Do Christians Use Magic Words?

When Simon Magus came offering to buy the secrets of the
Apostle Paul's "magic", Paul turned him away.

I've seen a troubling trend in Christendom which has sadly begun to drift over into Seventh-day Adventist circles. Someone posted one of those large sized memes on Facebook the other day that claimed that the letter J was only 600 years old, so Jesus couldn't actually be the "Name above all names."

I've seen this kind of thing before. These guys seize upon some obscure legal point and wrap themselves up in it like a cloak. I had a friend who once told me she was a "vegetarian waiting for the coming of the Lord," as if being a vegetarian was what qualified her for translation. We've seen all sorts of fanaticism rise up in and around the great Advent movement. We've seen false prophets like David Koresh (aka Vernon Howell III), prey upon weak and mentally ill members of our congregations and gather followers to themselves based on little more than some obscure twisted point of theology.

These individuals always have some bit of religious practice or some greater "understanding" of scripture that places their followers above ordinary struggling Christians. They adopt such practices as writing G-d, when they mean to say God. I don't know about you, but seeing GD like that without the "O" always reminds me of a curse word that it took me two years to get out of my head after I worked on a Brown & Root construction crew. It's not helpful at all in making me feel holier to leave out letters in the names of the Almighty.

I think Jesus is smart enough to know who we are talking to when we call him Jesus. If you want to call him Yeshua or whatever obscure Hebrew-sounding name you think is the correct one, that's fine. But to make it a point of salvation is, I believe, to cast stumbling stones in the path of the saints. Besides, the sound of the letter J is NOT 600 years old. It may not have been written as a "J" like we recognize it, but in languages like Latin as in English, many letters can have more than one sound. In English a C can sound like and S or a K, for instance and the letter U was written as a V in Latin for a long time. The J sound is far, far older than that and without sound recordings from two or three millenia ago, you can't be sure anyway. The pronunciation of many ancient languages has been lost long ago. 

This quibbling about the name of Jesus and associated phrases is pretty much the sort of legalistic clap trap many fanatics soothe themselves with, believing they are somehow better than their fellow Christians because they use the right name for Yeshua. They treat the name of Christ as if it were some sort of magic word by which God is forced to do things for you. In other words, if I ask in the name of Yeshua, God has to do it, but if I ask in Jesus' name He doesn't? 

That's little more than a Christianized form of witchcraft. I once had a Church of Christ pastor tell me that my baptism was "no good" because I was baptized in the name of "The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit" instead of Pastor Thurber using the magical phrase "In Jesus name." I asked the gentleman if he really believed that God was too stupid to figure out who His Son was. We serve a loving merciful God, not some superior sort of sorcerer. Jesus accepted those who came to Him wherever they were and with whatever burdens they carried. He never asked a single sinner to say any special sequence of magic words before he healed them. Often Jesus healed people before he asked them to repent.

This is, of course, one man's opinion, but it is based on a lifetime of study and prayer and walking with Christ (which is Greek, not Hebrew I realize, but again, I think Jesus is quite intelligent enough to figure out that I am talking about Him). Jesus asked sinners to confess and let go of their sins and He put no other burden upon them, save to walk with Him and that's really not hard to do at all. All you have to do is spend time with Jesus instead of looking around for all sorts of obscure "rules for proper holiness" that you can come up with to make yourself feel more secure and to elevate your brand of religion above that of others.

This practice reminds me of those martial arts guys who constantly brag about how "My Karate is better than your Karate!" Jesus (or whatever makes you feel superior to call Him), wasn't a sensei. He was a savior. In the Old Testament, we are sternly warned against practicing witchcraft and magic. God gave us the gift of language that we might communicate with each other and understand what God is trying to teach us. Language is not a magic wand and should NEVER be used as one.

We had a bout of something a few years back called the ABC's of prayer which, while based on Scripture, was taken almost into the realm of magic by some practitioners.  While it is true that God always answers prayers, to demand that He answer them in precisely the way we want Him to, based on the strength of our "faith" and the quoting of the words of Biblical promises, strikes me as dangerously close to practicing a form of conjuring. A dear friend of mine was convinced that if he asked, believed and claimed healing from his bipolar disorder, that God would have to heal him. He stopped taking his meds and a few months later was unable to continue preaching and after several years of bizarre behavior, he put a shotgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger with his toe. So much for God having to do what you tell Him to.

While it might be exciting to think we could have that sort of power to heal and move mountains, that is a power that belongs to God alone and to attempt to bend the Almighty to our will is a dangerous business. The story of Hezekiah is instructive here. God told Hezekiah he was going to die and to prepare himself. Hezekiah prayed and prayed that God would give him a longer life. God chose to relent and gave Hezekiah 15 extra years, during which time he had a son, Mannaseh, the only king of Judah judged to be as bad as the Israelite King Ahab. Had Hezekiah submitted to God, how much better would it have been for Judah not to have had that terrible king? 

