How Do We Determine Truth?

[i]

John 4:24

Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB)

²⁴ God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”

Sylvia and I were studying with a woman who showed much interest in what the Bible teaches. She had a roly-poly little dog that was covered in long black curly hair. He would welcome us each time we came with the exuberance only a little dog can show. Then he would settle in her lap, and she would feed him chocolates while we talked. (Don’t believe all the stories about how bad chocolate is for dogs. It certainly wasn’t bad for this little dog. If you are older, you’ll remember that doctors used to say that chocolate was bad for us, too.) This woman liked and accepted everything as we went along.

Eventually, we reached the study of what day was the day of worship. We pointed out that Jesus kept his Sabbath on Saturday, the day the Jews went to the synagogue. We talked about how the disciples kept the Sabbath after Christ’s death and resurrection. We prayed about it and invited her to church on the next Sabbath. We also told her to think about the topic. Naturally she had an excuse for not joining us the next Sabbath.

The next time we met to study with her, the little dog danced and barked his excitement at seeing us again. His whole body wagged with his tail. We inquired about what thoughts she had about the Sabbath. She answered readily, “Let’s pray about it!” We concurred.

“Jesus, should I keep the Sabbath!” she demanded in a loud voice. Then even louder, “Answer me, Jesus! Do you want me to worship on Saturday?” She continued her pleading and demanding for well over five minutes.

Neither she, nor we, heard any response from Jesus or anyone else. Finally she turned to us and said decidedly, “See, Jesus didn’t answer me. He would have answered me if he really wanted me to keep your Sabbath.” We spent some time talking about how God speaks to us. Sometimes He does speak to people directly and openly. Much more often He chooses to let us reason from the Bible what course of action He expects us to pursue. To worship Him in spirit and truth we need to be open to both sources.

We visited a couple more times, but her spirit had cooled, and though she didn’t express any animosity towards us, it became evident that the Holy Spirit could no longer reach her through us. So we parted as friends and fellow Christians but not as fellow believers.

Lord, please help me to follow You as You reveal Yourself to me.

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[i] https://www.thepointcommunity.net/2015/06/12/spirit-and-truth-frankfort-61415/

When is it Essential and When Not?

[i]

2 Timothy 2:23 

New King James Version (NKJV)

But avoid foolish and ignorant disputes, knowing that they generate strife.

We attended church one Sabbath in one of the larger Adventist churches in Michigan. Two of my cousins were with me, one Adventist and the other Lutheran. We were planning to eat at the Sabbath potluck after the service. (Dad always used to say, “If you want to taste good vegetarian food, attend an Adventist church potluck.”)

While we were waiting for the good ladies to get things going on the potluck, I noticed an old man in a wheelchair. On a second look I recognized him as Edward Specht, my major professor from college days some 50 years previously. He was well up in his nineties but still totally with it intellectually. I knew him to be someone who “did not suffer fools kindly.” We were having a great time reminiscing when a woman walked up to me and demanded, “Are you from La Sierra?”

“I am!” I replied, and turned back to Ed.

“Well, it’s a crime what you are teaching to those Adventist youth.” She was on her soap box in full style. She went on and on with accusations and misinformation.

I tried to gently and politely get rid of her or shut her up: to no avail. She was just itching for a fight. Finally, I assumed my voice of authority and commanded her, “Listen, lady, I am visiting with my former major professor whom I haven’t seen in decades. Leave us alone!” I turned my back on her and continued talking with Ed. She finally left in a huff, figuratively shaking the dust off her feet. Ed looked half amused and half pained. I knew he had been subject to controversies and bigots before that he simply had to walk away from.

I began to sympathize with Paul who had to face bigots who criticized his stance on things like circumcision and eating of certain foods. Over the years the topics have changed from the nature of Christ, to communion service, to baptism, to origins, to ordination, to wearing of clothes or jewelry, to evolution, to the role of women in church, to sexual preference. Historically people have actually died for their stance in the particular argument of the day

La Sierra and all other Adventist universities are walking a serious tight rope between keeping their secular accreditation and meeting church expectations. To best meet the intellectual and spiritual needs of the students, La Sierra requires all students who take freshman biology, where the subject of evolution is ever present, to take a 10 week seminar to help them reconcile science and Scripture.

Lord, may Your prayer for us to be one in Your love be fulfilled in Your church today in spite of our different understandings!

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[i] https://rogerhollander.wordpress.com/tag/religious-bigotry/

Just Where Is Heaven?

[i]

Ephesians 3:17-19

Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB)

¹⁷ and that the Messiah may dwell in your hearts through faith. I pray that you, being rooted and firmly established in love, ¹⁸ may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the length and width, height and depth of God’s love,¹⁹ and to know the Messiah’s love that surpasses knowledge, so you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Some have pointed out that Heaven is a spot on the other side of the Great Orion Nebula. Furthermore God’s administrative center must be hidden behind this magnificent nebula.

