Zombies and Virgins

Wanted to wish everyone a happy holloween. The fact of the matter is that the zombie apocalypse is already upon us, as the Liberals in our midst can atest. Let us all flee to Costco to survive.

Also found this edifying so thought I'd share.

Five Foolish Virgins

Matthew 25:1–13 “When the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them, but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps” (vv. 3–4).

Dr. John MacArthur rightly points out that the story of the faithful and wise servant in Matthew 24:45–51 tells us to be ready in case Jesus comes sooner than we have anticipated (The MacArthur Bible Commentary, p. 1,174). The faithless servant boldly sins, believing he can put off changing his ways because he thinks his master will be long in coming (Matt. 24:48–51). A wise servant, however, does not delay his duties since he does not know when his master will return, and he refuses to be caught unawares. He does not put off loving service to his master because today might be his last chance to do what is right.

On the other hand, Dr. MacArthur says the parable in Matthew 25:1–13 exhorts us to be ready if Christ delays longer than we expect (p. 1,174). The story is based on a Near Eastern wedding, a scenario familiar to His original audience. After nuptials at the bride’s home, a welcoming party escorts the newly-married couple to the bridegroom’s house for the lengthy reception. The attendants guide these evening processions with their “lamps” (Matt. 25:3–4), which are likely torches made of olive oil-doused cloths mounted on sticks. Wise members of the bridal party carry extra oil in case their torches need to be relit.

In Jesus’ parable, the bridegroom for whom the ten virgins are waiting is the Savior Himself (v. 1). Jesus is here implicitly claiming to be God incarnate; the Old Testament often pictures the Creator as a groom and His people as His bride (Isa. 54:4–8; Hos. 2:14–20). The bridegroom’s arrival is clearly taking longer than expected, for all ten ladies fall asleep (Matt. 25:2–5). This reveals that although we cannot know the exact time of His return, the fact that Jesus has tarried 2,000 years and counting is not unexpected.

The foolish virgins are unprepared for the bridegroom (vv. 8–13). They did not count the cost of being in the processional and did not ready themselves for its delay. Like many others, the foolish girls have not understood the price of discipleship; sacrifice and forethought are required to stand in the day of trial and to be assured that one’s faith is real (Eph. 6:10–20; 2 Tim. 3:16–17; 1 John 5:13). Only the spiritually prepared — the wise virgins — will enter the kingdom.

Coram deo: Living before the face of God

We cannot trust in the spiritual readiness of others. Being ready to enter the kingdom at our Lord’s return or, should He tarry, to remain faithful when our rescue seems long in coming is something that we are responsible for as individuals. We must see that our lamps are being fed — that we are continually growing in the love of God and service to others. Otherwise our oil will run out and we will be revealed as foolish and faithless.

Matthew 24

From Bible Gateway. Great thoughts on Matthew 24.

Dr. R.C. Sproul and other scholars propose a third way of interpreting Matthew 24:1–35, which argues that “the substance of the Olivet Discourse was fulfilled in AD 70” (The Last Days According to Jesus, p. 158). Our studies to come will advocate this approach. The main advantage of this view is that it takes seriously the time-frame references found in the Olivet Discourse. It also focuses on the context of the discourse — our Lord’s prediction of the fall of the temple (Matt. 24:2) — providing a coherent answer to the question as to when these things will take place (v. 3), that is, when Jerusalem and its temple will be destroyed.

Coram deo: Living before the face of God

This approach to the Olivet Discourse does not deny Christ’s future coming in glory “to judge the living and the dead,” as the creeds say. Those who advocate this view just argue that most of Matthew 24 is not directly applicable to this event. But many other passages affirm the second coming of Christ to usher in the new heavens and earth, and Christians must affirm that there is a day of judgment for the world (I Thess. 1:9–10). Are you longing for His return?

When Hope Fades

Found the below edifying from Bible Gateway.