Does God heal people?  Yes, unequivocally. Does He heal on demand?  Absolutely not. God is able to look down the corridors of time and see what the impact of every action will be. He knew Hezekiah would have a very bad son who would be king. He showed us the folly of demanding things go our way by granting Hezekiah's request. King David also prayed for the healing of his son, but when the son died, David got up and accepted God's will. David's willingness to accept God's reproval and his guidance was why he was called a "man after God's own heart".

 
Trying to force God to do what you think is best is always a bad idea. It is far, far better to pray and then wait for and accept God's answer.  In the same way, it's better to spend your time and energy trying to emulate Jesus than trying to find the right words to manipulate Him.  What was it Solomon said?

Vanity of vanity, all is vanity. We are vain creatures who tend to believe that we know best about things. But, in the end, we are neither wise enough, nor prescient enough to demand things of God. We cannot, as God does, see what will come of doing what we desire. Christianity has no room for Christian sorcerers who by using the right combination of words can, like Harry Potter, make things happen the way they want them to. It just doesn't work that way.

© 2016 by Tom King

Where In Scripture Does It Say, "Thou Shalt Choose the Lesser of Two Evils"

Elijah hiding out, having said some things to the king he didn't like.

I'm in a lot of trouble with my Adventist readers. As a blogger, I regularly touch the third rail of Adventism - politics. I can't tell you how many times I've been counseled to keep quiet about politics and, if I'm talking to a certain group of Adventists, to both be quiet and vote Democrat!

As anyone who reads my stuff knows, I'm a died in the wool Christian conservative, a strict constitutionalist and firm believer in small decentralized government. I've been told we are not to have an opinion about those kinds of things, but given how close politics comes to being religion it's a difficult thing to do, especially when politics is so apt to use religion as a vote-getting tool.

Jesus very clearly said to, "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's."  It should be noted that of the 12 men he told that to, one committed suicide, 10 were executed by governments and the only one to die a natural death was banished, given hard labor and boiled in oil first.  As Christians, we don't so much attack governments as they attack us. It's an old story.

Sometime add up how many prophets were killed by Israelite kings in the Old Testament. And despite this they kept on delivering messages to the kings that they didn't want to hear. The prophet Nathan was lucky that King David feared God because one of David's soldiers was ready to lop off his head when he delivered his message.

And remember what Samuel warned the Children of Israel about when they wanted a king like everyone else. People tell me we should just be quiet and God will put in the leader he wants. At this point I remind them that God gave Israel a king even though He didn't want them to have one. And the Israelite kings did every bad thing that Samuel said they would; everything God through his prophets said would happen did.  Yet, God gave them kings. GOD WAS TEACHING WHEN HE DID IT.

I find that, as a Christian, inaction is not appropriate, especially when I live in a nation that God specifically gave us as a refuge of religious freedom; a nation of the people, by the people and for the people. Since our government derives it's power, authority and very existence from the will of the people, then when we are counseled to "render unto Caesar", we are, in effect, being told in America to "render" unto ourselves for we are Caesar - the source of power. That said, the political choices we as Americans have are not either/or. Anyone who tells you different is selling something.

If we hand over the reins of power to government in some misguided attempt to gain safety, security or the chance to "win", then we are, I believe, doing something God would disapprove of. I'm from Texas. I admit it, so I think of things in a Texan context. I also grew up in an Adventist ghetto where we rolled up the sidewalks on Friday evening. I have seen what can happen when people take a stand. The boys at the Alamo, as a Trump supporter reminded me, lost that fight. He suggested that losing was the worst thing. This guy could not have been from Texas. The stand at the Alamo bought time for the Texican Army to get itself together and get to San Jacinto where they handily whipped Santa Anna. So the Alamo fight, by pinning Santa Anna's army for 18 days, won the war even though they lost the battle.

When I lived in Keene, we were sent a mule-headed wild man of a pastor named Ron Halvorsen. In my home town the good old boy network had it's roots deep in everything that went on in the town and we were slowly dying. Our kids were leaving. Church was as dry as the Hills of Gilboa. Ron came to town and planted the flag of truth. They fought him tooth and nail, but prayer meeting exploded from 45 people in the Youth Chapel to 12 to 1500 in a jammed sanctuary with another 100 or so kids in their own Wednesday service in the family center. When Ron left the good old boys celebrated. But the damage had been done and they never managed to get back their power. Ron Halvorsen stood for the truth and won, whatever the leadership thought. A lot of us are still in the church because of people like Ron and other brave workers for the Lord. These brave men and women gave us choices we could, in good conscience make. Many of these choices were not comfortable or easy, but they were right and set up against the "go along to get along" path that others were offering, these choices were the only ones we could in good conscience make.

C.S. Lewis pointed out once that “He (the devil) always sends errors into the world in pairs--pairs of opposites... He relies on your extra dislike of one to draw you gradually into the opposite one. But do not let us be fooled. We have to keep our eyes on the goal and go straight through between both errors. We have no other concern than that with either of them.” Lewis foresaw the rise of political forces in the world which would attempt to manipulate people; to bend them to the will of their masters. He recognized who was behind such false choices and clearly warned us that such choices would be presented to us in order to maneuver us into a trap. He was right.

