Monday, February 18, 2013
42 Months / Three and one-half Years / 1,260 Days in Revelation
Friday, December 7, 2012
Does Bible Prophecy Prove God’s Existence?
Hi everyone,
I am in the afterglow of a wonderful funeral service of my close childhood friend's father earlier this afternoon. A "wonderful" funeral? Yes, the service did a good job of reviewing a remarkable man's life, who did everything really well which he set his mind to. He was a baseball player who was good enough to play for the White Sox. But the Korean War interfered with that. He then set his mind on work, and became Senior Vice President of Finance for Control Data. After he retired, he took up golf and became the Edina Country Club Champion. He raised great family of five kids who are all kind adults, close to each other, and cared for him in the struggles of his last few years. I wish I knew him better, he was a truly remarkable man. It was also wonderful in being able to see old friends and to have the warmth of fellowship together.
Yet he passed away, as we all will do some day. Being a great athlete, smart at work, and a good family man does nothing to stop the inevitable. And so, this event has caused my thoughts to turn toward our Creator. So I try and understand the question of why don't more people accept God's presence, and His love for us as shown by the baby Jesus being born in a manger. The Christ child was sent to take away the world's sins, and to restore our relationship with God. A new relationship of a loving Father and a devoted child, instead, of a harsh taskmaster and an angry, unappreciative worker.
So my thoughts have turned to the Bible, God's Word to us, and its power and truth. The Bible, and through studying the Bible turned me from a pagan to a believer. I know of its power, and the power of the Holy Spirit to change us as we open up ourselves to seeing the truth of our lives. The truth is we are not good people deserving a heavenly reward from God. Instead, we are horrible, wretched, selfish and self-centered sinners who hurt countless others in our lives by our actions and inactions. But God in His love sent us a Savior to take away our sins, and to allow us to start building a relationship with this loving Creator of the Universe. It is an amazing story.
Yet many do not believe that God created the Universe, or that He does anything of value in today's world. This is the attitude I want to combat, and I know that I can tell others until I am blue in the face that God is here, and that He has helped me and changed my life. And He saved me from the shame and guilt of my many sins through Jesus' death on the Cross. But is there something a little more concrete for those who have honest questions of God's existence? I believe there is, and something as simple as the power of the Bible and prophecies made by the Prophets that are written down for us, and actually fulfilled, is what I want to post about this day. Do the Prophecies of the Bible show the Truth of the Bible, as well as God's existence? That is the question I want to address in today's post.
Let's take one of the prophecies made by Jesus in the Olivet Discourse (Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21). In this prophecy the Disciples mentioned the beauty of the massive Jerusalem Temple built by Herod. Jesus' comment was that within forty years (i.e., one generation) that the Temple would be utterly destroyed, to the point of one stone not being left on another. This Prophecy was fulfilled in 70 AD when the Roman army led by Titus utterly leveled Jerusalem, including its beautifully adorned Temple.
So the Prophecy of the Temple's destruction was made let's say 33 A.D. during the last part of Jesus' life. But was the Prophecy written down before the Temple's destruction in 70 A.D., or was this just added after the fact? The evidence strongly points to the fact that the Gospel of Mark was written before 68 A.D., and so this is a powerful example of a completed Prophecy which was written before the event actually took place.
There is ample proof that the Apostle Mark died in 68 A.D., which means his Gospel, of course, was written before this time. Church historian Eusebius wrote in detail the account of Mark's death. He was evangelizing in Alexandria and was celebrating the feast of the Resurrection in the year 68 A.D. and that same day coincided with the great pagan celebration for the feast of the god Syrabis. Thus a multitude of pagans assembled, attacked the church at Bokalia, and forced their way in. They seized St. Mark, bound him with a thick rope, and dragged him through the streets crying, "Drag the dragon to the place of cows." They continued dragging him with severe cruelty. His flesh was torn and scattered everywhere, and the ground of the city was covered with his blood. They cast him that night into a dark prison.
The next morning, the pagans took St. Mark from the prison. They tied his neck with a thick rope and did the same as the day before, dragging him over the rocks and stones. Finally, St. Mark delivered up his pure soul into the hands of God. This event is provided to us here. But the point here is that all of this took place in 68 A.D.
Would you like another reason that we can safely conclude that the Gospel of Mark, including Jesus' Prophecy of the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple within 40 year's time, was written before 68 A.D., taking place before the Temple's destruction? For this evidence we turn our eyes to the Dead Sea Scrolls. One of the 900 scrolls found in the Qumran cave is a portion of the Gospel of Mark. The cave was sealed in 68 A.D., before the Roman army escalation, which again shows that the Gospel of Mark was written before 68 A.D., well before the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple actually took place. If you would like more information on the Qumran cave, a Wikipedia article is here.
