Miracles

I preach at two churches. I've been pastor at a church in a tiny town of about 65 people for 3 1/2 years, and at another church in the countryside just since this past year. Yesterday morning I was driving south on my way to the country church, appreciating God's miracles, as I prepared to preach a message on God's Powerful Wisdom and Wise Power in Christ Crucified, from I Corinthians 1:20ff. Five whitetail deer bounded across the roadway a (safe) distance ahead of me, a sight to behold as they lept gracefully into a harvested cornfield, radiating the joy of jumping. Someone has said, "glory to God for dappled things". I sometimes wonder if animals can see God and spirit beings. Interesting that in Numbers 22:22ff, it is treated as a matter-of-fact that the donkey sees the Angel of the LORD, and that the only think pointed out as remarkable is that the donkey talked. Perhaps indeed our two (now deceased) cats Tigger & Kitty were seeing angels when, in different places and different times, they both looked intently at a certain spot overhead, close to, yet not directly at the ceiling. & Kitty Cat spent a lot of time sitting under our icon collection shortly before she died.

Back to yesterday's sermon, as I was speaking of miracles as signs of God's power, I made brief mention of a miracle the LORD allowed me to be in on a few weeks ago. "D", a family man in the country church, was recently diagnosed with "hairy-cell leukemia", fortunately the most treatable kind, but still a serious matter indeed. On his first day in the hospital in Sioux Falls, as a tube was being inserted for his 168-hour continuous chemo treatment, a needle touched the lining around his heart, and his heart rate and blood pressure jumped dangerously high. About that time was when I called him on the phone. I led a prayer for healing, according to God's will, and later I learned that as soon as we hung up the phone, he perceived that his heart was near to normal again. He told the nurses, who didn't believe it, because they expected it to persist until sometime the next morning. But they checked his pulse & pressure, & it was normal! They asked who was on the phone, and D said it was his pastor. The next morning his cancer doctor remarked that "that wasn't medicine, that was God".

Anyway, I made very brief mention of it during the sermon, but just before the closing hymn, D felt prompted to come up front and share the story with the church in greater detail, an emotional moment for him and a blessing for all.

The LORD makes His own decisions about how to answer each prayer. Even as I am blessed to have been along for the ride when He did this miracle, I think of times I have prayed for people and miraculous healings have not happened. God alone sees the big picture. Ultimately He does what glorifies Him the most, whatever that is, and I believe also does what will help people the most in reaching Heaven. Glory be to God for His miracles, and His powerful wisdom and wise power, seen most in Christ Crucified!

Heartcries of the Apocalypse, Part I

"But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, to show that the transcendent power belongs to God and not to us" 2 Corinthians 4:7

The Apocalypse is the end of the present age, the revealing of that which was hidden, the unveiling of the Kingdom.

Signs of the Apocalypse are all around us. World events center ever more in the lands of the Bible. As I write, the world holds its breath to see what comes of the election in Iraq - home of ancient Babylon and Assyria, birthplace of Abraham. A bloodbath is threatened by "insurgents" upon those who vote in the election. Earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, wars and rumors of wars, the beginning of birth pangs.

But the signs of the Apocalypse are not found only in the "signs of the times", but in the Kingdom, hidden in the hearts of believers in Jesus. "The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand". Those who have heard the voice of the Master answering their heart-cries know what I mean. "The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed" Romans 8:19. It is our task to answer the heart-cries of the Apocalypse.

As I was preparing to make this entry, two Jehovah's Witnesses rang the doorbell, youngish women with friendly voices (the one who spoke had a southern accent, though they had South Dakota plates on the car) who spoke of stress as a sign of the coming end of the age. Every time Witnesses stop by I react differently. Once I got into a debate & actually stumped one on a Trinity-related point. Another time I got lazy and didn't say anything constructive. Yet another time I told them in no uncertain terms that they were lost. This time, after leaving the usual "Awake" and "Watchtower" magazines, they asked if they could stop by again sometime, and I said yes. That was pretty much the conversation this time. It'll be interesting to see if and when they stop by again. I pray that the LORD will open their eyes to the truth. They were right - rampant stress is indeed a sign of the coming Apocalypse - yet the true Solution is just beyond their field of vision. They asked my name - I wonder if they noticed that the sign on the church next door says the pastor's name is "Michael", and put two & two together.