It appears that we really don't have a viable candidate running for president this fall. We are told that we must choose one or the other for fear the worst one will be, well, worse. I am a Christian and as an Adventist, the most stubborn sort of Christian, I do not accept the idea that I must choose between two evils. I can't find a passage in Scripture that ever recommends such a course. We Adventists have stood against the tide of Christendom throughout our more than a century and a half history. Many of our fellow Christians dismiss us a a dangerous cult because we won't back down and join the herd. We don't choose one evil or the other. We choose the truth, even though few religious leaders want that choice to even be on the table.

So I suppose being a Texan and a stubborn Adventist, it might be a little easier for me to just vote, "NO" in November. I'm used to "losing". But, sometimes you do what is right because it is right and winning or losing doesn't come into the calculation. When it all comes down to it, Jesus is coming soon. He is the only one who's approval I wish to win. Heaven is the only reward I want. Eternal life is the only victory worth having. 

© 2016 by Tom King

Seeing the End from Here

I grew up on End of Times prophecy seminars and evangelistic meetings. My home town of Keene, Texas is pretty much the capital of Adventism in Texas and the Southwestern Union, being the home of Southwestern Adventist University. My great great grandfather signed the charter for the Keene Church back in the late 1800s. I lived literally in a city on a hill - Keene is the highest spot in Johnson County. There used to be a train that ran through Keene back in the 20s. The train's conductor, a would-be humorist, used to announce Keene as "Next stop the Holy City."

So I heard a lot about prophecy as a kid. It was during the great schism of the 60s between hard-line, Sister White thumpin' legalism and the rise of the second great righteous by faith movement in the church. There was a lot going on. The one constant however were the stories about what would happen at the end of time.

It was scary stuff; the SDA preacher's version of hell fire and damnation preaching. Baptists scared people into the pews with tales of the horrors of an ever-burning hell. Adventist evangelists (some and by no means all) scared people into the pews with tales of being "unready" for the time of trouble. So I have this spidey sense about end of time signs.

The first thing man needed to bring the world to an end was a means to literally end the world. Well we already had that. I grew up with cartoon turtles teaching us to duck and cover in elementary school. We've lived with mutually assured destruction for a long time. We already have the means to turn the Earth into a dead and blackened husk fo a thousand years. So that's already done.

Some ten or fifteen years ago Pope John Paul II sent out an encyclical calling for Catholics to start lobbying for Sunday laws in their countries and declaring that Sunday was the symbol of the church's authority which all recognize. This was suggested as a means to improve the quality of family life. Nothing happened in the USA (apparently we think family life is okey dokey, so we didn't really worry about it too much, at least in North American Adventist circles. What I didn't know is that European countries like Germany did enact such laws. You can, for instance be arrested and fined in Stuttgart for mowing your lawn on Sunday. You can be visited by the police for washing your car on a warm Sunday afternoon in Munich. Quietly other strongly Catholic nations have followed suit. I don't know how many. I only recently became aware of the strong Sunday laws in Germany.

Then I stumbled on an encyclical by Pope Benedict calling for one world government with "teeth" to rein in countries like the United States. He suggested such a clearly socialist government be organized by industrial leaders, trade unions, international political parties (there's only one of those) and religious leaders. I stumbled hard over the bit about "trade unions" in particular and I heard "bundles to be burned" echo in my brain. The plan was proffered as a way to insure the relief of the world's poor - a massive redistribution of wealth from wealthy countries to poor ones. In his encyclical, Benedict stated "Obviously it (the global government) would have to have the authority to ensure compliance with its decisions from all parties, and also with the coordinated measures adopted in various international forums." Can you say, "Beast".


Then we got a Jesuit pope, Frances. Given the history of Jesuit twiddling with the Protestant interpretation of the identity of the anti-Christ through stealth campaigns in Protestant seminaries and its insertion of the Secret Rapture doctrine into the Protestant eschatology, I could hear the far off rumble of a coming storm. In short order, Frances is invited by an ex Israeli prime minister to head up something called "The United Religions", an organization designed to be a kind of spiritual United Nations. He has not said "No". Shortly after that, the pope sends a video invitation to American charismatics to give up "Martin Luther's protest" and rejoin the Catholic Church, claiming the problem has been solved with a little wording change in the church's doctrine related to salvation by faith in Christ alone. That sent a little chill up my spine. Then he visited the USA and spoke to Congress while the Speaker of the House stood trembling with tears in his eyes.

Now we see in the very nation that SDAs have long predicted would become the "Image to the Beast", a presidential election in which both candidates are outright criminals, demonstrated liars and con artists. One owns strip clubs and borrows slogans from Adolph Hitler. The other is suspected of treasonous behavior, collusion with our enemies and massively poor judgment during her term as Secretary of State. And one of our own Adventist "bright lights", who ought to know better, is asking us to choose the lesser of two evils. Can you say "...some of our brightest lights will go out?" Thought so.