WHEN HOPE FADES, FAITH EMERGES

We wait in hope for the LORD; he is our help and our shield. Psalm 33:20

The hope of most female refugees from North Korea fades away shortly after arriving in China. Most do not want to flee to South Korea, because then they lose all contact with their family, and they are not in the position to support them anymore. And if they go to another place in China, it is only a matter of time before they are caught by either the police or human traffickers. And who knows what happens to them then?

So, is all hope lost? “No, there is hope,” says co-worker Kun-so. She picks up a Bible. “And that hope is written in this Book. For in it are profound promises. There is a heaven. Jesus loves you. All tears will be wiped away. No more death, no more pain. The Bible can even be the key to a better life now.

“But we have to bring the hard, difficult, biblical messages to the surface. The Bible says that you have to bless those who persecute you. It means you have to love the husband that abuses you. I have seen improvement when a North Korean woman was able to love instead of hate. And I direct the women to how God feels about them, how precious they are in His eyes, about what Jesus Christ did for them on Calvary. Thanks to His sacrifice there is hope. I can point the women to the day that will come eventually. The day that our Lord will wipe away every tear from their eyes, the day that death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

“After a while, we try to teach the women to forgive their Chinese husbands for their abuse. We tell them Jesus commands us to love our husbands. I know this is not easy to do. But we have seen that some women found the strength to do loving things for their husbands, and as a result slowly the husband started to change.”

Moon lost her child through a forced abortion, only days before her due date. Moon still lives with the Chinese family responsible for killing her child. But she also came into contact with a female co-worker. The worker took care of Moon as best as she could. She befriended her, prayed with her and explained about God and His love for her.

“I will be forever grateful,” shares Moon. “Thanks to you, I came into contact with God. As I learn more and more about Him through your Bible studies, I am grateful that this wonderful Being loves me. China and North Korea have not changed. I am still a person with no rights, and there is always the threat that the police will find me and send me back to North Korea.

“My situation is terrible, humanly speaking. But I feel like I am living in a whole new world, just because I know God. And I know my baby is with Him.”

When hope fades, faith emerges.

RESPONSE: Today I will place my hope in the Lord and trust Him to change the situations around me.

PRAYER: Pray for North Korean refugees—especially women—who suffer severely often losing hope. Pray that they will indeed find hope in the Lord.

Standing Strong Through The Storm

Quick update and Beware

I found the below extremely edifying, so thought I'd share. Also this week will mark my one year involvement with Kiva. Today is also Infant loss awareness day. Please join me in praying for those who lost a loved one at an early age.

Beware of Apostasy Deuteronomy 13 “If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams…says, ‘Let us go after other gods’…you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams” (vv. 1–3).

Advanced technology has brought many benefits in the form of easier travel and communications. It is now relatively easy for those of us in the West to go anywhere in the world. Thus we can easily keep ourselves up to date on world events and what is going on in the lives of our friends and family who live far away. Yet there has been a downside to this progress. Television lets us see what is happening in other countries, but it also lets false teaching from Mormons, New Age gurus, and the health-and-wealth gospel into our homes. The Internet allows us to do research with greater ease and speed, but it exposes us to misinformation as well. In our day, aberrant teaching is far too accessible to people across the globe.

Erroneous teaching has been a problem for the covenant community from almost the very beginning. We read in today’s passage the warning Moses gave the people of Israel about false prophets just before the nation entered the land of Canaan. Even if the person who claims to speak for God is able to do great signs, Moses says, the people are not to follow the “prophet” if he wants to worship other gods (Deut. 13:1–3). The priority of sound teaching is a principle that we find throughout Scripture. As fallen human beings we are normally inclined to follow the gifted and charismatic teacher. The Lord, however, places a priority on the truth, not the abilities of the instructor. People might do great things, but they are never to be followed into the service of a different god. In fact, even if an angel himself were to preach another gospel, we must never follow it (Gal. 1:8–9). A teacher whose message consistently fails to line up with the essential doctrines of the Word of God must be rejected.