So what does all of this mean? Jesus made a Prophecy in 33 A.D. that within 40 years (or 73 A.D.) the Jerusalem Temple would be destroyed. The Gospel of Mark was written before the destruction took place, at the latest possible date being 68 A.D., based upon Eusebius' history and the sealing of the Qumran cave which housed a portion of Mark's Gospel. So we have a Prophecy made, written down, and copied to the world (as shown by it being part of Dead Sea Scrolls), and the event actually took place years later. The Jerusalem Temple was destroyed by the Roman army in July, 70 A.D. Therefore, we have a clear example of God's foreknowledge of a future event, which was confirmed by historical events. God's Word is powerful, prophetic and True.
Perhaps Bible prophecies do not prove God's existence. The Jerusalem Temple prophecy took place 2,000 years ago, and it is difficult to rest your life on something that happened so long ago. But I am presenting evidence to you, in hopes of a response. So what is your response to this? God provided a Prophecy of a future event and provided this Prophecy for the world to see. I hope that you will be more willing to read God's Word, to pray, and to seek out Christians to talk to, and to discuss any questions that you have. God bless you this Christmas season.
Saturday, November 17, 2012
Has Evolution Actually Been Observed?
A common challenge to Darwinism is whether anyone has actually seen Evolution in action. If you do a Google search on this question, you get the Physics Forum (link here) as the number one result. And a person asked a pretty basic question in the forum:
I know that it (Evolution) has been 'proven', but my question is, has it actually been observed by somebody? Yes, we can see the similarities between different subspecies and species but that alone is not proof that they evolved from each other. Has anyone actually seen it happen?
Has anyone seen Evolution actually happen? The responses are revealing as to why this is a problem for Darwinists. They suggested that getting a flu shot, seeing fruit flies, and the Peppered Moth are all claimed examples of Evolution in action. The flu shot is a good response, because that shows what Evolution can really do – it does a single or even a double point mutation in the gene which is a very small change, and that provides resistance to a drug or vaccination. And so, the flu shot changes every year. Great example, but it is very limited.
But the other responses (fruit flies and the Peppered Moth) are flat out wrong. So what is the best example of Evolution that is actually observed? My friend Ed rose to the challenge, and suggested E coli and the famous Lenski experiments provides a great example. Ed writes, "Creationists often make snide remarks about not seeing it happening, but now we have... Seen from the outside, this is like you having a baby that could suddenly eat wood chips... Seen from the inside, it's what we've been saying all along should happen... (link here). I thought it especially remarkable since Tom has used E. coli before in his poorly-understood attempts to falsify evolution..."
Wow! Ed, attacks me viciously (Ed is sweet, he only writes viciously), and comes up with a slam dunk example of Evolution that is actually observed from the Lenski E coli experiments – before they did not eat wood chips, but now they can. It sounds like this is a true beneficial mutation that helps E coli survive in different environments.
But alas, Ed is wrong. It turns out that the E-coli bacteria being able to eat wood chips / citrate, when before it did not, is not actually an evolutionary addition. But instead it turns out that this beneficial mutation in E-coli resulting from a break or deletion in a pre-existing gene. So if breaking what is already there is the best example of Darwinism in action, aren't Darwinists acknowledging that Evolution cannot actually create anything new?
Anyway, Lenski's E-coli experiments are fascinating. He is now up to over 50,000 generations (equal to 1 million animal years), and its results show that minor changes do happen (evolution works), and it benefits the whole community. But it doesn't do much more than that, in other words it is similar to what takes place in vaccination resistance. To explain it with a little more oomph, here is a recent (Nov. 13, 2012) letter from Professor Behe on this topic:
BEHE: Readers of my posts know that I'm a big fan of Professor Richard Lenski, a microbiologist at Michigan State University and member of the National Academy of Sciences. For the past few decades he has been conducting the largest laboratory evolution experiment ever attempted. Growing E. coli in flasks continuously, he has been following evolutionary changes in the bacterium for over 50,000 generations (which is equivalent to roughly a million years for large animals). Although Lenski is decidedly not an intelligent design proponent, his work enables us to see what evolution actually does when it has the resources of a large number of organisms over a substantial number of generations. Rather than speculate, Lenski and his coworkers have observed the workings of mutation and selection. For this, we ID proponents should be very grateful.
