Weekly Articles

Our family recently visited the El Rancho de Las Golondrinas (or “The Ranch of the Swallows”) living museum near Santa Fe, New Mexico.  While there, we toured the working grist mill and were treated to a very thorough and enjoyable explanation of the workings and historical significance of the mill.  One of the things that the mill did was to separate the wheat germ from the white flour, which enabled a much longer storage life for the flour as mice and rats would not bother the white flour.  The reason for this is that the white flour has little nutritional value by itself, and is good only when combined with real food (as humans do by cooking and baking).

A diet of only white (degerminated) flour will lead to a number of dietary diseases and ultimately death from malnutrition.  In the same way, false doctrines fed into the spiritual diet of the church leads to spiritual malnutrition.  The early church had to deal with this issue from the very beginning; Paul wrote to the Galatian churches with warnings not to be led astray.

I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— which is really no gospel at all.  Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ.  (Galatians 1:6-7 NIV)

These false gospels, which at the time were the Judaizers but later would be predominately Gnostic in nature, had the appearance of sound doctrine but were in actuality empty of true spiritual value.  Those who infiltrated the family of believers came purporting to be knowledgeable and Godly, but were in fact pursuing Godlessness and turning whole congregations away from the truth.  In the process they caused many to stumble by removing the power from the repentance and renewal that is the central manifestation of God’s power in our lives.

I am afraid that when I come again my God will humble me before you, and I will be grieved over many who have sinned earlier and have not repented of the impurity, sexual sin and debauchery in which they have indulged.  (2 Corinthians 12:21 NIV)

Christianity is centered on repentance!  Faith without repentance is merely a belief in the existence of the God that is going to destroy you.  Baptism without repentance is a public dunking.  Good works without repentance are merely pleasant things to do with your time.  Love without repentance is lacking in any real depth.  This should not be a surprise to any of us; after all, was it merely for a show that you came to Christ?  Or was it to change your life, repenting of your past ways and turning to God for direction and guidance?  Paul had the following guidance for Timothy about developing Godliness:

Have nothing to do with godless myths and old wives’ tales; rather, train yourself to be godly.  For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.  (1 Timothy 4:7-8 NIV)

If anyone teaches false doctrines and does not agree to the sound instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ and to godly teaching, he is conceited and understands nothing.  He has an unhealthy interest in controversies and quarrels about words that result in envy, strife, malicious talk, evil suspicions and constant friction between men of corrupt mind, who have been robbed of the truth and who think that godliness is a means to financial gain.  But godliness with contentment is great gain.  (1 Timothy 6:3-6 NIV)

Living on the wisdom and understanding of man is like eating a diet of white paste.  You cannot build any real value in your life apart from God, and you cannot get close to God unless you set your heart and mind on his words and his ways.  The worldly ways that always seem to infiltrate our churches serve only to cause quarreling and bickering.  But Godly ways, when adopted by the brotherhood will always negate and dispel the troublesome ways of the world – if we will only seek them out!  God is seeking to nourish our souls with his Spirit.

-Charles Peterson

According to the Bread for the World Institute (www.bread.org) over one billion people on this planet are hungry.  This in a world that produces enough food to feed everyone on the planet with more calories per day than thirty years ago (www.worldhunger.org).  So why are so many people hungry in a world with plenty of food?  They are not eating enough.

No, this is not my attempt at dark humor; the reason people are hungry is that they are not getting food that is available in the world.  For most of human history, the main cause of hunger was the scarcity of food – simply put, we did not produce enough food for everyone.  But since the industrial revolution and the tremendous breakthroughs in agricultural technology we consistently produce more food than we need; I remember news stories in the 1980’s about shiploads of wheat sitting in the dock, rotting because the United States had no way to get food to the starving people in Africa without utterly collapsing their primitive agricultural economies.  In other words, hunger today is not the result of the lack of food but rather the inability or unwillingness of people to consume existing food.

