TheSwordbearer.org

Daily Bread Archive Delta

D1 “CHRISTIAN” PICTURES

In Daily Bread Charlie 3 I said I’d only scratched the surface of the topic of visual images, particularly TV and movies, being used to reprogram people. This topic has awful implications, so I’ll do a brief recap:

TV and movies, by utilizing appealing and unappealing clothing, facial expressions, body language, music, dialog, tone of voice, etc., and by scripting situations in order to make audiences like and accept or dislike and reject things, can actually bypass the analytical thought processes by which our brains normally process words in order to understand their meaning and see if they agree with or offend the value systems we’ve built up over time via parental upbringing, church sermons, Bible study, etc. In other words, TV and movies have the ability to make us “emote” – to have gut-level reactions that are based on a combination of emotions, visual and auditory inputs (auditory refers primarily to music, tone of voice (aggressive, pleasant, screaming, pleading), crying, laughing, etc. – but not words) that produce pre-programmed responses inside of us in areas of our minds that are past (beyond) our mental value-system filters. In this way visual images can be used to quickly program/influence us without having to intellectually prove or disprove anything by interacting with our value-system filters. Let me give you an example of what I mean.

The “Boston Massacre”: In 1770 during the buildup to the American Revolution, about 50 colonial “Sons of Liberty” thugs (mostly mariners and wharf rats who worked for the master smuggler, John Hancock) deliberately surrounded, mingled with, and provoked a small group of young, frightened, outnumbered British soldiers. Using clubs, sticks, ice, snowballs, rocks, curses, grabbing at British muskets, and daring the soldiers to shoot, the Sons of Liberty caused enough confusion, fear, and panic in the soldiers that when an authoritative voice (circumstantial evidence suggests it was Samuel Adams) shouted, “Fire!”, the frightened soldiers – believing it was justifiable self-defense against a deliberate assault by overwhelming numbers of armed aggressors – shot and killed several of their attackers.

American founding fathers Paul Revere and Sam Adams didn’t have anything as effective as TV and movies, but their use of a deceitful image combined with a false “news account” of events caused many of their fellow British colonists to turn against their government. They produced a colored engraving that deliberately falsified the event. It showed a disciplined squad of uniformed British soldiers lined up in ranks, with hatred and anger on their frowning faces, apart from and in no danger from a small group of nicely-dressed gentlemen. The troops are being commanded to fire as if they are a firing squad at an execution by a sword-brandishing officer to their rear. The innocent colonial gentlemen, with no weapons of any kind (and accompanied by a cute puppy dog) are recoiling from the flame-spitting muskets with surprised horror on their faces. The dead and wounded have copious amounts of bright red blood flowing onto the street.

That Boston Massacre illustration was published throughout the 13 colonies, and it convinced huge numbers of American Christians to adopt anti-Scriptural behavior: They had been brought up to respect and submit to all authority, even froward authority:

1 Peter 2:18 Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear; not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward.

(Froward is a Bible word; if you don’t know what it means you are either a young Christian...or you have been a lazy one.)

They had also been taught to pray for their king, and they’d been taught that clamoring is a sin: Ephesians 4:31 Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking,

be put away from you, with all malice:

(Clamour/clamor is a Bible word; if you don’t know what it means...)

But now these Christians, based on Revere’s engraving, decided to reject 1 Pet 2:18 and Eph 4:31 by rising up against their own government that they’d been told was froward, and they began clamoring for a revolution. Why did they do that? Largely because of a picture! In fact, if you do some research, you’ll find that Paul Revere’s highly-inaccurate engraving is today admired as the most successful piece of propaganda in American history. That picture “validated” Sam Adams’ “news account” and helped bypass Christian value filters and convince God’s people it was now OK to ignore certain things He plainly says in His holy and inerrant word and to make clamoring against and rebelling against froward governments a modern

“Christian” tradition that has made parts of the Bible of none effect. That’s why you’ve never heard a single sermon telling you clamoring and rebelling against evil governments is a sin against God. And that’s why when you read those verses (and others like them) those commandments of God have absolutely no impact! Tradition/brainwashing/peer pressure are extremely effective weapons against holy Scripture – to see living proof you have only to look in a mirror.

Knowing the above info and the info in Charlie 3, religions today have decided these image-based brainwashing techniques should be used to teach religion and values. They have begun utilizing still pictures with storylines as well as movies with religious themes. They do not have malicious intentions. They are merely reacting to a number of facts:

Many people today are almost functionally illiterate: they have a hard time comprehending both written and spoken words.

Using words to teach takes time because of the above bullet and because words (written and spoken) must first be interpreted, analyzed, understood, and evaluated before they are accepted and incorporated into our value systems.

Time is money. And the love of money is the...

Using visual images is quick and efficient: In short order we can have lots of people (even functional illiterates) in our pews who are social and religious activists clamoring against the government and demanding a return to traditional morality.

If you’ve read AOR you know why the last bullet is bad. If you haven’t read it, you probably don’t. But I’m going to show why I think the bullet-4 technique is bad for Christianity.

The Lord is the Word of God. His holy Book is the word of God. He has ordered us to read, study, learn, eat, meditate on, obey, do, and live the Bible. And He has told us to use His word, in both written and spoken form, to teach others. Armed with what you’ve read above and in other Daily Breads you now understand that the preceding sentences in this paragraph involve intellectual interacting with the value filters in our brains – rather than gut-level emoting. Let me show you why that may not only be important, but crucial, and necessary. Carefully read this Scripture. It is the apostle trying to earnestly convince us (almost pleading) that he actually, really and truly did see and hear with his own eyes and ears the amazing things that are written in the New Testament. I have added underlining as emphasis, but I want you to slowly and carefully read the Scripture and add your own vocal intensity and emphasis as if John is speaking directly to you and he thinks or suspects that you may be a little bit skeptical about some of the amazing things about the Lord in the Bible. It may help if you mentally insert the emphatic word, really, before each underlined word:

1 John 1:1 That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life; 2 (For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and shew unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us;) 3 That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ. 4 And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full. 5 This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you...

When the Bible says word it is referring to both written and spoken Scripture. But when the Bible capitalizes Word it is referring to the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. Notice how similar the first few verses in 1 John 1 above and John 1 below are:

John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 The same was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men. 5 And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not. 10 He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. 11 He came unto his own, and his own received him not. 12 But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: 13 Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. 14 And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.

(They are wonderful verses. And powerful. Amen.) Now I want you to think about the interesting wording in 1 John 1:1. John says they actually saw Christ the Word with their eyes (as in reading the Bible); they actually heard Christ the Word with their ears, and they actually “handled” Christ the Word with their hands. John is saying those three things convinced them that all the stuff in the Bible is true. Could it be that our Creator and Saviour calls Himself the “Word of God”, and calls His Book the “word of God” for a reason? Could it be partly because He wants us to get to know Him like His apostles did – by “handling” Him? And could handling Him include eating His flesh and drinking His blood, which are actually learning and doing the words in the Bible? Of course it could. Now, you’ve already learned some of this in AOR chapter D9, How To Grow, but I’m going to bring in this modern stuff about using TV and movies to bypass our brain’s value-analyzing filters.

Let’s say two guys, Mutt and Jeff, get saved. Mutt is a wannabee Christian (as defined in Daily Bread Charlie 9), and Jeff is an idealistic Christian (Charlie 9). Neither of them is well-educated; their reading and verbal comprehension is limited, which curtails much of the intellectual stimulation they could ordinarily have via reading. Therefore they forego intellectual stimulation by turning to TV, movies, and the Internet so they can “emote” on a gut level. But now that they are saved and want to serve the Lord they look for a church. They end up in a mega church because it has a new program that uses big, full-color story cards and Christian films to teach them “doctrine” and how “good” Christians should live. Very quickly our two heroes stop “cussing”, get haircuts, tithe, buy jackets and ties, wear lapel pins, begin attending all kinds of “Christian activities”, become social and political activists, etc.

Mutt is happier’n a pig in puke. But Jeff isn’t content; he’s...well, he’s hungry. But he has no idea how to explain his discontent or what he wants. And he has no idea the Holy Spirit also tried to make Mutt discontent – but for various reasons Mutt ignored the still small voice, returned to his vomit, and says to his fellow pewsters, “Stay in the picture, bra!”

To make a long road to real Christian growth short, Jeff does the right thing by either 1) studying the Bible (because in spite of his poor reading skills he finds that somehow he’s finding the peace that passeth all understanding – he’s being fed); or, 2) he joins a good Bible-preaching, Bible-teaching church (for the same reason); or, 3) he begins fellowshipping and studying the Bible with a couple of other idealistic Christians (for the same reason). He goes on to master the Bible and become a lifelong doer of the word who says to his fellow pewsters, “Stay in the word, brother!”

Jeff responded to the subtle promptings of the Holy Spirit because he loved the Lord more than he loved self. Could it be that the Lord wanted Jeff (and us) to – like the apostles – get to know Him personally by “handling” the word of life? Could it be that by reading and hearing the words in God’s Book, we are somehow in our brains’ intellectual value-analyzing centers not only getting to know the Lord but also incorporating Him (eating His flesh/bread/manna and drinking His blood/milk/water) into who we are so we gain the strength to endure to the end no matter what trials and tribulations we may suffer along the way? Could it be that by doing the written word we are actually following Christ Himself?

Could it be that, because the image-and-emotion-based brainwashing programs bypass that vital “word-handling” process, those programs actually make us nothing but clean-living followers of self/men who lack the spiritual strength to endure to the end?

Could it be that God designed His word to be a two-edged sword that He uses to reveal the thoughts and intents of our hearts? Could it be that carnal Christians like Mutt prefer churches with emotional soap-opera sermons because their god is their belly and emotion-based feel-good sermons feed their self-oriented flesh; but good Christians like Jeff prefer Scripture-based sermons because they feed the spiritual new man rather than the flesh of the old man?

I think so, brother. I think there are good reasons our Creator chose to hide Himself from insincere Christians behind words they don’t/can’t quite get. But with sincere Christians who feed on His written words He not only reveals Himself, but somehow when those Christians interact with and do His word they are getting hands-on experience that gives them the same passionate confidence John has in the Scriptures above.

And that’s why when the Lord’s prayer says, “Give us this day our daily bread”, it isn’t really referring to physical food – because that would contradict the Scriptures that tell us to spend some days fasting from physical food. I say again, we are never told to fast from the mental and spiritual fellowship we have when we

feed on the word/Word of God. If we lazily and disobediently try to get to know the “picture of God” rather than the “word of God”, we are not feeding, fellowshipping, or growing.

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D2 CHRISTIAN MANLINESS

I had a conversation one time with a U.S. Army gunnery sergeant who’d been in Korea in 1976 during the infamous tree-trimming killings. He said the army had been accumulating some interesting data about male soldiers ever since women had been allowed in the army. When unexpected skirmishes broke out in non-combat areas containing women soldiers, exemplary male soldiers (never got into incidents out on liberty, never late, good with paperwork, excellent appearance in uniform, didn’t make sexist remarks around female soldiers, etc.) tended to abandon their posts because of a fatherly/brotherly concern in order to go make sure the women soldiers were OK. But the troublesome male soldiers (drunk and disorderly on liberty, sometimes late, unreliable with paperwork, disheveled appearance, tried to seduce female soldiers, etc.) remained at their posts and kept shooting at the enemy.