I've been reading the "Series of Unfortunate Events" books by "Lemony Snicket", the newest youth reading sensation since "Harry Potter" (I'll save the complex matter of the Potter books for another time). Like Potter, they are apocalyptic. Three highly intelligent orphan siblings weather one misfortune after another, trying to keep out of the clutches of the evil Count Olaf, which will apparently continue until the eldest comes of age and can inherit the family fortune. I think the books are successful, partly because they are witty, partly because they connect with the apocalyptic sense of impending doom, the coming of a day of reckoning, the feeling of helplessness in a world of forces beyond our control.

The "Left Behind" books (another issue in themselves) sold millions of copies. In 1999 the surprise movie hit was "The Sixth Sense", a movie which I interpret as a movie about "unfinished business", the sense that there isn't enough time in this life to tie up all the loose ends. Loose ends tied or not, people have a sense that the end is approaching. Rock and rap music is filled with a sense of anger and despair - according to a Christian talk show episode I heard recently, a major recurring theme is rage over being abandoned by one's father. Some despair, others seek to escape or transcend the ruins. I don't keep up much with popular music, but the sound of one new band has caught my ear, "Evanescence". A young woman's clear, bell-like voice soars over a hard rock sound that sounds to me, well, apocalyptic. The message of their first big hit? "Bring me to life."

There is a Way to have Heaven in your heart, a way to soar over the barren landscape through which you walk, a way to come to a place high on a desert plain, take shelter from the poison rain, where the streets have no name (yeah, I'm quoting U2, I hope it doesn't come across as tacky, because they're expressing the aspiration I'm describing). A way to be filled with life in a world of death. "Draw near to God and he will draw near to you" James 4:8. He draws near to us in Christ Emmanuel, "GOD WITH US". And, believers, the heartcries of the Apocalypse are for truth, for life, for real love and fellowship, for acceptance and belonging, for honest answers to honest questions, for beauty out of ashes. Let us show in our lives that what they seek is what we have to give.

At National Geographic News ...

A very interesting report:

Photo in the News: Shroud of Turin

And a very unsettling report:

Animal-Human Hybrids Spark Controversy

Did I give up too quickly?

Awhile ago I stumbled upon a blog entitled "Pharyngula", an atheistic, pro-evolution site done by a biology professor at a university in Minnesota not far from where I live. I decided to respond to a post entitled "To people who hate humanity" (pro-lifers being people who hate humanity, in his opinion, by virtue of confusing humans with "mere" zygotes, etc.). An active debate ensued on the subject of personhood. Someone called "BrianTHP" valiantly argued a pro-life position, but didn't convince anyone. I entered a reply which I thought was modest and carefully reasoned. In it I called myself a "mere religionist, a spiritual heir of bronze age goat-herders", playing upon words another post-er had written ridiculing the foundations of Christian belief. The professor himself never did respond to my post. Another post-er did respond, but didn't engage my arguments at all, instead delivering an ad hominem dismissal of my right to join a a scientific discussion. And that was all. So many issues seemed to be at stake - the reliability of God's voice in revelation, the right to life - I thought of trying to respond further, but it was an exercise in inner frustration trying to think of a reply that might get someone's attention. I had other important priorities, so I let it slide. So, did I give up too quickly, or is it best to move on, knowing that there will be other battles? In case anyone wants to read through the thread, here's the link:

pharyngula.org/index/weblog/
comments/to_people_who_hate_humanity

Pieta

Click picture for larger version.

