NRBC Blog

Fellow believers, have you noticed how brazen the opposition is getting? Yesterday, I caught a segment on “Fox and Friends” where a website called “Friendly Atheist” has issued a challenge for people to publicly and visibly deny (blaspheme) the Holy Spirit. Young people have been caught up in this, placing their videos on the website as if thumbing their nose at God and certainly at His word. Add to this the usual anti-Christmas issues that we saw last month and the contemporary interest in pagan worship, and it becomes obvious that something is afoot!

Where is all this headed? Is America completely out of control? Perhaps! However, all this is certainly not “news.” John records in the Revelation that during the last days when God pours out His wrath upon the earth and fallen humanity, the reaction will not be what we might expect. As the sun becomes super hot and men are scorched by its heat, and when great painful sores appear on their bodies, John says, “They blasphemed the God of heaven.” Fallen man’s nature will always be fallen! Circumstances may inhibit him, but they do not change him.

Church, God never promised us a bed of roses. In fact, Jesus’ warning to the disciples was quite the contrary. Bad times were coming and still are. Why else would Jesus say, “Those who endure to the end will be saved.” God expects the saved to endure, and endurance implies that something must be endured!

Whether it is ministry in the church, living the Christ-life in the workplace, or just being Christ-like in traffic, a Wal-Mart checkout line, or living beside that neighbor next door, life requires endurance. What the church has experienced in America for 230+ years has been an anomaly and not necessarily a good one. The American church’s acceptance in the culture has made us diluted and weak. Our spiritual muscles have atrophied, and we often fail to fulfill our Great Commission mandate. However, all that is apparently changing. Conservative Christianity has fallen out of favor with society. We have refused to be politically correct, and we are moving rapidly to a new day when we will have to pay the price. Are we prepared to endure?

There are some things that you do not encounter… they encounter you. That’s where I think we are. Christ’s church is about to be shaken, and when it happens, the “real thing” will be seen as never before. True believers will testify as they never have before, and regardless of what the reception is, we will “shine as lights in the world.” (Philippians 2:15) That is our calling and that is our future. May we accept it gracefully and gratefully because we are on the winning side.

Don’t ever forget, believer, when the final curtain falls, Jesus will still be standing, and we will be standing with Him.

Last week, I heard the sad news that another church is embroiled in conflict, and the “righteous” are privately circulating their petition to have the pastor removed so that they can return to the way they always “did church” in the past. How admirable… how moving! Isn’t it wonderful when church is everything we want it to be, and we feel so comfortable sitting in our pews on Sunday morning? Heaven forbid that a pastor should come in and “change” things! After all, doesn’t the church exist for the members; certainly not for the unchurched who have no desire to come be like us!

What has happened to us? Recently, I was again reminded of the way God has poured out His wrath in the past and the way He promises to do it in the future. Check it out! He has the enemy destroying itself. He just speaks a word, and every man’s sword is against his neighbor. Then, I thought of how so many churches in America are being destroyed from the inside out. Could it be that God is passing the Great Commission mantle to another nation? Could it be that American Christians have missed their divine appointment to evangelize the nations because they have hijacking the Lord’s church and made it their church? Let’s face it, we are no longer just sending missionaries to the mission field… we live in one! All around us is a secular culture, fully embroiled in itself, taking no thought of tomorrow and certainly having no concern for eternity. They are the vast multitude of the unchurched that cloister themselves in private communities with “no solicitation” signs at the gates and on the doors. They are dying in ignorance with no one to warn them of the coming judgment or share with them the Good News that life can be “really living,” and that living, even if the bottom falls out, can be filled with a “living hope.”

But, what is the church doing? Well, for many, it is a time to rejoice in “the good ole’ days!” It is to sing our hymns, listen to the heavenly sounds of organ music, and sit on padded pews until the obligation of Sunday is ended and we can get back to whatever it is we do the rest of the week. And, Katie bar the door if the preacher should suggest that we reach into those communities with home Bible studies or try to speak the culture of those we are called to reach. It might be adding a guitar and drums to the service or taking steps to build relationships or making worship more visible and interactive. No! That would be to “bring the world into the church;” but, what we are really saying is, “I want the church to be like my world.”

In lands less hospitable to Christianity, however, things are different. Believers are meeting in homes, huts, and secret places, reaching out to their neighbors, making disciples, and holding one another accountable. There are no church buildings, and it all seems like such a meager effort, but the church is growing, iron curtains are falling, and the one made of bamboo may be next! It’s a beautiful sight; one that pleases the Lord.

But, we like things the old way… the 50s way! So, God just turns His head and moves to another people, speaking a word of judgment as He goes. And, in the American church, every man’s sword is against his neighbor as buildings are empty, gathering dust, and the sound of the pipe organ gradually fades away to the melody, “We’ve a story to tell to the nations!”