Hunger due to inability to eat is understandable.  But are there really people who are unwilling to eat?  Absolutely.  From cultural dietary restrictions to traditional rejection of modern agricultural technology, some people simply refuse to do what it takes to eat.

Most of us would respond with incredulity, saying something like “that’s crazy!” and shaking our heads.  But how many in the church starve themselves spiritually for far less credible reasons?

Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life.  He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.  But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe.  All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away.  For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me.  And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day.  For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.”  (John 6:35-40 NIV)

If we believe that Jesus is the “bread of life,” then why do we not seek sustenance from him?  There seem to be so many in the church today that want to “experience Jesus” and so go from church to church, seeking some spiritual fulfillment in the event taking place in the worship service.  But that is not what feeds the spirit of man!

He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.  (Deuteronomy 8:3 NIV)

It is by no mistake that Jesus quoted this in response to the Devil’s temptation!  Jesus certainly was experiencing an event when he had fasted and then was confronted by Satan.  But he drew on what he knew from the scriptures and was saved from giving in to a false hunger.  Why would we think that we do not need the scriptures, when Jesus himself nourished himself with them?  The early church fathers also believed in deriving spiritual sustenance from the scriptures.  Many examples exist of their belief in the need for Bible reading, such as Clement of Rome (96 AD), Irenaeus (180 AD), and others.  The following sums up their ideas well:

Thomas of Alexandria (300 AD) “Let no day pass by without reading some portion of the sacred Scriptures – at such convenient hour as offers.  And give some time to meditation.  Never cast off the habit of reading in the Holy Scriptures.  For nothing feeds the soul and enriches the mind as much as those sacred studies do.”  (A Dictionary of Early Christian Beliefs, David Bercot, 1998 Hendrickson Publishers Inc.)

If the ancient Christians, who typically worked from dawn to dusk, seven days a week, could struggle to learn from scattered manuscripts and listen to words they possible could not themselves read, is it too much for God’s people today to pick up the Bible we have in our homes and read in the hours we have to ourselves each day?  We all fill our days up; but I guarantee that every American Christian reading this took time last week to eat food.  Did you take at least that much time to read God’s word?  A person who does not eat food will die in time; a Christian who does not feed on God’s word will die in eternity.  Are you choosing to starve or to thrive?

-Charles Peterson

Last month we celebrated the fortieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing.  This monumental feat in which the United States sent three astronauts roughly 384,000 kilometers to land on an airless rock and then to return, safely.  This is but one of many examples of mankind doing the seemingly impossible.

We tend to admire achievements of this sort:  the construction of the Pyramids, the Great Wall, and the Panama Canal; and the Battles of Thermopylae, Masada, and the D-Day invasion of Normandy.  We glory in our technological supremacy.

Now the whole world had one language and a common speech.  As men moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.  They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.”  They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar.  Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”  But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building.  The LORD said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.  Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”  So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city.  That is why it was called Babel —because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth.  (Genesis 11:1-9 NIV)

The people in the ancient post-diluvian world gloried in their ability to build and maintain a common identity.  But God stripped them of this vainglory, halting their construction and separating them by the mighty gulf of language.

His mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation.  He has performed mighty deeds with his arm; he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.  He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble.  He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty.  (Luke 1:50-53 NIV)

He mocks proud mockers but gives grace to the humble.  (Proverbs 3:34 NIV)

God frustrates the plans of men.  Our “mighty deeds” are nothing compare to the glories that God has revealed.  We landed men on the moon, but God created the moon!  We build a building, but God built this universe!  Now with these mighty deeds comes the expectation that great things will be accomplished.  So when the mighty among us fail, we are hit with a devastating blow to how we look at the world.

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.  Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”  When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, “Who then can be saved?”  Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”  (Matthew 19:23-26 NIV)

Notice that when Jesus says that it is impossible for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, the disciples become clearly agitated.  They ask “who then can be saved”; with the implication that if the rich couldn’t enter, then who could!  But Jesus explained that just because man cannot do anything about his state, God can!  What is impossible for man is possible for Jesus!  So remember to cling to the one who can save you – Jesus Christ.

