The Scourge Of Racism
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Let no one believe I spoke of the death penalty for gang bangers found guilty of murder in some cold, heartless religious detachment in my 2012 Commentary “Curtailing Gang Violence,” under the category, Call To Repentance posted August 12, 2018.1 In the warmest love of God, I am for human life and fervently preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ to see dead souls live (Ephesians 2:1-7)! However, urban communities across America are lawless killing fields where too often those not involved in gang conflicts such as children going to and from school are murdered. We all cry and cry and cry, but our sons and some of our daughters too, continue to hurt, maim and kill one another.
As I write in this edited, 2012 follow up Commentary, God has authorized human government to punish evildoers to include putting to death those that murder. This is because human life is of high value to God and He wants us to share His view of ourselves. God knows the horrible track record our nation has with minorities in its justice system and I do too. So, I am surely also calling for reform that brings it into line with His Word and the engagement of revived Christians in advance of prosecuting our sons in death penalty cases. It is hypocritical for us to insist to the world that black lives matter and we do not care enough to turn in and righteously punish our sons that cheaply murder them. The bloodshed in our streets as judgment proves God does not share in this hypocrisy!
Originally Published September 2012
I am not unaware of how those without a biblical worldview among professed black Christians processed advocating the death penalty as a means to deter and curtail gang violence in my August 2012 Commentary. Say what you will about the way of suffering our people have endured, self-destruction through murder as victims is not an appropriate response. This may be what is happening for many, but any so-called Christian and preacher that is only content to rationalize the slaughter rather than preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ and enforcing the divine value placed on human life to curtail it is in complicity! Still, the death penalty is to be done God's way also.
It is true that the devaluing of human life in this land has been going on since the colonizing of what was called a “New World.” Violence played a major role in subduing the Indians and turning captured Africans into slaves. These souls were treated with the utmost contempt in violence and murdered with impunity. After this came the dehumanizing Theory of Evolution and Margret Sanger who wished to control population by way of eugenics. Through the deceitful advocacy of women’s reproductive rights, feticide became national law and blacks now murder our own children in the womb at a higher rate than other groups. Survival in a harsh, often violent urban setting is daily life.
Daily too, is the saturation of violence in the media. Contrary to what a real "Christian nation" with a biblical worldview would look like, America has a history and culture of violence, murder and death that serves as a broader context and contributing factors for gangs among its many outlets. While there is always an outcry when an increase in gang violence and murder occurs, a couple of arrests and short prison terms later rather than being deterred in the main, these men are released morally unchanged to do it all over again. This is a vicious cycle that must and can only be broken when faithful Christians get involved with the Gospel, God's Word, power and accountability.
God Almighty, who declares in His Word without equivocation that He is man's Creator (Genesis 1:26-27), made him and all of creation at the beginning "very good," (Genesis 1:31, NKJV). Made in the image and likeness of God, human life is esteemed by God as the most precious of all since man is to be an eternal son. When man sinned, God, the Son of God and Word wrapped Himself in flesh to effect man's redemption that men of faith may even be raised from the dead to live with God forever (Psalm 49:1-15; John 1:1-5, 14, 10:10, 11:25-27; Hebrews 2:5-18).2 The death of Jesus Christ on the cross thunderously exclaims human life is of inestimable value to God!
Having such esteem for the life of man, after destroying a world of evil and violence (like our own) in Noah's day (Genesis 6:5-22), God gave him and all mankind an irrevocable edict. Man's life is so precious to God that not an animal or any man is to willfully shed his blood. If either creature does kill a man, as governing authorities men under God are to shed that creature's blood; that is, take the responsible animal or man's life as a statement of absolute opposition to the willful killing of a human (Genesis 9:4-6). Later, God in the Ten Commandments declares, "'You shall not murder,'" (Exodus 20:13, NKJV) which Jesus affirms and expands in application (Matthew 5:21-26).
God gave Israel just commandments, laws, statutes and ordinances (and thereby all mankind as a blueprint) for righteously dealing with those who murder. All persons accused of murder must first be given a trial where the facts of the case are determined. Given the historical and blatant corruption of American jurisprudence in the cases of minorities, every jury of peers in murder trials must include a fair number of the accused person's ethnic group or other minorities. There must also be a minimum of two eyewitnesses to consider the death penalty. All penalties must be handed out consistently to be an effective deterrent. Accountability and deterrence are the Lord's goals in the death penalty for murder (Exodus 21:12-14; Numbers 35:9-34; Deuteronomy 19:15-21).
It is now far past the time for Christians to have a biblical worldview on crime in general and gang violence in particular. Our compassion for the community ought to be displayed first in proclaiming the Gospel and God's Word on sin in unity. Our church ministries should be proactive in reaching our boys before they are introduced to gangs.3 They must be taught the truth that a holy God loves them, but hates their sins. Also, they are to value human life as God does or face man's justice and without repentance, His eternal condemnation (1 Peter 2:13-14; Revelation 21:8, 22:12-15). The risen, living Christ continues His cry among American churches, "Who is on the Lord's side?"
