I Sort of "Saw" Mom After She Died

(from an email to my brother Wayne)  I sort of "saw" mom after she died.  I didn't see anything with my physical eyes.  The truth of the matter is that I think the Holy Spirit sort of communicated to me the essence of the way mom is now, more than He let me see her. 

Mom and I started out, like all mom's do with their kids, with me knowing nothing and mom, seemingly knowing everything.  I was a newborn.  I wasn't even a skull full of mush.  I was a skull virtually empty of content.  Then I caught up to her in the knowledge department and then I think, in all honesty, I slipped ahead of her and became more "grown up" than she was ever able to be (thought not without enormous flaws which are the fate of all of Adam and Eve's kids in this life).

Mom is now way ahead of me once again.  The sense that I got was of a Lois who is very, very wise.  Her serenity, should she be embodied and come back to visit us for a month or so, would be legendary.  All of the scars are healed.  All of the inner conflicts, hungers, doubts and fears are completely resolved.  She may actually be as far ahead of me now (if not farther) than she was ahead of me the day I was separated from her body for the first time.

So did mom fail?  Of course she did.  In Adam we all failed.  But in Christ we all succeed with a success that is so comprehensive that we are unable to fully grasp, while in this life, how radically awesome we are going to turn out to be in the end.  As Paul says, we are His workmanship.  We are His project and when He is done making us we shall be a stately as a mountain, as beautiful as a sunset, and as tranquil as a brook bubbling through a mature redwood forest.  We shall be as beautiful and as wise and as peaceful as He can make us.

An Earthquake in Tokyo

Earthquake emails from my brother in Tokyo.  Times are Central Standard Time.

11:59 PM:  We just had the strongest earthquake I've ever felt.  I figured it

might be the end.

The Lazy-Boy was rocking in the living room like it was a rodeo.

Dressers, desks, pretty much cleared -- although somehow electronics

and my desktop are intact.  Duration: at least one full minute.

Shaking: like I've never felt.

This was as serious an earthquake as you can get without being

absolutely disastrous.

Still shaking, and not mildly …

12:08 AM: 

Obviously I don't feel like I'm in immanent danger, or I probably

would not be writing this.  But we are still shaking perceptibly --

*very* perceptibly, and it's been 18 minutes since the shaking

started.

This is scary stuff -- there are still some strong shakes.  By

strong, I mean the kind that would have scared me a few years ago,

but were nothing compared to what we just experienced.

Glad I got my power walk in already today.  ^^_^^

Telephones appear to be out now, as shaking *still* continues as I

write.

Holy *shit* this is strong.

From my brother Wayne who is still up and living in Naperville, IL: 

10 ft sunami warning for the NE coast.  Could be 20 ft they say.  How high are you?

I see a huge pillar of smoke rising from Tokyo

From Lance in Tokyo, 12:17 AM: 

How strong was it?

Well, when I leave my desk, that's strong.  When I go to the area of

our house where I believe the support beams are strongest, that is

the beginning of scary.

Hell, this sucker doesn't stop!!!

When I get down on my knees, that's when it really gets spooky.  I've

never gotten down on my knees before.  I did this time, and I said,

"Please stop now!"

It didn't.

Aftershocks are rumbling through here like crazy, the one above quite

strong.  But I think the worst is finished -- at least for today.

Shaking again ...  strongly ...

The earth is like Jello.

Obviously, we missed the BIG ONE, for now anyway.  Also obviously, I

don't even appreciate the BIG ONE yet, because this one rocked my

world.

You can get updates at:

(We just had a HUGE aftershock, maybe as big as the first one)

Wayne responds: 

I just watched a live feed on fox news with waves coming ashore (I think) with dozens of cars being swept away in the wave.  They are saying a small 3 ft wave came ashore shortly after the quake hit, but the big wave is still to come.

Lance continues:  It's been 5 minutes at least, enough to call Yuki (his wife) -- she's okay,

although the *IDIOTS* she works with want to evacuate the building.

I told her to let them go -- she is safe where she is, and who knows

what lurks outside.

My triple-monitor display continues to rock.  Telephone wires look

like jump-rope invitations.

