Posts Tagged ‘theology’

Replacement Theology…Is the Blinding of Israel Permanent?

Posted: February 2, 2020 in Christian
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Most of the people I knew growing up subscribed to the theory that the Nation of Israel blew it’s chance at the brass ring with the crucifixion of Christ and therefore were cast aside as ‘the Children of God’. My parents subscribed to this belief that we are the new Israel…that Christians are the new children of God. I was taught there probably will be some Jews that accept Christ as the Messiah and will be saved but Israel, collectively as a nation, screwed up beyond redemption. They also believe that Revelation is to be taken allegorically, because of the first verse of Revelation 1: THE Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show His servants—things which must shortly take place. And He sent and signified it by His angel to His servant John, (NKJV) The religion of my youth believes that the word signified (using signs) in that first verse means that Revelation is a book of signs and therefore to be taken wholly allegorically. In addition, I was taught that Revelation was basically relevant only to the 1st century Christians because it was about the destruction of Jerusalem that took place in 70 AD by the Roman Army under the leadership of Titus 1.

This places what I was taught into the category of replacement theology even though I had never heard of that term until recently. Apparently, the idea of replacement theology was first espoused by second century church leaders such as Justin Martyr even though the writings of his predecessors inform us that they didn’t subscribe to the theory of replacement theology. By the fourth century, the writings of church leaders such as Augustine (Catholics refer to him as Saint Augustine) imply that there was an increasingly anti-Semitic thought process building and thus they began embracing this mew idea of replacement theology and that viewpoint continued down the centuries, not only with the Catholic church, but also with the reformation movement, so today most of the protestant religions hold this view.2

According to replacement theology, all the blessings and promises God made to Israel throughout the Old Testament and any mention of them in the New Testament are allegorized. To substantiate the theory I was taught as a child that we are the new Israel, verses such as the one below in Galatians are used to offer proof. Galatians 3:28-29 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise. (NKJV) They say this means any reference to the heirs of Abraham and Israel now means Christians. So, does this verse prove that replacement theology is in fact correct?

As I was growing up I was taught by my mother to read the bible daily and I was taught the book of Revelation has no bearing in our lives because it only applied to the New Testament Church and the hardships they encountered during and after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. Why have it in the scriptures at all, then, I used to wonder? I was also taught that the Old Testament was a ‘good old history’ of a people that blew their chance at the brass ring. Using that philosophy as a benchmark of interpretation of the bible, a lot of pieces just didn’t fit and coalesce with me as I read the scriptures. I also realize using replacement theology forces you to not only allegorize Revelation, but much of the rest of the New Testament as well. Also, because that viewpoint creates disorder in the pattern and orderly nature of the progression of the scriptural nature of our existence as outlined by God (as I now see as I look back), it was explained to me at that time that much of the bible has to taken on faith if it doesn’t make sense to the reader. I therefore equated the religious teachings of my youth to pounding square pegs into round holes to try and make them fit, and when they didn’t fit…”oh well, that’s one you take on faith”. That didn’t really fly with me and the more I asked questions, the screwier the explanations got from the bible school teachers and church leaders to the point I was politely asked to stop asking these questions (you, know, just take it on faith).

It is my opinion, if you really believe in Replacement Theology, you need to tear Romans chapter 11 out of the bible. No, that’s being too generous…you need to tear the rest of the book of Romans out of the bible along with Hebrews and also the reference to Israel’s blindness in Luke 19:42 saying, “If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. (NKJV). An explanation of the passage in Luke by Paul, along with additional gems of information, come from Romans 11:25 For I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion, that blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. (NKJV). According to Strongs, the word until in the bible is an interesting word that always means a temporary condition of time, followed by a succeeding  event. That definition, in itself, means that the blindness of Israel is not a permanent condition.

