Wisdom's Friend

Wisdom's Friend
Wisdom's Friend

Friday, July 20, 2012

Ultimate Danger

ULTIMATE

THE HIDDEN DANGER OF RELATIVE LIVING

It has been said that good is the enemy of the best. What is often left unsaid is the danger of settling for the good instead of striving for the best. We will look more closely at this danger later, but we begin by noting that the word striving is used deliberately here. For while God grants good gifts to all humanity, without any effort on man's part, his best is reserved only for those who seek him with utmost passion.

"You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart" (Jer. 19:13).

"But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus" (Phil. 3:13,14).

"I worked harder than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me" (1 Cor. 15:10).

Note that we are not speaking of salvation here, for the Bible makes clear (Eph. 2:8) that this is a free gift of God that cannot be earned by man. But salvation is but the first step towards experiencing the ultimate depths of God in one's life; it is the moment of new birth, not the full maturation that comes only long afterwards, after a whole life of growing up from being a spiritual infant.

The Bible says that God causes the sun and its good warmth and light to rise on both the evil and the good (Mt. 5:45). This is an example of the good things that God sheds upon all humanity. This is relative good. But ultimate good--God and the things of God--do require effort on man's part to receive.

But most people never get past the good things God gives to us in this world to proceed onward to the best things that he desires to give to us. Instead, they are satisfied to live their lives far below the high level for which God has created us, which is intimate communion with him. Food, shelter, some degree of pleasure--these are what they desire, in varying degrees. A dog is satisfied with these things.

But we are not mere animals, despite the constant cry of the evolutionists to the contrary. God has called us to much more. We have been called to lift up our eyes to see the grand design of God for us, to have a higher vision than that which is so commonly found in this world.

"Let us fix our eyes on Jesus . . ." (Heb. 12:2).

We are to have our eyes set on God and the things of God. That is the ultimate vision, the ultimate way of living. This is in stark contrast to the relative life so many live in this world. And the tragedy of this type of life is that it is not life at all, and, in fact, leads to ultimate death. Living relative life ends in ultimate death. This is the danger of relative living, and it is hidden from mankind until their eyes are opened in Christ by the Holy Spirit to see this hidden danger. As the familiar hymn so simply but eloquently says, "I once was blind, but now I see." And as Scripture informs us, there is only one way for a person to remove the veil that hides his vision from this deeper life: it can be done only through union by faith and baptism into Jesus Christ:

"But their minds were made dull, for to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away. Even to this day when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts. But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away" (2 Cor. 3:14-16 NIV).

EXPOSING THE HIDDEN DANGER

If we would see, then we must be aware and know that there are, in fact, two types of death, just as there are two types of life. There is the relative life and relative death and then there is ultimate life and ultimate death. Jesus spoke of these two types, the relative and the ultimate, in these words:

"He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die"(Jn. 11:25,26).

That there are two types of both life and death is implied in these words of him who is life (Jn. 14:6). For Life said that the believer in him would live even though he dies. So there must be more to life than mere existence, life itself, for he said, "even though he dies".

Here Jesus promises that even if we die, it is possible to live. Furthermore, he speaks of the other end of this issue, saying that one who believes in him will never die. Unless there is something else other than the common, everyday view of life and death that humans hold, these words cannot be true. But they are true because they are spoken by him who cannot lie (Heb. 6:18) and who is the truth (Jn. 14:6).

Thus there is something more to life and death as we commonly perceive it. In fact, we ordinarily think of the life we know and the death we all must face as the ultimate realities. But the truth is that they are only relative. There is a life that is more than the common life known to man, which is mere existence, a life much better than that which we normally enjoy; and there is a death that is much worse than that of which we are normally aware. We take a look first at the life aspect.


RELATIVE LIFE versus ULTIMATE LIFE

Jesus said, "I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full" (Jn. 10:10). Thus it is quite clear that ordinary life that man lives without Jesus in that life is not the ultimate life God intends for man; it is relative life: good, yes, but definitely not the highest good, the fullness of life we are meant to have. It is a sad fact that the mankind, left to itself, lives its life fully in this limited world. Scripture describes this mindset this way:

"Their god is their appetite: They are proud of what they should be ashamed of; and all they think about is this life here on earth" (Phil. 3:19 TLB).

