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Bible Discussion / When Is Noncompliance Right in God's Sight?

« on: April 20, 2022, 05:23:26 AM »

I first wrote this on a friend's Facebook post a few weeks ago (due to Facebook character limits, it ended up being spread across three comments!), and having saved a file of it, thought it might be worth sharing here. I've been meaning to do this for a little while, actually, so now I'm finally getting it done.

Compliance vs. noncompliance is a rather interesting issue for us Christians, because as a general rule in the Scriptures, we are encouraged to be obedient (and thus compliant). Noncompliance is normally associated with rebellion, and Scripture usually frowns on this. A couple of examples:

For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the word of the LORD, he hath also rejected thee from being king. (1 Samuel 15:23)

An evil man seeketh only rebellion: therefore a cruel messenger shall be sent against him. (Proverbs 17:11)

It is important to understand however that the rebellion condemned by Scripture is specifically rebellion against God. Notice in the 1 Samuel quote that King Saul had rejected the word of the Lord. That is a key component of sinful rebellion - disobeying God. There are some other Scriptures that make this clearer:

For I know thy rebellion, and thy stiff neck: behold, while I am yet alive with you this day, ye have been rebellious against the LORD; and how much more after my death? (Deuteronomy 31:27 - the first mention of the word "rebellion" in the Bible makes a direct reference to being rebellious against the Lord)

Therefore thus saith the LORD; Behold, I will cast thee from off the face of the earth: this year thou shalt die, because thou hast taught rebellion against the LORD. (Jeremiah 28:16 - you might remember this one from my post about the false prophet Hananiah)

Therefore thus saith the LORD; Behold, I will punish Shemaiah the Nehelamite, and his seed: he shall not have a man to dwell among this people; neither shall he behold the good that I will do for my people, saith the LORD; because he hath taught rebellion against the LORD. (Jeremiah 29:32)

Another word associated with rebellion is resistance, and here is an example of resistance that is unquestionably sinful:

Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye. (Acts 7:51)

Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith. (2 Timothy 3:8 )

So it is very clear that rebelling against God is a no-no. Indeed, rebellion against God is precisely why the world is in such a horrendous mess today. But what about compliance with human governments? Should we always obey the government, or are there times when we should refuse to comply with government orders?

As a general rule, obedience to the government is encouraged in Scripture, especially this passage in Romans 13:

Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same: For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil. Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake. For for this cause pay ye tribute also: for they are God's ministers, attending continually upon this very thing. Render therefore to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour. (Romans 13:1-7)

So, here it sounds like we should always obey the government and that noncompliance is a bad thing. (Notice resistance again being used in a negative sense here.) However, this passage is also defining the purpose of government. God intends for the governments of this world to protect the good and punish the evil. They are meant to be ministers of God for good. When they punish evildoers, they are instruments of God's own judgement and vengeance against the wicked.

Unfortunately, not all governments are the terrors to evildoers that they should be. Some are so corrupt that they become terrors to the good instead. Some governments make laws that directly contravene God's laws. And this is where noncompliance becomes a legitimate thing for Christians to do. Let's look at some examples from the Scriptures of governments making evil laws and people of God resisting them.

Firstly, a pharaoh in ancient Egypt ordered the murder of baby boys (I'm sure he would have been a supporter of abortion if he had been around today):

And the king of Egypt spake to the Hebrew midwives, of which the name of the one was Shiphrah, and the name of the other Puah: And he said, When ye do the office of a midwife to the Hebrew women, and see them upon the stools; if it be a son, then ye shall kill him: but if it be a daughter, then she shall live. But the midwives feared God, and did not as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the men children alive. And the king of Egypt called for the midwives, and said unto them, Why have ye done this thing, and have saved the men children alive? And the midwives said unto Pharaoh, Because the Hebrew women are not as the Egyptian women; for they are lively, and are delivered ere the midwives come in unto them. Therefore God dealt well with the midwives: and the people multiplied, and waxed very mighty. (Exodus 1:15-20)

So here we see a clear case of noncompliance with a government order - an order that came from no less an entity than the king of Egypt himself. Notice why the midwives disobeyed - because THEY FEARED GOD. Observe also that God BLESSED them for their noncompliance in this instance. These midwives "rebelled" - but NOT against God. They OBEYED God and rebelled against a wicked order to commit murder, which would naturally have been against God's law. God honoured them, not for their rebellion against the government as such, but for obeying Him and doing what was right when the government ordered them to do something that was clearly evil.

Another king, this time in Babylon, made another evil law one day:

Nebuchadnezzar the king made an image of gold, whose height was threescore cubits, and the breadth thereof six cubits: he set it up in the plain of Dura, in the province of Babylon. Then Nebuchadnezzar the king sent to gather together the princes, the governors, and the captains, the judges, the treasurers, the counsellors, the sheriffs, and all the rulers of the provinces, to come to the dedication of the image which Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up. Then the princes, the governors, and captains, the judges, the treasurers, the counsellors, the sheriffs, and all the rulers of the provinces, were gathered together unto the dedication of the image that Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up; and they stood before the image that Nebuchadnezzar had set up. Then an herald cried aloud, To you it is commanded, O people, nations, and languages, That at what time ye hear the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, and all kinds of musick, ye fall down and worship the golden image that Nebuchadnezzar the king hath set up: And whoso falleth not down and worshippeth shall the same hour be cast into the midst of a burning fiery furnace. Therefore at that time, when all the people heard the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and all kinds of musick, all the people, the nations, and the languages, fell down and worshipped the golden image that Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up. (Daniel 3:1-7)

So a government order was given to worship an idol, in clear defiance of the First and Second Commandments. And notice the coercion involved here: anyone who refused to comply would face execution by fiery furnace. Most people, fearing the consequences of disobedience, complied with the order. Would as many of them have obeyed if were not for such a dire threat? It's worth thinking about in relation to vaccine mandates today. Is it right to coerce people into taking a vaccine by threatening them with job loss, exclusion from society and so on? Most probably, fewer people would have chosen to be vaccinated if it were not for the coercive nature of the mandates (which are thankfully largely being removed now).

Anyway, three brave men of God decided not to comply with the evil law that Nebuchadnezzar had made:

There are certain Jews whom thou hast set over the affairs of the province of Babylon, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego; these men, O king, have not regarded thee: they serve not thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up. (Daniel 3:12)

These three men were being noncompliant. It is worth noting too that other people dobbed them in, which is common in dictatorships. Verse 8 reveals this: Wherefore at that time certain Chaldeans came near, and accused the Jews.

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were duly arrested and brought before the king. They made it clear that they were prepared to die rather than disobey God's law. They were "rebelling" against the king of Babylon, but NOT rebelling against God.

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, answered and said to the king, O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up. (Daniel 3:16-18)

Nebuchadnezzar was so angry at the "rebellion" of these three godly Jewish men that he ordered the furnace to be heated seven times hotter (Daniel 3:19) However, the worst schemes of men cannot defeat God, and a most remarkable thing happened next:

Then Nebuchadnezzar the king was astonied, and rose up in haste, and spake, and said unto his counsellors, Did not we cast three men bound into the midst of the fire? They answered and said unto the king, True, O king. He answered and said, Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt; and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God. (Daniel 3:24-25)

Now, if Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego had been sinning by their refusal to comply with government orders in this instance, would God have miraculously saved them from a death like this? By no means. He would have allowed them to die to show His displeasure and judgement on their noncompliance. Instead of that though, He saved them because of their OBEDIENCE to Him, and also to teach the wicked king a lesson. Nebuchadnezzar learned his lesson so well that he CHANGED THE LAW:

Then Nebuchadnezzar spake, and said, Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who hath sent his angel, and delivered his servants that trusted in him, and have changed the king's word, and yielded their bodies, that they might not serve nor worship any god, except their own God. Therefore I make a decree, That every people, nation, and language, which speak any thing amiss against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, shall be cut in pieces, and their houses shall be made a dunghill: because there is no other God that can deliver after this sort. (Daniel 3:28-29)

So the courage of just three men to resist an evil law ultimately resulted in that law being changed. However, if they had complied along with everyone else, the law would never have been changed. Food for thought. Note that they did not break any good laws to bring this about - they only disobeyed the BAD law. They didn't riot in the streets, or loot any shops, or vandalise property, or even shout insults against the king. They just refused to bow to the giant golden idol. That was it. They otherwise went about their lives peacefully, harming no one.

Daniel was yet another who did not comply with an evil law:

Then the presidents and princes sought to find occasion against Daniel concerning the kingdom; but they could find none occasion nor fault; forasmuch as he was faithful, neither was there any error or fault found in him. Then said these men, We shall not find any occasion against this Daniel, except we find it against him concerning the law of his God. Then these presidents and princes assembled together to the king, and said thus unto him, King Darius, live for ever. All the presidents of the kingdom, the governors, and the princes, the counsellors, and the captains, have consulted together to establish a royal statute, and to make a firm decree, that whosoever shall ask a petition of any God or man for thirty days, save of thee, O king, he shall be cast into the den of lions. Now, O king, establish the decree, and sign the writing, that it be not changed, according to the law of the Medes and Persians, which altereth not. Wherefore king Darius signed the writing and the decree. Now when Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went into his house; and his windows being open in his chamber toward Jerusalem, he kneeled upon his knees three times a day, and prayed, and gave thanks before his God, as he did aforetime. (Daniel 6:4-10)

Observe once again that the law contravened God's law. Notice also how COERCION came into it. This time the coercion involved being thrown into a den of lions if the government order was not obeyed. Like his three friends before, Daniel was forced to choose between obeying God and obeying a law that opposed God. He chose to "rebel" against the evil law and obey God. Verses 11-13 show that he was dobbed in. Then these men assembled, and found Daniel praying and making supplication before his God. Then they came near, and spake before the king concerning the king's decree; Hast thou not signed a decree, that every man that shall ask a petition of any God or man within thirty days, save of thee, O king, shall be cast into the den of lions? The king answered and said, The thing is true, according to the law of the Medes and Persians, which altereth not. Then answered they and said before the king, That Daniel, which is of the children of the captivity of Judah, regardeth not thee, O king, nor the decree that thou hast signed, but maketh his petition three times a day. (Daniel 6:11-13) See again how they appeal to the king's pride (they say that Daniel "regardeth not thee", just like the earlier tattletales told Nebuchadnezzar that "these men ... have not regarded thee" - putting the emphasis on disobeying man). Sure enough, Daniel was thrown into the den of lions (albeit by a much more reluctant king). And once again, God delivered him:

Then the king arose very early in the morning, and went in haste unto the den of lions. And when he came to the den, he cried with a lamentable voice unto Daniel: and the king spake and said to Daniel, O Daniel, servant of the living God, is thy God, whom thou servest continually, able to deliver thee from the lions? Then said Daniel unto the king, O king, live for ever. My God hath sent his angel, and hath shut the lions' mouths, that they have not hurt me: forasmuch as before him innocency was found in me; and also before thee, O king, have I done no hurt. Then was the king exceeding glad for him, and commanded that they should take Daniel up out of the den. So Daniel was taken up out of the den, and no manner of hurt was found upon him, because he believed in his God. (Daniel 6:19-23)

So Daniel "rebelled" in this instance because he believed in his God. Once again, he only disobeyed the law that was against God's law. And God honoured his noncompliance with man's evil law, but compliance with His law. Once more too, his "resistance" resulted in a law being changed:

Then king Darius wrote unto all people, nations, and languages, that dwell in all the earth; Peace be multiplied unto you. I make a decree, That in every dominion of my kingdom men tremble and fear before the God of Daniel: for he is the living God, and stedfast for ever, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed, and his dominion shall be even unto the end. He delivereth and rescueth, and he worketh signs and wonders in heaven and in earth, who hath delivered Daniel from the power of the lions. (Daniel 6:25-27)

But if Daniel had given in and complied with the evil law, no change would ever have been effected. The evil law was only done away with because of his noncompliance with it.

We see noncompliance in the New Testament as well. A particularly noteworthy example is demonstrated by Peter and his fellow-apostles:

Then came one and told them, saying, Behold, the men whom ye put in prison are standing in the temple, and teaching the people. Then went the captain with the officers, and brought them without violence: for they feared the people, lest they should have been stoned. And when they had brought them, they set them before the council: and the high priest asked them, Saying, Did not we straitly command you that ye should not teach in this name? and, behold, ye have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine, and intend to bring this man's blood upon us. Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men. (Acts 5:25-29)

That last bit is extremely important, because that is a key determiner in whether we comply with something or not. If man's law clearly agrees with God's Law, we should obey it. But if man's law clearly contravenes God's Law, we should obey God's law and not man's law. A good example from relatively modern times is the laws of Nazi Germany, which among other things legalised the persecution and murder of Jews. Many people disobeyed the government and helped the Jews. They were "rebels" to the Nazis, but doing right in the eyes of God.

When it comes to COVID mandates and restrictions, not all of them are directly against the laws of God. For example, there is no specific Scriptural prohibition against wearing a face mask or taking a vaccine.  It is worth noting however that in the Scriptures, coercion is frequently associated with evil laws, and indeed the Antichrist himself uses it:

And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. (Revelation 13:16-17)

So coercion is associated with a spirit of Antichrist, which is worth noting when you consider all the coercion that has been associated with getting people to take their COVID-19 jabs. If these vaccines were such a great thing, what is the need for so much coercion?

It is also important to understand the value God places on charity:

And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity. (1 Corinthians 13:13)

Is it charitable to force people to choose between getting a vaccine or keeping their jobs? Is it charitable in the eyes of God to exclude some people from society because of their personal medical choices?

