JREnsey blog for August 2023

 

The Word for today

“[Christ, v. 15] existed before anything else,
    and he holds all creation together.
¹⁸ Christ is also the head of the church,
    which is his body.
He is the beginning,
    supreme over all who rise from the dead
    So he is first in everything.
¹⁹ For God in all his fullness
    was pleased to live in Christ,
²⁰ and through him God reconciled
    everything to himself.
He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth
    by means of Christ’s blood on the cross” (Colossians 1:17-20).

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The Billy and Albert Story

When Billy Graham was 92 years old, he was struggling with Parkinson’s disease. In January, a month before his 93rd birthday, leaders in Charlotte, North Carolina, invited their favorite son to a luncheon in his honor.

Billy initially hesitated to accept the invitation because of his struggles with Parkinson’s disease. But the Charlotte leaders said, “We don’t expect a major address. Just come and let us honor you.” So he agreed.

After wonderful things were said about him, Billy stepped to the podium, looked at the crowd and said: “I’m reminded today of Albert Einstein, the great physicist who this month has been honored by Time Magazine as the Man of the Century. Einstein was once traveling from Princeton on a train, when the conductor came down the aisle, punching the tickets of every passenger. When he came to Einstein, Einstein reached in his vest pocket. He couldn’t find his ticket, so he reached in his trouser pockets.

It wasn’t there. He looked in his briefcase but couldn’t find it. Then he looked in the seat beside him. He still couldn’t find it.

The conductor said, “Dr. Einstein, I know who you are. We all know who you are. I’m sure you bought a ticket. Don’t worry about it.” Einstein nodded appreciatively. The conductor continued down the aisle punching tickets. As he was ready to move to the next car, he turned around and saw the great physicist down on his hands and knees looking under his seat for his ticket.

The conductor rushed back and said, “Dr. Einstein, don’t worry, I know who you are; no problem. You don’t need a ticket. I’m sure you bought one.”

Einstein looked at him and said, “Young man I too know who I am. What I don’t know is where I’m going.”

Having said that Billy Graham continued, “See the suit I’m wearing? My children and my grandchildren are telling me I’ve gotten a little slovenly in my old age. I used to be a bit more fastidious. So I went out and bought a new suit for this luncheon and one more occasion. You know what that occasion is? This is the suit in which I’ll be buried. But when you hear I’m dead, I don’t want you to immediately remember the suit I’m wearing. I want you to remember this: I not only know who I am I also know where I’m going. Life without God is like an unsharpened pencil—it has no point.”

Whether you personally concur with either of their expressions, it’s a good story. [Contributed by John Smelser]

A prayer for the reader: May each of us live our lives so that when our ticket is punched we don’t have to worry about where we are going.

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The “Other Sheep” Doctrine

To whom was Jesus referring when He spoke of His “other sheep”?

In John 10:15,16 Jesus said: “As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down my life for the sheep. And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.”

These verses are still being used by some to teach a doctrine that the Christian faith is not the only path to God during this age and that pagan unbelievers may also be on a different path to salvation.

Jesus was speaking prophetically to make His main point that the covenants which formed the foundation of the Jewish faith would not be limited to Jews but would also be open to “all men everywhere” (Acts 17:30), i.e., the Gentiles who would become a part of the body of Christ (Acts 10:9-28). He would embrace them in due time but He spoke of them as though they were (Romans 4:17). The Lord was also speaking prophetically in a similar fashion when He said to Paul, “I have much people in this city [Corinth]” (Acts 18:10) when the work in Corinth among the Gentiles was only just beginning to get its legs.

There are two groups that God presently continues to deal with and work through—the Hebrew nation and Christians. A Jewish believing remnant will surface after the Rapture and play an important role in the Tribulation after the true Christians have been removed from the earth. We are not supersecessionists who posit that the church has replaced Israel in God’s plan.

Bottom line: John 10:16,17 in no way suggests that those in other faiths and/or serve other gods today have the promise of eternal life.

MacLaren’s additional exposition:

During His earthly life our Lord, as we know, confined His own personal ministry for the most part to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Not exclusively so, for He made at least one journey into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, teaching and healing; a Syro-Phoenician woman held His feet, and received her request; and one of His miracles, of feeding the multitude, was wrought for hungry Gentiles. But while His work was in Israel, it was for mankind; and while ‘this fold,’ generally speaking, circumscribed His toils, it did not confine His love nor His thoughts. More than once world-wide declarations and promises broke from His lips, even before the final universal commission, ‘Preach the Gospel to every creature.’ ‘I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me.’ ‘I am the Light of the world.’ These and other similar sayings give us His lofty consciousness that He has received ‘the heathen for His inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for His possession.’”

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Tired of keeping records on computer?

Here’s an alternative idea from fourth century B.C. Idumea, an area south of Judea and the Dead Sea.

Today’s businesses increasingly relying on sophisticated computer software to document transactions and track fiscal performance. But in fourth-century B.C. Idumea, about 40 miles southwest of Jerusalem, business records were kept by writing in black ink on ostraca (broken pieces of pottery).

As archaeologist Ada Yardeni explains, “These inscribed ostraca provide us with a window into the agricultural, economic and social life in the Hebron hills.”

While the Aramaic ostraca mainly record the delivery of wheat, barley and straw, they also document the delivery of everything from olive oil to workers and even to mice. Yes, ladies, there was an order on the “books” for 30 mice! (Check out that next pot of Idumean gumbo before diving in!) Found on the ostraca were 600 personal names—one hundred were Edomite and a large group were Arabic. In the fourth century, the population of the Hebron hills was indeed diverse, with many engaged in agricultural practices.

Next time your bookkeeper or secretary complains about the work load, especially the digital filing system, suggest that you go back to the ostraca system and check the response.