Also, we need to look at the history of the Jews since the destruction of Jerusalem. The fact that there are still Jews existing in the present day to talk about is nothing but miraculous. A quote taken from The Miracle of Jewish History say it very well, Over three hundred years ago King Louis XIV of France asked Blaise Pascal, the great French philosopher of his day, to give him proof of the existence of miracles. Without a moment’s hesitation, Pascal answered, “Why, the Jews, your Majesty, the Jews!”3 If Israel has been condemned by God, and there is no future for the Jewish nation, how do we explain the supernatural survival of the Jewish people over the past 2000 years despite the many attempts to destroy them? How do we explain why and how Israel reappeared as a nation in the 20th century after not existing for 1900 years? Why are they still in existence if their ticket on the train to glory has expired? If you accept the fact that the Jews still survive and are back in the Holy Land is nothing short of miraculous, then how can you accept the theology that Revelation is not about the Jews. I agree it says up front that is a book of signs. It is also a book of specific time periods, specific events and specific locations. If we start allegorizing complete books because they contain signs and symbols, that changes the whole complexity of the books of the prophets in the Old Testament.

Luke 19 tells us God placed blindness up the Israel as a nation because of their lack of attention to prophecy that had been laid out of them four centuries earlier by Gabriel in Daniel 9 when he gave Daniel the exact day the Messiah was to present himself as King in Jerusalem. As I read the history of Israel, I read about how God set them up as his people, performed miracle after miracle in their behalf, and how they continued to turn their backs on him. With Gabriel’s revelation to Daniel, God did everything short of screaming in their ears about preparing for the day of Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Some of the Jews were prepared for the day and welcomed him with celebration, but Satan, of course, was hard at work behind the curtain with the Jewish leadership trying to work his wiles to thwart God’s plan and the Jewish religious establishment corporately ignored the prophecy given by Daniel five centuries earlier, thus cascading the nation of Israel down the path it is currently on. I think of the passage in Romans 11 you read earlier where it talks about God casting away his people and explaining that he has blinded them until the fullness of the Gentiles in verse 25. The prophet Hosea gives reference to how they will turn back to the Lord when he says that they will seek his face when they acknowledge their offense in this end-time prophecy, in fact the whole book of Hosea is about this subject. Hosea 5:15 I will return again to My place Till they acknowledge their offense. Then they will seek My face; In their affliction they will earnestly seek Me.” (NKJV)

I have a personal comparison, (in my mind at least). We have a few simple rules in our house based on morality and respect. Our oldest daughter in her late teens decided she didn’t have to follow our rules. First we talked to her a few times, then the serious punishments started, we took away some liberties, took away her car, and finally we kicked her out, or ‘cast her off’. We didn’t stop loving her and we kept an eye on her from afar to make sure we could be close in case of a catastrophic event. We had friends keeping their eyes on her also just to make sure she remained OK. She eventually got off the drugs, saw the light and asked her mom if she could come back home. Her mom said she could if she was ready to follow the rules. Our daughter acquiesced and asked for forgiveness, demonstrated her sorrow and came home a changed person. So she, in her own way, ‘sought our face and asked our forgiveness’ and we welcomed her back. My wife and I are extremely fallible people with probably more faults than good areas and patience is not one of our points of shining glory, but when it comes to our children, we find the patience. Our Lord’s patience is incredibly infinite as demonstrated by the history of Israel and humanity in general…it would have to be, for him to still accept someone like me after my history of turning my back on Him and his Son and His followers before I asked for salvation a few years ago.

I personally feel that one major reason the US hasn’t been judged by God yet, is our alliance and protection of the Nation of Israel as God decreed in Genesis 12:3 I will bless those who bless you, And I will curse him who curses you; And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”(NKJV) In this time period of Israel’s blindness I kind of see the USA as a sort of thug, hired to help protect his recalcitrant children from the evils of the world “until the fullness of the Gentiles comes in”. As long as we act as the friends and protectors of the miraculous State of Israel, I believe we will be spared judgment. I pray regularly to God, thanking him for giving me the grace I don’t deserve and the mercy He imparts for not giving me what I do deserve. I also pray he do the same for my country.

