Deceived

Then the Lord God said to the woman, "What is this you have done?" The woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate." Genesis 3:13, NIV

It may be tempting to think that Satan's war against God began in Eden with the temptation of Eve. It is more accurate to say his war against mankind began there. When we first see Satan he has already fallen and his rebellion is underway.

Of the many weapons which he could employ in this war, which did he choose to employ? A classic Chinese text, taught in every War College gives us the answer: "All warfare is based on deception." (The Art of War, by Sun Tzu).

Now what is the defense against this great deceiver? How can man possibly fight against the mighty angel called Satan?

Actually, the confrontation in Eden was a pushover for Satan. No contest.

In case I suddenly keel over I will quickly make my point. Let us look at a very different battle, one in which Satan, great as he is,. was defeated, at least in this instance. What could be a greater match than Satan and Lord Jesus?

We learn so much when we see the weapon chosen by Our Lord to stop Satan. This is given to us in Luke chapter 4:1-13. It is the Word of God, the Bible. Now the One who walked on water, calmed the storm, and raised the dead chose as his weapon one available to us also.

Now I will pretend I am a teacher giving a test:

Which primary weapon do you choose in your battle against the Devil?

1. Living a good life, as in the Sermon on the Mount
2. Doing the best you can
3. The golden Rule
4. An ecstatic experience, such as tongues
5. Sound doctrine from the Bible

You may object that I have left out prayer. I believe it is the preparation for our battle with Satan. But not even prayer, which we are warned not to mis-apply, can be the greatest weapon in combat. Proof: the example of Jesus.

The above is subject to disagreement by thinking people. Disagreement can be a wonderful thing.

Freaks in Bottles

Victor Hugo wrote about the practice years ago of creating distorted children to later sell as court jesters and other freaks. This is described in The Man Who Laughed, and the term for these evil people is Comprachicos or child sellers. I understand that part of their technique was growing children in bottles and then breaking the bottle when the desired distortion was complete.

I don't know about this because I did not read his book. Who would want to?

Why am I writing about this horrible idea? Because I believe the practice, much modified, is still in effect. I believe that people raise their children and submit themselves to become freakish as to denominations. While in my recent hospital stay, my favorite therapist said of herself, "I am a recovering Catholic."

At the beginning of our country such ideas were taken very seriously. That is, people formed whole colonies on the basis of their favorite doctrine. The Trinity in Pennsylvania, comes to mind. I hope that all Christians would learn of this truth, but not under the threat of law, even death.

So how did Paul and others form the church in a time of great religious diversity? I believe they stressed a core of essential truth and left the details of various believers' ideas alone.

Today our differences are emphasized in some churches to the separation of even individual church members. I visited a church composed of three families, and even they had a split!

The old Today show did a quick survey in a crowd of various diets prescribed by different religions. One said, "No pork." Another said, "No meat at all." Finally a man said of his faith, "We eat anything." Suddenly this once somber crowd saw the humor in the situation and began to laugh.

Wouldn't it be great if the really essential doctrines were taught and any differences could be argued or discussed after this was accomplished? I am not asking for a universal church with watered down doctrine. Just the opposite--stress the essentials and talk about less major things later.

Am I being idealistic? Not at all. That is how the church was formed. What literature would you use? Let's hear a great big DUH. The church epistles in the Bible. So simple.

Release children from the freak making bottles. Some day there may be no bottles at all.

The LXX

And as Paul was to be led into the castle, he said unto the chief captain, May I speak unto thee? Who said, Canst thou speak Greek? Acts. 21:17

Insiders like to refer to this classic Greek translation of the Old Testament as the Septuagint. This means the 70 (scholars) who made this amazing book. What it did was take the Hebrew texts, which can be hard for us to understand, and put them into Greek, which many consider the most precise language on Earth.

I mean, there are about 7 tenses to express things in. You can nail things down with Greek.

Now I am going to make a big jump here. But I recently watched one of my favorite movies again. It is "My Big Fat Greek Wedding". What possible connection can there be between this wonderful movie and the LXX?

Well, in the movie the father insists that every word can be traced back to a Greek origin. One of the kids tests him out with "kimono" and he even pulls that one off.

But we do owe a lot in our culture to this very precise language. Now I am not trying to be an expert, because I am not one. What I wish is that more Christians would avail themselves to classic language sources to find out what the Bible really says.

Am I urging anyone to buy some exotic book that only scholars have access to? Hardly. Try Amazon for around $30. Not to learn Greek, but to read in English one of the great sources of the Word. I bought an Interlinear, in paperback yet.

How I wish that the so-called "laity" would invade the elitest pretenders in churches and seize the high ground from them. "Look Ma, I can read!"

I heard a Baptist friend really railing over the translation of a word meaning "white of an egg" into "slime of the purslane". Hardly a big difference when translating the meaning of "bland or tasteless". No doctrinal conflicts there.

I can't imagine a church splitting up into an egg white group and a purslane group. But these--and truly great differences--can be resolved by looking at a good basic source like the LXX.

We should not be dominated and often mislead by those who claim superior knowledge. Were they born in Israel or Greece thousands of years ago. No? Then they got their information from books. We all can.

A young seminarian to be was advised by his old mentor, "Get a Septuagint." Good advice.

My Exciting, Thrilling, File Cabinet (Not)

For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. John 1:17

I am, by nature, a messy person. I lose things all the time. But I have something that bails me out. I have my file cabinet. Now everything won't fit in there, but it really helps me find the important things.