-Charles Peterson

Actress Mischa Barton was recently hospitalized for her own protection; last year she had been arrested on drug-related charges.  A Los Angeles mother killed her 4-year-old son by stabbing him to death and then slit her own wrists.  The Governor of South Carolina was exposed as having left the country to have an extramarital affair.  These three news stories show the heavy burden of dark sin and deep despair that weighs down mankind:  Ms. Barton is but one of many examples of Hollywood stars who seem to be trying to find the quickest path to personal destruction; this mother entered some dark place in her soul that allowed her to brutally slay her own child; and Governor Mark Sanford (who had until this been held up as a possible Presidential hopeful in 2012) basically torpedoed his political dreams and shattered his marriage for a fling with his “soul mate”.

This is nothing new!  Many examples of this behavior are shown to us in the Bible.

They sailed to the region of the Gerasenes, which is across the lake from Galilee.  When Jesus stepped ashore, he was met by a demon-possessed man from the town.  For a long time this man had not worn clothes or lived in a house, but had lived in the tombs.  When he saw Jesus, he cried out and fell at his feet, shouting at the top of his voice, “What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, don’t torture me!”  For Jesus had commanded the evil spirit to come out of the man.  Many times it had seized him, and though he was chained hand and foot and kept under guard, he had broken his chains and had been driven by the demon into solitary places.  (Luke 8:26-29 NIV)

As the king of Israel was passing by on the wall, a woman cried to him, “Help me, my lord the king!”  The king replied, “If the LORD does not help you, where can I get help for you?  From the threshing floor?  From the winepress?”  Then he asked her, “What’s the matter?”  She answered, “This woman said to me, ‘Give up your son so we may eat him today, and tomorrow we’ll eat my son.’  So we cooked my son and ate him.  The next day I said to her, ‘Give up your son so we may eat him,’ but she had hidden him.”  (2 Kings 6:26-29 NIV)

One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace.  From the roof he saw a woman bathing.  The woman was very beautiful, and David sent someone to find out about her.  The man said, “Isn’t this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite?”  Then David sent messengers to get her.  She came to him, and he slept with her.  (2 Samuel 11:2-4 NIV)

Here we see three examples of similar behavior:  a life seriously derailed and out of control, a mother killing her son, and a ruler abusing power and privilege to gratify carnal lusts.  This is the condition of all mankind, even though these are particularly disturbing examples for us.  The world wants us to fill up with sin and depravity.  It wants us to shed true morality that is fixed by the creator for a false one made up by men and changed at a whim.

This world uses people up and discards them like yesterday’s garbage.  If you seek out the world, you will have to give up everything about you that links you to God; likewise if you seek out God you will have to rid yourself of the world’s influence.

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”  (Matthew 11:28-30 NIV)

Jesus knows the heavy, unbearable burden mankind struggles with.  So he came to lift it off of our shoulders in order that we could take up his burden through the grace of God.  If you stay with the world, you will never escape the world’s burden of sin and despair; if you choose Jesus, you will indeed lay down those oppressive burdens and pick up God’s mercy, love, hope, and forgiveness.  The choice should be easy: lay your burdens down and pick up Christ as your burden.

-Charles Peterson

On September 17, 1787, the Constitutional Congress approved the document which begins:

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

This, the Preamble to the United States Constitution, sets forth the reason for establishing our way of life – liberty.  Liberty is the great difference between us and the rest of the world, and it is something that has been eroded away to a pale shimmer of its former glory.

For the past eighty years our nation has been moving inexorably towards tyranny.  This tyranny which looms over us is one of our own making as we have sought to remove Christianity from its exalted and honored place at the center of American culture and have instead sought out more government control over our lives.  Through the granting of special rights to some people, all have seen the destruction of their liberty.  And while President Obama is not the first US President to seek out the subjugation of the American people, he has taken America closer to indenture and serfdom than any other; through this present administration the Federal Government has taken control of the financial and manufacturing sectors, and is poised to take over the energy and healthcare sectors as well.  This is not a political treatise, but is rather a call to all Christians to remember:  we have seen this before.