In the news today I saw an article about a new technology that has the ability to scrape all your records online, social media and everything for data. It analyzes words and puts together a report about you - one that purports to tell whether you are trustworthy or not. Google has already done something similar. The CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, said this when questioned about privacy concerns, "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place. The company, Score Assured, is offering its services to landlords, loan companies and employers as a way to vet those apply to them for housing, loans or employment.

"Whoa, "that no man might buy or sell" just flashed through my brain. The company's co-founder Steve Thornhill dismisses such worries saying, "If you're living a normal life, then, frankly, you have nothing to worry about." In the age of terrorism, can you imagine the US government not wanting to get its hands on a way to make sure people are living a "normal" life. All in the name of safety you understand.

So who decides what is a "normal" life. If you don't live a normal life what happens next. Can anyone else see a government market for this technology as a means to protect Homeland Security. The world has in its hands the means to insure your orthodoxy and we voluntarily have handed it to them. There's no hiding anymore other than literally going into the rocks and the mountains and hiding and with heat sensing scanners and satellites that can read a newspaper from outer space, there really is no hiding anymore.

The Great Controversy has always been about freedom vs control.  God wants us to be free and to live as we choose. Lucifer has always thought we needed a more firm hand. Look at all the most devilish governments that have ever existed and they all share one thing - a lust for power over the lives of all.  We old geezers read George Orwell's 1984 in school and for some years have managed to avoid it. An new generation is rising and Orwell and the Bible are off the reading lists for children now.

We live in a world clambering for safety, entertainment and comfort - sex, drugs and rock n' roll if you will. Greed and the lust for power has created a world so complex we can't understand it anymore. So we invent conspiracy theories to try and simplify things enough so we can understand them. We're being set up to believe that the only way to save ourselves from these conspiracies is to give ourselves a powerful leadership we can trust. Sadly, we're being set up. The only conspiracy out there is a loose sharing of mutual lust, greed and self-interest. The leader of this conspiracy is not who people think it is. We fight not against flesh and blood, but against "principalities and powers" and these have been pushing the world closer and closer to the brink of surrender and destruction using the same lies, the same inducements and the same techniques over and over. Socialism has gone down in disaster and death time after time after time and still we see men binding them selves in bundles like Mussolini's symbolic Fascio - bundles to be burned in the fires of the concentration camps, the gulags and the ghettos.

I found God during the early days of the righteousness by faith movement in the late 60s. I began a personal walk with Christ at that time, but I was impertinent enough to ask God to prove He was really who He said He was. And somewhat to my surprise, He did. Repeatedly. Undeniably. Nowadays I have a different reaction to those scary prophecies and their ongoing fulfillment in the nightly news stories.

Now, when I see the signs as Jesus said we would, my heart is lifted for I know that the time is near. It is the Autumn of our world and the winter is bearing down on us. But we are His and we need not fear. I tell people all the time that I believe that Jesus is loading up the bus to come and get us. Everybody pretty much agrees, though all of us are not completely comfortable in that knowledge. But I do not fear the time of trouble, for He is with me always. I know this, for every time an angel appears to a man, the first message he delivers is always the same.  "Fear not!" So I don't. The world IS coming to its end. Like the changing of the leaves in Autumn foretell the coming of winter, the signs of the end are all around us.

Even so, come Lord Jesus, for I am not afraid.


© 2016 by Tom King

Grief: It's Who You Know

With Christ you do not walk alone whatever trials may come.

Up front, let me tell you I am no stranger to grief. At the age of four, my cousin who my Mom babysat regularly died suddenly of SIDS. It was my first encounter with death and the sadness that accompanies it. When I was a little older, my baby brother died due to a heart defect that he was born with. We kids brought German measles home and gave it to my Mom which caused Craig to be born with it. My 16 year old brother Donnie was shot through the chest with a 12 gauge shotgun at close range by a friend when I was 18. Fifteen years later, my stepmother shot my father through the chest with a 12 gauge shotgun and then waited to call 911 till she was sure he'd stopped breathing. I lost a business and home we had invested countless hours and dollars in. I had several jobs fold up under me. My family asked me not to visit my beloved grandmother anymore because it upset her, even though my grandmother had told us on our last visit with her that she'd never felt closer to God than she had while my wife had been staying with her. Her apparent stroke and mental confusion caused my aunt's ban on our visiting her. This effectively cut me off from my extended family on my Dad's side for years.

In struggling to do God's will with our lives we've run up against roadblocks and what I can only describe as attacks by Satan. We endured poverty and deprivation, our son developed a seizure disorder. Another son developed bipolar disorder. Our middle son died in his sleep in his senior year of college. I did CPR for 30 minutes before the ambulance arrrived. My wife developed bipolar and suffered a massive breakdown. My son's bipolar and the poor choices he made while not on his meds landed him in jail for we know not how long. We have passed through displacement, hunger and homelessness. We've witnessed God's deliverance and intervention many times when we thought we could not go on.

