Tough Questions...With No Answers?

While reading through our site, I found a person that had asked some pretty tough questions. The counsel that they received from their Christian friends was even more alarming. Sometimes, we as Christians want to think we have to have all the "godly" answers to everything...not realizing the answers that we are providing aren't coming from God's Word at all. Unfortunately, it seems we are always compelled to "fill in the blanks", per se, when we don't know God's Word to answer the questions we have. More times than not, "filling in the blanks" leads to counsel that isn't, well, exactly "Biblical". The motives may be good; you want to help...but, sometimes we seem to compound the problems by causing guilt, shame and even disheartening feelings towards God. Counsel like, "God is punishing you..." or "You have unresolved sin in your life, that's why God took your child!" I really felt compelled to do some homework on the issues that the person brought up. So I wrote some ideas down that I learned along the way.

The first concern was the influence satan has on our lives. To discard the influence of satan in this world would be erroneous to say the least. Even the archangel Michael, when fighting with the devil, didn’t take away the influence of satan (Jude 1:9). Satan does influence this world because he is of this world. However, he doesn’t have power over God. So, he has influence, but not power. The power lies in the hands of the victor(God) and that has already been accomplished. (1John 4:4)

Satan’s task is to destroy you! (1 Peter 5:8 ) God called the angels to present themselves before Him. Satan, being an angel, had to go before God as well. When satan arrived before God, God asked him what he was doing. Satan told God he had "come from roaming through the earth and going back and forth in it."(Job 1:6-7). Here (in Hebrew verbiage) satan is being pictured as an animal with its nose to the ground, running around in circles, desperately and voraciously searching for food. That’s what satan is doing, every day, all day. Guess who's on the menu???? YOU! But remember, we tend to assimilate satan and God, regarding their power. Not true! Satan has no power that isn’t given to him by God. (Job 1) God is omnipresent, satan is not! He is a uni-dimensional being. He can only be in one specific location at a time, although spiritual, but definitely in one place at one time. Satan is also the “accuser”, constantly going before God, accusing us of our sins before Him. (Rev 10:12). So, satan is real and he is present, just don’t give him more credit than he deserves, don’t discount his influence either.

One of the questions had to do with becoming "things" when we die. We are not made into flowers when we die and we are not made into pretty angels with long flowing hair and white wings. I think that is by far the greatest deceit that man has bought into from satan. God created us in His image, both male and female (Gen 1:27). If you get some time, read about angels (biblically speaking), you will be amazed at their descriptions, books like Genesis, Revelations, etc. Romans and Corinthians talk a lot about the realm of spiritual beings and of heavenly beings. A couple great books to read about the properties of our spiritual beings are Romans (chaps 6 & 8) and 1Cor (chaps 6 & 9 ). There is an entire section in 1Corinthians (15: 35-58 ) that talks about the Resurrection of the body. Many people have questions about what happens when we die, it's a natural question. Remember, there are mysteries that are only known to God and won’t be revealed to man (Rev 10:4, etc.) So there isn’t anything wrong with the answer, “I don’t know.”

However, God does provide us with a lot of answers; we just have to look in His Word. For example, of heaven God speaks of a place that we will never be hungry or thirsty or cry or be sad. In other words He will take away all our pain and agony, release us from our own guilt and shame, which causes us a lot of pain (Rev 7:15-17). When we die, we are separated from the body (2Cor 5:6-8 ). This separation is between the spirit and the flesh. So there is an immediate cleavage that takes place once we die. In Philippians (1: 21-24) Paul again talks about departing from the body and being with Christ and not with man. So, as long as we are alive, we are separated from Christ. Of course, Christ is with God, and with God there is the heavenly realm. James (2: 6) talks of this separation as well. Also, we know heaven is a real place because of Paul’s description of his friend’s experience (2Cor 12: 2-4). 1 Peter (3:18) tells us of the purpose of Christ’s death; that we may be brought to God through him. And what is the benefit of this death…FREEDOM! (1 Pt 4:1) Freedom from the sin of this world and all that it has in it.

The best thing that you can share with others, other than the salvation message of course, is the transcendent peace of Christ. If we can have Christ’s peace with us now, imagine what His presence will be like. There is freedom in the peace of Christ: freedom from suffering (Mk 5:34, Lk 8:48 ). Christ's peace also gives us: guidance (Lk 1:79), God’s favor (Lk 2:14), protection (Jn 14:27, Phil 4:7), victory (Jn 16:33), strength and encouragement (Acts 9:31), causes our justification through faith (Rm 5:1), hope (Rm 15:13), provides order (1Cor 14:33), proof of the Spirit's presence (Gal 5:22), produces prayer and thankfulness (Col 3:15, 1Tim 2:2), discipline (Heb 12:11), and comes with heavenly wisdom (Jm 3:17). But what then is the purpose of Christ’s peace? 2 Pet (3: 13-15) tells us that the peace we receive in Christ is the knowledge of our salvation through Him. That He has already conquered satan and that as long as we abide in Him, we have that peace, knowing that we too will enjoy the presence of God in heaven. Without Christ’s peace we have to rely on man’s peace; there is only destruction and death found there (1Thes 5:3, Rev 6:4).