In a manuscript published a few years ago in the Quarterly Review of Biology (Behe 2010), I discussed laboratory evolution results from the past four decades up to that point, including Lenski's. His laboratory had shown clearly that random mutation and selection improved the bacterium with time, as measured by the number of progeny it could produce in a given time. He demonstrated without doubt that beneficial mutations exist and can spread quickly in a population of organisms. However, once Lenski's lab eventually identified the mutations at the DNA level (a difficult task), many of the beneficial mutations turned out to be, surprisingly, degradative ones. In other words, breaking or deleting some pre-existing genes or genetic regulatory elements so that they no longer worked actually helped the organism under the conditions in which it was grown. Other beneficial mutations altered pre-existing genes or regulatory elements somewhat.
What conspicuously was not seen in his work were beneficial mutations that resulted from building what I dubbed new Functional Coded elemenTs, or "FCTs." Roughly, a FCT is a sequence of DNA that affects the production or processing of a gene or gene product (see my review for a more rigorous definition). In short, improvements had been made by breaking existing genes, or fiddling with them in minor ways, but not by making new genes or regulatory elements. From this information I formulated "The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution": Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain. To say the least, the First Rule is not what you would expect from a process, such as Darwinian evolution, which is touted as being able to build amazingly sophisticated molecular machinery.
Before my review was published, the Lenski lab observed a mutant strain in their experiments that could metabolize citrate in the presence of oxygen, which unmutated E. coli cannot do. (Blount et al. 2008) (Importantly, however, the bacterium can metabolize citrate in the absence of oxygen.) This allowed the mutated bacterium to outcompete its relatives, because the growth medium contained a lot of citrate, as well as oxygen. It was an intriguing result, and was touted as a major innovation, but at the time Lenski's lab was unable to track down at the DNA level the exact mutations that caused the change.
Now they have. In a recent publication in Nature (Blount et al. 2012) they report the multiple mutations that confer and increase the ability to transport citrate in an atmosphere containing oxygen. They divide the mutations conceptually into three categories: 1) potentiation; 2) actualization; and 3) refinement. "Actualization" is the name they give to the mutation that first confers a weak ability to transport citrate into the laboratory E. coli. (It turns out that the bacterium is lacking only a protein to transport citrate into the cell in the presence of oxygen; all other enzymes needed to further metabolize citrate are already present.) The gene for the citrate transporter, citT, that works in the absence of oxygen is directly upstream from the genes for two other proteins that have promoters that are active in the presence of oxygen. A duplication of a segment of this region serendipitously placed the citT gene next to one of these promoters, so the citT gene could then be expressed in the presence of oxygen. Gene duplication is a type of mutation that is known to be fairly common, so this result, although requiring a great deal of careful research to pin down, is unsurprising.
Over time the mutant got better at utilizing citrate, which the authors called "refinement." Further work showed this was due to multiple duplications of the mutant gene region, up to 3-9 copies. Again, gene duplication is a fairly common process, so again it is unsurprising. In another experiment Lenski and co-workers showed that increasing the concentration of the citrate transporter gene was sufficient in itself to account for the greater ability of E. coli to grow on citrate. No other mutations were needed.
A more mysterious part of the whole process is what the group called "potentiation." It turns out that the original E. coli they began with decades ago could not benefit from the gene duplication that brought together a citT gene with an oxygen-tolerant promoter. Before it could benefit, a preliminary mutation had to occur in the bacterium somewhere other than the region containing the citrate-metabolism genes. Exactly what that mutation was, Lenski and coworkers were not able to determine. However, they examined the bacterium for mutations that may contribute to potentiation, and speculated that "A mutation in arcB, which encodes a histidine kinase, is noteworthy because disabling that gene upregulates the tricarboxylic acid cycle." (They tried, but were unable to test this hypothesis.) In other words, the "potentiation" may involve degradation of an unrelated gene.
Lenski's lab did an immense amount of careful work and deserves much praise. Yet the entirely separate, $64,000 question is, what do the results show about the power of the Darwinian mechanism? The answer is, they do not show it to be capable of anything more than what was already known. For example, in my review of lab evolution experiments I discussed the work of Zinser et al. (2003) where a sequence rearrangement brought a promoter close to a gene that had lacked one. I also discussed experiments such as Licis and van Duin (2006) where multiple sequential mutations increased the ability of a FCT. Despite Lenski's visually startling result -- where a usually clear flask became cloudy with the overgrowth of bacteria on citrate -- at the molecular level nothing novel occurred.
So the Question of whether anyone has actually seen Evolution in action, actually is another arrow in the quiver of Intelligent Design. Evolution does little changes in the battle against malaria like malaria's ability to develop resistance to chloriquine. It doesn't do the heavy lifting of what we see in our world. Evolution doesn't create and doesn't develop anything new. So, I hope that you see from this post that something else (or more precisely SomeOne else) is going on here. Investigate the examples of Evolution, and don't be afraid. Evolution's Iron Gates are paper mache thin.
Has Evolution Actually Been Observed?
