Flying the US flag

I usually stick to more Church related topics. So this would seem on the surface to be a god departure from my usual. But then again, Im not sure it is. Respect is respect. No matter if that respect is for God, our president, your boss, or the US flag. They all deserve respect even if we dont agree with their methods ( in the case of the Pres)

I go for walks in the sub-division that I live in. I go out every day and I notice some houses that are flying the US flag outside. I love that these houses are attempting to be patriotic. But some of these houses are not hitting the mark. Maybe they just dont know how to properly display the US flag. Maybe they are too lazy to do it right. I really dont know. And by the way, its not just private homes that get this wrong.

In fact, the main abuser of flying the US flag improperly are businesses, especially retail ones. I think when it comes to retail businesses, most of them that fly the flag dont do it for patriotic reasons. They do it so they can appear to be patriotic so they boast about this and sell more to those of us that are patriotic.

What I see in some houses and businesses just down right bothers me. I have seen flags displayed that are old, ripped and torn.

To fly a flag like this that needs repair is very disrespectful!

If you fly a flag, it must be in good condition. If your flag becomes ripped and torn, then it must be taken down. If you cant afford a new one, then its best to not fly one at all, instead of flying one that is all ripped up.

The 2nd mistake I see are flags that stay out all night long and are not lit up.

This is also disrespectful. You must take your flag down at sunset. If you do want to leave it out at night, then it must be permanently lit so that the flag is never in the darkness.

The Flag of the US deserves respect just like our God deserves respect. Its wonderful that some people want to be patriotic, but please please please learn a few simple rules to display our flag properly !!!

Why do non-Christians feel compelled to come to Church on Easter and Christmas?

Happy Easter!!!

Something that has always puzzled me. Easter and Christmas are the 2 days of the year that non-Christians come to Church. Its on these days that local Church's swell in attendance. Its always seemed a bit odd to me.

Its on these 2 days a year that Church Pastors get a chance to preach to more Non-Chrisitians, in one fell swoop, than at any other times of the year. It seems atheists, Agnostics, and other non-believers come on these 2 Sundays when they wouldnt even dream of darkening the Church doors any other days.

Why is this?

What unseen force compels them to come to Church on just these 2 days? If would seem logical that if they deny God the other 363 days of the year, that Easter and Christmas would be no different. Why on these 2 days, would people deny their belief systems and come to pay homage to a God that they dont even know?

Well, I would like to purpose that there is a part of them that knows that God is God and nothing else will fulfill them. I would like to put forth that even though they dont know God, they deny God, and even battle against him, that on these 2 days of the year, something inside them, perhaps deep inside, just tells them that they must go to Church and recognize their God.

The group Audio Adrenaline sung a song about this that in my opinion summed it up the best. I tried to find a youtube video on it, but was not able to. Perhaps the song is to old.

"And every heart, and every soul, everybody's got a God-shaped hole. " I think they put it very well.

In every single person, God built into their very genetic code a knowledge that God is the creator. Every person knows, even though they can choose the deny it, that Jesus is the Son of God and he is the only thing that will fill this whole inside them.

• Ganhdi Could not fill it !
  
• Pat Robertson Cant fill it !
  
• Your Local Pastor Cant fill it !
  
• Your Dad or your Mom Cant fill it !
  
• Your son or daughter Cant fill it !
  
• Money Cant fill it !
  
• Toys Cant fill it !
  
• Cars and trucks Cant fill it !
  
• Muhammad Cant fill it !
  
• Confucius Cant fill it !
  
• Brigham Young Cant fill it !
  
• Shaq Cant fill it !
  
• Your Job Cant fill it !
  
• Barack Obama Cant fill it !
  

But !!!!!

• JESUS CAN FILL IT !
  
• YAHWEH CAN FILL IT !
  
• Elohim CAN FILL IT !
  
• EL-SHADDAI CAN FILL IT !
  The God who is the same yesterday, today, and forever CAN FILL IT !
  
• The God Who Heals CAN FILL IT !
  