Credit: www.hollywoodjesus.com/passion_photo.htm

My (incomplete) list of who should've been nominated

Best actress in a leading role: Maia Morgenstern, The Passion of the Christ

Best actor in a supporting role: Hristo Shopov, The Passion of the Christ

Bravest filmmaking: Mel Gibson, The Passion of the Christ

Humblest offering of oneself in portraying the Savior: James Caviezel, The Passion of the Christ

Another troubling report

Fla. Loses Appeal in Terri Schiavo Case :

story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/ap/20050125/
ap_on_go_su_co/scotus_brain_damaged_woman

For an important and little-reported side of this story, read this article:

www.thechristianactivist.com/new/schiavo/schiavo.htm

Jews in Russia

A troubling report: news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050124/ap_on_re_eu/russia_anti_semitism

Christ, the Scapegoat

Interesting read in "The Epistle of Barnabas" 7:6-11 (www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf01.vi.ii.vii.html). He clearly says that the scapegoat in Leviticus 16 is a type of Christ. That caught my eye because the Seventh-Day Adventists have a teaching that in Lev. 16 the goat on which the LORD's lot falls stands for Christ, and the "scapegoat" for Satan. They then have to backpedal and emphasize how they don't mean that Satan atones for our sin, and I take them at their word. I think they have tied themselves into a pretzel on this one, by thinking over-literally that the two goats have to stand for two different persons, rather than two things that the One Savior does for us. But I believe them when they say that they believe in Jesus alone as Savior and atonement for sin.

Our pastor in the Lutheran Brethren church we went to for awhile in Minnesota also gave a very good interpretation of Lev. 16 awhile back, saying that the two goats stood for two aspects of Christ's atonement for sin. He is also a Bible professor and a fine Christian man. May the LORD richly bless him.

I bring up this quote from "Barnabas" because it shows that as early as AD 70-135 (the range within which is believed to have been written), there was clearly a Christian interpretation of Lev. 16 which differed from today's Adventist view. One thing about the Early Church is that everybody wants a piece of it. Adventists, Lutherans, Orthodox, Baptists, Catholics, you name it, all claim the Early Church as an early form of themselves (of course, heretical cults such as the Jehovah's Witnesses do the same thing). So, who's right? On the one hand, the reading I've done so far of the Apostolic Fathers makes the Early Church look not exactly like any church body we have today. On the other hand, it's remarkable to me how, though the Trinity hadn't yet been officially defined, the faith of the early Christians was exactly the same religion that Trinitarian Christians follow today. It doesn't have an alien flavor, like the gnostic sources that Dan "DaVinci Code" Brown advocates (but doesn't really understand - they weren't the sexual "liberators" he thinks they are, but that's for a different post sometime). It's exactly the same faith I grew up with, exactly the same Savior. All Christians may see the core of their faith in Christ in the Early Church, but not our own denominational idiosyncrasies. So I'm not really picking on the Adventists any more than on my own church body, for example. We all have lots to learn.

In these Last Days, we need to learn more about what the Early Church really taught & believed. The sources are readily available in print and on the net. This is one of the main weaknesses in the Church that the Enemy is exploiting, that we don't know our own history, so people can shrug off Christ by saying, "Oh, it was all made up in a smoke-filled room."

Praise be to the LORD Jesus Christ, who carried our sins out into the wilderness for us (Lev. 16:21,22)! Praise to His Name!

"When women go through an abortion, the baby feels pain."

Interesting bill being considered in Minnesota. It's not enough, of course, but I'm in favor of anything that might help reduce abortion (or the victim's pain) in any way. Imagine how it would feel to refuse anaesthesia for a child you were about to abort - a real attention-getter. This also highlights another one of my laments - as a deliberate ticket-splitter and old-fashioned progressive-populist, I rue the fact that there's so often only one pro-life choice on the ballot.

www.echopress.com/article.cfm?Article_ID=29923

An idle thought

I've only seen the first of the "Matrix" films, but I know the thing about how there's been "more than one matrix". So, what if there was a new matrix invented in which everyone thinks they are hobbits? Agent Smith has a sinister disguise, hanging out in Rivendell ...

The White Bridge

Do you believe in dreams and visions, as in Acts 2:17-21? The following is from my sister, who does Ripples of Faith. By the way, she describes herself as a "mystic scholarly type with a touch of Bozo", which makes it two for two in our family - our parents survived anyway - actually, I think they encouraged it ... anyway, here's what she has to say:

I read the updated blog tonight, and am sending my prayers for "C".

I thought I would share with you, I have had recurrences of the old dream/visions I had before and a new one as well. I do hope that I'm not of the "old man" dreaming dreams type, but of the "young man" seeing visions category, teehee.