On the other hand we view that God is the creator or prime generator of not only our Solar System but of the entire vast universe we detect beyond it. Whether your concept of this creation stretches back in time to a monumental week some 6,000 years ago--or to an inconceivably huge big bang some fourteen billion years ago--or some point of the past in between, you probably have breathed the query, “What was God doing in the eternity before this universe?”

St. Augustine quoted someone who quipped in response to this question, “He was preparing hell for those who pry into mysteries.”[ii] From the context of this remark Augustine clearly regarded this answer as an ill-posed jest.

But seriously, since God is “the same yesterday, today, and forever;”[iii] He was undoubtedly creating other universes. Where might he place these other universes? Well, certainly not within our universe; they must indeed be “beyond” or “outside” our universe, which was not here before He created it.

It is not impossible that Paul was hinting at a possibly vaguely understood concept when he expressed a four-dimensional measuring “length and width, height and depth” of God’s love. This concept just might be vital for our understanding of the presence of God. If there is another spatial dimension besides the three in our universe, then God would not have to be in a heaven over 1344 light years away. He might be just a scant millimeter away in this fourth spatial dimension and yet be beyond our sensory perception of Him.

Writers of the newly reincarnated science fiction Star Trek series hint at a similar notion of a space “warp”. How can space be warped unless it is in a dimension outside of the space itself?

Thank You, Lord, for being ever close to our side at all time!

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[i] http://maxpixel.freegreatpicture.com/Portal-Vortex-Time-Travel-Wormhole-Warp-Space-2514312

[ii] Book XI, Chapter 12 of the Confessions of St Augustine

[iii] Hebrews 13:8 (HCSB)

God Is Not Finished With Me Yet

Jeremiah 10:23

Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB)

²³ I know, Lord,
that a man’s way of life is not his own;
no one who walks determines his own steps.

The other day some kids were taunting Katie through our back fence. I watched it from a point where the kids couldn’t see me. When one of them threw something at Katie and scared her, I remonstrated with them. They dashed away out of sight yelling back at me. I knew at the time that my approach was poorly chosen. What I should have said was something like the following.

“Hey guys, dogs are pretty stupid when they bark at somebody from behind a fence. I often feel that way, too. Katie doesn’t recognize you. She may even think you’re up to no good. If you owned that house, you might even want a dog to bark at somebody in your backyard whom you don’t know, especially if they were there with malice in the minds.”

This may even have earned their empathy. If not, we may still have parted as friends not antagonists. Hindsight is always 20/20. Jeremiah adds this prayer to his lament that we don’t walk the way we want to:

“Discipline me, Lord, but with justice—not in Your anger, or You will reduce me to nothing.”

Truly the Lord does discipline us but with far more grace than we ever deserve.

Thank You, Lord, for covering our erring steps with Your marvelous undeserved, forgiving grace.

Preacher, Cook, Blog

[i][ii]

Psalm 143:8

Good News Translation (GNT)

⁸ Remind me each morning of your constant love,
    for I put my trust in you.
My prayers go up to you;
    show me the way I should go.

I sat in the large congregation of people celebrating the life of Dr. Harold Fagal. As they told of how he had let his witness be known, first as a pastor and later as a professor, I decided that I should write down my thoughts about God and put them somewhere where others could read about them if they wanted to.

I created a file on my computer called simply Devotions, and my first entry was on January 26, 2011. I continued filing my thoughts and turning over and over in my mind how I might place them where others could see them if they chose to. People had spoken about blogs and how they could find things on a blog. I had no clue what a blog was, but that weird word stuck in my head.

Then I purchased the video Julie & Julia simply because my daughter’s name is Julia (and definitely not Julie). In the movie Julie created a blog where she entered her experiences of cooking each of the recipes in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. The blog gained lots of readers. Julie then published these blogs in a book. Julia Child was livid with anger; she felt that Julie was simply using her name to make money. I said to myself that if Julie could make a blog, so could I.

Between Julie and my own nagging head, I started to investigate blogs. I found there were lots of public blogs. Many of them cost a monthly fee, which I was not about to pay. Some of them were free, and Blogspot seemed to be a leader in the free group.

So on November 8, 2013, I posted my first blog, entitled Speaking Well, about a young soldier on duty in Germany who spoke the most abominable English I had ever heard but loved me into reconsidering Christianity after I had completely given up on it. I ended that blog with the prayer “Thank You, Lord, for your love that flowed through this soldier to me. May Your love flow through me to others!”