The gunny told me the army was wrestling with the apparent fact that the kind of soldiers you want in peacetime and for public relations reasons were the kind you did not want in battle. And the troublesome soldiers were the kind you wanted in your foxhole in combat. The army’s dilemma was how it could recruit and retain the kind of men who’ll win our wars...even as the military (and society) was transitioning into the kind of politically-correct unisex environment that women would be comfortable in. A possible solution: Let the regular military units be full of non-discriminating, women-accommodating, politically-correct metrosexuals; and make the special-forces units all male (as much as possible) environments by making the training so physically rigorous that almost no women could qualify. An example of the former: In order to accommodate women back in the 1970s, West Point reduced its physical requirement that cadets be able to perform at least 3 pull-ups – now all a girl had to do was hang on the bar and “unlock” her elbows...it was called a “flexed-arm hang.” She was now a combat leader of “men.” The military decided it could get away with these changes without sacrificing national security because the nature of warfare was changing: no longer were nations fighting each other with huge armies in “world wars”; fighting was increasingly being done by small groups of guerrilla units. As a result the government considered reducing the number of military bases and regular troops, while beefing up special-forces units. At the same time the government wisely rejected the draft because a “fair” draft would recruit 50% women.

One of the hurdles I had to get over as a young Christian soldier was the issue of “personality.” Part of it had to do with the fact that men were being asked to stop being themselves and start acting like politically-correct metrosexuals. The more I became a doer of the word the more I found myself at odds with other Christians, some of whom needed to be rebuked – and it wasn’t unusual for them to tell me I wasn’t demonstrating “Christian love.” Well, I already knew I loved both God and my fellow Christians because the Bible is very clear about that: those who are doers of the word love God and His church. And those Christians who are not doers of the word – either because they never bothered to learn the Bible or because they are pussies – do not love Him...no matter what they say with their lips:

1 John 3:3 And hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments. 4 He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. 5 But whoso keepeth his word, in him verily is the love of God perfected: hereby know we that we are in him.

1 John 5:2 By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep his commandments. 3 For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments:

OK, I loved God and His church. But what about “demonstrating Christian love”...i.e. my personality? I had people beginning to tell me I was too hard, too aggressive, and they said I needed to let my Christian love “radiate” so others could see in me “Jesus’ love for all men.” Maybe they had a good point. Maybe they were right when they said my personality sucked (my word, not theirs) and I shouldn’t call people pussies just because they were demonstrating “Christian cowardliness” by letting the normal fears we all have cause them to inexcusably recoil from being doers of the word. Maybe they were right that the kind of soldiers God favors in this war are those with sweet personalities who shirk their duty.

One day a Christian from another church (who knew somebody I knew) came over to my house to try to convince me to be a kinder, gentler Christian. I don’t remember what I’d done to cause him to drive over to

my house and introduce himself, but I do remember that at one point during our conversation he got out of his chair and sat on the rug at my feet with his legs tucked under him sideways and his hands on the arm of my chair as he sweetly pleaded with me with a cherubic face to be more “loving.” Well, (I thought) maybe this guy is right and I do need to reform my personality...because here I am thinking he acts like a pansy, even though I don’t think he is. Is it a sin to think that? Where does the Bible define Christian manliness/personality as clearly as it does loving God and His church? Or do I just not really understand love itself? Does Christian love mean acting and speaking in such a way that those you rebuke will still like you and won’t think you’re a jerk?

My problem was I had learned what Christian love is, but I had not learned how to have a “Christian personality.” The solution – as always – was to consult the Lord via His Instruction Manual.

I studied some of the men in the Bible. These men were perfect examples because they were heroes who had God’s approval. Take Moses, for example. At first blush we might think he had a sweet personality like many Christians today think we should have:

Numbers 12:3 (Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth.)

But then we keep reading...and find that we must question the Lord’s taste in people: Exodus 2:11 And it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown, that he went out unto his brethren, and looked on their burdens: and he spied an Egyptian smiting an Hebrew, one of his brethren. 12 And he looked this way and that way, and when he saw that there was no man, he slew the Egyptian, and hid him in the sand.

Moses’ murderous rage doesn’t make him seem “meek” to us modern Christian pussies. In the next verses he broke the tablets of stone and then tried to make his brethren choke on the golden calf:

Exodus 32:19 And it came to pass, as soon as he came nigh unto the camp, that he saw the calf, and the dancing: and Moses’ anger waxed hot, and he cast the tables out of his hands, and brake them beneath the mount. 20 And he took the calf which they had made, and burnt it in the fire, and ground it to powder, and strawed it upon the water, and made the children of Israel drink of it.

God said Moses had “Christian meekness” – and modern “Christianity” in practice says God was wrong. Could it be that, since the Bible says “Christian love” for God and for the brethren is being a doer of the word (with nothing being said about “personality”), that God defines “Christian meekness” as “submissive obedience” to Him (with nothing being said or cared about “personality”)?

Now let’s look at one of my favorites, Phinehas: Numbers 25:6 And, behold, one of the children of Israel came and brought unto his brethren a Midianitish woman in the sight of Moses, and in the sight of all the congregation of the children of Israel, who were weeping before the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. 7 And when Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, saw it, he rose up from among the congregation, and took a javelin in his hand; 8 And he went after the man of Israel into the tent, and thrust both of them through, the man of Israel, and the woman through her belly. So the plague was stayed from the children of Israel. 9 And those that died in the plague were twenty and four thousand. 10 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 11 Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, hath turned my wrath away from the children of Israel, while he was zealous for my sake among them, that I consumed not the children of Israel in my jealousy. 12 Wherefore say, Behold, I give unto him my covenant of peace: 13 And he shall have it, and his seed after him, even the covenant of an everlasting priesthood; because he was zealous for his God,

John the Baptist was a pretty tough character who didn’t mince words. In fact, his sharp tongue got him beheaded. But our Lord not only selected John from the womb (knowing what kind of man he’d be), He said this about him:

Matthew 11:7 And as they departed, Jesus began to say unto the multitudes concerning John, What went ye out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken with the wind? 8 But what went ye out for to see? A man clothed in soft raiment? behold, they that wear soft clothing are in kings’ houses. 9 But what went ye out for to see? A prophet? yea, I say unto you, and more than a prophet. 10 For this is he, of whom it is written, Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee.

11 Verily I say unto you, Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist:

Other examples include:

Captain Jehu (famous because he “driveth furiously” his chariots) was selected by God to do some “wet work” in 2 Kings 9. It looks like God’s selection of Jehu had everything to do with the fact that his Christian meekness/submissive obedience meant God could rely on him to do his duty – and it had nothing to do with Captain Jehu’s sweet personality.

One of the Lord’s beloved prophets was Elijah. But Elijah, shockingly enough to sweet-personalitied metrosexual pussies, actually “mocked” other people’s religion (1 Kings 18:27) and then killed 450 of their prophets (1 Ki 18:22,40). Could it be that God favored Elijah because He needs warriors who can be counted on to do their duty in this war in spite of their normal fears?

Could it be that God forgot to say anything about “personality” in the Bible? I submit that being a submissive doer of the word is the only “personality” God cares about – which is why He doesn’t just talk about it, He commands it! Let me reword that: If you aren’t the kind of Christian who overcomes your normal fears and is a doer of the word: you are not a soldier of the cross; you will not be comfortable standing around conversing with the Lord and His favored men above; and your personality sucks because God defines Christian personality as “being a meekly-submissive doer of wet work or Bible study or anything else He wants you to do.”

Could the difference between what the Bible teaches about Christian men and what modern “Christianity” teaches about men be but another indication that the Bible is not – and has not been for a long time – our “sole authority in all matters of faith and practice”? Could this be but another indication that we love God with our lips – but not in spirit and in truth?

One of the reasons our Lord liked these men is He is Himself not only a man, but a warrior: Exodus 15:3 The LORD is a man of war: the LORD is his name.

And the Lord teaches war: Psalm 144:1 Blessed be the LORD my strength, which teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight:

The Lord is looking for men who will fight for Him in this war. Sadly, modern “Christianity” isn’t producing men, let alone warriors. Christian men today are too timid to go against the grain of tradition and morality. Why are they timid? Because 1) they don’t know the Bible like they should; 2) they aren’t doers of the word and therefore haven’t been growing into manhood – they’re still running around in spiritual short pants; and 3) they act like they’re in the world’s regular army rather than in God’s special forces.

Read the bold print above in Num 25:11,13. The Lord was extremely pleased that Phinehas wasn’t the type of man who, when he saw sin in the camp, grabbed a breath mint so he could go radiate the love of Jesus; Phinehas was the kind of warrior whose love for the Lord and for His church made him grab a spear. I guarantee you, brother, when Phinehas went storming into that tent neither of the two people who had but seconds to live saw anything resembling “Christian charity” in his face...they saw nothing but murderous rage. But when the Lord looked at Phinehas He ignored the outward appearance and saw in his heart the kind of love that actually put God ahead of people. Can the Lord find such men today? You, brother, need to be the kind of man whose love for the Lord makes you zealously and jealously contend for Him – even if it means having to go to the fearful and awful extreme of offending pussies with your tone of voice and emphatic mannerisms. Look around, brother: Nobody else cares! That’s why the Lord needs you. That’s why the Lord favors men with “warrior personalities” – fear doesn’t prevent them from doing their duty and cutting a wide swath.

The Lord doesn’t need just men; He needs men who’ll fight. My gunny friend said politically-correct metrosexuals don’t make good combat soldiers. And I am of the opinion that most Christian males today don’t really believe we’re at war. If they do, they have no idea what it takes to successfully wage war. And therefore, if today’s metrosexuals find themselves sitting at a table in a chow hall during the Millennial Reign they are going to feel like homos in a Hell’s Angels biker bar: At their table they’re eating with Moses the mad murderer; Elijah the mass murderer; Captain Jehu the wet-work specialist; Phinehas the disemboweller; Joshua, the most successful combat leader in history who is known for exterminating entire populations,

including men, women, children, and animals (Joshua 6:21); and David, the man who (among other deeds more often spoken about) decided cutting off the foreskins of 200 soldiers he’d killed was better than doing it to a mere 100! The men at that table are going to be the kind of rough-edged, been-there-done-that veterans of real-world, real-life combat who will have neither respect nor patience for modern Christian males who act more like women.

We need to be men for the Lord. That doesn’t mean we should act like cocky adolescents full of hormones and no social graces. It just means we should – via mastering and doing the word – grow close enough and confident enough in our walk with the Lord that we aren’t afraid to be real, to be ourselves, and to be zealous for the Lord’s sake. If we do that, the Lord will teach our fingers to fight, and our hands to make war, and our experiences along the way will make it so we’ll be comfortable carrying our trays over to our brothers’ table in the Millennial chow hall and saying, “Hey, comrades. OK if I join you?”

***

D3 THE WONDER AND THE SIMPLICITY

There are times when I get flashes of insight that show me how deep and involved certain aspects of Christianity are, such as: Faith and belief (what they are, where they originate, how they grow, etc.); love (this one is extremely complex (e.g. it involves emotions but should not be confused with and by emotions), but it is so important, so foundational, to Christianity); and the body of Christ (it truly is a living organism, and as such has many, many layers, members, and interrelated parts).

Sometimes the flashes of insight produce wonder and awe when some of the big picture of God’s kingdom and its beauty, its consistency, and its truth come into sharper focus. And there are times when I get humbling glimpses at how much I can’t yet see and don’t fully understand: I am but one member, one pot of clay, one lowly and humble servant in a vast and glorious kingdom.

When I see myself and my knowledge and understanding in relation to the vast intricacy of a kingdom I can only faintly see as through a glass darkly, and I realize the “in part” of “now I know in part” (1 Corinthians 13:12) I am struck with so much humility that I can actually feel the fear in it. And that element of fear in humility makes me think of the dad in Mark 9.