I pray that these passages help you as much as they helped me to understand the confidence we have in abiding in Christ. There are tough questions asked by people who don’t believe in Christ, and even tougher ones from those of us who do believe. Only God holds the answers to some things! Remember that sometimes bad things happen to good people. Chip Ingram, lead pastor of Living on the Edge and Walk Through the Bible ministries, has an excellent series of this suffering topic, "Why bad things happen to good people." I encourage you to go on line and listen to it(http://www.lote.org/). I pray God gives you wisdom and guidance through your questions and I pray you receive the gift of peace that comes through the saving faith of Jesus Christ.
May God Bless You All,
Todd Erickson

"Come...Follow Me"

What is the purpose of walking in Christ and being his disciple?” We all strive to be “good, godly people, don’t we?” I mean, we all think we are doing “okay”, right? At least we are better than the person sitting next to us (we think). So what are we really trying to be anyway? And is what we are trying to be even what we are supposed to be trying to be in the first place? Do we even know what we are called to be, if at all, or should we just be wingin’ it through life? I think the majority of us have never taken the time to really think about these questions.
To get to the chase, we are called to be Disciples of Christ, but what does that mean? What is a disciple? What is it that Christ is calling us to be? When you hear the word disciple, what thoughts come to your mind? Maybe words like followers, friends or students come to mind. Or maybe images of a few guys, covered in dirt, just hangin’ out with Jesus plays on the screen of your imagination. What should the term mean to us as believers in Christ? Isn’t that what the journey of being a “Christian” is all about, becoming a disciple of Christ? In order to really understand what the term disciple means, I think we have to forget what we know about the word, according to our loose American ideals, and relearn it in a historical, Biblical context. Let’s learn what it meant to be a disciple in the days of Christ.
As a young Jewish boy, at the ripe old age of 6, you would begin the process of memorizing the Torah (first five books of the Tanakh-Hebrew Bible, also known as the Pentateuch). This would normally take a boy around 4 to 5 yrs to complete. After completely memorizing the Torah, the child would be quizzed about his knowledge and would move on to the next stage of Jewish education. At ages 10-14 they would memorize the Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Daniel, and all the rest of the Hebrew Scriptures. By age 14 you were expected to be able to recite the entire Tanakh.
Keep in mind, there was no room for error. The Jewish people revered the name of God so much that they feared even making a mistake in writing His name. When the name of God was written, they wrote it omitting a letter, usually like “G*d”. So you could just imagine what the final exam was like; line for line; word for word, no mistakes! At age 14 the boy was now ready to begin learning the Talmud. The Talmud is the Jewish book of customs, ethics, and stories, which are authoritative in Jewish tradition. The Talmud is made up of two parts; the Gemara and the Mishna. The Mishna is the written records of the oral law and the oral traditions. So this memorization was everything that the Jewish culture was: encompassing laws, traditions and oral literatures. The Gemara is an indepth analysis of the Mishna. Which every topic was discussed and interpreted. In conclusion, it was a lot to memorize (loose translation).
After completing this process, the student would have to decide which rabbi they wanted to study under. There were several orders and tractates that a rabbi could belong to. Each one of these would have their own interpretations of traditions and literatures. For example, some rabbis followed a sect of Orders Zeraim, which concerned themselves with agricultural laws. Others followed a sect Order Toharot, who concerned themselves with the ritual purity laws of the Temple and sacrificial system. The student would have to know the rabbi’s interests, style of teaching, rabbinic functions and preferences. They studied the different rabbis to know what their interpretations were of the scriptures.
Then, at 14, the child had to go to the rabbi and converse with him. He would question the child and the child would answer, in minute detail. (We can see Christ going through this very process when he was in the temple, Luke 2: 43-49.) The rabbi would then make a decision as to whether he would accept the child or not. The rabbi would say to the child, "Come, take my yoke upon you” or “Come. Follow me.” If the child didn’t do well enough, the rabbi would refuse him and would tell him, “Go learn your father’s trade.” Imagine your entire life, every waking hour, every word you learned, only to be told to go pound nails! You didn’t make the grade, you didn’t measure up! That was the reality of the rabbi’s decision.
Now granted, not every one could be a rabbi, but you can bet they all wanted to be, as a child. Rabbis were the leaders of their world, the decision makers, the most powerful people in their culture; every father’s dream was for their son to be accepted by a rabbi. When you became a student of the rabbi’s teaching, you were considered to be learning his “yoke”. So you were “yoked together” with the rabbi. This meant that you now had the arduous task of learning every law, every rule, every regulation that the rabbi knows and you will have to learn his interpretation of them. There is a phrase in the Mishna that says, "May you be covered in the dust of your rabbi." The idea was that if you followed behind your rabbi on the dusty roads, you would get covered in his dust. Meaning, you were following him so closely, to be so much like him, that you are glorified to be covered with the dust he left behind. That is how close a disciple wanted to be to his rabbi.
Now you can see why there was such an extreme importance placed on the rabbi’s acceptance. Once the rabbi said, “Come. Follow me,” you went. Your family was jubilant and you left all you had behind. You left what you were doing, with no hesitation whatsoever! When we read about Jesus calling his disciples (Mt 4:19-20, Mt 19:21 Mk 2:14 and Lk 5:11) we see this very same obedience. Often times, people say, “They couldn’t have really left everything and everyone they knew behind.” Oh, but they did! Who did Christ call? He called fisherman and tax collectors. These men were already considered failures, religiously speaking, just “simple-minded men.” These men were rejected as disciples, or they wouldn’t be fishing. They didn’t make the cut! They didn’t measure up to what the religious leaders wanted…but they were exactly what Jesus wanted. They were “good enough” for what Jesus was going to teach them.
The next logical question should be, why follow Jesus? How did they know to follow him? How did they know he was a rabbi? How did they know he was the rabbi they should follow? We see that they immediately stopped what they were doing and got up and followed Jesus. Why? There was no fanfare, no large audience surrounding him to make him look important. So how did they know to follow him? From reading the scriptures, we know that they already “knew” Christ. Jesus says that his followers will know his voice. (Jn 10:3, 10:7, 10:14)
Don’t miss this point! By Jesus saying to them, “Come. Follow Me”, he was telling them so much more than just three words. When we read this, we hear, “Come. Follow Me.” But the words the disciples heard were; “I know you.” “I know what you know.” “I have listened to you and I accept you.” “You are good enough to be my disciple.” “You are able to be just like me.” Isn’t that what we have already learned, that the goal of the student was to be exactly like the teacher, in every way. And, if there is a “calling” from the teacher to the student, there must be an expectation, on the teacher’s behalf, that the student can complete what he is being asked to do, which is to eventually be exactly like the teacher, an exact replica!
The final disciple-making qualification one would have to obtain would be to receive public acknowledgement as a disciple, in their own community. But first, the disciple must have a leader that was revered in the community as being a rabbi. That is exactly what occurred. In Mk 10:51 and Jn 3:2, we see that the public and the Pharisees refer to Jesus as “Rabbi”. And in Mt 12:2 and Mk 7:5, Jesus’ followers were referred to as “disciples”.
Isn’t that what Christ is calling us to do today, to completely follow him? If we will listen, Christ is still calling for his disciples. He is still reaching out to us in the middle of our “lives”, saying, “Come. Follow Me.” “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me…for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Mt 11:29-30) He doesn’t insist on us using our own abilities to memorize rules and regulations or to walk where he has not gone. Christ is calling us to become like him! He calls us to purity and to self-sacrifice. We are called to live for more than just our own pleasures. We are called to show others that Christ is real, living and that he is still calling! Remember, we are not called to be rabbis, we are called to be brothers and to help make those brothers disciples! (Mt 23:8 and Mt 28:19)