1 Have I not confessed to murder in allowing the death of my unborn children as an unsaved youth? Back then I would not have understood why I merited the death
penalty for my crime against humanity, but I do now and appreciate to the fullest measure the grace of God that did not treat my sin as it deserved in the midst of a
society that had legally and falsely decided aborting the unborn is not murder. I did not get away with anything since until my last breath, though forgiven, I must
endure public shame while with others, fighting to persuade our society to return to God’s view of murder in the face of His staggering judgments for refusing!
2 As the Lord leads, I present the reality of the divine eternal purposes and destiny of man as God’s redeemed creature in my book, The Strong Man Of God: Back
To Basics. It is available at all major internet book sellers, by order at your favorite brick and mortar bookstore or in the Strong Man Store.
3 Our Ministry is doing this through our Urban Radio Campaign and its Strong Man Minute Page as well as the Strong Man Academy. We welcome Kingdom dri-
ven Christians and churches that want to support us in the work! This can be securely done on the Give Page of our Web Site.
The Holy Spirit is absolutely critical to the life and perseverance of Christians in these latter days as He has been from the beginning. All that God allows going forward separates the wheat from the chaff; the faithful from the unfaithful so that immediately before the full outpouring of His wrath upon the disobedient, the surviving tested, faithful and true Christian remnant are glorified with the bypass of death to experience instantaneous transformation to immortality (1 Corinthians 15:51-52; 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17)! They proceed from life to life by the agency of the Holy Spirit who indwells them and through whom they persevered in hope to that glorious moment.
Be reminded again in this edited 2012 blog repost the Lord led me to write that Christianity and the Christian life is no mere religion of manmade invention. God has marvelously revealed the divine reality and Kingdom through the life and work of His Son, Jesus Christ; work that saves and baptizes men into the life giving, dynamic activity of the Holy Spirit (John 1:1-34)! With all thanksgiving and praise, I rejoice in the triune God for having become a partaker in the divine nature and what that has meant for me in a journey that approaches forty years (2 Peter 1:2-4)! I am not worthy of this highest of honors to contain in this earthen vessel the exceedingly great treasure of the great “I AM,” (Exodus 3:13-14; John 8:48-59, 2 Corinthians 4:7, NKJV). Bless our God this Thanksgiving, you saints!
Originally Posted July 29, 2012
It is not just for some small and insignificant reason that the apostle Paul commands members of the church at Thessalonica, “Do not quench the Spirit,” (1 Thessalonians 5:19, NKJV). The Holy Spirit is the Christian’s source of new birth (John 3:1-8), eternal, spiritual life (John 6:63), instruction (John 14:26) and power (Acts 1:8) in Christ. Among the analogies of the Spirit’s presence and work in the believer are “rivers of living water” (John 7:37-39) and “fire” (Acts 2:1-4)! The Spirit of God is as elemental to the spiritual life of a Christian as oxygen is to the body. No Holy Spirit, no sign of divine life or salvation (Romans 8:5-9). This is also made clear in my book, The Strong Man Of God: Back To Basics.
As I was taught from the Word by the Holy Spirit in my spiritual infancy, so, I have faithfully taught: the Christian life is a supernatural life that He leads, controls and empowers! The Holy Spirit must do this or we cannot be Christians much less fulfill the will and instruction of Christ that His disciples do the miraculous works He did and in greater number (John 14:12-14). The Lord instructs His apostles (minus Judas Iscariot) that obedience out of love for Him would pave the way for the Holy Spirit to be sent to them as a Helper (John 14:15-17, 16:5-15).
The Holy Spirit equips us to do the will of Christ. If we abide in Christ by faith, we will live and bear fruit in our service to Him through the Spirit. The Father will even prune us to bear more fruit. But if one will not abide--having quenched the Spirit and being fruitless, the Father cuts him as a withered branch from Christ the true vine and he is thrown into eternal fire on the day of judgment (John 15:1-8; Revelation 20:11-15).
All of the foregoing being true, how is it that for the majority of history after the close of the apostolic period, increasingly, the religious educated elite have attempted to dam up the living water and quench the fire of the Holy Spirit in the lives of believers and the churches contrary to the apostle Paul’s command? They have done this with high sounding academic pronouncements and writings that in effect render the Holy Spirit a back seat participant and servant of the activities of outwardly pious, but flesh driven men practicing religion. They declare the Spirit does not talk to men, do miracles through them or still empower all of the New Testament listed spiritual gifts anymore.
This gives another insight into why many Western churches are stagnant, declining and dying with this kind of teaching going on. As I recently wrote, it is to the glory of God that the Third Person of the triune God has worked around human religious folly to accomplish His mission in the Gospel anyway (see Praise For The Almighty God, September 13, 2015 under the category, “Glory To God!")!