In conclusion then, Christians should obey the laws of the land wherever possible, but exceptions should be made when a law is clearly evil. Noncompliance is right when the disobedience is against an unjust, wicked law. From a spiritual standpoint, it is part of the right kind of resistance:

Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. (James 4:7)

Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: Whom resist stedfast in the faith, knowing that the same afflictions are accomplished in your brethren that are in the world. (1 Peter 5:8-9)

If it is not clear whether a law is good or evil, the use of coercion to force compliance is one significant indicator that it is evil. When refusing to comply with specific laws though, we should still endeavour to comply with all other GOOD laws. God is not pleased with things like rioting and looting to protest laws, because these are against His laws and also show lack of charity to one's neighbour. When people in the Bible disobeyed bad laws, they still continued to obey all good ones wherever possible. So if we choose to not comply with a law that is evil, we need to bear that in mind. At all times, we should seek to follow after charity (1 Corinthians 14:1).

This has turned into a bit of an essay (unlike me, I know), but I hope it will edify all of you here and also anyone else who may read this.

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General Discussion / Vaccine Propaganda from 1820

« on: April 16, 2022, 12:56:06 AM »

Recently, while checking out the latest offerings on Project Gutenberg (a site with over 67,000 free e-books of one sort of another, including Christian ones, all public domain), I came across a tract about vaccination that was published in 1820, not long after Edward Jenner's smallpox vaccine began to be used. It's what historians might call a primary-source document. What I found fascinating about this tract is that it contains all the ingredients for the modern-day vaccination narrative. It shows that vaccine propaganda started very early on.

If you want to read the tract online, or download a Kindle or ePub version for your own use, it can be found here: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/67824

It goes by the long-winded title of A Statement of Facts Tending to Establish an Estimate of the True Value and Present State of Vaccination. The author is Sir Gilbert Blane, an eminent Scottish physician who actually did some good things in his career, including saying that sailors should eat lemons to combat scurvy and inventing the tourniquet to stem bleeding from a wound. So he was, you could say, a "trusted medical expert" in his day.

Anyway, here are a few quotes from the tract to show the early development of the modern-day mainstream narrative about vaccination. This is solely about the smallpox vaccine, since no other vaccines had been invented at this stage (as far as I know).

Vaccination is "safe and effective": "It ought to be stated also, with a view to a decision on this question, that Vaccination itself is attended with no danger, and frequently takes effect without any visible disturbance in the system. There is even reason to believe, that in its process it wards off other diseases, by pre-occupying the constitution." (Emphasis mine)

The data doesn't mean what you think it means: "It appears from this statement, that the proportion of deaths from Small Pox to the total mortality, increased in the course of last century; so that Inoculation appears to have added to the mortality. It is but fair to mention, however, that this total mortality is not quite a just scale whereby to measure the relative mortality of Small Pox; for in the course of that century, the general mortality itself was greatly diminished in relation to the population. This diminution of general mortality was chiefly owing to the diminished mortality of children under two years of age, which, at the time when the account began to be kept, 1729, averaged about 9000; but at the end of the century not more than 5000; also to the decrease of fevers, and still more of fluxes. The relation of the mortality of Small Pox to the population, would therefore be a more fair criterion of its increase or decrease."

Opposition to vaccines is based on "misinformation": "Since the suppression of this practice, the adoption of Vaccination, though in a degree so incomplete, in consequence of public prejudice, created entirely by mischievous publications, has been unable to prevent a considerable, though fluctuating, mortality from Small Pox." (My emphasis)

"This is chiefly imputable to the abuse of the press, the general licentiousness of which may be denounced as one of the most grievous evils of this age and country, in regard to other subjects interesting to humanity and public happiness, as well as this; the votaries of error and depravity being more successful, because they find more encouragement in disseminating their principles, than the advocates of truth, virtue, and good order." (Emphasis mine - kind of hard to disagree with his views about the press though!)

Vaccination should be mandatory: "But it is demonstrable, that if at the first moment of this singular discovery, at any moment since, at the present or any future moment, mankind were sufficiently wise and decided to vaccinate the whole of the human species who have not gone through the Small Pox, from that moment would this most loathsome and afflicting of all the scourges of humanity be instantaneously, and for ever, banished from the earth."

"Formerly, Small Pox was one of the greatest embarrassments to the operations of armies; and ships of war were occasionally under the necessity of quitting the sea, from the prevalence of this disorder among their crews. Those lately at the head of the navy and army, with that vigilant wisdom and humanity which become those who direct the affairs of a great and enlightened nation, recommended and enforced the practice of Vaccination in both these departments, to the great furtherance of the public service." (My emphasis)

Anti-vaxxers are "idiots": "And let me here, in the name of humanity, beseech practitioners not to be forward in publishing single cases of failures, real or supposed; for, when the weak minded and uninformed hear of these failures, without hearing at the same time that there are hundreds of cases of permanent security for every single case of failure, they are guided by the exception, which becomes to them the rule; their judgments being thereby most fatally perverted." (Emphasis mine)

"It is of the highest importance to society, that this subject should be seen in its true light, and in all its bearings; for the frequent occurrence of these cases of Small Pox, however safe in themselves, have had a most pernicious effect on the credulous and ignorant, by giving a check to the practice of Vaccination." (My emphasis)

Vaccine injuries or failures are "very rare": It is evident, therefore, that according to that maxim which guides mankind in the conduct of life, namely, that of acting on a general rule and average, and not on exceptions, these adverse instances ought not to have the least influence on practice, even though they were much more numerous. Nor indeed do they, except in the very rare cases here cited, deserve the name of failures; for, though they fail in preventing Small Pox, they do not fail to prevent Death. (Author's emphasis)

Anti-vaccine parents are harming their children: "How many parents are there now who, from a weak distrust in the virtue of Vaccination, have to lament the loss of a child from Small Pox, either casual or inoculated? Many such are known to myself." (Note also in this quote that vaccination is called a "virtue", in keeping with the modern narrative that Vaccination is Next to Godliness.)

Opponents of vaccination should be silenced: "Such are the sentiments which must fill every well constituted mind; and it behoves the whole medical profession, which has already done itself so much honour by the zealous and disinterested encouragement afforded to it, to continue its efforts in eradicating every remaining prejudice against it." (Emphasis mine)

So those are a few selected highlights, but by all means, read and study the whole thing for yourself. Chris, if you ever decide to revise your United Vacci-Nations article someday, this could be a useful resource to cite in that it shows the early development of the modern vaccination narrative that we see today.

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Bible Discussion / Some Thoughts on Jonah 3

« on: March 23, 2022, 06:36:04 AM »

I have been going through the book of Jonah over the last two or three days. While it's quite a short book, not only in terms of chapters, but also in terms of the number of verses in each chapter, there is quite a lot packed into it. Just from the third chapter, which comprises only ten verses, I have gained some interesting insights which I would now like to share.

I'll start with Verse 2:

Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee. (Jonah 3:2)

I want to focus in particular on the last part of that verse. When we preach, we need to make sure that we are preaching what God has bid us to preach, and not just something based on our own human wisdom. There are a lot of preachers around today who say things that may sound quite good, but ultimately they're just speaking visions of their own heart (cf. Jeremiah 23:16 and 23:26). True ministers of God do His bidding and say what He wants them to say.

Now while we may not get messages directly from God the way His prophets did, we still have instructions in the Scriptures about what we're meant to preach. Here are just three examples to be going on with:

And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. (Mark 16:15)

We are bid to preach the Gospel. Not just any old gospel, but THE Gospel.

And daily in the temple, and in every house, they ceased not to teach and preach Jesus Christ. (Acts 5:42)

Whether preaching the Gospel, or just preaching generally, we are bid to preach and teach Jesus Christ.

Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine. (2 Timothy 4:2)

We are bid to preach the Word of God and instruct our hearers in its doctrines.

Getting back to Jonah 3, the next verse I want to look at is Verse 5:

So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them. (Jonah 3:5)

Notice who the people of Nineveh believed. They didn't believe Jonah in his own right. They believed GOD. This is one way to know whether a preacher is of Christ or not. If people believe the preacher, and idolise that person (buying their books and DVDs, for example), that preacher is a wolf seeking to draw disciples away after himself or herself (cf. Acts 20:30). But if preaching results in people believing God, being convicted deeply over their sins and understanding how badly they need Christ as their Saviour, then that preacher is the real deal.

Observe also the remarkable things that can happen when we simply obey God. All Jonah was doing was preaching what God told him to preach, and it had a most extraordinary outcome. He was doing it reluctantly too, but he was still obeying, and God honoured his obedience.

One more thing I want to point out is that in ancient times, putting on sackcloth was a sign of mourning. So what the people of Nineveh are doing here is showing grief and godly sorrow over their sins.

This remarkable citywide repentance was led from the top:

For word came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. (Jonah 3:6)

See here how the king lays aside his robe, which was a symbol of all his power and authority. Wearing it probably would have made him feel very important. Doubtless he would have been very puffed up in it. The way he removes his robe and dons sackcloth instead symbolises a sinner laying aside their pride and humbling themselves before God.

If only Joe Biden, Boris Johnson, Scott Morrison, Jacinda Ardern and other world leaders would follow this ancient king's example! He puts them to shame, just as his repentance (and that of his people) put the unbelievers of Christ's day to shame:

The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here. (Matthew 12:41)

Returning to the repentance of the Ninevites, let's check out Verse 8:

But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands. (Jonah 3:8 )

Here we see the pattern of repentance and conversion that Chris talks about in his repentance teaching. (I haven't read it for a while, so I'm not intentionally copying anything from that, if that too happened to talk about these verses.) The crying mightily unto God was the repentance. Then after conversion, they turned from their evil ways. First they humbled their hearts, then they changed their ways. The grief and godly sorrow for sin (repentance) PRECEDED the turning from sin.

I have one more comment on Verse 10, and then I'll close this out:

And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not. (Jonah 3:10)

The people of Nineveh were not saved by their works. Rather, they were doing works meet for repentance. Turning from their evil way was evidence of their repentance, not the repentance itself. And so as God always does with sinners who truly repent, He had mercy on them - much to Jonah's chagrin (but that's in the next chapter, and this post is about the third one).

As always, hope this has edified. Here's a final thought: don't be like Jonah in your attitude to the lost, but do be like him in obediently preaching what God wants you to preach. You never know what He might do with that!

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Bible Discussion / Hananiah - What He Shows Us About False Prophets and False Teachers Generally

« on: December 30, 2021, 11:25:03 AM »

Recently I have been going through the book of Jeremiah, and not long ago, I read through the 28th chapter, which includes a showdown between Jeremiah and a false prophet named Hananiah. This chapter provides some helpful lessons about false prophets, and false teachers generally, and I thought it would be a useful exercise to go through it and show what I've gleaned. In the process, I'll also look at one or two other Scriptures dealing with false teachers and show how they apply to Hananiah.

Before I dive in properly, some background context: by the time Jeremiah was active, Israel had been divided into the northern and southern kingdoms, and Jeremiah was called by God to preach to the southern kingdom, Judah. In particular, he did a lot of preaching in Jerusalem, then the capital of Judah. This kingdom was given over to all manner of wickedness, including pagan worship, fornication and child sacrifice, among other things. God was ready to judge all this wickedness by sending the army of Babylon (headed up by King Nebuchadnezzar, the same one featured in the book of Daniel) to invade Judah, besiege Jerusalem and carry away the Jews into a captivity that would last 70 years. But He sent Jeremiah to make one last plea for repentance. However, his prophesying and preaching fell on deaf ears. In fact, Jeremiah was mocked and scorned to such an extent that at one stage he wished he'd never been born! But despite his immense unpopularity, he kept faithfully preaching the message God told him to.

But while Jeremiah warned the people about the coming Babylonian invasion, and also told the people to surrender and go into captivity because those who chose to stay and fight would end up being killed by sword, famine or pestilence, other prophets had a rather different message, and one such prophet was Hananiah. So let's have a look now at what he had to say:

And it came to pass the same year, in the beginning of the reign of Zedekiah king of Judah, in the fourth year, and in the fifth month, that Hananiah the son of Azur the prophet, which was of Gibeon, spake unto me in the house of the LORD, in the presence of the priests and of all the people, saying, Thus speaketh the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, saying, I have broken the yoke of the king of Babylon. Within two full years will I bring again into this place all the vessels of the LORD'S house, that Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon took away from this place, and carried them to Babylon: And I will bring again to this place Jeconiah the son of Jehoiakim king of Judah, with all the captives of Judah, that went into Babylon, saith the LORD: for I will break the yoke of the king of Babylon. (Jeremiah 28:1-4)

Here we see two key characteristics of false teachers. Firstly, they can sound a lot like genuine people of God. The way Hananiah talks sounds very much like how Jeremiah himself spoke. They can use the same phrases and the same general pattern of speech to make themselves appear Christian. For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works. (2 Corinthians 11:13-15) Hananiah was such a minister of Satan, cunningly transforming himself to appear as a true prophet. Secondly, they preach a message that appeals to people. The truth is often not very appealing. Now go, write it before them in a table, and note it in a book, that it may be for the time to come for ever and ever: That this is a rebellious people, lying children, children that will not hear the law of the LORD: Which say to the seers, See not; and to the prophets, Prophesy not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceits: Get you out of the way, turn aside out of the path, cause the Holy One of Israel to cease from before us. (Isaiah 30:8-11) The people of Judah didn't want to hear Jeremiah's right things. But they would have been loving the smooth things and deceits uttered by Hananiah! He was also using good words to deceive his hearers. For they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly; and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple. (Romans 16:18) One could also describe this little speech of Hananiah's as "great swelling words": For when they speak great swelling words of vanity, they allure through the lusts of the flesh, through much wantonness, those that were clean escaped from them who live in error. (2 Peter 2:18) Hananiah was saying, in so many words, "Don't worry about this Nebuchadnezzar dude. Our God, the GOD OF ISRAEL, is gonna take him down! He's gonna totally smash him! In two years, we'll all be back to normal, guys." That kind of talk certainly sounded more appealing than "You're going into captivity for 70 years because of your sins, don't fight it, just surrender, because the Lord has given you into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar", which is a rough summary of what Jeremiah was preaching around this time.