As all interrogators know, fear is an effective way to get to truth. If we fear God our apologies, confessions, and conversations with Him will have more humble truth in them than they would otherwise. When the dad in Mark 9 wanted the Lord to help his boy, and the Lord tied His help to belief, the dad, with tears of desperation cried out, “Lord, I believe.” But then his fear made him humbly add this admission/confession: “help thou mine unbelief.”

Mark 9:23 Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth. 24 And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.

That Scripture has affected my prayers: For decades I have often, when telling the Lord, I believe, added, help Thou mine unbelief. And when saying, I love You, I often add, help me love You.

Because you and I love the Lord we want to serve Him properly. But we are mere clay vessels who only see through a glass darkly, therefore we need to have the Mark 9 dad’s fear-induced truthful humility so we can realize that this war, the Romans 7 conflict between our old man and our new, the deceitfulness of our own hearts, and our limited understanding of so much can and will confuse, blind, and lead us astray if we aren’t careful to always walk circumspectly by not straying from the strait gate:

Matthew 7:14 Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.

This may be a good time to remind you to beware of theology. Theology is not based on faith in God, the inerrancy of His word, the things He has said about His word, fear, humility, truth, Biblical love, etc. It is based on mankind’s instinctive and traditional reliance on the Greek philosophers’ Reason; an un- and anti-scriptural belief in the necessity of the Enlightenment; a pride-based belief that we see as through a clear pane of glass; and the foolish notion that our knowledge of the above wondrous mysteries of so much is complete enough and definite enough that we now have the ability to – without authority – mess with things that are way above our pay grade. I say again, brother: beware of theology,

Matthew 7:13 ...for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:

The strait gate is actually pretty simple to identify if we have eyes that see and ears that hear. (But that’s a big if because there is so much that can get Self to go confidently striding through the wide gate.) The strait gate requires a love-based desire to glorify God; the dad’s fear-based humble honesty so we can admit that we’re merely servants who are ignorant of so much; and the belief to actually be the Lord’s humble servants.

And now I get to the “simplicity” in the title. This is the part where I repeat something I’ve said so many times, will say so many more times, and will never stop saying: Never let anything distract you from the fact that we have been given the second birth because God wants servants. Our job is to do what He says. We’re not here to be smart; we’re here to be lowly, humble, fearful doers of His written word. If we will keep our noses in His Book, and if we keep our feet walking exactly where it says, our Good Shepherd will take care of the rest. We must by faith actually and really believe that, because if we don’t we are going to be sidetracked.

The good news is, the Lord rewards our being humble doers of His word by giving us growth, which includes knowledge, understanding, and wisdom. That growth reaffirms the fact that being an obedient servant of His written word is in fact the strait gate, and it allows us to have occasional glimpses inside ourselves when we see the carnal darkness, ignorance, pride, fear, and weakness that tempt us to go astray. When we glimpse the filthy, empty, unworthiness of Self, we must use it to remind ourselves to be His sheep, to be careful not to stray from His little flock. And we must learn as rapidly as possible from our sins that, while being a doer of His word is a simple concept, in practice this war is deadly and deceptive...and there are many casualties.

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D4 WINNING TACTICS

I often stress that success in this war requires being a doer of the word. But being a doer requires knowing the word so you know what to do, and young Christians may not have mastered the Bible yet. So I’ll go over some of the things I’ve done over the decades in order to protect myself from distractions, temptations, my deceitful heart, slovenly Christians, etc.

When the Lord gave me spirit life I suddenly had a hunger: I wanted to know about Him. The first thing I did was read my Bible version (RSV) from cover to cover. I didn’t study it; I just wanted to know what it said...and didn’t say. I did it so I’d have a complete foundation; I didn’t want to begin building before I’d read the whole Bible because I thought that might be putting the cart before the horse. I also read a couple of books about Christianity and the historical reliability of the Bible.

I was a Roman Catholic, so I naturally began attending Catholic nighttime “Bible” studies. I was shocked to find out I already knew more about the Bible than the nuns who taught the classes. I was disgusted by the “nothing-is-definite, what’s-your-opinion?” view of the Bible. Any questions I asked produced mushy, frustrating non-answers. Over time this built up until one night as my wife and I were walking out of the church after another “Bible study”, I realized I was almost trembling with some weird feeling that the Roman Catholic Church was evil. I have no idea what it was. I’d never experienced anything like it before or since. It may have been merely a reaction of intense dislike for the mentally undisciplined amateurish floundering of the Bible study, but my revulsion was directed at the RCC as an institution – not just at the Bible classes. I said to me wife, “I don’t know why, but we’re never coming back to the Catholic Church.”

A few days later some Baptists knocked on my door, and I ended up joining their church and being baptized because it was a “Bible believing, Bible preaching, Bible teaching church.” I was hungry, I was looking for food, and I couldn’t get enough.

I had so many questions that I kept a little spiral notebook and pen in my shirt pocket so I could keep track of them. During sermons when the preacher said things, out came the notebook and questions were written down. I researched everything. I went to the library, bought and borrowed books, began studying issues in depth such as creation vs. evolution, and the Bible version issue. I was there for all events every time the doors of my church or other affiliated churches in the region opened. I even helped my church picket a local drive-in theater for showing X-rated movies. I went to Christian seminars in big cities. I went on an archeological dig with a creationist Christian who turned out to be a fraud. The pastor was so delighted to have a young, eager Christian on his hands that he began a “pastor-to-people hour” every Wednesday before

the evening service. He’d answer written questions that were passed up to him. Well, I didn’t know Christianity wasn’t all open and above-board; I thought it was OK to ask questions about anything. The week before the pastor had shocked and offended some pewsters by calling on an older woman during a church service to lead the church in prayer. She did, but she was visibly upset because she and a number of the older Christians thought women were supposed to remain silent in church. Out came my spiral notebook, I researched the issue, and submitted a question about it during pastor-to-people hour. I honestly thought there might be something in the Bible I’d missed and the preacher would teach us about the topic. Wrong! He crumpled up my question, addressed another one, and terminated pastor-to-people sessions. That was one of my earliest lessons that modern Christianity not only does some things that are un- and anti-scriptural, but that there is no defense against what the Bible says.

Two of the most important things I did during my short (less than two years) stay in the church were to master the Bible version issue and gain a wealth of knowledge and experience about modern Christianity – good and bad. The most important thing was not going out and buying a KJV, the most important thing was mastering the Bible version issue. Lots of lousy Christians use the KJV and say it’s the inspired and inerrant word of God. But I wanted to know if they were Scripturally correct or not. Once I understood the Bible version issue, it was thrilling to know the inspired word of God actually exists today, and amazing to see that God has preserved it in such a way that faithless unbelievers can’t see that it exists, but to believers it’s as simple as letting the literal written word of God point out that we find His word by its fruit of inerrancy. I realized I now had a sure foundation, and as long as I stuck with what the Bible said, I was sticking with Almighty God Himself. Yes, I’d already seen that many Catholics and Baptists not only don’t go by the Bible, but they have no defense against the literal word of God.

The next most helpful thing in that Baptist church was the experience I gained. The Lord allowed me to see, do, and learn an awful lot about modern Christianity. I eventually had to leave because my open, honest, and idealistic belief that Christianity was supposed to be in accordance with the Bible was causing me to be disappointed, disgusted, and offended by what I learned about “reality.”

My wife and I got rid of our TV because we realized it was an unnecessary distraction and time-waster: we needed to master the Bible, and that was our top priority. We were learning rapidly, and that milk and meat was satisfying my need to feed. Unfortunately, other Christians in our church felt a different need – the need to ridicule us for getting rid of our TV. Our pastor even made sarcastic remarks about us from the pulpit! The pastor was increasingly uncomfortable in my presence because of his pastor-to-people embarrassment, his dread whenever he saw me pull out my spiral notebook during sermons, and a number of things I found out that were going on in church. I was vaguely uneasy about all of this because it didn’t seem to be the way Christians were supposed to be. One day while doing volunteer work at the church I asked the preacher a question during a casual conversation. I said people always said we were supposed to “grow spiritually”, but I’d never heard anyone teach how we achieve growth, so could he teach us about it someday during Sunday school or during a sermon? He didn’t say anything. But that Sunday he delivered a red-faced, screaming sermon about how the pastor is God’s man and nobody tells him what to preach! Well, I can be kind of slow sometimes, but I realized he was wasting everybody else’s Sunday simply because he was afraid to say something to me man to man.

By the time we quit attending that church a short time later, I had learned three things. 1) I needed to master the Bible because I had more questions than modern Christianity had answers. 2) With the inspired word of God as my textbook and the Comforter as my tutor I had all the tools I needed. 3) Modern Christianity was in very bad shape, so I needed to protect myself from leaven and isolate myself from irritants.

We moved to a farm out in the middle of nowhere. This was physical separation. This was my creating an environment for myself that allowed me to dedicate myself to the kind of intensive study I felt driven to do so I could expeditiously master the Bible.

Now I’ll go over some of the daily-routine things that have helped me and have become part of my life. In no special order:

“Practice daily with the guns.” You are preparing for spiritual warfare. The Bible is your weapon. Read and/or study it every day. Without fail. It is your daily bread. You need it. Just do it. It is an extremely important part of your relationship with the Lord. It gives Him opportunities to increase your knowledge, understanding, and strength. Do not let Him and

yourself down: read the Bible every single day for the rest of your life. If a day ever comes when you decide to skip your Bible reading, you must first commune with the Lord and let Him know what it is on your agenda that is so important that you won’t have time for Him today. Yes, some days your reading will be boring. But some days your reading will unexpectedly turn into a feast, and you may spend many hours feeding. Even if you don’t feel motivated to read, do it anyway out of a sense of duty. The Lord will note your unflagging dedication and your obedience, and He will reward you.

“Pick out the biggest and commence firing!” The best way to master the Bible (after you’ve read it straight through a couple of times) is to master specific doctrines one by one. Pick the big ones, the important ones, and the ones that most interest you first. Take notes. Write down things you’ve run across that you want to look into someday. Make side lists of verses that deal with certain topics so you can easily find them later. Use a concordance to do word studies and find verses.

Come out of the closet. When having normal everyday conversations with people, saved or not, I encourage you to mention the Bible or the Lord. Don’t force it. Let it be a natural reference having to do with whatever you’re talking about. It can be something as simple as, “Well, we know we all go back through Noah”; or “The Lord hasn’t given us any rain in quite a while”; or “I happen to know about that because I’m a Bible believer”; or it may be something more in-depth depending on the circumstances. As your Bible knowledge and Christian experiences that result from being a doer of the word increase, you’ll be amazed at how many times Biblical stuff comes to mind. By speaking up you’ll learn that there’s nothing and nobody to be afraid of. If they think you’re a wild-eyed, drooling fanatic, what do you care? And if somebody ever says something derogatory about you or Christianity or the Bible (they usually say nothing), you’ll quickly realize they’re not a threat: they’re lightweight airheads firing blanks...and they probably already know that and therefore have no desire to match wits with a Swordbearing front-line Christian warrior.

Be picky with your social life. Don’t become close friends with pagans or with Christians who aren’t interested in the Bible. Make your socializing center on the Bible. If you end up with no friends, it’s only because they’ve turned out to be the kind of people you do not want to be around. People are dangerous because peer pressure is a powerful force. Be very careful with people – they can be very bad for you.

