“Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false …”
That the end times will be associated with mass deception is not generally disputed. Both the Lord and his apostles warned of it. I used to wonder how the whole world might be taken in so successfully. Are most people really that gullible?
Well, yes, apparently.
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Three unrelated thoughts about failures of memory.
Critics of dispensational teaching frequently insist that it cannot be valid because we do not find it discussed explicitly in the writings of the church fathers or, to the best of our limited knowledge, throughout the next couple of millennia of church history. I have always found that a weak argument, not least because both our knowledge of church history and of the opinions of the church fathers are so fragmentary. In fact, precious truths are far more easily lost than we might think.
Perhaps that’s why Proverbs says, “Buy truth, and do not sell it.” Some things are invaluable.
Do you know where this new term “speed of science” comes from? It showed up in memes a few weeks ago and I had no idea. I had never heard it used. Well, I found out today. If you already know, take a bow.
It comes from the answer to a question posed in a European Parliamentary hearing. Dutch MEP Rob Roos asked Pfizer’s Director of International Developed Markets whether Pfizer tested or studied transmissibility before releasing their version of the COVID vaccine to market.
Many years ago, long before they were woke, crazy and depraved, I was a big superhero comic book fan. I owned shelves full of them. In my early twenties while still in college, I wrote and drew a few published comic books to see if I could make a career out of it. (I probably could have been passable if I had persisted with it, but I would never have been a top-drawer industry professional.)
Superhero comic books are like soap operas in that they tell multiple small stories within larger story arcs that overlap and never really end. The idea is to get the reader invested in the characters and coming back month after month to see what happens next.
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“How can Christians repair broken relationships caused by differences of opinion about COVID policies?”
I think it’s fair to say debates about vaccination, masking, distancing and lockdowns probably caused more dissension between believers than any single issue in my lifetime. In most cases interpretation of scripture had little or nothing to do with it; if the Bible was quoted at all, it was usually a verse or familiar Bible phrase tacked on as a gloss, like the “Vaccination is loving your neighbor” rhetoric.
Jackson v. Ventavia is the abbreviated title of proceedings in a lawsuit currently being heard in a US District Court in Texas. Under an old law nicknamed the “False Claims” Act, anyone with specific knowledge of corruption or fraud in relation to any government contract may file suit on behalf of the government against an alleged offender.
Court documentation being in the public domain, we can now see some pretty interesting allegations and an even more interesting response.
Most elders, pastors and church leaders would agree that formulating an appropriate corporate response to the purported pandemic has been among the most difficult and divisive issues they have ever had dropped in their laps. No matter which way they went, some Christians were going to disagree with official church policy. A non-trivial number of congregants have parted ways with their brothers and sisters over it, and some are still mulling their options.
The question for church leadership is how to minimize the damage.
Bellator writes, “Someone asked me to read The Post-Quarantine Church by Thom Rainer. I attach a copy of page 5.”
Well now, there’s an invitation we can hardly pass up!
Turns out the quotes Bellator selected were not related to the author’s recommendations about what our churches most need to learn from the events of the last two years, but rather to his observations about the priorities pursued by church administrators once lockdowns were announced and Christians stopped gathering together for worship.
I consider those priorities disturbing. You may too.
“Have you seen this opinion piece on how the Federal government engaged evangelicals on Covid?”
So inquires a commenter named Ted at Blog & Mablog.
Thanks for passing that on, Ted. But let’s get a couple of preliminary observations out of the way before we parse the article by Megan Basham for DailyWire.com.
I have found myself thanking the Lord for some strange things lately. One of them is death. Another is the limits of human memory.
The mind of God is a staggering thing to contemplate. The moment we do so we are almost guaranteed to get something wrong. Nevertheless, enough has been written about it in scripture that we can be confident there is nothing God does not know, no prayer he does not hear, no burden of which he is not aware, and therefore no care or adverse circumstance in which he is unable or unwilling to provide grace.