Many are they whose sole purpose in life is simply to enjoy solely for themselves as much as life has to offer, never considering that there is a judgment by God for how one has lived one's life. Not believing in a God who judges and not believing in a resurrection for judgment, their philosophy of self enjoyment is a natural result of such thinking:

"If the dead are not raised, then 'let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die' " (1 Cor. 15:32 WEB).

But that Scripture passage goes on to issue this warning to those who are influenced by this very popular worldview: "Do not be misled: 'Bad company corrupts good character' "(v. 33). It then goes on to show how to avoid being deceived and destroyed by this deadly, false worldview: "Come back to your senses as you ought, and stop sinning; for there are some who are ignorant of God--I say this to your shame" (v. 34).

Yes, it is to one's utter shame if he cannot see the plain truth about reality, that there is a God for whom we are made and that all his good gifts are meant to point us to him.

"I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. . . . The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse" (Rom.1:16,18-20 NIV).

There is no excuse for not seeing what is so obvious, that there is a God who created all that exists and that he has claim upon that creation, including us human beings, to live for the purposes for which he created us, which is to know him, love him, serve him and worship him. To live for any other reason is to bring shame to one's soul.

Notice that this passage uses the phrase "suppress the truth". It is not that human beings do not know that there is a God; they know it from what he has created. But they suppress this knowledge because they do not want to serve the One who created them with innate ability to know the truth about creation and reality. They suppress what God wants them to know but which they do not want to know, all the while continuing to want to know what God has expressly forbidden them to know. It has been this way ever since Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. On the very day they chose forbidden knowledge while rejecting revealed knowledge, they died, spiritually; physical death came much later but was inevitable as a natural consequence of rebellion against God. That there are such types of death is one of Scripture's revelations to us.

THE PERVERSENESS OF FALLEN HUMAN NATURE

It is clear from the way most people in this world live that they do not believe God when he tells them the ultimate truth about reality and his existence and their own. Instead, they prefer to choose or even create, they think, their own reality, a reality more friendly to their own self-centered desires. This is not a new aberation of  sinful man but has been around for a long, long time. Ages ago, even the chosen people of God, the Jews, told the prophets whom God sent to warn them of their refusal to quit living relative lives and to start relating their lives to him who is the ultimate life that they did not want to hear the message God had given to those prophets. Therefore God accurately described those people in this way:

"These are rebellious people, deceitful children, children unwilling to listen to the Lord's instruction. They say to the seers, 'See no more visions!' and to the prophets, 'Give us no more visions of what is right! Tell us pleasant things, prophesy illusions. Leave this way, get off this path, and stop confronting us with the Holy One of Israel!' " (Is. 30:9,10).

Incredible! An entire people prefer lies and a false vision of reality instead of the truth! How can this be? Surely no one really wants to live a lie, to live one's entire life in a fantasy world. Sadly, it is true. In fact, far more people fool themselves and deceive themselves that their own, self-centered lifestyle is the appropriate way to live rather than the way proclaimed by God in his Word. Nevertheless, God does not force them to admit their error; instead, he says of them:

"Leave them; they are blind guides. If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit" (Mt. 15:14).

Jesus truly spoke well by describing such blind people as falling into a pit, for Scripture often speaks of the end of such people as being in a pit, the pit of hell and its fire. This is the danger of relative living: It ends in ultimate death.

 THE DANGER OF RELATIVE LIVING

People are free to live life however they choose in this world. But they are not free to escape the consequences of that choice. There are laws and justice systems that are in place to punish offenders of the law. And if a person somehow avoids punishment in this world, there is always the punishment of the next. No one escapes final judgment. Some may seem to live wicked lives on this earth and never pay the penalty for it, but we are assured by God in his Word that there is always a final accounting for every individual's life. Sometimes we see a person's inner, hidden heart and motives, and sometimes we cannot, but we are assured that God sees all and there is an ultimate judgment for all.

