The saddest 10 days

40 days after Jesus resurrected from the grave, conquering sin, death and hell, we read in Acts 1 that He then ascended into Heaven where He sits even today at the right hand of God the Father, making intercession for us as our Great High Priest. Before He ascended into Heaven, and even before He was crucified, He had told His disciples that when He was gone, He would send the Comforter. This Comforter is the Holy Spirit. In Acts 1:8, He repeats the promise and gives them charge concerning it:

"But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth."

If you need a reminder about that Command "Ye shall be witnesses," (that is a command just like, Thou Shalt Not... only it's plural and positive, Ye Shall...) might I recommend reading: Looking Unto Jesus today. And for some more specifics, Dying Young would not be a bad read today too.

Jesus gives His disciples charge to stay in Jerusalem until the Holy Spirit came to them. He had promised this Holy Spirit earlier, that He would be their Comforter for Christ after He was to leave them. We know from Acts 2, that on the day of Pentecost, this Comforter came down upon the disciples, fulfilling the Lord's promise. From that day forward the Holy Spirit indwells those that put their faith in Christ's work on the cross. With Him, we have been sealed eternally - that have put our faith in Christ.

Ok, the preliminaries out of the way, here's today's thought: The day of Pentecost in Acts 2 was 50 days after the feast of firstfruits, which happens to be the day that Jesus rose from the dead. That means that after 40 days, Jesus ascended into Heaven, and then 10 days later the Comforter came. The title of my post is: The saddest 10 days.

The disciples had fellowship directly with Christ for 3 years. I imagine that the 3 days after His death were worse than these 10, but that's a different post - For 10 days, they were without Christ. For 10 days, they lived without the Holy Spirit inside of them. What a strange time it must have been. How many times in our lives do we end up walking around, even for 10 days, not realizing that we don't "have" Christ or the Holy Spirit with us? Yeah, I know... He's there, but we may have well left Him at home by the way we act.

For 10 days, these men were in limbo. Obeying Christ's command to wait. One observation is that this is when THEY replaced Judas' spot as one of the 12 Apostles - without Christ's presence, and without the Holy Spirit. They chose two men, and had the lots decide between the two. Am I the only one that thinks that the Apostle Paul was the man that God had planned to replace Judas?

The thought for the day is: what a sad 10 days it must have been for them without the presence of God that they had been accustomed to, or that they were about to experience. The challenge for the day (besides "Ye shall be witnesses"): Make sure that you're not walking around without the Holy Spirit. The worst way to make decisions is to make them on your own.

Just a thought...

KJV-Only Reason # 7

"What's up?" The smart-alec answer to that question is: The sky, or the ceiling. How do we know what that phrase means? Because we grew up hearing it, and heard other people's answer to it, and figured out that it means something like, "What's going on?"

"Here's the scoop:" When a person grows up with a language, they get to know the different nuiance's of that language that you wouldn't generally get taught in school. A simple example, "Coche" in Spanish. For all of you that took Spanish in school, you know that coche means car, right? Well, if you were in Guatemala, coche means pig. You don't learn that in school.

"Do you get the point?" The King James Translators lived in a different world. They grew up reading books instead of playing video games. They grew up with language teaching, and it wasn't just something they were taught in school and never used again. The details of the translators are told of some having read the entire Hebrew Bible by the age of 5. Now, I'm going to be realistic and say, most likely it was mother or father reading with the boy the Hebrew Bible. Because, at age 5, you've hardly been alive enough to do that, but the point is still made. Some of these men were considered Greek masters at the ages of like 14. What were the modern translators doing at 14? When it came time for the translators to translate the KJV, they would have recognized languages and their peculiaralities (is that a word?) for what they really meant.