The new dream/vision has an ongoing theme of "cutting off", grass, meat, a CD, Whisker's whiskers, everything being "cut off", as if it were saying there is a "cutting off" coming. These dream/visions are always identifiable as opposed to "normal" dreaming, with the sudden "awakening" I have immediately afterwards, and the feeling of a presence nearby that delivered the message. The other two are the "unveiling" of the supernatural beings surrounding us, where I "see" just how crowded the air around us is with angels and other more scary creatures, and the one where there is a sudden flash in the Eastern sky. Its ALWAYS the eastern sky, and it rocks the entire earth when it happens.

I will say though, that the other dream/vision, the one where people must seek shelter under the "white bridge" has gone ever since Billy Graham broke his hip and postponed the "last" crusade. The ONLY news story I saw about it, was a reporter, walking away from the Rose Bowl after the crusade, and there it was, the White Bridge! It almost appears that a certain event was prevented simply by Dr. Graham's misfortune. I've thought of sharing this with my friend, N, who worked on the crusade.

I just thought I'd share the "mystic" side of this stubborn Scandinavian stuck in a German Lutheran community, LOL!

Deceiving the masses

Preparations are continuing for the "DaVinci Code" film.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050121/film_nm/france_louvre_dc

Dan Brown and his comrades exploit people's ignorance of Church history (and history in general) in the same way that the Jehovah's Witnesses do. A few months ago I wrote this letter (link) to a former employer who hosted a discussion group about the book at his church. To this date I've received no answer.

Brown claims that Christianity as we know it, including the deity of Christ, is a plot cooked up by Emperor Constantine and others in order to centralize power. Funny that he totally disregards the fact that Christianity existed from early times in parts of Africa and Asia which were never controlled by the Roman Empire, and though the forms of Christianity there (such as Monophysite and Nestorian) differed from the Church in the Empire on the details of the divine & human natures of Christ, they were fully agreed that Christ is indeed both divine and human. One could argue that Brown's dogma betrays a racist bias, since he totally disregards ancient African and Asian Christianity as a piece of evidence. And of course, he pulls the wool over the eyes of those who don't know the very, very early evidence that, within the Empire, Christianity was indeed the exact same religion in the beginning that it still is today.

My big theory of churches (in progress)

For your consideration, here's a little chart that I use to explain the differing personalities of different church bodies & denominations:

Orthodoxy	Mysticism
Scholasticism	Pietism

Each item is the polar opposite of the one diagonal from it (but remember that a polar opposite can be a complementary paradox rather than a contradiction - for example, my own small church body, the "Free Lutherans", deliberately tries to be both orthodox and pietistic).
Defining terms: I define "orthodoxy" as an emphasis on correct doctrine, "scholasticism" as a particular way of being very analytical about doctrine. It's related, of course, to St. Thomas Aquinas & so forth, but lots of people think in a scholastic way even though they wouldn't want to be caught dead agreeing with the "Dumb Ox." Some Lutherans, Calvinists, and many other Protestants fall into this category.
Pietism is a red flag word for many, the subject of much heated discussion. Like St. Constantine, it gets blamed for lots of things. Here I'll simply define it as an emphasis on experience, in contrast to orthodoxy's emphasis on content. Mysticism is the embracing of mystery as contrasted with the attempt to analyze everything.
I think this little chart helps to avoid some confusions. For example, many (mostly scholastics) confuse scholasticism with orthodoxy. Some Lutherans are equally as conservative as we are, but much more scholastic (analytical), so naturally we are suspected of being less orthodox. There's a class of Lutheran church bodies (LCMS, WELS, etc.) which I call the "Germanic scholastic Lutherans" for this reason. They are from a good hard-headed German heritage. So are we Scandinavians soft-headed? Don't answer that ... But I would say we have an equal emphasis on correct doctrine, but simply are more mystical and pietistic about it, and less analytical.
I doubt that any Christian church is totally free of any one of these four (though some come close). A difference between the Eastern & Western churches would be that the Eastern are more mystical and the Western more scholastic.
Your comments, rebuttals, etc. are invited.