Moreover, in a grand display of mercy, the Holy Spirit has also periodically (and strategically) in history poured out renewing fire on the churches in the wake of anointed preaching by men such as Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield in what were called Great Awakenings nearly three centuries ago. And while there may have been some other breakouts of revival here and there since including the 1906 Azusa Street event in Los Angeles that has given rise to the fast growing Charismatic Movement with its accompanying spiritual sensationalism and abuses, parching spiritual drought and cold deadness otherwise grip so many of the churches large and small today.
No human effort can remedy this; only Holy Spirit empowered renewal can bring about the drought busting rains and rekindled fire of revival Christians and our dying churches need. It is time we begin to earnestly seek Him in all confession, repentance and heartfelt petition (Nehemiah 9:1-37; Psalm 51:1-17; Acts 4:23-31).
In being revived, you will be able to understand the prophetic urgency of the strong man of God message and cause. In being revived, surely you will rise up from your religious diddling and aspire to become strong men and great women of God. In being revived, now you can see again the awesome greatness of our God in battle array ready to work through us in all signs, wonders and displays of power to engage and frustrate the enemy as did our Lord instead of the other way around! In being revived, you will understand all of the New Testament spiritual gifts are intended by God to enable His sons to serve His purposes in the Church until Christ returns.
The ability to think, reason and form opinions is a powerful ability we humans have from being made in the image and likeness of God. Created by Him with freewill, we are free to think whatever we want. The issue is, however, is what we are thinking lined up with reality and truth especially as set out objectively for us by our Creator? Atheists clearly see the reality and truth of God’s existence and deny it because they choose to think otherwise about the evidence. But for those of us that have been born again by the Spirit of God, we not only see the reality and truth of our God, but by His Word and revelation our eyes are opened to joyfully know these more deeply and learn that which is to be--His mind as it were (1 Corinthians 2:6-16)!
In the aftermath of declaring the spiritual reality and truth about the Eternal Sons Of God in the June 19, 2016 repost, the Lord has led me to repost this re-titled and edited 2013 blog that followed it. It serves as a prelude to addressing immortality from a biblical perspective. In it, we also see again the devastating consequence of culturally conditioning the faith to the point human thinking supplants God’s Word. For while titillating, flights of fancy, romantic ideas, wishes and subjective speculations in their error create heresy and rob believers (as they have done over the centuries) of the awe and child-like wonder available from the authentic glimpses of the unseen spiritual realm and future God has provided us in His Word. Why settle for false fantasy when the reality and truth are so good?
Originally Posted May 26, 2013
Faithful Christians know that we are not to impose our own ideas, views or desires onto Scripture or the faith. Even the apostles among themselves had to constantly guard against this in preserving the purity of their Scripture rooted message and the simplicity of Christ (Galatians 2:11-21). Nevertheless, with the rise of Christianity the religion of men after the passing of the 1st century apostles, as foretold, all manner of corrupt violence has been done since to God’s Word with the result that much wrong thinking and many false doctrines exist and persist among professing Christians along with their leaders in the churches to this hour (Acts 20:27-31; 2 Peter 2:1-3).
Examples of unbiblical thinking and ideas abound, but consider a few popular ones. As it concerns the impact of literature on Christian thinking, Dante may have written a fictional work showcasing Catholicism’s Purgatory and Hades as Satan’s current residence, but the Bible teaches neither idea. The television show Touched By An Angel starring Della Reese featured female angels, but where are they in the Bible? One of the most popular widespread cultural sentiments today not at all taught in the Bible puts anybody human opinion believes to be good in Heaven at their death. Related to that thinking is the unbiblical idea the dead in the afterlife can see earth activity.
I have heard even professing Christians say regarding departed loved ones: “I know he (or she) is looking down on us right now.” Where in the Bible is it taught that disembodied human spirits either in Heaven or Hades are permitted to view earth activity in real time? Concerning the afterlife too, not discouraged by solid Bible teaching to the contrary, many professing Christians solely out of mortal sentimentality and desire continue to insist they will reunite with loved ones and take up where they left off before death disembodied in Heaven and after at the resurrection to immortality forever! Such wrong human thinking and ideas will only continue to proliferate among professing Christians unless the guilty repent and turn back to the Bible as the final authority for spiritual reality and truth.
I fully empathize with the deep emotional ties we mortals have to our family and friends in this life. As finite mortals, the temptation to want eternity to be like our present is linked to what is familiar and excellent to us. For example, males find it hard to think of an eternity without females because of their mothers and intimate involvements with others. However, God’s Word is to be considered true because His perfect character permits Him to speak no other way (Numbers 23:19; Deuteronomy 32:4; 2 Samuel 7:27-29; Psalm 119:160; Titus 1:1-2)! Thus, Scripture is clear that death ends life, all biological family and marital ties as we knew them physically in this mortal age forever (Job 7:6-10; Ecclesiastes 9:2-6; John 19:25-27; Romans 7:1-3; 1 Corinthians 7:39).