Amazingly, it seems no broken windows.  But the floor in my office is

a mess.  The ground is *still* moving, and moving sharply.

From Lance:  Now 2 hours and about 25 minutes later, and we are still getting

rattled by aftershocks that I would have previously called

"earthquakes".

But as I say, we dodged a bullet.  Had this been a bit closer, your

emails would be going unanswered, probably.

My response to my brother the next morning:  I hope this email finds you and Yuki safe and well.

Of all the natural events I have been involved in, earth quakes are the most disconcerting.  The air is supposed to move.  The wind is supposed to blow.  So sometimes it blows too hard and you get a tornado.  But the earth is NOT supposed to move!  It's supposed to be right under you.  When you go up for a rebound it's supposed to be right where you left it when you come back down.  (Actually, I don't go up for rebounds too often any more, but I certainly used to.)

I have been riding a motor scooter for several years now.  I got involved with the scooter when the price of gas last jumped to $4.00 a gallon.  I get 60 mpg on the bike.  So no matter what happens to the price of gas I am in pretty good shape for about eight months out of the year.  But riding the bike has brought me to a new place spiritually when it comes to praying about common, ordinary events.

I noticed I am much more likely to pray for a safe ride to work when I ride the scooter than I am when I drive a car.  And yet driving the car is one of the riskiest things we do.  It's safer than being on the scooter, but it's still a risky thing.  So the bike is dangerous and so is the car, but why did I find myself more likely to pray before I got on the bike?  It was because I was used to the car.  Everyone rides in cars.  Everyone accepts that risk.  And when we accept a risk we stop thinking about it.  And then we stop praying about it.  Which is presumptuous I think.

Several years ago, before I ever bought the scooter, I was driving down to Macomb to pick up Joy and bring her home from college.  It was snowing.  All of a sudden I lost control over my vehicle.  It was spinning like a top and I ended up going off the road backwards.  A split second after I went off the road a semi when right through the space where my van had been spinning at 55 mph.  With that snow on the road there is simply no way he could have stopped in time.  A split second sooner and I could have been broadsided by that truck.

I can't tell you how many times I had driven by people in the ditch during a winter storm and thought to myself, "Well, you just have to know how to drive in bad weather.  Some people just aren't careful enough."  Mr. Smug, who now found himself in a snow bank on the side of the road watching as a semi roared by.

So between that near accident and the scooter I find myself much more conscious of common, ordinary dangers and more likely to pray over such things.  I ask God to protect my family from everything from microbes to meteors.  Once a week I try and pray for everything I might have to worry about.  I ask God to protect us, our property, and our vehicles from disease, accidents, lightning, wind storms, fire, flood, backed up sewers, earthquakes, settleing foundations, meteors, infestations of pests (we have termites in the neighborhood), terrorism, crime, and anything else I haven't thought of.

Basically, on my "everything" prayer day I try to cover everything I might conceivably worry about.  And then I ask God for the gift of His peace.

There are two other steps to this process.  Step two is to turn every worry you have during the week into prayer.  Right now I'm concerned about the country, the debt, and what's going on in the Arab world.  But I'm even more concerned about listening to news without turning that into an occasion for prayer.  I have come to the conclusion that if I listen to too much news and do too little praying that I am just harming my soul.

Step three is to meet each problem as it occurs with prayer and a sense of God's presence and God's provision.  I expect my prayers to work!  I expect that when I get to heaven I will find out that there is a certain amount of grief that I did not experience because I prayed!  But we live in a fallen world and, as a more Christian and classier version of the bumper sticker should say, "The excrement of solid bodily waste is a constant and ongoing part of the process of life."  So when "excrement occurs," how do I respond?  Do I panic or do I respond like someone who believes that God is watching over me and that if something bad happens, then God is right there to help me through it?

I suppose the ideal would probably be something like this.  The house is shaking.  I somehow manage to struggle into my adult undergarment to avoid annoying and embarrassing wet spots on my trousers.  Or if the earthquake is really bad, even more embarrassing brown spots!  Always remember, "the excrement of solid bodily waste is a constant and ongoing part of the process of life."  Then I get under a door frame.  But while I am struggling with the undergarment and getting to the door frame I am praying. 

