First (and Last) Responder

Can you think of a more idyllic photo subject than a dad, a mom, their young daughter, and the family dog stopping by the roadside to pose for a group photo on a spring day against a lush backdrop of gorgeous south Texas wildflowers and other native flora?

But at the exact same instant that grandma snapped the family photo in 2016, there was something very wrong transpiring in the lower frame of this lovely tableau…

Sometimes, the most placid and seemingly innocuous environments can harbor things sinister and even deadly if we are not both aware and discerning of our surroundings. Imagine Eve in the garden of Eden! Could there have been a more beautiful setting within the protective confines of this harmonious, sinless paradise than beneath the shade, foliage, and luscious fruit of the tree of knowledge? Right now, the world is learning how something as unseen and even submicroscopic as the coronavirus can have deadly consequences for human life.

Today, we speak often of “safe places”; places of quiet refuge where one need not be afraid of physical threats or harm. We may even think of “the church” as always being one of those safe places, at least in a spiritual sense. We know in reality and from scripture that in some cases this can be far, far from the truth. Satan, after all, can manifest himself as a “minister of righteousness” (II Cor. 11).

In particular, the old satanic lie, “you shall not surely die” was with us in the beginning (Genesis 3). It was there when Ahab and Jehoshaphat consulted with the “prophets of the Lord” about their disastrously doomed plan to join forces together in battle (I Kings 22 *Note: these were not Jezebel’s Baal prophets; Elijah had already dispatched those with the sword). The lie, or more accurately, the Laodicean lies, are tragically still demonic traps and spiritual stumbling blocks for many persons who, at least outwardly, profess Christ today. “You say you are rich, and have need of nothing…” (Revelation 3).

It is possible to sit even in a “Bible-based” church for an entire lifetime when you might just as well be ensconced somewhere in a spiritual mausoleum because God’s Word has never penetrated your conscience to the point that sin has become “utterly sinful” (Romans 7), or you have become hardened over years of no real heart change. Paul warned in his epistles about spiritual leaders who have all the right “words” but no “power” (I Cor. 4). Be on the alert then, whether in ornate or unadorned religious settings, where there is no real, life-altering conviction of sin, no crying out for God’s mercy, no sign of anything supernatural outside of human understanding or interpretation. Why? Because we already have everything!

“You shall not surely die…because we have collected scriptures with which we are able to comfort you in the knowledge that Paul’s warnings of apostasy written to the churches do not literally apply to us “true” saints [see Romans 11]; that when you were saved you were also baptized “by default” by the Holy Spirit, even though there has been an absence of any real, tangible evidence (maybe even love itself) in your life; and that the “sign of Jonah” was irrelevant to the understanding of our salvation because Jesus’ human soul [not His spirit] never actually descended as a prisoner of death into the depths of Sheol, only to be released, empowered, and reunited with His glorified body and His spirit [the Holy Spirit] at the thunderous, resurrecting voice of God. [see Psalm 18].”

My brother-in-law was the attending ER physician when the man mentioned in the first paragraph was first admitted to the hospital; obviously he heard the snakebite story firsthand and would later receive an unedited digital copy of the photo (he is not at liberty to share the original version with faces for publication without permission, but on the internet the curious can find the exact same photo with the family faces blacked out).

There is nothing photographically “flawed” about the picture other than the man looking downward instead of at the camera, but if you zoom in to the bottom of the picture, there is a rattlesnake in the act of striking, fangs visible, in the apparent direction of the wife, whose hand is directly above the serpent. Amazingly, the family dog somehow distracted and deflected the strike, but the woman’s husband was envenomated in the leg by one fang, oddly, at the same instant that the dog was stricken in the face by the other fang. The man would be treated and later transferred to an urban hospital. He recovered fully. The faithful dog did not survive.

According to Paul, God has much better things in mind for us than being sidetracked by Satan or shipwrecked in our faith! (Hebrews 6). It is through a love of the truth and the consistent faith exercise of God’s Word that we gain spiritual discernment into things that could otherwise be harmful to us and our families (Hebrews 5). God’s great love is able to keep us and protect us in every circumstance, but He expects us not only to “deflect” satanic attacks, but to defeat the enemy of our souls with the spiritual weapons of warfare He has given us through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. (Ephesians 6).

The Alpha and the Omega. Jesus is our first, and last, responder!

Bryan

Must reading for any believer desiring to enter into a deeper faith relationship with God and to learn more about miracles and answered prayer: G.C. Bevington biography / Kingsley Press (compiled in part during the 1918 “Spanish Flu” epidemic).

Birthing Babies

A hospital delivery room is not for the fainthearted. I blacked out when one of our five children was being born (not quintuplets; it would have been far worse!). I was seated and didn’t fall over or pass out, but for a few seconds it was like someone had turned out all the lights, like one of the times I donated blood. Many are those who will bear witness that these venues are regularly characterized by a lot of yelling, blood, and gore. Until the process is complete, “birthing babies” can be very stressful, in particular for the mom giving birth and sometimes for the dads in attendance, who have been known on occasion to literally pass out during this miraculous phenomenon.

