Every Word Matters

Someone asked me an interesting and fun question recently that I thought I might share the answer with you. The Question? Did Methuselah die in the flood? In Genesis chapter 5, Moses recorded the genealogy of Adam, and we learn that Methuselah, lived 969 years- longer than anyone else recorded. Here is where you can get a pencil and paper out: If you take the age of Methuselah when Lamech was born (187), add to that Lamech's age when he begot Noah (182) and the age of Noah when the floodwaters came (600), you discover that Methuselah was 969 years old the year the Flood occurred [187+182+600=969].
Since Genesis 5:27 indicates this was the age at which Methuselah died, it is logical to conclude that he died the year of the Flood. However, the Bible does not indicate that he died as a result of the Flood, so it is important not to assume that he did. Not much is known of his character, but we do know about his family. He was the son of Godly Enoch, and his son Lamech prophesied with spiritual insight at the birth of Noah in Genesis 5:29.
We also have to consider the meaning of his name. When Methuselah was born, his godly father must have prophetically known of things to come, because Methuselah means “When he dies, Judgment”. It is not mere coincidence then, that the same year he died, God judged the sinful world with the great Flood of Noah's day.
We have one more very significant clue that might go un-noticed. Genesis 7:10 says: “And after the seven days the flood waters came on the earth.” Note, that it does not say after seven days, but after the seven days. So, why was it necessary for seven days to pass? According to the Jewish commentaries on this text, it was likely a sitting Shiva, a custom in which family members of the deceased sit and mourn for the loved one for a period of 7 days. The Rabbis explain that the person who died was Methuselah, and Noah and his family sat Shiva for him for 7 days.
While it cannot be concluded for certain, the scriptures indicate that the death of Methuselah, was the sign from God to Noah, that God’s judgment was eminent. It is my opinion that Methuselah died a week before the flood, not in it. It also shows us that God himself delayed the coming of the flood based on the merit of this great man for 7 days. This study reinforces the significance of the meaning of every single word in the scriptures. The meaning of the names and even the word “the”.

PhobiaNovusPhobia

As a child, I knew that a phobia was an irrational fear. I knew of some common psychological disorders like Claustrophobia (confined spaces), and Arachnophobia (fear of spiders), as well as the irrational fear of heights, flying, and germs. With the release of the latest Time Magazine: “Is America Islamophobic?”, those who oppose the Ground Zero Mosque, Franklin Graham, myself and the majority of American citizens have been identified as fear mongers and closed minded bigots. The press has introduced us to a whole new category of phobias lately that vilify those with differing opinions.
This is nothing new to me. As a pastor I have been called a homophobe, because I believe that homosexual acts are a sin. I don’t have an irrational fear of people who are homosexual, and their behavior does not hinder my day to day activities at all, but the label is given, whether I am seeing a psychiatrist or not.

Is fear not a good thing to have? In fact, rational fear is a very good thing, because it can save your life! Don’t we want our kids to fear being run over by a car when crossing a busy street? Fear of the Nile Crocodile is a good thing to have if the Nile River is your primary source of water. Fear of the growing radicalization of Islam is not irrational at all. For those families who are mourning their loved ones in New York, or thousands of other places around the world, where terrorists have achieved their objective, fear is not only rational- it is the very objective of the violence! If you were a 14 year old Pakistani girl, who’s best friend lost her eyes, nose and ears from an acid attack because she said "no" to a marriage proposal, would your fear of saying no to a proposal be irrational? If you lived in Poland in 1938 and your neighbors were disappearing would your fear of Nazi’s be irrational?
New terms have been created that are intended to silence people with legitimate concerns, and in an ironic twist, used to label those who voice opposition as fear mongers. Are all our new security measures that we are hassled with at airports, ferries, and sports events due to irrational fears too? The fact that our national security administration has shrunk back from naming Radical Islam as the primary danger does not negate the rational response. Am I an abortionphobe because I oppose abortion or a broccoliphobe because I don’t like that vegetable?

Airport security has the approval of the press to calculate risk and thereby protect the public from terrorists. But they would become "islamophobic profilers" if they were to focus on certain characteristics that identify those terrorists, such as an Terrorist harboring country of origin or one who faithfully attends the Dar Al Hijrah Islamic Center in Falls Church, Virginia, because that would be totally irrational. Instead of the identifying the mosque as the learning center for two pilots of 9/11 and the Fort Hood Shooter, they print quotes like these: “We at Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center reiterate our condemnation of this brutal murder. We continue to send our condolences and prayers for the recovery of all the families and victims of this godless act.” and “Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center is one of the largest and diverse Islamic Centers in the nation. We are committed to serve the community as a place of worship, education and social services.”