So what about replacement theology? I think if you accept the Bible as a holy, integrated message system from Our Lord that flows and weaves a history of his grace, redemption and salvation for his children, real and adopted, then Replacement Theology doesn’t hold up. If it’s not an integrated message system, then the veracity of the scriptures start to fall apart. With the same token, if you allow the text to speak to you as Christ and the apostles did (and in my opinion, they are fairly reliable examples), and if you accept the scriptures as the integrated message of Our Lord, then you need to believe that the bible “says what it means and means what it says” and that the blindness of Israel until the ‘fullness of the Gentiles come in’ means exactly that; a specific length of punishment for the first children of Yahweh that will end when Christ comes for the Church, and body of Christ is taken up.

God Bless, Jim

Revised 02-2-20

1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Jerusalem_%2870%29

2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supersessionism

3 excerpt from “History News Network” by Benjamin Blech http://hnn.us/articles/38887.html

Everyone Did Right In Their Own Eyes…maybe we need to look in a mirror

Posted: January 31, 2020 in Christian, My view of the world
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I was raised in a denomination that believes in replacement theology and also believe because the Israeli religious authority were responsible for the crucifixion of Christ that Israel blew their chance at the brass ring and that the church is the “new Israel”. They also believe the old testament was a great collection of stories that really have no bearing on our salvation and because of these factors, Israel didn’t hold a lot of significance to me for other than being the genetic ancestors of Christ. Therefore some of the more ‘boring’ books of the Old Testament (which there were many back then) just got glossed over to fulfill the ‘reading the scripture’ requirement that my mother enforced on me while growing up.

In January 15, 2010, the Lord saved me from myself and I started on a marvelous journey of discovery that has taken me all through the ancient history of God’s people. I quickly discovered that the bible has more than twenty seven important books and that the other forty nine books are much, much more than a bunch of filler, as I was taught as a child. Now that I have realized that the significant part of the word of God starts in Genesis and ends in Revelation and that every fact entered into the scripture by the Holy Spirit has been placed there for our learning, if we are willing to pay attention to detail. It also reveals to us throughout its marvelous pages that it is a continuous web that is woven into a cohesive structure, designed to stand up to the forces throughout the ages that have been, and still are, trying to destroy the veracity of the word of our Lord. Once those facts sunk into my head, then those ‘boring’ books became exponentially less boring and I began pouring through these wonderfully educational and eye-opening books.

Judges was one of those ‘boring’ books to me growing up. Other than the story of Sampson and Delilah, I knew almost nothing about the book. Now that I have actually sat down and read the book with my new understanding, it seems quite interesting and lays out a four hundred year decline from an appreciative, worshipful people into a nation that continually turns its back on The Lord. One of the curiosities of Judges is the opening; everyone did what was right in their own eyes. The author (which many commentators believe is Samuel) used this phrase to open a couple of different chapters to explain the attitude of the Israelites throughout this four hundred year period of the history of the Lord’s chosen. This is not a pleasant comment, rather it’s an drear judgement stating that they had turned away from following the statutes laid out in Deuteronomy 12:8 when the Lord warned them of doing just this before they crossed the Jordan to possess the land. While this topic I’m writing isn’t a synopsis of the book of Judges, the opening statement written during this dismal period of Israel’s history and contained within the pages of Judges, should be a warning to us all. So, what does it mean and why should we care?

Judges 17:6 In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes. (NKJV)

This is a scathing indictment against Israel’s attitude. The Lord chose the Jews to be his people. He brought them out of Egypt using supernatural powers that scared the wits out of the leader of the world. He guided them throughout their wanderings in the Midian wilderness and protected them with a special cloud that was unmistakable in it’s unnaturalness during the day and an astral object of fire at night, preparing them to come together as a nation so they could defeat the Satanic kingdoms in Canaan, and what happens…they lose faith in the Lord at the last minute, even though they have all this extraterrestrial stuff going on around them. He punishes them for ‘doing right in their own eyes’ by causing all the unfaithful adults to die in the wilderness, while protecting them with more of the supernatural stuff for thirty eight more years and do they learn their lesson? No. Within a couple of generations, they revert back to ‘doing right in their own eyes’ again.