That’s pretty amazing.
The unjabbed stand outside and sing their own Christmas songs as
Finnish churches are now requiring the pass to enter.
Via: fb.com/hennamaria22
An online acquaintance in Finland confirms.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more holiday-oriented than usual.
Tom: I was out for my early morning walk in a little bit of a mood, and I decided the thing to do was to spend my prayer time thanking the Lord for the good things he has brought into my life and the great things he is doing in this world.
I’m sure you can imagine exactly what happened, IC: my mood changed drastically.
Immanuel Can: Gratitude will do that, won’t it? One of the great sins of mankind is lack of it.
Disclaimer time: our loving Father is not indifferent to the details of his children’s lives. He cares about our strained relationships, our problems at work, our finances and our trips to the doctor’s office. It matters to him when we grieve over a lost pet. If you are not grateful for that level of divine attention today, you certainly will be at some point down the road.
The bone of contention in what follows, then, is not whether God cares, but how his care is normally expressed to us. After all, we can’t appreciate the Lord’s love if we can’t recognize it. If we are expecting it to manifest one way and it manifests in a different way, we may feel God doesn’t love us at all.
More importantly, we really don’t want to lead other Christians to expect from the Lord things they are most unlikely to receive.
Well, the COVID crisis has sure taught us all some lessons, provided we’re conscious enough to think them over. And the purpose of this post is to help us do that; first, by listing some very obvious things we all cannot help but realize, and then by talking a little bit about how Christians should be feeling about all of it.
Because it’s really not the same for us as it is for everyone else.
Hang on. You’ll see.
A few years ago over lunch, a friend pointed out to me that the holy kiss is not merely a passing reference to an ancient custom in the Bible’s historical narrative; rather, it’s a New Testament commandment given by two different apostolic writers not once, not twice, but FIVE TIMES. It was obviously important to both Peter and Paul, the Jachin and Boaz of the early church.
As such, we would be unwise to ignore it or handwave it away. The holy kiss should never be “kissed off”. At least, I’m uncomfortable doing that.
I had a conversation with one of my brothers in Christ recently that left me a bit shaken and concerned, I must confess.
It was outside of a local church building. The man was speaking to me about the mask mandates and the distancing regulations that the church had implemented.
Suddenly, his eyes flashed with fire, and his words became tense and cruel: “These people,” he said, “These people who just think they can …” He went on with such fierceness that his wife had to put her hand gently on his arm, and say to me, “You see we feel strongly about this. Pray for us.” “Come along, dear.” And she pulled him away.
He was still in mid-rage, I could see, and there was much more he wanted to say.
Our old friend Dave B. writes:
“I’d be curious to hear your opinion on the ‘expert’ claims that those vaccinated develop less serious side effects, should they catch the dreaded COVID virus. Is this legit?”
Dave, you ask the best questions. I’m game to share my current opinion about the effectiveness of the vaccines so long as we all recognize it is just that, and that new data is emerging daily.
Last Tuesday, John Piper used his mega-platform among Reformed Christians to come out in favor of COVID vaccination and to implore his fellow believers to go out and get jabbed:
“My aim in this article is to encourage Christians to be vaccinated, if they can do so with a good conscience and judicious medical warrant.”
Hey, at least he had the decency to include the caveat of “a good conscience”.
In addition to our own family gathering this year, I was invited to enjoy an early Thanksgiving celebration with three Christian friends whose extended families refuse to share a meal with them until they get vaccinated. We had a wonderful dinner and an enjoyable evening together, but it was hard to overlook the elephant in the room — or in this case, the herd of elephants not in the room.
Thanksgiving is usually about turkeys, not elephants.
Well, that certainly didn’t take long.
Less than two weeks back I observed that people are getting vaccinated for all sorts of reasons, the vast majority of which are pragmatic rather than moral or religious.