Develop a 24-7-365 relationship with the Lord. Talk with Him about everything. Think about His word and matters Christian. Thank Him for times when a cloudbank, or fall leaves, or falling snow, or a cool breeze that billows your sweat-soaked shirt out from your back makes you have one of those timeless moments that stick with you forever. If you’re carrying a bucket of gravel up to the barn, and you stumble and spill it in the deep, lush grass by the spring, and you feel your fatigue spilling over into senseless anger...fast (as in not eating) from your impatience. Tell the Lord you’re tired, you hate little detailed penny-ante work, but you’re going to get down on your hands and knees and pick the gravel, one by one, out of the grass and refill the bucket. And you’re doing it for Him because you want it to symbolize the kind of servant you want to be for Him: patient, humble, disciplined, and happy to do whatever task no matter how distasteful you may think it is. Just be with Him. You’ll find out He’s good to be with.

Pray. Ask Him to help you love Him, serve Him, learn His word, or be more patient. Everything. Prayer is just a more specific talk with Him – as opposed to the constant communing with Him every day such as above when picking up gravel. Be careful when you pray not to be selfish. Pray for the church. Be strong: admit to times when you fret or falter, but tell Him you’ll never quit on Him. Be honest and humble in your prayers. Don’t BS Him with “Christian rhetoric” because He’s way ahead of you and will not be fooled or pleased. Use your prayer time to honestly and objectively review how you’ve been performing. Thank Him for growth, and ask for more. Don’t be afraid to talk honestly about the possibility that He may want you to suffer horribly one day – like Job. Yes, you’re afraid to bring up stuff like that because you don’t want to give Him any ideas. But He doesn’t work that way. Your prayers should be part of your relationship, and your relationship is a journey whose objective is your becoming the kind of faithful servant He delights in and can count on for anything...forever.

Get up early. If you get up early you’ll always have time to read the Bible and study the Bible – because the rest of the world will be asleep and therefore won’t interrupt you. I got up today at 0430 in order to write this Daily Bread. Sometimes I get up earlier, sometimes I don’t get up until 0600. But the Bible is always the first thing I do every day. A good side benefit of getting up early is it’ll help you become more disciplined.

Cultivate the soil of your heart and humble your soul with fasting. Do things that will eliminate distractions and temptations. Establish habits and routines that are good for you. Just make up your mind and do them. They may seem like big deals at first, but when you do them you’ll realize how screwed up we are by not having a deeper understanding of the “all is vanity” in Ecclesiastes. Fast regularly. Ask the Lord to help you translate the fasting into the kind of dedicated discipline that will help you avoid temptations, be a faithful doer, and endure trials. No, you don’t understand how those “cultivating” things positively impact our hearts and souls any more than I do. But do ‘em anyway, soldier, because they’re in our Weapons Manual and we believe He’s looking for warriors who promptly carry out His orders – whether we understand everything about them or not. Faith is the victory.

Get your life and your household under control. Get out of debt, be an expert who’s known for dependability at work, and rule well your own house.

Make “disciplined” your middle name. Do not allow or tolerate laziness, slovenliness, or procrastinating in your life. Reading the Bible every day, getting up early, and fasting are good ways to make self-discipline part of your character. Be on time and in other ways be dependable. Stand up straight, tuck in your shirttail, pull up your pants, comb your hair, don’t drag your feet, look people in the eye, be honest and truthful. Look like the squared-away, elite Christian soldier you are or are in training to be. Be proud of your Christian character, and live and walk and talk in such a way that you can stand unashamed and unafraid before a mirror, your comrades, and your enemies – like Christ did before Pontius Pilate. I say again, be disciplined.

Be strong. You’ll need to be strong if you’re going to be a doer. The best way to be a doer is to address your fears. Are you afraid to turn down your neighbor’s dinner invitation because he and his wife are low-life scumbags and you’ve been afraid to openly be a Bible believer around them? Get off your butt and go tell him. It doesn’t matter if you’re humble with him and confess that you feel bad about the kind of Christian you’ve been and are in the process of repenting, or if you curtly decline his invitation and don’t care if his feelings are hurt or not. Your personality isn’t important; getting your life in order so you can quickly grow into a strong and dependable warrior is. The best way to grow stronger is be a doer of the word.

There are things in the Bible that I won’t mention to you. They aren’t big enough deals for me to preach them. But they have become part of my relationship with the Lord. In a way they’re personal; they’re things I came across in His Book that I made part of my life because I think my Husband appreciates them. I could open the Bible and show you why I do them, but I won’t. I want you to develop your own relationship with Him based on whatever things in the Bible impress themselves upon you. Don’t be afraid to develop your relationship. Don’t be afraid to be different from me.

Fear is a big impediment to Christian growth. And many Christians increase their fear and timidity by trying to conform to some “image” of what a Christian should be. The way they dress, their vocabulary, their tone of voice, and their personalities are all calculated to project that mythical “Christian image.” But they end up being insecure and shallow because they know they’re phonies putting on a pious act. Don’t get sucked into that trap, brother. If you’ll take the above actions to heart in order to preserve and protect your environment so you can avoid or overcome the temptations, pitfalls, and trials that are part of our Christian walks, you’ll grow rapidly. Humility will help. Be yourself. Let your relationship with Christ shape you. Have the personality and the character He gives you via the experiences He deems fit for you. Being yourself will help you during those times when standing alone on Scripture becomes necessary. And it will become necessary.

You are a plant in a weed-infested world. Your job is to mature and bear fruit. Part of your job includes taking the above steps to protect your flanks and cover your six so your little environment can be a fertile,

weed-free garden of Eden where you won’t have to spend all your time and energy fighting weeds and briars. If you don’t successfully get through training/childhood you’ll never be a good combat soldier/adult. So take your training seriously and help it be fruitful by doing the above steps. One day you’ll be glad you did.

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D5 OUR CRYING SHAME

Matthew 15:14 Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.

Today we’ll look at a good example of the leaven of theology, and at why Christians need to start relying on the Holy Spirit to open their understanding of the literal word of God.

John 11:35 Jesus wept.

When the Lord graced me with the new birth I didn’t know my rear end from a hole in the ground. All I knew was I was hungry! Suddenly – for absolutely no reason I was aware of – I actually wanted to do something strange...something I’d never done before: I wanted to read the Bible and learn about the Lord Jesus Christ. I had no idea my sudden hunger was the result of the new birth: but the fact is I was a newborn babe, and my hunger was my perfectly normal craving for milk, the milk of the word of God. And the Bible was the Teat I reached for.

(Why did I underline perfectly normal craving above? As is oft my teaching method, I’ll back into the answer: There are many people running around today – such as W.T. Door – who say they are born-again Christians. And yet they know nothing about the Bible and have never read it! That is not normal! If you meet Joe Schmuck at work, get to talking with him, and invite him to lunch, what are you going to think when he says, “Oh, no thanks. I’m not into food. I’ve tried a bite or two over the years ‘cause a lot of people like food, but I didn’t like it. I’ve never eaten a meal.” The answer is a no-brainer: he’s a liar because physical beings need physical food to survive. And because spirit beings need spiritual food to survive, guys like W.T. Door who claim to be Christians but don’t feed on the Bible are probably lying also. (I say “probably” because I’m trying not to be “judgmental.”) The word of God is the spiritual food our spirit bodies need to eat. Therefore, if there is no craving, there was no new birth: doth not nature itself show that people must eat to live?)

When this newborn babe got to John 11, I was sitting in the living room. I was so impressed by the verse I’d read, it was so powerful and so moving that I could not contain – I had to share it: I got up and went into the kitchen where my wife was fixing lunch. I said, “This is amazing: Lazarus has died, and Christ just tried to reassure Martha by telling her Lazarus would rise again. And when Martha says, “Yeah, we’ll all rise again – at the resurrection”, Jesus boldly and amazingly states, “I AM the resurrection!” When I read that verse it filled me with such wondrous awe of my Saviour (even though at that point I knew almost nothing about Him) that I felt the goose bumps start marching and the hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention and salute my King.

I had no idea back then that the chapter I had just read in plain English was misunderstood by all theologians and most preachers.

When today’s preachers want to prepare a Sunday sermon they have several problems:

Because of faithless unbelief there is much in the Bible they just don’t get. That makes them insecure.

Their faithless unbelief in the inspired inerrancy of the literal word of God also makes them unable to read and comprehend – because they aren’t sure if the words they read should be there or not.

So they make the idiotic decision to rely on flesh and blood (theologians) to teach them God’s word rather than the Comforter Himself – even though teaching us His word is the Comforter’s job!

When theologians teach the Bible, their faithless unbelief renders them incapable of understanding even the shortest verse in the Bible. That’s why they incorrectly say about Jesus wept:

Some people say Jesus wasn’t true man. But His tears reveal that He had human emotions as He mourned the death of His friend, Lazarus. Oh, how He loved that man!

Jesus was demonstrating His compassion for all men on earth.

His tears reveal His raging anger at the unfair tyranny of mortal death.

And that is what most sermons about John 11 say. But they’re wrong.

First, a story. You and all of your buddies are wheelchair-bound cripples. You all share a Bible and pass it around so different guys can read it. One of you drops it on the floor, and there it lies because none of you can pick it up. You all cry because you wish you could have the Bible again. And then your caretaker walks into the room and asks what’s the problem. You point to the fallen Bible and tell him he might have been able to catch it while it was falling, but now that it’s on the floor it’s too late and he won’t be able to do anything about it. And then your caretaker weeps. Oh! The humanity of the man as he shares your sorrow! Oh! the compassion he has for all men who don’t read the Bible! Oh! How he rages against the unfair tyranny of gravity!

Now, before you roll your eyeballs and say what a stupid story that is, let me say that the Lord Jesus Christ has more capabilities than a caretaker in a room of quadriplegics. With that in mind, let’s read John 11 as if we possess 6th grade reading skills and are thinking about doing a book report on the chapter: (And I’ll embellish and editorialize (in a larger, different font) for book-report purposes in order to drive home the point that the chapter deals with the sad fact that, even when Christ the caretaker showed up to pick up the fallen book, His own people did not even believe in Him enough to know Who He is!)

John 11:23 When Jesus saith unto her, Thy brother shall rise again.

24 Martha saith unto him with dripping sarcasm, I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at

the last day; we all will. 25 Jesus said unto her in order to teach her that the power of the resurrection isn’t a date or a place – it’s Him, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet

shall he live: 26 And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?

27 She saith unto him with her lips, Yea, Lord: I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which

should come into the world.

28 And when she had so said, she rolled her eyes and went her way, and called Mary her sister

secretly, saying, The Master is come, and calleth for thee because you’re His favorite because you’re the one who always sits at His feet listening to His teaching. 29 As soon as she heard that, she arose quickly, and came unto him. 30 Now Jesus was not yet come into the town, but was in that place where Martha met him. 31 The Jews then which were with her in the house, and comforted her, when they saw Mary, that she rose up hastily and went out, followed her, saying, She goeth unto the grave to weep there. 32 Then when Mary was come where Jesus was, and saw him, she fell down at his feet, saying unto him,

Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died, but You weren’t here, so not only is his death Your fault, but now that he’s dead it’s too late because not even You can do anything about it. 33 When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her, he groaned

in the spirit, and was troubled about how awful this spiritual war is going to be if people continue to be as unbelieving, faithless, and blind as this bunch, 34 And said with sorrow over their unbelief...and perhaps a touch of bitterness, Where have

ye laid him? They said unto him without a shred of belief and hope, Lord, come and see. 35 All alone in a sea of unbelief, Jesus wept over the fact that not a single one of His own people believed in Him. 36 Then said the clueless Jews, Behold how he loved him! And He cries because of His frustrated sorrow and anger that Lazarus is dead and He knows He isn’t here to resurrect him...because there’s nothing He can do about his death!

