Death

For those who know me best, you probably know that the subject of death is one that I actually enjoy thinking about and discussing because, in part, it causes me to think about my life, my God, and the destiny that awaits me.

This last week John Piper's father passed from this world into another. Today, his soul rests in heaven.

As I read what Piper wrote concerning his father's last moments on earth and his own personal thoughts at the time of his dad's death--and thereafter--I was deeply moved. More importantly, I was encouraged. It made me think about how much of an impact Christian parents can have upon their children, and how their children may be used of God. I think about men like John Piper who have been used of God to preach, shepherd, write, and teach for the advancement of Christ's kingdom; and I think about the parents of men like these. While some of the parents of great Christian leaders are/were not believers, many men--like Augustine, Spurgeon, Piper, etc.--did have parents who were faithful to introduce their children to a knowledge of Jesus Christ and pray diligently for God to save them. These children grew up to call their parents blessed.

Please take a minute to read Piper's account of his father's death:

Tuesday, March 6, 2007. 2 a.m.

The big hospital clock in room 4326 of Greenville Memorial Hospital said, with both hands straight up, midnight. Daddy had just taken his last breath. My watch said 12:01, March 6, 2007.

I had slept a little since his last morphine shot at ten. One ear sleeping, one on the breathing. At 11:45, I awoke. The breaths were coming more frequently and were very shallow. I will not sleep again, I thought. For ten minutes, I prayed aloud into his left ear with Bible texts and pleadings to Jesus to come and take him. I had made this case before, and this time felt an unusual sense of partnership with Daddy as I pressed on the Lord to relieve this warrior of his burden.

Read the rest of the story here.

Zodiac Movie Reviews

Typically I like to write my own reviews of movies that I've recently seen. However, I came across the following review of Zodiac and found it very insightful and close to my own thoughts of the film.

What would you do if you knew who a serial killer was, but the circumstantial evidence, however strong, was not enough to bring that person to justice? What if you were dealing with a case that had gone cold some time ago, with police exhausting all their leads and options? What if only you were obsessed and persistent enough to pursue this to the end? What if you would have to lose your marriage in order to bring this person to justice? What if your obsession doesn’t find resolution?

Such is the very remarkable story of Robert Graysmith, a cartoonist for a San Francisco newspaper beginning in the late 60s who would not let this matter drop and ended up writing two best selling books on the Zodiac killer. Jake Gylenhaal does a compelling job of portraying this truly obsessed man’s quest for the truth of this matter even after the police had long since given up hope.

The story begins in 1968 when there is a grisly double murder in Vallejo California, and carries on with numerous killings in San Francisco and elsewhere. The killer sends coded messages to the San Francisco Chronicle which Robert is able to decode. We are regaled with Marvin Beli the famous lawyer who goes on TV to try to talk the killer into giving himself up-- all to no avail. But an important clue is given one day when the killer calls Beli. A clue missed by the police is only much later picked up by Robert. In painfully slow fashion the evidence mounts and points in a particular direction.

Continue reading Zodiac review here.

Fearing God

My wife Paige has an uncle and aunt--Bill and Naomi Hayes--who are traveling ministers/evangelists. We were blessed last year to have been able to spend some time with them while they were here ministering to churches in the Valley of the Sun. While Bill preaches mostly within Assembly of God and Pentecostal circles, he is the first to admit that his message is not typical among many Pentecostal preachers. He preaches themes like "Sin," "Repentance," and "Fearing God." He cuts away the fat to get to the meat and preaches the raw truths of Scripture to people, many of whom are used to having their ears tickled with positive, self-esteem-building words.

The following is an email I received last week from Bill on the topic of Fearing God.

Here we are in the Bahamas, more precisely Nassau, where all the hoopla of the Anna Nicole Smith saga is being acted out. I can hardly get any other news on TV than endless reporting of the body and the baby. Who has the jurisdiction of the body and who is the father? It was reported on one of the cable networks that this is what the people want to see and hear in the news; in fact it has doubled some of the stations’ ratings. One network said 80% of Americans are deeply interested in this story. Does that tell us something about our culture today in America?

