Should we talk about the "lake of fire"?

Particularly when trying to share our Christian faith with others?

I thought of this because I realize that it's a question that I didn't really address and answer in the sermon on Sunday. If we believe in eternal conscious punishment for those who have rejected the Creator, then we need to warn people about it, right?

My recommendation is to be very careful here... generally, I think we should stick to speaking about the basics of how God has shown His love through Jesus Christ, and that through faith in Him we are forgiven, rescued from slavery to sin and Satan. I don't believe the church's mission is to talk about the lake of fire -- the mission of the church is to talk about Jesus!

Let me support my case here by pointing to how Jesus' first disciples shared their faith -- they talked about the resurrection! Look through Acts -- Peter, Philip, and Paul all point to Jesus' resurrection as the urgent reason why people should put their faith in Jesus! It is often not necessary to elaborate on the punishment people face if they reject Jesus because the Gospel message contains within it the idea that rejecting Jesus means you're saying "NO" to the only hope you're going to have. Consider the famous verse John 3:16:

"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." (NIV)

You usually don't have to go beyond this. But if you're sensing the Spirit's leading, or they ask you about the cost of rejecting Jesus, go on to the next 2 verses!

"For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son." -- John 3:17-18


Above all, pray that the person you are sharing your Christian faith with would see the person of Jesus and that a personal encounter with the Lord Himself would change their heart. In John 16, Jesus tells us that the work of the Holy Spirit is to convince people of the judgment (particularly that Satan has already been judged and is now awaiting his final execution). Jesus talked about hell more than anyone else; if you must talk about hell, it's good to show them His words about it.

I've got more thoughts on this... I'll post tomorrow...

Overwhelmed by Chicago... but confident in an unseen God

I wanted to post about some thoughts I had on our recent trip to Chicago for the Alliance's New Official Worker Forum, held in Wheaton. We came into the city on Amtrak and went out to Wheaton by commuter rail. Travelling by train (especially one moving slowly) removes my feeling of control, which probably started these thoughts I'm about to share.

First of all, the downtown overwhelmed me in a way that never happened when we lived in the city. Probably that means we've gotten used to the smaller city feeling of Detroit. Detroit's big, no doubt, but Chicago is massive and its downtown is booming and construction continues. There seems to be more skyscrapers, and they're bigger too.

I'm not sure why, but I started thinking, "Big Money continues to call the shots... all of these people I can see are dominated by big corporations... the rich get richer and everybody else treads water, and the vast majority of people either ignore God or treat him as a hobby... there are so few who REALLY want to be disciples of Christ... "

Needless to say, I began to doubt whether the church was having any effect on society, particularly in a proud city like Chicago. My thoughts remained stuck there and I didn't talk to Lisa at all except to say I was thinking and didn't want to share.

When we arrived at Wheaton, we still had a ways to walk with our suitcases. I finally started to share with Lisa what I was thinking... and as I was talking, I realized that I had to simply TRUST Jesus that HE was doing His work, no matter what things looked like. Of course, this is one of the major truths of Revelation, but I really think being stuck on slow trains and staring out the windows was starting to mess with my mind... or I was allowing it to, anyway.

But as we were waling through Wheaton, I remembered that His Kingdom is invisible, and thank God that it is. It's bigger than our eyes can see, and it is only grasped, it's only understood by FAITH.

And then John Meyer's favorite verse came to me (he's pastor of the Alliance church plant down in Hamtramck):

"Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain." -- 1 Corinthians 15:58

And that's the deal -- no matter what we see, even when we observe a world obsessed with money, power, and instant gratification. Our PRIMARY reward for doing the Lord's work is not going to be something we see here.

This encourages me to always serve the Lord first, no matter who my earthly boss is, or even if I'm unemployed or retired. He is our Master; what a blessing to work for His INVISIBLE Kingdom.

Because one day, everything that's invisible is going to come out into the open.

mp3 Converter - found!

Ed found a good one from download.com, and I'm going to set to work converting the sermon files to mp3s -- which will be much more download friendly! Praise God! Thanks Ed.

Update on Norman

Hi everyone,

I talked to May today and she gave me the news on Norman -- they've talked to their case manager at Henry Ford Hospital and Norman's surgery will probably be in late September. There are two reasons for the delay:

1. Norman needs to donate blood twice in the next six weeks (once for every three week interval until the surgery) that will be stored to use for the surgery. Why not use donor blood? Donor blood is typically used for accident victims or those needing emergency surgery.

2. Norman's surgery is going to be a 12-16 hour event. (Wow) Accordingly, the case manager needs to find a day that all FIVE doctors (four surgeons and a trauma doctor) can be present for the surgery.

Norman is enduring the pain and trying not to become addicted to the pain killing medicine he is taking in the meantime. Pray that God would sustain him and give him relief. Also pray for May and Winston as they do all the things they need to do around the house and especially in supporting Norman. Also pray for them that God would guide the arrangements that face them in the next few weeks, for the surgery and also for the long-term disability paperwork.