For seven years now I have written hundreds of devotions, and for well over five years I have posted some of them. I tend to be technologically challenged, and it still takes me a half hour or more to post a single blog, not counting the hour or two it takes me to think about it and write it down. I see that last year I only posted 13, about once a month! I can do better than that.

Father in Heaven, You remind me each morning of Your love for me; help me to express my appreciation to You more frequently.

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[i]Harold  Fagal http://ak-cache.legacy.net//legacy/images/cobrands/PE/photos/mugs-513521mg_20110109.jpgx?w=200&h=200&option=3&fc=fff

[ii] Julia Child http://cook.fnr.sndimg.com/content/dam/images/cook/editorial/blog/legacy/devour/2010/8/Julia-Child-The-French-Chef-588.jpg.rend.hgtvcom.616.462.suffix/1505357138862.jpeg

Cancer and Hope

[i]

Joshua 1:9

Good News Translation (GNT)

⁹ Remember that I have commanded you to be determined and confident! Do not be afraid or discouraged, for I, the Lord your God, am with you wherever you go.”

On Friday afternoon I spoke with my cardiologist. I had looked for my report from Parkview Hospital of my 3 weeks there during the first stage of my West Nile Virus (WNV) treatments. I had gotten them from the hospital on a CD, and I took a copy to him back in June last year. I hoped he might be able to lay his hand on it.

Of course he asked me why I needed it, and I told him I was planning to see an oncologist in Los Angeles about my prostate cancer (PC) growth. The oncologist wanted any lab reports, etc. that I had gotten recently. He asked me what I am doing currently, and I told him I was taking two hormone treatments. I told him that the oncologist in LA had an alternative treatment system that I wanted to investigate.

My cardiologist pointed out how well I am improving and healing from my WNV encounter. He insisted that I am in a lot less dangerous position now with PC than I was under the WNV. He pointed out how well I am currently. He urged me to follow the standard treatments used in medicine today and not to get lulled into some promises of alternative medicine. In his own optimistic way he urged me to “be determined and confident”, and not to “be afraid or discouraged”. He went on to tell me that he would see me in 10 years and then in 15 more years (then I would be 100).

Thank You, Lord, for Your encouragement and Your promise to be with me wherever I go! I am confident that You will do exactly that.

#CALIFORNIA, #SOCAL, #IE, #HEALTH, #CANCER, #PROSTATE, #PROSTATECANCER, #WNV, #WESTNILEVIRUS, #HOPE, #HORMONETREATMENT, #MEDICINE

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[i] https://www.24hrcares.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/this-picture-says-there-is-hope-for-prostate-cancer-because-of-the-blue-ribbon.jpg

All the World to be Taxed

Luke 2:1

King James Version (KJV)

2 And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed.

This week congress passed the revised tax law for Americans. President Trump touts this as a great step forward for America in his goal of “making America great again.” He is, of course, totally unwilling to acknowledge that America became great initially when almost no American paid any income tax. He tells us confidently that everybody’s taxes will go down. His opponents point out that the taxes of the middle class will go up and that Social Security and Medicare will go down, giving me a double whammy! Secondly, I had over $2,500 tax wrested from my account a few days ago because I live in house in California. Furthermore, the California legislature is doing everything it possibly can to push that amount up to $10,000 and more.

The Old Testament predicted that our Lord and Savior would be born in Bethlehem. His father and mother, Joseph and Mary, were betrothed to be married and living in Nazareth in a different province of the Roman Empire that was several days’ walk from Bethlehem. Mary was “great with child.” Other Old Testament prophecies indicated that this was indeed the exact time Christ was to be born. 

God in His infinite wisdom knew that both evil angels and people (both Jews and Gentiles) eagerly awaiting this birth. He didn’t dare have the parents either married or living in Bethlehem lest they be destroyed before Christ was even born. So He had the great Augustus Caesar suddenly decide he wanted to know exactly how many subjects he had, who they were, and where they came from.

Only an absolute dictator could demand such from his subjects. He issued a decree that everyone should be taxed, in Greek ἀπογράφεσθαι, which looks to me like it means something like “written down.” Various English Bible translations render this as taxed, enrolled, registered, census taken, and even “names written down in a book[i].” This must have been the greatest data base every assembled in antiquity. Whatever it was, it was instrumental in getting the Joseph and his “espoused wife” to the right city at the right time while many others were also there so that Jesus had to be born in stable. Of course, to the watching universe, Jesus anonymity was shattered that very night by the visit of the shepherds.

Thank You, Lord God, that You are willing and able to “pull strings” to get Your will done even when it means going to the very top of earthly powers. I trust that You are willing to do this even today to prepare the world for Your Second Coming.

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[i] Worldwide English (New Testament) (WE) © 1969, 1971, 1996, 1998 by SOON Educational Publications