A repeated statement by news outlets, “Let her be buried next to her son in the Bahamas, so she will find that rest and peace in death that alluded her in life.” What a pagan way of looking at life and death. Jesus gives no such comfort! In Luke 12:18-21 Christ gives us a glimpse of the result of a wrong connotation placed on prosperity,

“And he told them this parable…a certain rich man said, this is what I'll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19 And I'll say to myself, 'You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.' 20 But God said to him, 'you fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?' 21 This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God." (NIV)

Here is another example from Luke 16:19ff-- "There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day… 22 the rich man also died and was buried. 23 In hell, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away.” Rest in peace! How is it possible? Too late! As the writer of Hebrews states in Heb 9:27 “It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.” (KJV)

Is it surprising how easy we have made it for men to enter the kingdom of God in modern times? No need for a radical new birth, “Except a man be born again he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” No need for “REPENTANCE.” Jesus said, “Repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand.” The first word of the Gospel! What we have today is a new version of “Cheap grace,” a phrase used by Dietrich Bonhoeffer in describing the German evangelical posture during the rise of Hitler. Here is a quote from Bonhoeffer:

“The only man who has the right to say that he is justified by grace alone is the man who has left all to follow Christ. Such a man knows that the call to discipleship is a gift of grace, and that the call is inseparable from the grace. But those who try to use this grace as a dispensation from following Christ are simply deceiving themselves.”

Here in the Bahamas the church, the nation, and even the schools are very religious, “evangelical religious.” They can even pray and read the Bible in the public schools and do! But what do they have to show for it? A nation where crime is even higher then America, the murder rate nearly four times higher then the U.S. Sunday morning a pastor of a Baptist church, four robbers kicked open his door, took everything he had, shot him through the heart while his wife and twin daughters watched. Here is a country where STD’s are rampant and HIV is one of the highest in the west. Where single parented families are the norm, the fathers are not deadbeat dads but “Millstone men,” and yes “Millstone women” too. (Read what Jesus said a millstone man is in Matt. 18:5 & 10.) We in America are embracing a similar “cheap grace” Christianity. The most popular preaching centers in, “Your Best Life Now.” Barbara Walters, in a recent interview with a pastor who proclaims this narcissist Christianity stated, “Your gospel has no sin, suffering or sacrifice in it.” And I might add “And we Christians now love to have it so!” Self-help Christianity centers in, “It’s all about me.”

This book and minister are not the only offenders (he merely sits at the top). Leading Pentecostal magazines have almost nothing about a God who is to be greatly feared by his people and the inhabitants of planet earth, – nothing!! Am I being too hard? I tell the congregations where I minister, “I’m not the hard one; it is you that have no fear of God in your message and life; that is hard!” Then I quote Proverbs 28:14, “Happy is the man who fears the Lord always but he who hardens his heart shall fall into trouble.” Isn’t that where we in the evangelical church find ourselves these days: “IN TROUBLE.” Our families disintegrating, divorce higher among people of faith than those with no faith at all, drugs and alcoholic addictions, STD’s spreading like wild fire and every dilemma of a postmodern era has found itself in the heart of the church. Why? Where is the “Keeping power of His Grace?" Where is the power of the cross?

THE CAUSE FOR THIS TRAGEDY IS...
“The way of peace they have not known, (why?) there is no fear of God before their eyes.” (Rom. 3) Paul the Apostle says this of the world. Today it is characteristic of the church. I am not the only one who is saying this! Henry Blackaby states “The distinguishing characteristic of the church today in America is no fear of God.”

THE CURE...
A revival of the fear of the Lord; God showing up in our churches. A cry from our hearts, “Restore unto us a holy fear of the Lord,” but for that to happen we must have a change of thinking, a realization that indeed God is to be greatly feared.