• The God Who Sent His Only Son To Earth To Die So That You And I Can Live CAN FILL IT !
  
• The God Who Loves You CAN FILL IT !
  
  
• The God Whos Son, Jesus Christ, rose from the grave so that we can have eternal life that we celebrate in Easter CAN FILL IT !
  

Happy Easter Everyone !!

What was God thinking when he wrote the Bible?

The Bible is the owners manual for our lives. But yet, it is one of the most difficult books to understand and figure out.

I have read a lot of owners manuals in my life. I got one just the other day for a telescope that I purchased. At the start of the manual, it said that the assembly of my telescope would take 30 minutes. I remember thinking to myself; Yeah, right !

I went through the manual and read the instructions carefully. Some steps were fairly easy to follow. For others, I had to read and re-read them, but finally got it right. Others seemed to be just plain impossible. I was about to give up, when God gave me the thought to look on YouTube. Thank God for YouTube! I found the assembly instructions for my telescope right away. I was able to watch the videos and finish assembling my telescope.

Just like those telescope instructions, most people find the Bible to be a very difficult book to figure out. That's why we have so many Preachers, and Evangelists. If you ask 20 different Pastors, Evangelists, and Christians what a certain passage in the Bible means, you are likely to get 20 different answers. (If you stick to asking people that are all a part of the same denomination, you might have a better chance of getting the same, or similar answers. Pastors that are of the same denomination probably all attended the same type of college or seminary, so they were all taught the same thing.)


To make things even worse, we have a lot of versions of the Bible. At my last count, there were about 150, and those are just the English ones. The more popular and accepted ones are the New International Version (NIV), New American Standard (NAS), the King James and a handful of others. In fact, there are many Churches that will only read a specific version of the Bible and refuse to even recognize any of the others.

Then there is the problem of denominations. There are hundreds, and perhaps even thousands, of denominations (Denoms) in Christianity. The Baptist Denom alone has about a hundred different divisions.

So is it any wonder that the average Christian is completely confused?

Lets get back to my example of the telescope and the users manual for it. Lets say that the manual for my telescope was originally written in Greek. It was then translated into English by 150 different authors . None of the 150 authors could agree on the proper interpretation of the manual, so all 150 of them came up with their own version.

Interpretation of the manual for this telescope was so controversial, and so disagreed on, that hundreds of thousands of Colleges and Universities sprung up to teach people how to properly interpret the manual. These colleges, and universities generated hundreds of thousands of professional teachers that had the sole purpose of teaching others how to properly interpret the manual. These teachers started hundreds of thousands of smaller schools where they taught others how to properly read the owners manual, and put together the telescope.

Soon, several of the smaller schools that believed the same, or similarly, began to come together to form Unions. Each of these Unions had a different idea on how the telescope should be assembled and used.

The Union of "Southern Telescopes Users" (STU for short) believed that before the telescope could be used, it had to be immersed in water.

The Union for "Thats a Really Dumb Idea" (TARDI) believed that immersing the telescope in water was stupid and just sprinkling it with water was enough to make it useful.

The Union for "That's still a really dumb idea" (TSARDI) believed that putting any water at all on the scope was just plain dumb and the TARDI and STU were morons.

The Union for "Telescope Speakers" (TS) believed that if the telescope was assembled properly, it would begin to speak in strange languages. They further believed that if the scope didn't speak in these weird languages, it was not a useful scope.

The Union of "Telescope Speakers Anonymous" (TSA) believed that the Union of TS was full of BS (Buggy Swillology, which meant "Crazy Turtle People" in Greek).

I could go on and on with this analogy, but I think I had better stop there. Besides, I think I made my point. In case I didnt, I will state it plainly.

Here are the problems I might run into when purchasing this telescope;

• Hundreds of versions of the manual.
  
• Hundreds of thousands of Colleges and Universities that were there to teach me how to build and use it
  
• Hundreds of thousands of smaller schools that had teachers that all taught different ways of building and using the telescope
  
• Thousands of Unions that all thought different ways to build and use my scope.