When the prophet Samuel was getting old, the elders came to him to ask for him to appoint a king to rule over them.  Samuel’s sons were corrupt and the elders feared what would happen; God told Samuel to give this response:

He said, “This is what the king who will reign over you will do:  He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots.   Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots.   He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers.   He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants.   He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants.  Your menservants and maidservants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use.   He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves.   When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the LORD will not answer you in that day.”  (1 Samuel 8:11-18 NIV)

Notice what God said the king would do to the people if they became subjects of an Earthly king.  He said the king would take their sons and daughters to work for him (such as nationalizing whole economic sectors).  He said the king would take the fruits of their labor and give them to his attendants (such as using the money seized through a confiscatory taxation policy to enrich political supporters).  He said the king would take their wealth and use it for himself (such as using taxpayers to finance government takeovers of private companies). 

Again, this is not an indictment of President Obama alone; this trend has been going on for eighty years.  The President of the United States is very much a reflection of the American People – in terms of their desire to follow God.  See, when the Israelites asked for a king, God told Samuel that they had rejected God as their king.  In so doing they had surrendered their God-given liberty and willingly subjugated themselves and their children to a human being.  This should be a wake-up call to all American Christians!

We have a choice to make:  do we seek out the government to solve our problems for us, or do we look to God and follow his lead?  Are we going to surrender the classroom to atheists and let them indoctrinate our children with their own deluded imaginings?  Are we going to let them strip away America’s Christian identity?  Are we going to quietl subjugate ourselves to a king in the form of a President?  Are we going to reject God as our king?

-Charles Peterson

In a commencement address at Wesleyan University in 2008, then-Senator Obama gave this admonition to the audience:  “our individual salvation depends on collective salvation”.  His remarks were in the context of his belief that the American dream is attained by the individual being subsumed into the collective group.  This quote immediately strikes at my belief in the American Dream and in is direct contradiction to the Founding Documents; but it did make me think, “where do we look for salvation?”

My first thought is that the American ideal is one of personal freedom and accountability – Self-Reliance!  But is that what it should be?  No doubt we should all be responsible for our actions and reap the rewards or losses of what we do.  However, when all seems against us, do we look within ourselves for the answers?  If so, we are missing out on the source of our strength.  Look at David’s conversation with King Saul about whether or not David could go to face Goliath:

Saul replied, “You are not able to go out against this Philistine and fight him; you are only a boy, and he has been a fighting man from his youth.”  But David said to Saul, “Your servant has been keeping his father’s sheep. When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, I went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth.  When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it.   Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the living God.   The LORD who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine.”  Saul said to David, “Go, and the LORD be with you.”  (1 Samuel 17:33-37 NIV)

Clearly David did not rely on himself, but looked for strength from God.  But there are others who might say that community is who can save our nation from its sinking into moral depravity.  They say that in order to raise children properly, “it takes a village”.  But this is not what Joshua believed:

“Now fear the LORD and serve him with all faithfulness.  Throw away the gods your forefathers worshiped beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD.   But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.”  (Joshua 24:14-15 NIV)

Joshua told the community that they had to make a choice between the World and God.  But he also make it plain that he was going to follow God regardless of what his community chose to do.  He was willing to be ostracized by those around him rather than let the “village” decide what was right and wrong.  But maybe the village is simply too small; there are many who believe that the government will save us.  Our President certainly thinks that government is the answer.  But Daniel and his friends did not think this way, and they chose wisely when they sought God’s salvation over the government’s:

Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego replied to the king, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter.   If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king.   But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.”  (Daniel 3:16-18 NIV)

Therefore these three examples show the fallacy that was exemplified in Barrack Obama’s statement:  our individual salvation is not linked with some collective salvation, but rather it is linked with our relationship with God!  David chose to trust in God rather than his arm, so God strengthened his arm.  Joshua chose not to trust in the community but rather to take a stand on God’s side, so God preserved him within the community.  Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego chose to reject the King’s evil command and instead hold to God, and so God preserved them in the fire.

