The Rest of the Old Old Story

What is salvation? I like to use the example of a saved drowning person. The saved person is the one who’s standing on the shore. The unsaved person is the one in the water, flapping their arms in the air and going under for the 3rd time.

It’s the same with Christian salvation. Peter likes to talk about escaping the corruption or pollution that is in the world through lust (2 Pet. 1:4; 2:20).  The writer of Hebrews describes people who are enlightened and taste of the heavenly gift and the power of the world to come (Heb. 6:4-5). Paul tells the Corinthians that they “were” unrighteous, but now they’re “washed,” “sanctified,” and “justified.”

Those are impressive religious words, but if we don’t define them, then they don’t mean anything at all.

• “Washed” means baptized. (Everyone–and I mean everyone–believed that from the time of the apostles until a 100 years after the Reformation. So if that’s not true, then the apostles didn’t know how to preach the Gospel.)
• “Sanctified” means made holy. It means separated or set aside for the use of God.
• “Justified” means made righteous. It literally means that. It’s a cousin to the adjective “righteous.” It’s popular today to define righteousness as nothing more than being seen as righteous by God. George MacDonald called this a “revolting legal fiction,” and that’s exactly what it is. “Justified” means to actually be made righteous so that you walk in righteousness (1 Jn. 3:7).

So how does one obtain all these things?

Obedience: The Path to Christian Salvation

The Bible makes the general statement that Jesus has become the author of salvation to all who obey him (Heb. 5:9). (Did you know the Bible said that?)

However, it has a lot more specific things to say about obtaining salvation by obedience.

At the top of this post, do you remember I defined salvation from drowning as standing on the shore? There are a lot of specific ways that you can see the fruit of your Christian salvation in the way of a transformed life. I’ve been listening to Psalms and Proverbs on tape the last couple days, and they have a LOT to say about that.

Obedience and Tangible Salvation in the Psalms

Let’s start with Ps. 111:10. It says:

A good understanding have all those who do his commandments.

I quote that a lot because Noah, the head elder of our church, quotes it a lot. What I didn’t realize is how often that’s repeated over the next 40 Psalms and the first few chapters of Proverbs.

It starts in the very next Psalm:

Praise the Lord! Blessed is the man that fears the Lord and takes great delight in his commandments.

His descendants shall be mighty on the earth.  The generation of the upright shall be blessed. Wealth and riches shall be in his house, and his righteousness will last forever. To the upright light will arise in the darkness; he is gracious, full of compassion, and righteous. (112:1-4)

Now that’s standing on the shore, rescued from drowning! That’s real, tangible salvation!

Psalm 112 goes on and gets better than that, but so do later Psalms. How about this incredible passage from Psalm 119. It’s not even just a promise. It’s what David says was his actual experience:

Through your commandments, you make me wiser than my enemies … I have more understanding than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation. I understand more than the ancients because I keep your precepts. … How sweet are your words to my taste! Sweeter than honey to my mouth! Through your precepts I get understanding, therefore I hate every false way. (vv. 98-104)

Wow! You can’t beat that!

How’d David get so wise? How did he understand more than the ancients?

He kept God’s precepts.

A good understanding have all those who obey him.

Obedience and Tangible Salvation in the Proverbs

What sort of wisdom can you gain from Proverbs?

The proverbs of Solomon … to give subtlety to the simple, to the young man knowledge and discretion. A wise man will hear and increase learning; a man of understanding will obtain wise counsel to understand a proverb and its interpretation, to understand the words of the wise and their riddles.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction. (1:1-7)

Proverbs is all about obeying God. Proverbs is practical wisdom. Leaf through the proverbs. They do not talk about esoteric things or deep theology. They talk about lending money, border disputes, laziness, getting up early, and a lot of other very down-to-earth, practical things.

But if you will obey, Jesus–who is the Wisdom of Proverbs–will give you understanding in all those other things.

If you try to get understanding of deep theology by study, then Paul tells you what will happen:

The purpose of the command is love out of a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith. Some have turned aside from this to empty words. The desire to be teachers of the law, but they don’t understand what they teach nor the things about which they make confident assertions. (1 Tim. 1:5-7)

Solomon begins the Proverbs by telling his son–probably a general reference to any student listening to his Proverbs–to avoid stealing and murder and the people who steal and murder (1:10-18).