Source: Bible History Daily 9/8

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Intelligence expressed

“Without justice being freely, fully, and impartially administered, neither our persons, nor our rights, nor our property, can be protected. And if these, or either of them, are regulated by no certain laws, and are subject to no certain principles, and are held by no certain tenure, and are redressed, when violated, by no certain remedies, society fails of all its value; and men may as well return to a state of savage and barbarous independence.” — Joseph Story (1833)

Intelligence depressed

“The political left’s attempts to silence ideas they cannot, or will not, debate are a confession of intellectual bankruptcy.” – Thomas Sowell

Intelligence confessed

“AI is kind of a fancy thing. First of all, it’s two letters. It means Artificial Intelligence.” – Kamala Harris

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Ever wonder…?

…if Ben and Jerry, the Ice Cream Boys, are going to transfer their corporation to indigenous people from whom it was reportedly stolen? Or if they are the only ones still drinking Bud Light? [Perhaps the guys at Anheuser Busch are gobbling up B/J’s ice cream to help that company curb their economic free fall.] The chief of the Native American tribes in the area of Ben and Jerry’s HQ said he is still waiting for the corporation to move out and turn over their land and facilities to the tribe. They have heard nothing.

…what would have happened when God and the Bible were removed from public schools if all the children had followed?

…why or how we elected a president who just last week learned to count past six?

…where the Hardy Boys are when you need them to find the cocaine user in the White House?

…if your Beagle pup could have sniffed out the coke user in the White House within 15 minutes?

…why Dems are confused by parades where everyone wears clothes and don’t swing strange toys around?

…if America can handle this much common sense: “If you are able-bodied, you work. If you take out a loan, you pay it back. If you commit a violent crime, you go to jail. If you’re a man, you should play sports against men.” – Senator Tim Scott

…if the aliens some claim are among us (crashed crafts, biologic remains, all unseen by the public so far), what kind of evangelistic effort should be planned for their conversion to the Christian faith, or will they, through AI, seek to convert us to the “Kryptonic faith”?

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Speaking of personal pronouns: Is the Holy Spirit an “It” or a “He”?

I recently ran across an interesting take on anti-Trinitarianism and the KJV Bible. In Doug Kutilek’s monthly newsletter he pointed out that Dr. Emery Bancroft (1877-1944) in his book Christian Theology suggested the possibility the Socianism, a strongly anti-Trinitarian movement founded by Italians Laelius Socinus and his nephew Faustus Socinus during the Reformation, may have played a role in the text of the KJV. Laelius was definitely a reformer, yet his views seldom crystalized into solid doctrines that aligned totally with the major reformers. His nephew Faustus, however, constructed an anti-Trinitarian doctrine that came to be called “Unitarians,” or merely Socinians. They believed in one God, Jesus was not of divine origin, and that the Holy Spirit was more of an “influencer” or an expression of power of the one God. Socinianism became rooted in Poland among the Polish Brethren Movement and established a university near Kraków.

The movement was later the victim of the Catholic Counter-Reformation and Polish believers were forced into exile in other European countries, including England. There the Socinians influenced John Biddle, later called the father of English Unitarianism. He vehemently attacked the doctrine of the Trinity, elevating the Father and considering the other two as fulfilling the role of subordinates. He held that Christ was fully human, divine only by office and not by nature. The Holy Spirit is not a co-equal divine person with the Father. Biddle was belittled, imprisoned, fined, but through it all influenced many Englishmen who agreed, some of whom came to America aboard the earliest ships carrying Pilgrims and settlers.

When the KJV text was determined by the translators, among them may have been at least one whose mind was bent somewhat in the Unitarian direction. Bancroft seems convinced that Unitarian or Socinian influence was in play in perhaps four renderings. He says, “This circle of people had a well-defined doctrine to teach. The great mass of Christians refused to accept the doctrine, but nevertheless passed unconsciously under its chilling influence, and almost the whole church came to think of the Spirit of God as an influence, if not to speak of Him as such. In the Authorized Version, the personal pronoun which refers to the Holy Spirit is translated by the neuter ‘it’ [John 1:32; Romans 8:16, 26; I Peter 1:11] as an index of the trend of thought among Christians at that time. Men prayed of the Spirit as of ‘it,’ an energy, proving that the Socinian teaching had chilled the zeal and enthusiasm of Christian doctrine concerning the Holy Spirit.” (Emphasis his)

These references to the Holy Spirit as “it” present no cause for concern for Oneness believers since we firmly hold…[Continue reading this article by clicking HERE]

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Views from the crib:

“I’m a new believer…in static electricity.”

 

“As the new Marshall of Tombstone, I am coming for you, Hunter!” – Wyatt Slurp

 

“I’m off of Ben and Jerry’s for good since I discovered Blue Bell’s Homemade Vanilla.”

 

“Just look what those stupid liberals are doing to Austin!”

 

“I was conceived during the Twump administwation!”

 

“If she could be a boy for just one day, she’d wish she had never been born a girl!”

 

“Don’t feed me that socialist malarkey. I got two eyes and I can see what’s really going on!”

“Mom just decided to become a vegan. Yuck!”

 

“I pucker for Grandmas!”

 

“I hope you read this entire blog and share it with a friend. If you don’t, I’m coming your way with some brass knuckles!”

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Last Words

“If your religion doesn’t let Jesus be what the Bible says He is, you need to drop that religion and pick up a new one.” – Johnny James

“The name of Jesus is the superlative wonder of linguistics; it is the picture of the ugliness of sin and the beauty of holiness. Jesus’ name is a portrait of the love of God painted on a human canvas.” – Also Johnny James, known as The Walking Bible

“Life without God is like an unsharpened pencil—it has no point.” – Billy Graham

Stay cool in August…spend more time in an air conditioned church.

JREnsey