JREnsey blog for May 2023

Welcome to our May blog! Grab a cup of coffee and let’s visit. Your input and feedback are appreciated. 

 

The Word for today

“So do not act like the people in Egypt, where you used to live, or like the people of Canaan, where I am taking you. You must not imitate their way of life” (Leviticus 18:3 NLT).

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Oh, I see

• Leadership is the ability to show average people how to do the work of superior people. – Dr. Alan Zimmerman

• Leadership is an action, not a position. – Donald McGannon

• It’s just as difficult to reach a destination you don’t have as it is to come back from a place you have never been. – Zig Ziglar

• If a man knows not what harbor he seeks, any wind is the right wind! – Seneca

• Censorship is the tool used when the lie loses its power. – Greenmedinfo.com

• Nothing gets a mass shooter out of the news quicker than finding out it’s a Democrat or a member of one of their subsidiary factions. – Anon.

• Why should a theology of angels be based on what one excited girl said when she answered the knock on the door of a room where a prayer meeting was taking place? Ans: Because it gives sensationalists a handle.

• The beliefs of the trans activists are a reflection of the secular relativists at large. They believe that there is no God. They believe that morality is a social construct, and because it is a construct, they feel entitled to remake their own morality according to their own whims and desires. They believe that the sexual binary is also a social construct that prevents people from being their “authentic selves” and therefore “happy.” It truly all boils down to self-worship at the expense of everyone and everything else. – Emily Griffin

• What we are seeing in America and in other places in the West is “matriarchal Marxism.” Blaze News commentary continued to speak of Tucker Carlson’s departure from Fox News this way: “The matriarchy can fly the ‘mission accomplished’ flag across America. …The fall of Tucker Carlson at Fox News symbolizes the matriarchy’s prioritizing of message over merit. Performance could not shield Carlson from the consequence of America’s adoption of a feminized culture that levels the playing field by castrating men, reimagining traditional standards, and embracing a false reality.”

• “The idea that there are more than two genders is based on the lie that you need an identity that isn’t male or female to live free of all ‘norms’ associated with your biological sex. Teaching kids this lie is psychological abuse which will lead to self-loathing and self-harm.” – Outspoken_Sam

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Austrian researchers find ancient manuscript of Matthew

I was elated with the news that an ancient Syriac manuscript containing a portion of the Gospel of Matthew had been found. It appears to be older than any other MS of Matthew. It contains portions of two chapters only (11 and 12) and not the entire Gospel. I was disappointed inasmuch as we were anticipating a discovery of the last portion of Matthew 28. The only MSS we have of that complete chapter before A.D. 325 are missing verse 19, due mostly to damage. Is that coincidental? Perhaps, and perhaps not. Let’s keep watching for a clue as to when verse 19 first included the words “of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” in manuscript copies. Is the phrase original or was it added subsequent to Matthew’s composition as many scholars now believe?

Source: https://www2.cbn.com/news/world/researcher-discovers-fragment-1750-year-old-translation-gospel-matthew

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Book Review

Letter To the American Church

By Eric Metaxas

Regnery Publishing, 2022; hardcover, 139 pages; $22.95; available for $13.79 from Mardel Christian & Education

A book is merely paper and ink unless it speaks to you personally, inspires you, convicts you, or makes you think thoughts you never dreamed you would. This book has done all four for me.

Metaxas has also authored a biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian who didn’t survive the Nazi reign in the Germany of the 1930s and 40s. Bonhoffer had attempted to help the German Lutheran Church and its 18,000 pastors see what Hitler and his Nazis were up to, although with little success. The German Protestants, particularly, were rocked to sleep by a popular nationalism driven by Nazi ideology and somehow could not grasp the courage to speak up even when it became clear what was really going on. The great majority of the pastors and lay leaders never found their voice, their silence greasing the slide of that nation into genocide, dooming them to an eternal shame.

The author’s biting truths will invoke conviction upon any believer’s soul who dares follow the path of the German Church. He reminds us that American pastors in the eighteenth century spoke boldly against the tyrannical King George, calling him by name, thus contributing to our winning freedom from that colonial empire. Today, many or most American pastors are too frightened by what they see as a potential backlash should they speak out against the snowballing changes rolling out of Washington. It looks like Germany of the 1930s  all over again.