In first Samuel, the Lord is explaining the Israelites rejection of the Him as their king, to Samuel.

I Samuel 8:7-20 And the LORD said to Samuel, “Heed the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected Me, that I should not reign over them. “According to all the works which they have done since the day that I brought them up out of Egypt, even to this day—with which they have forsaken Me and served other gods—so they are doing to you also. “Now therefore, heed their voice. However, you shall solemnly forewarn them, and show them the behavior of the king who will reign over them.” So Samuel told all the words of the LORD to the people who asked him for a king. And he said, “This will be the behavior of the king who will reign over you: He will take your sons and appoint them for his own chariots and to be his horsemen, and some will run before his chariots. “He will appoint captains over his thousands and captains over his fifties, will set some to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and some to make his weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. “He will take your daughters to be perfumers, cooks, and bakers. “And he will take the best of your fields, your vineyards, and your olive groves, and give them to his servants. “He will take a tenth of your grain and your vintage, and give it to his officers and servants. “And he will take your male servants, your female servants, your finest young men, and your donkeys, and put them to his work. “He will take a tenth of your sheep. And you will be his servants. “And you will cry out in that day because of your king whom you have chosen for yourselves, and the LORD will not hear you in that day.” Nevertheless the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel; and they said, “No, but we will have a king over us, “that we also may be like all the nations, and that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight our battles.” (NKJV)

The book of Judges is a dismal account of the continued breakdown of faith and the patterned slide into a self-reliance spiral of failure that can be explained in a nutshell in the above scripture when the Lord tells Samuel they have totally rejected Him. This passage is sort of a companion to the book of Judges and helps enlighten us to the meaning behind the indicting phrase: “everyone did what was right in their own eyes”

The Lord ended up granting their wish for an earthly king and we find that Moses in Deuteronomy explained about the roles of a future king and the rules he was expected to follow. God knew they wouldn’t stay with it, but gave them the statutes to follow anyway. One of the statutes was a commandment for each King to write out his own copy of the Torah. It sounds like a time-consuming process, and I’m sure it was, but it was designed to burn the Mosaic Law into the brain of the King by the time he had finished this massive project. One look at the history of the kings of Israel and Judah tells us that very few bothered to give more than a cursory nod to the statutes laid out by the Lord. The priests had all had intimate knowledge of the Torah, but that doesn’t mean every Jew did. Handwritten copies of the law would have been rare and expensive and also required the ability to be able to read. The practice of having the king write their own copy of the Pentateuch was designed to make sure the King intimately knew the law and would deny him an excuse when he would ultimately break it. The Lord may have put it into place for the same reason as the rest of the Mosaic Law, to expose the weak and sinful nature of the Jews which were a small insignificant nation of people chosen to represent the Lord, hand-picked from a sinful, broken human race.

Just because the Lord allows us to do things, doesn’t mean that is what he would have us do. The Lord wanted the Jews to accept him as their ruler, their King to rule from the Mercy Seat in the Holy of Holies, but as He told Samuel, they rejected him. In fact, the whole history of the Jews is a history fraught with rejection and disobedience spattered with small periods of time of faithfulness and trust and love. The book of Judges as well as the books of the prophets are written records of failure to follow the Lord, time after time. We have a compressed history of the Israelite nation to look back on and shake our heads in dismay as we read of their apparent lack of faith in their deliverer, savior, guide and father, but we need to be conscious of the time periods we are dealing with. We are looking at a history of thousands of years this record has recorded. By perspective, we have just a little over two hundred years under our belts and look how far the United States has slipped from a country founded on freedom of religion and principles based on the bible and faith in our Lord to one that wholly rejects God and anything associated with Christ, Christianity or support of Israel in it’s short history. Comparatively, Israel is the shining example of faith and redemption and loyalty, because overall, they were faithful for much longer at a time before sliding into self righteousness.