If you were faced with all this, you would probably throw up your hands in disgust and return the telescope. I know I would !

As Christians, this is exactly what we have to deal with.

I know its taken me a while to get here, but I have finally arrived at my original point.

What in the world was God thinking when he wrote the Bible?

Its important to understand that all this mess that I just described was not God's doing. We made this mess.
We invented Denominations.
We invented these Colleges and Universities.
We invented all these different versions of the Bible.
And we invented all these Pastors and Evangelists that have all these different ideas of how to build the proper Christian and make him or her useful.

But even the Bible itself can seem to be a pretty confusing book. Lets take a look at that a bit.

The Bible was not written in English. It was written in Aramaic, Greek and Hebrew. The entire old testament was written in Hebrew, expect for a few chapters that were done in Aramaic. The entire New Testament was written in Greek. To make things even more difficult, most authors of the New Testament used common everyday Greek, while some used a more classical form of Greek.

After the Roman Empire was Christianized, the entire Bible was translated into Latin. In the coming decades, the Bible was translated again and again as needs arose. Then around 1611 AD, the Bible was put into what we know as the King James Bible. The King James bible was written in the style and common usage of the English people that lived in.... you guessed it, England.

This was the Shakespearean era. Shakespeare used words like Thou, Wherefore, Wherto and other words of this nature. In fact, calling the Bible by the one that authorized it, King James, seems strange to me. I think the version should be renamed to the "Shakespearean Bible"?

There have been hundreds more versions since the King James. Some have stuck and some have fallen by the way side. Perhaps the versions that didnt make it were the ones that were sown in poor soil?

The Bible authors wrote the books of the Bible in languages that we dont use today. The Greek language that was used in the Bible is a dead language. So in order for the Bible to be useful to us English speaking types, it had to be re-written. Trouble is that no one can agree on the proper interpretations of the languages used in the Bible. There are many words in Greek that just dont translate well into English. Many Greek words dont have a direct translation at all.

One good example of this is the word "Love". This word is used hundreds of times throughout the Bible. In Greek, the language of the New Testament, there are 4 words that all mean different kinds of Love.

Agápe means unconditional love. In modern day Greek, it means "I love you". Éros is passionate love, with sensual desire and longing.
Philia means friendship or affectionate love in modern Greek. It is a dispassionate virtuous love, a concept developed by Aristotle. It includes loyalty to friends, family, and community, and requires virtue, equality and familiarity.
Storge means "affection" in ancient and modern Greek. It is natural affection, like that felt by parents for offspring. Rarely used in ancient works, and then almost exclusively as a descriptor of relationships within the family. It is also known to express mere acceptance or putting up with situations, as in "loving" the tyrant.

There are hundreds of thousands, depending on who you ask, of other words in the Bible that just dont translate well and in some cases not at all. So this is why no one seems to be able to agree with how to interpret them. So therefore, we have all these hundreds of versions of the Bible.

The difficulty with this is that if a word is not translated properly, it can completely change the meaning. We can get an idea of the problem if we go back to my story of the telescope with the manual that was originally written in Greek. Lets assume that when the manual was translated into English, 1 word was translated incorrectly. The word "Screw" was improperly translated as "Hammer". So when the manual meant to say "Screw the left and right parts together", the bad translation made it to say; "Hammer the left and right parts together."

This 1 word would change the entire project. Instead of a telescope, I might have wound up with a very large well beaten metal toothpick.

The story is the same with Christianity. Lets take 1 of those 4 Greek words for Love and intentionally mess it up. How about using for an example "Love your neighbor". Now the intention of God's statement was that we should have unconditional love, or feelings, for our neighbor. We should have "Agape" love for them. But what if this word was mistranslated as Eros. Now instead of having this unconditional love for our neighbor, we are to fall in love with with our neighbor, which is everyone.