Actually, a third point that I came across in Matthew Henry's commentary on this chapter is that false teachers only promise MATERIAL blessings, whereas true ministers of God emphasise the SPIRITUAL blessings He offers to those who repent and put their faith and trust in Jesus Christ. Like today's "prosperity preachers", Hananiah is all about the material things only. In his world, Nebuchadnezzar is going down, the treasures of the Temple are coming back, and life is going to be just peachy. It's all about the here and now. He does not speak one word about matters of eternal importance.

After listening to this fair speech by Hananiah, Jeremiah responds with some rather delicious sarcasm:

Then the prophet Jeremiah said unto the prophet Hananiah in the presence of the priests, and in the presence of all the people that stood in the house of the LORD, Even the prophet Jeremiah said, Amen: the LORD do so: the LORD perform thy words which thou hast prophesied, to bring again the vessels of the LORD'S house, and all that is carried away captive, from Babylon into this place. (Jeremiah 28:5-6)

Jeremiah is saying in so many words, "Would that it were so!" In some ways, Jeremiah himself probably would have been pleased if Hananiah's prophecy had been a true one. I must say that it's interesting Jeremiah reacts this way rather than say straight up, "That's a pack of lies!" Rather than disagreeing with Hananiah, he starts out by mockingly agreeing with him. However, he goes on to point out that he is not the first "doomsaying" prophet of God:

Nevertheless hear thou now this word that I speak in thine ears, and in the ears of all the people; The prophets that have been before me and before thee of old prophesied both against many countries, and against great kingdoms, of war, and of evil, and of pestilence. The prophet which prophesieth of peace, when the word of the prophet shall come to pass, then shall the prophet be known, that the LORD hath truly sent him. (Jeremiah 28:7-9)

This last bit is particularly key. Rather than outright accuse Hananiah of being a false prophet, Jeremiah instead says, in essence, "Let's see if this prophecy of yours comes true. If it does, then it came from God. If it doesn't, then it did not." Jeremiah doesn't have to call Hananiah a false prophet when the failure of his prophecy will say it instead. He echoes the principle expressed in Deuteronomy 18:22, When a prophet speaketh in the name of the LORD, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the LORD hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him. Very often (although not always), false prophets give prophecies of peace. That is because preaching peace is far more popular than preaching doom for the unrepentant! Hananiah was saying there was going to be peace again in just a couple more years. That would have made people feel good, unlike that mean old Jeremiah who was always making people feel bad with his reproving of their sins and warnings of God's judgement.

False teachers tend to be bold, and Hananiah is unperturbed by what Jeremiah had to say to him. Let's see now what he does next:

Then Hananiah the prophet took the yoke from off the prophet Jeremiah's neck, and brake it. And Hananiah spake in the presence of all the people, saying, Thus saith the LORD; Even so will I break the yoke of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon from the neck of all nations within the space of two full years. And the prophet Jeremiah went his way. (Jeremiah 28:10-11)

To understand why Jeremiah was wearing a yoke around his neck, we need to go back to the previous chapter. Thus saith the LORD to me; Make thee bonds and yokes, and put them upon thy neck (Jeremiah 27:2) The reason is to symbolise the following: And it shall come to pass, that the nation and kingdom which will not serve the same Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, and that will not put their neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon, that nation will I punish, saith the LORD, with the sword, and with the famine, and with the pestilence, until I have consumed them by his hand. (Jeremiah 27:8 )

So Jeremiah had the yoke around his neck in the first place to illustrate that not only Judah, but many other nations around it, would be forced to serve the king of Babylon. He didn't just put it on for a lark, but because God specifically instructed him to do so. It was a visual reminder of God's judgement. However, Hananiah kind of "hijacks" the yoke to illustrate his own false prophecy. Here we see another important characteristic of false teachers: they take the things of God and use them for their own twisted purposes. Hananiah took the symbol of God's judgement and turned it into a false symbol of liberation from Babylon. (Notice again how he mimics the speech patterns of a real prophet.) It's like how today they take the rainbow and turn the symbol of God's promise not to flood the world into a symbol of perversion that He judges! Of course, what they most often twist is the Word of God itself: As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction. (2 Peter 3:16) Whereas Jeremiah was faithfully obeying God, Hananiah was really just going by his own imagination. Jeremiah himself exposes this particular characteristic of false teachers: Thus saith the LORD of hosts, Hearken not unto the words of the prophets that prophesy unto you: they make you vain: they speak a vision of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of the LORD. They say still unto them that despise me, The LORD hath said, Ye shall have peace; and they say unto every one that walketh after the imagination of his own heart, No evil shall come upon you. (Jeremiah 23:16-17) This is exactly what Hananiah was doing.

Paul warns in 2 Corinthians 11:15 that the end of false teachers shall be according to their works, and Hananiah was about to find this out. Judgement was about to be pronounced on him, and Jeremiah was to give him the bad news. Let's look at the first part of this:

Then the word of the LORD came unto Jeremiah the prophet, after that Hananiah the prophet had broken the yoke from off the neck of the prophet Jeremiah, saying, Go and tell Hananiah, saying, Thus saith the LORD; Thou hast broken the yokes of wood; but thou shalt make for them yokes of iron. For thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; I have put a yoke of iron upon the neck of all these nations, that they may serve Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon; and they shall serve him: and I have given him the beasts of the field also. (Jeremiah 28:12-14)

What God is saying here is that Hananiah's false prophecy of peace in two years is going to result in worse bondage for the people of Judah. The false belief that Nebuchadnezzar would be defeated in just two years would encourage them to remain in Jerusalem and fight the Babylonians, the very thing God had told them NOT to do! Such is the way of false teachers. The "freedom" they promise actually leads to greater bondage. While they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption: for of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage. (2 Peter 2:19) Hananiah was just such a servant of corruption.

The next two verses reveal two more key characteristics of false teachers. Here's the first:

Then said the prophet Jeremiah unto Hananiah the prophet, Hear now, Hananiah; The LORD hath not sent thee; but thou makest this people to trust in a lie. (Jeremiah 28:15)

Another false prophet is condemned for the same thing in the next chapter: Send to all them of the captivity, saying, Thus saith the LORD concerning Shemaiah the Nehelamite; Because that Shemaiah hath prophesied unto you, and I sent him not, and he caused you to trust in a lie (Jeremiah 29:31)

True ministers of God preach the TRUTH and want people to TRUST IN GOD. But false preachers instead cause people to TRUST IN A LIE. In Hananiah's case, that lie was "God's going to cause Nebuchadnezzar to lose big in a couple of years". Modern lies might include "God wants to make you rich" or "Jesus told us not to judge anyone, so we shouldn't speak against sin" or maybe "God wants all religions living in peace and harmony together", among others. Usually, this trust is gained through clever rhetoric - the good words and fair speeches that deceive the HEARTS of the simple (undiscerning).

Jeremiah then says to Hananiah: Therefore thus saith the LORD; Behold, I will cast thee from off the face of the earth: this year thou shalt die, because thou hast taught rebellion against the LORD. (Jeremiah 28:16)

Once again, Shemaiah is also reproved for this in the next chapter: Therefore thus saith the LORD; Behold, I will punish Shemaiah the Nehelamite, and his seed: he shall not have a man to dwell among this people; neither shall he behold the good that I will do for my people, saith the LORD; because he hath taught rebellion against the LORD.

The final thing to learn from Hananiah then is that false prophets and other kinds of false apostles TEACH REBELLION AGAINST GOD. Genuine ministers of God teach OBEDIENCE to Him. They exhort people to OBEY His Word. But for all their fine words, false teachers are all about rebellion. A New Testament example is the false prophetess called Jezebel: Notwithstanding I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols. (Revelation 2:20) Committing fornication and eating things sacrificed to idols are both sins and as such, acts of rebellion against God. Hananiah was teaching rebellion against God because his "prophecy" was encouraging people to stay in Jerusalem rather than surrender to the Babylonian army as God had commanded. It would also have made them more comfortable in their sin rather than understand that God was judging them for it. A particularly devious trick that false teachers play is to teach rebellion while making it appear as though God actually approves of it. After all, they "speak for God", so God must be OK with these sins. But people who listen to such false teachers are in for a rude shock. These things hast thou done, and I kept silence; thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself: but I will reprove thee, and set them in order before thine eyes. (Psalm 50:21)

The 28th chapter of Jeremiah then ends with this rather dismissive note about Hananiah's death: So Hananiah the prophet died the same year in the seventh month. (Jeremiah 28:17)

Jeremiah was thus proven a true prophet (not for the first time). He said Hananiah would die, and so he did. However, it is important to note that Jeremiah did not wish death on Hananiah. He was rather pronouncing the judgement that God had given him. He spoke a true word from God, and so it came to pass. Meanwhile, Hananiah, for all his fine words and grand gestures, died with no fanfare in the end. He is summarily dismissed from Biblical history, while Jeremiah, whom many people did wish dead and even tried to kill at different times, lives on.

Anyway, I hope this has been a useful study. There are of course other things that can be learned about false teachers from other sections of Scripture, but these were some of the characteristics I thought could be learned from examining Hananiah, and I thought I'd share these gleanings while my study of this passage was still reasonably fresh in my mind.

5

General Discussion / PsychoHeresy Awareness Ministries

« on: December 02, 2021, 11:14:27 PM »

While listening to the latest audio teaching about psychology, I heard Chris mention Martin and Deidre Bobgan. Well they run a site called PsychoHeresy Awareness Ministries, and this is the main page of it:

https://pamweb.org/

This is their statement of faith, which seems pretty sound as far as I can make out:

https://pamweb.org/about-the-ministry/

One issue I do have with their statement of faith is that they don't define repentance. But they do say of Jesus Christ that "He mediates between God and man for those who are repentant believers". That's about the only place where repentance gets any sort of mention.

Also, I'm not totally sure about this: "WE BELIEVE that the 66 books that comprise the Bible are the plenary, verbally inspired Word of God, inerrant and infallible in the original manuscripts, and the guide and final authority in matters of faith and day to day life, interpreted by the Holy Spirit to each individual believer". I don't disagree with the statement as such, more the implication that the Bible can't be inerrant and infallible in a translation. However, they do seem to use the KJV in their works.

The site has been around for a long time - 28 years, in fact! I can remember visiting it many years ago, and it's still in my bookmarks. They have written a ton of books, some of which have free chapters, if you want to get an idea of their material:

https://pamweb.org/free-ebooks/

Probably one of their best works (or best-known) is James Dobson’s Gospel of Self-Esteem & Psychology. They also have Larry Crabb's Gospel, which Chris mentioned in his teaching. For any Spanish speakers here, many of their books and articles are also in Spanish.

Anyway, I think that if you want to explore the many problems with psychology further, this is a site worth checking out. It seems like a reasonably good resource for this particular subject matter.

6

General Discussion / Child Abuse by French Catholic Clergy Exposed

« on: October 05, 2021, 10:19:26 AM »

Lead story on BBC News today:

French Church abuse: 216,000 children were victims of clergy - inquiry

So according to this story, the just-released findings of an inquiry into abuse within the French Catholic Church show that about 216,000 children, most of whom were boys, have been abused in the Church since the 1950s. The number of abusers is estimated at 2,900-3,200. If abuse by lay members of the Church is counted, the number of victims could be as high as 330,000.

The inquiry was an independent one commissioned by the French Catholic Church in 2018. It ended up being some 2,500 pages in length. Some findings of the report (and I now quote directly from the article):

"It said the Church had not only failed to prevent abuse but had also failed to report it, at times knowingly putting children in contact with predators.

"'There was a whole bunch of negligence, of deficiency, of silence, an institutional cover-up,' the head of the inquiry, Jean-Marc Sauvé, told reporters on Tuesday.

"He said that until the early 2000s, the Church had shown 'deep, total and even cruel indifference' towards victims.

"'The victims are not believed, are not listened to. When they are listened to, they are considered to have perhaps contributed to what they had happen to them,' he explained.

"He added that sexual abuse within the Catholic Church continued to be a problem. (Ya think?)

"While the commission found evidence of as many as 3,200 abusers - out of a total of 115,000 priests and other clerics - it said this was probably an underestimation.

"'The Catholic Church is, after the circle of family and friends, the environment that has the highest prevalence of sexual violence,' the report said." (Emphasis mine)

France is a deeply Catholic country. As BBC analyst Hugh Schofield notes, "This was over 70 years and more than half the cases were before 1970. But still - for many French this will be the moment they wake up to the sheer scale of the phenomenon of Church sexual abuse. What was once anecdotal and prurient is suddenly a defining feature of society." (My emphasis again.) He adds, "There has to be recognition that sexual abuse of youngsters by priests was systematic. It was the Church - not rogue individuals - that was responsible." (Well, I think it was a bit of both - everyone is responsible for their own sins, but without doubt, the Catholic Church had a big part to play in covering it up and sometimes facilitating it.)

So a bit of a bombshell there, although given the Catholic Church's track record elsewhere in the world, not in the least bit surprising. Let's hope that some people in France will wake up to what an evil institution it is and that this will lead them to discover the real Jesus Christ rather than the false wafer one they have been serving.