Indeed, for the Christian, the disconnect process from family begins in terms of priority at salvation when we take up with Christ (Psalm 45:10-11; Matthew 10:34-39; Luke 14:25-27; Romans 6:3-4) following His example (Mark 3:31-35). Sadly, many professing Christians do not believe Christ means what He says about the primacy of our relationship with Him. But He warned the otherwise thriving church of Ephesus He would take away their existence unless they returned again to Him as their “first love” (Revelation 2:1-7, NKJV). Some in days to come will deny the Lord clinging to their mortal families of this world and perish eternally (Mark 8:34-38; Revelation 14:9-11).
At the onset of the new eternal order God also gives His redeemed sons a permanent memory wipe of all the “former things” of this present creation to include the sinful, sorrowful and painful experiences we had even with family and friends during our mortal sojourn so that they will not interfere with our new glorious experiences in His presence forever (Isaiah 25:8, 65:17-19; Revelation 21:1-4, NKJV). The memory wipe is necessary too because though in perfect agreement with God’s righteous condemnation of the wicked to the lake of fire, how could we not grieve forever as emotive creatures knowing that people we cared about during our mortal lives are there (Malachi 4:1-3; Revelation 20:11-15, 21:8)?
Please note how Christ’s mortal family members (Mary, James and Jude) relate to Him as Lord, are not accorded any special standing nor do they appear to pursue it by right of family relationship in the aftermath of His resurrection and ascension in the canonical New Testament (Acts 1:12-26, 15:6-22; Galatians 1:18-19, 2:1-10; James 1:1; Jude 1). Only the transcendent spiritual relationships formed in and through the Holy Spirit of divine love with fellow faithful believers (including those from the family) in this present life will survive death intact and continue as we serve God together forever (John 3:3-7, 13:34-35, 14:15-17; Romans 5:5; 1 Corinthians 13:8-13; 2 Corinthians 5:16-17; Galatians 5:22-25; 1 John 3:14-15, 4:20-21; Revelation 22:1-3).
Rather than attempting to impose our wishes on Christianity and corrupting His Word to do so, God’s will is for us to accept His will, way and Word as it is written (1 Corinthians 4:6)! If we do, it will mean we think righteously, objectively and truthfully about things as well as hold to and teach sound doctrine as the Lord wills (John 7:24; 2 Timothy 1:13-14). As it concerns our unsaved family and friends presently, the truth about God’s total disconnect at death should move us to do all of the loving of, witnessing to and good deeds for them we are going to do now (Ecclesiastes 9:7-10; Ephesians 5:15-16; Colossians 3:17)!
Concerning after we die, remember Heaven currently is only a temporary stop for our disembodied spirits to await God’s promised resurrection to immortal glory. As exceedingly superior to our present, mortal experience as Heaven will be to us disembodied, Scripture promises exponentially greater, unending experiences still to unfold for us as the immortally embodied and glorified eternal sons of God (Ephesians 2:4-7; Revelation 21:5-7)! The risen, living Christ continues His cry among American churches, "Who is on the Lord's side?"
One of the most impressive things about the Man, Christ Jesus, is that He is absolutely serious about living to please and do His Father’s will.1 He is the loving Son of God and acts like it; living as a true Disciple of His Father (Isaiah 50:4-6; John 5:19-23, 8:48-49, 10:30-39, 12:48-50)! Sadly, the same cannot be said for many professed Christian men that relate to the Father and the Lord Jesus mostly from a detached distance. In my book, “The Strong Man Of God: Back To Basics,” I teach with the Lord’s leading that aspiring strong men of God in His image are loving sons of God and Christ’s disciples forever!2 As I write in this edited 2010 Commentary, living the faith in real life is about living these roles out now, in spite of the hardships, criticisms and persecution that it provokes.
Originally Published July 2010
I have lost count of the times I have been persecuted with the occasional open, but mostly subtle verbal assaults I receive for seeking to live out biblical Christianity in real life. No longer to my surprise after over thirty years, the persecution I receive is primarily from professed Christians who have found ways to rationalize and justify compromises with or just to boldly corrupt God's Word. I am knocked as the proverbial "goody two shoes"3 that makes all of the contemporary, go with the flow folk including even members of my own family angry because I will not get with the program (Matthew 10:34-39). After all, everybody is doing it. Um, where have I heard that before?4
I take a hard look at the lives of my critics and find absolutely no evidence whatsoever that they have more joy, peace and experience of God's genuine blessing in their lives than I do. Instead, what I do find is a whole lot of heartbreak and needless sorrows because contrary to the narcissistic lie made popular on much of Christian television, God does not exist just to make us happy, healthy, wealthy and whole. But even worse, so many have actually invented their own god and jesus that allows them to do anything they want including sin without consequence.5 As a result, many professed Christian lives and homes mirror those of people that have not professed Christ.
