 students injured.

Most of the news media at that time, 1970, gave this version of the truth about these killings:

1. The students were wild-eyed, dangerous, violent,  protesters (of the Vietnam War).

2. They were putting the National Guardsmen in imminent danger of their lives.

3. Guardsmen opened fire on the students randomly out of fear and panic, not as a result of having received orders from commanding officers.

4. The students were “right on top” of the Guardsmen and charging dangerously towards them, provoking the Guardsmen to open fire in self-defense.

When we got to the Kent State campus and the site of the historic shootings (which many historians believe contributed greatly to the end of the Vietnam War), I was amazed to see how much distance there was between where the Guardsmen were standing at the top of the hill and the targeted students who were in a parking lot down below.  They were HUNDREDS of feet apart. It was obvious to me and my family members that there was no way that these unarmed students could have imposed an immediate threat to the safety of the Guardsmen.

When we got back home, I began to do internet research on the Kent State shootings. I made contact by e-mail with one of the injured students and asked him specific questions about his experiences on that day, May 4, 1970.

Here is what I discovered:

1. Only two of the four students killed had been actively participating in the protests that led up to the shootings. One girl was simply walking through the parking lot on her way to class. One young man was an “All-American” Army ROTC student who had stopped for a moment, with books in his arms, to see what was going on.

2. None of the students were armed. A few had been tossing gravel in the direction of the Guardsmen, but that was the extent of the “threat” from the students.

3.  Instead of random acts of panicky Guardsmen opening fire on the students, this was an organized and orchestrated military operation. Many who witnessed the events, including a decorated Vietnam veteran, said the soldiers turned and fired on the students in unison “like a firing squad.”

When I learned these things I became angry. In all of these years since the Kent State tragedy occurred, I had been fed a “psuedo-history” version of what actually occurred that day on a college campus in Ohio. Not the truth.

“And the truth shall make you free” — John 8:32.

Sometimes the truth isn’t pretty and comforting and doesn’t seem to mesh with our human pre-conceptions and prejudices.

But we can’t learn from the past if our lessons are not based upon the truth.

And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. John  8:32