The greatest irony of all is that when Radical Islam succeeds in their goal of instilling terror into their enemies, their allies, the American press, identifies the real threat to the American ideal: Islamophobes. I think I am developing PhobiaNovusPhobia. (Fear of New phobias)

Getting More out of the Bible

I was recently asked “how can I get more out of scripture when I read it.” Like a meteorologist gets more out of looking at the sky than the average person because of their training, we too, with some simple disciplines can get more out of scripture than first meets the eye. So I am going to do a few blogs on the subject.. First installment- Look for word repetition and patterns in scripture. Word repetition can occur in Books of the Bible, as well as a single teaching within a book. Word repetition in scripture is sort of like underlining something or using bold print when we take notes- it provides and emphasis to something that is important. Take for example John 15:1-8 (NIV)

The Vine and the Branches
15 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. 2 He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. 3 You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. 4 Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.
5 “I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. 6 If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. 7 If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. 8 This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.
a The Greek for prunes also means cleans.

I have made a word construction from three different words that are repeated in the teaching. In this text you can easily identify Branch, Vine and Fruit and repeated words. Identify how these words are used in conjunction with the rest and the passage comes alive. If therefore you understand the importance of these three words, you will understand the text more fully and it’s implications in your own life. You can apply this principle to almost every passage you study.

Crying Over Spilled Oil

The daily news stories of the catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf is cause for great frustration, anger and sadness in me. Accidents happen every day. Plenty of well intentioned people cause harm to others when bad circumstances come together. My frustration in this debacle is that no one is pulling out all the stops to stop this river of oil, conveniently called "a leak" from polluting what God has put us in charge of! Instead of making every effort to clean it up, the politicians seem more interested in how they can spin it for their advantage.

The president has used it as a platform to stop oil drilling in the Gulf, and for the global warming (pardon me, the climate change)agenda. Conservatives seem content to use the poor management of the situation as a whipping stick on the current administration. Oil companies have spent a lot of advertising dollars to reassure us how much they care about the environment. BP, despite it's incompetence, continues to tell us that they are doing everything they can.

Meanwhile, millions of people's livelihoods and likely billions of God's creatures are being wrecked every day. We came up with the technology to put men on the moon 40 years ago, but we can't seem to coordinate our efforts well enough to plug this hole?! I am not a rocket scientist, but has anyone thought of dropping a huge cement block over the thing? It is a sin against God and his wondrous creation, and people are treating it as a political opportunity. I weep along with the creation and those poor folks who live in the Gulf region.

I am appealing to a greater power- Dear Lord, please provide us with someone with the authority, means, and intelligence who can take charge and stop this flow of oil. And Lord, please help them get past the politicians to get it done soon. Amen.

Hebrew made simple

Comprehending the Bible can be a challenge, but with a little attention you can identify some trends in the Bible that will help you get more out of God's word.For example: The place BETH-EL: A town on the border of the territory of Ephraim (Josh. 16:1–4), at an important road junction 11 miles north of Jerusalem. Abraham built an altar there, Jacob had a dream there (Gen. 28:10–22), and named it Bethel:

House (Beth) of God (El)- which is the meaning of the Hebrew name. We also find Beth in Bethlehem (house of bread), Bethesda (House of grace) and Bethshan (house of quiet). Maybe when all my children leave the home some day it will become Bethshan!

You might recognize the similar el prefix or suffix in other Hebrew words like Immanuel(God with us), Elijah (Jehovah is God), and Israel (He struggles with God)- The name given to Jacob when he struggled with God.

Now that you know that el means God, and Beth means house, you will recognize them in hundreds of texts.

Faith Resurrected

Jesus’ disciples suffered martyrdom for their convictions, but other religious people also demonstrate changed lives because of their religious beliefs. Many have willingly given their lives for their faith: Muslims; followers of various religious teachers and political ideologies have inspired life changes and even martyrdom. But transformed lives, whether the disciples or others, does not prove that what they believe is true- It only proves that those who are willing to suffer and die for their religious commitments truly believe them to be true. Is there a difference then between the two?
In general, people committed to a religious or political message really believe it to be true. But belief in something does not make it true. Like other examples of religious or political faith, the disciples believed and followed their leader’s teachings. But unlike all others, the disciples had more than just their beliefs—they had seen the resurrected Jesus. This is a crucial distinction; their faith was true precisely because of the resurrection. Their doubts are well documented in the scriptures, until they witnessed the resurrected Jesus.
Think about it. Which is more likely—that an ideology we believe in is true, or that I and a number of others saw my wife Amy several times during the last month? If eternity rested on our conviction, would we rather base our assurance on the truth of a particular religious or political view, or would we rather have that faith confirmed with repeated cases of seeing someone? Hundreds of people witnessed that Amy was here, in the last month, as hundreds witnessed Jesus after the resurrection.
Unlike the world’s faiths, which rest on certain beliefs being true, the disciples both heard the unique teachings of Jesus, his many miracles and him after being dead and buried! Jesus was the only founder of a major world religion who had miracles reported of Him in reliable sources within a few decades. But most of all, He confirmed His message by rising from the dead. The disciples, both individuals and groups, saw Him repeatedly. Even two skeptics—James the brother of Jesus and Saul of Tarsus (Paul)—witnessed the resurrected Jesus.
No wonder the disciples were willing to die for their faith!