As He made His way toward the city of Jerusalem just days before His crucifixion, the Lord Jesus saw it and wept over it. He grieved because the religious leaders and people were doing everything they could to bring peace to the nation, but they were rejecting Him who was their peace. The end result would be Jerusalem’s and their destruction as occurred in 70 AD (Luke 19:41-44). With the Lord's heart I weep today for many professed Christians and fellow pastors that are doing the same exact thing Israel was with their made up and corrupted forms of Christianity. In the process, they reject the Jesus of the Bible and destroy themselves.
Christianity is not a religion or set of spiritual and moral principles to live by if you like them. It is the authentic, in time response of the living God to our need for deliverance from His righteous wrath toward our rebellion. For what compared to eternity has been a brief historical period, He has given us time to repent and believe on His Son, Jesus Christ, who died for our sins, was buried and raised to life so we might be forgiven and reconciled back to God. Those that do so, become the adopted sons of God who zealously love Him and begin an incredible journey that overflows with the gracious blessings of our Father even in times of difficulty (Galatians 4:6).
Christianity does not make all of our problems and troubles go away. Indeed, as His disciples, we are guaranteed to have tribulation and persecution as we pass through this life on our way to glory (Luke 9:20-26; Acts 14:21-22; 2 Timothy 3:12). However, the Christ of biblical Christianity gives us the spiritual resources to face and overcome this world's troubles through faith in Him (John 16:33). As a result of the very real costs of devotion and suffering for His sake in a fallen, hostile world, the Lord challenges those that would be His disciples to count the cost before signing up to follow Him (Luke 14:25-35).
The aspiring strong man of God in the image of Jesus Christ takes the words, instructions and commandments of our Lord to heart. With a sold out heart in all zeal he seeks to please Him and do His will. He does not twist and corrupt His Master's program to fit his own. Instead, he lives out his faith in and applies the truth of God's Word to every life circumstance he faces. Love, marriage, parenting, extended family, other relationships, the job, athletic fields, politics, social issues etc. are all arenas he lives out his biblical faith without compromise or corruption. Is that you, sir? Please stop calling yourself a Christian if it is not and you are unwilling to repent (Matthew 7:21-23)! The risen, living Christ continues His cry among American churches, "Who is on the Lord's side?"
1 See my January-February 2017 three-part series, Jesus, Son Of Man (and especially part-two posted February 5, 2017 ), under the category, The Cause, to explore
this point further.
2 The book is available at all major internet booksellers, by order at your favorite brick and mortar bookstore or in the Strong Man Store.
3 This is actually the first instance I used this derogatory phrase in commentaries or blog posts since 2010. I decided not to remove it after having already used it in the
January 28, 2018 post, Character Is Required Of Christian Men, under the category, Instruction, because it fully captures the words and attitude of no small number of
those toward me I have encountered over the years from among professed Christian religionists especially.
4 Read the August 26, 2018 post, Worldly Peer Pressure, under the category, Call To Repent.
5 See and/or download the sobering free one page document, The Gods Of Cultural Christianity in the Strong Man Store.
On the heels of such an incredible journey through God’s Word tracking Christ’s post-cross activity and resulting promise of the Christian’s glorious destiny in Him just concluded in the April 2016 blog reposts, my great desire is to continue on. Lord willing, I will return soon to the subject of the resurrection and immortality of faithful Christians. However, my focus has been painfully diverted momentarily from the glories to come to the currently escalating rebellion against God that is participated in even by many professing Christians and their churches falsely claiming He has changed His program for mankind in this present, mortal age (Malachi 3:6; Hebrews 13:8).
Amazingly, from the question of to whom does it belong to what one’s rights are with it, the human body is at the center of this very open rebellion against God in these latter days. And why would this not be so? If human beings are going to rebel against their Creator, then it stands to reason that everything, absolutely everything including the human body tied to His will for them would be the object of resistance as is fully implied in His foretold Word about this rebellion (Psalm 2:1-3). I have been down this road a few times in my blogs, but the May 2014 posts, "The Body Beautiful," Pt. 1 and 2 under the same category as this blog, God’s Creatures, serve as excellent related posts.
Those posts and this edited 2013 repost are intended to state again briefly what God from His Word instructs as a foundation about males, females, their natural, mortal bodies and corresponding roles and responsibilities in this present age written not for worldly rebels as a first priority, but those professing to be Christians in the churches so they might repent before it is too late. For if we as fallen creatures are ready to visit punishment on our children for rebelling against our instructions, how much more the living, just and holy God our Creator (Isaiah 13:11-12)? This repost also forms the basic underpinning for next week’s blog and those to come discussing the immortal body.
Originally Posted May 5, 2013
Men and women have natural bodies designed by God to fulfill the divine will and purposes for this present, mortal age. Their bodily forms follow the respective functions male and female have in the divine purposes of governance and procreation (Genesis 1:26-28). God created Adam the male first making him the federal head of the human race. He then created the woman by taking a rib from Adam and dividing him functionally into two, bringing them back together as one in marriage (Genesis 2:7, 21-24). From His actions as Creator, clearly, God is the Owner of the human body and the soul that inhabits it! As a result, human beings cannot just do as they please with their bodies and lives in opposition to the divine will without consequences (Genesis 2:16-17; Ezekiel 18:4).