And then last month, the little dog that God had given us and who had brought us untold comfort and joy through the difficulties of the past 7 years died in my arms. It felt like losing a child. Then, my wife went back home to Louisiana for six weeks to help a cousin who's husband is suffering liver failure due to exposure to Agent Orange during his time in Vietnam.  I found myself alone without even my doggy companion to keep me company.


It sounds like a tale of unrelenting woe when you put it like that. My life, however, is not a tale of woe. Viewed from the perspective of one who endeavors to serve God as best that he can, my life has been chiefly one of peace, joy, love and happiness, albeit interspersed with grief and trouble. I have done things that I thought God wanted doing and am pleased that many of them resulted in good things happening. I have friends who love us, children I am proud of and the hope of heaven. I am content. 

Grief can make you a kinder, more sympathetic person or it can turn you into a self-absorbed angry monster. It is living daily with Jesus that makes the difference. It is He who heals a broken heart and keeps it from hardening and turning in on itself. It is Christ who helps the broken-hearted to heal by opening those same hearts to even more opportunities to share his love with a world suffering at the hands of the Prince of Darkness.

Men grieve differently than women. Though we don't show it or talk about it as much, we still experience it. In many ways male grief is a more difficult process. Women talk about their grief and express their emotions openly with other women and with their supportive menfolk - fathers, brothers or spouses mostly. Men seldom show emotion with other men and often actively hide it in front of their womenfolk. Because we stuff our grief, we probably aren't terribly good at listening when our wives are grieving over the same thing we are. To listen and empathize would mean exposing ourselves to the danger of opening up our own emotional pain and that is something men don't like to do. 

Most of the time, if men shed tears over our grief, it is when we are alone, driving in our cars, sitting in a fishing boat or walking alone in the woods. In every case in my own life where I lost someone important to me, my tears have flowed mostly where no one but God could see them. I had to actively go to God about my grief, because, for some reason, the human mind processes grief in close proximity to where it generates anger. I've had to pray a lot during periods of grief in order to keep from being surly or short with my loved ones. Solitary prayer alone with God can help. Walking and weeping while praying seems to valve off some of that emotional pressure caused by the internal struggle we men have in trying to bury our sadness and sense of terrible loss.

We learn through grief that loving others, that offering ourselves to act as the instruments of our loving God is the only way through our pain. There is a bright and hopeful eternity beyond this sad little world, but we cannot go around life's dark valleys. We must, like David said in Psalm 23, "... walk through the valley of the shadow of death." David, in typical male fashion, however, follows up that statement with a ringing declaration. "I WILL FEAR NO EVIL!" One evening during a particularly difficult personal trial, I had just received another phone call with more bad news. I went out on the front porch and stood there looking out upon a darkening wood. I suddenly remembered David's declaration. Almost instinctively, I squared my shoulders, raised an arm and shook my fist at the darkness. Out loud I shouted, "Come on you old deceiver. Is that the best you've got?" Some people chide me for doing that, saying you should never tempt Satan that way. To me it felt like a battle cry in the midst of some war that was going on in my life. It gave me courage in a strange way and even though the devil didn't let up on us for a while, we did manage to overcome him anyway and came out with our faith stronger for it.

My neighbors probably wondered what the crazy man next door was yelling about, but it did give me a great sense of relief. The Apostle Paul said, "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms." In any conflict, it is important to understand who your enemies are. It helps you to bear the losses that you inevitably have during any war and helps you stay out of the trap of blaming yourself or, worse, of blaming God.

A life which bears much grief can be viewed as either a tragedy or a triumph. Loss doesn't have to be defeat. Remember the Alamo. Remember the cross. Whether your life ends in defeat or victory, it's resolution does not depend on your won/loss record nor even on how well you fought. Whether you win or lose depends instead on who you know.

Me? I choose to know Jesus.

©  2016 by Tom King

Follow Your Leader? Sorry, I Already Have One.

And I'm not sorry at all....

Politics and religion often overlap because it is hard to believe something as fervently as Christians do and to avoid getting crosswise of your country's political leadership. It has always been so. After all, most of them believe they should be worshipped and find those who love and serve Christ to be troublesome at best and a downright threat to their power at worst.

The is nothing worse to a human leader than followers who won't follow and subjects who won't bow down. A few wise leaders do understand the power of a free citizenry, but not terribly many. God blessed our nation with a surprisingly large group of leaders who did, though most saw the folly of entrusting your liberties to princes, kings, emperors and potentates in the light cast upon the subject by England's insane King George III. In America, it was churches where the Revolution began and was fomented. Followers of Christ didn't think they needed any other King. After all most of the colonials had come to America to escape persecution by kings and nobles they disagreed with.

America has had a good run as protector of its citizens' rights and liberties. Two hundred forty years is not bad for a country. It took Rome a lot less than that before it gave up its Republican system of government in exchange for the empty promises of a smooth-talking "leader".