The difference is easy to illustrate. Pragmatic arguments for vaccination include “If you don’t get vaccinated, you may lose your job”, “If you don’t get vaccinated, you won’t be able to go to a restaurant or a football game”, or even “If you don’t get vaccinated, you won’t be welcome in my home for Christmas.”
Contrast that with my favorite strained and unconvincing recent attempt at making the issue moral: “If you don’t get vaccinated, you’ll kill your grandmother.”
Okay then ...
Once or twice in the last year and a half I’ve heard a Christian say something to the effect that they are trusting the Lord to keep them safe from the coronavirus. I suppose that is true of all of us to one degree or another, but the comment got me thinking: How high a priority should our physical safety have in our prayers?
Let’s dismiss binary thinking on this subject right at the front door. I cannot see how praying for better circumstances can ever be categorically wrong when it is accompanied by a heartfelt “Nevertheless, not my will, but yours.” It not a question of good vs. bad use of prayer time, but a question concerning degrees of good. We are looking to have the very best priorities in prayer, right? Ideally, we should be asking for the things Christ himself would have asked of his Father under the same circumstances.
That’s a very high bar, and we will not reach it all the time in prayer, but it should certainly be our goal in coming into the presence of God.
Let’s get this straight right off the top: COVID vaccines are not the “mark of the beast”.
Admittedly, government strategies for implementing universal vaccination are similarly coercive. We are not quite yet at the stage where no one can buy or sell without the say-so of Pfizer or Moderna, but depending on where you live, restrictions imposed on the unvaccinated are becoming more than a little onerous. COVID vaccine passports are the hot button issue of the moment, notwithstanding mounting evidence that the science does not support across-the-board vaccination as a solution to the spread of the virus and its variants.*
So then, if the powers-that-be recognize vaccination will
not solve the problem, why are the vaccinations still being pushed so
frantically? Reasonable people are curious, to say the least, and less-reasonable
people are speculating about a connection to
Must I point out the obvious? Sure, why not.
I have seen the future of the church. It is non-institutional, non-sectarian, untraditional, discreet, highly portable and deadly serious. These are all good things.
That’s my conclusion after a week away up north with a group of 11 Christians of varied backgrounds, denominations and convictions from all over our province. What drew us together was a pair of mutual friends and our love of Christ, not any particular theological compatibility or shared history.
Here is my concern, and it’s a big one: in our movement toward what sure looks like the inevitable next phase of church life in North America, we are in danger of leaving our leadership behind.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
Immanuel Can: Tom, I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but a division seems to be forming within the Christian community generally, and within some local churches as well, over the issue of what we all should have done about the government’s lockdowns. In some cases, the debate is becoming quite heated. One side says “the powers that be are ordained of God”, and that as a duty to love our neighbor, all Christians should be very thorough in obeying the government’s dictates. The other side points out that love of neighbor is the second commandment, not the first, the first being to love God above all, and that all Christians have a duty to “obey God rather than men”.
Tom: Actually, I’ve written extensively about that very subject here and here, and I’ve recently been enjoying a few of the more radical “first commandment” folks online. As you point out, both sides have their scriptures.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
If you’ve been watching the numbers over the last few months, it should be evident to even the most Negative Nancy that the COVID-19 rates of infection and death are finally decreasing steadily. We may reasonably discount the weekly cries of the media alarmists about the latest terrifying variant; that’s just what they do when they’re all out of stories about dying polar bears.
Tom: And so we are beginning to hear tentative musings about reopening businesses and getting back to something approaching our pre-March 2020 way of living. As someone who worked in the office throughout the entire song and dance, I was more than a little surprised to read that I am not necessarily in the majority in my desire to see society normalize. Tim Kreider of The Atlantic has decided he’d rather stay in bed, along with untold numbers of others who would rather work from home forever ... or preferably not work at all.
IC, didn’t one of the ‘seven deadlies’ use to be the sin of sloth?