Concerning men as males and women as females, as I write in my book, The Strong Man Of God: Back To Basics, they are “different by design.” For example, in general historically, men are geared in brain function toward logic, reason and objectivity critical for problem solving, take charge leadership. Women, on the other hand, major in multi-tasking as managers and are more subjectively inclined. These and all other seemingly distinctive behavioral characteristics of males and females are those of the one man, Adam, divided and accentuated in each by God’s intentional design of their respective natural bodies in accord with His will. Thus, individually and together male and female are man (Genesis 2:23)!
In the image and likeness of God who alone "gives life to all things" (1 Timothy 6:13a, NKJV), Adam as a male was equipped in his body with the means to initiate human physical life. The testicles of man produce, store and deliver living seed that not only initiates human physical life, but also powerfully determines whether that life will be male or female. God gave the man a sex organ which is a perfectly designed instrument for the pleasurable delivery of his seed during the course of intimacy with his wife. While biologically it is possible for unmarried males and females to procreate, this occurs outside of God’s will that children be conceived in the context of marriage (Genesis 4:1).
So concerned was God that a man be interested in sex that leads to procreation, He also designed his testicles to produce a hormone called testosterone that in cooperation with his brain gives him a highly intense desire to have intercourse with his wife. Barring reproductive issues in either the man or his wife, lots of sex would yield lots of children in accord with the divine purpose for fruitful procreation affirmed after Noah’s flood and again following the wrath of Christ’s Second Coming among surviving mortals beginning with the Jewish remnant (Genesis 9:1; Deuteronomy 30:1-10; Isaiah 65:20-25; Jeremiah 31:1-9, 27-28; Ezekiel 36:7-15, 37-38; Romans 11:25-27; Revelation 7:1-8).
The reproductive system in the natural body of the woman is more involved than the man’s. God designed her body to enjoy intimacy with her husband and to also produce hormones that heighten her sexual interest. Not only does she receive her husband’s sex organ by way of a special body cavity that dually serves as a birth canal, but God gave her the apparatus to produce living seed to conceive after mingling with his. When a woman of childbearing ability does not become pregnant, her seed dies and God designed her body to expel it during a menstrual cycle.
God designed the woman’s body to have a womb in order to host a newly conceived human being for nourishment and development in its protective walls until time for birth. Upon birth, God designed the woman to be able to feed up to two babies at once with milk from her breasts that have been awakened for service by hormones in her body. Plainly, to the glory of God as the male body is purposely constructed to initiate human physical life, the female body is purposely and intricately built for conceiving and bearing that life! In the image and likeness of God too, the woman as a mother bonds with and nurtures her children (Genesis 3:8-9; Deuteronomy 32:9-12; Matthew 23:37).
Tragically, because of sin, the natural body does not always form as designed nor does it or the human soul that inhabits it function perfectly. In fact, the body begins to undergo decay leading to death after only a relatively short time (Genesis 3:16-19). Males with no or malfunctioning testicles and women that have been barren, missing reproductive parts of the body or that miscarry are seen throughout history. Too, in willful rebellion against God’s purposes men and women driven by a corrupt lust for pleasure have selfishly misused the sexual function of their natural bodies and murdered its fruit justly bringing divine wrath upon themselves (Romans 1:18-32). The risen, living Christ continues His cry among American churches, “Who is on the Lord’s side?”
The Bible teaches that the mark of a genuine Christian is the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit within shining as light out of darkness from that Christian’s life. This happens quite naturally because the unique, superior nature and character of life embodied in the triune God radiates outward as the sun’s light and heat. Of the foremost display of the divine presence and life in genuine Christians is love. Impostors are not able to love God or others as commanded because they do not have the Holy Spirit and the love of God within them. The Holy Spirit leads me to explore the matter more fully in this re-titled and edited 2013 blog repost to help us discern true Christians.
Originally Posted January 13, 2013
It is not without superior, unimpeachable purpose that the Lord Jesus says to Nicodemus, a religious leader of the Jews that was sympathetic toward Him, ‘“You must be born again,’” (John 3:7, NKJV). Spiritual new birth by the Holy Spirit is an absolute requirement for entry into the Kingdom of and intimate relationship with the triune God. Therefore, any person professing to be a Christian that has not been born again by the Holy Spirit--no matter how educated, credentialed or the length of time in a local church--is an impostor (Romans 8:5-9)!
Such being the case, I exhort every professing Christian reading this in the strongest possible terms to heed the counsel of the apostle Paul and examine yourself to see if you are truly “in the faith,” (2 Corinthians 13:5-6, NKJV). In all humility, check yourself for the vital signs of spiritual life that come through the new birth by the Holy Spirit. In the new birth, authentic believers in Jesus Christ are made “partakers of the divine nature” as He also prayed (John 17:20-23; 2 Peter 1:1-4, NKJV). The nature and life of God are brought into the authentic born again believer’s life through the exclusive agency of the Holy Spirit who is God (Acts 5:3-4)!