Beware the Brew of the False Prophet

When we looked at Revelation 17 and 18, we saw God's warning to His people: that we must reject the seductive charms of materialism. Satan uses Big Money to seduce and trap people into the addictions of luxury. And as we all know, the "System" is horribly oppressive to those who serve it, as well as those who reject it.

The False Prophet of Revelation, also called the "beast from the earth", isn't known as well. When we looked at him in Revelation 13, and talked about briefly last week, is that he exists to bring glory to the Beast -- which is the Evil Empire, the political and military system Satan and his forces use to enslave the world and oppress God's people.

How does he do this? He does it by getting people to worship the government. This happened in Rome's day, it goes on today, and it will be very much the case in the last days. How can we spot it? We can see it in those governments that whip up their people to huge amounts of nationalism, the obsessive devotion to country that Satan uses to lead people to worship something other than God.

For fun, I've been reading Josef Joffe's Uberpower: The Imperial Temptation of America at bedtime. He is a German newspaper editor, and Jewish I believe, so I wasn't expecting any theological insight. After discussing the current situation in China, he gets philosophical and calls nationalism "the most powerful political glue ever invented." (page 199) My eyes popped out of my head as I kept reading:

"Its promise is the deceptive equality delivered by the one political good that comes with an inexhaustible supply: national idenity, pride, and exceptionialism. Power and wealth are by definition limited assets; what I acquire, you cannot. Not so nationalism, a bottomless well that will never run dry. All can drink from it without clashing over who gets what and how much - there is more than enough from all. Even better, as they gulp down the intoxicating liquid, all persons are alike. Whether rich or poor, mighty or meek, they are one another's equals in the community of fate that is the nation... The promise of community on the cheap explains... how eagerly such a heady brew is lapped up by a people tortured by deepening rifts of income and status." (page 199-200)

This is the cup the False Prophet offers!

Paul and Peter tell us in the New Testament that we are to respect our leaders, and generally submit and obey the laws of the government. Jesus tells us that we should "give to Caesar what is Caesar's." I think the Bible wants us to have a healhy patriotism that supports our country, pays taxes, and serves our nation. We live in a great country that allows us to criticize it as part of our civic duty.

But nationalism, or obsessive devotion, to a flag or a government is a dangerous force in our world today. Let us pray for those who are seduced to worshipping their country, and let us beware of it ourselves.

(Photo by Oliver Gruner)

PRAY FOR THIS MAN!

Take the "drug trafficking" charges with a big grain of salt, folks.

August 8 (Compass Direct News) – Seven years after Issa Motamedi Mojdehi converted from Islam to Christianity, Iranian secret police have jailed him for abandoning Islam but officially charged him with illegal drug trafficking.

Authorities formally charged the 31-year-old Christian with drug trafficking when he was arrested two weeks ago. But Savama (secret police) officials have told Motamedi Mojdehi that his real offense, said to be recorded in his confidential legal file, is abandoning Islam. Unless he renounces his Christian faith and returns to Islam, officials told him, he will remain in jail and possibly face execution.

Read the whole story at Compass Direct here.

Issa has a wife, 8 year old daughter, and an infant son. Pray for them too. May God bring to justice all of the regimes that hurt His Church!

Hearing God

I might have mentioned before that our District Superintendent, Rev. Jeff Brown, who oversees our church as well as the other Alliance Churches in the Lower Peninsula and around Toledo, has asked that each pastor set aside a day for prayer and fasting. I did this on Tuesday evening into Wednesday and, as part of the day, spent some time reading a book I had ordered last year but hadn't found the time to do any reading in -- Hearing God; Developing a Conversational Relationship with God by Dallas Willard.

I may have mentioned that phrase before, "conversational relationship". I'm convinced it is key to experiencing all that God has for us in our life.

In the book, Willard's task is dealing "with hearing God as it bears upon a whole life in the will of God - upon the question of who God wants us to be as well as (where appropriate) of what he wants us to do." (page 12) Rick Warren, if I'm remembering right, mentions this in The Purpose Driven Life as well.

The issue I'm really excited about though -- in reading this book -- is developing a lifestyle of continually communicating with God. We may have talked about this in Discipleship Group when we discussed the discipline of prayer. It is important that we have a daily time with God, but also important that we realize that our relationship with him isn't just limited to that morning (or bedtime, or whatever and whenever it is for you) "transaction".

"The biblical record always presents the relationship between God and the believer as more like a friendship or family tie than like merely one person's arranging to take care of the needs of another." (page 23)

How exciting!

Bye Bye Babylon...

I saw an insight earlier this week, and I wanted to share it because one of the core issues when we consider our place in this world is TRUST.

"When Babylon perishes, the economic chaos is complete; the world of the unbeliever, on which he has pinned his hopes and built his trust, collapses! This is true with respect to the fall of every Babylon -- whether it is literal Babylon, or Nineveh, or Rome." -- William Hendriksen, one of the best interpreters of Revelation, as quoted in Revelation: 4 Views, edited by Steve Gregg

I would add our current global capitalism to the mix. It too, shall pass, which is what Gene always says. So don't trust it!

Our true Home is somewhere else - it's Someone else - we will see Him face to face one day...