A common challenge to Darwinism is whether anyone has actually seen Evolution in action. If you do a Google search on this question, you get the Physics Forum (link here) as the number one result. And a person asked a pretty basic question in the forum:
I know that it (Evolution) has been 'proven', but my question is, has it actually been observed by somebody? Yes, we can see the similarities between different subspecies and species but that alone is not proof that they evolved from each other. Has anyone actually seen it happen?
Has anyone seen Evolution actually happen? The responses are revealing as to why this is a problem for Darwinists. They suggested that getting a flu shot, seeing fruit flies, and the Peppered Moth are all claimed examples of Evolution in action. The flu shot is a good response, because that shows what Evolution can really do – it does a single or even a double point mutation in the gene which is a very small change, and that provides resistance to a drug or vaccination. And so, the flu shot changes every year. Great example, but it is very limited.
But the other responses (fruit flies and the Peppered Moth) are flat out wrong. So what is the best example of Evolution that is actually observed? My friend Ed rose to the challenge, and suggested E coli and the famous Lenski experiments provides a great example. Ed writes, "Creationists often make snide remarks about not seeing it happening, but now we have... Seen from the outside, this is like you having a baby that could suddenly eat wood chips... Seen from the inside, it's what we've been saying all along should happen... (link here). I thought it especially remarkable since Tom has used E. coli before in his poorly-understood attempts to falsify evolution..."
Wow! Ed, attacks me viciously (Ed is sweet, he only writes viciously), and comes up with a slam dunk example of Evolution that is actually observed from the Lenski E coli experiments – before they did not eat wood chips, but now they can. It sounds like this is a true beneficial mutation that helps E coli survive in different environments.
But alas, Ed is wrong. It turns out that the E-coli bacteria being able to eat wood chips / citrate, when before it did not, is not actually an evolutionary addition. But instead it turns out that this beneficial mutation in E-coli resulting from a break or deletion in a pre-existing gene. So if breaking what is already there is the best example of Darwinism in action, aren't Darwinists acknowledging that Evolution cannot actually create anything new?
Anyway, Lenski's E-coli experiments are fascinating. He is now up to over 50,000 generations (equal to 1 million animal years), and its results show that minor changes do happen (evolution works), and it benefits the whole community. But it doesn't do much more than that, in other words it is similar to what takes place in vaccination resistance. To explain it with a little more oomph, here is a recent (Nov. 13, 2012) letter from Professor Behe on this topic:
BEHE: Readers of my posts know that I'm a big fan of Professor Richard Lenski, a microbiologist at Michigan State University and member of the National Academy of Sciences. For the past few decades he has been conducting the largest laboratory evolution experiment ever attempted. Growing E. coli in flasks continuously, he has been following evolutionary changes in the bacterium for over 50,000 generations (which is equivalent to roughly a million years for large animals). Although Lenski is decidedly not an intelligent design proponent, his work enables us to see what evolution actually does when it has the resources of a large number of organisms over a substantial number of generations. Rather than speculate, Lenski and his coworkers have observed the workings of mutation and selection. For this, we ID proponents should be very grateful.
In a manuscript published a few years ago in the Quarterly Review of Biology (Behe 2010), I discussed laboratory evolution results from the past four decades up to that point, including Lenski's. His laboratory had shown clearly that random mutation and selection improved the bacterium with time, as measured by the number of progeny it could produce in a given time. He demonstrated without doubt that beneficial mutations exist and can spread quickly in a population of organisms. However, once Lenski's lab eventually identified the mutations at the DNA level (a difficult task), many of the beneficial mutations turned out to be, surprisingly, degradative ones. In other words, breaking or deleting some pre-existing genes or genetic regulatory elements so that they no longer worked actually helped the organism under the conditions in which it was grown. Other beneficial mutations altered pre-existing genes or regulatory elements somewhat.
What conspicuously was not seen in his work were beneficial mutations that resulted from building what I dubbed new Functional Coded elemenTs, or "FCTs." Roughly, a FCT is a sequence of DNA that affects the production or processing of a gene or gene product (see my review for a more rigorous definition). In short, improvements had been made by breaking existing genes, or fiddling with them in minor ways, but not by making new genes or regulatory elements. From this information I formulated "The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution": Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain. To say the least, the First Rule is not what you would expect from a process, such as Darwinian evolution, which is touted as being able to build amazingly sophisticated molecular machinery.
Before my review was published, the Lenski lab observed a mutant strain in their experiments that could metabolize citrate in the presence of oxygen, which unmutated E. coli cannot do. (Blount et al. 2008) (Importantly, however, the bacterium can metabolize citrate in the absence of oxygen.) This allowed the mutated bacterium to outcompete its relatives, because the growth medium contained a lot of citrate, as well as oxygen. It was an intriguing result, and was touted as a major innovation, but at the time Lenski's lab was unable to track down at the DNA level the exact mutations that caused the change.