False teaching is dangerous to the Lord’s people because it can lead people into apostasy. An apostate is one who has committed the deadly sin of professing faith in the one, true creator God and then later denying His profession. The problem of apostasy was so bad in ancient Israel that the Lord eventually brought the curse of exile upon the nation. Let us beware of error lest we too succumb and suffer the same fate (Rev. 2:12–17).

Coram deo: Living before the face of God

Of course, we realize that anyone who abandons Christ did not ever have saving faith to begin with (1 John 2:19). Nevertheless, this truth should not make us complacent; rather, it should encourage us to demonstrate the reality of our faith and pursue earnestly the truths of God that we may “inherit the promises” (Heb. 6:11–12). Take time today to pray for your soul, asking the Lord to keep you in the truth and preserve your faith until the end.

Doctrine Divides

Again from Bible Gateway.

Doctrine Divides

Jeremiah 6:1–15 “They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace” (v. 14).

Throughout history men have appeared who would become famous for seeking peace at any price. Perhaps the greatest twentieth-century example of such a figure is the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain who in 1938 proclaimed that he had achieved “peace in our time” with Adolf Hitler even as he was preparing to unleash his blitzkrieg on Europe. Chamberlain’s aversion to hostility was so great that Hitler played him for a fool.

Conflict is something that most people, when given the opportunity, try to avoid. Peace is so desirable that significant differences between individuals and groups are often ignored, and unity is sought under the lowest common denominator. When peace is sought under these auspices, it can be easy to ignore the importance of truth altogether. The modern heirs of nineteenth-century Christian liberalism reveal such tendencies. In the drive to live peaceably with other professing believers and even other non-Christian religions, liberalism has tended to redefine Christianity as “the universal fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood of man,” or some other innocuous definition. Ironically, liberals tend to tolerate any kind of belief system unless it happens to represent orthodox, biblical faith.

We cannot, however, judge mainline Protestantism without recognizing that these problems are increasingly evident within evangelicalism. Even though many different denominations were born out of the Protestant Reformation, evangelicals have traditionally confessed the inerrancy of Scripture and the doctrine of justification by faith alone whether they were Lutherans, Baptists, Anglicans, Presbyterians, and so on. Today, unfortunately, the desire for unity means that such essential doctrines are often diminished so that Protestants, Roman Catholics, and Eastern Orthodox can all get along. Professing evangelicals no longer necessarily believe that justification by faith alone is an essential doctrine — even though without it there is no Gospel (Gal. 1:6–9; 2:15–16).

If Christian unity is to mean anything, it must be a unity of faith grounded in the truth. To sacrifice conviction for “peace” is to have no conviction at all.

Coram deo: Living before the face of God

Christians have often divided over matters not essential to Christian orthodoxy and lobbed charges of heresy at one another. Such actions have created a distaste for theology in the minds of many people, and there is now a tendency to downplay any essential differences within the visible church because of all the vitriol shown over the less important points of doctrine. Let us be passionate for the truth, but let us not divide unless Christian orthodoxy is at stake.

Twisting the Truth

A great follow up on unity from Bible Gateway.

Twisting the Truth

Acts 20:7–35 “Fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them” (vv. 29–30).

Historically speaking, divergent viewpoints have existed within the church since the days of the apostles. Christians have always had to live in community with other believers who do not agree with them on every single point, and they have had to do so in a way that keeps “the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph. 4:3). As an example of this, Paul in Romans 14 clearly intends to bring civility to Christians who are arguing over matters of diet and calendar.

No matter the particular issue, all disagreements occur only because one or more parties in the disagreement are at least partially in error. Both you and I can be wrong when we differ over something, but we cannot both be totally right. Not every error is a legitimate cause for division, and differences must be tolerated whenever they do not undermine Christian faith. Paul in Romans 14 makes this point, telling certain Christians not to judge other Christians who abstain from meat (mostly Jews still concerned with purity laws) even though no food is unclean in itself (v. 14). As long as the consciences of “the weak” did not bind the consciences of “the strong,” their view of food was tolerable.