Now, a couple of Scriptures that relate to this. Notice in the following that when Christ and the disciples got word about Lazarus’ sickness, He said 1) the sickness wasn’t about death; 2) it was to in some as-yet-unrevealed way going to glorify Christ:

John 11:4 When Jesus heard that, he said, This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby. 5 Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus.

6 When he had heard therefore that he was sick, he abode two days still in the same place where he was. That’s right, Christ deliberately waited for the book to fall onto the floor. Why? Because He made Lazarus sick, and waited for him to die so He could teach us how foolish we are not to believe on Him for everything. 7 Then after that saith he to his disciples, Let us go into Judæa again.

8 His disciples say unto him with fear that they, too, might be captured and killed, Master, the

Jews of late sought to stone thee; and goest thou thither again?

9 Jesus, seeing their fearful unbelief, answered, Are there not twelve hours in the day? If any man

walk in the day, he stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of this world. 10 But if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, because there is no light in him.

11 These things said he: and after that he saith unto them in figurative speech, Our friend Lazarus

sleepeth; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep. I say again, He wasn’t grieving over a fallen book: He orchestrated the whole scenario for our benefit. 12 Then said his fearful, unbelieving disciples, Lord, if he sleep, he shall do well, because sleeping people wake up. So we don’t have to risk going anywhere near the Pharisees after all. 13 Howbeit Jesus spake figuratively of his death: but they thought that he had spoken literally of

taking of rest in sleep.

14 Then said Jesus unto them plainly because they’d failed to catch on to His figurative speech,

Lazarus is dead as a doornail. 15 And I’ll tell you something else: I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent ye may

believe; Why am I glad I waited for Lazarus to die? Why am I glad he is now dead as a doornail? Because I have orchestrated this whole thing for your sakes...that ye may believe. nevertheless let us go unto him, and let’s hope to find a few people who – unlike you twelve – actually know Me well enough to believe I can do all things. If I find nothing but unbelief, it may sadden me to the point of tears...because there’s no excuse for unbelief and it’s a crying shame.

Now I’ll wrap up this chapter that deals with inexcusable unbelief.

John 11:37 And some unbelievers of them said, Could not this man, which opened the eyes of the blind,

have caused that even this man should not have died?

38 Jesus again seeing unbelief therefore again groaning in himself cometh to the grave. It was a cave,

and a stone lay upon it.

39 Jesus, eager to perform His long-planned miracle, said, Take ye away the stone. But Martha,

the unbelieving sister of him that was dead, the very one who just said with her lips she believed Christ to be the resurrection and the life and the Son of God, jumped in front of the stone and spread her arms and saith unto him, No, Lord, don’t open the tomb, because not only will You not be able to resurrect him, but You’ll let out a horrible odor, for by this

time he stinketh: for he hath been dead four days.

40 Jesus saith unto her with sadness and a touch of angry impatience, Didn’t you listen to a word I said?! Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God?

41 Martha, who’d tried to protect Lazarus’ dead body from the ignominy of becoming a public stinking spectacle, pursed her lips, slightly shook her head in unbelieving resignation, and grudgingly stepped aside. Then they took away the stone from the place where

the dead was laid. And Jesus lifted up his eyes, and said, Father, I thank thee that – unlike all these people – thou hast heard me.

42 And I knew that thou hearest me always, so I wasn’t being impatient or disrespectful when I said that to You: but it was actually because of the unbelieving people which stand by I said it,

that they may believe that thou hast sent me.

43 And when he thus had spoken, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. (The hairs on my head are standing at attention again!) 44 And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes: and his face was bound

about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them with a rather subdued voice because He was a bit disgusted and He was done here, Loose him, and let him go. And throughout the amazed and jubilant celebrating that went on by all the people as Lazarus was unwrapped and told

about all that had happened, the Lord Jesus Christ seemed to withdraw somewhat into Himself; indeed, He almost seemed sad. “What a strange man”, some of the clueless thought. They had no idea He, knowing what painful events He had just set into motion, was inwardly girding His loins for the horrors He was about to suffer. Or, as the Bible says, He was “steadfastly setting His face to go to Jerusalem.” (Luke 9:51). And that look on His face had such a combination of determined strength, darkness, death, and the agony of bearing the weight of the sins of others, that many turned away from Him in mortal fear (Luke 9:52-62). Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give to save his life. 45 Then many of the Jews which came to Mary, and had seen the things which Jesus did, believed on him.

46 But some of the traitors among them – who wouldn’t believe no matter what they saw or read in the Bible – went their ways to the Pharisees, and told them what things Jesus had done, because, like the twelve disciples, they knew the Pharisees wanted to capture and kill Christ. 47 Then gathered the chief priests and the Pharisees a council, and said, What do we? for this man doeth many miracles. 48 If we let him thus alone, all men will believe on him: and the Romans shall come and take away both our place and nation.

Pass...in...review!

When Lazarus died what did our Lord literally say, that He was glad, or that He was sad? Right!

Did Christ weep over a death He planned, waited for, and claimed to be glad about; or did He weep because of all the unbelief among His people? Right!

You now know things theology has been unable to figure out. Beware of the leaven of theology.

Much of John 11 is sad because it deals with the fact that many of us turn away from the Lord because of our fear and unbelief. And it shows we need to read and believe what the Bible says. And the verse we need to focus on isn’t the shortest one; we need to immerse ourselves in the power and the inspiring glory of

John 11:25 Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live:

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D6 I’LL HAVE MANNA, PLEASE

In fifth grade we were assigned a story to read. In it a farm boy who was a star on the school basketball team was with his parents at an athletic award event. Lots of boys who played various sports were there, as were their families, coaches, teachers, etc. The crux of the story was the basketball star’s parents were older and less attractive than most of the other parents, and after a while the mother realized her son was avoiding her like the plague because he was embarrassed by her age and appearance. She was deeply hurt. That story helped me be more considerate.

One morning when I was in high school I missed the school bus. (Yes, I rode the bus.) My mother, who’d gotten up and prepared breakfast for Dad and us kids, and bagged lunches for us, said she’d drive me to school. She put a scarf over her hair curlers, and an overcoat over her nightgown and bathrobe, and we left. When we pulled up to the school entrance it was crowded with hundreds of kids waiting for the doors to open. At that age it wasn’t cool to kiss your parents in public; I was accustomed to seeing other kids get out of their parents’ car and flip the door closed without so much as a backward glance or a fare-thee-well. But, not wanting my mother to ever go through what the mother in the story did, I leaned over, kissed her goodbye, thanked her for the ride, and stepped out of the car.

We’ve probably all been to events at which the food is provided by the wives. Each woman prepares a dish or two. And sure enough, people being what they are, everybody digs into the tasty dishes and ignores the more mundane ones. Except me. I take note of which dishes are the wallflowers and load up my plate. And if I know who prepared the dishes I make sure to say something about how good it was to the woman and her husband.

I don’t know what the Marriage Supper of the Lamb will be like. It’ll probably be a big, fancy affair with every kind of food on the table you can imagine. People will be telling the waiters they’ll have lobster, steak, etc. But I’ll ask for manna for several reasons.

First, it was specially prepared by the Lord for His people in the wilderness. It was good for them but, like the food of the Bible, the Lord prepared it in such a way that it would be a test – it wasn’t always appetizing. As you know, many of His people complained because they were selfish. I’ll order and eat manna because it will symbolize the fact that I will do anything and everything the Lord wants, and I’ll do it with a cheery “Aye, aye, Sir!”

Second, to me manna is cool, not just because the fame and nostalgia it has acquired from being in the Bible – it’s cool because it came directly from God. It is therefore special to me in a way that evokes love and humility: it is a reminder that I have chosen to forgo what I want; I’ll satisfy myself with whatever my King provides.

Third, I am in training to be – forever – a servant who lives to carry out the Lord’s will. The biggest problem, the biggest obstacle to my growth is me! What I want has turned out to be a serious pain in my ass. I want to successfully die to self. And, like Esther, I want only what my King wants.

All of the above boils down to this: Having a servant’s attitude by being aware of other people and how to help them is the best course because our Creator designed us to be servants. I’ve learned that the road to dissatisfaction, shame, and regret is Self. And the road to satisfied contentment is serving Him and His church. I am, after all, a servant. And I like being His servant. I’m proud to serve. And I want to please Him.

Esther 2:12 Now when every maid’s turn was come to go in to king Ahasuerus... 13 Then thus came every maiden unto the king; whatsoever she desired was given her to go with her out of the house of the women unto the king’s house. 14 In the evening she went, and on the morrow she returned into the second house of the women, to the custody of Shaashgaz, the king’s chamberlain, which kept the concubines: she came in unto the king no more, except the king delighted in her, and that she were called by name. 15 Now when the turn of Esther, the daughter of Abihail the uncle of Mordecai, who had taken her for his daughter, was come to go in unto the king, she required nothing but what Hegai the king’s chamberlain, the keeper of the women, appointed. And Esther obtained favour in the sight of all them that looked upon her. 16 So Esther was taken unto king Ahasuerus into his house royal... 17 And the king loved Esther above all the women, and she obtained grace and favour in his sight more than all the virgins; so that he set the royal crown upon her head...

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D7 INBREEDING REQUIRES CULLING

Long ago when my wife and I first started our flock of sheep (Horned Dorsets), we heard from other shepherds in our area about two shepherds who believed in inbreeding their sheep. The amazing thing, we were told, was their sheep were in great demand by other shepherds because the sheep were so consistently flawless and because inbred sheep have a high concentration of good genes. If that were true, I asked, why didn’t everybody inbreed? The answer was that those two men were having some success with their flocks now, but they were “living dangerously” because at any moment their ewes could start having lambs with two heads, three eyes, and three legs.

Along with the fact that the two shepherds were breeding excellent sheep, there were three factors that helped convince me to research inbreeding:

The two inbreeding shepherds were both college professors.

As a Bible believer I had already learned to be somewhat skeptical of “common knowledge”, and my continuing studies would eventually result in the quote,

“To run with the majority during the race of life is to be mediocre all of the time and wrong most of the time.”

Many of the more successful shepherds were using breeding programs with various names such as “line breeding” that were really inbreeding with a few inconsistencies thrown in.

What I learned from my studies was fascinating, not merely because – once again – common knowledge was wrong, but because it turns out the Lord knew what He was doing when He (beginning with

Abraham’s selecting a wife for his son from among his close relatives) advised the Hebrews to only marry among themselves and to shun pagans.

Inbreeding is incest. It is when you find a stud ram you really like and try to develop a flock that is “made in his image.” You do that by having him breed his sisters and daughters and granddaughters and great-granddaughters for as long as he lives. (You could also inbreed by simply “closing your flock” by never bringing in rams or ewes from other flocks, and by letting your rams and ewes breed each other randomly. But this random method would take longer to produce results.)

Incest has gotten a bad reputation for a reason – it tends to bring out undesirable genetic characteristics. For example, let’s say you have a flock of Horned Dorset sheep and you’ve heard inbreeding will give them crumpled horns and spots of dark wool. Undesirable traits are produced by “recessive” genes, which are genes that usually don’t show up, such as crumpled horns in sheep, and perhaps a “history” of diabetes or heart disease in your family. If you do not inbreed, the recessive genes will tend to stay hidden...and you’ll only have a crumpled horn (or heart disease in your family) show up every second or third generation. That’s right, “outcrossing” (the opposite of inbreeding), which means you go buy a stud ram every two or three years from some other flock so he won’t be related to your ewes, will tend to “mask” the recessive genes and bad traits usually won’t show up. But your flock (and your family) will still have those bad recessive genes in their genetic mix...and in random generations those bad genes will show up.