"Lord, please protect my family and bring us safely through this crises.  Protect our lives and our property.  If we must suffer loss or injury, give us the grace to to respond like sheep who are confident because they know that their Shepherd never leaves them or forsakes them.  And Lord, if this is my time to depart be in your presence in heaven, I welcome that with all my heart."

That, I think, would be the ideal.  Now if you will excuse me, I have to go to the store.  While we literally have cases of them in the garage at work, I just realized  that I have no depends in my home emergency preparedness kit.

This is in answer to an e-mail my brother Lance sent me about the death penalty. This link will take you to the article he was referencing.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/09/07/090907fa_fact_grann?currentPage=all

Here is my response.

I think that the first exposure that I received to the argument that the Bible mandates the death penalty was when I went to Prairie and took my first tour through the Old Testament. Since then, my views have (I hate to say it) evolved. Although I would like to point out that the evolution of my thinking has absolutely nothing to do with random mutations.

This is what I think.

It is a horrible injustice to execute an innocent man, but it is probably equally horrible to condemn an innocent man to prison for life.

It is an imperfect world. Innocent people get convicted from time to time. Some of them have almost definitely been executed.

We can't eliminate the criminal justice system because it is imperfect. There are predators among us and they must be dealt with.

My reaction to the news that led Illinois Gov. George Ryan to commute those death sentences was not that the death penalty was wrong, but that the system probably needs some sort of a balancing mechanism. If that many people on death row have been set free, how many innocent people are rotting in prison while serving life sentences? I am just as concerned about them as I am about those facing the death penalty. After all, as Bill Clinton's brilliant Surgeon General once remarked, "I suppose we all got to die of something."

I think that we could probably set up a process whereby any sentence longer than 20 years could be re-investigated from the ground up by a state police unit that would be, in some way, the equivalent of an internal affairs department.

I think that prosecutorial misconduct is a very, very scary thing, and that it is probably more common than we are aware of.

I think we should be impeaching federal judges on a fairly regular basis. We are not stuck with these peopel for life, or at least we don't have to be.

I think that they really didn't have any option other than execution during Old Testament times. They simply didn't have, and couldn't afford a prison system like the one we have today. If you took something from someone, you didn't go to prison. You paid it back plus 20%. If you couldn't afford to pay it back, you were sold into slavery for a period of time necessary to repay the debt.

If you injured someone, an economic value was attached to the injury and you had to pay that person for their injury plus 20%. This is the famous "eye for and eye and tooth for a tooth" passage. The idea is that you don't fine someone as much for a knocked out tooth as you would for a gouged out eye.

You'll notice that there was no mention of prison in the previous two examples. As I said, the system didn't exist, nor could they have afforded to construct such a system.

I just had Christmas with my family, and I was thinking about depression days and pioneer days when kid might have received an orange for Christmas. Our standard of living is amazing and it makes many things possible now that were not possible then.

The only institution that could have served as an equivalent to prison was slavery, but the slave system was not like the one set up in the South and it wouldn't have worked for capital crimes. Let's say that I had the resources to pay someone's fine and accept that person as a indentured servant until their labor paid me back the cost of the fine plus a small profit. Assuming that I could come up with enough money to pay for a human life, there is no way I'm gong to let a murderer loose in my farm or in my shop. I wouldn't have a system in place that would enable me to do that safely.

In the light of all these facts, I don't think we would be dishonoring God if we were to do away with the death penalty or at least modify it in some way.

Last, but not least, I am more and more impressed with the reality that no one gets away with anything in the end, apart from the forgiveness of God through Christ. Even in that case, the crimes forgiven have been paid for by the sufferings of the Savior.

The deeds are being written down and the books are going to be opened. How much time will all this take and in what detail will our lives be reviewed? I am beginning to think that they will be reviewed in great detail. If I will not loose my reward for a cup of cold water given out of compassion, then it makes sense to me that my good deed, which seems like a very small thing to me, is actually a very big deal in the sight of God. I suspect that every random act of kindness will be reviewed in detail.