7

General Discussion / There's such a thing as "long flu" now.

« on: September 29, 2021, 06:58:08 AM »

I have just come across this rather interesting article on the BBC News site, which reveals that a study has shown there is such a thing as "long flu", similar to "long COVID":

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-58726775

The study does say that persistent symptoms are more common for COVID than flu, but still, that's pretty intriguing. And the article led me to another interesting article from six days ago:

https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-58624295

This article talks about how common colds in the UK have become worse this year because people's immune systems have been messed up by all the lockdowns. People are getting severe colds with symptoms that are similar to flu, but not quite as bad, supposedly.

What also caught my eye in this second article was this quote:

"ZOE, the world's largest ongoing study into the virus, states through their millions of health reports, many of the symptoms of Covid-19 are now the same as a regular cold, especially for people who have received two doses of the vaccine. That makes it harder to tell the difference." (Emphasis mine) Is it the vaccine (wait, wasn't that supposed to give you immunity from COVID?), or is it just attenuation, where the virus is becoming more infectious but less deadly?

So yeah, just thought I'd share that. Although the BBC is as bad as any other mainstream media for propaganda, they can still manage to be somewhat informative about things on occasion.

8

Evangelism / "Christian" Man Confronts Women on a Beach (An Example of What NOT To Do)

« on: September 09, 2021, 07:47:41 AM »

Today I happened across this story about a Colorado man who confronted a group of three women in bikinis on a beach:

https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/world/2021/09/man-filmed-harassing-group-of-young-women-for-wearing-pornographic-bikinis-at-colorado-beach.html

The article includes video footage that lasts for about 3 1/2 minutes. Use discretion if you want to watch the video (I mostly scrolled down the page so I could listen without seeing too much). It starts playing automatically, so if you don't want to watch it, jump on the pause button. However, if you do watch the video (or largely listen to the dialogue therein), it does provide a little more information and context than the article alone.

Now of course, the mainstream media love stories that support their narrative that Christians Are Evil, but leaving that aside, I think this story shows an example of what NOT to do when evangelising. I don't know whether this guy is even saved! I reckon it's very likely he could be a false convert, or at best a baby Christian. Actually, he doesn't really evangelise much at all, other than warning the women that they will have to answer to God someday (I'm glad he at least pointed that out to them).

Anyway, the man's name is Logan Dorn. He admonishes these women (one of whom posted a couple of videos of the confrontation on TikTok) for their extremely immodest bikinis, asking them why they're dressed that way and telling them that they should consider "young eyes". He goes on to say, "There's freedom of speech and if men of God don't stand up, then our society is going to go down the drain because there's no morality". (He does have a bit of a point there in that men of God should stand up and reprove the works of darkness and not just passively allow evil to go unchecked, but there is a time and place for that sort of thing.) A couple of the women he was confronting pointed out that they're atheists, and he retorted that they could still put some clothes on rather than showing their bodies off. He goes on to say that they should put on a "one-piece or a two-piece that actually covers your body". (Actually, those kinds of outfits still leave a fair amount of flesh exposed, so his standards of modesty are not the Bible's.)

Mr Dorn then posted a video on TikTok himself to explain his side. According to the Newshub report, the video has since been deleted. They do not say whether Mr Dorn himself took it down, or whether TikTok removed it. But in any case, he reportedly said this in the video: "I just had a righteous anger come over me and also just boldness by the Holy Spirit to go and confront these ladies and to speak truth". He also claimed that he was "introduced to pornography young and wants to protect young people from it".

In the video (which I think is a combination of the two different TikTok videos), the women react in the way you would expect lost people to react to a Christian (or professing one) - they curse (that's bleeped out), laugh at him and roll out the lost sinner's favourite two words from the Bible, "Judge not" (which they misquote as "Thou shalt not judge"). Near the end of the video, another woman talks to them. I think she might be Mrs Dorn, but I'm not sure. She is in a "two-piece" (shirt and shorts), but her own standard of dress is none too modest, as she shows a bare midriff and too much of her legs. Yet Mr Dorn held her up as a standard of modesty these women in bikinis should aspire to!

A key point in this story is that the women asked, several times, to be left alone (the video corroborates this). But Mr Dorn ignored their requests and kept haranguing them. So I think that describing his behaviour as harassment is actually accurate, even though the mainstream media often falsely accuse Christians. Certainly, this is not what the Bible teaches us to do. If we approach someone to share the Gospel with them, and they tell us in no uncertain terms to get lost, the instruction from the Word of God is to respect their wishes and not try to force them to listen to something they're not interested in:

And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet. (Matthew 10:14)

And whosoever will not receive you, when ye go out of that city, shake off the very dust from your feet for a testimony against them. (Luke 9:5)

The Bible moreover says that rebukes for specific sins should be reserved for those within the church:

For what have I to do to judge them also that are without? do not ye judge them that are within? But them that are without God judgeth. Therefore put away from among yourselves that wicked person. (1 Corinthians 5:12-13) This Scripture should be borne in mind too: He that reproveth a scorner getteth to himself shame: and he that rebuketh a wicked man getteth himself a blot. Reprove not a scorner, lest he hate thee: rebuke a wise man, and he will love thee. (Proverbs 9:7-8) Scorners are lost people, and some of what these women say amounts to scorning. In a Biblical context, a wise man is usually a saved man. Mr Dorn is "getting himself a blot" here. His actions are bringing Christianity into disrepute, which of course the mainstream media just loves.

If these women had been members of this man's church, and professing Christians, he might have been more within his rights to reprove them (although even then, he would be better to confront them at a later time when they were dressed). However, these women are plainly lost. They care nothing for the things of God and only want to walk after their own lusts. They don't need reproving over specific sins so much as they need the Gospel preached to them, beginning with the Law so they can see their sin in general and understand their lost condition. This man is addressing a symptom rather than the underlying cause. Sure, what they're doing is wicked, but wicked people are going to act wickedly! Even if they covered up like he asked, it wouldn't change their lost condition. They would still be full of their wicked lusts. Colossians 4:5 gives this instruction: Walk in wisdom toward them that are without, redeeming the time. What this man is doing however is not wise. In fact, he's really not acting all that much better than the Taliban who force women to obey their standards of modesty. At least he's not physically assaulting them the way they would. But he's still out of line, even if he makes a couple of valid points. As wicked as those women are being, they have liberty to think and act as they do. They will answer to God for their words and actions one day, and we know it will not end well for them if they have not repented and been born again by then. But in the meantime, how they want to conduct themselves on a beach is their business, provided they're not harassing or assaulting anyone.

I think what this man is doing could also be considered striving, something else the Bible tells us not to do: And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth; And that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will. (2 Timothy 2:24-26) And he's not being very obedient to this command either: And that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you (1 Thessalonians 4:11) Of course, we can't be quiet when preaching the Gospel or reproving the works of darkness, but outside of that, we should mind our own business as much as reasonably possible. In a way, this guy is being a busybody in that he is essentially meddling: But let none of you suffer as a murderer, or as a thief, or as an evildoer, or as a busybody in other men's matters. (1 Peter 4:15)

What should he have done instead? Well for starters, he probably would have been better off not going to that beach in the first place. If you know there is a high likelihood you're going to see a lot of bare flesh in a place, then why go there and expose yourself to so much temptation? But since he was there, the next best course of action would have been to avert his eyes. I made a covenant with mine eyes; why then should I think upon a maid? (Job 31:1) Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. (Matthew 5:27-28) Now, you can't help an initial sighting, but you can help looking after that. Mr Dorn should have just turned his face away, minded his own business, and moved on. In fact, by confronting them for such a long time, he was getting quite the eyeful! He saw FAR more of those women than he would have if he'd just looked away and let them be. Given that he admitted he had a problem with pornography from a young age, that hardly would have been helpful to him.

He says he wants to protect young people from porn, but first and foremost, that is the job of their parents! (I don't know whether he had any children with him, but if he did, why take them to a place where they're going to see a lot of skin being shown?) It's not his place to be a moral guardian on a beach. And if he was so keen to "speak truth" to those women, then why not preach the Gospel to them properly? But perhaps this man, like the Pharisees of old, is a bit too focussed on externals. Moreover, while we do need to obey the Great Commission, that doesn't mean we should do it everywhere. There are places we have no business going to. So even if he had actually preached the Gospel to them properly, he would have still being doing it in an inappropriate setting. That in itself causes confusion. Moreover, reproving someone for wearing a bikini on a beach is a bit like going into a bar and telling someone off for drinking, or standing in a brothel and preaching against fornication! It's not wrong to say these things are sins, but to actually go to places where the sins are regularly committed and say it is another matter.

In conclusion, when I read a negative story about Christians or Christianity in the mainstream media, I often feel angry at the media for their blatant anti-Christian bias. However on this occasion I feel more grieved with Mr Dorn himself. All he has succeeded in doing is hand the media a gift on a plate to bash Christianity with. Of course, it's not Christianity that is the problem here (though the media wants you to think that), but Mr Dorn. Apart from his harassment, he shows himself up as a hypocrite with his very faulty definition of modesty. And while those women need to repent and be saved, he also has some repenting to do (and quite possibly needs to get saved as well). He needs to examine his own heart and remove the beam from his own eye. After all, while those women will answer to God someday, he will have his own day of reckoning. Men of God need to stand up, sure, but they also need to lead by example, and his example in this instance is not a good one to be following. Or am I being a bit too hard on him? What do you think?

9

Bible Discussion / Conversation Between Jesus and a Scribe

« on: September 06, 2021, 01:15:11 PM »

In my Bible study yesterday, I worked through Mark 12, and Verses 28-34 of that chapter contain a conversation between Jesus and a scribe who asked Him a question about which was the first commandment. The Gospel of Matthew also records this conversation, but only the first part (it's in Matthew 22:35-40). Mark goes into more details. So for this post, I'll mostly stick with Mark's version. Although I will note that Matthew calls the man a "lawyer" (much the same thing as a scribe). Anyway, I just wanted to share a couple of interesting things I gleaned from my study of this particular passage. Of course, it's not my first time reading this part of the Bible - I've read all the Gospels many times. But one of the joys of Bible study, I find, is how you can learn new things even from passages you're very familiar with.

Before I share what I have learned this time around, here is the passage (Mark 12:28-34) in its entirety:

And one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, and perceiving that he had answered them well, asked him, Which is the first commandment of all? And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these. And the scribe said unto him, Well, Master, thou hast said the truth: for there is one God; and there is none other but he: And to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love his neighbour as himself, is more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices. And when Jesus saw that he answered discreetly, he said unto him, Thou art not far from the kingdom of God. And no man after that durst ask him any question.

As I say, Matthew records the first part of this conversation, but Mark records the response of the scribe/lawyer. And it was in this response that I learned the things I want to share. Firstly, while the scribe appears to echo the words Jesus spoke, there is one word he says differently. He talks about loving God with all the heart, soul and strength, just as Jesus did, but instead of mind, the scribe uses the word understanding. What I think is going on (but I could be misunderstanding!) is that a correlation is being drawn between understanding and the mind. We generally understand things with our minds. When we're lost, our minds are polluted by the world's philosophies and our own sinful inclinations. This gives us some extremely faulty understanding when it comes to the Bible. Even after we're saved, our minds can still be pretty messed up for a while. But studying the Word of God helps to renew the mind (Romans 12:2). A renewed mind gets proper understanding of the Word. And when you love God with all your mind (as well as the other three things you're supposed to love Him with), He gives you ever more understanding. But also, we need to love Him with as much understanding as we currently have. And as we do that, He rewards us with more in due course.

I hope that's making sense. It was just interesting to me how "mind" and "understanding" were being associated there, and something I hadn't noticed before. The second thing that stood out to me (although this is something that I have noticed before) is how the scribe says that loving God and your neighbour is "more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices". Under the Law of Moses, burnt offerings and sacrifices were mandatory, but many people did them as a show of piety than out of any real love for God. It's a bit like how some people today go to church every week for no other reason than to create a false impression of holiness. One person in the Old Testament who puts up a false front of godliness is the Proverbs 7 woman. In Proverbs 7:14, she says, I have peace offerings with me; this day have I payed my vows. That is the very first thing she says. It's almost like she's trying to make herself feel better about what she's got planned, or even about what she says next. "Sure, I'm committing adultery and cheating on my husband here, but hey, I did my sacrifices like Moses said to, so I'm a good person, really!" And of course, Saul tries to justify his disobedience in not fully obeying God's commands to him by saying he wanted the best of the Amalekites' animals for a sacrifice. So those are a couple of examples of people using the old system of sacrifices to try and make themselves appear better than they actually were. And while we don't have those sacrifices today (because Jesus paid the final sacrifice on the cross - amen!), there are other ways people do the same sort of thing (like the aforementioned attending church buildings regularly, or observing modern holidays with their pagan, man-made traditions and so on).

In my personal notes on the verse where the scribe says this (made on an earlier occasion when I studied Mark 12), I cross-reference two Old Testament passages. One is 1 Samuel 15:22, And Samuel said, Hath the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams. (That is the riposte to Saul's excuse.) The other is Proverbs 21:3, To do justice and judgment is more acceptable to the LORD than sacrifice.. Interestingly, the verse in 1 Samuel addresses love for God (obeying Him is an act of love for Him), while the one in Proverbs has more to do with loving one's neighbour. (I actually just realised that as I'm writing this!) So what the scribe says in Mark's Gospel ties in very well with those OT verses.

