Ben Hur

Oooppps...

It has been awhile again. Uh oh.

Well, I finished Gansky's 40 Days book several weeks ago. I enjoyed reading it. Even though I have read the New Testament many times, Gansky has a way of pulling things together and helping you so see more than you were seeing when you are reading book to book, chapter to chapter. I liked the book. It encouraged me and it taught me. I would recommend it. Be forwarned however. When Gansky summarizes what the resurrection has done for us and its applications, he talks about several things, but does not address the infilling of the Holy Spirit in today's believer, which many Christians accept in addition to the indwelling of the Holy Spirit upon being born-again.

Ben Hur - A tale of the Christ.

Immediately after finishing Gansky's book, I started an abridged version of Ben Hur. I don't recall reading this book in high school or at the university. Maybe I am the last person in the world to read this book? I have a vague recollection of maybe seeing the movie when I was a youngster? But then maybe not. At any rate I finished reading the book this past Saturday evening. I found it to be difficult reading. The usage of so many commas in every sentence kind of threw me. Also, the writing was strange to me in its structure. I had to reread many of the sentences and paragraphs to fully comprehend what the words were telling me. I did like the story. It was engaging. I liked reading about characters who were seeking a Messiah, someone to deliver them from the political rule of the time who would establish an earthly kingdom, but in the end coming to the realization that the Messiah did not come at that time to establish an earthly kingdom, but a kingdom in the hearts of men, thus the Messiah was also the Savior, saving men from their sinfulness with the Savior's (Christ's) sacrifice. Did you notice all the commas I used in that sentence? Well today, I went shopping out of town with my wife. While at a store, I found a used DVD of the 1959 Best Picture award Ben Hur movie directed by William Wyler. I had told the people at work that I was reading Ben Hur, and they asked why I just didn't watch the movie. Well, now I will!

"I am the resurrection and the life;

he who believes in Me will live even

if he dies, and everyone who lives and

believes in Me will never die.

Do you believe this?"

-Jesus Christ

New Book I am reading, 40 Days.

A favorite author of mine that I like to read, Alton Gansky, who writes both nonfiction and fiction, just recently wrote a new book called 40 Days - Encountering Jesus Between the Resurrection and Ascension published in 2007 by B&H Publishing Group, Nashville TN.

Besides having read several of Gansky's excellent fiction books, earlier this year I read his work Uncovering the Bible's Greatest Mysteries and was immediately caught up with it. I liked this book so well, that I purchased the book he had written previously titled Uncovering God's Mysterious Ways. While I enjoyed Uncovering the Bible's Greatest Mysteries more, they both were good reads. So when I found that he had written another nonfiction book, 40 Days, I couldn't resist ordering it.

Well it showed up in the mail today. Yippee!

Hey, did you hear the good news? When the disciples showed up to check out the tomb, guess what? They didn't find Jesus' dead body lying there! When Jesus' body found them, it wasn't dead anymore! Their Jesus was alive again! Hallelujah!

I might be a little excited about getting to read this book!

Another Quote from a book I am reading.

"Man was created originally to have fellowship with God. This fellowship is so vital that without it man is like a jet aircraft flying in a dense fog and suddenly losing all its instruments."

-Hal Lindsey, The Greatest Works of Hal Lindsey - The Late Great Planet Earth, chapter 12, Inspirational Press: New York, NY, 1994.

Translation:

Man is utterly lost and blind without God, living each moment of life on the brink of eternal disaster.

Yes we are still here.

Greetings!

This space has not had much going on for awhile. I have plenty of material to post, but have had little time with the work schedule and its demands to spend the time posting. However, I allotted a little web time this afternoon, so here's a short post so you, and you know who you are, know we still exist.

Fellow blogger, An Elder For JC, is having a tough time right now. Remember him in prayer. His wife has not been doing very well for the last several weeks. Reports of her condition are very discouraging to hear. Apparantly she is very sick.

Father, God in Heaven we remember this dear lady in our prayers, we pray for healing, we pray for mercy in her situation, we pray for your intervention in her situation, we pray for our Elder brother, we pray for him as he deals with the situation, we pray that he will be strengthened and touched by You as he deals with the realities of the situations facing him, in Jesus name we ask and pray these things. We know that as we stand by them, You also are right there, helping and making a difference that only You can make, a difference that we believe and depend on You to make, that we are unable in and of ourselves to make. Amen.

John MacArthur offers no hope to Christians?