When I found my telescope instructions on Youtube, I was able to skip the written ones and get my telescope assembled easily and quickly. Unfortunately, God didn't use video for the books of the Bible. It had not been invented yet, so he couldn't. But surely there were people that could draw. The Bible does not even have any good illustrations in it. Though you can find some versions today that have these in it. Oddly though, its children's versions of the bible that have these. For some reason, it is seen as a weakness if you need pictures in your Bible. Something I dont get. Personally, I would love to have an adult version of the Bible that has lots of good pictures in it.

This blog may have come across as a bit on the negative side. If it did, that was not my intention.

If we are to point blame at anyone for this mess, its rest securely on us. God is perfect. In his writing of the Bible and setting up the Church, he had to rely on the imperfect, which is us. God gave us an excellent owners manual. If we follow it, we can build a good Christian life which will work just as the master meant it to.

But just be careful who you listen to, and what you read.

If I were to give new Christians, and even old ones, suggestions, they would be this.

• Dont believe everything you hear or read.
  
• Read from more than 1 version of the Bible and compare what they have to say.
  
• Go to whatever Church that God has led you to attend.
  
• Listen to the Pastor, your elders, and those Christians that God has put over you, but your ultimate authority is God, not any man. (Even Pastors make mistakes. If you Church's Pastor says, or thinks, that he is totally right and right all the time, go someplace else.)
  
• Be careful who you let speak into your life.
  
• Test everything you hear and read against the word of God and when in doubt go to God in prayer.
  
• Pray constantly
  
• Study the Bible for yourself from multiple versions.

The bottom line to all this is that God is perfect, but we are not.

• God's Word is perfect and was perfectly inspired. But what we have are translations and as such certain words and phrases can and do vary from translation to translation.
  
• God's Church is the perfect and spotless bride of Christ. But the Church is made up of people that are not.

Preachers going to Hell

Got your attention didn't I?

Well, that was the idea. To get your attention and hopefully keep it. The title of my blog alone probably caused you to make an instant judgement about me. And it was probably not a favorable one. But ya know, thats ok. Im a big boy and I can take it.

In a way this is a follow up to my previous blog on the book "23 minutes in Hell". In that blog, I said that I believe that the Church, which includes us and preachers, have gotten way out of balance.

Did you ever watch the Karate Kid?

In the movie, Mr Miyagi tells Daniel (the kid)
that he must have balance. Balance not just in his Karate stances, but in life. The old saying is that all work and no play makes John a very boring person. We all need to balance work, play, church, family, etc in order to live a productive and happy life.

The Church is no different.

In order to have a complete understanding of what it means to be a Christian and to lead a Christian life, we need a well balanced message. In the history of the Church, we have struggled to find and maintain this balance. We struggle with everything from balancing works and grace to heaven and hell.

Most Churches and Church pastors are very well versed in the heaven part. They seem to have grace, faith, and salvation down pretty well pat.

But what we lack in our modern day Churches is a good understanding of the consequences of sin, which include Hell.

In all my years of attending Church, which are about 35, I have never heard a sermon on hell. In my opinion, its impossible to understand the fullness of Christianity without a good understanding of hell. Its like being told all your life what it means to be good, but never being told what it means to do bad. Without a knowledge of what is means to be bad, its impossible to know what it means to be good.


"What shall we say, then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! Indeed I would not have known what sin was except through the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, "Do not covet."
Romans 7:7

We were given the law for the very reason that we would know that we are in sin and need a savior. I don't know about you, but this seems a bit weird to me. If God had not told me what coveting was, how would I know that I had done it? And if I did not know that I had coveted, would I have coveted?

Its a bit like the old saying of "What came 1st, the chicken or the egg.
The Chicken came from an egg. But a chicken had to be around to lay the egg that the Chicken came from. Of course as Christians, we know the answer to this one. God created a chicken, not an egg. So maybe this is not the best example.