The other thing I want to touch on is Jesus saying "Thou art not far from the kingdom of God". I think this means that the scribe wasn't saved, but he was heading in the right direction. He's "not far" from the kingdom of God, but he's not actually IN the kingdom (not born again yet). Another indication that the man was not yet saved is found in the Matthew account, where Matthew 22:35 says that he was "tempting" Jesus by asking Him the question. Whenever people try to "tempt" Jesus in the Bible, they're usually trying to trip Him up in some way. They're certainly not on His side. So the impression I have of this man is that he was a bit like how I used to be. He had some good understanding, more than a lot of lost people, but still lacked something (perhaps, as in my case, a repentant heart). I think though that he was a bit more sincere than the Pharisees and Sadducees who had previously questioned Christ in the same chapter of Mark had been. Hopefully he did go on to be saved.

So I hope this was interesting and edifying, and please do share any additional thoughts you may have, or make corrections as need be. After a very busy two months (caused by a single large translation project, which I'm very thankful to the Lord for as it provided me with some much-needed income), I am enjoying a little lull in work, so it means I have a little more time to post on here. I guess other people have been busy with various things too, because it's been very quiet here in recent times. And I could well get busy myself again soon (the same translation project I've been working on all this time may yet have more to it), and not have time to post much, so thought I would take advantage of this opportunity to contribute something while I had some down time. If the down time continues long enough, I'll try to be a little more active (without going crazy or anything). I'm particularly keen to do more Bible study and discussion, but I'll post wherever I can add something of use.

10

Bible Discussion / When God Slew Uzzah

« on: July 01, 2021, 09:07:40 AM »

As I mentioned in another thread, I have been working through 1 Chronicles recently, and came across the account of the Ark of the Covenant being transported from Kirjathjearim in Judah (where it had been for 20 years according to 1 Samuel 7:2) to Jerusalem. It includes the account of Uzzah being slain by God for touching the Ark when he was performing the seemingly good action of trying to stop it from falling out of the cart after the oxen pulling it stumbled. But during my latest study of this incident, I have learned some worthwhile things (and one crucial thing in particular), and would like to share them for general edification (or correction if I have anything wrong).

I remember that when I first read about the Lord slaying Uzzah, probably when I was still using the Good News Bible of my childhood, I felt a bit perplexed. My thinking back then was, "Surely Uzzah was just trying to do the right thing. Why kill him for that?" Well of course, one reason he died is because he touched something that he shouldn't have been touching, but there's a little more to it than that, as I have now found.

2 Samuel 6 covers a good deal of what transpired (including the slaying of Uzzah), but 1 Chronicles provides more details, including a full account of the second stage of the Ark's journey that the 2 Samuel account only devotes a solitary verse to. The first stage of the Ark's journey is recorded in 1 Chronicles 13, and the second stage in 1 Chronicles 15. The first few verses of 1 Chronicles 13 cover David's consultation with the people. David shared his desire to go and bring the Ark, but he wanted to make sure that this was not only God's will, but also that the people were in agreement. What I got from these verses is that David did not just impose his own will on the situation. He didn't take the attitude, "Well this is what we're going to do whether you like it or not!" He reasoned the matter out. And as it turned out, the people were all in favour (see Verse 4). Without doubt, they desired a good thing. However, it is possible to sincerely want to do something for the Lord, but still do it the wrong way.

So they all went off to Kirjathjearim, and I'm sure they were probably full of excitement and enthusiasm, perhaps even a bit of holy zeal. They then did something that may seem perfectly logical for an object like the Ark: And they carried the ark of God in a new cart out of the house of Abinadab: and Uzza and Ahio drave the cart. (1 Chronicles 13:7) That detail about the cart is important to bear in mind, because I'm going to return to it in a short while. We also read in the next verse, And David and all Israel played before God with all their might, and with singing, and with harps, and with psalteries, and with timbrels, and with cymbals, and with trumpets. So they were definitely in a pretty happy mood. It was a time of both celebration and worship. Probably in that moment, all seemed right in David's world. But then this happens:

And when they came unto the threshingfloor of Chidon, Uzza put forth his hand to hold the ark; for the oxen stumbled. And the anger of the LORD was kindled against Uzza, and he smote him, because he put his hand to the ark: and there he died before God. And David was displeased, because the LORD had made a breach upon Uzza: wherefore that place is called Perezuzza to this day. (1 Chronicles 13:9-11)

The same incident is recorded in 2 Samuel thus:

And when they came to Nachon's threshingfloor, Uzzah put forth his hand to the ark of God, and took hold of it; for the oxen shook it. And the anger of the LORD was kindled against Uzzah; and God smote him there for his error; and there he died by the ark of God. And David was displeased, because the LORD had made a breach upon Uzzah: and he called the name of the place Perezuzzah to this day. (2 Samuel 6:6-8)

So there was an accident, or near accident, in which the oxen pulling the cart transporting the Ark of God stumbled. As they stumbled, the cart would have "shook" in some way and the Ark would probably have been in danger of sliding out. Uzzah reached out for it, and didn't just briefly touch it, but held on to it for a period of time (no doubt meaning to prevent it from falling out). He probably had the best of intentions in reaching out as he did. Nevertheless, his action was a serious error, enough to bring down a very severe judgement from God in the form of instant death. He had touched something extremely holy. However, that is not ultimately the main lesson to be learned. There was a really important lesson for David (and ultimately for us all), which becomes clear in the second stage of the Ark's transport.

Between those two stages, there was a hiatus in which the Ark rested in the house of Obededom the Gittite (presumably it was nearby to the threshingfloor, since the death of Uzzah made David disinclined to continue at that time) for a period of three months. We see an example of God's graciousness and kindness when we learn that He blessed the house of Obededom, and all that he had (1 Chronicles 13:14). A house in which God is present is a blessed house indeed.

Moving on to 1 Chronicles 15 and the account of the second stage of the Ark's journey to Jerusalem. Now the first important point to note from that chapter is this: Then David said, None ought to carry the ark of God but the Levites: for them hath the LORD chosen to carry the ark of God, and to minister unto him for ever. (1 Chronicles 15:2) This harks back to Deuteronomy 10:8, At that time the LORD separated the tribe of Levi, to bear the ark of the covenant of the LORD, to stand before the LORD to minister unto him, and to bless in his name, unto this day. So the Levites were the only ones meant to carry the Ark. However, that may not have been the case previously. Let's go back to 1 Chronicles 13 momentarily and have a look at the second verse of that chapter to see David's initial plan: And David said unto all the congregation of Israel, If it seem good unto you, and that it be of the LORD our God, let us send abroad unto our brethren every where, that are left in all the land of Israel, and with them also to the priests and Levites which are in their cities and suburbs, that they may gather themselves unto us. So the priests and Levites almost seem to be an afterthought in David's mind there. At least, that is what it looks like to me.

Going back to Chapter 15, David gives some instructions to the Levites and says that they had not been involved in transporting the Ark previously: For because ye did it not at the first, the LORD our God made a breach upon us, for that we sought him not after the due order. Now the breach in question was the death of Uzzah. So now it becomes clearer that God killing Uzzah was not just a judgement upon him for his error. He was also chastening David and teaching him a lesson. In his enthusiasm to bring the Ark back to Jerusalem, David had been careless. His intention was good, but the way he went about it was wrong. Now however, having learned his lesson, he makes things right: And the children of the Levites bare the ark of God upon their shoulders with the staves thereon, as Moses commanded according to the word of the LORD. (1 Chronicles 15:15)

That commandment of Moses is found in the Book of Exodus: And thou shalt make staves of shi-ttim wood, and overlay them with gold. And thou shalt put the staves into the rings by the sides of the ark, that the ark may be borne with them. The staves shall be in the rings of the ark: they shall not be taken from it. (Exodus 25:13-15) That is how God intended for the Ark to be carried. It was meant to be borne upon the shoulders of Levites. By using the staves to carry it, they would never touch it. (BTW, I have deliberately inserted a hyphen in "shi-ttim", because when I used the whole word, the site censored the first four letters. But obviously I'm not using bad language there!)

So the big lesson that I learned from all this is that while it is good to want to do things for the Lord, we must do them God's way. David and the children of Israel sincerely wanted to bring the Ark of God to Jerusalem. The Bible never says that their desire was wrong. Where they did go wrong however was in failing to convey the Ark in the manner that God wished it to be conveyed. In Old Testament times, doing things God's way meant following the instructions of the Law of Moses. But in essence, it was about obeying the Word of God as it is now. There was a clear instruction regarding how the Ark was to be carried, but David completely ignored it. Instead, the Ark ended up being put on a cart. It was a "new cart" - I guess they figured that an old cart wouldn't be right. But the Ark was not meant to be put in ANY cart. Placing it in a cart, new or otherwise, was man's way, not God's way. The Ark would not have been in any danger of falling if it had been carried by the Levites in the first place. Uzzah would never have handled it, to stop it falling or for any other reason. NO ONE would have touched it directly, because it would have been up on those staves. And so in the end, that is why God slew Uzzah. It wasn't just that he handled the Ark, although that was certainly a key reason. It was also because the entire thing was being done wrong. David, and indeed the nation of Israel in general, needed to learn a lesson from it. It was their collective foolishness that put Uzzah in that position in the first place. (That said, his own foolishness also contributed.)

There is much about this lesson that applies to modern Christianity. A great many professing Christians think that they are serving the Lord in this way or that way, but they are not doing it the way He wants. For example, they may sing praise and worship songs, but these songs might have a worldly rock beat and be more about pleasing the flesh than worshipping God. Or they might think that they are honouring God by celebrating Christmas and Easter, but in reality they are participating in pagan rituals that are greatly displeasing to Him. Or maybe they try to obey the Great Commission, but instead of preaching the Law to bring people to repentance, they get people to say a "sinner's prayer" so that they can "get their numbers up". And so on and so forth. In my own life, a few years ago, I went through a period of putting tracts in letterboxes. These were mainly Chick tracts, but I used some others as well. I thought I was fulfilling the Great Commission, but the fact is, I was not actually talking to anyone. In fact, putting tracts in letterboxes was my way to AVOID talking to people. Nowadays, I call what I did back then "hit and run evangelism". Slip the tract in a letterbox and quickly move on. And if someone gets mad reading it later, I'll be long gone. But in the Bible, we see Christ and His apostles, and occasionally other Christians, talking to people. In order to PREACH the Gospel, you actually have to open your mouth! (I do want to make clear that I'm not against tracts and there are good ways to use them, such as if someone is in a hurry so you offer them a tract to read later when they have more time.) And I can think of other things I did (including listening to CCM) in which I thought I was honouring or serving God, when in fact I wasn't at all, because I was doing things my way and not His way.

So anyway, that is what I have gleaned from this particular study, and what I wanted to share. I'm sure that there are other interesting lessons that can be taken from these chapters as well, so by all means please share any additional thoughts on them that you may have, or alternatively correct any errors I may have made. Also, if you want, share illustrations from your own lives of how you wanted to do something for the Lord but ended up doing it your way instead of His, and what consequences and lessons were learned from it.

11

Introduce Yourself / Kia Ora from New Zealand (Part One)

« on: June 15, 2021, 10:36:08 AM »

Hello to everyone, G'Day to members from Down Under (both sides of the Tasman) and Kia Ora to my fellow-Kiwis here. Fair warning: long post ahead. In fact, it's so long that I've had to split it into two parts.

I guess I'll start this introduction with some general remarks, then get into my testimony proper. So, I am 49 years old and live in Wellington, New Zealand. My avatar picture is a photo of Oriental Bay in Wellington that I took on my phone when walking there one day. I am by no means a professional photographer, but I do like taking snaps on my phone when out sometimes. By profession, I am a freelance translator, and I greatly enjoy languages. My working languages are German, French and Spanish, but I am also studying an assortment of other languages on a site called Duolingo. I enjoy writing and have kept a diary for more than 30 years. A few months ago, I also started a Christian blog, which you can read here if you like: https://isaiah4212.blogspot.com/. I am single and shamefully, still live with my parents. I have a number of collections, some large and some small. It is fair to say that covetousness has been one of the besetting sins of my life. Some other besetting sins that have characterised too much of my existence on this earth have included pride, lasciviousness and slothfulness.

So that covers the basics, I think. Now to dive deeper. The first thing to say is that I was raised in a Christian home. A more accurate description of my home environment would be ostensibly Christian. It was actually very worldly. Something I came to realise quite a while ago is that neither of my parents are born again. My father could probably best be described as an agnostic nowadays. However, during my childhood he made some sort of Christian profession. But he has long since dropped that pretence. My mother still identifies as Christian, but she is a false convert if ever there was one. Her "conversion" occurred at a Billy Graham crusade held at Athletic Park (which used to be Wellington's main stadium; it was demolished some years ago) in February 1959. She was 17 at the time. In her late teens and 20s, she was quite involved in Youth for Christ (which I think was set up by Billy Graham, or one of his organisations). She attended a Methodist church, but some of her closest friends were Pentecostals, and as a result of this, the faith that she developed was a rather curious Methodist/Pentecostal hybrid.

My father was born and bred in Wellington, as I have been. His mother was a Christian Scientist, but thankfully that had no real influence on him. His father was a Rosicrucian, but I don't think that was a very big part of his life. Still, not ideal spiritual influences. My mother on the other hand was born in Inverness during the Second World War. However, her parents were from the Shetland Islands, and they flew back there with her when she was six months old. One of her earliest and most vivid memories is being out in a garden with her grandmother (not sure if it was the paternal or maternal one) when German planes came overhead and shot at them. She remembers her grandmother hurrying back into the house with her while bullets thudded into the ground all around them. By the grace and mercy of God, neither she nor her grandmother were hurt that day. It really says something about those Nazis though, that they would shoot at an elderly woman and a three-year-old girl. As a result of that early memory, my mother has had a lifelong hatred of guns. I wasn't even allowed to have a toy gun growing up. While I don't share my mother's hatred of guns, and think the Second Amendment is a definite good thing, I'm not really into them either. Wouldn't know a Colt from a Smith & Wesson, for example. But that's by the by.