My Purpose In Writing...

I think that in order to understand what a person writes, you have to understand where they are writing from. That is to say, what is their frame of mind when they are creating the text. A person can read a passage and think, "Okay, I think I understand that." However, I believe that it isn't until we actually read the Scriptures in the tense and time they were created, that we can find what God is really sharing with us. I think there are foundational "reading" principles that are unique to the Bible as well.

First, I hear people say all the time, especially about the book of 'Revelation', that you need to unlock the "secret" meaning behind the words, or "I can't pull the meanings from the Scriptures." That couldn't be further from the truth. God has given His Word to us that we may grow and learn from it. Why would it be something that you have to decode? I mention the book of 'Revelation' because most people consider it to be a book of mysterious prophecy...do we stop to think of what the title means...to reveal?

Which leads me to my second principle: When I read a passage, I take the time to find out what was going on when it was written, who it was written to and why it was written. The only mysteries that have to be unlocked, per-se, are the historical facts surrounding the writings. Once you learn the historical facts, then the text becomes alive and pertanent. Remember, these books were documents that recorded historical facts, chronological events and some were quite simply letters to people or people groups, so they have specific relevance to those who received them. The specific structure of the books, word usage and terminology all played a personal and vital role in their communications. Take a simple name for example. Today, we use them as personal identifiers or tags. However, in biblical times, you became your name. You personified your name. That's why sometimes in the Bible we see that God would change peoples' names; like after a covenant was made with them.

Lastly, I believe that the Bible is as relevant today as it was for the people in it. Although it is very unlikely that we would see a Roman army hunting us down; we can take away valuable lessons from their recordings of the people who did experience the event. God's Word is living, not dead. Not something that existed for a time and the time has now passed. In Hebrews 4:12 we read: "For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart." That's the power of God's Word!

So, as I write down some of my thoughts on this "blog" thing, I hope you gain some of that same insight. I hope to provide as much background information on my posts as possible so you know where I am coming from. I really enjoy sharing what God puts on my heart, especially through a wonderful medium like this. I also look forward to any comments you may have regarding my posts. Thanks Josh, God Bless!

Together in Christ, Todd