Or maybe the old philosophical thought of; If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

Perhaps an even better example is from a movie called "The Matrix".
In the 1st Matrix movie, Neo had just went to see the oracle for the 1st time. Neo enters the room where the oracle is at. There is a vase in the corner on a table. The oracle tells Neo not to worry about the vase. At this Neo turns around and knocks the vase off the table and breaks it.

Neo asks the oracle how she knew this was going to happen. The oracle tells Neo that what will really puzzle him later on is if she had not told Neo about the vase, would he have still broken it?

This is the same sort of circular logic that God seems to be using.

But that is probably a subject best left for a longer blog later on. What I actually want to cover today is hell and why pastors would, or at least should, be going to hell. This is a subject that every pastor should be covering.

Well, I finally found a pastor that is going to hell. His name is James McDonald.

No... he is not actually going to hell. So dont leave bad comments or contact him and tell him that I said he is going to hell. Not that he would probably care anyway. He might even get a chuckle out of it.

He is going to hell with respect that it is preaching on it. Here is the link. http://jamesmacdonald.com/blog/?p=6279

I wont go into detail on what James had to say. You should listen to it yourself. My main purpose in the blog was simply to point out that this preacher is well balanced. He is preaching on the consequences of sin, the primary one which is hell. And on order to have a full understanding and appreciation of the gospel, Churches need to be balanced.

Nazi Germany and the Anti Christ

I have always been fascinated by Nazi Germany and Hitler. When I was in school, I ever wrote my term paper in Hitler. This time in history still holds an interest for me.

The other day, I watched the 3rd Reich on TV. It was a very good program. I often take some flack for being so interested in things like this. I hear people saying that it was a terrible time and we should just forget it. We should have nothing to do with these horrible things.

Under my breath, I have to laugh at this Hiding-Your-head-in-The-Sand mentality. As Christians, we need to be on constant watch for any evil that might try to raise its ugly head. The best way to know what evil looks like, and avoid it, is to look at what it did in the past. Satan is not that smart. He does not have any new tricks. To learn what he does and how he works, we only have to look at the past.

"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing" Edmund Burke 1797

The other reason I have to laugh at these comments is that if the person that is saying this is a Christian, has he or she not read their Bible?

The Nazi Party, also known as the 3rd Reich, was in power in Germany from 1933 to 1945. Their leader was Adolph Hitler. Hitler and the Nazi party rose to power virtually overnight. Hitler was an extremely charismatic speaker. The entire country swallowed his rhetoric hook line and sinker. He was seen as Germany's saviour. Hitler was even named "Man of the Year" by Time Magazine.

"Hile Hitler" was the mandatory national greeting that every German had to know and use. Young children were taught this greeting on their very 1st day of school. To not use it was to risk being sent to a concentration camp. Thousands of Germans were sterilized to prevent them from having Children because of all sorts of problems that were seen to be potential defects.

In 1936, every child over 10 years of age was required to join the Hitler Youth. This was a training camp where children was trained for warfare. They took a pledge that they would fight and die for hitler. Sadly, many off them did just that.

There were some Germans that did not agree with what Hitler was doing. But they dared not say anything. If you did say something against the party or Hitler, you risked being overheard by someone else. And you never knew who might be listening. Your very own family members might turn you in.

Jews were seen as the scourge of Germany. They were blamed for the everything that was seen as wrong with their country and their life.

They were not allowed to mix with "Real" Germans in any way just like Blacks were treated in the old South. Eventually, the hatred of Jews got so bad, that millions of jews were murdered.

If you were a Jew in Nazi Germany, you could not buy or sell expect in specified areas. Jews were forced to wear insignia to identify them as Jews.

Does any of this sound familiar?



So why do I want to learn about Nazi Germany and Hitler. So I can be on the look out for this sort of thing again. So I can try as best I can to make sure that this atrocity never happens again.

I also believe that it is a preview of things to come here in America. This time, it will be the gentiles turn to reap the wrath of satan instead of the Jews. To get a glimpse of what it will be like and what the Anti-Christ will be like, you only have to look at past events like Nazi Germany and Hitler.

