Last week at the local high school, I struck up a conversation with a middle-aged janitor in the faculty lunchroom. When he discovered I was a retired preacher moonlighting as a substitute teacher, his face lit up as he told me he too was a Christian, and he then began to share with me the joy he was experiencing from the Christian life in which he had immersed himself. He attends his church whenever the doors are opened (several times per week), reads his…
“I can quit whenever I want” is the famous phrase uttered by all drinkers who are just beginning the tortuous, painful journey into alcoholism. Eventually, that particular addiction is impossible to hide, but there is another addiction that is much more pervasive but also much more subtle. Generally, just like the beginning alcoholic, until this addict is set free from this addiction, he is not even aware he was addicted. Last week, of the two alcoholics we investigated, both continued in their addiction,…
The first alcoholic is a friend who is a serious, committed Christian. Her alcoholism is not the drink-every-day-but-continue-to-function-normally brand so she can hold down a steady job, as can many alcoholics. Her’s is the binge variety. She gets drunk for at least a week at a time, usually longer, and shuts down completely, often ending up in the hospital. When she is sober, she is positive about her relationship with God, reads the Bible regularly, attends church and shares her faith all over Facebook.…
“It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, But the glory of kings is to search out a matter” ( Proverbs 25:2). A few days ago I sent out an excellent article on free trade. This one today is the rebuttal, also excellent. What is the biblical answer? On many such controversial questions about biblical truth that I have had during my life I have come to see that I was just flat wrong on my views and have changed 180 degrees. On…
Some forty years ago some slightly older friends had their children in a tiny, independent, “Christian school” with about twenty other young grade-schoolers. Jill and I, with three little children ourselves at the time, thought our friends were crazy. We naively were just beginning the unquestioned, twelve-year public school journey with Adam, Jason and Ramah, just following the Christian culture around us, because “that’s what everyone does.” We never even thought about anything else. The only alternative to government schools we had ever heard…
For the last several blog postings we have discussed a biblical term that is much used but with little consensus as to what it means—“the kingdom of God.” We have seen that God’s kingdom was established on the earth initially through Adam as he and his descendants were given the commission to “have dominion over . . . all the earth” as God’s representatives in Genesis 1:26. Through Adam’s unwillingness to exercise that dominion in the Garden of Eden, Satan stole it at the…
We have seen in past postings that each jurisdiction in the kingdom of God—family, church and civil government—has its own unique biblical parameters that the other jurisdictions never violate. There is a legitimate “separation of church and state,” but never a separation of “God and state,” which is the current working definition of the term. To try to do so is laughable. The original intent in the Constitution was to protect the church from the state; it is seen today as protecting the state…
Last week we referred to the kingdom of God as a ship, the “ship of the kingdom,” because the diagram of its authority structure looks like a sailboat. God the Father, at the top of the diagram, delegated the kingdom to Jesus at His ascension, prophesied in Daniel 7, Psalm 2 and Psalm 110, and pictured in the diagram by the first vertical line. We saw last week that Jesus immediately (four verses later in Daniel 7) then delegated that rule to His people…
After His ascension to heaven, Jesus was seated on His throne at His Father’s right hand to begin His rule over His recently-received kingdom of God. In His first act as King, He delegated the kingdom to His people on the earth, thereby establishing the principle of delegated authority as its modus operandi. In theological terms, this rule is called Christ’s “session.” The word means “the sitting together of a court, council, or legislature for official business.” Generally it refers to ruling, judging, or mandating,…
We concluded last week’s posting with Jesus’ ascent to heaven after the completion of the task assigned to Him here on the earth by His Father. His work on earth as the God-man is now over: “It is finished!” He cried from the cross. In Daniel 7:13, after arriving in heaven, He prophetically reports to His Father, the Ancient of Days, seated on His throne: “Mission accomplished, Father. Your people are redeemed and the kingdom usurper has been dethroned!” In the previous verses in…