Now they have. In a recent publication in Nature (Blount et al. 2012) they report the multiple mutations that confer and increase the ability to transport citrate in an atmosphere containing oxygen. They divide the mutations conceptually into three categories: 1) potentiation; 2) actualization; and 3) refinement. "Actualization" is the name they give to the mutation that first confers a weak ability to transport citrate into the laboratory E. coli. (It turns out that the bacterium is lacking only a protein to transport citrate into the cell in the presence of oxygen; all other enzymes needed to further metabolize citrate are already present.) The gene for the citrate transporter, citT, that works in the absence of oxygen is directly upstream from the genes for two other proteins that have promoters that are active in the presence of oxygen. A duplication of a segment of this region serendipitously placed the citT gene next to one of these promoters, so the citT gene could then be expressed in the presence of oxygen. Gene duplication is a type of mutation that is known to be fairly common, so this result, although requiring a great deal of careful research to pin down, is unsurprising.
Over time the mutant got better at utilizing citrate, which the authors called "refinement." Further work showed this was due to multiple duplications of the mutant gene region, up to 3-9 copies. Again, gene duplication is a fairly common process, so again it is unsurprising. In another experiment Lenski and co-workers showed that increasing the concentration of the citrate transporter gene was sufficient in itself to account for the greater ability of E. coli to grow on citrate. No other mutations were needed.
A more mysterious part of the whole process is what the group called "potentiation." It turns out that the original E. coli they began with decades ago could not benefit from the gene duplication that brought together a citT gene with an oxygen-tolerant promoter. Before it could benefit, a preliminary mutation had to occur in the bacterium somewhere other than the region containing the citrate-metabolism genes. Exactly what that mutation was, Lenski and coworkers were not able to determine. However, they examined the bacterium for mutations that may contribute to potentiation, and speculated that "A mutation in arcB, which encodes a histidine kinase, is noteworthy because disabling that gene upregulates the tricarboxylic acid cycle." (They tried, but were unable to test this hypothesis.) In other words, the "potentiation" may involve degradation of an unrelated gene.
Lenski's lab did an immense amount of careful work and deserves much praise. Yet the entirely separate, $64,000 question is, what do the results show about the power of the Darwinian mechanism? The answer is, they do not show it to be capable of anything more than what was already known. For example, in my review of lab evolution experiments I discussed the work of Zinser et al. (2003) where a sequence rearrangement brought a promoter close to a gene that had lacked one. I also discussed experiments such as Licis and van Duin (2006) where multiple sequential mutations increased the ability of a FCT. Despite Lenski's visually startling result -- where a usually clear flask became cloudy with the overgrowth of bacteria on citrate -- at the molecular level nothing novel occurred.
So the Question of whether anyone has actually seen Evolution in action, actually is another arrow in the quiver of Intelligent Design. Evolution does little changes in the battle against malaria like malaria's ability to develop resistance to chloriquine. It doesn't do the heavy lifting of what we see in our world. Evolution doesn't create and doesn't develop anything new. So, I hope that you see from this post that something else (or more precisely SomeOne else) is going on here. Investigate the examples of Evolution, and don't be afraid. Evolution's Iron Gates are paper mache thin.
Sunday, November 4, 2012
Worship the “Living God”
Happy Daylight Saving's Day to you. This morning I thought I would write about Justin Martyr, one of the early Christian Apologists, to see if there is anything that we can learn in reaching a world which is lost (1 John 5:19). Justin was born around 100 (both his birth and death dates are approximate) at Flavia Neapolis in Samaria (the middle portion of Israel, between Galilee and Judea) of pagan Greek parents, and lived to approximately 165. He was brought up with a good education in rhetoric, poetry, and history. He studied various schools of philosophy in Alexandria and Ephesus. While at Ephesus, he was impressed by the steadfastness of the Christian martyrs, and by the personality of an aged Christian man whom he met by chance while walking on the seashore. This man spoke to him about Jesus as the fulfillment of the promises made through the Jewish prophets. Justin was overwhelmed. "Straightway a flame was kindled in my soul," he writes, "and a love of the prophets and those who are friends of Christ possessed me." Justin became a Christian, but he continued to wear the cloak that was the characteristic uniform of the professional teacher of philosophy. His position was that pagan philosophy is not simply wrong, but is a partial grasp of the truth, and serves as "a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ." Source: http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bio/175.html.