"Some men's sins are evident, preceding them to judgment, and some also follow later" (1 Tim. 5:24 WEB).

Whether sooner or later, judgment is thus assured by God's Word. Jesus had this to say about this matter:

"He who rejects me, and doesn’t receive my sayings, has one who judges him. The word that I spoke, the same will judge him in the last day" (Jn. 12:48 WEB).

The consequences for rejecting God and his laws and his Savior, Jesus Christ, are most severe. They are, in fact, ultimate. Those who have lived their lives as relative lives, that is, not in accord with the ultimate laws and ways of God but only relative to the ways of this world will ultimately face ultimate punishment: separation from God for the ultimate "amount" of time, that is, eternity. There is no more terrifying prospect than this. It is the ultimate fate of horror: to exist forever apart from God, with not the least bit of goodness or pleasure in that existence, for where God is not, there is no good.

This is the message that has been attempted to be conveyed here in this piece of writing. My heart aches and sorrows for the multitudes I see caught up in deception, with no love for God or truth, racing on their way to eternal torment because they have no love for the truth.

"They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved" (2 Ths. 2:10 NIV).

Friend, do not be one who lives a relative life. The consequences are the ultimate in horror. Live the ultimate life of life in Jesus Christ. It's consequences are also ultimate, but they are the ultimate in joy: life forever with God in heaven.

Saturday, July 7, 2012

2012: WHY THE WILD WEATHER

The summer of 2012 in the USA will always be remembered for the number and severity of storms, wildfires, extreme heat waves, and other extreme weather that struck the country. What are we to make of such widespread and extreme happenings? They are clearly out of the ordinary, as the shattering of thousands of temperature records prove. Do we just chalk it up to the vagaries of weather? Blame it on global warming? Or could there be a deeper cause?

The more extraordinary the phenomenon, the more extraordinary is its cause likely to be. The weather extremes in the USA in 2012 are so beyond ordinary that any observant person should immediately suspect something going on that is far beyond the normal. An astute person looking for the root cause of all this supernormal activity in nature will look not to the natural realm but to the supernatural. Two examples from the Bible come to mind that bolster this contention.

The first is the Great Flood of Noah's day. Before that time, in the Garden of Eden, Scripture says that "God had not sent rain on the earth . . . but (a mist) came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground" (Gen. 2:5,6 NIV). In other words, before sin corrupted the paradise that was originally earth, everything was of a gentler nature because everything was in tune and in accord with the nature of the God who created it--and that nature is gentle. The psalmist says of God, "Thy gentleness hath made me great" (Ps. 18:35 KJV).

Elsewhere, one of Job's friends, though often having a mistaken view of God and reality, did speak knowingly in one passage, where he says, "Are God's consolations not enough for you, words spoken gently to you? Why has your heart carried you away, and why do your eyes flash, so that you vent your rage against God and pour out such words from your mouth?" (Job 15:11-13 NIV).

Those words were spoken long ago in response to the calamities that had struck Job, calamities far beyond those normal to life in this fallen world. They also hold a hint as to why these extreme weather catastrophes have befallen our own nation in our own time. Ill-conceived words from our society and government against God and his laws have caused God to respond, changing his preferred tone of gentleness to one of severe warning and judgment. If people do not respond to his gentle ways, then he must increase the pressure on them to repent of their sin and rebellion against him. He does this out of his unchanging love for them, for he has already proven that he will do all that he can to warn them and try to turn them from their wicked folly. He proved that when he gave up his only Son on the cross to save all mankind from the consequences of sin.

We have had a long period of gentle reproof from God and verbal warnings. Those reproofs and warnings were ignored as America went from wickedness to wickedness, passing laws that defied God's laws for life and how it should be respected and lived. Therefore, God must now turn up the heat--both figuratively and literally--to try to get our attention. If we will not respond to gentler means, then more drastic measures must be taken. The extreme weather calamities of 2012 are one way in which this is done. It may be possible to look the other way when godless laws are passed in the land; it is not possible to ignore stifling heat and wildfires that spread across the land. We should pay attention to the warnings that these extreme weather events are meant to convey to us, for there is always a connection between the natural and the supernatural, just there was in Noah's day.