If someone were to say, "I'll bet your cabinet is full of things you've invented," I would have to tell them, "Not one thing in there is something that I have invented. But I have a lot of things that someone else has invented in there."

This is what the Dispensational system is--a filing system. Not very exciting is it? But it keeps things straight. So when someone talks about the evil dispensations that someone has invented, I say. "He made them. We just file them to keep them straight." I challenge anyone to find a doctrine that we have invented.

The above scripture is a dispensation illustrated. It shows the change from Moses to Christ--from the Old Testament to the New. It is when we fail to make these distinctions that we can get into trouble.

Some tell us we are under the Law. To them I will say, "Do you eat bacon?". Maybe I'll say it to a vegetarian some day. Then I'll be in trouble.

Some say we are Israel, or that Israel was in the church. I have heard both. To these people I say, "You really need to work on your filing system."

Venn Diagrams and the Israel of God

They which are the children of the flesh, these [are] not the children of God: but the children of the promise are counted for the seed. Romans 9:8

I was not good at math. Understatement--I flunked algebra two years in a row. I think I balanced an equation once, but soon the figures became meaningless to me. Like a bunch of ants marching on a text book page. Of course I find ants interesting.

Later, in college, I was introduced to the diagrams of John Venn which he introduced about 1830. (I just looked them up.) Now I began to understand a little. They helped a lot.

Some time ago I told of Charles the cleaning man. He was wrestling with the quotation which says "all Israel shall be saved" (Romans 11:26). It was a mystery to us both, for we knew there were lost Israelites, like Judas.

Now I will try to use Venn to illustrate this idea. On a blank sheet of paper I draw a square. I will label the square "All People". Inside the square I make a circle and call it "Israel". Finally I draw a circle and call it "Children of Promise". Only this circle overlaps the Israel circle a bit.

Where the two circles intersect, we have "Israel of God". These are God's people, who he fore ordained, believing Israelites, or "all Israel".

Does this work? I hope this illustration is correct. I flunked math, but I want to get this one right.

Dick and Jane

Those of us who are old enough, remember learning to read using the repetative stories of Dick, Jane, Baby Sally, Puff the dog and Fluff the Cat. Try to get one of these readers in a rare book store.

Moderns totally laugh at them and that method of learning. "Why, it was not even phonics!" Trouble is, I loved them and I still do. I learned to read on them and I will always be grateful.

You may hear the whirring of a time machine as it takes me back to the first grade. Yes, after all these years I remember the stories.

Sample: Baby Sally is watching a giant crane at a construction site with her family. She leans forward to see better and drops her doll. It tumbles down into the giant hole the digging machine is making. "Oh, no, no ," says Baby Sally,"I have lost my dolly." The crane operator saw it fall, and very delicately picks the doll up in the huge jaws of his machine. He carefully drops it at her feet. The family waves a friendly hello to the friendly operator. End of story.

As I told this story I was learning to read and build up the confidence of a six year old boy. "How pathetic," say people today. Dick and Jane are used as examples of a long past, simplistic time. People laugh.

In contrast, my sister began to read a new library book to her children. It was about a haunted ghetto apartment. Weird moans could be heard coming from the basement. What could they be? The family got up the nerve to investigate.

They discovered the moans were not from ghosts, but were the sounds made by agonized drug addicts. Mystery solved! Go to sleep kids. The basement is not haunted after all, it is just the sounds of a crack house.

I remember my sister's anger over this story. Of course she did not finish reading it.

Back to Dick and Jane.

I found that the reading method I learned was quite realistic. Instead of puffing out phonic sounds, like "buh, buh, buh," Dick and Jane repeated whole words. "Oh, look, look, look." It sure worked for me.

But what about the unrealistic pictures? Once again, I was startled to find that the pictures were made from actual photographs of people living then. I saw some of the pictures and the photos on which they were based. People did live and look like these drawings!

Warning, my point is coming up.

There are some of us who accept the Bible just as it is. We are laughed at--not that I care--because we believe in the Old Testament stories of real people and events, and the New Testament lessons drawn from them. It turns out that we are scientifically correct after all. People are catching on to false teachings. It is one of the few modern trends I really like.

To the so-called liberals, I only have this to say, "Buh, buh, buh."

Oh, Daddy, You're Scaring Me!

When I was a little boy, I had just learned to use a hatchet. I was chopping green twigs into smaller pieces on a tree stump we used as a chopping block. Twigs were flying around. I was having fun.

My father noticed my careless abandon and said to me, "Son, those twigs could be your fingers if you're not more careful." I was horrified as I thought of cutting off my fingers. "Oh, Daddy, you're scaring me!" I complained.

He looked at me seriously as he said, "I'm just trying to make you be more careful." You can bet I was cautious as to how I held the branches and swung my hatchet after that.

There are some very earnest, hard-working people warning our country about the dangers ahead, from a collapsing economy, loss of freedoms, and nuclear radiation. Our instinct is to complain that they frighten us. Of course they frighten us. That's their job.

Where do they get these terrible truths that they assail us with? The best use only publicly available material. That is, available if you look for it. I applaud them, except when they wander into a theology they have inherited and have not studied. I won't applaud them in that case, but I will forgive them.

It is as if you were staying in a hotel and someone pounded on your door to wake you up. They go down the hall yelling, "Fire, fire!" In your dazed and sleepy mind you realize they are right. You begin to smell smoke.

Are you about to ask this person how they voted in the last election? They have warned you, to waked you up. You are grateful to them.

That is how I feel about these people called "alarmists" by so many. When the fire is coming your way isn't an alarm what you need to hear?