Pretty basic, isn’t it!

The fear of  the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, not deep study!

After saying only that, Solomon says that Wisdom is walking around in the streets, crying out to the simple, trying to get someone to listen.

So later, she says, when they are in trouble and crying out for her, she will not answer.

Why? Because they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the Lord.

Discretion will preserve you; understanding will keep you; to deliver you from the way of the evil man, from the man who speaks perverse things. (Prov. 2:11-12)

Do you want to be delivered from error? Obey God. Discretion will preserve you. Understanding will keep you.

Uprightness and Righteousness

This is really important. I don’t know where to put it or how to phrase it so that its importance is properly emphasized, but this is really important:

Uprightness is a choice; righteousness is a gift.

And the gift of righteousness is given to the upright in heart.

Ps. 36:10 reads:

Prolong your lovingkindness to those that know you, and your righteousness to the upright in heart.

Ps 112:4 says:

To the upright light arises in the darkness; he is gracious, compassionate, and righteous.

All these things are another way of saying what Hebrews 5:8 says. Jesus is the author of eternal  salvation to those that obey him.

Faith and obedience were intertwined in the Hebrew mind. Only we western legalists could conceive of something so utterly ridiculous as claiming to have faith in someone and then ignoring what he tells you.

Imagine a guide on an African safari. He’s leading a group through the jungle. One of the guys keeps patting him on the back and telling him, “I have faith in you.” However, the next time the group stops to rest, and the guide calls an end to the break and starts forward, Mr. I-have-faith-in-you says, “Hey, I thought this trip was by faith. I don’t have to do what you say.”

What do you think? Spiritual? Or just ridiculous?

• The righteousness of the upright shall deliver them. (Prov. 11:6)
• Righteousness keeps the one that is upright in the way. (Prov. 21:18)
• He became the author of eternal salvation for them that obey him. (Heb. 5:9)

On the Health Care Plan, have you noticed how no one has talked about doctors and hospitals charging less money?

Rose Creek Village has businesses that make a good portion of  their money by working for rich doctors … doctors with jaguars, twenty thousand square foot houses, and money to spend for very fine trim, paint, and faux finishes.

I had my shoulder put back in socket at McNairy Regional Hospital, which according to the $250 book, Customized Fee Analyzer, normally charges 4 to 5 times standard rates for this area for its services, despite being in one of the poorest counties in the country. The doctor talked to me for two minutes, then had me wait for about 90 minutes on a table, during which time he didn’t see me at all. After 90 minutes, he came in and worked on my arm for a half an hour and popped it back in.

He charged me $400 for that half hour.

Doctors need to make $800 per hour???

The hospital charged me $643 for walking into the emergency room. They charged me $90 per shot for six shots I wasn’t given. I called more than 15 times to talk to someone about the six $90 shots that didn’t happen, and I always got someone who couldn’t help me and a promise that someone would call me back.

They charged me $280 for being processed out of the emergency room. They charged me $40 for the $2 scrub shirt they sent me out with because they had to cut mine off. Total charge: $2400, not including the doctor, whose charge was $400 extra.

I paid them $1200, told them I’d see them in court if they wanted more, and then they left me alone. The doctor’s office agreed to take $200, a bit more reasonable, but still $400/hour for his time.

My One Health Care Request

Require doctors to charge less!

Do they need the money? You tell me. They’re hiring our top end carpentry and painters, driving jaguars, and living in multi-million dollar homes. That has to happen?

I read this today in this news report:

Fears over rising costs have been a critical factor in kick-starting the reform debate. The US spends around $7400 per person per year on healthcare, twice the health costs in Canada, the next highest spender.

I lived in Germany as a civilian for four years. America’s health care costs are ridiculous. There’s no other explanation. Limbaugh and others can go on and on about how socialist medicine doesn’t work, but I lived there, and it worked great.

We got a visitor from America while I was there who had no health insurance.  He contracted a kidney infection and was in the hospital for a week with a catheter for most of that time. He got out, the infection flared back up, and he went in another week just being treated with antibiotics.