There will be no shortage of time. God could spend 25 or 30 years reviewing my life with me in great detail.

This same process will apply to sins not covered by the blood of Christ. We must believe this, preach it, and be a witness to it.

Our problem, I think, is that we don't remember very much very clearly. All of our past, good and bad, get's lost in the mist of our memories. But that thing you did ten years ago, whether good or bad, will be reviewed in detail. And if it was a bad thing, and you protest to God about it, He can reach inside of you and press a neuron that will cause you to instantly recall, in vivid detail, every aspect of the incident under discussion. In deep hypnosis it is possible for a person to remember their whole life in vivid detail, even including sounds and odors.

We are like foolish criminals who commit crimes in front of ATM's or in other places where security cameras record everything in vivid detail. In our case, the recording is not just in the mind of God, it's permanently recorded somewhere in the recesses of our own brains.

I used to love Paul Harvey's stupid criminal stories. The guy hands the teller a note saying, "I have a gun. Give me the money!" The teller turns the note over after the criminal flees. He wrote the note on the back of an envelope. On the other side the teller sees his name and address. This type of thing actually happens.

Imagine an even stupider criminal. He plans his crime in great detail. Then he writes a letter to a judge. "You need to be at such and such a place at such and such a time. Bring some cops and a jury. This is what I'm going to do. We can have the trial in five minutes after the crime. This will save time and money."

Every sin is just that stupid. You visited the no-tell motel with sweet Susie from the office and nobody saw you? You think you got away with it? In a worst case scenario, the biggest worry you have is that your wife will find out?

The entire crime was caught on film. The Judge was holding the camera. And you will be called into account.

So, Merry Christmas to one and all. Thank God for the gift of His Son which has resulted in a whole lot of video tape being erased. All praise and glory to the King of Heaven, who is perfect in love, in justice, and in power.

Low down, no good liars.

More from my reactions to a video supporting evolution. You'll need some background here. An man named Michael Behe wrote a book called "Darwin's Black Box." It is a great book. In my opinion it totally destroys the theory of macro evolution. In the first few minutes of his speech, this is what the science guy had to say about Behe:

The guy is saying that says Michael Behe believes that Astrology is a scientific theory. The implication is clear. Behe doesn't believe in evolution, so if we can just get him to be honest with us, he will reveal all kinds of crackpot ideas. Well, I've read Behe's book. There is simply no way this man believes in Astrology.

So I go to do some research. This lie is all over the web. It's simply not true.

Michael Behe was asked about astrology when he was acting as a witness at a trial. He admitted that astrology used to be considered a scientific theory but that it had been discredited. The lawyer for the plaintive came back with one of those lawyerly questions: "So the idea of astrology fits the criterion for being considered a scientific theory?" Behe admitted this was so, but stressed that it was discredited by the evidence. His whole point was that just as Astrology has been discredited, he belives that evolution will be discredited by

And they are ALL LYING or unknowingly repeating a lie.

Here's the address of the trial transcript.

Why is this man praying?

I was watching an on-line video defending evolution. This was part of my e-mail discussion of evolution. I think you might be interested in my reaction to the first part of the video. A professor of religion gets up and begins the whole thing with a prayer. Then the scientist gets up. His position is that God exists, but that He hasn't done anything since the Big Bang. This is what I wrote back to the person who suggested that I watch the video:

Well, if just made it to the prayer. I realize this has nothing to do with the meat of the argument, but why is he bothering to pray to a god, who, if he does in fact exist, apparently doesn't do anything (with the possible exception of setting off the big bang). If evolution is true, our very existence is a meaningless, cosmic accident. If that's true, why should we even kid ourselves about someone being out there who is paying attention to us? Given sin and human nature (or the way we behave), it is just as likely that a creator, should he bother to getting around to noticing us, would be appalled and disgusted and deeply offended that we would even dream of calling him "father."

If the Bible is true, then God was directly involved with every step of the creation process. And Adam and Eve are literal, historical figures. If you are going to disassociate the Christian religion from the contents of 99.99% of the Bible because it's not true, then empty the freaking buildings, turn off the lights, and walk away.