What I find impressive about Justin Martyr's argument showing the Truth of Christianity is his powerful faith. What separates Christians from other religions is that we worship a "Living God" who cares for each of us, individually. Justin submits that God is the source of all provision, the change of the seasons, and shows His love by delaying the ultimate Day of Judgment to ensure that more people will be saved. In addition, Justin argues that what separates Christians from the other religious groups of his time is that they only worship only idols which are "soulless and dead", as opposed to the true God. I see this as a powerful argument which separates Christianity from every other group – namely, that we worship a Living God who intimately cares for each individual, while those who worship idols that are "soulless and dead" are only insulting the true God by attaching to Him "things that are corruptible, and require constant service." So let's look at what a "Living God" means.
The phrase "Living God" is used 34 times in the Holy Scripture, in both the Old and New Testaments. Here are a few examples:
Psalm 42:2 - My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. (ESV)
Mt 16:16 - Simon Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." (ESV)
1 Thess 1:9 - For they themselves report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God (ESV).
So what does it mean to describe God as the "Living God"? I think of this as a description that means there is action, life, and power involved. But better, I like the description of J. R. Miller, The Living God (1902) - "We have put our hope in the living God." 1 Timothy 4:10
The God of the Bible is a living God. He has a heart of tenderness and love, like our mother's heart. He thinks of His redeemed people, and cares for them. He seeks their companionship, is interested in their life, craves their affection, and is grieved by their sin or alienation from Him. Jesus was the revealer of God; and He used but one name in making God known—the name Father—putting into the holy word, all that is tender, sweet, and compassionate, all that love could possibly mean.
This truth of the living God is full of rich encouragement. It assures us of complete satisfaction for all our cravings. We know what a satisfying of the heart, even a strong human friendship gives. There are friends who are to us like a great rock in a weary land. We flee to them in the heat of parching days, and rest in their shadow. A friend in whom we can confide without fear of disappointment; who, we are sure, will never fail us; who always has a healing tenderness for the hurt of our heart, comfort for our sorrows, and cheer for our discouragement—such a friend is not only a rock of shelter for us in time of danger—but is also as rivers of water in a thirsty land, when our hearts cry out for life and love.
Justin Martyr at Lystra picked up on this when he urged those hearers to "turn from these vanities unto the Living God who made heaven and earth and the sea and all things therein." In Apology 1 Justin taught that God cares for each individual (chapter 13), that He does not need anything (chapter 10), that He is a God of prophecy (chapter 12), and is the provider to us of all things (chapter 13). It is interesting that Justin uses as his one "proof" of God's love for us is His delay in judging the world. He writes:
…For the reason why God has delayed to do this, is His regard for the human race. For He foreknows that some are to be saved by repentance, some even that are perhaps not yet born… And if any one disbelieves that God cares for these things, he will thereby either insinuate that God does not exist, or he will assert that though He exists He delights in vice, or exists like a stone, and that neither virtue nor vice are anything, but only in the opinion of men these things are reckoned good or evil. And this is the greatest profanity and wickedness.
Yes, Justin Martyr was writing in the second century A.D., but it seems like he knows what is taking place in the world today. He demonstrates God's love by showing that His judgment has not yet taken place. And then Justin indicates that if some do not believe in God's love, that they will try and argue that 1) He does not exist; 2) God is evil; or, 3) God is uncaring like a stone, and that virtue and vice were created by man, and that they do not matter to God. Wow! Justin Martyr here has hit on all of the major attacks against God used by the best minds of the 21st Century world. Yet, his evidence stands, God loves us enough to delay unleashing His wrath and Judgment against mankind's sin and disobedience.
Justin Martyr comes full circle in his Apology I, when he describes the futility of worshipping anything else besides the true God, when he writes:
And neither do we honor with many sacrifices and garlands of flowers such deities as men have formed and set in shrines and called gods; since we see that these are soulless and dead, and have not the form of God (for we do not consider that God has such a form as some say that they imitate to His honor), but have the names and forms of those wicked demons which have appeared… And that the artificers of these are both intemperate, and, not to enter into particulars, are practiced in every vice, you very well know; even their own girls who work along with them they corrupt. What infatuation! that dissolute men should be said to fashion and make gods for your worship, and that you should appoint such men the guardians of the temples where they are enshrined; not recognizing that it is unlawful even to think or say that men are the guardians of gods. (Apology 1, Chapter 9, here is a link to all of Justin Martyr's writings.)
So what can we learn from Justin Martyr when confronting opposition to God? First, we must know that we worship the true and Living God, who loves us more strongly and intimately than we could ever imagine. And second, we know that God has revealed Himself and His heart when He sent Jesus the Messiah, God the Son to die on the Cross for us. Any other group who does not worship Jesus, worships an idol, which is soulless and dead. These idols have no power, and that it is wicked to think that men can act as guardians of god in this world. Who wants to worship something that is dead and lifeless, when we can worship the loving and kind God, who is a Living God? All praise to Jesus who most clearly revealed God's love for us, Amen.