There are several attributes of the nature of God the apostle Paul calls “fruit” and that serve as vital spiritual life signs in the authentic born again believer. The fruit of His presence is not created, but is the natural reality and display of His Person dwelling in the authentic born again believer (Galatians 5:22-23). Since they are of the nature and life of God, it can be accurately stated that “God is” before each fruit of the Holy Spirit the apostle lists in the well known Galatians passage cited and elsewhere such as Ephesians 5:9. Indeed, the apostle John writes, “God is love” because God uniquely in nature is love (1 John 4:8, NKJV).
The love of God is exceedingly greater than and distinct from fallen, sinful human love. While human love by divine design is modeled on and intended to be a full expression of God’s love, because of sin in us it is a corrupt, inferior imitation. For example, we that are authentic born again believers know from God’s Word and experience in His company that He loves unconditionally (John 3:16; Romans 5:6-8). We, on the other hand in the natural man of the sinful flesh, love very conditionally based on the other person’s performance and reciprocation. Moreover, the apostle Paul gives a brief description of God’s kind of love in contrast to human love in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8a.
Paul teaches God’s love is longsuffering, kind, forgives keeping no accounts, rejoices in the truth, bears, believes, hopes and endures all things; does not fail! Human love in contrast, however, is often impatient, unkind, envious, boastful, proud, rude and selfish, easily provoked and offended, keeps records of wrongs in bitterness, revels in perversion and fails miserably. Also, human love is very often confused with sentimentality and lust. Clearly, when it is said the Lord Jesus has commanded Christians to love each other, it is not intended for us to do so with human love. He says in John 13:34, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another,” (NKJV).
The new command of Christ completely fulfills and exceeds the Law which says, “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18, NKJV) since He loved by voluntarily laying down His own life in the cause of saving rebel sinners and enemies; the innocent for the guilty (Romans 5:6-11). In our sinful thinking, to love a neighbor as much as we love ourselves is next to impossible since we are born selfish. So, to love even my brother in Christ as He loved me in unconditional, sacrificial self-denial is beyond impossible in human love. Thus, Christ gives His new commandment with the understanding that only His born again followers would be able to carry it out through the exclusive agency and power of the indwelling Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5)!
Impostors in the flesh cannot love either God or a supposed Christian brother with divine love because they are devoid of the Holy Spirit. This is the reason the apostle John is so brutally direct in his Holy Spirit inspired teaching on the subject of Christians loving each other (1 John 2:3-11; 3:10-24, 4:7-21). Divine love for one another actualized by the Holy Spirit is not only a commandment of our Lord, but it is the one and only authenticating sign He gave by which all (believers and the world) would recognize His genuine disciples (John 13:35). The Christian life is a supernatural life!
Hence, the unique calling card of born again believers as witnesses and ambassadors of God in the earth is the divine love filling our hearts by the Holy Spirit and tangibly seen in its display with one another (Acts 1:8; 2 Corinthians 5:20; Colossians 3:12-14). Every aspiring strong man and great woman of God in the image of Christ is a genuine Christian marked by the Holy Spirit and displaying the resulting vital life signs of the new birth through Him including the fruit of divine love.1
1 Get my book The Strong Man Of God: Back To Basics to learn more about the fruit of the Spirit. It is available at any major internet bookseller and at the Strong Man Store on our Web Site, www.thestrongmanofgod.org.
Today, the Lord would have me build an important bridge from the January 13, 2019 post, The Courage Of Conviction, under the category, Instruction, to a social issue and His preachers. The social issue is the wicked practice and tragedy of abortion solemnly held up, prayed about and protested by still not enough professed Christians and churches on this very day set apart each year as Sanctity Of Life Sunday. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is a preacher who with God imbued courage, led many to stand up to nonviolently protest America’s oppressive and unjust treatment of its black citizens a generation ago before being assassinated. We celebrate his holiday tomorrow.
Surveying internet articles on abortion as a social justice issue, I was amazed not by the divergence of opinion, but by how the phrase “social justice” was defined, claimed and used by basically two different sides. And since social justice as a contemporary concept draws its most important personification by way of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., each side also claimed him as a likely endorser. In this post, it matters not where Dr. King may or may not have stood on abortion since he made no quoted direct and specific declaration one way or the other. What matters to the God of the Bible is where all of the truly called preachers of His Word should courageously stand!
Because definitions are an integral part of the intensifying spiritual warfare of these latter days, I cannot in good conscience go any further in this post until I first give proper definition to the terms “social” and “justice.” In its first layer of definition for social, Microsoft Encarta relates it “to human society and how it is organized.” Encarta goes on to associate social with how “people in groups behave and interact” as well as how they live or prefer to live as part of a community. Justice is defined first as “fairness or reasonableness, especially in the way people are treated or decisions are made.” It also refers to the legal system and how laws are applied according to this dictionary.