[bold & italics mine]

Teach Your Children Well

When I was growing up, my parents were very diligent in reading regularly to me and my brother. In doing so, my parents instilled in me from a young age the importance of literature, especially the value of knowing God’s literature, the Bible. In addition to reading Scripture with us, my mom and dad were consistent in introducing us to other quality books, most memorably, Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress and The Holy War, Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia, along with countless biographies of men like William Carey, George Mueller, Teddy Roosevelt (“Bully!”), Robert E. Lee, Jim Elliot, and other accounts of God’s providence in the lives of real people in history.

But on top of all of these terrific books, there was one exercise which my parents were dedicated to helping Paul and I do: catechism.

About a year ago I heard Alistair Begg speak at a local church here in Gilbert. In his message that evening he discussed the lack of doctrinal knowledge and spiritual maturity in churches today. He attributed this in part to poor training in Christian homes and in another part to poor preaching in Christian churches. He mentioned the Puritans, and even more recent generations of Christians, and how they were extremely thorough in the doctrinal training of their young people. But somehow in the latter days, children are being raised in homes and churches where there is very little emphasis placed upon theological understanding and training.

I have been to different youth groups, Sunday School classes, Christian school chapekl services, conferences, and churches, and I can truly agree with Alistair Begg’s diagnosis of the problem with youth today. They are not being given a solid, doctrinal foundation upon which to grow spiritually. The Christian leaders in their lives are not working hard to teach even the basics of Christianity to their youth. In other words, the baton is being dropped.

Just last month I attended a conference at which author and speaker Josh McDowell was speaking on a similar topic. He mentioned how the generation of his grandchildren—today’s teens and pre-teens—is being bombarded with postmodern thinking on every front: at school, on television, in Hollywood, in magazines, on the internet, in the news media, at home, and even at church. Spirituality has become little more than a personal feeling, experience, or opinion. Even the fundamentals of the faith are forgotten or ignored. As Pastor Begg accurately mentioned, this is mostly why the Da Vinci Code was such a huge phenomenon for Christians. As he said,
Why do you think so many books were printed for Christians on the subject of Christ’s divinity and the authority of Scripture?
Because so many Christians were confused and bewildered by the ideas that Dan Brown was presenting.
And why were Christians confused?
Because they are ignorant as to some of the most essential tenets of biblical Christianity.
And why are so many Christians so ignorant?
Because the Bible is not properly being exegeted and expounded in by church pastors.

O that parents would teach and pastors would preach the fundamental doctrines of the Bible again!

God has given us so many tools by which we can learn about Him. One of these devices is catechism. Catechism is a systematic way of teaching someone the basic (and not-so-basic) truths of the Bible. A good catechism thoroughly covers topics such as God (His being, nature, attributes, tri-unity, etc.), Christ, sin, repentance, substitutionary atonement, justification, sanctification, God’s Word, heaven, and hell. These are the exact things that Christians need to know, but often don’t. Thus, it’s no wonder so many Christians are afraid to witness to unbelievers—they hardly know what they believe for themselves, how could they share that with someone else? It’s no wonder Christians shrink back in fear when another article or book or movie comes out in an attempt to discredit the deity of Jesus Christ. It’s no wonder young people buy into the philosophies of the day taught to them by their college professors, movies, or magazines. They were never taught by their parents the fundamentals of the faith.

I am so thankful for the biblical education with which my parents blessed me! I thank the Lord that I was warned about Mr. Worldly Wiseman, Vanity Fair, and the Flatterer before I became too set in my ways. I thank the Lord that I was taught to guard Eye Gate, Ear Gate, and Mouth Gate. I thank the Lord for men of character who were moral leaders and examples of godliness. I thank the Lord that I was raised in a good church with sound preaching from caring elders and biblical teaching from loving Sunday School teachers. And I thank the Lord that on at the age of five I was able to share with two Mormon missionaries at our door what the “chief end of man” is.

Please take another moment to read Pastor Tom Chantry’s post on the Benefits of Catechism.


God bless!