Reason # 7: Because the translators of the KJV were more engrossed in the ancient languages than modern translators

The argument is made that the scholarship of the modern translators is greater than that of the KJV translators. I am not pretending to say that today's translators are stupid or ignorant, by any means. I am quite sure that they are well qualified to make good translations. Here's what I am willing to say (I could be wrong): When someone today says that the KJV translators mistranslated a verse, or that they made a mistake in a verse, I really have a hard time accepting that. If someone wants to say that what the English words meant back then, and today we would say... whatever. I'm ok with that. But to say that the translators just slipped up and put a negative in there when there shouldn't have been one - I just don't buy. And the best part: when somebody that has taken 4 years of Greek in seminary feels confident in trying to correct the KJV translators' choices on words... I find that laughable.

Congratulations Michael & Erika... and Natalia

For those that have not heard yet...

http://www.prayforitaly.com/2007/07/psalm-1273.html

God better not be first.

I have to give credit to where credit is due. Recently I was listening to a message from Paul Washer on the Holiness of God. In that message he was talking about how God is incomparable to anything else. He contrasted the highest cherub that sits around the throne of God and the smallest single cell creature in the waters, and he made the statement that the cherub is not more like God than the single-cell creature - they both are incomparable to God. God reveals Himself in ways that we can relate to, but still He is not like us.

Anyway, in the message, he mentions how God is not supposed to be "first" in our lives - as if something else could be "second" and competing with God for first. God is supposed to be the ONLY thing in our lives. I recently read or heard a quote, and I can't seem to find its source, but its premise was: Any conversation of which Jesus Christ is not the central theme of the conversation, is a wasted talk. Our lives should be completely about Jesus Christ. Everything that we do, even if it is just us eating or drinking, should be done for the glory of God.

PDA's OK?

So, my question for today is: Are PDA's OK?

You techies are thinking: Personal Digital Assistants, like Palm Pilots or something, but I am referring to Public Displays of Affection.

Here's the thought. For an unmarried couple, it is immoral for them to have sexual relations. The Bible calls it fornication. We would say that it is immoral to show fornication to a single person as it would lead to temptation. Even if it was showing a married couple the temptation would be the same.

The Bible also teaches that a man and a woman should not even touch before marriage. 1 Corinthians 7:1 says that. It teaches that touching leads to fornication. To solve that problem, you get married :)

So, my thought: if it is wrong to tempt an unmarried person with "all the way" sexual relationships being depicted in front of them, would it not be just as wrong to show "touching" in front of them? When I kiss Sarah, in our marriage relationship, it is pleasurable and honorable. If I do that in front of an unmarried person, it is going to entice them to want to do the same. To solve that problem, the Bible says they should marry. 1 Corinthians 7:2 says that. But, should the married couples keep the activities that are only permissible to married couples behind closed doors?

I don't know, Just a thought...

Unconditional Election - Calvinism

So, I finally finished the chapter on Unconditional Election. Did I mention that the chapter was 165 pages in length? Since it is so long, I could not do justice to the chapter in one, two or even more blog posts.

The summary of the chapter I will try to give is this: and I quote (that's what the little quotation marks mean), "The basic error of Calvinism is confounding election and predestination with salvation." The basic premise, in my words, is that whenever those words are used, the individual 'salvation' of the person is not in question, but rather the results: Predestined to be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ means that the believer was fore-ordained to become conformed to His image - not that the person was fore-ordained to believe.

The last section of the book was on infant baptism. I was surpised to find out that according to Vance - who would have used as much ammo as he had in his arsenal - many Calvinists are actually quite against the idea that an infant that dies in infancy is actually not part of the "elect." Spurgeon actually was very adamant about that point. He believed that all infants that die would not perish. This actually is more in line with Calvinism than other explanations I had heard. Some would teach that if the child's parents were part of the elect, then they could be confident that there children were too. But it seems that this flies directly in the face against their Calvinist Theology of Unconditional Election. This is putting the Election as being Conditioned on the faith of the parents!

Anyway... What do we know for sure? Man without God is without hope. He is not willing that any should perish. Salvation is of the Lord. I could go on and on, but eventually the verses that people like to contend about will be too much and fights will break out, etc...

Just a thought...