I guess I am the odd guy out.

The very first time I read Exodus, I put the Bible down and thought to myself, THESE GUYS ARE CRAZY AND MUST BE STONED ON DRUGS, THOSE HIPPY CHRISTIANS OF THE EARLY 70′S, TO BELIEVE THIS STUFF!

hmmmmm,

So what’s changed?

Nothing in myself. Everything to myself, though.

It’s none of my business what you believe.

That’s God’s business, right?

I am just as much an unbeliever today as every other day, I just sleep better at night as you point out OFTEN.

I tremble at His Word though now!
I am continually laughing at my own stupidity and ignorance and foolish behavior and beliefs.

I NEED A SAVIOR,

Get it?

ok,

bless you Tom and can you make those distinctions again?

michael
Eureka, Ca.

Sorry I’m so late responding to your article. Jesus, being God, would not have left anything at all behind to be worshipped by man. Since God wants us to worship God and not artifacts that may or may not have belonged to Him as human, there is no way that he would have left anything behind.

This is an excellent point and discussion. It’s not unlike the early struggles I had coming out of my former atheism/agnosticism as an evolutionist. And for me that was a BIG deal because I was not just an armchair “evolutionist”, I chose my entire degree and education in part based on this. I’m a geologist. Scientifically speaking the plethora of learned information was in the opposing direction of my new faith. At one point I had to just “stop” trying to answer all my old evolution questions and say, “I believe/trust in Christ alone even if I cannot answer the rest”. As a scientist I was pulled by my knowledge one way but as a Christian the other, I had to in fact, from the point of view of faith, be incredulous toward that which I had the most knowledge and “evidence”. In essence in my mind, as way of example, I had to say to myself, “If the sky being blue, and today this is what I indeed see and experience and measure…blue-ness, means there is no Jesus Christ for me, then I will have to believe the sky is not blue and trust Christ alone, IN FACE of the “facts””. Because it was no laughing matter for me anymore to think other wise, I had HEARD the Law of God. Because at the end of that, no Jesus FOR ME, means “we are still dead in our sins and trespasses”. For one day I/we WILL die and that FACT remains without change. That final act of the Law still affects everyone and at that point who CARES what the color of the sky is.

When this news came out, James Cameron’s bit, they were quoting the stats, some billion or trillion to one that it was not. The “counter” arguments and that was coming from “top flight” theologians around the country. But immediately I thought to myself, “That’s pathetic, if its not zero “chance”, you are attaching everybody’s faith worse than Cameron because this comes from “apologist” for the faith…which is worse. Why? Because to some degree I/we can waive off a heathen as being just a heathen, but when it comes in this form of ‘apology’ from “our people” it is WORSE than the heathen claims…that is an apologetic akin to a “chance” of it happening. At the level of the conscience, where the devil operates mostly, anything short of zero is worthless apologetically speaking. Especially to the weak in the faith.”!

But to answer otherwise what does it do to our faith? It persecutes it, it laughs at it, it is a form of scoffing at it. It is as Paul speaks in Galatians 4 where the children of the Law are always persecuting the children of the promise. I know this is a Lutheran post but John Calvin has one of the best insights to this passage that is pure Gospel and theology of Cross I’ve ever read:

Gal 4:29. As then, he that was born after the flesh. He denounces the cruelty of the false apostles, who wantonly insulted pious persons that placed all their confidence in Christ. There was abundant need that the uneasiness of the oppressed should be soothed by consolation, and that the cruelty of their oppressors should be severely checked. It is not wonderful, he says, that the children of the law, at the present day, do what Ishmael their father at first did, who, trusting to his being the first-born, persecuted Isaac the true heir. With the same proud disdain do his posterity now, on account of outward ceremonies, circumcision, and the various services of the law, molest and vaunt over the lawful sons of God. The Spirit is again contrasted with the flesh, that is, the calling of God with human appearance. (1 Samuel 16:7.) So the disguise is admitted to be possessed by the followers of the Law and of works, but the reality is claimed for those who rely on the calling of God alone, and depend upon his grace.

Persecuted. But persecution is nowhere mentioned, only Moses says that Ishmael was qhum, (metzahek,) mocking, (Genesis 21:9;) and by this participle he intimates that Ishmael ridiculed his brother Isaac. The explanation offered by some Jews, that this was a simple smile, is entirely inadmissible; for what cruelty would it have argued, that a harmless smile should have been so fearfully revenged? There cannot then be a doubt that he maliciously endeavored to provoke the child Isaac by reproachful language.
But how widely distant is this from persecution? 1 And yet it is not idly or unguardedly that Paul enlarges on this point. No persecution ought to distress us so much as to see our calling attempted to be undermined by the reproaches of wicked men. Neither blows, nor scourging, nor nails, nor thorns, occasioned to our Lord such intense suffering as that blasphemy:
“He trusted in God; what availeth it to him?
for he is deprived of all assistance.” (Matthew 27:43.)
There is more venom in this than in all persecutions; for how much more alarming is it that the grace of Divine adoption shall be made void, than that this frail life shall be taken from us? Ishmael did not persecute his brother with the sword; but, what is worse, he treated him with haughty disdain by trampling under foot the promise of God. All persecutions arise from this source, that wicked men despise and hate in the elect the grace of God; a memorable instance of which we have in the history of Cain and Abel. (Genesis 4:8.)