It's always amazing in history when perfectly sensible people like the Israelites, who had witnessed time and again God's deliverance under the government that God Himself had set up over His people, choose to put tyrants over themselves. They, like almost every group of humans who drift toward trusting in themselves, demanded a stronger king.  Samuel warned them (I Samuel 8:10-22)

• ¹⁰ So Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking for a king from him. ¹¹ He said, “These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen and to run before his chariots. ¹² And he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. ¹³ He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. ¹⁴ He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants. ¹⁵ He will take the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and to his servants. ¹⁶ He will take your male servants and female servants and the best of your young men^[a] and your donkeys, and put them to his work. ¹⁷ He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. ¹⁸ And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.”

When our current presidential election cycle began I had some hope. There were many candidates I could vote for, even including a Seventh Day Adventist who actually seemed to have a shot at winning the thing. I was thinking, maybe God was going to give us a brief respite to finish the work before Babylon rises up, wrecks the world and then falls. Instead, we wound up with two candidates so desperately slimy and evil that most Christians are revolted and the prospect of voting for either one. My favorite candidate even went over to the dark side and endorsed the strip club owner in the race, claiming he was at least  better than the socialist that was running.

The lesser of two evils, my friend, is still evil and electing someone evil to the most power office in the world is never, ever a good idea.  In discussing the situation with other Christians at the weekly food bank, my cab driver and a couple of folks I struck a conversation with at Walmart this afternoon, we have pretty much decided that the people of America have chosen the path to destruction and that Jesus must be loading up the bus to come and get us.

Jesus said in Mark 13: 28-30

• "28Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its branches become tender and sprout leaves, you know that summer is near. 29In the same way, when you see these things happening, you know that He is near, right at the door. 30Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have happened.…"

I don't know about you, but I'm seeing stuff happening that the evangelists who evangelistic meetings at my church and at camp meeting told us would happen at the end of time. In less than twenty years, we've seen the last three Popes call for (in order), Sunday laws (John Paul), a world government with teeth (Benedict) and an end to "Luther's protest" and reunification of the Protestant churches and Roman Catholicism into a universal church (Frances). We've witnessed a former Israeli prime minister inviting the Pope to head an organization called "United Religions", a quasi-governmental parallel to the United Nations for the world's churches. We've witnessed the Pope speaking before Congress and president after president making the pilgrimage to the Vatican to kiss the Pope's ring.

Kids, it's a comin' just like the preachers have been trying to tell us it was. So this election cycle, I'm voting none of the above. I may write someone in, but I won't be voting for either of the two corrupt servants with whom Satan has presented us.  If you'll notice that the countries that commit the most evil in this world like to have meaningless elections where there is no real choice at all, only illusory ones.

It's time to dust off your study Bibles and prepare to stand in the breach with your swords. It will take courage. Some of the brightest lights of the church will go out. We know this. It's heart-breaking when it happens, but there's a reason we Christians don't have to worry about leaders.

We don't need anyone's "great" human leader to fight our battles for us or to tell us what to do - we already have one and He has already one our battle for us. There's nothing they can do to us for Christ sends us angels to stand beside us and every time one does, the first thing he says to us is, "Fear Not!"

So I am not afraid. And that's a message we should be preaching to anyone who will listen.

© by Tom King

The Great Controversy Over "The Record Keeper"

This afternoon, I watched "The Record Keeper" again - the SDA funded film based on Ellen White's Great Controversy. I was again impressed by it. It's still my opinion that the suspension of the film was a mistake for the following reasons:

1.  I've seen the Record Keeper several times now. I realize full well I am looking at an allegory. There is a precedent for allegory in the Bible. Technically 7 lean cows could not eat 7 fat cows. They don't have the teeth for it and the thing, where the image Nebuchadnezzar saw is struck by a stone, didn't really happen.
2.  Cancelling the film is a huge waste of resources. The film was vetted at every step and still somehow after spending a million bucks or so, the GC didn't like the results. I don't like my tithes and offerings wasted in that fashion.
3. The failure of the GC to approve a film about The Great Controversy surprises me not a bit. The General Conference would never have allowed Jesus to tell the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus, much less include it in Scripture. Christ's parable, after all, contains "theological inaccuracies".  
4. An allegory or parable is not intended to be accurate in every detail  It's designed to make a discreet and specific point and make a point it did. It's not a documentary. It's not historical fiction. It's a way to introduce the idea of the war in heaven and to draw viewers into a greater understanding of the cosmic impact of the little drama we're having here on planet Earth.
5. The Record Keeper does an excellent job of introducing the story of the war in Heaven, something most Christians know little about. It puts flesh on angels and broadens the perspective of Christ's mission to Earth and what it was about. It's a good starting point for a discussion.  
6. And no, angels aren't ninjas. It's not likely anyone will come away from the film thinking otherwise. We have no idea what a war in heaven would look like, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't a College Bowl debate. The portrayal in this film only makes it clear that the conflict was really war - albeit of a sort we probably can't understand.
7. We really need some new ways to mine souls from the culture as it is. Jesus was accused of being a drunkard and a glutton for spending too much time with sinners and not paying court to the ruling elites of the church. I think the criticism of the film is uncomfortably similar to the accusations of the Scribes and Pharisees.
8. Science Fiction readers and viewers are actually really more open to the story of the Cosmic Conflict as Great Controversy is alternately titled than we give them credit for. A friend of mine became an Adventist because he picked up a copy of The Great Controversy thinking it was science fiction. By the time he finished it, he was looking up the location of the nearest Adventist church. It was seeing the war between good and evil in a cosmic context that did it for him. And this was back in the 60s. It's even more so now. If we can put Christianity into a broader context, i.e. an intergalactic war between beings we would see as aliens should they reveal themselves to us, we might just reach some folk we aren't going to reach with talking heads and sermons in our media.
9. We paid for it.  I think it was  a huge mistake to abandon the Record Keeper. I don't think the controversy over it would have been damaging to the church. It might well have been invigorating. I think every Adventist whose tithes and offerings went to fund this million dollar project should be give a copy of it for free. 
10. We church members should be allowed to decide if what we paid for is worthy. We don't need a GC nanny state. We work for Jesus. HE is our immediate supervisor.