To review: Outcrossing will tend to avoid having problems with recessive traits like crumpled horns and heart disease. It does so because outcrossing tends to favor the good (dominant) genes and subdue the bad (recessive) genes. But the recessive genes are still there in some sheep and they can be genetically passed to their offspring...and will randomly show up via crumpled horns every now and then.

Inbreeding has the opposite effect on recessive genes; it tends to force the recessive genes to surface. That means initially you’ll have more lambs born with crumpled horns and dark spots in their wool. What are you going to do with those sheep with undesirable characteristics? You’re going to cull them from your flock by turning them into food or selling them. And the lambs that were born looking good (no horn or wool problems) might not have any recessives in their genetic mix – because the inbreeding didn’t force anything bad to appear...this time. So you’ll use them as breeders, but you’ll need patience; it’ll take several generations of inbreeding and culling to expose and eliminate the recessive genes from your flock. When that is accomplished, no matter which rams and ewes mate, all of their lambs will be pure; you have eliminated the recessive genes from your flock. As long as your flock remains closed it will remain genetically pure and have no problems.

But if you one day go out and purchase a big, good-looking ram from another flock so you can use him as a stud, all of your inbreeding and culling will go out the window because the new ram has an unknown genetic mix. For a generation or two you may be pleased. But one day you may have a lamb with hip dysplasia, or a bad under-bite, or something else that shows you’ve now got unknown recessives lurking in your flock. And the only way to eliminate them is to close your flock again, inbreed, and cull the undesirables.

That’s an abbreviated sketch of inbreeding. It doesn’t tell the whole story, but you’ve got the general idea. My wife and I were so amazed by what we read in library books on genetics that we telephoned the two shepherd-professors and drove hours to visit their farms and hear what they had to say. They were well-educated, knowledgeable, experienced, and fascinating to speak with. And, just as knowledgeable Christians are frustrated by religious traditions and common knowledge, these two men were passionate about the subject of inbreeding and frustrated by the barbs and arrows flung at their backs by the ignorant majority. One of the professors actually went to the Isle of Guernsey in the English Channel to visit dairymen: In the old days the Guernsey breed of dairy cows originated because the geographic isolation (difficult to get stud bulls on small boats) forced the farmers to inbreed. Genetics also explains how Noah, with relatively few animals aboard his ark, could have populated the globe with all the different animal breeds we have today: Just a few mongrel dogs, for example, when turned loose on the earth would have eventually through inbreeding and geographic culling produced many dog and wolf breeds. (Now you know why there are so many different breeds of sheep and cows; it’s because of natural inbreeding due to geographic isolation. Just look up a list of sheep breeds and notice that many of the breed names are geographic regions.) Today dog breeders are continually producing new breeds by using inbreeding and culling to isolate the kinds of genes they want and then to purify the breed until the Kennel Clubs are satisfied with the stability and reliability of the new breed. New strains of corn (and apples, and everything) are developed in the same way: Mix some strains that have

qualities you like, and then use inbreeding (manual pollinating) and culling of the results until you have reliable strains.

I say again: Inbreeding is widely understood and used all over the world. In fact, just about the only people who don’t understand how useful and helpful inbreeding can be are the majority!

There are reasons tradition has given inbreeding a bad reputation:

The love of money: It’s cheaper to outcross and sell expensive puppies to people who want good-looking animals (that may or may not end up with hip dysplasia), and also to sell cheap puppies to families that don’t know or care if they’re ugly (that may get hip dysplasia), than it is to take the time to inbreed and cull in order to develop a truly pure, healthy breed. (Most “purebred” animals today are not genetically pure.)

Culling is thought to be “unfair and cruel” by many lightweights.

Outcrossing can initially cause “hybrid vigor”: you’ll get larger animals and crops than normal – so you get to sell more product.

Well, I just deleted a bunch of stuff (about how the show rings at our summer county fairs are ruining the purity of our “purebred” livestock, about hybrid vs. open-pollinated crops, what the professor learned on the Isle of Guernsey, what the modern agricultural schools were teaching his son, and how his old-fashioned farm sailed through a recession even as he watched his modern-farm neighbors go bankrupt) because, as interesting as it all is in the context of this discussion, I don’t want to get too long-winded because I want to move on and show how this all applies to the Bible:

What if the Devil really did consummate his union with Eve (as we discussed in AOR), and thereby introduced “fallen seed” to the genetic mix of the human race. Would that mean the Lord meant it literally when He told the evil Pharisees they were “of their father the devil” (John 8:44)? Could the Bible be referring to the Devil’s “recessive genes” in Cain when it says Cain was “of that wicked one” (1 John 3:12)? And could more “wicked seed” have been added to our human gene pools when the devils took human wives (Genesis 6:2,4; Numbers 13:32,33)?

What if these hypothetical “wicked recessive genes” of the Devil tend to multiply in humans and become dominant over time? Could that be a contributing factor to the human race (in general) going downhill until the Lord, as a wise General in this war, stepped in and drowned everybody but those on the ark? Perhaps even Noah’s gene pool was tainted (like all of ours are), but he didn’t allow his leaven to affect him because Noah “culled” Self. We are aware that over time Noah’s descendants also went downhill, so God chose Abraham, divided the human race into saints and ain’ts, told His people to be separated from pagans, and instructed the Hebrews to inbreed. There could be good reasons for all of that: The Lord, as our Good and Wise Shepherd, understands what a valuable tool inbreeding can be...if it is used with culling. Therefore He told His people to inbreed in order to force the evil recessive genes to surface and reveal which people were “of their father the devil.” How would parents know which of their children were “of the devil”? By their fruits.

Now comes the culling part. The Lord told His people in the Old Testament to cull/execute any child who, at the age of sixteen, was still incorrigible (Deuteronomy 21:18-21). And, knowing that some evil children would survive, and knowing some good children would be later corrupted, the Lord put more culling/death penalties in the Bible for certain sins. Could it be that our Good Shepherd was using inbreeding and culling/the death penalty in order to slow down the Devil’s progress against the church?

Now we get to the New Testament era. Did the Lord abandon the Old Testament’s Old Commission and its reliance on physical reproduction (“be fruitful and multiply”) and instead issue the Great Commission (“preach the gospel”) because He saw that His people had gotten so genetically corrupt that, like Adam’s and Noah’s generations, they now had to be cast off so He could start all over again? (It may sound like I’m about to become a skinhead racist. But I’m not; so bear with me.) It may be that the Devil’s own genes, which are spiritual, were corrupted when he rebelled. And therefore the evil recessive genes he has passed on to us humans aren’t in the physical old man part of us, but rather in the spiritual new man part. But that doesn’t mean we can commit physical sins as long as we remain “mentally pure” as some teach, because if that were true there would be no “thou shalt nots” in the Bible. Therefore, somehow, physical sins stain our spirit bodies. I say again, somehow the physical kingdom of heaven and the spiritual kingdom of God can and do interact with and affect each other. Had the Hebrews become so polluted that too many of them were “of the

Devil”? We know the Bible-based religion of the Hebrews had become so polluted by tradition that the Lord warned about “the doctrine of devils.” Could the almost-out-of-control leaven be one of the reasons He came here to die on the cross – He wanted to get rid of the leavened-by-tradition Old Testament, and use His death to validate the fresh-and-unleavened New Testament (Hebrews 9:16,17)? In other words, as a wise general in battle, or a wise surgeon treating gangrene, the New Testament was the Lord’s way of cutting/culling His losses so His corporate body/flock wouldn’t be dragged down by its evil members. The NT was a way to start over (like with the patriarchs Adam, Noah, and Abe), it was a way to live to fight another day – in this case for two more days (two thousand years) so His church could make it to the end of the 7,000-year war.

Could it be that by the time of His First Coming, the whole human race was so full of evil recessive genes that there simply weren’t enough halfway-uncontaminated people around for Him to even consider starting over with another human patriarch? In this NT era, in order to have enough soldiers to fight the war, the Lord realized He could no longer rely on any single group of people because it would be overcome way too soon. He therefore opened the gospel to the whole world. Why? Because our war has deteriorated to the point that it is now guerrilla warfare, which is being fought by small groups and individuals widely scattered all over the globe. These warriors have been doing what not enough parents did in the Old Testament – cull. Yes, I know, we don’t kill bad children these days. In fact, we don’t (shouldn’t) even have children anymore! You have read 1 Corinthians 7 haven’t you? That’s why the Lord ditched the Old Commission (get married) and issued the Great Commission (start preaching) – the NT’s commission calls for verbal intercourse rather than physical intercourse. Could that be because the human gene pool is too polluted to continue physical breeding? If you are a good Christian it’s partly because of culling – you died to Self, just like the Lord told you to. You are subduing your evil recessives by walking after the Spirit rather than after the flesh. If you decide to ignore the New Testament by getting married, the odds are you’re marrying someone whose recessives have taken over. In other words, like the Pharisees, your spouse may be a nice, moral, whited sepulcher – of the devil.

Two other ways we NT saints are supposed to cull are separation and church discipline. That means shunning. Most Christians today don’t even know what shunning means. (We’re in deep and serious trouble, brother.) We’re supposed to be struggling to hold on until the Lord returns. But, like the Hebrews at the First Coming, too many of today’s Christians are of their father the devil. And Christian doctrines have become the doctrines of devils. History has repeated itself just like Ecclesiastes 1 says it does.

The “inbreeding” of the NT era is supposed to be the kind of intimate, deeply-Biblical, heavily-oriented-towards-doctrine intercourse (the verbal kind) of Christian fellowship. If we were good Christians we’d be repelled from the world and drawn into the haven of each other’s arms. And that would create serious discussions that would help good Christians grow...and force bad Christians to expose themselves and either repent or be culled/shunned. But, alas, we aren’t good, salty Christians who keep our churches doctrinally pure and spiritually strong. Our churches have become recessive-gene breeding grounds for born-again, upstanding, morality-worshipping, tithing, hypocritical Pharisees. In other words, the “deadwood” in our churches you might ordinarily point to as the problem – aren’t. Those kinds of pewsters aren’t really a doctrinal threat; but they should be made to get with the program or get out because, as we say on the farm, they’re taking up room at the feed rack...room that could be used to feed sheep who want to grow and become active salts with savor. The true doctrinal threats in our churches are the Bible-thumping Pharisees because they tend to be leaders who can influence and leaven all but the few true warriors. The reason modern Pharisees survive and thrive is our churches don’t have enough true warriors (defined as doctrinally-mature Swordbearers) to start and sustain the kind of daily, between-services, doctrine-based fellowship and Bible studies and discussions that will eventually expose the tradition-loving, Bible-hating Pharisees (like Christ did) and cause them to pack up and git! I hate to keep repeating myself, but for Jesus’ sake I’m going to say it again: Just like at the First Coming when the very people who were looked up to as Bible-believing pillars of the church turned out to be the blind who were leading the ignorant slothful pewsters to hell with them; so too is that true today. Because of the general lack of Biblical maturity in the church as a whole back then, the Pharisees survived and thrived! The same is true today. A good and effective army isn’t the one with a few seasoned veterans and many unmotivated sloths taking up room at the feed rack; it’s the one with a majority of true warriors and a few motivated, eager, actively-participating-and-growing recruits.

The AV1611 has been made of none effect by tradition. If it is to become an effective weapon, Christians need to open their KJVs, master their KJVs, and be doers of the word. Forget about your personality! Be a man like Phinehas and fight!