Sunday, September 30, 2012
Jesus’ Command to Sell All You Have
We are studying David Platt's book entitled 'Radical' in our Thursday morning men's group. Pastor Platt has amazing stories of his faith journey where he has traveled the world, helped and witnessed to the poorest of the poor, and is now leading a mega-Church in Birmingham, Alabama. And in our Men's group we are up to chapter 6 in his book, where Pastor Platt suggests with a straight face that we Americans should sell our possessions and give to the poor (Luke 12:33; Mark 10 (story of the Rich Young Ruler)). He points out that nowhere in the New Testament does it suggest that a person's obedience will lead to material blessings. And if God is the source for all of our skills, abilities and talents, and placed us in this wonderful, opportunity filled country of America, shouldn't we be willing to freely give to others what we have received? He also brings the hammer down on American believers by suggesting that rich people who neglect the poor are not people of God.
He suggests American Christians have a blind spot on this issue. As the Jewish people during the time of Jesus had a blind-spot of self-righteousness that prevented them from seeing Jesus, so Americans have a blind-spot about our wealth. The Protestant work ethic of 'I worked hard, I'm talented, and I deserve everything I worked for' does not leave much room for acknowledging God as the source for all blessings. And if material wealth is "earned" by us, then it is much harder for us to give it away to those who don't deserve it – you know, those who don't work so hard, aren't so smart or talented, or who live in a foreign land. Pastor Platt condemns these attitudes, and believes we need to do more, much more in helping the poor throughout the world.
This is a tough message. Won't we always have the poor, no matter what I do? Shouldn't I help those in my local community first, rather than "wasting" money overseas? Isn't the government already doing enough? To combat my attitude, I decided to look at what Jesus taught:
First is Jesus' teaching in John 14:15, which says If you love Me, keep My commandments.
We are told that the greatest Command is to love God, and the second is like it, to love others. But what does the Command to "love others" look like?
In the 'New Treasure of Scripture Knowledge' entry for 1 John 2:3, all of Jesus' commands from the Gospels were assembled. And the most frequently given command (24 times) is His command to love others by giving. Here are the verses:
Love Others (Giving/Generosity)
Charitableness, Mt 18:10. Lk 6:(37), 38. give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you;
Clothing to be shared with needy, Mt 5:40. Lk 6:29.
Giving, Mt 5:42 Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you.
Mt 10:42 And whoever gives one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly, I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward.
Mt 19:21 (Rich Young Ruler – go sell all and give to the poor);
Lk 6:30, Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back.
Lk 6:38 give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.
Acts +*20:35 In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, 'It is more blessed to give than to receive.'
Give according to ability, Lk 11:41n. But give as alms those things that are within, and behold, everything is clean for you.
Invite poor for meals, Lk 14:13. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind,
Liberality/generosity, Mt 5:42 (Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you.) 6:30 (But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?) 12:33 (Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad, for the tree is known by its fruit.), 34. Mk 12:41-44 (And he sat down opposite the treasury and watched the people putting money into the offering box. Many rich people put in large sums. 42 And a poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which make a penny. 43 And he called his disciples to him and said to them, "Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the offering box. 44 For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on."), Lk 12:33 (Sell your possessions, and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys.). Ac +*20:35 (In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, 'It is more blessed to give than to receive.').
Lending, Mt 5:42 (Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you.). Lk 6:34, 35 (And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to get back the same amount. 35 But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.).
Pay adequate wages, Mt 10:10. Lk 10:7 (And remain in the same house, eating and drinking what they provide, for the laborer deserves his wages…)
Sell what you have, Mk 10:21 (And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, "You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me."). Lk 12:32-34 ("Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom. 33 Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. 34 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.)
Support of the ministry, Lk 10:7. And remain in the same house, eating and drinking what they provide, for the laborer deserves his wages. Do not go from house to house.
Support of the poor, Lk 14:13, 14. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, 14 and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just."
My prayer is that this topic and these verses are a blessing to you to help you see how best to help the poor and needy. In Christ, /s/Tom Wolff
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
John 14:12_Believers will do even greater works than Jesus?
Hi everyone, in today's post I am providing you with some research that I have done on the controversial passage of John 14:12-14. Here are the verses:
John 14:12-14 (ESV)
12 "Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father. 13 Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.