But I will give the same warning on this blog that I gave in my last one. We must not focus on the bad things of the world. Lets instead look at all the good things that God has done and continues to do in this world. Lets keep watch and warn the world of what may happen again, but lets always focus on Jesus and the good that he is going in the US

The Book "23 Minutes in Hell"

The book is called "23 Minutes in hell.
(I wrote this review previously, but decided that I need to re-write it. I am not above admitting when I made a mistake. My original review was in error a bit.)

Right off the bat, the book grabs your attention. Hell is just 1 of those things that fascinates us. Evil itself seems to fascinate us. Don't believe me? Well, let me prove it to ya. When we see a wreck on the freeway, it seems like just about everybody has to stop, or at least slow down, to gawk at it. The news is made up almost entirely of bad news. People getting shot, people suffering from this or that. If all this bad news was not popular, it would not be this way. But this is what we all want to see.

When young girls are growing up, there is just this fascination with that certain bad boy. Many a Pastor's daughter has found out about his attraction to the dark side only too well. There is just something about evil that is alluring. So I have little doubt that this book will not be popular because of its title alone.

Before we get to the book, I want to give you a little background on hell.

When Jesus was on earth, he talked about the mercy and kindness of God, but he also talked about the consequences of sin, which was eternal punishment. In order to make the people understand what eternal punishment was, he had to paint them a picture with his words.

He needed to make hell sound so horrible, so grotesque, that no one would want to go there. He needed a place that the people could immediately picture in their minds. A place that was so horrible that the very mention of the name would strike terror in their hearts.

Jesus found exactly what he was looking for in Gehenna. Gehenna is the name of deep narrow gorge that lies to the south of Jerusalem. It forms a continuation of the Valley of Gihon. It separates the Hill of Zion from the Hill of the Evil Counsel. Tradition has it that the Hill of the Evil Counsel was the place where Caiaphas and Judas met. Tradition also has it that the Hill of Evil Counsel is the present day site of the United Nations Headquarters in Israel.

There is a smell of sulfur in Gehenna (Enoch, lxvii. 6). According to the Babylonian Talmud, the fire of Gehenna burned sixty times hotter than any earthly fire. It was also known as “The Valley of Hinnon”. It was first mentioned in Joshua 15:8. The modern name of Gehenna is "Wadi al-Rababah".

Gehenna was a place where worshipers of the god Molech sacrificed their own children during the reigns of Ahaz and Manasseh. During the reign of Josaiah, Jeremiah was called on by God to destroy the shrines in Topheth, to end the practice and to prevent anyone sacrificing children there (Jeremiah 7:31,32). Despite Josaiah's ending of the practice, Jeremiah also included a prophecy that Jerusalem itself would be made like Gehenna and Topheth.

In Jesus’ time, city refuse, including the dead bodies of both animals and criminals, were thrown into Gehenna. It was constantly on fire with smoke rising from it day and night. Although it is full of fire, there was no light in Gehenna, but only darkness (Matt 8:12). It was a place where there were always maggots. Their worms never died and the fire was never quenched.

I find hell a fascinating subject. As a Christian, I believe it is vitally important to know my enemy. When a nation is going to war, the 1st thing they do is to find out as much as they can about their enemy. They need to know who there enemy is, what abilities their enemy has, what strategies their enemy uses etc.. The more you know about your enemy, the better chance you have of defeating him.

Its no different with satan and hell. If we are to avoid the traps of satan and defeat him in our lives, we need to know something about him. We need to know who satan is, how he works, and his strategies to ensnare us. We also need to have a better concept of hell so that we can tell non-believers about it.

We have lost this in our modern day Churches. Hell is no longer preached from the pulpit like it was in years past. Today, most Churches, Pastors and Christians won't even use the word hell. Maybe this is largely because hell is now a curse word. I believe that this was a carefully crafted plan of Satan.

