Pease, Peace, When There Is No Peace

 

[1]

Jeremiah 6:14 King James Version

¹⁴ They have healed also the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, "Peace, peace; when there is no peace."

 

On October 13, 2025, I started this blog when President Donald Trump stated: “We have Peace. There is peace.” I’m sure he fondly hoped that there would be peace.

A thousand or two years before Christ, Abraham had two sons, Ishmael and Isaac. They were long separated because Sarah, Isaac’s mother, couldn’t take the way Ishmael, fourteen years his elder, was taunting Isaac. The two brothers buried their father. That was probably the last time they, or their descendants, ever did something together in peace.

None of the descendants seem to have learned how to forgive when something evil was done to them. Instead, they feel obliged to seek revenge at all costs. Their vengeance seeking may yet plunge this world into a nuclear war that would threaten the survival of the human race. I’m sure that this attitude is the one that caused Christ to say that if we forgive men their sins, God will forgive us our sins, but if we don’t, neither will He forgive us. Matthew 6: 14-15.

It appears that Trump needs to learn the lesson of forgiveness himself. He has still not forgiven California for not voting for him and has refused Federal help for the massive fire burn areas near Los Angeles of last winter.

Lord, help us to be forgiving in love.

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[1] https://www.npr.org/2025/01/10/g-s1-41873/la-fires-los-angeles-palisades-eaton-hurst-california

God is Love

 

[1]

Exodus 20:8-12 King James Version

⁸ Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. ⁹ Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: ¹⁰ But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: ¹¹ For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

 

The only time God spoke to humanity in His official position, He gave the ten commandments to them through the most impressive set of fireworks ever seen.

The fourth commandment is the center of His presentation. In it He identifies Himself as the Creator of heaven and earth and sea. He states that He made these in six days and rested the seventh, which He calls the Sabbath.

Let’s do a thought experiment. God identifies Himself as a creator of heaven, earth, and sea—that is, of our universe. I think in this way. Suppose God enjoys and administers his vast creations. The biggest number the Greeks named was a myriad. So maybe God spends a myriad years enjoying His creation. During this time His marvelous intellect explores other ideas for another, a different universe. Mentally, He plays around with the physics of this new universe, and the creatures He would like to have. His ideas are vast and sometimes quite strange: think of giraffe vs. rhinoceros, humming bird vs. ostrich, sloth vs. human.

God’s excitement builds over those ten-thousand years until He can’t hold it in. He spends a week creating this new universe. Then he monitors carefully how things develop there while He continues running His vast other universes. His overwhelming rule is that of love: the love of God for His creatures, the love of His creatures for Him, and the love His creatures have for each other.

Time goes by. Myriads progress one after another. Envision this happening since time immemorial. There is no first universe creation. God has always been doing this! Then God’s greatest helper decides he can run all these universes better than God has been doing. He has been God’s right-hand angel since time immemorial. He skillfully starts the greatest coup d’état ever attempted. God in love does not kill him outright, but he is driven from heaven. He chooses to take up residence in God’s latest creation. He swiftly defeats its lord—Adam and Eve. Then God lets him develop his insurrection until everyone in all of God’s universes recognizes that Satan is a brutal imposter.

We are in the final scenes of this fierce struggle. Love eventually overcomes evil. Notice that EVIL is simply LOVE spelt backwards with “I” taking the place of the hug, “O”. Without love, life becomes misery or evil.

I awoke this morning with words of the song “The Love of God” running through my mind.

The love of God is greater far
  Than tongue or pen can ever tell.
It goes beyond the highest star
  And reaches to the lowest hell.
The guilty pair, bowed down with care,
  God gave His Son to win;
His erring child He reconciled
  And pardoned from his sin.

O love of God, how rich and pure!
  How measureless and strong!
It shall forevermore endure—
  The saints’ and angels’ song.

When hoary time shall pass away,
  And earthly thrones and kingdoms fall;
When men who here refuse to pray,
  On rocks and hills and mountains call;
God’s love, so sure, shall still endure,
  All measureless and strong;
Redeeming grace to Adam’s race—
  The saints’ and angels’ song.

Could we with ink the ocean fill,
  And were the skies of parchment made;
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
  And every man a scribe by trade;
To write the love of God above
  Would drain the ocean dry;
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
  Though stretched from sky to sky.

Frederick M. Lehman, 1917
v. 3 by Anonymous/Unknown

 

Dear Lord, I love You and yearn for Your final banishment of evil and establishment of Your kingdom of love!