The bigger problem though, is that it is simply a reflective attitude of all of us humans. People have to make a concerted effort to rely on the Lord and not their own inflated and contorted views of their own abilities to manage their lives and the lives of others around them. Unfortunately we as a modern people do no better than the Jews of the time of the judges and we have their failed examples to learn from and to fall back on, or to use the words of George Santayana, “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it”

God Bless, Jim
updated 11-28-20

Dem Bones, Dem Bones…Ezekiel 37 and Israel

Posted: January 30, 2020 in Christian, Life and Memories
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I have recently been thinking about some of my favorite bible stories from my childhood and this one had an accompanying song about the same subject but I can’t seem to recall how the song went…oh well…

The story was written by the prophet Ezekiel, and the book of Ezekiel is a hugely interesting volume as he paints awesomely descriptive pictures with words as well as some extremely precise end-time prophecy, however, Ezekiel chapter 37 stands out as the format of one of my favorite bible stories as a child.

In this particular chapter Ezekiel writes of a weird story of a bunch of bones that go though a sort of progressive reversal entropy as they reassemble from dry bones into whole human shells lying there awaiting the breathe of The Lord to complete the process of bringing them to life. I have decided to approach this review of the chapter from a sectional viewpoint, separating it into two main sections.

Ezekiel 37 verse one through verse ten could be a description of any one of us. Most of us have been self-absorbed within our own humanity at some point in our lives and have turned our backs on God and His Word while dallying and dancing with Satan, whether we realize it or not. I know many feel that life is full of gray areas, but it is clearly and simply black and white, according to Christ in Matthew 12:30 “He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who does not gather with Me scatters abroad. (NKJV) Whenever the latter is the case, we are spiritually dead and as dry as kindling in the wastelands of our own self-worth and self justification without the Lord, just as these dry bones lying in the valley. Ezekiel tells us in verse 1 the Lord sat him down in the midst of the valley. My mind goes in weird directions sometimes and when I saw this I instantly wondered, “what valley?”. From a personal standpoint, I’ll call it the Valley of the Shadow of Death and since Ezekiel was with the Lord, he obviously feared no evil. When we are away from the protection of the grace of The Lord, we are lost and evil overtakes us and sucks the life right out of us until we are no more than piles of bones amidst the dusty remains of our former selves. Only the grace of Our Lord can reassemble our spirit and breathe the breath of his grace back into us, making us whole.

Anyway, there are more verses to this chapter than 1, and the description from verses one through ten is just pure fun. Continuing with verse two, Ezekiel continues describing what he sees in this valley full of bones, as the Lord has him walk amongst those remains. Verse three finds the Lord asking Ezekiel a rhetorical question and then tells him to prophesy to this very odd crowd, explaining to him what to say. When Ezekiel begins to prophesy, the weirdly fun portion of the chapter come leaping at us as the whitened, dried bones begin to physically react to the prophecy of the Lord culminating in them coming to life after the Lord breathed life into them, creating a massive army. Suddenly, the chapter does an about face as the Lord explains the meaning of the chapter through his prophet Ezekiel starting in verse 11: Then He said to me, “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, Our bones are dry, our hope is lost, and we ourselves are cut off!’ (NKJV) and continuing through the rest of the chapter. A good summary can be had from verses 21 and 22: “Then say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord GOD: “Surely I will take the children of Israel from among the nations, wherever they have gone, and will gather them from every side and bring them into their own land; “and I will make them one nation in the land, on the mountains of Israel; and one king shall be king over them all; they shall no longer be two nations, nor shall they ever be divided into two kingdoms again. (NKJV). If we reflect on the history of Israel as the Holy Spirit has given us, we know that the nation went from the leadership of Moses and Joshua and then went through several regional judges until their first king Saul, then on to kings David and Solomon. After Solomon they had a civil war and the kingdom split and the people eventually were killed or taken into captivity. Therefore, what Ezekiel is quoting is future events and end-time prophecy that is still to come. OK, to continue.