Other errors deny those very beliefs that set Christians apart from all other people, that is, they deny those truths without which the Christian faith is impossible. Denials of the Trinity, the virgin birth, and other such matters are errors that we refer to as heresies. To preserve the purity of its testimony to the one, true God, the church has historically stood against heresy, calling councils and writing creeds to define the boundaries of orthodoxy.

Traditionally, heretics have been unwilling to admit that they do not affirm Christianity as it has been handed down throughout the ages. This problem was compounded beginning in the nineteenth century when heretics were increasingly able to stay in their churches without being disciplined for their aberrant views. Many unbelievers today are leaders in some Protestant denominations, which have suffered a mass exodus of members. The complicity of many church bodies in looking the other way when soul-damning lies are taught has forced many to flee these churches lest they be devoured by the wolves.

Coram deo: Living before the face of God

Paul in Romans 14 urged the toleration of those who in error felt it was wrong to eat what they thought was unclean. If this is so, should we not also tolerate those who disagree with us over issues such as the method of baptism or the millennial reign of Christ, especially when it is impossible to determine with absolute certainty which views are less faithful to Scripture than others? Are nonessential truths something over which you break fellowship?

Prayer Requests

Some prayer requests from VOM which I wanted to share.

"Prayer is the pulse of life; by it the doctor can tell what is the condition of the heart. The sin of prayerlessness is a proof for the ordinary Christian or minister that the life of God in the soul is in deadly sickness and weakness." - Andrew Murray

"praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints" - Ephesians 6:18

VOM-USA Prayer Update for August 2, 2013 On Thu. Aug 01 2013 at 03:11 PM Moderator wrote: India--New Amendment Could Increase Consequences for Christian Evangelism Source: VOM Sources

2 Corinthians 2:14-17

A proposed amendment to the "Freedom of Religion" law in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh poses a threat to potential converts to Christianity. The amendment stipulates a mandatory one-month advance notice to the district magistrate by both a prospective convert and the minister who wishes preside over a conversion ceremony. It also provides more stringent punishment (a three- to four-year prison term) and heftier fines for non-compliance. The district magistrate and any investigating police officer are charged with ensuring that no conversion happens by force or allurement, mandates that would allow them to impede true conversions. Christians are concerned this amendment grants too much power to local authorities, who are likely to intimidate those of a minority religion and hinder genuine conversions. It will also encourage the harassment of Christian pastors and anyone seeking to convert.[/quote]

Vietnam--Recent Convert Tortured and Imprisoned Source: VOM Sources

2 Corinthians 4:8-11

A new Christian, "Bao," is being pressured by village authorities to recant his faith, a VOM worker reports. After Bao and his family converted to Christianity four months ago, authorities told Bao he could not live in the village and that he could not use or purchase any products like food, clothing or candles from the village as long as he continued in his beliefs. They repeated their threat three times. After Bao was baptized, on July 16, his brother beat him and had him arrested. Bao was jailed for two days and was beaten and shocked in his eye with electric wires. Police fined Bao $250, which had to be paid before he could be released. His wife was unable to go and find someone to loan them the money because she is blind. Instead, Bao was released on the condition that he return in two days with the full payment. VOM is providing Bao with money to pay the fine. Please pray for the provision and protection of Bao and his family.[/quote]

Iran--Guards Harass Christian Prisoners Sources: VOM Sources, Mohabat News

2 Timothy 1:11-12

Prison guards raided the cells of Christian prisoners in Iran recently, damaging facilities and stealing personal belongings. On July 18, 150 prison guards raided a ward in Evin prison in Tehran, pulled prisoners from their cells and began searching. During the search, guards broke and stole prisoners' belongings. They also damaged facilities in the cells, including cooling systems and electrical wiring. Some of the Christian prisoners in the ward are serving sentences of eight years for their religious activity. Shortly afterward, guards raided the cell of Christian prisoner Behnam Irani, who is being held in Karaj, Iran, and treated him similarly. He has been in prison since March 2010.[/quote]

Bangladesh--VOM Project

Pray for those involved in a project teaching discipleship and vocational training in the trade of tailoring to persecuted Christians so that they can be self-supporting.[/quote]