Musings on January 3 and beyond

 

I’ll admit that the past few days have been somewhat of a fog. I am incredulous that professing Christians are endorsing and advocating violence and lawlessness – this can come from nowhere else but the abyss and is assuredly demonic (James 3:13 – 18; 2 Thess. 2:1 – 12). I am also baffled at the lukewarm response to this insane idolatry by Christians who do know better, where is the clear denunciation of evil in the church? Most of the language I’ve read from people with a broad platform falls far short of calling evil and idolatry what they are – perhaps it is just this sort of cotton candy leadership, which is not “rightly dividing the word of truth,” that has contributed to our present condition.

 

Where are those who speak with authority and not as the scribes? Who will speak as the oracles of God? What have we come to?

 

Below is an email I sent to a friend the morning of January 3. On Sunday mornings I make it a special point to pray for pastors I know, and their wives and families and churches. On January 3 I had a particular burden and sent the note below to a pastor friend. The burden manifested itself in Jeremiah 4:19 – I was living that verse, my heart was pounding in intercession for the church and my country. Little did I know what January 6 would bring.

 

I also knew I was to fast on Monday and Tuesday, I broke the fast late Tuesday. I didn’t know why at the time, but on Wednesday I did.

 

I’ve engaged a few professing Christians in conversation about violence and nation – worship over the past few days, and sadly it has stressed friendships…how can this be? How can professing Christians endorse what is clearly demonic? How can they ignore Christ and the Bible? It appears that what passes for the church in much of American is simply a house of cards. Here’s the email excerpt:

 

 

Sun, Jan 3, 7:58 AM (12 days ago)

 

Good morning…

 

I've been wondering how Ezekiel and friends could possibly live with the images and knowledge they had...such as idolatry in the Temple...sickening. I suppose it is all a Burning Bush dynamic, how else to consider it? Yet it does seem at times as if the frail bush will be consumed

 

Then this morning, Jeremiah 4:19 (and this is one of those passages in which I wish I really knew Hebrew to the point that it oozed from the pores of my skin) - for I don't think any English translation can probably do it justice...though perhaps you could capture it? (Hint).

 

This is likely one of those passages in which unless a commentator has lived it to some degree that any explanation will taste like flat soda pop. But then, unless the reader has touched it, and been touched by it, the flat soda pop will taste okay.

 

And then I've been thinking that we've had conflict since the beginning of the New Creation in Acts...as the Epistles bear witness to...and we insist on desecrating the Temple...even setting up our own Roman standards....or perhaps reenacting Antiochus Epiphanes...with only an altar, a swine, and with images...and we think it is normative.

 

Poor Jude, he had so much he really wanted to write about, but he fell under the necessity to appeal that his readers would contend for the faith once delivered...do we even know what that "faith" is? Strangers we are to the Creed...as Dorothy L. Sayers wrote many times, "The beauty is in the dogma."

 

It's all well and good to be excited about being in the Body of Christ...until you realize just what He is going to do with His Body...