Total cost? $3,000.

Now I know this was 1986, 23 years ago, but I assure you it was multiple thousands of dollars cheaper than it would have been in America. I’ve been treated by Germans, and I’ve been treated by Americans, and if anything, the treatment in Germany was better, cleaner, and more efficient.

I Don’t Get It

This health care plan, if it doesn’t address America’s ludicrous costs and its over-wealthy doctors, is a waste of time. Yet I’ve not heard one news report yet addressing the issue of simply telling doctors and hospitals their costs will be limited.

Will they go broke? No. Look the world over. We’re the most expensive health care providers in the world by double. A friend of mine flew to England to have a hernia operation. He paid cash, and it was cheaper to fly there and back and get the operation than to have it in the US … in South Dakota.

Good grief.

This is completely inappropriate to the normal subject of my blog, but it’s my blog, so …

I always say there’s nothing like reading error to motivate one to write truth.

I’m prone to writing error here and there, too. I’m human. I have things I don’t understand. I have things I forget to consider.

Teaching and Truth

Hopefully those of us who take it upon ourselves to teach will at least never make errors on purpose. Some do, however, Some are so bent on some supposed truth that they couldn’t care less about facts, history, Scripture or anything else. They’ll twist anything to prove their point. (Thus, the anti-Norman Geisler post two days ago.)

Catholicism, the Councils, the Creeds and Men’s Salvation

The one today, however, is not a purposeful twisting of history, I’m quite sure. It’s simply not considering history. It’s so easy not to notice the obvious.

On a “Equipping Catholics” blog, I read:

It is very important that we take a moment to recognize the impact heresies and anti-Christ philosophies can have on the eternal destinies of their adherents. False concepts of Christ can pull people away from the only narrow path that Jesus said leads to eternal salvation. False doctrines about Christ can result in the eternal loss of one’s soul.

And that is precisely why the Father gave us the Church — to protect us from those falsehoods and erroneous philosophies about salvation, sin and judgment …

Indeed, it was the early Church Councils (such as Nicea, Ephesus, Constantinople and Chalcedon) that handed down to the 21st century Church what is still considered the orthodox Christian faith — much of which is illustrated in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed.

What this writer means is that it’s a good thing that these councils came along to defeat heresies like Arianism and Nestorianism, or else people might be pulled away “from the only narrow path that Jesus said leads to eternal salvation.”

What the writer did not consider–nor have most of the rest of us considered–is whether it worked.

Did the councils of Nicea, Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon lead people to follow Christ on the narrow path and save their souls?

Did they not rather lead to a top-heavy hierarchy, numerous false conversions, and a church full of corruption, superstition, and false doctrines? A church which later would be rightly called antichrist by the multitudes that fled its corruption and persecution?

Catholicism and the Dark Ages

After the councils, Christians became the persecutors rather than the persecuted. Rather than desecrating temples of idols, they created temples of idols so much that the emperor Julian the Apostate declared that Christians surpassed the pagans in their hero worship (by worshipping saints).

The last of the seven councils, of which the aforementioned are the first four, approved the “veneration” of icons. That Council, overriding a previous one, declared that it was appropriate to proskuneo a picture of a saint, as long as you didn’t latreia it.

Both those words are translated worship in the NT. In fact, both are used in Jesus’ statement to the devil, when he quoted Deuteronomy, “You shall worship (proskuneo) the Lord your God and him only shall you serve (latreia).” It seems clear to me that Jesus would not have approved of the worship of a picture of Peter, any more than Peter, who rejected proskuneo from Cornelius (Acts 10:25), would.

The Church produced from these great councils refused to allow its followers to hear the Scriptures, whether written or read aloud, in a language their followers could understand.  They burned John Huss and William Tyndale alive for giving people the Scriptures in the vernacular, and they burned John Wycliffe’s bones twelve years after he was buried because they couldn’t find him while he was alive.

This Church created “the Dark Ages,” the greatest time of ignorance in the world since before Sumeria in 6000 BC, and to this day they continue to produce Christians that are well over 90% Christian in name only.

I don’t think the councils succeeded at keeping people on the narrow path for the salvation of their soul.

Would Allowing Heresy Have Done Better?