John MacArthur, well respected for his expository works regarding scripture, seemingly offers no hope to Christians regarding the power of Christ to operate in their lives through the ministry of saved mankind operating in the gifts of the Spirit on their behalf.

He writes that there is little hope that Christians of our age will actually be saved when they die (he uses 213 pages to explain this in his book "Hard to Believe" which does contain valid concerns in regards to man and their salvation) and to not expect anyone (aside from God I hope) to help you supernaturally with your sickness, demon possession, or premature death. This last part for me is literally, hard to believe.

Having said that, here is my thoughts regarding a quote from MacArthur's book "Hard to Believe". It is not my intent to discredit, throw mud at, or ruin MacArthur's reputation here, but to simply disagree with his belief regarding the apostolic age compared to our church age. I had posted this as a comment on another blog, but put it here as well.

I have been reading John MacArthur's "Hard to Believe" book. I bought the book several years ago but am just now reading it finally. Yes, I am sure everyone who blogs has already blogged this book, and I am way behind.

The book jacket caught my attention because of what it said on the back "This book is John MacArthur's unflinching, unapologetic treatise on the modern tendency to alter the true message of Christianity in order to meet the whims and desires of a culture hoping for nonconfrontational messages, easy answers, and superficial committments." This got me curious and I asked myself, 'What does he think is wrong with the churches today?'. So I bought the book.

My list of what I think is wrong with churches and 'Christians' today is rather lengthy but I was surprised at how strongly and unreservedly he attacked 'evangelicals', 'charismatics', 'preachers trying to get people power' and televangelists (and that's not even mentioning the attack on the 'seeker friendly' church). At any rate, I have plodded on through the book and still have two chapters left.

I do recall previously seeing unsympathetic blogs regarding John and his attack on the 'church'. But I was still unprepared for what I read. Evangelicals, charismatics, pentecostals, faith- healers, televangelists, and seeker-friendly churches are apparently single handedly thwarting the advance of the Kingdom of God being established in the hearts of men and women around the world -according to John.

Well okay, yes I agree, saying a 'sinner's prayer' or giving money to the televangelist is not going to guarantee entry into heaven. And I would agree that churches where the preaching never brings conviction of sin or never exposes the sinfulness of man to man, where the work of the Holy Spirit in convicting men's hearts is not welcome -well I would agree that church is not fulfilling its intended mission. We would be well to avoid these churches for our feedings.

Here's where I take exception to John MacArthur's writings. In chapter 10, 'Traitor's to the Faith' of "Hard to Believe" page 171, he writes: "No one on earth can have the power of Jesus Christ to do what he did, and anybody who promises otherwise is lying. God granted the power of Jesus Christ only to the apostles and those who followed in the apostolic age to establish His messiahship. You will never have the power to heal the sick or raise the dead, walk on water, or cast out demons." (The bold emphasis is mine.)

Are we just supposed to take whatever Satan and his demonic reign over this world throw our way and never stand up to it in the name of Jesus? I don't think so! We in and of ourselves are powerless against the enemy(ies) of God (meaning Satan and his strategies to take men to hell with him). Because of this, I do not believe for one fraction of a second that Jesus would leave us in this age without the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives to combat Satan and his works in our lives. We in and of ourselves in the natural may not have the power to do what Jesus did, but Jesus already overcame Satan, and Jesus avails us the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit in our lives to enforce that victory. I believe this means that we not only have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit when we are born-again (become the sons of God through regeneration by putting our faith in what Jesus and only Jesus has done for us to gain eternal life), but that we can also experience the infilling of the Holy Spirit to be given power in our lives to do what God has called us to do and to stand in the face of evil: laying hands on the sick and expecting them to recover, seeing the dead rise from their lifelessness, casting demons out, and preaching that cuts to the heart of men and brings conviction of sin leading to true salvation.

If saved men didn't have the power of Jesus to do the things Jesus did, anytime any attack that could be traced back to Satan came against them and those around them, wouldn't we be just standing around wringing our hands with our tails tucked between our legs watching Satan destroy everything around us? I have heard too many testimonies from this church age, of healings and demons departing their host, where saved men were participants in the event to accept that the power of Christ is not alive and well in men to heal the sick, cast out demons, and raise the dead.