The author points out that no specific laws hinder our speaking out against injustice, political corruption, or blatant unscientific folly being poured into the minds of our children in schools. But such action would be an intrusion of the political realm, some say. So? Condemn Nathan, Daniel, Obadiah, Jesus, John the Baptist, the apostles Peter and Paul. Condemn William Wilberforce, and M. L. King if we will. And Rosa Parks, Lech Walesa, and Ronald Reagan while we are at it. They spoke and acted even when there were laws preventing such speech and when there were none.
They spoke truth to power. The German church was not forced to look the other way when evil assumed power. They voluntarily turned up the volume of organ music when trains passed to override the cries of the Jewish prisoners on their way to the death camps. We must not intrude into the political realm, they opined. Their respectability among the ruling class was a higher priority.

That is what current evildoers want us to do—look the other way. Bonhoffer knew the pastors and churches must stand against the evil and let their voices be heard. The future of families, children, churches, the nation itself depended on it. The large majority of pastors, however, opted for silence. That silence doomed the nation to virtual destruction. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of churches ended up as rubble, millions dead, families scattered, women violated by the Russian victors, the stench of burning flesh from the Auschwitz ovens forever in their memory. With tongue and pen, Bonhoffer had pleaded for their eyes to be opened before it was too late. Few were willing to listen. “We must not be political,” was the mantra.

We now find ourselves in a similar situation. Must we be forced to give homage to an unscientific science, a wink at an unbroken string of lies, and a bow to a hypocrisy matching  that of the Pharisees? Shall we fall in behind the Andy Stanleys and Tim Kellers, pretending that the culture war is farcical and what is needed is just to support our politicians with prayer? Or with others who piously say, “Don’t worry. God is in control. He will see that everything turns out right.” Pray, certainly; but none I have named in paragraph four above stopped at that. Pray but don’t act is the easy way, the comfortable way, the broad way. Poland would still be under the grinding heel of Marxism if it were not for a Walesa. Please don’t call Rosa Parks a loser for refusing to go to the back of the bus. She multiplied herself a thousand times over when she acted. The Berlin wall might still be standing unless a Ronald Reagan had loosed a forceful challenge at the Brandenburg Gate, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” Would slavery still be in the West were it not for a William Wilberforce who breathed hope to millions of slaves: “Surely the principles of Christianity lead to action as well as meditation,” he said.

Most of the blame for Germany’s ills were laid at the feet of the Jews. Hitler demonized them as “enemies” of the state, internal terrorists, justifying the “final solution” of genocide and the Holocaust. Has not the same seedling been planted in America? Tagged as “haters,” Christians are being blamed for many of the social ills of our own nation. Male “patriarchal” Christians are particularly at fault. Feminists will save us, one former president opines. Give women the reins of leadership. They will expunge the patriarchy from the church and conservative voices from the state. As soon as enough people are convinced of these modernist/secularist concepts, watch what happens. Will we, as the German church did, fail to connect the dots in time?

No one is expecting some idyllic, optimal situation in the present world. But God’s people have always challenged leaders when they pushed an anti-God, anti-biblical agenda. Metaxas has given us a Bonhoffer-like wake-up call. Our families and their futures are at stake. The time to speak truth to power is now, not after the die has been permanently cast and there is no turning back. May America’s Christians of any and all stripes find their collective voice to help right this old ship of state called a Democratic Republic.

Toward the end of the book, the author will pique your conscience with a view of ethics that may shock your traditional mind. Warning: Please don’t read this timely book unless you are willing to be stirred, challenged, and motivated. Read at your own risk.

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Quotes from Letter To the American Church:

“We must declare what we know to be true. And part of what we must declare is that the secular leftists in America—and leftists in the church—have become radically political and are cynically pretending that those who disagree with them are the ones being political.”

“So what exactly did the German church fail to see? In a word: the future. …They did not connect the dots.”

“As a devoted Lutheran Christian, he knew that the fiery church of Luther had long since disappeared. It had been replaced by pro forma ‘religion.’ It was Christianity without Christ.”

“Adolph Hitler…was nonetheless deeply dedicated to fundamentally changing Germany.” [From whom have we heard those words?]

“Either we help evil or we fight evil.”

“Are we already heading for the caves, believing nothing we do can matter, and that judgment is falling and all we can do is save ourselves?”

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Other views:

Is this how to make America great again?

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Last Words

Hooray for Kansas! It has become the first state to define gender as one’s biological sex at birth. Read this and pray for your state government to adopt something similar. https://www.theepochtimes.com/c-kansas-state-news

Just so you know…I am a trans activist. Trans-formation is what I believe occurs in one’s conversion from a trans-gressor. It happens when we make a trans-action involving the name, the blood, and Spirit of Christ. I believe Jesus was trans-figured, Bible trans-lations are helpful, and the trans-cendence of God is a reality. I am looking forward to being trans-lated from earth to Heaven in the Rapture. Join me in my trans-journey.

Here’s a shout out to all the 2023 graduates! Congratulations!

God bless!

JREnsey