Yes.

I suppose you want me to give reasons for asserting that.

1. It could not have done worse; that’s impossible.
2. It may have prevented the church gaining political power, and that’s always better.
3. The churches did not hold a council to rout the gnostics, but they were driven out, anyway.
4. If the Church had not gone into cahoots with the emperor, they may not have admitted all those unconverted pagans who switched to Christianity for purely political reasons.

Since the Church did hold the councils, and since they did get political help to win their battles, history went the way it did. We’ll never know what would have happened had it not happened.

However, I find it impossible to believe that a lack of understanding of the Trinity, which Tertullian said was common in the church in A.D. 200,  could have led to as many people forsaking the narrow path and losing their souls than the rout of councils and creeds did.

My wife tells me that the ridiculous story that Ronald Reagan buried 20 trillion dollars in the White House Rose Garden actually made it to the Google news listing last night. I found a copy of it here.

As soon as I heard it, I started laughing. When  I heard it was buried in mason jars, I laughed louder.

This is not my typical blog post, but I couldn’t resist talking about this. Humor, politics, and math combined. Irresistible.

Zero Is a Really Big Number

I love math. One of the things I love about math is how big a number zero is.

Just three zeros turns 1 into 1,000. Three more zeros are worth 999,000, as they turn 1,000 into 1,000,000.

The next three  zeros are worth 999 million as they turn a million into a billion.

What’s the point?

The White House Has a Really Big Rose Garden

The article says that the money was buried in “low denomination bills.”

Yeah, right.

Let’s assume these “low denomination bills” are 100′s. If you divide 20 trillion by 100, you only get to take two zeros off. You still have 200 billion.

Do you know how much room 200 billion $100 bills takes up?

Well, assuming that it takes 250 bills to make an inch (which is close to true of 20# typing paper, and I think that money’s thicker), then you have a stack of bills 800 million inches high. Divide that by 5,280 and you get a stack of money 151,515 miles high. That’s 60% of the way to the moon.

You’re going to bury that in the White House rose garden?

We did some more math and determined that Ronald Reagan had to dig a cavern 5 miles long, 1 mile wide, and 100 feet deep. And that’s assuming there’s no mason jars or oven mitts taking up room with them.

That’s a big rose garden.

Where Did Reagan Get the Money?

I was 26 years old in 1987 when Reagan did this. I remember hearing about the deficit and the national debt. To this day, the national debt is still less that 20 trillion dollars. In 1987, the federal budget was less than a billion dollars.

So I looked up the gross domestic product for 1987. It was difficult to find, but I did find that the gross domestic product for “all industries” totaled 4.8 trillion dollars or so.

So Ronald Reagan buried something over 4 times what the entire United States spent in 1987?

Right.

Ronald Reagan’s Buried Money Was a Joke

I don’t know who started the joke, but if you read the article, it’s obviously tongue-in-cheek.

Computers are computers, even if they’re run by Google. I’m sure one of those quick spiders, which can read keywords but can’t see tongues or cheeks, picked it up.

You can’t find it on Google News today, even with a search, so some insightful (mildly) human has removed it.

It’s not April 1, so I don’t know why the story was written. It was funny, though. I loved the comment attributed to Barack Obama:

“‘Our economic worries are no more,’ announced a jubilant Barack Obama.”

Error, lies, and foolishness are always excellent motivators for me to blog.

The particular embarrassing morass of propaganda to which I am referring is John Ankerberg’s interview with Norman Geisler. The interview is such a collection of Protestant fantasy that I hardly know where to start.

However, start I will.

Norman Geisler

Geisler doesn’t believe in Purgatory. Fair enough. I don’t either.

To Geisler, however, it appears that means he can pick any parts of church history he wants and say that they don’t either. In his case, he picks Luther’s 95 theses, and then he tells us:

Luther … tacked up his 95 theses and said, “There is no purgatory. There are no prayers for the dead. You can’t buy people out of purgatory.”

That’s nice. Norman Geisler passes himself off–and is believed to be by a multitude of the ignorant sheep that will always, and should, constitute the majority of the church–an expert on “the historic Christian faith.” Yet, it is apparent from this interview that he makes up his own historic Christian faith.

