Resurrection Assurance

 The resurrection of Jesus' dead body guarantees our bodily resurrection. He, as the Head of the body, led the way. We, as members of His body, will follow.

Christ's body was placed in the grave, having died after the load of our sin had been placed on it. His body became the receptacle of sin, but when He rose, sin was left behind. He came forth with a glorified body, freed from any taint of sin.

The same will happen to our bodies. Death is the means whereby God will purge our bodies of contamination. The scattering of our elements will be like purifying them through a filter. When God recalls those elements in the Resurrection, they will return clean and whole. 

Eventually, every Christ-follower will be completely delivered: spirit and body. We will stand whole before God. When all is said and done, sin will have nothing of me but its own self. This will be a good riddance. Ruth says she wants to inscribe on my tombstone, "Here lies a bookworm being eaten by earthworms". I hope the worms that eat my body get indigestion. I want to share with them the misery this body has caused me.

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Update on our Unreached People Group

For 17 years we at Second have been working among the Bells of the Big Country as our adopted Unreached People Group. I have been discouraged of late due to the slow progress being made. I decided to write my friend who works tirelessly and ceaselessly for the Bells. Here is his analysis of the situation.

"This morning I've just written to the consultant who is planning to come and help with checking of 1 Kings in November/December. I plan to try and check the Bell drafts of Ecclesiastes and Revelation on time to check them in November. Recently I've spent a month working on the autobiography of a Bell friend.

The progress among the Bells does seem slow, but strangely we feel encouraged nevertheless. Some of the existing believers seem to be setting down roots deep in the Word of God, and it feels like good fruit will certainly follow. The timetable is out of our hands, but in the domain of the Holy Spirit. That's how it feels to us. We await expectantly; while doing what we can to keep on encouraging the Bell friends in the right direction. Recently (in July) Genesis and John were recorded, and these will hopefully soon be produced on DVD (with accompanying illustrations) to pass out to believers who as yet do not know how to read Bell."

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Parents of Wayward Children

Parents, if your children go astray spiritually, do not beat up on yourself. Reproach not thyself. If perfection is the litmus test for parenting, we all fail. We can only do our best, plus pray mightily and frequently.

         Outside influences beyond our control are pressuring our children. Pornography is omnipresent, easily available. Drugs are proliferating. Mental illness is increasing. One wrong person coming into the trajectory of a teen's life at the wrong moment can undo everything. By the way, on the other hand, the right person can also affect radical change for the good. I urge you to seek ways to enlist Godly adults to disciple your older teens.

         Freewill comes into play. However good a job we do as parents, we must remember; once children become adults, they are responsible for their own behavior and decisions. Young adults have to make their own choices.

We have to face the painful fact some were never believers. Children sometimes go through the motions of becoming a believer, but we don't have a lens to look into a child's heart to see for sure what happened there.

         The child/adult transition age continues to get younger. It was 18; then it was 16, drivers license age; now it comes with the first cell phone. Studies are showing that sexting has become a problem for children as young as 12.

One helpful adage is; rules without relationships can cause rebellion. In this equation, once our adult children are no longer under our rules, and already in rebellion, only one thing is left: relationships. Parents, do all in your power to be your teens and adult children's best friends. Once they know where you stand on a given issue, try to bond. Don't compromise, but don't hold at arm's length either. When you disagree, talk but do not badger.

We are not insiders able see everything. As we see situations, we can react like Pharisees, with a condemning frown, or be like Jesus, who leaned toward compassion. Henceforth, I want to more and more be like the latter.

 

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Armorel Address

My dad turns 87 on Sunday. He was born in Armorel, Arkansas, on August 24, 1927. Lindbergh had just flown the Atlantic. Dad was named Charles in his honor. His middle name is Pinkney, the name of his grandfather who raised my dad's mom. He was number four of 13 children, of which 12 grew to adulthood. I thought a few lines in his honor would be appropriate.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new baby boy, conceived in Armorel, Arkansas, and dedicated to the proposition that cotton farmers have lots of babies. Now we are engaged in a great test of longevity, testing whether that boy, or any baby so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow, his life. He accomplished that through the way he lived. It is for us, the living, to be dedicated here to the legacy he is leaving behind. He taught us that to Jesus we owe the last full measure of devotion. We highly resolve that his example will not be left behind in vain.

Happy birthday, Dad.

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Bilyeu

I wish everyone could have been at the 30th annual Bilyeu concert last night. I felt it was an appropriate evening for Hosea and Debbie's last night as Pastor and First Lady at Ridgecrest.

They have been dear friends to Ruth and me. To see hundreds of people on their feet cheering for them was a blessing to us.

Hosea is already way overbooked for the next few months. He will be very much in demand as a preacher and a singer. He will preach our annual Thanksgiving Sermon at Second on November 23. I hope he will bring his family to see a song or two.

Congratulations to two wonderful people. Hosea and Debbie Bilyeu, may the rest of your days be the best if your days.

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God's Name: YHWH

The Tetragrammaton (a Greek word meaning "four letters") is YHWH, the holy name of God. Jews considered God's name too holy to be spoken. To prevent breaking the third command by taking God's name in vain, they refused to speak it out loud.

To prevent Hebrew readers from slipping in public, and accidentally pronouncing the name, vowels of the word adonai (Lord) were superimposed on the consonants YHWH, thereby creating a word that was not a part of standard vocabulary. Our word "Jehovah" was an effort to translate this vowel/consonant combination. We now know Yahweh is the proper pronunciation.

Out of respect to Jewish sensitivity, English Bibles have usually not used the name of God. Instead, they use the word "Lord", with the O R and D being capital letters smaller than the capital L. This occurs over 5000 times in the Hebrew Bible. For instance, Psalm 23 begins in the Hebrew with YHWH, but we say "The Lord". If you look at the verse in the KJV and most modern translations, you see the smaller capital letters.

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The Deleted 1963 BFM Sentence

In the 1963 Baptist Faith and Message is this sentence: "The criterion by which the Bible is to be interpreted is Jesus Christ." This sentence was deleted from the 2000 BFM. At first glance this seems a bad thing to do. How could anyone go wrong with Jesus as the measuring stick for all laws?

Here was the problem. Liberals sometimes used this sentence to nullify Bible laws. They said if Jesus did not speak directly to an issue, we are free to agree or disagree with other Bible passages on a given subject.

For instance, Jesus did not discuss abortion or euthanasia. Though the overwhelming verdict of Scripture is pro-life, from womb to tomb, some say this does not matter since Jesus did not deem it important enough to talk about.

Unbelievers thus twist the very intent of Jesus. We are not to let our silly notions of love nullify obedience to laws. Rather, we are to obey God's laws in a spirit of love. Jesus came not to destroy the Law, but to fulfill it.

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