This reminds us, that not only ought we to be filled with horror at outward persecutions, when the enemies of religion slay us with fire and sword; when they banish, imprison, torture, or scourge; but when they attempt, by their blasphemies, to make void our confidence, which rests on the promises of God; when they ridicule our salvation, when they wantonly laugh to scorn the whole gospel. Nothing ought to wound our minds so deeply as contempt of God, and reproaches cast upon His grace: nor is there any kind of persecution more deadly than when the salvation of the soul is assailed. We who have escaped from the tyranny of the Pope, are not called to encounter the swords of wicked men. But how blind must we be, if we are not affected by that spiritual persecution, in which they strive, by every method, to extinguish that doctrine, from which we draw the breath of life! — when they attack our faith by their blasphemies, and shake not a few of the less informed! For my own part, I am far more grieved by the fury of the Epicureans than of the Papists. They do not attack us by open violence; but, in proportion as the name of God is more dear to me than my own life, the diabolical conspiracy which I see in operation to extinguish all fear and worship of God, to root out the remembrance of Christ, or to abandon it to the jeers of the ungodly, cannot but rack my mind with greater anxiety, than if a whole country were burning in one conflagration:

What John Calvin captures here rings true to my ear and experience. Persecution is not always by the sword, the American church IS persecuted just not by the sword. And in a sense worse! Seeking out open persecution just for the sake of it IS a theology of glory…seeking to die for the faith in order to be assured, “I’m saved”. It’s just a morbid form of works. True persecution, first comes AT YOU as you passively receive it. It always seems to have at its center Satan attempting to dislodge the faith of “Christ FOR ME”, first and for most – the second death is central to all REAL persecution. My entire early Christian experience with baptism and doubts that nearly drove me to suicide and wrestling with God constantly 24/7 not too few times entailed this. It seems what Satan and the children of the Law do, even unknowingly to them selves perhaps, is always attempt to STRIKE at that promise that says, “CHRIST FOR ME”, at the point of the second death (e.g. believer’s baptism strikes against not FOR the faith). Any action of persecution by open sword for the first death is in reality unto the real goal of the devil unto dislodging from faith in Christ FOR YOU unto the second death. To create the terror there. This he does indirectly by sword threats of the first death making you think, “God is against me”, OR he does it more immediately to your mind/soul and preaches, “SEE you are no Christian. Look at you, Christ is not for you. How do you know, did he speak to you like the woman caught in adultery? Hath God REALLY said ‘for YOU’”. Or by setting forth these “new discoveries of Christ’s body”. All of these strike at the second death. When I struggled I really wasn’t afraid of the first death, that’s why thoughts of ‘suicide’ come and are possible. The suicidal thinking is fearless as to physical death, that’s NOT what he/she fears. What I feared was the second death, judgment. This was worse than all the pain in the world and at times overwhelmed me in anguish. I would have gladly offered my life for the faith if it meant I would have been saved, but that would have been the greatest deception of all would it not?

In any case what such “new discoveries” tend to do to the faith, or at least their desired affect by Satan using his mules such as Cameron, is to strike to the jugular of our faith and thus we’d still be lost in our sins. What’s worse though is not James Cameron or even the Discovery Channel to some degree they are just heathen clowns to some of us. Rather, where the devil does his BEST work is the Christian apologist “on our side” who is really doing the devil’s work by trying to be “clever” and show some kind of astronomical odds against it. That merely is the devil’s work for him and directs the eyes of the soul and places faith in statistical probabilities. “Are you afraid you are going to die under wrath? Its 10 billion trillion to one they are right, now isn’t that better”. Try that on your death bed, the devil won’t remain so stupid against your mind/conscience when unleashes his brief case of law against you. It’s absolutely worthless when on the day of your death bed the devil brings with himself finally the real Law, and preaches your condemnation to you and even though you know of Christ, you don’t know if He’s really died FOR YOU! This is the devil’s SINGULAR trick every single time. This was his deception in baptism as “Rome views it” and as Baptist view it, or Cameron’s ‘new discovery’. Pick your poison because it’s ALL POISON. Every single time his goal is “eyes off of Christ for you”. His ‘bag of tricks’ and willing and duped helpers are almost limitless, the only thing predictable is his trick of destroying you at the second death. That’s the ONLY way to ferret out his devices and machinery, ESPECIALLY, within the church (e.g. the sacraments).

I think it was Luther who once said, paraphrasing from memory, that it doesn’t matter if something against the Gospel be preached/written from the apostles mouth’s/pen themselves I must deny it. Contra-wise to that is that EVEN if Judas himself wrote an epistle of real Gospel I must believe it. It boils down to this, even unto biblicalism, do you believe authors and authority and books, or do you believe (that is trust) the message given, that is Gospel? Luther was not “against” the authority of Scripture, but he knew what the message of Scripture MUST be or else thrown out.

Blessings in Christ FOR YOU/US,

Larry – KY