The nice thing about digital media is that it's easy to pass around. You can find the entire 11 episodes of The Record Keeper on Youtube at the link below. If you find it useful, it's not hard to find the study guides that go with it.

Just sayin'

Tom King

Old Dogs and Children

Daisy among the daisies.

 We lost our beloved dog Daisy a couple of weeks ago. My wife and I were crazy about that little animal. I'm not one of those who believe the old "all dogs go to heaven" / Rainbow Bridge mythology, but I have come to believe that some dogs definitely must go to heaven if the universe makes sense at all.

Daisy and the old guy she rescued.

I'm working on a book about the subject that I hope you'll read when it comes out. It outlines the thinking and scripture that have brought me to the opinion that God will one day reunite us with our beloved animal companions.

First, it's possible.  If God can raise something as complex as a human being from the dead, I do believe he can manage to restore a feisty little bit of a mixed breed retriever. I say that because I know for sure and certain that God sent us the little dog in the first place.

Back in 2005, my daughter's dog Suzy was living with us. We'd had her for more than a decade and she eventually became very sick and my daughter made the difficult decision to have her put to sleep. It was a huge blow to our family as we were all very attached to her. We all showed up at the vet's at the end - three large men and two tall women all crammed into the tiny treatment room. The vet saw that there was a lot of emotion happening and wasn't sure quite how to handle that much grief packed into one little room surrounding one very sick little dog. He brought us a children's book called the Rainbow Bridge. Now all of my kids were in their twenties. I had gray hair. There were no children there, but the vet had no other comfort to offer. We grieved for that little beagle for years.

Walking with Suzy

Then our middle son, died suddenly and once again we were plunged into grief that was deep and painful. My wife developed a full blown case of bipolar disorder, in part, due to the stress of losing our boy.  One thing we both knew was that we couldn't imagine every taking in another dog. We become too attached to living things that we care for.

So, Sheila, my precious wife, never one to sit around and do nothing found her nursing skills becoming impaired. She developed a severe hand tremor and had to quite working as a nurse. She took up home care for elderly clients and took on one lovely woman named, Mary Bob. Not content to provide care on the fly, my wife took on the job with all the energy and efficiency of two people, despite the continuing damage being done to her by her struggle with bipolar. Where she no longer had the skills to provide help to Miss Mary Bob, she roped me into it.

One afternoon, after I had finished pressure washing the mold off the sides of Miss Mary Bob's house, I was carrying my tools back to the shed when I saw movement in the grass. Mary Bob's regular landscaper/gardener had recently been deported to Mexico and hadn't swum back yet, so the grass was getting pretty tall.  As I watched a pair of black ears emerged from the grass followed by dark eyes and a friendly doggy snout.

She came up out of the grass and loped over to me where she threw herself down on her back at my feet, exposing a skinny ribcage covered with fleas. I looked at her and hardened my heart.  "Oh, no," I said.  "We just can't take in another dog. It would hurt too much to lose another one." I put up the tools and avoiding eye contact, I went back to the house, climbed up on the porch and sat down on a chair to remove my dirty boots.

And there she sat. Making eye contact. "Oh no," I repeated.  She ignored me. Instead she came straight up to me, put her paws in my lap and laid her ear right on my heart and stayed that away. God didn't exactly say, "This is your dog now," but the message was clear. I called out "Help" hoping my wife would come and take the decision away for me. She burst out the front door thinking I'd cut off a finger or something. When she saw the little tableau, the dog hugging me as though afraid to let go, she stopped short. My wife is very perceptive about spiritual things. She recognizes the hand of God when she sees it.

Did someone say breakfast?