Jesus said that it would be better for a man to have a millstone tied around his neck and to be cast into the sea than to lead other people astray. He meant that literally. It's literally true. When I look at some of these "ministers" and think about what Jesus said, it makes me tremble.

More from my e-mail discussion of evolution. For those of you who aren't into science, if you can hang in there for a paragraph or two I think you'll understand the illustration. It's a tremendous example of pure common sense applied to the existing data:

There is a (I don't remember the exact numbers here, but I'm close) 27 molecule chain reaction that takes place in the human eye in the amount of time it takes light to travel the width of a human hair. This chain reaction produces an electrical impulse that travels down the optic nerve to the brain. The result is the illusion that we call "sight." My understanding is that if you take any one of the molecules out of the chain reaction, you end up with a blind human. And that doesn't begin to answer the question of how the eye got there, the presence of the optic nerve, or the ability of the brain to process the information.

To me, these kinds of questions should provide great support for evolutionary theory. If evolution happened, it happened on a molecular level. We can now see things at the level and examine them. This should take us well beyond comic book science. If evolution is the result of very tiny, random changes, they we ought to be able to trace the chains backwards at a molecular level.

Please take a human eye and simplify it, using only existing structures and parts already present, and do evolution in reverse. Take me back to a very simple, working organ that could, say, detect motion. And then move forward, molecule molecule, small random change by small random change, and show how every one of the small changes is a very small step that leaves the organism with some kind of adaptive advantage that would explain the spread of the minute change from the one individual in which the random change took place to the rest of the species.

Okay, maybe it's not fair to ask you to take us that far back. Can you go back 25 steps? If not, why not? How exactly did this marvel of complexity arise from random events? If you go back one step, removing one of the molecules from the chain reaction, you end up with a blind human. We have to conclude that the entire chain reaction was put in place all at once. There is no reason for "natural selection" to add piece by piece to a structure that isn't doing anything.

It's comic book science, and I'm not buying it.

Thoughts on evolution #2

More from an e-mail discussing evolution:

I have yet to hear of any explanation of this that doesn't rise above the level of what I call "comic book science." And believe me, I know all about comic book science. Chemicals + energy = superpowers. A teenager is attending a science exhibit. Radiation is suddenly released just as a spider bites the young man. Energy (radiation) + chemicals (spider venom) = Spider Man!

Compare that to a "scientific" explanation of how billions of pieces of computer code (DNA) were added to existing creatures during the Cambrian explosion.

"Tectonic events made mountains as well as earthquakes which affected many species (Nash). These could have forced tidal waves which would add to the circulation of the water in the oceans and alter the chemistry over a large range. This may have been a key point in accelerated evolution, possibly creating scenarios that added oxygen to the water. When there was little oxygen in the atmosphere multicellular life could not expand but as algae started to produce more oxygen through photosynthesis, bacteria then used the oxygen and produced greenhouse gasses which warmed the earth encouraging the growth of life (Nash). As the algae built up on the floors of the oceans due to erosion it was proposed that water could not circulate as well, possibly promoting life to evolve rapidly during the Cambrian period (Nash)."

Blah, blah, blah. That would have been perfectly acceptable in Darwin's day because we didn't know any better. I would go so far as to say that in the light of our current level of understanding in the life sciences, that the preceding quote hardly qualifies as science.

Millions and billions of biological computer code would have had to be added to existing organisms over a relatively short period of time. How did this happen?

Thoughts on evolution #1

For the record, I believe the earth is billions of years old and that the creation days in Genesis one are therefore very long days. I believe in a literal Adam and Eve from whom we are all descended. I believe in a literal garden of Eden. I believe the appearance of new creatures over time in the geological record is a result of the creative work of God. But I can't believe in macro evolution as it is currently taught, and here's why:

The simplest organism we can conceive of (which is less complicated that the simplest organism we have actually seen in nature) has about 100,000 "steps" in it's little DNA stair case. You can bombard the little cells all day long with radiation of one kind or another and you can make minor changes in the staircase, but how in the world are you going to add 3.19 billion steps? Human beings have 3.2 billion steps in their spiral stair case of DNA. How are you going to add all that information? Mutations (radiation hitting the staircase and changing its structure) take place, but they don't add information. They just change the existing information.