When the Lord comes back it’ll be because, once again, He needs to rescue His faithful few survivors. By then things will be so bad that He’s going to make Armageddon a bloodbath the likes of which the world has never seen. And His saints will rule and reign under His iron hand. But the seed of the gates of hell will have multiplied so much that our General will only be able to hold out for one more day (a thousand years). That’s when the final rebellion will occur.

Time to wrap this up.

Am I dogmatic about all of the above? No. But it does fit with and explain a lot in the Bible such as the following: the Great Commission; the recommendation that we not marry; inbreeding/intimate fellowship; culling/shunning; the devils mating with humans; “of your father the devil”; “of that wicked one”; and the Lord’s repeatedly cutting losses and regrouping under new patriarchs in order to tactically retreat from the inexorable progress made by the gates of hell. Yes, the above scenario can and does make sense out of some weird-sounding things in the Bible. If we were better and stronger Christians we’d not only be talking about things like this, but we’d be strong enough to discuss them intelligently/Scripturally so we could exhort each other.

This is a huge, involved, and deep subject. And it requires some Biblical maturity because it takes some things in nature and compares them with some seemingly-strange things in Scripture...so we can marvel at the apparent consistency of it all. As you well know, I believe we should take the Bible literally. Yes, there are valid figurative applications for some of the above verses. But those figurative applications, unlike the literal applications, haven’t even come close to explaining and tying a number of things together. As a result most of those verses are swept under the rug by today’s churches. I think that’s a mistake. Even if we don’t accept the above as a proper application of the literal word of God, we should still profit from it by talking with the Lord about how this war may be a lot more involved and may be going a lot worse than we thought. And then we need to gird our loins because the Tribulation is coming, and some of the things that happen then are going to be weirder than the above...because this war really does involve both spiritual and physical beings.

One of the plusses of the above scenario is it helps explain why Satan agreed to fight this war against God Almighty: The Lord has given Satan some huge advantages. That’s why the Lord seems to have had a strategic reason behind all of His His tactical retreats/rearguard actions: Because of the advantages given to the Devil, the Lord simply cannot win a prolonged war unless He violates whatever rules He and Satan agreed to...and the Lord won’t do that. So He needs His church to somehow endure to the end of the seven days. In a very real way, inbreeding/close Bible fellowship and culling/shunning seem to be some of the tools our Good Shepherd has been using on His flock in order to expose and then cut off members of His army who did not “cull themselves” by dying to Self and marching after the literal commands of their General. Is it any wonder the Lord has historically been delighted whenever He finds real men who are zealous for Him like Captain Jehu the wet-work specialist, Moses the murderer, Phinehas the disemboweller, Elijah the mass murderer, Joshua the exterminator of entire populations, and David the corpse mutilator (as was covered in Daily Bread Delta 2)? We are at war! And it doesn’t look to me like it’s going very well.

Let them that have ears that hear, hear. ***

D8 FAITH, FAILING, AND BEING ALONE

Faith, in its trusting and following meaning may be the stumblingstone more Christians trip over than any other. I say that based on my experience. The kind of stumblingstones I’m talking about aren’t the big, black-and-white sins like adultery and stealing, because my desire to do right, to serve the Lord in spirit and in truth, makes big, obvious sins like those not a problem for me. My biggest problems have been things in my relationship with the Lord that require faith in the face of failure and walking alone.

I usually don’t want anyone, Christian or pagan, to think I’m a failure. And I usually don’t want to be considered as “one of those deluded losers who’s way out in left field.” (The first one probably has to do with pride, and the second with peer pressure.) But the more black-and-white something is, no matter what it is or how big and scary it is, the less of a problem it is for me because my honest desire to do right doesn’t have any wiggle room with any issues that are black-and-white. But, if trusting the Lord to take care of me might make

me look like a failure, I sometimes struggle. And if I have to be the only one who thinks a certain course of action is the proper one, especially if it could lead to failure, I sometimes struggle.

Properly dealing with big, scary things requires strength, and I think I have plenty of that. But properly dealing with things that might make me look like a loser out in left field requires humility, and, sadly, I think I have more pride than humility. It is humility that will allow me to exalt God by following Him along a path that may lead to (what others think is) failure. I need more humility. And since everything in our relationship with the Lord is based on love for Him, I obviously need more love for Him in order to have more humility.

I’m not going to go into specifics here because I don’t think I should, and I don’t think I need to. Going into specifics might give you wiggle room by allowing you to congratulate yourself that you don’t have that specific problem. By not being specific I’m allowing the Holy Spirit to make you think of whatever He knows is appropriate. In other words, by not being specific I’m actually emphasizing faith. I’m emphasizing the fact that the problem areas I’m referring to are often things that have more to do with our relationship with the Lord than they do with “thou shalt nots” in the Bible. It is important that each of us develops (defined as: to work on so it can grow) his relationship with the Lord. Our individual abilities to be intimate with Him, to communicate with Him for all of eternity starts now. That word communicate includes the ability to hear and heed His still small voice so He can gently let us know what we should do to please Him.

Being able to hear His still small voice (1 Kings 19:12,13) requires faith because there is no sound. It also requires maturity (knowing the word, plus doing the word, plus time) so our hearts can be more properly receptive to some of the subtleties involved in having an active, growing relationship with Him. Relationships are highly personal because we are all different members. Your relationship with the Lord won’t be the same as mine. Right now we may not know Him very well, but because we want to know Him intimately and understand Him throughout eternity, we need to develop and build our relationships with Him now by developing ears that can hear by faith, and by being humble enough to glorify Him even if it makes us look like lunatics and losers to others.

Look at the dates on two of my quotes from the Wallpapers Motivational page:

In the absence of fear, there can be no courage. Len Smith 1985

Present fear is never as bad as later regret. Len Smith 1999

The first quote is inspirational and forward-looking; it is based on hope. The second quote is introspective and backward-looking; it is based on experience.

I have never regretted anything I’ve done or suffered for the Lord. Many of those things scared the daylights out of me because my fear made me think they’d be a lot worse than they turned out to be. I am glad and thankful I didn’t let my fear stop me.

I have always regretted the times I was conquered by my fear. I say again with love and with tears, comrade: Whenever you feel fear, rejoice, because you are on the threshold of a faith- and courage-based accomplishment. Fear is a signpost pointing out glorious opportunities to serve with courage and humility...opportunities to grow. Regret is a reminder of those times when we let fear make us turn our backs on the Lord – just like Peter did before the cock crowed.

If – in spite of our fear – we walk by faith, our relationship with the Lord will deepen and we’ll no longer feel so alone. And one day when we truly know the Lord we’ll look back at fear and realize that, as bad as it seemed, it was actually empty...which makes regret that much worse.

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D9 A NEEDLE’S EYE

John 11:7 Then after that saith he to his disciples, Let us go into Judæa again. 8 His disciples say unto him, Master, the Jews of late sought to stone thee; and goest thou thither again?

In the above Scripture the Lord and His disciples have received word that Lazarus is sick. If we were to read only the above verses we might think the disciples were selflessly thinking about Christ’s welfare when

they cautioned Him against going to a place He might be captured and killed. But when we read the following verses we see that the disciples weren’t so unselfish after all: they were afraid they would be killed along with Christ. And their selfish fear of death made them all later forsake Him when He was captured in the garden of Gethsemane.

John 11:15 ...nevertheless let us go unto him. 16 Then said Thomas, which is called Didymus, unto his fellow disciples, Let us also go, that we may die with him.

Let’s tuck the above perfectly-natural self-centered reaction into the back of our minds and move on. I am now going to say something that is so astonishing and so shocking it will blow your minds away:

“Trusting in riches won’t save you; if you want to go to heaven you have to put your faith in God.”

Are you astonished? Are you shocked? Did I just blow your minds away? Are you now filled with such fear that you’re even wondering if you are going to heaven? No, of course not...because the above statement is not shocking. In fact it’s rather mild.

But theology teaches that the statement is astonishing beyond measure.

OK, now I’m going to tell you something else that theology says is so shocking it will astound you:

“Back during the time of Christ the main gates of cities, including Jerusalem, were kept open during daytime in order to accommodate the large numbers of pedestrians, camels, sheep, goats, commercial carts, merchants, chariots, etc. But at night those main gates, which were quite large and wide, were closed for security purposes – so an invading army couldn’t rush in. But one or two small night gates were left open to accommodate the few people who might be out and about. For security purposes these gates were narrow enough to prevent military chariots and wide formations of soldiers from getting through. The night gates were just wide enough to allow large animals that were commonly used for transportation, such as camels, to squeeze through as long as they did it one at a time and in only one direction at a time. One of these gates in Jerusalem was, theologians say, named The Eye of a Needle.”

And once again you find yourself disagreeing with theology: The above info does make sense and it is interesting...but no way is it mind-blowingly astonishing. Let’s ignore the fact that archeologists and historians have found absolutely no evidence that any night gate was ever named The Eye of a Needle in any city in the world, and let’s see what the literal word of God says.

The disciples were not shocked beyond measure when Christ said we should trust in Him rather than in riches, and they were not flabbergasted when He said the only rich men who are going to heaven are those who unload any bulky cargo from their camels and lead the cud-chewing animals through a narrow gate. But, even though Christ seems to be directing His comments at wealthy people, which would exclude His disciples, He did say something that hit His disciples right between the eyes. How do we conclude that? By reading how they reacted to whatever it was that Christ said:

Mark 10:25 It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. 26 And they were astonished out of measure, saying among themselves, Who then can be saved?

Theologians want you to believe those who followed Christ were appallingly stupid: They claim that right after Christ spoke with a rich man, told him to get rid of his riches, was then rejected by the rich man, and concluded by saying it’s pretty hard for rich people to get into heaven, that the disciples, horrified by what they’d just heard, turned and asked each other, “Who then can be saved?!” That’s right, theologians think not a single disciple had the brains to say to his buddies, “Are you guys morons, or what!? Everything the Lord said was directed at the rich, which means the poor CAN be saved. Guys...that means people like us!”

People are people, and we all tend to selfishly think about ourselves. We noted in John 11, for example, that one of the reasons Christ’s disciples didn’t want Him to go to Jerusalem was they knew they’d have to go with Him and therefore they, too, might be captured and killed. It is significant that the disciples did not react to whatever the full context of Christ’s talk about the eye of a needle was by patting themselves on the back and saying, “Yahoo! Lookin’ good for us poor folks!” No, in fact they did the opposite, and a clue as to why is: right after they failed to answer their own question about who then could be saved, Christ seems to abruptly change the subject from rich people to all people, which would include His disciples:

Mark 10:27 And Jesus looking upon them saith, With men it is impossible, but not with God: for with God all things are possible.

The “who then can be saved” reaction of the disciples, together with the fact that Christ did not say, “With rich men it is impossible...” suggests there was more said during this event than God chose to record in His Bible. And our earlier comparison with the selfish motives of the disciples in John 11 seems to be validated by what they say next, because what Christ told them made them fear for their own salvation:

Matthew 19:27 Then answered Peter and said unto him, Behold, we have forsaken all, and followed thee; what shall we have therefore?

Why would God not spell it out for us in His Book? Did He sometimes speak in parables and write things in His Book so only they that put line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little; and they that have eyes and ears that see and hear would get it...but theologians wouldn’t? Yes.

What message should we get? Well, after we absorb the fact that Christ’s message scared off the rich man and caused His poor disciples to be shocked and frightened into asking “who then can be saved” and “but what about us!?”, we should then apply that info by being deadly serious about the war and about doctrinal correctness:

Luke 13:20 And again he said, Whereunto shall I liken the kingdom of God? 21 It is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.