Martin Luther’s 95 Theses

I have Luther’s 95 theses up on my Christian history web site. Try going there and taking a look at number 26. There Luther suggests that the pope, rather than offering to remit sins through keys of the kingdom that he does not possess, ought to seek remission by praying. The obvious context, as is clear from the rest of the theses, is that the pope ought to be praying for souls in purgatory rather than claiming the ability to release them.

Nothing in the 95 theses denies purgatory. Luther was still a Catholic priest at the time, somewhat under the delusion that the pope was going to support him in his ideas. Thesis 50, for example, says:

Christians are to be taught that if the pope knew the exactions of the pardon-preachers, he would rather that St. Peter’s church should go to ashes, than that it should be built up with the skin, flesh and bones of his sheep.

I’m pretty sure Luther would deny purgatory later, though I’ve never looked it up, and I can’t be certain of it. But during the time of the 95 theses, he was a good Roman Catholic monk.

History

This is history. History is where you read what a person said, and then you tell people what that person said.

History is not taking your own words and wishes and putting them in the mouths of historical figures. Doing that is blasphemy, lying, and deceit, and it will cause God to send you to hell.

Read it for yourself. The Bible says that all liars will have their part in the lake of fire.

Beware, Norman Geisler and John Ankerberg. I don’t care what service you think you are rendering to people by defending them from Jehovah’s Witnesses, Way missionaries, Mormons, and Roman Catholics. If you defend them by lying, you will have your part in the lake of fire. If you create a new gospel, a new Christian history, and a way that is contrary to the apostolic way–no matter how much you defend it with the Bible–then you are to be anathametized by all true Christians.

The Bible

Geisler also presents an imaginary history of the Bible in that interview. Almost nothing he says is true. I don’t have time to go into it here, nor time to research all the quotes I’d have to research for you, but I have a page on it and I can highly recommend A High View of Scripture? on the subject. A High View of Scripture? is an Evangelical book published by a well-respected Evangelical publisher, Baker Books.

‘Nuff said, as the saying goes.

 I saw a blog recently, pretty good other than the ridiculous amount of advertising at the top, and I wrote the following response to it. I thought it was pertinent and ought to be on my blog.

Scripture and the Church

The history part of your post is excellent, and that’s unusual. While there are always going to be interpretations of history, there are basic things that simply happened, and any honest person has to at least stick to those things. Most don’t. You did. Congratulations. It’s sad that it’s so rare.

That said, I do disagree with your conclusion about carefully sticking to the Scriptures. One of the things the Scripture says to do is to test things by their fruit. I’m not very impressed by the fruit of the sola Scriptura movement. It’s pretty pitiful, in fact.

But let’s say we were to actually follow Scripture in the more important areas:love, unity, mercy, judgment, for example, and above all in how to know truth. Well, here’s some things it says.

The foundation of truth is the church and the revelation of God in the church (1 Tim. 3:15; 1 Jn. 2:27, where the “you” is plural, not singular). I’m not Catholic or Orthodox. By church, I mean the local church bonded together in Christ, not some organization.

That’s what the Scripture says. I didn’t make that up or rely on tradition. The Scripture says that if people are trying to seduce you, then you don’t have to worry if you–the local church–follow the anointing into what’s true. Hold fast to the unity of the Spirit, and God will lead you into the unity of the faith (Eph. 4:3,13).

God’s church will never be founded on micro-managing type of rules like no instruments and other things people fight over. It will be found on those who depart from iniquity (2 Tim. 2:19). People who pursue peace, faith, and holiness together (2 Tim. 2:22). And people who judge sin and put those who are obviously faking it or purely nominal out of their midst (1 Cor. 5). You will never find the church united in power and following God when most of its members have no interest in denying themselves, taking up their cross, and following God, even giving up all their possessions for one another and for the poor (Luke 9:23; 14:26-33).

Following the Scripture will lead you to know God and walk by the Spirit, so that the Spirit of God resolves all the difficulties in your midst, even the doctrinal ones. Following the Scripture as a foundation of truth, rather than knowing that Christ is Truth (Jn. 5:39-40), will have you never resolving your differences but living like Pharisees. It’s been proved over and over again.