Earthquake, tornado, sinkhole, flood, tsunami, ice/snow storm…People are unsettled after a natural disaster and they go looking for answers. The views here at the blog spike after a disaster but they rise the most after an earthquake more than any other natural disaster.
Personally I think quakes unsettle people because this is the very ground we walk on that is moving, splitting, and otherwise kicking up. If solidity isn’t solid, than maybe invisible God is real…The subconscious thought or fear is likely, “If the earth isn’t solid, then what is?”
Remember video stores? Before streaming was invented you had to physically go to a video store and rent a movie, checking it out from the store. You drive home and pop it in to the video cassette recorder machine hulking on top of your console tv to view whatever movie you’d rented. Then reverse the process to return it the next day. Back in the 1990s at the video store on a busy Friday night, I was looking for a movie adapted from an Oscar Wilde play called An Ideal Husband. I couldn’t find it, so I went to the gal at the checkout so she could peek at her catalog to see if it was lent out.
I’d asked, “Do you have An Ideal Husband?”
Without missing a beat, she said, “No, but if I did I wouldn’t lend him out!”
The LORD said to Satan, “From where do you come?” Satan answered the LORD and said, “From roaming about on the earth and walking around on it.” (Job 1:7)
God knows where satan has been, of course. God is omniscient. This means He knows all there is to know. When we see that question in the Bible asked by God we know it’s a way of drawing out information from the one who is being asked, as God did with Adam in the garden, (Genesis 3:9), or when God asked Cain where his brother is (Genesis 4:9).
When God asks satan where have you been, and satan replies that he had been walking up and down upon the earth, we might picture satan stomping around causing trouble. But we rarely stop to consider what kind of trouble, what does that trouble look like? We also might not consider how satan has cohorts, conspirators who fell with him, and how they might be acting as an army in unified and precise formations to carry out that evil trouble.
We often hear the angels referred to as “heavenly host.” This is a military term. We can picture squadrons of unholy angels dispersing under orders from their leader satan, the adversary. So what does that ‘trouble’ from the unholy angels look like?
There are myriad varieties of their unified battle against God these long centuries. Wars, genocides, mobs, chaos… Since the unholy angels influence the ungodly and even sway the godly from the path and blind them briefly, when we see a unified action suddenly erupt, we can intuit that a spiritual adversary is behind it. It does not take much for satan to light a fire under sinful people, who are already opposed to God and whose flesh is willing. Here is what I believe is an example of what satan is doing as he roams the earth:
Last week Pastor John MacArthur took a stand for biblical morality. He has a wide influence and a large platform. His call for preachers to preach on biblical morality this Sunday was in response to a Canadian legislative bill banning any conversion therapy for transgender or homosexual people. Even mentioning biblical morality to them would be considered ‘conversion therapy’ and the offender would be arrested as a felon and jailed. Any online content would be removed by the government.
The bill banning conversion therapy in Canada received royal assent on Wednesday, making it into law. Bill C-4 makes providing, promoting or advertising conversion therapy a criminal offence. The bill defines conversion therapy as the “practice, treatment or service designed to change a person’s sexual orientation to heterosexual, or to change a person’s gender identity to cisgender.” (Source).
Our Canadian preaching brothers appealed to us, their neighbors on the south, and MacArthur took up the call.
"MacArthur, who is known for his syndicated broadcast program "Grace to You," published an open letter on the Grace Community Church website Tuesday calling on "ministers of the Gospel" to join him on the third Sunday of the new year in preaching about "a biblical view of sexual morality." (Source)
The Canadian law takes effect January 8, so MacArthur’s call for faithful men of the Gospel everywhere to preach on biblical morality is for Sunday January 16.
As the wave of push-back against satan’s wiles rose higher, received attention, and garnered public commitments, suddenly and seemingly out of nowhere a huge wave of negative publicity against MacArthur rose up. It muddied the waters, it sidetracked discussions, it was evil and sly.
A video clip of MacArthur allegedly preaching against religious liberty was circulated. I say it was evil and sly because the clip was edited. It was edited in such a way that it made MacArthur seem like he was saying the opposite of what he actually said.
A twitter friend noted, “So John MacArthur is calling on pastors and churches to take a firm stand on Biblical sexuality and against all sexual immorality. Then, SUDDENLY and TOTALLY UNRELATEDLY, there is an outcry over something John MacArthur said from the pulpit, taken out of context, over a year ago?” (@ShinarSquirrel).
Roman soldiers were known for their commitment to formation, operating under orders to the strictest degree, and for their success. They were also known to be terrifying. Would the unholy angel legions be any less committed, less precisely operational, or less terrifying? No. (The unholy angels, AKA demons, are only as successful as God allows them to be. But for now, they are allowed to operate according to His plan).
Not only the unsaved but even strong Christians can be drawn into the fray.
–We can forget that the opposition is actually the mission field, –We can forget our manners and issue harsh words that are not edifying, –We can become confused ourselves as we spend time in the fray, or have our point of view slyly shifted, –And more
When we see sudden eruptions against a strong biblical stand, and when we see a lock-step reaction online, in print, or in real life to something biblical, we can heavily suspect satan and his legions behind it. THIS is what spiritual warfare looks like. Satan is roaming around, but what is he doing exactly, and what does that look like in my life and within my spheres? Think on this.
We don’t look for satan or his demon cohort under every rock, but we do have to be mindful that we are soldiers and earth is God’s battlefield. We don’t fight in the usual ways like the Roman soldiers did, but we are in a battle.
1 Peter 4:12 reminds us that the fiery trials are nothing surprising. “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal among you, which comes upon you for your testing, as though something strange were happening to you;“
Ephesians 6:12 reminds us of who and how we fight, for it IS a battle, “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.”