My Grandad was an old style Southern Baptist Preacher. Preachers of his day were called hell Fire and Brimstone preachers (HFB for short). They were called this because they preached hell and the consequences of sin right from the pulpit. They saw things as black and white with little to no grey at all. For example, If someone did not have food on the table or money to pay bills, the answer was to get off of their lazy backside and go find a job. Or quit spending all their money on cable, or these other useless things.

They would preach a literal hell and describe it much like Jesus did. They would tell people that either they shaped up and accepted Jesus, or they would burn for eternity in hell. They did not pull punches.

Now, I don't advocate scaring people into accepting Jesus just for the sole reason of avoiding hell. But I do believe that their is value in telling both Christians and non-Chirisians alike about the consequences of their actions.

What we lack in these modern times is a symbol of what hell is and what it is really like. We need something like Gehenna so that when people hear of hell, they can pull up a mental picture in their minds. Today the word hell us used as a part of normal speech for many people. We have been desensitized to hell. No longer does it mean a place of eternal punishment and torture that defies imagination. So is it any wonder than when we as Christians tell someone that they are in danger of going to hell, they think of it as no big deal. It has no meaning to them at all. I think a book like this is invaluable to bring people back to a knowledge of this awful place.

On with the actual review of the book.

I love books like this that shake up the status quo. Another book that really shook up Christians and created controversy was The Shack.

The main reason why this book is controversial is because the author talks as though his going to hell is a factual account and so it literally happened. He claims that God sent him to hell and brought him back for the sole purpose of being able to tell everyone how horrible it is so that no one would want to go there and so they would get saved. In the book, he even describes getting beaten my demons and tortured without mercy.

This is the way the book opens up. After his trip into hell, he was taken up to heaven where Jesus explained why he was sent there. Then he says that he floated into his bedroom where his body was at. So what the author actually experienced was a dream or some sort of Out of Body experience.

Just in case you are thinking that visions and Out of Body experiences are anything new, here are a couple scriptures to ponder.

In Acts 2:17, God tells us; "'In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams.

In 2 Corinthians 12:3, Paul says; "I must go on boasting. Although there is nothing to be gained, I will go on to visions and revelations from the Lord. 2 I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know—God knows. 3 And I know that this man—whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows— 4 was caught up to paradise and heard inexpressible things, things that no one is permitted to tell.

I think that every Christian should read it. We all need a fresh revelation from God of what hell is and why He does not wish that anyone choose to go there. I do want to add to this just a bit though as a word of warning.

We must avoid building a Church or ministry around something like this. As Christians, and as a Church, our focus must be on Jesus, His Love, and the positive message of salvation. There are Ministries out there that focus on things of Satan like Deliverance Ministries. I believe this is wrong. If you go looking for Satan, you will see him behind every bush. Like in most everything else in life, there must be balance. Ecclesiastes 3:1 says that for everything there is a season. While it is good to know who our adversary is, we must be careful to maintain our focus on Jesus, not our adversary.

Miracles - Regular, Unleaded or "There is no Spoon"?

My family attends a local Assembly of God church here in Idaho. At Church, some gal came up and offered the Church the opportunity to go on a short term missions trip to Africa.

Its might be a wonderful opportunity for us. I used to be a missionary with YWAM. This was several years ago.

I have always wanted to get back into missions. My daughter is a fairly typical 8 year old. Well, she is better than typical. She loves God and was saved when she was 6. But she is typical in the sense that she is spoiled by the abundance that we have here in America. She does not know what its like to be poor and not have access to cell phones, computers, and anything she wants to eat anytime she wants to eat it.

Our daughter wants to go. She is excited about it. She picked up a love for other cultures and curiosity from me.

My wife has always wanted to go to Africa. So this trip seems to fit the bill.

The trip is going to be expensive. We just finished our taxes and are expecting a really nice refund. We could certainly say that getting this refund money is a miracle that will all but pay for our missions trip.

Now we just need to figure out if God really wants us to use this money to go on this trip or do the more logical thing. We have amazed a little credit card debt from Christmas. We also need to do some things around the house and such. This money would be perfect for that. So the dilemma begins.