Pleasing nobody by pleasing everybody

The ELCA (http://www.elca.org), which we don't belong to, has released their Report and "Recommendations from the Task Force for ELCA Studies on Sexuality" last Thursday:

http://www.elca.org/faithfuljourney/tfreport_faq.html

Basically their recommendation is not to make any policy changes on paper, (on paper they're against blessing same-sex unions, and clergy who are homosexual in orientation are to remain celibate), but that in practice the policies won't be enforced, allowing instead for "pastoral discretion" on the local and synodal level. In other words, there will be change neither in official policy nor in actual practice. The "Blue Law" approach to moral compromise. That should make everyone happy, after they've spent so much time & money & dragged every single parish through their "churchwide study". An ELCA lay preacher remarked to me, in so many words, that there's potential for a real split on this issue.

Besides grieving for the lack of "Thus saith the LORD" conviction in this decision, I grieve for the death of the ELCA's goal of being a uniting church body, working towards ecumenical reunion of presently-divided Christians. The ELCA formed in 1988 out of the merger of three church bodies. One entire new church body has recently split off from them. If it happens again, they'll be back to pre-1988 conditions. According to stats at www.arda.tm, the ELCA loses, every 2 3/4 years, as many members as my own small church body has. In the last few years the ELCA has had a "concordat" of mutual ministry with the Episcopal Church - USA. I believe, in part, they were hoping that partnering with such a prominent church body, and one that claims apostolic succession, would be a giant step towards church reunification. But the EC-USA is now in "impaired communion" with a number of other Anglican churches, especially in Africa & Asia, which don't approve of their consecrating an openly gay bishop. By extension, it seems that the ELCA's communion would be "impaired" as well. The ELCA belongs to the World Council of Churches, which began as a sincere effort to bring about church reunification, but it seems to be increasingly alienating some of its original members from the Eastern Orthodox communion, who, I believe, sincerely & naively hoped that the WCC would help other Christian churches to become more like the Orthodox Church! Instead the opposite is happening.

When will someone point out that the emperor is wearing no clothes? When will people see that alienating Christians by departing from the the Church's historic teachings is counterproductive to church unity? Someday the "mainline" Protestant churches in the USA will have to merge, not just out of ecumenical concerns, but because they will have lost too many members to sustain all their separate bureaucracies. Meanwhile, I optimistically believe that as Christ's return approaches, true believers in all Christian churches will become increasingly more united - and ominously, false believers will also become more united with one another. I believe a drastic and surprising reshaping of Christian church bodies is coming this century, and it's already starting.

Prayer

Anyone who reads this, please join with me in praying for "C", a man I've known for a couple years or so, who knows Who the Truth is, but goes back to square one whenever he hits the bottle. He calls me "Preacher Man", and when he's released from incarceration he stops by for conversation, etc., but last evening was more frightening to us than he'd ever been before. I guess we need prayer, too - I haven't gotten much sleep tonight. We're looking forward to a time of refreshing at the pastors' & wives' retreat this week, but we're letting our neighbors know to be on the lookout for him, physically and spiritually.

P.S. - "Cutting edge?"

BTW, the phrase "cutting edge of the Apocalypse" was coined, as far as I know, by a delightful Orthodox nun I got to know in Indiana. It was her description of the stark inner city situation in which she lived and worked. I write from a much different geographical perspective, as I live in rural Northeastern South Dakota. But signs of the Apocalypse exist here as well, even among the cows.

About this blog

This blog is intended for the purpose of "uncovering truth, while we still have time." I am a Christian, I happen to be a Lutheran pastor, and also a "perpetual student," currently puttering away at a grad degree in Jewish studies. I have a burning desire to learn more about early Christianity and its origins, and I have lots of other interests, too.

This blog is not a sensationalistic "date-setting" discussion about the End Times. I chose the name because I feel a sense of urgency in my own quest for deeper knowledge of the Truth, and urgency in sharing Truth with others. I write with a sense that this world is passing away, and that, whether by death or by the LORD's return, my time here on this earth will someday come to an end.
The name in the URL, "apocalypse1335" comes from Daniel 12:12, which says "Blessed is the one who waits for and reaches the end of the 1,335 days."