So if you believe God started life and left it to evolve, you have to explain, not how the DNA structure might have been changed by mutation, but how 3.19 billion pieces of information was added to it.

Everyone has probably seen the picture of Darwin's tree of evolution. It's like a bush. Right at the base you see all the different life forms branching off. That's not what the geological record shows.

If you want to draw the tree to scale you can illustrate it using a football field. You start out with single celled organisms. These are the trunk, or the beginning of the tree. These stretch from one end zone to (I forget the exact placement) the 13 yard line at the other end of the field. All of a sudden you get some branches. Some sponges and whatnot. But long before you get to the 12 yard line you see a branching of the evolutionary tree into an inexplicable complexity of life forms. Billions of pieces of information were added in an astonishingly short period of time.

I've never seen a sensible naturalistic explanation for that. I've never seen one that could come close to being reasonable.

What about people who never get a chance to hear?

More excerpts from my e-mail. What happens to souls who never get a chance to hear the gospel? My reply:

Souls who lived before Jesus came? If they had access to the old covenant, they could be saved under that covenant. Which leads us to the great masses of people who never got a chance to hear under either dispensation.

We get a possible answer from something that Peter wrote. After Jesus was dead, but before the resurrection, He went and preached the gospel to the worst generation that ever lived, the people from the time of Noah's Ark. Think of how the earth would be if the Nazi's had won WWII and their culture had spread across the face of the earth and you might have some sense of just how corrupt things had become at the time of Noah.

Why would Jesus go and preach to them? Did He say, "Neener, neener, continue to burn in hell because you didn't listen to Noah? The redeemer Noah believed in has finally come and I am He. Don't you wish you had made different decisions in your lifetime?" Somehow, I don't think that would be gospel (good news) to them. He couldn't even have told them that it was good news because some of their descendants would be able to be saved. They didn't have any descendants. The only way it would be good news would be if they had a chance to believe it and act on it.

Which would lead you to believe that they all probably are in heaven right now and there must be some sort of second chance for everybody, so everyone will probably be saved in he end. Right?

I don't think so. I've spend a whole lot of time thinking about this, and this is what I am thinking.

Most people think of heaven as a place with beautiful homes, no crime or disease, and great golf courses. We will have to go to some sort of "church" once a week, maybe even once a day, but this would be a small price to pay for being able to escape for 40+ hours of work every week. Shoot, you could trade three hours of church a day for eight hours of work and most people would take you up on that one. That's the common picture of heaven, and it's deeply flawed.

God is a triune being. He is the ultimate relational being. And in saving us, He is calling us into union with Himself. We will become part of Him. He will always be God and we will always be man, but we will live in beautiful harmony with the conscious awareness of His presence throughout all the ages to come. Jesus described the relationship as the relationship between a vine and a branch. Shared life.

Nobody wants to go to hell, but not everyone will want to go to heaven. CS Lewis told a story about a man in hell. He was living all alone, miles and miles away from everyone else. One day he decided to catch a bus and go visit heaven. He wandered around for awhile. Nobody threw him out. Nobody made him leave, but eventually he took the bus back down to hell again. He didn't belong in heaven and he didn't want to be there. I think he just about nailed it, except for the part about nobody throwing him out.

The question isn't ultimately based on access to information. It's based on a willingness to repent, to acknowledge the goodness of God, and to willingly live in harmony with Him.

There will be those who see Him who will fall in love with Him, joyfully abandoning themselves to a life of totally intimacy and harmony with Him. Others will be unwilling to surrender their autonomy, no matter what the cost. To someone outside the kingdom, I would of course recommend reading the New Testament with an open heart. But I would also recommend reading with an open heart that is specifically seeking an inward revelation of the beautiful God. I've read to the end of the book, and understand this much about the story. It's a love story. All the pain and suffering, but in the end it's a love story. The greatest love story of all.