These examples should remain on our minds and within our hearts constantly.  It is only God who is our refuge, and it is only God who is our defender!  Reject the collective mindset and embrace instead the Christian one!

-Charles Peterson

I was watching an episode of the History Channel program Life Without People in which was discussed the durability of various works of man such as the Statue of Liberty, the Houston Astrodome, and Boston’s John Hancock building.  The program assumed that all living people suddenly disappear and then looks at what happens afterwards to the “world we leave behind.”  In this particular episode, the Statue of Liberty was said to exist for up to an additional three hundred years before succumbing to decay and deterioration due to the lack of human maintenance.  It was thought possible that the force of a piece falling (the example given was the torch) might be enough to make an impression mold in the sea floor, which over the years could produce fossilized remains.  This then led to the statement at the end of the show that the most persistent human remains would in fact be our bones (such as with the dinosaurs).  The ending comment was “this is the final fate of human bodies.”

There are many who believe this statement, that our final fate is to decay and become bones.  And they do have the full facts supporting them, don’t they?  After all, we have the bones of many dead people available for us to examine.  And if this is true, then what is the point of life but to leave the world a better place than when we were here?

But this is not true.  Our final fate is not as bones interred in fossilized remains, but instead to be raised up, reinvigorated and made alive.  This is an important point, for there are many who claim to believe in God who do not accept the bodily resurrection.  They believe that we become ethereal spirits on a higher plane of existence.  But that is as false as those who believe in no spirit at all.

But someone may ask, “How are the dead raised?  With what kind of body will they come?”  How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies.  When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else.  But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body.  All flesh is not the same:  Men have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another.  There are also heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies; but the splendor of the heavenly bodies is one kind, and the splendor of the earthly bodies is another.  The sun has one kind of splendor, the moon another and the stars another; and star differs from star in splendor.  So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.  (1 Corinthians 15:35-43 NIV)

There is a time appointed when all men, from all times, will be raised and judged.  And the judgment will not be “did you make the world a better place?”  It will be “how well did you follow God’s laws?”  It is not a graduated scale, but rather a “pass/fail” sort of test.  And make no mistake, we will all fail that test.  Do not delude yourself by thinking that you can live your life as you please, “making the world a better place,” and can therefore rest easy apart from God’s law.  But do not despair, either!  Although none of us can pass that test, Jesus Christ did!  And in doing so, he opened the way for those who put their trust in him to live.  Our proof of that will come on the day of the resurrection.

The hand of the LORD was upon me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the LORD and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones.  He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry.  He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?”  I said, “O Sovereign LORD, you alone know.”  Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the LORD!  This is what the Sovereign LORD says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life.  I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life.  Then you will know that I am the LORD.’ “  (Ezekiel 37:1-6 NIV)

God is faithful, and so we can be assured of the fact that the resurrection will happen.  Our final fate is not the grave, but rather being raised to stand before God.  So with this in mind, do you want to stand there alone?  Or would you rather stand with Jesus?  That is a choice that must be made now.  Your final fate depends on that choice.

-Charles Peterson

This last week the world was shocked by the death of fifty-year old music icon Michael Jackson.  Jackson was a mainstay of my generation, having risen to prominence in the late 1970’s, and was credited with having been a fundamental influence on the MTV culture.  He was raised in a music-entertainment oriented family, lived a bizarrely scandal-clad life, and died under suspiciously controversial circumstances.  In the wake of the reporting on his death, many disturbing comments are being made:

“This is the day the music died”

“I have lost meaning in my life”

“The King is dead”

This hero worship is nothing new; Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, and Kurt Cobain all had large followings.  And I am sure that similar rhetoric was used to describe these icons as well.  But with Michael Jackson, this worship seems even more perverse in light of how much his shocking behavior was displayed for all of us to see.  It seems to be a sign of our times to ignore all of the glaring problems in a person’s character, simply to pay homage to that person’s popularity. 