My mother came to New Zealand with her parents and younger brother when she was ten years old. It being the early 1950s, they came on a ship. My mother's younger brother was only three at the time. He and my mother are estranged nowadays. He's an atheist. Although he had four children who are my first cousins, I have never really known them. As my mother and her brother grew up, he was very spoiled, which soured relations between them. When she "converted" at that Billy Graham crusade, the hostility on his part increased. After my maternal grandparents died, there were all sorts of dramas between my mother and her brother over the will of my grandmother in particular, but as Paul would say, I spare you. My dad meanwhile also has a brother (two years older than him). He doesn't have a great deal to do with him, but there is a little more cordiality between them. My dad's brother cheated on his first wife with the woman who is now his second wife. The latter is not a particularly nice person and may actually be a witch. She is certainly into witchcraft. In fact, many years ago she threatened to put a hex on my mother! She may have been joking, but my mother was not amused and my dad reckons she was serious. So that hasn't exactly been good for the fraternal relationship on my dad's side.

The Reserve Bank of New Zealand is a place of some significance to me. In the 1960s, both my parents worked there, and this is where they met. When my father started working at the Bank, he was still a university student and living at home. My mother is 5 1/2 years older than him, but she was also living at home (although she had done a bit of flatting for a couple of years, i.e. living in apartments). My mother has said that the Lord told her she was going to marry my dad. (I'm not sure what spirit spoke to her, but I am quite certain it was not the God of the Bible. At the time, my dad was not a believer, so why would God tell my mother to be unequally yoked? He did have some sort of "conversion" though, but I have the cynical suspicion that he only professed Christianity so he could marry my mother.) In 1970, they married in the Methodist church my mother attended. On Valentine's Day and all. Apparently, they didn't actually realise it was Valentine's Day until later. They wanted to get married on a Saturday in February, and Valentine's Day happened to fall on a Saturday in 1970. Now, I realise that Valentine's Day is really quite a pagan thing (I have read the article on this site about it, and have also read elsewhere about its pagan origins), but the one upside of them marrying on that day is that it made their wedding anniversary easy to remember! They moved into a house they had bought before getting married (although they did not consummate their relationship until after the wedding - nowadays, my dad supports and even advocates living with someone before marriage, i.e. the sin of fornication, but back then he went along with my mother's wishes). I made my entry into the world two years later. After marriage, my mother left the Reserve Bank, but my father continued to work there until 1990, when he was made redundant due to restructuring. (He soon found other work in the financial sector, but it was a bit of a shock to the system at the time.) I have many memories of visiting the Bank. By a rather strange twist of fate, the place where my dad ended up working moved its offices into the Reserve Bank building for a while! By the time he retired in 2011 however, it had shifted premises again.

Earlier I shared that one of my mother's earliest childhood memories was a pretty unpleasant one (being shot at by the Luftwaffe during the Second World War). Well, one of my own earliest memories is not too nice either. Sitting in my high-chair one day and drinking a cup of milk, I knocked it over and spilled it everywhere. It wasn't deliberate, but just the natural clumsiness little kids have. My mother cleaned up the mess, of course, and also did something else: she hit me. I have a vivid memory of her slapping my face and left arm. I also remember it happening in "waves" - she would retreat into the kitchen to do some work, then advance towards me and hit me again while yelling something. This happened maybe four or five times. I also have other memories, mainly from the first ten years of my life, of being screamed at, slapped in the face and spanked with my pants down, usually in sessions lasting about 20 minutes. Many of these punishments were for no obvious reason. On at least one occasion, my mother clearly manufactured a reason to hit me. She told me to "stop doing that" with my mouth, but never specified what "that" was. I genuinely had no clue what she was on about. After repeating this command to my increasing bewilderment, she then took my pants down and spanked me for my "disobedience". At least I was spared a more prolonged session of screaming and slaps that time.

These actions by my mother produced evil fruit. This is not what chastening should do. The chastening of the Lord, or of godly parents, should produce peaceable fruit of righteousness (Hebrews 12:11). However, the chastening of my mother produced great anger and resentment within me. It also produced another very wicked fruit: a spanking fetish. (I have read the forum rules, and I don't want to violate them, especially in my first post, or any other post for that matter. But this has been a particularly significant area of sin in my life, so I feel I have to say something about it. I want to be open and transparent while hopefully not being inappropriate. But I certainly won't be offended if Christopher, or Timothy, or Jeanne, or whoever else moderates this forum, decides to edit this paragraph.) The fetish began when I was about 10 or 11. It may have even started earlier, actually. I won't go into any gory details about it, but I hope it's safe enough to say this much: I have never actually indulged the fetish physically, purely due to a lack of opportunity (although I want to stress that I grieve over this as much as any other sin now and no longer want anything to do with it). It has all been in the imagination. I started having very vivid fantasies at that young age and it went from there. But I certainly fed my imagination in adult years by visiting various Web sites, forums and even buying online magazines (which I have subsequently deleted). Spanking fetishes come in quite a wide variety. Some people like giving them, others like receiving them, still others enjoy both. Then you get people who enjoy certain types of implements, and so on. My own specific "thing" revolved around the receiving aspect, and the "giver" had to be a woman. It didn't matter who the "receiver" was (it could be me, or someone I was reading about), just as long as a woman was dishing it out. (That's about the most G-rated way I can express it.) I also used to have fantasies of being dominated by a woman or women - all quite demonic, looking back on it. These wicked fantasies had two root causes. The first was what my mother did to me in childhood. (She has also been very domineering towards my dad over the years, so that was another factor.) The second was the corruption of my own flesh and heart. Notwithstanding what my mother did, I can't blame her for my own evil choices. While the sins of others against us can certainly predispose us to certain behaviours, we still make the choice to indulge them. In the eyes of God, my mother is responsible for her own evil choices, and I am responsible for mine. Still, there is something of a correlation between her sins and mine.

Before I move on, I need to point out that due to what my mother did, and also due to my own sins of the mind in this area, I have done a Jacob, as it were, and had something of a wrestling match with God over spanking and child discipline generally. How to reconcile what the Scriptures say with what my mother put me through and the perversion that resulted? Well, with God's gracious help, I have come to these conclusions. Firstly, it helps to study not only the usual verses in Proverbs, but all Biblical passages about God's chastening. Godly chastening of children should reflect God's chastening of us. It should certainly be somewhat unpleasant, but it should also be just. Matthew 5:22 tells us not to be angry without a cause, and this should apply to parents' dealings with children. The purpose of corporal punishment (and for that matter, rebuke and reproof) should be to correct wrong behaviour. It should teach the child that sinful behaviour has unpleasant consequences. And as I said above, it should yield good fruit in terms of repentance and improved behaviour. My mother, however, often got angry without a cause and punished me unjustly. Furthermore, her punishments were really about domination and control, not discipline. A second conclusion that I have reached is that spanking a child with their pants down is wicked. I'd even go so far as to say it's downright satanic. For one thing, the Bible never commands that to be done (beating with the rod, yes, taking pants down, no). Other passages in the Bible command modesty. God wants us to train our children to be modest, among other things. Taking their pants down to punish them flies in the face of that. Then there is the fruit that it bore in my own life, as described above. I have also read things by other people that strongly indicate a close correlation between spanking a child with their pants down and the subsequent development of sexual fetishes. They also indicate, in some instances, a fetish on the part of the parent. (Some of those people may have been passing off fantasies as true stories, but enough of them seemed credible to make me think there's something in it - in any case, some of the accounts I read were on anti-spanking sites, where there would be less motivation to make things up for titillation.) Then too, there is the fact that all sites devoted to adult spanking themes have one common denominator: exposed buttocks. (As above, I'll understand if this is edited out; however, in order to show this work of darkness for what it is, I feel this point is particularly important.) Whatever else they might do differently, that is the one thing they all do the same. It is the absolute centrepiece around which all other aspects of the fetish revolve. I really can't stress that enough.

A third conclusion that I have reached is that child discipline is a bit like music, books or whatever in that there is a godly kind, and then also an ungodly kind. Godly discipline is just, moderate and yields good fruit in a child's life. Its express purpose is to correct sinful behaviour and bring about repentance. Another positive outcome of godly discipline is that it teaches a child good boundaries. Ungodly discipline on the other hand is frequently unjust, excessive and produces evil fruit in a child. Wrongful punishment is almost as bad as leaving a child to himself. In both cases, the child develops either poor boundaries or none at all. It is not always associated with sexual perversion, but that can be a factor sometimes, especially when a child's modesty is violated, as mine repeatedly was. It is NEVER a factor in godly discipline though. A fourth and final conclusion is that an implement should be used. The KJV advocates a "rod". It never speaks of striking with the hand. Only modern versions use the word "spanking". If you look up the word "spank" in a dictionary, it means strike with an open hand. No reference to an implement. Why would God want an implement to be used? Well IMO, because it makes more impact through clothing. The hand alone doesn't sting much through clothing. Moreover, when a hand is placed on the buttocks, there is an intimacy associated with that, even if said hand is hitting them. That's why some people like to express affection with a playful smack on the rear end. An implement is not intimate like that. So use of an implement through clothing is, in my view, how God wants corporal punishment to be done, when it has to be done.

But for all her physical and emotional abuse, my mother also spoiled me. This was the flip side of growing up with her. I was coddled, pampered and extremely sheltered. There were good aspects to this. I never got involved in drinking or fornication, or whatever else my schoolmates were into. When they were out partying, I was home studying or watching TV with my parents. Another good thing my mother did was warn me about the occult, although sometimes, she got a bit over-zealous in that area. But there was plenty of evil fruit as well. For one thing, while my mother often punished me unjustly, she also let me get away with things that I actually should have been punished for! You can imagine the moral confusion that created in me. There were actually times when I was justly punished, usually by my dad, or a grandparent, or a teacher, so I didn't get away with every wicked thing I did as a child. I give sincere thanks to God for that now. There were also a few occasions when even my mother punished me justly, but far more times when she did it unjustly. Another evil fruit of her pampering was that I learned to be slothful. I never had to do any chores. Everything was done for me. So I never learned how to take responsibility for anything. I was never taught. So I was never trained for life in the adult world. Instead, I was trained to be a perpetual child. Such practical skills as I managed to acquire while growing up, I basically taught myself. However, when I went to university, I did learn to drive and succeeded in getting a full licence. But I never got a car of my own, and I eventually let my driving slip (I am only just starting to pick it up again now).

We have never been much of a church-going family. For a while during the 1970s, we attended a Baptist church (Tawa Baptist, in case any New Zealand members are familiar with it). Why it was a Baptist church and not a Methodist one, I don't know - maybe it was the most popular church in town or something. Eventually however, my parents stopped attending because they did not want to be baptised. (Very sensible given that they're not actually saved.) Since then, I don't think they have ever gone to another church (other than for weddings and funerals, of course). I myself have only been to one other church, which was a Salvation Army one in Miramar (aka "Wellywood") for a couple of years in the mid-1990s. My main motivation for joining that church was that it had a lot of young people, and I was in my early 20s at the time, so wanted to socialise with other Christian young people. I wasn't that worried about the things you should worry about as a Christian, such as sound doctrine or the fruits of the Spirit. Developing a social life was all that mattered to me then. I ended up drifting away from that church because I got discouraged by how worldly it was. Quite ironic actually, as I was very worldly myself! But somehow I understood that Christians shouldn't be as worldly as what the people in that church were. (To cite one example: we watched The Addams Family Movie during one of the youth group get-togethers.)

Until the year 2000, my brand of Christianity was what I now understand to be New Evangelicalism. It was a very worldly, "feel-good" kind of Christianity. In 1981, for my ninth birthday, my mother gave me my first Bible. It was a Good News Bible, endorsed by Billy Graham of course. I now know that of all the modern translations, or new-age versions as Christopher calls them, this is one of the worst. The chief translator of the Good News Bible, aka Today's English version, Robert Bratcher, denied the divinity of Christ. The Good News Bible does something that most of the other new-age versions don't: it removes the blood of Christ almost entirely. The word "blood" is usually replaced by the word "death" in the GNB. So it is a particularly satanic version, really. But this was the Bible of my childhood, teen years and 20s.

Then in 1982, Radio Rhema opened full-time in Wellington. (It had begun in Christchurch four years earlier.) I actually attended the official opening ceremony. Rhema had a very significant effect in my life. It exposed me to all kinds of false teaching, including the Pentecostal heresies of Derek Prince and the "Christian" psychology of Dr James Dobson. It also introduced me to CCM. Thanks to Radio Rhema, I became intimately acquainted with many of CCM's big names, including Amy Grant, Michael W. Smith, Carman, First Call, the Second Chapter of Acts and others besides. (Which Way the Wind Blows was one of my all-time favourite CCM songs, or songs of any genre, and even now, I catch myself humming the odd bar of it.) A Scripture Union Bookshop (which later became Manna Books, now defunct) was the source for a number of tapes and later CDs. I discovered DC Talk through a tape I bought at this bookshop (this was their early stuff when they did hip-hop, so they weren't yet featured on Rhema). I also ordered things directly from Radio Rhema sometimes. Rhema also introduced me to some books, including The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan and the Sugar Creek Gang series by Paul Hutchens (he was a Quaker and believed in revivals, so not very spiritually sound).