Can you believe it? The Cowboy’s did it again! I’ve been following Dallas for years, and at last it looked like they had found their star, inspirational player and were in the running for the Super Bowl. Then, in the last minutes of Saturday night’s game, Tony Romo bobbled the ball on a potential game-winning field goal snap, made a mad dash for the goal line and was stopped short of a touchdown… in shame! Seattle advances; Dallas is out.

I wish it was the first time I have seen Dallas shoot themselves in the foot, but it has happened many times before; more than I can remember. Isn’t it sad, though, that their star player… the one who had breathed life back into the team should be the one who finally dropped the ball?

Life is like that! All too often, it is the very one who has the greatest potential who ends up falling on the goal line. None of us is immune. To start well does not guarantee that you will finish well. Today’s hero can be tomorrow’s black eye. We never have the luxury of coasting. If we are not to disappoint ourselves and everyone around us, it must be full-bore all the way!

The Bible is filled with examples of men and women who had great potential but who did not finish well. They got their eyes off the finish line and onto themselves or something else around them. Before long, like Demas who deserted Paul, they were in the world, loving it, failing God, and ending in failure.

Tony Romo’s football bobble is a great disappointment, but it doesn’t begin to compare with a life that loses its meaning and misses out on its potential. “Fight the good fight of faith,” Paul said. It is advice that he, himself, followed, and it is the only way to true spiritual victory.

Don’t drop the ball!

Saddam Hussein is dead, and now the pundits are having a heyday criticizing the Bush administration and the Iraqi government for carrying out his execution. Even well-meaning Christians are second-quessing the morality of taking Hussein’s life. Who’s right?

First of all, it was not the U.S. but the Iraqi people who tried and executed Hussein. Those who oppose an independent Iraq or hate the U.S. ubiquitously will always find ulterior motives or presumed anti-Muslim factions who orchestrated his death, but Hussein was “weighed in the balances and found wanting!” Like Belshazzar who preceded him, he mocked the God of heaven, persecuted the innocent, and exalted himself as if he alone were sovereign, and “on that night, he was slain!” The only difference; God used the Medes and Persians to pour out His judgment upon Belshazzar. He used the Iraqi government to execute Saddam.

O, but some will say that it is different now. Christians should not take revenge and the life of another, even if it is for a “just” cause. If we are talking about individual Christian conduct, I can agree with that statement. We are to be forgiving and not judgmental, but when we carry out the just laws of government, it is a different matter. Paul said, “Rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil. Do you want to be unafraid of the authority? Do what is good, and you will have praise from the same. For he is God’s minister to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid; for he does not bear the sword in vain; for he is God’s minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil. Therefore you must be subject, not only because of wrath but also for conscience’ sake.” (Romans 13:3-5) Saddam Hussein refused to do what was right “for conscience sake,” so he faced “wrath” instead; and, governments that carry out that wrath are ordained of God!

That having been said, I must add that it gave me a sick feeling to realize that Hussein was one moment standing upon a gallows and the next, like the rich man in Luke 16, lifting up his head in hell “being in torments!” His eternal doom had been sealed, and he will never again have an opportunity to repent! That is an ominous fact and might well lead one to think that it would have been better to allow him to live that, like the Apostle Paul, he might one day receive the Savior. But, “it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment,” (Hebrews 9:27) and Hussein’s appointed day came… “ready or not!”

But, that is not the saddest part of the story. Remember the name, Tariq Aziz? He was the lone “Christian” in Saddam Hussein’s cabinet. He was the Deputy Prime Minister and served as foreign minister during the 1991 Gulf War. It is reported that his love and support for Saddam was so great that he actually saluted the telephone whenever his president called! Now in custody, that support has not diminished. Therein is the greater shame! Hussein is dead and, as far as we can tell, is in hell for all eternity, but the one man in Hussein's life who professed to know the truth apparently never stood for it. He became a politician, a rising star in a corrupt government, and allowed everyone around him to live in ignorance and die in sin! Is he a true believer? I cannot say, but there is a Chaldean Catholic church of which he was a part, that may have missed one of its greatest opportunities.

Now, this is my point: We can sit around and discuss the morality of Hussein’s execution until the cows come home and miss God’s lesson for us. The great failure in the Saddam Hussein story is the failure of the church and individual believers, professed or real, to take a stand for the “faith once for all delivered to the saints.” You see, Tariq Aziz is not the only failure. We fail when we allow our families, neighbors, and work associates to live and die without hearing the good news of Jesus Christ. We, too, become so involved in the secular that we neglect the significant.

Does Aziz have any regrets? I hope so, but regardless, I know that every true believer will… if we fail in the very purpose for which we have been saved and left here. God help us to be different!