 

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[1] https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Flookaside.fbsbx.com%2Flookaside%2Fcrawler%2Fmedia%2F%3Fmedia_id%3D611018337688184&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=42026be4f25a4ff3dcf7a5f67b18ad81d7193cd05fa28bd9db2cc981f76d4cd8

 

God is a Consuming Fire

 

[1]

Deuteronomy 4:24 Holman Christian Standard Bible

²⁴ For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.

 

There are many devout, Bible believing Christians, a number of them my friends and relatives, who tell me that God never kills anyone. God is too loving to kill anyone. Christ, Himself said: ¹⁶ “For God loved the world in this way: He gave His One and Only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life. ¹⁷ For God did not send His Son into the world that He might condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.” (HCSB)

When I mention events like the Flood, the response is that God provided a way of escape—the ark—and they chose not to avail themselves of this. They perished of natural causes. Pharaoh’s army in the Red Sea—they could see that this was a trap, and yet they entered it of their own volition. Sennacherib’s army besieging Jerusalem? I forget the excuse offered here. Hellfire in the latter days—responses vary from the non-existence of hell to the surety that God’s love will save everyone. Ananias and Saphira—just a cautionary tale against lying to God, or Scripture does not say that God killed them. The shock of being discovered lying gave them each a heart attack. Korah, Dathan and Abiram who rebelled against Moses just happened to be swallowed by an earthquake, and their 250 supporters just happened to catch on fire.

What we all agree on is that God is extremely powerful and loving. What makes me feel very uncomfortable is when someone says “God is a consuming fire!” means “God is not a consuming fire.” We are treading on extremely dangerous ground when we start dictating which parts of the Bible are true and which are not.

Dear Lord, Thank You for promising us wisdom and an understanding of Your Word. Help us to live in love with all Your children.

 

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[1] Carl Joseph Ministries https://carljosephministries.com/god-is-a-consuming-fire/

Here a Little, There a Little

 

[1]

Isaiah 28:13 New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition

¹³ Therefore the word of the Lord will be to them,

“Precept upon precept, precept upon precept,

line upon line, line upon line,

            here a little, there a little,”

in order that they may go and fall backward

            and be broken and snared and taken

 

This past week I watched The Final Events of Bible Prophecy, by Doug Batchelor. It reminded me of the times I have studied, and what I used in my studies with others. For example, when studying the importance of the Sabbath, Batchelor covered all (is it?) New Testaments texts that mention the “first day” of the week, plus numerous NT and OT texts that mention the Sabbath, to convince us of the importance of Sabbath keeping. I have listened to another pastor (from a different persuasion) use a similar technique, and the same eight texts, to convince me of the sanctity of Sunday.

Once while hitchhiking from Lusaka to Salisbury (Harare today), I was picked up by a Jehovah’s Witness elder. We had to wait for at least 45 minutes near the Zambesi River as a tropical storm dropped so much rain that we couldn’t see the road we were on. While he was driving and waiting, he gave me studies of the key doctrines of his denomination. In those days I was an irreverent 17-year-old, who had studied all those texts he used in 10 years of study in Adventist parochial schools. I would use those same texts to show that they could also support a completely alien doctrine to his. Eventually I became so obnoxious that he couldn’t take me anymore. The road we were on was in dense bush and very wild. When he was near the Sinoia Caves (now called Chinhoya), about 400 km from Lusaka and 100 km from our destination, he pulled over, took my little suitcase from his trunk, and told me had taken me as far as he was going to take me. Then he drove off leaving me standing beside the road.

In retrospect I find the following:

1.      He was a far better Christian than I. He dropped me near the only bush hotel on this desolate road where all of Africa’s “Big 5” freely preyed. Anywhere else I would have been easy prey. At Sinoia Hotel, I could at least find food, water, and a bed.

2.      He knew his Bible very well and enjoyed the comfort of resting in his faith. He supported his faith from scripture, confidently.

3.      My uses of his texts to support a different view than his may have started to cause him to doubt his faith. He did what the Bible admonishes us to do—flee from the devil.

4.      I worry that using the proof-text method to support my faith may result in my going or falling backward and being broken and snared and taken!

Surely Isaiah viewed the Bible study technique described in verses 10 and 13 of chapter 28—the proof text method—as valid. Yet he also sounds the warning that this method could become a snare.

Lord, may Your Holy Spirit guide our study and lead us into all truth!

 

 

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[1] https://bible.art/p/eknuZ6meXfZX7KL7nN0D  I take no responsibility for the misspelling in the picture. I do like the complicated design--which matches the complicated reasoning we sometimes employ.