The second illustration from the Bible is that of the ten plagues of the Exodus (Ex. 7-12). No one who reads the biblical account of that massive exodus from Egypt can help but be struck by the extraordinary nature of the ten plagues: frogs and gnats that covered the land; hail of incredible proportions and intensity; and mysterious darkness that descended on the land. An hypothesis has been put forth that all the very unusual weather phenomena of the exodus were the result of a comet passing through earth's atmosphere. Whether that is so or not is open to debate, but even if true, that would only explain the strange events on a surface level. Natural phenomena are only the means by which supernatural causes are manifested. We should not confuse the mechanics of extreme natural events with their underlying real causes.

A stubborn, unmoving high-pressure system in the middle of the country may be the culprit causing the physical process of a heat wave, but what makes that high pressure system so stubborn and unmoving in the first place? To seek the answer to that question in terms of other natural causes fails to understand the connection between the supernatural and the natural worlds. That such a connection does indeed exist is affirmed in many places in Scripture; the book of Amos alone contains a number of them, as it describes how God uses the world of nature as a vehicle to carry out his decisions in the heavenly realms:

"I . . . withheld rain from you. . . . I sent rain on one town, but withheld it from another. One field had rain, another had none and dried up" (Amos 4:7).

The United States, in this incredible year, saw wildfires of unprecedented size and number; drought and heat swept over much of the country; record-breaking numbers of tornadoes and storms of great intensity ravaged other parts of the land. All of this left the people stunned and in shock. What is going on? They do not know. They do not know because they do not look to the supernatural for the explanation; they leave God out of the picture.

And what is the supernatural explanation? It is given in that same passage quoted above from Amos. After describing various harsh and frightening disasters that have struck the land, he makes it clear that God was the cause of these disasters.

"I . . . withheld rain from you" (v. 7).

"Many times I struck . . ." (v. 9).

"I sent plagues . . ." (v. 10).

And after each such plain declaration that God is the real, supernatural cause of these disturbances in weather and the land, comes the equally clear statement of why he is doing this: to wake up the people out of their deadly complacency. After each disaster's description comes these words: "Yet you did not return to me" (vs. 6,8,9,19).

Some might object that a loving God would not do this. Isn't God love? How then can he do such dreadful things to human beings? He does it for the same reason a loving parent disciplines a disobedient child: precisely because he does love that child and knows that if that child continues on his wayward path, only pain and suffering await him. He does it to turn the child from his own selfish, harmful ways.

"God disciplines us for our good . . . No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it" (Heb. 12:10,12 NIV).

"Do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son" (Heb. 12:5,6 NIV).

"We have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the "Father of our spirits and live!" (Heb. 12:9 NIV).

But this nation has not submitted. Instead, it has flaunted God's laws and created new laws that defy those laws. Therefore, God must discipline such disobedience, for if it were to continue, the whole nation would go down to hell and its fires. And since this people and nation has paid no attention to the gentle voice of God, he sends more drastic measures as loving warnings, turning the land into a small foretaste of the hell that awaits it if it continues down its wayward path. There could hardly be a more dramatic, living demonstration of the hellish fate that awaits any nation that continually defies God:

"All the nations that forget God shall be turned into hell" (Ps. 9:17 KJV).

We in America experienced the truth of this Scripture in 2012. Much of this country was turned into a miniature taste of hell, because we forgot God and his many blessings upon this country.

"She has not acknowledged that I was the one who gave her the grain, the new wine and oil, who lavished on her the silver and the gold--which they used for Baal. Therefore I will take away my grain when it ripens, and my new wine . . . I will punish her" (Hos. 2:8,9,13 NIV).

We have forgotten God and are in danger of being a nation that is turned into hell. The only way of escape is to repent and turn back to God. Jesus Christ is the only way (Jn. 14:6).