What Do We Do Here? And Why?

In a nutshell, we try to expose the darkness of deceit with the light of truth whenever we can in an effort to point people to the cross and the salvation that is offered to us freely in Jesus Christ and His sacrifice on our behalf (Ephesians 5:11; Matthew 10:16).

Here's an appropriate quote from Chuck Missler that I recently came across:


Jesus' story is a love story written in blood on a wooden cross that was erected in Judea about two thousand years ago. His crucifixion wasn't a tragedy; it was an achievement! Announced in advance in the Garden of Eden at the dawn of history, He made His human debut in a manger in Bethlehem, paid a cosmic price on our behalf at the Cross, and now appears ready to finalize His climax of all human history on our near horizon. In the Biblical record, every detail, every place name, every number, has been skillfully tailored by deliberate design. And they all point to Him. He is on every page, intricately hidden in every detail of the text. Deciphering these 'codes' is our ultimate challenge.


What an exciting thought to read it described that way! What an exciting time to be alive!

Now, contrast that with what we found at New Wineskins recently to get an idea of why we spend so much time looking at pop culture:


Seriously though, wisdom and discernment are called-for here -- both in swallowing this wholesale or in rejecting it out of hand. Either way, as one of my favorite pastors likes to say: 'The main things are the plain things and the plain things are the main things.' God is in control of it all.

I was emphatically done with this real-life parable/allegory last night. Done, done, done. I don’t like being thought of (or beginning to think of myself) as a gloom-and-doom nut-job. Yet without any effort on my part, it just keeps going. I’ve asked myself: Can one make patterns this deep and this densely interconnected from anything in the news? Answer: no. Even the best writers of pure fiction inspired by the news end up with a product that’s more limited than this — flatter and less rich with symbolic meaning.

I’ve asked myself also: Is this the Holy Spirit leading? Or some other spirit? Or just my fevered brain? If you’re not inclined to believe in a living, active, personal God who came down to be with us (Emmanuel) in the flesh, working out His perfect plan for individual human beings by dying on a cross for our sins, and for mankind in general via history, past, present and future, then the answer is easy: fevered brain.

Yet I keep getting these quiet, subliminal reassurances that get stronger the more time I spend in the word: No. It’s good to test the spirits, but not to doubt everything. There lies true insanity. Read the Bible and look at how real-life events helped to prepare God’s people in the past… how they echo, sending powerful messages in miniature. It has always been thus. Allegories and prophetic symbolism works on people at levels they can’t even know. It is to the good. Write it.

One more piece of context, then the story.

If you were God and you wanted to get through to idolatrous Americans disinclined to take you at your Word, how would you do it?

I don’t know. He’s God and I’m not. He has ways we cannot fathom. Yet I should think that, being a merciful God who, as with all love and light, is active and takes initiative, reaching out and wanting no one to be lost, He would seek them (I should say ‘us’) where they 'are', just as Jesus did in eating and meeting with sinners.

Like those pesky bottom-of-the-screen ads on television that keep getting larger and more blatant and persistent each year, I would 'get in their face' wherever they happened to be paying attention already. I would use sports, money and fame to tell parables of my abiding love for them… if I were God…which I’m not.


I hope that clarifies things a bit for any new visitor to this site especially as we get ready to embark upon 2010.