Isaiah 11:11 It shall come to pass in that day [That] the Lord shall set His hand again the second time To recover the remnant of His people who are left, From Assyria and Egypt, From Pathros and Cush, From Elam and Shinar, From Hamath and the islands of the sea. (NKJV) reiterates the same thing; that The Lord is not finished with Israel and even though they disobey and take idiocy to operatic levels as has been proven by their history1, The Lord has punished but still loves his first chosen children.

We within the Christian community in this gentile era need to get over our “look at us…we have Christ and are so special and you had your chance and screwed up” mass ego trip that many denominations hammer at from their pulpits Sunday after Sunday and realize that we are, at best, an opening act while the real performers warm up in the wings. At the worst we are a traveling side show that the Lord gracious has allowed to perform…lets hope we don’t get booed off the stage, regardless which we turn out to be.

God Bless, Jim
1-30-20

1 I’m not Israel bashing, if you look at our compressed history compared to their few thousand years, we are extremely more stupid than they.

Cain’s sacrificial mistake…was it self-reliance?

Posted: January 26, 2020 in Christian
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Recently, I started thinking about Cain, Abel and the first recorded sacrifice, and I believe that Cain’s sacrificial mistake was primarily based upon not really paying attention to the desires, wants and needs of the Lord.

The common viewpoint I was taught early on is that Abel’s sacrifice was accepted because his sacrifice was based solely on faith, while Cain’s sacrifice was borne from his reliance upon his own works. I don’t believe that to be the case, because even though Cain was a farmer and did produce a sacrifice from the toils of his labor, Abel was a shepherd and therefore also produced a sacrifice from the toils of his labor also.

From the very beginning of the scriptures, we read that God teaches us about the importance of the shedding of blood. This early in man’s existence, that was something odd, as all people were vegetarians and were not allowed to kill animals for sustenance. The first inference of the necessity of the shedding of blood was when God clothed Adam and Eve with skins. He could have whipped the skins up out of thin air, but that is not probable, so the Lord would have killed an animal for the purpose+ of using the skins as coverings. This act also would have been the first example of a sacrifice and I believe it would have most likely been the skin of a sheep, since that was most probable purpose for them at this time.

For most of my life, I was taught to be self-reliant in all things, It wasn’t until the Lord saved me that I slowly started to learn that self-reliance is not the way to go, but to rely on the Lord in all things is how I should be living my life. That was a very tough lesson for me to learn, and the knowledge did not come over night. Cain was a farmer and to offer the toils of his labor would have been the natural thing to do. I do not know how the Lord attempted to explain his expectations to them, but apparently it went in one ear and out the other with Cain. I have lived most of my life as Cain did in his early years and when I look back I would have been a whole lot better off if I had relied upon the Lord instead of myself. The automatic nature of my “natural man” is to take on the burdens of life myself and to be self-reliant. The way I prevent that thought process is to constantly remind myself of the innumerable ways the Lord keeps blessing me and where I was when I relied upon my self, as compared to where I am when I rely upon the Lord

While I am on the subject of Cain, I feel the way Cain is portrayed in the scriptures, leads to an unfair assessment of him through potential translation errors, for he is lumped in with the “ungodly”, a term that creates completely awful connotations with us, however the Greek word simply means a lack of reverence toward God. Of course Cain went on to commit murder, (later in the scriptures we read that David was guilty of this sin also, but the Lord viewed David as a man after His own heart) but the Lord made sure he was unharmed, even though he was banished to the land of Nod. I believe Cain repented and asked for forgiveness at some point, for when we look at the meanings of the names of Cain’s descendants in the Hebrew, we find he named them names that were reverential toward God.