(But what about missions? If there is a chance people can hear or make a decision after they die, why should we support missions? Because Jesus said so. Because I could be wrong. Because to God, a person is saved from a whole lot more than hell when they get saved. People are slaves of Satan. They are delivered from the kingdom of darkness so they can walk in God's marvelous light. Even if a person could be saved later, Jesus doesn't want them to have to wait. I have always supported missions and I always shall.)

He'll be along soon

More excerpts from my e-mail. If Christianity is true, and all of God's people are praying for Him to come back, where is He? My reply:

As to why He isn't back yet, it was pretty well established that the time for that is set. I sincerely doubt that we can move it up by our prayers.

As for signs of the coming of the Kingdom, yes, we all tend to get a little carried away over optimistic. Here are the facts as I see them. There is no way that the end times scenario could take place without a Jewish state in Palestine. The emergence of that state after 2,000 years of dispersion, is a modern miracle.

I'm told that they don't study most of Israel's battles at West Point because there is nothing to be learned from them. Case in point. The guy holding the Golan Heights in 1973 was down to seven tanks by the beginning of day three. They knew they were going out to die that morning, but they were willing to die to buy time. So their seven tanks rumble out and stretched out before them are over a hundred Syrian tanks. And just as they begin to get in range, the Syrians begin to run away. Some abandon their tanks and run on foot. Others turned the tanks around and left the battlefield.

What is so amazing about these stories is that the people who tell them will frequently tell you that they are not religious. They are secular Jews. They don't pray. They don't really believe in the supernatural. But they are compelled to believe in something or someone as a result of their experiences in battle.

Incidently, humanly speaking, the trickster saved them. Nixon took a 3:00 AM call from Golda Meier. His advisers did not want to help. Nixon asked her what she wanted. She had a list ready. He got a copy of it. And he sent every single thing she asked for by air.

The existence of Israel quickens the pulse and excites the mind, but apart from the Jewish state, I personally don't see one piece of fulfilled prophecy in my lifetime. Not one. This whole thing could go on for another century or two and it wouldn't affect my faith. The Jews could get slaughtered and the state could be destroyed, but that wouldn't affect my faith either. The emperor who followed Constantine didn't like Christianity, and he gave the Jews a state in Palestine. That probably got the prophecy buff's excited back in the day. But later emperors took that authority away from them.

And since you insist on asking such cosmic questions (I'm thinking that these e-mails mike make an interesting book), I have to say a word about time. I had a God encounter a couple of years ago as I was riding my bike past the bus station. And I suddenly had this amazing thought. What if one of these buses smashed into me? What if I died?

And this is what I came up with.

http://mac61107.blogspot.com/search/label/Dealing%20With%20The%20Death%20Of%20A%20Christian

The point is one of the perception of time. If you want to walk with God, you will have to move from your time perspective to His. The month between Thanksgiving and Christmas used to seem like it was a year long. Now I blink and it's gone. And standing there beside my dead body, faced with the reality of a separation from Nancy and the kids, the time perspective once again shifts. They'll be along at the appointed time. And it won't seem like much time at all.

Jesus is coming back quickly. Very, very quickly. And if this whole trains of history wobbles it's way down the tracks for another 1,000 years before He comes back, He is still coming back very quickly. Someday we will look back on this from the perspective of billions of years of existence. He is coming back very quickly. It won't seem like any time at all.

Was Jesus a socialist?

Continuing excepts from a recent thread of e-mails. One of my correspondents opined that Jesus was a socialist. Jesus quote about the rich man and the eye of the needle was brought up. My reply:

One of the things that really struck me when I was reading through the Old Testament for the first time was the earthy nature of God's promises to the faithful. If Israel was faithful, then they would be wealthy and virtually disease free. Pretty cool covenant.

The disciples had been raised on this stuff. To them a rich person wasn't a bad guy, he was a good guy! If he was rich (and he was a Jew) he must be an exceptionally diligent in following the commandments. The associated personal wealth with living an exceptionally good life. It was this context in which Jesus made his comment about the needle.

"It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." If the disciples had been schooled in socialism they would have replied something like this. "Right on! Power to the people! Stick it to the man!"