How you have fallen from heaven, O morning star, son of the dawn!  You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations!  You said in your heart, “I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of the sacred mountain.  I will ascend above the tops of the clouds I will make myself like the Most High.”  But you are brought down to the grave, to the depths of the pit.  (Isaiah 14:12-15 NIV)

This was God’s response to the hubris of the King of Babylon.  It is not the only verse dealing with the subject of man’s pride!  In fact, one of the principle themes of the Bible is the predisposition of man to worship anything and everything except the Creator.  Our society is just as susceptible to this form of idolatry as past generations.  We seem to want to place our trust in man, rather than in God.

For all can see that wise men die; the foolish and the senseless alike perish and leave their wealth to others.  Their tombs will remain their houses forever, their dwellings for endless generations, though they had named lands after themselves.  But man, despite his riches, does not endure; he is like the beasts that perish.  This is the fate of those who trust in themselves, and of their followers, who approve their sayings.  (Psalm 49:10-13 NIV)

No matter what we do here, we will all die.  Rich or poor, healthy or sick, athletic or obese, we are appointed only a short while.  But in that short time we will either accept Jesus or reject him.  And that decision will affect eternity.

“The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried.  In hell, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side.  So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’  But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony.  And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’ “  (Luke 16:22-26 NIV)

The rich man wasn’t in torment because he had to “make up for having been comfortable,” but rather he was paying the price of not having seen to the needs of Lazarus when he was in need.  So trusting in our wealth or power is foolish; trusting in someone else’s wealth or power is even more foolish.  Yet people are doing just that when they build a cult of personality about a person.

Michael Jackson was a talented, if very troubled, entertainer; but he was only a man.  He lived for himself and he died for himself.  But the real King is not dead; Jesus Christ came to this world for us, he died for us, and he arose to eternal life for us.  The King is alive and is calling all of us into his court; let us not be late in responding!

-Charles Peterson

Last Friday I attended a prayer breakfast centered on efforts in the community to combat childhood hunger.  I took my Bible along and kept it with me during the course of the meal and the presentation.  At the end I left and, stopping by my house to change clothes on my way, proceeded to go to work.  Saturday morning I sat down in my home office to prepare my weekly sermon and bulletin article and could not find my Bible.  I looked about frantically until I realized that the last time I remember holding my Bible was at the prayer breakfast.  I called the fire department (the venue hosting the event) and they confirmed that they had my Bible; I dressed appropriately and drove over to retrieve what I was missing.  I was truly thankful that someone there had taken care of my Bible so that I would be able to get it – I thanked God, as well.

If this seems odd, understand that in addition to the availability of the Bible on the Internet I have no less than five copies of the Bible in my house that I could have used.  But I needed MY Bible!  I am used to it – I know where passages should appear on the page, I like the feel of how the pages turn, and I am comforted by the weight and size.  Do these things matter in terms of my ability to read the Word of God?  No, they have no bearing on that.  And if I had permanently lost my copy I could have replaced it fairly easily.  But it would have been very disruptive to my life.

I know that this sounds like I have severe psychological problems.  I have many books in my house (I am a certified “book lover”), but I do not obsess over them in this way.  But my Bible is different!  I can read God’s word from any of a number of sources, but at any given time I only possess ONE Bible copy that serves as my primary source.  I believe this is because the Bible is not just another book!  It is sacred and holy in a very real way that has little to do with the bindings on a leather and paper apparatus.  I become very attached to a particular copy of the Bible at a time, probably because the content of the Book is my connection to the will of God and my source of Divine comfort and strength.

Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path.  I have taken an oath and confirmed it, that I will follow your righteous laws.  I have suffered much; preserve my life, O LORD, according to your word.  Accept, O LORD, the willing praise of my mouth, and teach me your laws.  Though I constantly take my life in my hands, I will not forget your law.  The wicked have set a snare for me, but I have not strayed from your precepts.  Your statutes are my heritage forever; they are the joy of my heart.  My heart is set on keeping your decrees to the very end.  (Psalm 119:105-112 NIV)

It is no coincidence that the longest chapter in the Bible (the 119^th Psalm) is devoted to praising God’s word!  This Psalm is divided into twenty-two parts, each one titled after a letter in the Hebrew alphabet with that same letter beginning the passage.  The psalmist had a profound love for God’s word – his commandments, teachings, and ways.  I’ve heard people refer to the Bible as “Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth” and other such whimsical notions.  And while I am not attacking those things, I wonder if we have the sincerely dependent love for the Bible as that psalmist did for the small portion available to him. 

The Bible is God’s revelation to man!  It is through reading the Bible that God can open your heart and mind together to his will.  But the Bible is a horrible reference guide.  It is not meant to be set on a shelf, only to be opened like a dictionary.  Too many people have no use for the Bible until something happens to them and they say, “let me look this situation up.”  It is only through daily reading of the Bible that you can begin to unlock the mystery of God’s love in your life!  As the children sing, “the B-I-B-L-E, yes that’s the book for me!”

-Charles Peterson

This last week I was taken aback by some old photographs my wife had unpacked while moving old boxes around.  One in particular cut right to my heart; it was a picture of my oldest daughter at around eighteen months old.  The expression of the child in the photo brought back a flood of memories, from her quick thievery of the toppings her mother and I would prepare for homemade pizza (green pepper slices were her favorites) to the mundane errands she and I would run together.  The discussion of the photos grew in scope as we reminisced about our other daughters and joyfully compared the three distinct personalities.  We talked about the changes that have taken place over the last nine and a half years of our marriage, and about how many more were ahead of us.  The conversation ended with our wish that those moments had not passed; but of course they had to, or we would never have had the next moments.  We are limited, because time does not heed our call.

Time flows in one direction.  Yes, I know what some scientists say, about time going in both directions (forwards and backwards), and possibly even other directions.  But really, in flows in only one direction for us:  forwards.  None of us experience time in any way other than looking backward in our past but moving inexorably forward into our future.  This is by design, not by accident, just as our awareness of this fact is by that same design.

I have seen the burden God has laid on men.  He has made everything beautiful in its time.  He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.  I know that there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live.  That everyone may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all his toil—this is the gift of God.  I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that men will revere him.  (Ecclesiastes 3:10-14 NIV)

God, by design, set eternity in our hearts, and then caused the work of his hands to be permanent and the work of ours to be temporary.  Why?  So that we would revere him!

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.  (Genesis 1:1 NIV)

God’s word starts with the phrase, “In the beginning,” implying that there was nothing before this point other than God; there was no space and no time.  Time is often referred to as a river, flowing on in one direction and sweeping past events.  But it could also be viewed as a building, with each floor being built on top of all those that came before.  If we view time in this way, then the “In the beginning” phrase is the ground floor upon which all of the time since has been built.

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city.  On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month.  And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.  No longer will there be any curse.  The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him.  They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.  There will be no more night.  They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light.  And they will reign for ever and ever.  (Revelation 22:1-5 NIV)

Looking at the end of the Bible, we see the preview that God gives us of what our life will be like after time.  Currently, we struggle against the forces of darkness and we struggle against our own dark hearts; but there we will walk fully and completely in the light!  And tied to this is the reality of eternity that is expressed as “for ever and ever.”  You see, for all of those moments of joy with my daughter that I can re-live only in memory, my existence there will be complete and not a series of events being swept away by time.  Eternity has been set in our hearts not to frustrate us, but to liberate us from fear:  God is planning greatness for you and I!

-Charles Peterson