I really believed that when I read in the Bible that Jesus healed the incurable disease in His day, that I could be healed today of today's incurable diseases whether Jesus healed me or whether Jesus healed me through the ministry of man operating in the power and gifts of the Holy Spirit. Despite MacArthur's claims (he probably has a book filled with scripture that 'proves' this claim?) that no one on earth has the power to heal the sick and cast out demons, I will continue to believe otherwise. I refuse to put God in a box that does not allow these things to occur in my world.

As a side note, based on the criteria for books that could be placed in our church library, the above statement by MacArthur would eliminate "Hard to Believe" from being in our library. It is contrary to the teachings and beliefs of our pastor and the 'denomination' we are associated with.

K-Fish

A Life Changed

A quote from a book I am reading:

"Salvation is not an addition; it's a transformation that leads to willing submission to His Word. The whole message of 1 John is that if you are truly redeemed, it will manifest itself in a transformed life in which you confess sin, characteristically obey the Lord, and manifest love for the Lord and others. The divine miracle of a changed life reveals true salvation, resulting in a heart that desires to obey the Lord. As Jesus said, "If you abide in My word, you are my disciples indeed" (John 8:31)."

from chapter 5 of "Hard to Believe" by John MacArthur

Working in a Jacuzzi

Recently, I received the email content, featured below, from a close friend who is struggling with liking their job. I thought it was funny, but doubted it was true because of a 'wet-suit' being used with a brass helmet rather than a dry-suit. And a garden hose? That being said, here is the story:

Having a bad day at work????

If laughter is the best medicine, this is sureto help your work attitude.

I LOVE MY JOB . . . . . .

This is even funnier when you realize it's real! Next time you have a bad day at work think of this guy.Rob is a commercial saturation diver for Global Divers in Louisiana. He performs underwater repairs on offshore drilling rigs. Below is an E-mail he sent to his sister. She then sent it to radio station 103.2 on FM dial in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, who was sponsoring a worst job experience contest. Needless to say, she won.

"Hi Sue,

Just another note from your bottom-dwelling brother. Last week I had a bad day at the office. I know you've been feeling down lately at work, so I thought I would share my dilemma with you to make you realize it's not so bad after all. Before I can tell you what happened to me, I first must bore you with a few technicalities of my job. As you know, my office lies at the bottom of the sea. I wear a suit to the office. It's a wet suit. This time of year the water is quite cool. So what we do to keep warm is this: We have a diesel powered industrial water heater. This $20,000 piece of equipment sucks the water out of the sea. It heats it to a delightful temperature. It then pumps it down to the diver through a garden hose, which is taped to the air hose. Now this sounds like a good plan, and I've used it several times with no complaints. What I do, when I get to the bottom and start working, is take the hose and stuff it down the back of my wet suit. This floods my whole suit with warm water. It's like working in a Jacuzzi. Everything was going well until all of a sudden, my bottom started to itch. So, of course, I scratched it. This only made things worse. Within a few seconds my bottom started to burn. I pulled the hose out from my back, but the damage was done. In agony I realized what had happened. The hot water machine had sucked up a jellyfish and pumped it into my suit. Now, since I don't have any hair on my back, the jellyfish couldn't stick to it. However, the crack of my bottom was not as fortunate. When I scratched what I thought was an itch, I was actually grinding the jellyfish into the crack of my bottom. I informed the dive supervisor of my dilemma over the communicator. His instructions were unclear due to the fact that he, along with five other divers, were all laughing hysterically. Needless to say I aborted the dive. I was instructed to make three agonizing in-water decompression stops totaling thirty-five minutes before I could reach the surface to begin my chamber dry decompression. When I arrived at the surface, I was wearing nothing but my brass helmet. As I climbed out of the water, the medic, with tears of laughter running down his face, handed me a tube of cream and told me to rub it on my bottom as soon as I got in the chamber. The cream put the fire out, but I couldn't go to the bathroom for two days because my bottem was swollen shut."

So, next time you're having a bad day at work, think about how much worse it would be if you had a jellyfish shoved up your bottom. Now repeat to yourself, "I love my job, I love my job, I love my job. Now whenever you have a bad day, ask yourself, is this a jellyfish bad day? May you NEVER have a jellyfish bad day!!!!!

I checked this story out on http://www.snopes.com/humor/letters/diver.htm and found that versions of this story have been circulating since 1998. Also, it turns out that the trueness of the story is questionable because of the wet-suit aspect.

Happy Easter

I bought my wife a chocolate easter bunny a month ago, and she ate it already. Wonder what it was thinking as she nibbled off each piece. You do believe chocolate easter bunnies have feelings don't you?