But that's not what they said. "When the disciples heard this, they were very astonished and said, 'Then who can be saved?'" Note that they were astonished. This was contrary to everything they had been taught as children. What they were saying was, "if a rich guy, who has been blessed with wealth because of his exceptional devotion to keeping God's commandments can't be saved, then what chance to us poor people have." The implication was that if the holy rich man couldn't make it, nobody could. Jesus agreed with this point of view.

"And looking at them Jesus said to them, 'With people this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.'" In other words, it is impossible for any human, rich or poor to live a good enough life to be saved. What was impossible for man would only be possible for God, who had become a man and was about to die to pay the penalty for our sins.

This is not a socialist teaching, but it has been co-opted by leftists who want to portray Jesus as being on the side of the revolution. The point of the story is not that people need to give up their wealth, it was that people couldn't be saved by their own good works.

This would be my very brief, not well planned out in advance, summary of Jesus attitude toward money.

Don't worship it. Don't over emphasize it. Don't expect too much from it. You can't serve God and mammon.

Don't worry about it. Make the spiritual life your first priority and God will see to it that your basic needs are met.

Be generous with those in need.

And let it call come from the heart. That was hugely important to Jesus.

He was in the temple with the disciples when a rich man came in and made a very ostentatious show of giving a large sum on money. He was followed by a poor woman who dropped in the equivalent of a quarter. His take on this was that the poor woman had given the larger gift. Her motivation was pure. The rich man had been showing off.

I don't think Jesus would be impressed with a system that made giving a matter of law instead of a matter of the heart. The heart was of primary importance to him.

One other point.

The Obama's earned a million in 2006. That's pretty good money. In 2007 it jumped to 4.2 million with book royalties. In 2008 it dropped to 2.4 million. A great American success story. They were able to buy a house worth 1.6 million.

I'm reminded of a pastor I once heard preach. He was doing the "it's sinful for Americans to have all this money" routine. I would say to him the same thing I would say to the Obama's. Nothing is stopping you from giving it away. Figure out what the average income is in American and live on that. Give the rest away.

Practice what you preach. Don't buy a 1.6 million dollar house.

Thoughts on the founding fathers

I got into an e-mail discussion of racism and history recently that I thought you might enjoy. It ended up going all over the place, including evolution and what happens to people who never get a chance to hear the gospel. I'm going to be posting some excerpts over the next couple of weeks. All of this started with a discussion of whether or not politically conservative people are racists:

Just for the record here, if I knew someone who was a racist, I would not be his friend. I would go ballistic if my daughter tried to date him.

I stood at the Jefferson monument earlier this month with my son. I hate going to the Jefferson monument. I hate it because I want to love this man and I want to admire him. I do it because the whole world is indebted to him for the words that he wrote. But I can't forgive him for what he did. Maybe you haven't heard this story?

Jefferson was a spendaholic. The longer he lived, the deeper into debt he sunk. With every bottle of French wine that he drank he was dooming his slaves to what, for most of them, was probably a fate worse than death. People were willing to continue to loan him money because they knew he was good for it -- after his death. The sale of his property would cover his debts.

So I was standing at his monument looking up at him, and all I could think about was that awful moment when his slaves were sold. Husbands and wives, parents and children, in many cases separated from one another, never to see each other again for as long as they lived. I'd vote him off Mt. Rushmore if I could.

Later in the exchange I shared this perspective on the life of Washington:

Washington did much better. Maybe not as well as we would have liked, but much better. He arranged it so that every slave he had the authority to free would be free at his death. No one else in his family supported him in this. There is evidence that he was deeply concerned that his wishes would not be carried out after his death (they were). His wife owned some property separate from George, and did not free any of those slaves before or after she died.

Washington was one of the most famous people in the world when he died, and beyond a doubt the most influential American. It was one heck of a gesture and I suspect that it had a huge impact on the way people thought about slavery.

One other interesting thing on Washington. He was aware of the potential for a conflict over slavery, and could even see that conflict ignited during his lifetime. He told some of his friends that if such a conflict began he would move to the North and fight for the abolition of slavery.