23 Then said one unto him, Lord, are there few that be saved? And he said unto them, 24 Strive to enter in at the strait gate: for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able.

What could our Lord have told people about this war and about how few are going to be saved that would cause them to react with incredulity and bug-eyed fear? Well, He apparently elected not to spell it out for us. So I’m going to use two things in this Daily Bread as an intro to something we already touched on in Daily Bread Delta 7.

The rich man went to the Lord, called Him “Master”, and said “I’m a Commandment-keeping Bible believer; what else do I have to do to be saved?” Since nowhere in the Bible are we told to sell everything we have and give it to poor people, we may conclude that the Lord’s answer to the rich man was directed only at him and was intended to be a figurative slap across his smug and cocky face: The Lord read the young man’s heart, wasn’t impressed, was offended when the man called Him Master (He hates lip service), and decided to show him He was not his master: He told him to sell his stuff, and then to follow Him. And, as with many Christians through the centuries, there was simply no way the man was going to obey and follow Christ because he had his own life to live. And that is what (I think) the Lord’s overall talk was about: obeying and following Him by being a hearer and doer of what the Bible literally says. The vast majority of His children, from the garden of Eden until today, are simply not going to go through that needle’s eye (and we invented theology so we wouldn’t have to).

In reference to Luke 13:20,21 above: As you know, the kingdom of God is like a big batch of bread dough that has been leavened just a little bit...but the leaven spreads until the whole thing is leavened. Now we’ll draw upon some of what we speculated about in Delta 7 and do a quick horrifying (and I hope edifying) review of world history.

When Satan’s rebellion started, he and the Lord sat down and agreed on the rules of war. The rules heavily favored Satan, otherwise he wouldn’t have agreed to go up against God Almighty. In order to raise an army of Christians God ordered Adam (via the Old Commission) to use sexual intercourse/marriage to multiply. Before Adam could do that, however, Satan leavened Adam and Eve. Our Lord reacted by kicking them out of the garden to deny them the tree of life.

“Adam’s army” (Adam’s later descendants/the church/the generations of Adam) got so leavened that the gates of hell were about to prevail, so God stepped in to cull His losses and start over again. He sent the Flood to kill everybody in His church (are there few that be saved?!) except for His unleavened new patriarch, Noah. And just as He had done with His first patriarch, Adam, God ordered Noah to raise a new army of saints via the Old Commission/marriage. But the leaven – as always – spread inexorably throughout the generations of Noah until God had to step in again for the good of the church.

Because the war wasn’t going very well, God decided to make these changes:

He abandoned His previous tactic of having all people on earth (children of Adam and Noah) be members of His army. So for the first time in history He divided the human race into saints

(kingdom of God) and dogs (kingdom of heaven). Unregenerate humans now existed for the first time in history. The era of the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of mankind had to end...or else the church wouldn’t survive.

God selected Abraham as His new patriarch. And just as He had done with His first two patriarchs, Adam and Noah, God ordered Abe to raise a new army for Him via the Old Commission/marriage. And, for the first time in history, God told His people, in an effort to utilize an “us vs. them” tactic, to separate themselves from unregenerate dogs to protect God’s church from some of the sources of leavened carnality out in the Gentile world.

For the first time God issued a Manual-at-Arms (the Old Testament) to His army, the church, the generations of Abraham.

In another first, and in order to further protect His people, God gave them the land of Canaan and issued specific instructions to keep the world’s leaven out of Israel.

But the Devil continued to make progress. For example:

Greed (Achan at Ai) and lust (Balaam and King Balak at Shittim) tempted God’s people to bring leaven into their own camp (the accursed thing in Joshua 7:1, and whoredom with the daughters of Moab in Numbers 25:1). Another example is King Solomon’s marrying so many pagan wives that he took the incredibly idiotic step of destroying separation and spreading leaven by declaring freedom of religion (1 Kings 11:1-9) in Israel, which turned his heart away from God!

Greek philosophy (Reason) was spread all over the world by Alexander the Great. Reason was one of the major factors that so leavened Hebrew religious doctrine that the word of God was made of none effect. It was so bad that proselytes were made twofold more the children of hell than the Pharisees themselves.

By the time of the Lord’s First Coming His church’s doctrine was so Satanic that His own Bible-preaching army gladly killed Him. Correct doctrine is extremely important.

In short, God’s army, the generations of Abraham, had become so leavened it was now destroying

itself: a man’s enemies were they of his own house/church/family!

Leaven/Greek Reason spread all over the globe, infected (using theology) the doctrines of the Old Testament, and quickly changed the ideology of world civilizations so radically that the Old Testament would eventually become nothing but a hated laughingstock because of all of its “negativity”, its “thou shalt nots”, its violence, its “vengeful God”, and its death penalties. The two problems God was facing were serious ones:

First, the world population was now so leavened that He couldn’t use another patriarch, it simply wouldn’t work: no longer could any single patriarch sexually multiply into an army/church pure enough to last until the Second Coming. So He had to dump human patriarchs by opening the gospel to all people all over the world. That way the church would no longer be a large, easily-targeted army of Hebrews concentrated in one area; the New Testament would become a corporate body of widely-scattered guerilla forces all over the world that were made up of individuals and small local churches who looked around and realized “Christianity” was so far gone/leavened that Christ’s success depended on them to endure to the end by utilizing both separation and an “us vs. theology” program of submissive obedience to the literal word of God to keep themselves relatively pure doctrinally. Disciple-shocking fact: By disbanding His OT army of multiple millions of Hebrews in Israel and relying instead on tiny groups of NT soldiers scattered worldwide, the Lord makes it look like His objective is for His church to somehow survive until the Second Coming – even if His church is reduced to two or three dedicated, hardcore hermit-warriors gathered in His name! In other words, at the Second Coming could the number of His unleavened warriors be again reduced to the number of people on Noah’s ark – plus or minus a few?

Matthew 7:14 Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.

As Bible believers we need to take a serious look at what the Bible says, take a look at the state of modern churchianity, get a shocking glimpse at the undeniable signs, drop to our knees, and ask,

“Lord, are there few that be saved!? What about me, Lord? Am I the kind of hard-nosed, dedicated, uncompromising warrior that You seem to prefer...like Moses, Phinehas, David, and Jehu? Or am I a

slothful, smug, self-righteous, pretentious little Bible-toting pussy like the rich man who called You ‘Master’ above?”

The second problem the Lord faced was the Old Testament. Reason-based traditions had made the OT not only of none effect, but incapable of successfully guiding His church through the next 2,000 years. So He cut off His Hebrews, instituted His New Testament, and tried to help His NT saints avoid all the leaven all around the world by telling them to protect themselves from that ever-spreading leaven in two new ways – do not use philosophy/Reason (Colossians 2:8), and do not get married (1 Corinthians 7). That’s why He dumped the sex/marriage of the Old Commission and replaced it with the verbal intercourse of the Great Commission. In the OT He’d advised His people to be separated by not marrying dogs. But now the bread dough of the whole world was so leavened that He advised His NT church to – through obedience to His word – preserve/prolong their relatively-unleavened purity by not marrying anybody.

I say again, we now have no human patriarch and therefore no formal army like the generations of Adam, Noah, and Abraham had been. Today we are fighting guerrilla warfare, it is being fought all over the globe, and it is being fought by individuals and tiny local churches who love the Lord enough to master His word and live it.

Today history has repeated itself: Reason-based theology and tradition have made both Testaments of none effect...so much so that most Christians actually believe it’s good for the church if they get married and have families so we can have larger church memberships. Most of our churches are worthless because most Christians are worthless. It has gotten so bad that no longer can the Lord use a Flood and begin His Millennial Reign with another patriarch. It may be that at the Second Coming there will only be a shockingly-small handful of dedicated, hardcore hermit-warrior Christians left. The paltry number of unleavened warriors who endure to the Second Coming, coupled with the fact that something about the human race has apparently changed and therefore caused the Lord to stop using patriarchs/marriage to repopulate His church, is why our Masterful General is going to have to resurrect His dead saints from the past 6,000 years to find enough people like David, Jehu, Moses, Joshua, Phinehas, and Elijah to fill the ranks of His army so He might be able to hold off the gates of hell for just another 1,000 years. (No, His people during the Millennial Reign will not be in their glorified bodies – because we’re not circumcised until the eighth day.)

The sad fact is, even many of us who are resurrected will not survive the Millennial Reign; we’ll be overcome by leaven. As the end draws near the church will be very close to losing the war. But just when the Devil thinks he’s about to win...the last grain of sand drains from the hourglass: Time has run out, the war’s over; and the Lord is the victor...by an extremely narrow margin.

Now, while I don’t think the Lord said any of this stuff to His disciples, we know positively that whatever He said about how many can be saved was so horrifying it made His disciples ask if they’d make it. Are you beginning to see why the Lord has made extensive use of culling over the centuries? And not only that: He has used extremely-horrifying methods of culling His leavened people in attempts to impress upon the rest of us just how serious, how deadly, and how close this war is.

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D10 IN JESUS’ NAME

In AOR we’ve already learned about why brides basically lose their own identities by taking their husband’s name. The bride, having none of her own authority, is trusted to exercise her husband’s authority with great judgment, responsibility, and care by doing everything in his name.

In olden days women better understood the importance of their husbands’ names. When a wife ordered a couple of hired hands to accompany her to town to help her load supplies, they replied, “Yes, Mrs. Jones.” They were acknowledging and submitting to her position as John Jones’ head servant. (We can’t help but think of Abraham’s head servant being sent on the important errand of finding a wife suitable for Isaac.)

In town when the bill was presented to Mrs. Jones, she was careful to sign it as Mrs. John Jones in order to officially signify that she was acting under his authority and on his behalf. She’d never brazenly sign as Jane Jones because women were helpers, servants, with none of their own authority – no matter how many capabilities and qualities they may have had.

The Bible says we are to do everything for the glory of God in the name of Jesus Christ. That’s one of the reasons we pray in Jesus’ name. But because we live in a modern unscriptural society in which women have been liberated from their Biblical roles, more and more Christians have no knowledge of the above history of why women took their husbands’ names upon themselves and why they signed official paperwork as Mrs. John Jones.

But I’m going to look at another forgotten aspect of our doing things in Jesus’ name – humility.

We have the honor and responsibility of being His espouses brides. But I fear tradition and habit have made us automatically and lightly end our prayers with those familiar words without understanding their gravity. As we mature in our Christian walks we may have a tendency to think of ourselves as “good Christians” whose prayers and actions are viewed favorably by God. In other words, without being aware of it, pride sneaks in and, like the praying Pharisee, makes our prayers abominations – no matter how proper the words are.

Whenever we say in Jesus’ name we must remember why it is necessary that we do so: We are sinful, mortal abominations in God’s eyes...unless we humbly let Him know that we know we are nothing without the righteousness and authority of Christ. We are His brides, and we’re proud to humbly act as His obedient servants who live to carry out His will.

So let’s try to remember that the words in Jesus’ name should connote some respectful fear on our part, which will serve to remind us to be careful that our words and deeds should never be taken lightly. We should never get full of ourselves and forget our roles as His servants who – having none of our own prerogatives, authority, and worth/righteousness – do everything fearfully and carefully aware that we are, indeed, glorifying God in accordance with his written word...and in His glorious name.

Luke 18:9 And he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others: 10 Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. 11 The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. 12 I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess. 13 And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner. 14 I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.

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