Between 1982 and 1984, we went to live in the United States for two years. My dad was seconded to the International Monetary Fund in Washington, DC. He worked in a section representing the Australia and Pacific region, or something, serving as an Alternate Executive Director. So that's why we went there. In many ways, it was an exciting time. I got to experience a decent amount of air travel, life in another country, discovery of another culture and so on. I visited most of the famous places in Washington (never did a tour of the White House, though). Also visited a number of Civil War sites, including Manassas and Gettysburg. Other things I remember from my time in the States include snow, squirrels and raccoons, squillions of TV channels (we only had two in NZ in those years), a charming show called Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, American football and baseball, and the daily Pledge of Allegiance ritual at my elementary school (which I did not participate in, since I wasn't an American citizen; still stood respectfully though and learned it by heart through hearing everyone else recite it). One thing America had that New Zealand didn't (at that time) was a Christian television channel! However, this channel was not all that godly, really. It had secular TV programmes like Mister Ed. The Christian programmes it featured were things like The 700 Club and PTL with Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker. There were also some children's programmes. I remember one called Gospel Bill. It was a puppet thing, mostly. Nowadays NZ does have a Christian channel, called Shine TV (run by the same company that owns Radio Rhema), which is pretty ghastly in view of how much worldliness and corrupt doctrine there is on it. There was a radio station in America we used to listen to called WCTN, which was based in Cabin John, Maryland. (We lived in Bethesda, just northwest of DC.) A show I remember from that was Haven of Rest, and there was also a talkback hosted by Pastor Richard Kline of the Halpine Baptist Church. I think my mother rang him and got on air a couple of times, but we never went to that church.

During my time in America, my parents and I also visited Canada, France and the UK, including the Shetland Islands, where we met many of my mother's relatives. But in late 1984, we returned to New Zealand and moved from our old house in Linden to one in Miramar, near Wellington Airport. My parents and I still live in that same house to this day. In the second half of the 1980s, I attended a private boys' Presbyterian school near my home. It was technically a Christian school, but it was no more Christian in reality than my upbringing. However, through the various assemblies at that school, I did learn a number of classic hymns. Did reasonably well academically and won some prizes, although I lost a friendship during my last year at school due to the fact that we both coveted the history prize and both got very prideful in our pursuit of it. In the end, I won that particular prize, but it was a bit of a hollow victory, really (and now I feel great disgust at my pridefulness back then). In subsequent years, that former friend came out as gay and is now "married" to another man. However, there was nothing improper about the friendship we had, and as far as I know, he didn't fancy me. But perhaps it's just as well that the friendship foundered. All the same, the way it happened is a shame.

Through the first half of the 1990s, I attended Victoria University (with the way my mother was, enrolling at any other university and thereby - gasp! - living away from home was not an option). Having gone to a boys' secondary school and otherwise led an extremely sheltered existence, I now found myself suddenly surrounded by specimens of this mysterious creature called the Young Woman. I developed crushes, most of which were unrequited (not least because, every time I formed a crush, I tended to behave like a complete doofus). I do recall one young lady getting a crush on me, and while that was nice in a way, there was something about her that made me uneasy, so I rebuffed her. In my second year, a strong enough mutual interest developed with a girl in my Linguistics class that we actually had a couple of "dates" - to wit, lunch together one time, and afternoon tea another time. But she was a Seventh-Day Adventist, and her father was about as domineering towards her as my mother was to me. In the end, her father pretty much broke us up. (Funnily enough, he featured on the Fair Go programme a couple of times a few years later.) But I think God had a hand in that, because to have got more deeply involved with her and maybe become a Seventh-Day Adventist would have been a major disaster. Also at Vic, I attended Christian Union meetings and went to some CU social events - all very spiritually shallow, quite honestly. During my Honours year (I majored in French), I became somewhat friendly with a fellow-student who was about eight or nine years my senior. We also had a couple of "dates", including watching a French movie together, and she often rang me up at nights (ostensibly so we could practise our French). But in the end, we were never really more than friends. Then she actually left for France one day, and I never saw her again. She wasn't a Christian though, so again, God was watching over all of that. As I said earlier, I learned to drive at this time. However, even after getting my full licence, I almost never drove on my own. One or both of my parents would usually be with me.

After completing my Honours degree, I studied German and Spanish for a couple of years. During this period, I began to explore a career I was interested in: translation. In 1997, I began a Master's degree in French. I didn't really want to do this (which is why I had put it off), but my mother wanted it. At the same time, I began to start getting translation work on a regular basis with a company in town. Working with this company meant regular access to the Internet for the first time (we didn't yet have it at home - my mother wasn't keen). It also meant that I discovered online pornography. I got quite a lot of work from this company for a while, and spent so much time with them that I eventually gave up on the Master's degree (the final straw was a blazing row with my mother - I am ashamed to say that I quit the MA in part to get back at her, but I had completely lost interest in it by then anyway). However, my little porn habit then got found out. I thought I was done for, but apart from a stern reprimand, I actually continued getting jobs at that company for a while longer. (I am pretty sure that one or two other people in that company, maybe even quite senior people, might have had secret porn habits of their own. Not that it justifies my sin in that area.) Eventually however, I got kind of "frozen out". This led to me starting a freelance translation business at home. Which meant I could finally get the Internet - and resume indulging in porn. I mostly tended to favour stories and pictures. Wasn't so much into videos, although I did watch some. While a lot of the porn involved the fetish I talked about above, I also had other areas of interest. Suffice it to say, my mind was quite the cesspit of filth. And like the foolish young man in Proverbs 7, who went to the street where the adulterous woman lived, I sought this stuff out. I wasn't a victim the way that say, a child accidentally discovering a stash of adult magazines might be. I was expressly after material that catered to what was already going on in my imagination. So the evil was present in my heart, and I was looking to feed it.

It took a while for my new freelance career to get off the ground, so during this time, I tried some other part-time work. That included a six-month stint in an antiques shop. Unfortunately, the owner of that shop was a male version of my mother, and the quintessential workplace bully. In early 2000, that job came to an acrimonious end. I was very bitter about it for a long time. It's not that I thought I had long-term prospects in that shop, or that type of work generally. It was that he was so nasty, and completely unrepentant about it, and also the similarity of his behaviour to my mother's was decidedly triggering. However, I sinned too, for instance by giving him a piece of my mind by e-mail, and I have discovered that a key to healing from situations like this is to confess your own sins to God. Then trust Him that He will deal with the other party in His time and in His way. It was quite a long time before I did that, however. In the meantime, I bore quite the grudge. I have not outright hated too many people in my life, but I really hated that guy. But a major reason for the hate was that I concentrated on his sins and overlooked my own. That was based on pride in my heart as well. There was something of an "I'm better than him, he's beneath my contempt for what he did" mentality. However, what I missed was that BOTH of us sinned against God. In our different ways, we were equally guilty before Him. So in the eyes of God, I wasn't better than that bullying boss at all. Finally realising that made a world of difference.

Not long after the antiques shop job ended, I found myself in another situation where the wife of an online friend developed a "more than casual" interest in me. It got to the point where she made a pass at me (from memory, I think she propositioned me for phone sex). Now despite the fact that I was lonely, down in the dumps and had a woman throwing herself at me for the first time, a dominant type of woman at that, and despite the fact that I was wickedly indulging in pornography (adultery in the heart), I still had enough respect for the Seventh Commandment to decline her. Also, there is another rule that we have in New Zealand: "Don't cut your mate's lunch". In other words, don't have an affair with your friend's wife. Not to mention that she just plain creeped me out. However, this woman was like Potiphar's wife. She wouldn't take No for an answer. She kept bugging me. I remember reading the story of Joseph and Potiphar's wife at that time (albeit in the Good News Bible). The similarities to my situation were amazing. I also read other relevant passages in Proverbs. One verse that particularly stuck out to me was Proverbs 5:8. In the Good News Bible, it went something like, "Keep away from such a woman! Don't even go near her door!" Of course, in the King James Version, the verse states, Remove thy way far from her, and come not nigh the door of her house. It was the "Keep away/Remove thy way" part that really stood out. I felt that God was indicating to me to cut ties with her. However, I didn't want to hurt her feelings, or the feelings of my friend. But then her grandmother died, and she went away for a few days to attend the funeral. During that time, I confided in another friend, who urged me to break contact. This friend also told me that there would never be a good time to do it (when I expressed hesitation at ending the friendship during a time of bereavement). So with some "help" from my mother, I wrote a letter and ended the friendship with both the woman and her husband. But remember, she was of the same spirit as Potiphar's wife. So she harassed me by e-mail for a couple of months. What she did amounted to stalking. It was a very stressful time. However, she gave up when I tricked her into thinking I was leaving the country for a while. (I should have trusted God to deal with the situation His way, but in my pride, I decided to solve it myself. It worked, remarkably enough, but that doesn't make my deception right.)

Towards the end of 2000, I underwent what I call my Great Theology Shift. This doesn't mean that I got saved (because I am about as sure as I can be that I was a false convert then), just that I broke away from the New Evangelical philosophy that up until then was the only "Christianity" I had ever known. It happened on this wise: one night, while reading the "Letters to the Editor" section in The Evening Post (which used to be Wellington's evening newspaper), I came across a letter by a man named Russ Watt, mocking Christians who were opposed to this popular new series of books about a boy wizard named Harry Potter (you might have heard of him). He said they were "pathetic", which triggered me as I had been called that by my bullying boss. He found it ridiculous that Christians should be getting so wound up over works of fiction. But he also made reference to the Crusades as "evidence" of Christian hypocrisy. So I fired off a letter to the editor by e-mail, and it was published (in slightly abridged form) in The Evening Post of 3 November 2000. (My memory is not THAT good - I recorded all this in my diary at the time.) I asked Mr Watt whether everyone who had the courage to stand for their convictions was "pathetic". I then went on to say that while the Harry Potter books were fictional, the witchcraft they promoted was real and very dangerous. I made reference to Deuteronomy 18:9-13. Finally, I said that the Crusades were carried out by the Roman Catholic Church, and that the Catholic Church was not Christian. I then added, "and many Protestant Christians will tell you that it is Christ, and not the Pope, who is the true head of the Christian Church". Moreover, I pointed out that the worship of Mary violated the First and Second Commandments. Although I made some good points, my letter evinced quite a haughty spirit. You may wonder how I came to have such a strong anti-Catholic position - unusual for a New Evangelical. Well for all my worldliness and evil ways, I did study that Good News Bible of mine a bit. And as vile a translation as it is, it still contained some truth. Enough truth, in fact, to make me see some things wrong with Catholic doctrine. Also, one night in the early 1990s, a Radio Rhema talkback featured a Catholic priest as a guest. When I compared the things he said with what my GNB said, I knew there was something seriously wrong. For instance, I remember him declaring that Mary was still alive. And he said other stuff about Mary that I just knew to be un-Biblical. The more I learned about Catholicism, the more I knew that it was very bad news.

Well of course, a Catholic responded to my letter. I'm sure others did as well, but a letter by one Kevin Boyd appeared in the 15 November 2000 edition of The Evening Post. Here is how I reported the letter in my 2000 diary the following day:

Well, a guy called Kevin Boyd said I “obviously didn’t know much” about Catholicism. He alleged there was no such doctrine as Marian worship (he’d better read the 1994 Catechism!) and claimed Catholics only worship God (the Pope worships Mary, so there goes that idea). He also said Christ is the Head of the Church, but that the Pope is His representative on Earth (and where in the Bible does it say that?). Mr Boyd did agree with me that witchcraft is real, dangerous and is to be avoided at all costs. But he concluded by saying he looked forward to the day when all Christians would worship in unity, without “fostering prejudice”. That’s ecumenism – all denominations uniting under the Pope.

Earlier in the same entry, I made this remark:

I am quite convinced that [...] Catholicism promotes a false and un-Biblical religion which masquerades as “Christian”.

After reading Mr Boyd's letter, I paid a visit to Chick Publications, which I had discovered about a week earlier while researching Catholicism. My first diary entry about this site shows that I was quite enamoured with it:

Spent much of the afternoon and evening at Chick.com, a Web site I first discovered about a week or so ago. It’s the Web site of Chick Publications, run by one Jack T. Chick. This is a really awesome evangelical Christian organisation. Chick uses tracts in comic book form to present the Good News of Jesus Christ to people. Every single tract explains how you can be saved. And apparently, many people have been won to Jesus through Chick tracts.
   But Chick tracts also expose the dangers of the occult and false religions such as Islam, Buddhism, Mormonism, the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Roman Catholicism. Yes, I said Roman Catholicism. I have always felt the teachings of Catholicism to be contrary to the Bible. There is much info on Chick’s site confirming this. Indeed, he claims that the Roman Catholic Church is nothing less than the “whore of Babylon” spoken of in Revelation 17. But Chick does not preach hatred of Catholics, only the falsehoods of the R.C. Church. He says we must not “throw rocks” at Catholics, but do all we can to win them to Christ. But that includes exposing the false doctrines of Catholicism.
   Didn’t end up having a very productive day, but no matter. I learnt some mighty stuff!

In more recent times, I have learned that Jack Chick was inspired to start his ministry by the preaching of Charles Finney. He believed Finney was a man mightily used of God. That is the very root of Chick Publications. I actually corresponded about this with Chris four months ago. The fact remains however that Chick Publications played a key role in my Great Theology Shift. However, on 17 November 2000, I found another site (which I think is still around) that first alerted me to the Bible version issue:

Tonight, I found another excellent Christian site, “Christian News and Views”. Many very interesting articles here. One challenged the authenticity of modern Bible translations, saying they corrupt the true Word of God. It claimed the Good News Bible – the version I use – is one of the worst! A sobering thought.
   Other articles on this site warn of how the likes of Billy Graham and Dr James Dobson have fallen away from the truth of the Gospel and into error. Again, sobering stuff.