Spiritual birth can also be a painful experience. It is true that there are those who come to Christ at an early age in life and never look back. But even these must have their own “mini-Gethsemane” in the act of surrendering their (perhaps pliable, yet) still independent wills to Jesus, and the process doesn’t stop there. But for a large percentage of us, getting to, upon (“I am crucified with Christ”), and beyond the Cross of Jesus Christ can be a real life-and-death struggle because our own wills have been in in the ascendancy for so long.

There is a very real danger in the church when well-meaning (or at times self-serving) clergy and others try to inject their own “epidural” into those struggling to find God by providing misguided and human-inspired words of comfort and enablement instead of interceding and trusting God to save them, no matter how difficult and painful the “delivery.” I sat in a church “stuck in the breach” for a full year knowing that I was in a lost spiritual condition, but was absolutely unable to do anything about it. There was a hindrance and I was helpless to do anything except to ask for prayer and to hold on to hope as if my life depended upon it, which it did.

You may lose your grip on faith for a time, but you can never, ever abandon hope!

People who give up all hope are the ones who take their own lives, or are overpowered by Satan and consciously reject the claims of Christ for eternity. I could have prayed a thousand “sinner’s prayers” during my time of crisis and nothing would have changed, because God had a perfect plan for redeeming my soul, and that plan would unfold only in His timing and through His means. But when it was fulfilled, it would be real. It would be, not by reason, but by revelation. My pitiable portion of faith would become alive.

Our flesh, even without Satan’s added prompting and deception, can be the biggest deterrent to a genuine salvation experience. There are many things that can hinder salvation and then being filled with the Holy Spirit. It is often said, “Jesus doesn’t clean His fish before He catches them.” Much more accurately, Jesus doesn’t catch His fish until they “come clean.” Jesus doesn’t deliberately go around looking for rocky ground to sow His seed. There may be many obstacles in my heart that prevent me from seeing the true Gospel. Perhaps it is a root of bitterness or unforgiveness against someone that I, in reality, have no intention of surrendering. Perhaps it is a private addiction or some other sin that I consciously try to conceal from the piercing, convicting laser-light of the Holy Spirit. Perhaps I am expecting to come to Christ, but only as long as that doesn’t mean giving up any of my idols in the process.

As a friend of mine often says, “We need to let GOD save people!” That is not to say that God does not want to use us to sow, water, feed, and cultivate. That is a huge part of our mission during our stay here; to make disciples for Christ. But if a person doesn’t recognize they are lost and are in danger of eternal judgment, what are they going to be saved from? In the scriptures, repentance always precedes salvation. It is the job of the Holy Spirit to reveal our lost state, and then to bring us safely and methodically through the delivery process.

That process will inevitably involve a Gethsemane of our own will, but one of God’s making, with the loving objective of our eternal adoption as His children!

“Then he said to me, ‘This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel saying, “Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,” says the Lord of hosts.’” (Zechariah 4:6 NASB)

The Counterfeit Conception

Something very disturbing had happened in the hearts of many of the religious “elite” of Jesus’ time – including priests, Pharisees, and Sadducees – that caused our Lord to categorize them very differently from the common people, even contrasting them in a negative light vis-à-vis the prostitutes and tax collectors, the “dregs” of Hebrew society!

Matthew 21:31-32 NASB…“Truly I say to you that the tax collectors and prostitutes will get into the kingdom of God before you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him; but the tax collectors and prostitutes did believe him; and you, seeing this, did not even feel remorse afterward so as to believe him.”

According to Jesus, not only were these privileged “sons of Abraham” NOT God’s children, but they had been, in fact, spiritually sired by the evil one, Satan himself! These “converts” were not growing up into the image of Christ. Instead, they were being transformed into the image of the “father of lies.”

John 8:44 NASB “You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”

Even more terrifying, some very self-righteous and pious among these “counterfeits” had descended so far into Satanic deception and demonic control that they had consciously and deliberately blasphemed the Holy Spirit by declaring – in their jealous rage – that the Son of God and His disciples were casting out demons in their midst by the power of the prince of demons himself, “Beelzebub.” For this sin, Jesus said, there was NO forgiveness, either in this life or in the life to come!

Matthew 12:32 NASB “Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the age to come.”

It is odd to think that Jesus would pray and ask God to forgive many of the very people who persecuted Him, accused Him, and brutally nailed Him to the Cross, but that there was another class of “religious” persons who had become so blinded and perverted by darkness that they had already sealed their own doom for all eternity, by denying the true source of exorcism by the power of the Holy Ghost working through Jesus and also through His spiritual descendants. By contrast, others like Nicodemus and some of his peers – though in the beginning unregenerate – turned to Jesus, having recognizing the source of His spiritual authority.

Matthew 6:23 NASB “But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!”

Hebrews 10:26-31 NASB “For if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a terrifying expectation of judgment and the fury of a fire which will consume the adversaries. Anyone who has set aside the Law of Moses dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much severer punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled under foot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know Him who said, ‘Vengeance is Mine, I will repay.’ And again, “The Lord will judge His people.” It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”

Satan is now, more than ever, in the business of seducing followers, but we need to realize that until we are convicted of sin and make the choice to surrender ourselves fully to Christ, we are all prisoners of death and darkness. But for those even in our darkened generation who desire to know truth and whose consciences have not been permanently seared by an appropriation and subsequent rejection of the “Spirit of grace”, there remains great HOPE!

How great is God’s love for us?

Romans 5:8-11 NASB “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. And not only this, but we also exult in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.”

Bryan