Jim

Strange Gods in My Life

Posted: November 23, 2019 in Christian
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I am a former pagan and strange gods are nothing new to me.

While I was still practicing polytheism a few short years ago, I discovered the God of Israel and Christianity via Chuck Missler audio books that were given to me by a cousin and I became fascinated by the Missler Beyond series. I subsequently added this Judea/Christian God to my list of gods I would honor, placing Him kind of at the “Big Kahuna” level. I assumed this was an adequate gesture and He would be pleased with this, so I continued on with my life. A few years later, I turned to the Christian God in desperation concerning a three-decade addiction and He immediately responded and saved me (being the only god that had ever interacted to me in an entirely positive way) so I became highly impressed and I started reading and studying His word where I quickly discovered that my placement of this God at the top of the heap was not adequate at all and was actually insulting to the Him, as I discovered when I read  the first of the ten commandments in Exodus chapter twenty.

My Lord has forgiven me of my past and has brought me into His fold, but recently I started wondering about the whole concept of strange gods from the aspect of the biblical standpoint. An example I will start with is a well-known Christian entity that is the face of Christianity to most of the world…the Catholic Church. In no way am I trying to bash Catholicism here (they just came to mind as an example), and I will be the first to admit that I do not fully understand their religious concept, but I still have had exposure to their practices from looking about as well as reading about their beliefs.

Jesus said in John 14:6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. (NKJV)

I am familiar with some of the medals and pendants that the Catholics sell with saint this and saint that designed for the recipients to pray to for protection from various specific things, and I am slightly familiar with the rosary beads that are used in conjunction with a rote prayer to Mary, mother of Jesus. I don’t know about you, but John 14:6 seems pretty clear and succinct and all the icons of saints to hold and pray to and prayers to mother Mary are prayers to strange gods, are they not? It seems to me that those that use icons of this person and that person for protection and those that pray to Mary are, by their actions, saying that Christ as our intercessor is not adequate.

However, if I am to be honest I also have to look inward and use the same ruler on myself that I am willing to use on others. So, what about myself? Am I better than this institution I just mentioned, or am I simply casting stones from my own glass house?

I do admit, I prayed to strange gods for better than two decades without a lot of positive results and it seems that I am not alone. Apparently most of the nation of Israel, including the priests, prayed to strange gods in the form of Teraphim for most of their history, prompting the very first commandment; Thou shalt have no other gods before me…but they persisted.

I, as well as most of the people alive today, have even more access to the scriptures before us than the original sons of God and with our instant and mobile information at out fingertips, it is more readily available than at any other time in history, so there should be no worry about having access to the Word of our Lord…that’s correct, isn’t it? You would think that we would have fewer strange gods in our lives because of this instant and wonderful access to the throne of God…unfortunately, that is not the case.

I still have to constantly sweep for Teraphim and strange gods in my life. I feel it is the basic nature of corrupt humanity to elevate ourselves and rely upon our own strengths, instead of turning to the actual strong shoulders in our lives. Whenever a harsh burden has been placed upon my shoulders I re-actively and almost instantly take it on and try to pridefully muscle my way through the burden instead of allowing God to take it away from me.

The question I have to ask myself is this…am I rejecting my Lord and rejecting His help that He promised, therefore perhaps elevating myself to a status equal to His own? Am I sort of making myself a strange god, trusting in my own worth and spirit instead of my Father? Christ quoted from the Psalms (Psalm 82:6) when He threw this accusation of making themselves “gods” at the Pharisees in John 10:34 (Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, “You are gods”’?). Yeah, unfortunately, I believe I have to admit that I think that may be the case…and that is a very scary thought. Allowing strange gods into our lives is a very easy thing to do…getting rid of them is a much, much more difficult task.

God Bless, Jim

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