Despite that warning about Dr Dobson, my diary shows that I soon went on to read his book, Love Must Be Tough. But December 2000 continued to bring forth some pretty interesting developments. For one thing, my stalker wrote me a "one-off" e-mail on the 12th. (It turned out to actually be the last thing she wrote to me.) My initial reaction to that message included quotes from the King James Bible rather than the Good News Bible.

On the face of it, the e-mail seemed pretty innocuous, a “catch-up” message from “an old friend”. But I can read the subtext, the message which is not verbalised, but which the history of my past experience with [the stalker] writes in glaring neon lights. The subtext of the e-mail goes something like this: “I’m still here. I haven’t forgotten about you. You might think you’ve escaped me, but I will recapture you and have my way with you yet!” OH, NO YOU WON’T! I will NEVER surrender! “The LORD is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I trust; my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower. I will call upon the LORD, who is worthy to be praised: so shall I be saved from mine enemies.” Psalm 18:2-3 (KJV) I will no longer trust in my own strength or wisdom, but will trust in the Lord to deliver me from [the stalker]. She’s got no chance against the Sword of the Spirit!

Then came this on the 14th:

Visited Demonbuster.com and read a few articles on there. One which really caught my attention was one about the spirit of Jezebel. Some of the characteristics of this spirit include control, domination, manipulation, sexual impurity, intimidation and much more besides. It was almost like a profile of [the stalker]. “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” Ephesians 6:12 (KJV) My battle is not really with [the stalker], but against Satan and his kingdom, including the spirit of Jezebel which I believe may be present in [the stalker].
   But to overcome the spirit of Jezebel, I have some sins of my own that I need to repent of. In particular, lying and cowardice. In lying to [the stalker] (or anyone, for that matter), I am trying to control the situation, and trusting in my own wisdom and abilities, rather than putting my faith in God, the Spirit of Truth. Also, by lying, I am giving into fear. But “God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind”. 2 Timothy 1:7 (KJV) “And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” Matthew 10:28 (KJV) Lies and fear are not of God, therefore I must repent of these and ask God’s forgiveness, so that He will cleanse me and I can serve Him.

I'm not sure whether Demonbuster.com still exists, but nowadays I would NOT recommend that site. It is full of Pentecostal weirdness. But what I find interesting there is the conviction I was clearly feeling. I don't reckon I was saved, but God was clearly doing something in my heart. I then found a site called Dial-the-Truth Ministries, run by Terry Watkins. That site still exists, although it's not updated much nowadays. On 18 December 2000, I got my Good News Bible and started comparing it to the King James Version. Here is what I discovered:

Did some Bible study, but this was a bit different to the usual. Last night I’d printed out an exposé of the New King James Bible and its many “retranslations” (or mistranslations) of what is in the King James Bible, or Authorised Version. Investigated verses in my Good News Bible (the so-called “Today’s English Version”), and found that almost all of them contained considerable alterations of what is in the Authorised Version. Some verses were so altered that they had an entirely different meaning! I’ll be doing more research tomorrow, but so far it’s been pretty grim.

Then the NEXT day, I shared some discoveries about CCM:

[W]ent to the Dial-the-Truth Ministries Web site (www.av1611.org) and continued reading an exposé by Terry Watkins (the same guy who wrote about the New King James Bible) on rock music. He shows pretty conclusively that rock music, including so-called “Christian rock”, is of the Devil. The Bible says true Christian music should glorify God and be sung to Him. “Christian rock” stars say they use rock as a way to “reach the lost”, but 1 Corinthians 1:21 shows that it is preaching, not music, which God intends for reaching the unsaved. What’s more, music should emphasise melody, but rock emphasises rhythm, the beat. The beat of rock and roll is based largely on the drumbeats of voodoo and other dark pagan religions. Rock stars like Little Richard admit as much!
   What was really sobering is just how un-Christian much of the work of so-called Christian artists like DC Talk, Amy Grant, Michael W. Smith and others is. The evidence is pretty clear, and I must admit, the likes of Grant and DC Talk seem to get progressively less Christian with each album they put out. But maybe that’s because their music, with its rock beats, has had a Satanic influence from the outset! I must say, I really felt (and continue to feel) challenged by the Lord about the type of music I listen to.

My entry for 20 December 2000 demonstrates some real conviction:

Went to the Dial-the-Truth Ministries Web site and read lots of interesting articles, mainly about the King James Bible vs. “modern” Bible translations and more about the evils of rock music, including its dark origins. A couple of articles proved pretty conclusively that “Christian” rock is like “Christian” pornography or “Christian” dope-smoking. In other words, it’s an oxymoron. Light and darkness cannot have fellowship.
   My own liking of pop music (which is really “soft rock”) derives from the fact that it makes me “feel good”. In other words, it appeals to my flesh, to my carnal instincts. “Christian” pop or rock does exactly the same thing, but I’ve tended to think it was “OK” to listen to Amy Grant, DC Talk or whoever because they were “Christian”. But if I’m really honest, I listen to these singers or bands for the same reason I have listened to secular singers or bands – because the music makes me “feel good”. It doesn’t glorify God or testify to the work of Jesus Christ, unlike those “old-fashioned”, “boring” hymns. “Christian” rock does exactly the same thing secular rock does – glorifies man and awakens carnal instincts! As Winnie-the-Pooh might say, I have been Foolish and Deluded.

But wait, there's more from that entry, although this time it concerns the Rapture:

Read more on the DTTM site, about rock music, creation vs. evolution and the end times. The DTTM people believe, like many Christian people, ministries and churches today, in the Rapture, where Christ will allegedly spirit His church away before the Tribulation. But on sites like Demonbuster.com and Open Bible Ministries (www.1335.com) to name but two, I have read that the “Rapture” theory was dreamed up by a Jesuit priest named Francesco Ribera, and didn’t start being seriously adopted by the Christian Church until the mid-19th Century! While there will certainly be a Second Coming of Christ, it will be with a great shout, not “sneaking” the Christians away from the Tribulation! The persecutions of the last days will be experienced by true Christians and be a supreme test of faith.

I have to say that I have never really believed in a pre-Tribulation Rapture. How can the Antichrist makes war with the saints if they've all been secretly raptured away beforehand? But as you can see there, I was kind of confused about it.

On the 22nd, I had more to say about the Bible version issue:

Managed to conclude the study of the New King James Bible in light of my Good News Bible. The findings continued to be pretty grim, though there were a couple of passages in which the GNB version wasn’t as bad as the NKJV one! Still, the evidence is mounting that the Good News Bible is, well, bad news. Like the other modern translations, it is not based solely on the Textus Receptus of Antioch, but on corrupted Alexandrine manuscripts favoured by the Catholic Church, most notably the Vaticanus and Sinaiaticus. Moreover, I have learnt that its chief translator, Robert Bratcher, didn’t even believe in the deity of Christ! Small wonder that His deity is attacked in a number of passages in the Good News Bible. One of the worst examples is Philippians 2:6, which in the GNB reads: “He did not think that by force he should try to become equal with God”. It’s there in black and white. Jesus Christ did not have to “try to become equal with God”! He WAS and IS equal with God! He IS God! Christ is God manifest in the flesh! The King James rightly says: “He thought it not robbery to be equal with God”. The KJV is the only Bible in the English language based solely on the Textus Receptus.

The 24th was Christmas Eve, and I talked about Christmas a bit, and also a new site I found called Jesus-is-Lord.com. Unfortunately, that site had heresy on it the last time I looked (in particular, embracing a Saturday Sabbath and rejecting eternal security). But back in 2000, it had some quite good material on it, although the tone was always a bit questionable. But anyway, my thoughts about Christmas:

It is becoming increasingly obvious to me, though I think I have already sensed it, that Christmas is not Christian at all, but is as pagan and godless as Halloween. As the article on Jesus-is-Lord.com correctly stated, you can paint an apple to make it look like an orange, but no matter how much like an orange it may look, it’s still an apple. Christmas (or more correctly, the “Christ Mass”) is a pagan apple painted as a Christian orange. The rituals of the Roman Saturnalia were adopted by the apostate and pagan Roman Catholic Church and given Christian names. 25 December was the birthday of the Roman sun-god, so the Catholic Church declared it the birthday of their “Son-God”. But the Jesus of Christmas is not the Jesus of the Holy Bible, as both the Bible and history show.

Then I had this to say on Christmas Day itself:

So this is Christmas … a celebration, supposedly, of the birth of Jesus. But while I have no doubt of Jesus’ virgin birth (is you don’t believe in that, it’s a bit difficult to believe in His death on the cross and resurrection), I do now question the legitimacy of the “Christ Mass” as a celebration of His birth. The Bible never instructs us to celebrate Jesus’ birth. And if it did, you can be sure God would want it celebrated in an entirely different manner to the kind of pagan revelry, debauchery and idolatry that characterises the Christmas we have today. Historically, 25 December is the birthday of the Babylonian sun-god, Tammuz, son of Semiramis. Modern-day depictions of Mary and “baby Jesus” bear an uncanny resemblance to ancient pagan depictions of Semiramis and Tammuz. Like I said yesterday, the Roman Catholic Church, “Mother of Harlots”, has simply adopted the pagan rituals of Rome, which came from the pagan rituals of Babylon, and given them Christian names. What we are really celebrating, unbeknownst to most, is the birth of Tammuz, a Babylonian god. Jesus is not in Christmas. He never has been, and He never will be. But He is in my heart, and the blood He shed on the cross for my sins cleanses me from sin. Hallelujah!

I also got a bit fired up after watching the Queen's Christmas message (I currently still watch it, actually):

The [Queen's message] was a clever little ad for the One World Church, as Her Majesty dared imply the Bible, the Koran and Buddhist, Hindu and Sikh sacred writings all had a “divine source”. What blasphemy to lump the Word of God with such Satanic trash! Shame on you, Ma’am!

On the 28th, I discovered another site that is still around today, Personal Freedom Outreach. This site has some good information about cults, although you have to pay to get full access to their "Quarterly Journal". Anyway, I reported on some stuff I read there:

In my exploration of Christian Web sites, I came across another today called Personal Freedom Outreach. This site has the aim of exposing the false teachings of cults and wrong teaching within the Christian church. Some of the articles, such as about Benny Hinn, I have read elsewhere. (Or at least, I’ve read very similar ones on the topic.) There were also articles exposing false teachings by Joyce Meyer, Kenneth Copeland and other Charismatics. Another article on this site warned of the dangers of conspiracy theories, e.g. about the Illuminati and the New World Order etc. The basic point is that many of these theories are distracting Christians from their real purpose of sharing the gospel about Jesus Christ. I must say that many of the sites I’ve visited which harp on about the Illuminati and the coming One World Government say little if anything about how you can get saved. And that should be the main purpose for a Christian ministry: preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and His atoning sacrifice on the Cross.

That same night, I threw out two books I had bought a few years earlier, and then explained it the next day:

A little more on why I decided to throw those books out last night. It really is most unusual of me to throw anything of mine out, especially books! Moreover, it had been quite a while since I bought the books and read them. The author, a Charismatic, had had these out-of-body experiences in 1976, during which Jesus allegedly appeared to her and took her on a sort of divine “guided tour” of first Hell, then Heaven, over 40 days and nights. I got the books out of curiosity as to what these places were like. But the Bible gives ample description of these two places, and if God hasn’t revealed something about them there, He has His reasons. What bugged me about the books is that out-of-body experiences are more in tune with New Age practice than Christian. Also, after the author supposedly went to Hell, she was in a terrible emotional state and had nightmares for days afterwards. Would Jesus really do that to one of His children? But more seriously, Jesus said rather a lot to her during these “trips” into eternity. Should we as Christians take Baxter’s books as something additional to the Bible, seeing as they supposedly have “new words” of Jesus? The Bible says if anyone tries to add to it or take away from it, they’ll be under a curse. Would Jesus go against His own word by giving “new revelations” to a housewife in Washington, D.C.? I really don’t think so. Reviews of Baxter’s books, which I read on the Personal Freedom Outreach and Let Us Reason Ministries Web sites, lined up her “revelations” against the Scriptures and proved pretty conclusively that they’re a load of bunkum, despite Baxter’s probably sincere desire to try and win people for Christ. And so I threw Baxter’s two books out last night and asked the Lord to forgive me for ever buying them in the first place.

The "Baxter" in question was Mary K. Baxter, and the books by her that I threw out were A Divine Revelation of Hell and its sequel, A Divine Revelation of Heaven. Definitely books that you should steer well clear of. Anyway, as you can see, my personal theology was undergoing a rather radical shift, although I was still under New Evangelical and Pentecostal influence somewhat. But there is some pretty good understanding being expressed there, and some conviction over certain sins. I didn't just swallow what I was reading blindly, either. For instance, I did my research on comparing the Good News Bible with the KJV, and realised that there was a considerable disparity between the two. As a translator myself, I understood something about semantics, and it was as clear as day that the GNB and KJV were saying some VERY different things in many places! However, there were still some things wrong with my doctrine, like when I wrote on 31 December 2000 that I had "recommitted my life to Jesus Christ after a period of backsliding". Hmm, no mention of repentance. And while I did use the word "repent" back then, I don't think I understood it correctly. And all this good understanding aside, there was still plenty of pride in my heart.

OK, I'm going to split my post here and then post the second part as a reply to it. Thank you for reading this far if you've managed to hang in there!