God wins. Someday the adversary and his evil companions will be locked up and then thrown into the Lake of Fire. What a day that will be!
God rebuked sinful man. His anger was higher than the mountains, deeper than the lowest valley. He covered the planet with His wrath, in the flood.
The waters were high, deep, angry, and overspread all that existed. All. All that water was God’s wrath for sin. He enshrounded the earth with judgment, covering it with water as a garment. (Psalm 104:6). His water was the judgment robe that spread over the earth as a mantle.
I wrote on Facebook that I’d discovered a recommendation from Stephen J. Nichols, president of Reformation Bible College and chief academic officer for Ligonier Ministries, of a book that Johnny Cash had written. Nichols had said that Cash, yes, the singer/musician, had novelized the life of Paul and it was “A piece of genius.”
Excited, I made mention of this on Facebook. A question came up, a good question. It was asked sincerely. I decided to follow it up here because it bears discussion.
Growing up, I used to watch the PBS Masterpiece Theatre classic “I, Claudius”. It was about one of the least known Emperors of the Roman Empire, Claudius. Claudius is not as well known, being sandwiched in history between the more famous emperors Caligula and Nero. I was fascinated with the Roman banquets, of which the show “I, Claudius” had many. I used to wonder why they ate while reclining. It seemed cumbersome to me.
We’re a week into the new year. How long do you say “Happy New Year?” LOL, I say it only on the day or a day or so after. Are you still keeping up with your New Year’s Resolutions, if you made any? I don’t make resolutions but I did make some changes. Tweaks in my routine.
Yesterday I posted an article about the fact that hell exists, why it exists, and why people go there (and how to avoid it). Here-> Betty White talks about her own death with Larry King. I was asked about how to handle knowing a loved one is very likely in hell enduring eternal torment. It’s a troubling question, an important concept to dig though – if tough on the heart and mind.
Actress and animal advocate Betty White died last week. She was 99 years old. She was just two weeks shy of her 100th birthday.
She had longevity not only in years that the Lord graciously gave her, but had longevity in her career that she loved so much. It’s a wonderful thing to love what you do and be given so many years to do it.
When she died, as many times happens with a celebrity death, the concept of death suddenly becomes real to people. It does to me, it brings the afterlife into the forefront of my mind. I am in Christ and I fear death no more. The curiosity I’d had about what happens two seconds after my last breath is finally satisfied in the certain knowledge that I will be with Jesus in heaven. I do not know what I’ll be doing, apart from praises and songs of worship to Him, but given His intellectual creativity these last 7000 years, I know it’ll be wonderful.
The Bible is replete with warnings about how worthless the assigned shepherds of Israel can be, (Ezekiel 34:2-3), and how worthless the shepherds of a church can be. (Jude 1:12). The verses warn about their judgment for feeding themselves and not the sheep, and more. See Ezekiel 34:4,
Those who are sickly you have not strengthened, the diseased you have not healed, the broken you have not bound up, the scattered you have not brought back, nor have you searched for the lost; but with force and with violence you have dominated them.
In the New Testament Jude calls these false ones selfish, and Peter calls them indecent, destructive, self-centered, greedy, and much more.
It’s painful to think that the ones in whom we put our trust to teach us well and lead us into righteousness by example and by the preaching of the word, may have ulterior motives that are actually as dastardly as all that. But think of how awful the Pharisees were! They were a group that emerged from times past who were concerned with stricter adherence to the Law. First called Pharisees in around 135BC, the Pharisees held to a strict belief in the Oral Law that God gave to Moses at Sinai, plus the Torah. The Torah was the Written Law, and was open to interpretation.
While it is often hard to picture someone’s evil who operates under the cloak of righteousness, we can look at the Pharisees’ deeds to see just how evil they were. Jesus reserved His worst rebukes for the priests, scribes, Pharisees, and Sadducees. There is a reason for that!
–Lazarus suffered an illness, and then suffered death. However, Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. The chief priests wanted to kill Lazarus AGAIN!!
–They cared more about tithing cumin and mint than for justice and righteousness. They abandoned their duty to minister to the people by offering mercy, and instead focused on minutiae. Mint over people is a bad trade, Jesus said in Matthew 23:23.
–They ignored the needs of the people,
–They co-opted Judas into sin by paying him to reveal where Jesus was so they could arrest him,
–Instead of celebrating his healing, they grilled the recently healed blind man, AND his family, and they all feared the Pharisees. Our shepherds are not supposed to instill fear in us…
–They put people out of the synagogue. Cutting people off…?…Instead of helping them in their sin by showing them the way in love?
The same sins and traits exist today in the worthless shepherds exist today in pastors and elders. How do I know? There is nothing new under the sun. As long as we’re still human living in flesh, as long as there is sin in the world, there will be some shepherds (pastors) who exhibit the same traits the Pharisees did. They are often hard to spot, or if we do spot them, it’s hard to accept their evil. But is IS evil. We rationalize their behavior away.
Are there pastors who put people out of church? Yes, and not for properly followed church discipline reasons. Are there worthless shepherds today who focus on their tithes of mint and enjoy the chief seats instead of helping people in sin? Yes. Are there pastors who manipulate people so they can satisfy their own agenda (which usually is about building their fiefdom inside the church). Yes.
I’m making two points here,
1. Worthless shepherds exist today as they did back in the Pharisee days. Don’t look under every rock for one, that’s the wrong focus. But if you begin to suspect one, don’t ignore the discernment warning, either. 2. If you have a worthwhile shepherd, (pastor/elder) protect him in prayer, support him, meet his/their needs. Praise the Lord for him! The Bible says,
The elders who lead well are to be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who work hard at preaching and teaching. (1 Timothy 5:17).
the-end-time.org 