Is it more logical to spend 6 grand for a 7 day trip to Africa or spend it on making our lives here better by paying off bills? Of course in the end, we need to do what God is telling us to do.

But this leads me to a question in my mind. I could say that getting this refund from our taxes is a miracle. The one that we have been looking for to pay for our missions trip. But this tax refund is one that we worked for. Its money that the government owes us. So does that really make it a miracle?

When I think of miracles, I think of something that came out of nowhere. Like Israel when they fled from Egypt. They were led around by a pillar of fire. The Red Sea parted before them so they could walk on dry land. I think of the burning bush that Moses saw on the mountain of God. I think of all those plagues of Egypt. These are examples of blow-your-mind, out-of-thin-air, impossible to explain otherwise, flat out miracles.

A miracle like this would be if God send us a check for 6 grand in the mail, or had someone call us up on the phone that we didn't even know and tell us that they were paying the 6 grand for us to go on the missions trip. Or if the dog were digging in the backyard and dug up a lock box, which contained 6 grand. Something like that would fit this definition of a draw-dropping, mind blowing, out-of-no-where, bonifide miracle.

But what we see most of the time are everyday miracles. The fact that I wake up every day is a miracle. The fact that no one anywhere has pushed the button and blown us all to hades is a miracle. I have a poor diet. So the fact that I have a good metabolism so I don't weigh 500 pounds is a miracle. And on and on I could go. These are everyday miracles, so we really don't pay them much mind. They are so common that we don't even think of them as miracles at all.

Then there are things that are miraculous but can be explained by circumstances, or life. For example, a while back, I got a check in the mail for $1200. This check was completely unexpected. So it seemed to fit the definition of a miracle. But when I looked at the check, it was from a company that I used to work for. It was back pay that they owed me.

So, since I can explain it as normal life, does this mean that it was not really a miracle?

I think this is going to be a study that I need to post over in my other blog Biblical Theories.

I think that God does things this way on purpose. If it was that easy, it would not require any going to God for these things. I don't think that God does these Mind-Blowing, out of no where miracles too much anymore. Why? Cause, they dont work to foster faith. For an example of this, you only have to look as far as Israel when God took them out of Egypt. God did more mind blowing miracles for them than at any other time except when Jesus walked the earth.

Israel saw 1st hand all these mighty miracles, yet they doubted God at every turn. If we look at the miracles that Jesus did, we see the same things. The very people that received those miracles are the same ones that put him to death. Mind blowing, bonfide miracles are not really that good for getting people to believe.

So maybe God went to plan B. Or perhaps he had this plan all along. Most miracles we see today can be explained away somehow. They were due to natural phenomena, normal circumstances, doctors, etc...

Even most, or perhaps all, of those miracles that we thought were the huge bonfide ones of the Bible can be explained. I have heard it said that all of the plagues of Egypt had natural explanations. So perhaps this is the way it has always been. Perhaps God has and always will work through the natural. What we call "The natural" is after all his domain as well.

But I think the bottom line to this is just how much did God intervene to cause that miracle to happen? Or did God intervene at all? If God did not intervene, but left it to something that he already created or set in motion, can we still call it a miracle?

When I got that check for $1200, did God intervene to force that company to send that money to me? Or was it just a circumstance that happened because that company owned me that money? Or does it even matter?

Perhaps no matter if God intervened directly or not, its still a miracle. Or is it that a miracle has to be defined as a direct intervention by God and is one of those Mind-blowing, out of no-where things?

If we determine that God has to directly intervene in order for it to really be a miracle, how do we know that? How can we know for sure that God did it?

So going back to my original problem of going on this short term missions trip to Africa, how can I know what kind of miracle getting this tax return money was, or if it was a miracle at all? Perhaps it was just money that the feds owed us.

But no matter how you define this, does it make it any less of a God thing?

I think in the end, at least for me, applying logic to this, or trying to figure it out is useless. I can only use what I think I know of God and prayer to try to discern what he wants us to do with this money.