Context 1) In John 14:6 Jesus reveals to the disciples that He is the way, the truth and the life, and that no one can come to God the Father except through Jesus. After Jesus tells the disciples that He is the "way" to the Father, Phillip asks to see the Father (14:8). Jesus suggests to Phillip that whoever has seen Jesus has seen the Father (14:9). Jesus then tells Phillip that he should believe on at least the basis of the miracles (NIV, other translations uses "work") he has done (14:11).
Which brings us to the amazing promise of verse 12, which is that whoever believes in Jesus will also do the same works and even greater than what Jesus has done.
Some Commentators limit this promise of greater works of the Apostles, which does not give due credit to Jesus' phrasing ("whoever believes"…) Another attempt to limit this promise is to point out that the geographical scope of the works done is now much greater. But again this has the problem of looking at the promise as if it was made to a group of believers, rather than the individual nature of the promise (whoever believes…) A better look at this verse is given by John Calvin:
John Calvin's analysis: It perplexes many that He said that the apostles would do greater works than He had done. I pass by the other and usual answers and will be content with just one thing. First, we have to understand what Christ means. The power by which He proves Himself the Son of God is so far from being bound to His bodily presence that it must shine forth in more and greater examples when He is absent. Now Christ's ascension was soon followed by the wonderful conversion of the world (Greek omitted), in which His divinity was displayed more powerfully than when He lived among men. Thus we see that the proof of His divinity was not confined to the person of Christ but was diffused through the whole body of the Church. Again, this doing of which He spoke was not peculiar to the apostles alone, nor to a few of the godly, but related to the whole body of the Church.
Tom's Summary – Jesus' power was not bound to His body itself. Instead, when He is seated in heaven, His power, glory and divinity will shine more clearly than when He walked on Earth. And this doing of greater works is not limited to the apostles, but is given to the whole body of the Church.
I like the way another commentator has put it, focusing on the relationship that is available to us: As the Father abides in (Gk. menō, v. 10) Jesus so too the Spirit abides in (menō, v. 17) the believer. Thus the confidence of Christ can be ours: as the Father was committed to his Son, so Jesus through his Spirit will stand with us in every need (vv. 13–14). The point in these verses is not that every prayerful request will be granted, but that the character of Christ's relationship with God at this level may be ours. But here we must recall Jesus' consistent subordination to his Father's will (5:19, 30; 6:38; 7:16f.; 8:28f.) and his desire simply to glorify (12:28; 17:4) and please God (8:29).
The provision of Jesus that will bring about this relationship is declared to be the indwelling Spirit (vv. 15–17), who now bears two new names: the Paraclete (niv Counselor, v. 16) and the Spirit of truth. Elwell, W. A. (1995). Vol. 3: Evangelical Commentary on the Bible. Baker reference library (Jn 14:4).
Context 2) What is the "work" that Jesus is promising that believer's will be doing greater than even Jesus himself when He returns to heaven? It could be bringing others to a saving faith, such as what took place on Pentecost when 5,000 believers were saved in one day (Acts2). But remember that Jesus told Phillip to believe based if on nothing else on the work that Jesus has done (14:11). The NIV actually translates this as "miracles" and I think it has the right idea here. These works of Jesus included feeding thousands with nothing more than a few loaves of bread and fish, healing the sick, casting out demons, and His teaching. Again, John Calvin is helpful here:
John Calvin's analysis:
Because I go to the Father. The reason why the disciples will do greater things than Christ is that when He has entered into possession of His kingdom, He will demonstrate His power more fully from heaven. It is therefore clear that His glory is no way diminished; for after His departure the apostles, His mere instruments, did more excellent works. Moreover, from this it was plain that He sits at the right hand of the Father, that every knee may bow before Him. And a little later He Himself plainly declares that He will be the author of everything that will be done by the hands of the apostles.
Tom's Summary – The apostles did greater things than Jesus because He was in heaven. And this does not diminish Jesus' glory in any way. His apostles were mere instruments. Mere instruments do nothing on their own. Instead, it all points to the holder of the instruments, Jesus Christ who is the author of all that the apostles did.
Finally, do not miss the reason for the greater works – that the Father may be glorified in the Son (v. 13). Calvin again provides excellent analysis: This passage agrees with what Paul says: "That every tongue should confess that Jesus is Christ, to the glory of God the Father (Phil. 2:11). The aim of everything is the sanctifying of God's name. But here is declared the true way to sanctify it – in the Son and by the Son. For although the majesty of the Father is in itself hidden from us, it shines in Christ; although His hand is concealed, we have it visible in Christ. Accordingly, in the benefits which the Father bestows upon us, we have no right to separate the Son from Him, as it is said, "He that honors not the Son, honors not the Father". Vernon McGee makes a great point here, Have you noticed how often Jesus speaks of His Father? The Father is mentioned twenty times in this passage, and it is always the Lord Jesus who mentions Him.