Abortion- A Wide Long View

Whether it be a part of health care legislation, a matter of law (Roe vs. Wade in America) or a conversation about an “unwanted” pregnancy, it is especially important that Christians are aware of our tradition, and what the Bible teaches about abortion. Abortion has been practiced throughout the world from ancient times, but the fear of death and lack of access to physicians who performed “safe” abortions placed natural limitations on the procedure. In classical paganism, abortion and euthanasia was common and widely approved. The performing of abortions and doing harm was specifically prohibited for physicians who had taken the Hippocratic Oath (4th Century BC and thereafter). This oath to the gods was a step towards saving human life and not performing abortions, but those who lived by this law were the exception. One of the great triumphs of the growth of Christianity in the western world was to greatly diminish the practice of abortion and infanticide in those parts of the world.

Christianity gave the pro-life movement another dimension as the church of Jesus Christ swept through the Roman world, setting standards in medicine, culture, and public policy. Christianity had this effect because what the Bible teaches about human life. If you look for “abortion” in a concordance you won’t find it, as that term was not used by the people of that day, but scripture is not silent on the subject. The biblical foundations for prohibition on induced abortion are found in the doctrines of creation and incarnation. The starting point for a biblical understanding of human nature is the truth that human beings are created in God’s image (imago Dei). It is clear from Genesis 1:26–27 that human beings are distinguished from all other creatures (kinds), by our bearing the likeness of our Maker. The image applies to Jew and Gentile, religious and irreligious, young and old. The issue here is not complex. If someone is human, that person bears the divine image and his or her life is sacred. It’s genetic. With the recognition that human life is sacred, the scriptures guide our actions. This foundation underlies the commandment “Do not murder” (Ex 20:13) and provides a straightforward response to abortion, because it applies to all human beings, from the beginning of life to its end. “Whoever sheds man’s blood, his blood shall be shed by man, for God made man in His image.”) This teaching is also of central importance in the use of human embryos for research and cloning. There is only one logical position one can take from the scriptures: those who are human are made in the divine image and should not be murdered. The main argument against this truth comes in the debate of when a human life begins.
That is where the doctrine of the incarnation comes in. When we celebrate Christmas, we remember that the incarnation of the Son of God, the second Person of the Trinity, took human form and did so from the beginning of human biological existence. He did not just come as a man. The incarnation began with conception. Mary was told by the angel that she would conceive by a miracle, the human life of the Son of God. Shortly afterward she visited Elizabeth, where John the Baptist’s first testimony to his kinsman and Lord is given. As a six month fetus, he leaped in his mother’s womb at the presence of the days-old embryonic Jesus (Lk 1:39–45). With the theological foundations of imago Dei, and the incarnation, the many references to unborn life in the prophets, Job, and especially Psalms (particularly Psalm 139) take on powerful significance.

For this reason, cultures that have remained Christian have a reverence for God, and laws by church and state that prevent the large scale practice of abortion. Many of these laws prohibiting abortion have since been abolished, even in Christianized nations. The influence of the church held fast in the western world until naturalist philosophy, and Darwinian evolution theory displaced the predominant Christian view of man. The devaluing of human life with naturalism and atheism has set the stage for the practice of abortion to re-emerge on a grand scale. In the last 40 years the United States, Canada, Britain, France, Switzerland, Denmark, Hungary, Romania, Italy, and Australia have legalized abortion. Add this to the nations where it is already legal like Russia and China, the world’s abortion leaders, and you have a worldwide abortion rate that is greater than any point in history.

The combination of modern medicine’s advanced abortion procedures, the decline of Christian influence, and the legalization and accessibility of abortion in more countries is yielding an estimated 42 million aborted babies per year worldwide. Nations who maintain a predominantly Christian influence are the world leaders in low abortion statistics and they all have laws against it. Like the physicians who originally took the Hippocratic Oath, Christians find themselves going against the cultural current of the world. If we are to change this grievous trend in our own country and the world it will be through the spread of Christianity and the reestablishment of the biblical teaching of the sanctity of human life. When nations recognize the authority of our creator and God’s word, rather than men’s, the culture and public policy will change.