So, then, it would seem that by combining the words social and justice one would come away generally understanding the phrase to mean the ways in which a human society has established standards of fairness and behavior that are upheld and enforced within it. However, the world governed by Satan cannot endure such simplicity and must complicate things with this definition of the phrase: “the way in which human rights are manifested in the everyday lives of people at every level of society.”1 And there it is, “human rights.” Differing views of legitimate human rights and the source of morality is the reason our society is divided on the social justice issue of abortion.
Faithful Christians--every aspiring strong man and great woman of God in the image of Jesus Christ--start with God and His Word rather than fallen, sinful human assertion no matter how scholarly or brilliant in understanding anything about societal function and concepts such as justice that originate with Him!2 Indeed, God as our Creator has made us in the divine image and likeness to function in community as God from eternity (Genesis 1:1-3, 26-28, 2:7, 18-24; Luke 3:21-22; John 15:17, 17:11, 20-26). Referring to God, Scripture proclaims: “Righteousness and justice are the foundation of Your throne,” (Psalm 89:14, NKJV). God is the source of righteousness and justice!
God introduced His righteous and just nature into the human experience when He gave a command and the consequence of disobedience to the first man (Genesis 2:15-17). The man sinned and God brought His just consequence (Genesis 3:1-6, 17-19).3 For generations thereafter, Adam’s progeny were without righteous and just laws and nearly all destroyed as lawless in the global flood of Noah’s day (Genesis 4:1-24, 6:5-13). God, not man; God later gave to Israel and the world His righteous and just laws introduced through Moses (Deuteronomy 4:5-8; Romans 5:12-14). In His Law, Israel and any other human societies had a perfect standard of justice (Psalm 19:7-8; Romans 7:12).
Our nation’s Declaration Of Independence declares we derive certain rights from God. While individual rights were recognized in God’s laws, they never overstepped the eternal morality issuing forth from the righteousness and justice those laws embodied (Psalm 111:7-8, 119:142; Proverbs 14:12)! Thus, no human individual or society on earth apart from government punitively has the right to take another human life which begins by God’s design at the moment of conception (Genesis 9:5-7; Exodus 20:13; Psalm 139:13-16; Luke 18:18-20; Romans 13:1-4).4 It is here that every God called preacher is to take his stand to uphold the righteousness and justice of God’s Word and speak up to call out societies engaged in the unjust, wanton murder of its weakest citizens (Jeremiah 7:28-31).
Truly, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. courageously stood up when called upon by the Lord to cry out for and demand social justice for oppressed, segregated, disenfranchised, poorly educated and impoverished black Americans from a nation claiming “In God We Trust” a generation ago (Psalm 103:6). But now, a folk more helpless and voiceless than my slave forefathers cries out to God for social justice; even the unborn whose right to live by divine sanction is taken away in their mother’s wombs. Why are the many preachers who know God’s Word silent? Why do they not courageously stand up like Dr. King for black Americans and cry out with one voice on behalf of the unborn? Is it not because they do not all know the Lord or have His heart (Matthew 7:21-23; Mark 10:13-16)?
Is it not also because the racial group in this society with the highest number of abortions today are black Americans whose post-Civil Rights era leadership that includes many preachers sold them out long ago like Esau for some stew (Genesis 25:29-34)?5 Therefore, unless they seek it now, they will not find a place of repentance in the judgment (Isaiah 1:10-20; Hebrews 12:12-17)! And to the nation that has made law the unjust right of women to murder their unborn as Israel once sacrificed its children to demons (Psalm 106:37-38): the Lord will stand for the unborn and vindicate their blood as their Avenger in His holy wrath (Psalm 9; Jeremiah 7:32-34; Nahum 1:2-6; Zephaniah 1:14-18)! The risen, living Christ continues His cry among American churches, "Who is on the Lord's side?"
1 Goggle “define social justice” and see the definition offered by Wikipedia.
2 Learn more about the aspiring strong man and great woman of God in the image of Jesus Christ from my book, The Strong Man Of God: Back To Basics and com-
panion instructional resource, The Strong Man Of God Men’s Group Study. They are available in the Strong Man Store.
3 Death as a consequence of the first man’s sin included separation from fellowship and harmonious community with God (Isaiah 59:1-2) followed by the same among
humanity at every level beginning in the family; working its ruinous end among brothers and spouses (Genesis 4:8; Malachi 2:13-16; Matthew 19:1-8). The Lord Jesus
Christ alone through His death, burial and resurrection has made restoration of life, fellowship and harmonious community with God and among all humanity possible
(John 3:16-17, 11:23-27, 14:6; Romans 5:6-11; Ephesians 2:1-7; 1 Peter 3:8-12).
4 See the August 19, 2018 post, Valuing Human Life, under the category, Biblical Worldview.
5 Read the four-part post beginning February 26, 2017, God Of Restoration And Judgment (and especially part three for which this footnote is specifically made), under
the category, Black History.
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