"Do you think she'll eat tuna?" she asked.  In short order, the dog had been fed, scrubbed and washed and named Daisy (because she popped up out of a meadow like a flower).  Miss Mary Bob even contributed to her rescue and gave us $50 to pay for the cost of the vet so we could get started right with her. She went home with us that day and lived with us for the rest of her life.  She house-trained herself. She had one accident and I told her "NO, don't do that," and took her outside. After that, when she needed to go, she went to the door and asked to be let out. Never had another accident.  She was the smartest most good-natured dog I've ever known. She didn't seem to be able to bark. It was a year after we got her that I heard a dog barking in the house and wondered whose dog it was. It turned out it was Daisy. She was parking at an approaching UPS delivery guy.  She never barked except to warn us that someone was coming. If she knew the people or decided they were harmless, she never barked, reserving her wrath for UPS, FedEx, the postman or anyone else in uniform that approached the house with a little too much cheek.

When she was younger, I used to let her out a couple of times a day to run. She would go bounding through the woods and along the beach near out house like some kind of demented kangaroo. She'd come home, eyes sparkling and tongue hanging out with a big stupid old doggy grin on her face. She was a high class mooch who always demanded some offering from every plate of food we ate. She didn't bark or steal food off the table. She'd just sit there with those big sad eyes till one of us, usually my wife would crumble and give her something. I always put stuff on my plate that she could safely eat. Our sharing food with her made her feel like family.

And she was family. I used to make fun of old people who talked baby talk to their pets and doted over them like they were human. Over the short span of Daisy's, however, I found myself more and more talking just like that to her as she ever more endeared herself to our hearts.  She died suddenly on my birthday in April. We fought hard to save her. Christian and not-so-Christian friends donated nearly $1800 to pay for her veterinary bills. Sadly, in spite of our prayers and the prayers of literally hundreds of others, her health continued to deteriorate rapidly over the last couple of weeks. We went for our last walk as a family just three days before she died. My wife and I were and are devastated. We prayed as hard for that little dog as we do for our children. Once again it was a pitiful scene in the vet's office as we let her go. She died with her stuffed squirrel under her paw where she liked to have it at nap time. Her ashes are on top of my rolltop desk next to a vase with a fresh daisy in it.

Daisy in her Service Dog outfit.

Daisy got us through a lot of tough times over the past few years. She would come and get me if Sheila was having a panic attack and get up right beside her and offer Sheila a head to stroke until the terror subsided. She goaded me into taking longer and longer walks that have helped me gradually lose almost 30 pounds in the past few years. People have asked me if we rescued Daisy. I tell them, "No, Daisy rescued us." C.S. Lewis had an interesting notion about the Earth where we will spend eternity that I find hints of throughout scripture, especially in Isaiah. He believed that in the New Earth, we will find all the good things of the old Earth - that this life is something like a crucible in which the dross is burned out of us leaving behind the pure gold which he will then save. Lewis and I with him think of those things as the "real" things of Earth of which this is all but a shadow. I never met a more perfect dog than Daisy, although Suzy wasn't far behind and it wasn't as if she didn't try to be a perfect dog. If the shadow Daisy was that good, then what must the "real" Daisy, recreated by our loving Father be like?. I sometimes think that it is no accident that dog spelled backward is what it is. 

• Dogs love us unconditionally. 
• Dogs are always glad to see us.
• Dogs forgive us easily and often.
• Dogs want to spend time with us.
• Dogs will die to defend you or protect you.
• Dogs like Daisy are patient, loyal and do not give up on you.

Daisy and me - worship time.

Some of the more moribund of Christian theologians scoff at the idea of God resurrecting something so lowly as a dog. "They cannot choose to follow Christ, so they cannot be saved," they say. There is no baptism for dogs. These are also the same people who believe God will chicken fry little children in an ever-burning hell just because the pastor said "in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit" instead of "in Jesus name" over them when they were baptized. I don't hold much credence in such grim theology.

A creature, as perfectly lovely as our Daisy was, just shouldn't be lost. He who sees the sparrow fall and makes the lion to lie down with the lamb in peace, is, I am certain after my 44 year walk with Christ, surely able and willing to give us that which is good and pure and lovely. And I have met very little in this world as good and pure and lovely as our little Daisy.  God will surely not deny us good things. Jesus said he wouldn't. And while there may be a reason God let our furry baby go to her rest sooner than we wanted to in this world, I can think of no reason for him not to give her back to us in the next.

Daisy and I and Miss Sheila have a lot of exploring yet to do. It will be one of the great joys of eternal life for us to ramble the hills of our vast and perfect world. May he come soon. I know I have a lot of folk waiting up ahead in time for us to arrive at the moment of resurrection when we are all reunited. The we will look up and see Jesus coming in the clouds. The timing of that is His, not mine. For now I wait upon Him, trusting in His goodness and wisdom. I've got a couple of brothers, a son, my grandpa, and others - a whole crowd of loved ones I expect to see again at the last trumpet. I'll also be looking around for a couple of very happy hound dogs that will throw themselves into our arms, wagging their tails for joy.  That to me is the very essence of heaven and of heaven's kindly and loving Lord.

Wendy Francisco, whose husband wrote the song "He's alive!" wrote this little song that expresses my feelings about our doggy friends precisely. I sang it once for church and found I had tears running down my face by the time I got through it. A creature who inspires that kind of love and emotion in a human being, should have a place among the redeemed of Earth.

Just sayin'.

© 2016 by Tom King