My Apologies

To my dear friends and readers:


There is  reason for my silence at the moment.  My computer is in the shop to be rebuilt.  Hopefully what I get back will be better and I'll be back to offering up more essays.  I wish the best for those who read my posts.


Stanley Loper

On Helping Others.

Today’s subject was requested by a cousin on Facebook.

I encourage my readers to ask for subjects to be covered though I reserve the right to decided which I cover.  He asked me to compose a lesson on helping others.  Since my daily Facebook devotion is geared to a daily passage of the Bible to read I’m limited with the daily devotion to whatever lessons may be found in the assigned reading.  However, I have the freedom and flexibility here, so:

The question at hand provides a perfect example of how the Christian may apply the Topical Method of Bible study I use in my study of God’s word.  Although we, as Gentile Christians are not under the Law of Moses, as the Apostles confirmed when the question was put before them in the first century (See Acts 15:1-32 for the story and decision in context), that doesn’t mean the Old Testament is irrelevant to us today.  When writing the young man Timothy, Paul told him that “all scripture” was beneficial for many things including as a guide for life (2 Tim. 3:14-17).  The scripture Paul was talking about was the Torah, the only scriptures Christians had besides Matthew’s Gospel at the time.  So the wise Christian consults the Old Testament as well on every subject to get a complete picture on which to base doctrine, teaching, and life’s decisions.

The Patriarchs

We find a wealth of information on the subject in the OT and I can but hit some highlights in our consideration.  In the age of the Patriarchs we find the patriarchs were always ready to help others.  When Abraham left Ur he took his father, Terah and his nephew, Lott with him.  He stopped off on his journey to the land God commanded him to go in Haran, apparently because his father wasn’t up to the journey and cared for him until his father died before continuing the journey on to Canaan.

When he got to Canaan he and his nephew had a parting of the ways.  Yet when Lott was captured in a war among the kings of Canaan Abraham gathered his men and rushed to his nephews rescue without a thought as to the circumstances under which they’d parted.  Thus Abraham laid his life on the line to help his nephew in his extreme time of need.  On the occasion of when Sodom and Gomorrah came under Judgment Lott saw the two angels of God who were sitting in the square waiting under the dangerous situation of the city and took them into his home, where he defended them from the mob that wanted to abuse them.

As a side note, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah gets a little misunderstood.  Check the story and you’ll find they weren’t punished because they were homosexuals, in fact Lott’s daughters were engaged to two of their number, and so many of them weren’t.  My bet would be the number of homosexuals among them was about the same as now, about 1-3%.  But they were judged because they practiced every evil and debauchery under the sun, as their conduct indicated when they demanded the “men” who’d come under Lott’s roof that they could rape them.  That, by the way is a time honored way of visiting the ultimate contempt and abuse on a man in the orient and elsewhere, to rape him as if he were nothing but a woman.  The story is found at Genesis 19:1-22.

We find an interesting story where Sarah insists the son of Hagar, the son of Abraham’s slave and technically his firstborn be sent away.  So Abraham does so under God’s permission.  As you consider the story, note that Abraham did give Hagar and Ishmael provisions, to help them under the circumstances.  However, they ran out of provisions and come near to death.  But God steps in to help the pair himself.  So God himself set an example for us as he not only saved the pair, but turned Ishmael into a mighty nation (Gen. 21:1-21).

Israel

After God delivered Israel from their slavery in Egypt he made helping other a part of the law.  In Exodus we find it codified in the law that the Israelites were not to afflict destitute aliens, orphans or others in destitute and desperate conditions (Ex. 22:22-27).  God made provisions for the poor for when they had to present mandated sacrifices at the temple to help them.  They were allowed to bring animals of lesser value than otherwise required (Lev. 4:11-13).   In fact, when the days for purification were completed in the case of our Lord’s birth and he was brought to the temple his parents made use of that provision for the poor (Luke 2:22-24; Lev. 12).  So God set the example for the people of Israel to follow in helping those less fortunate in their midst.

But the law didn’t stop there.  It mandated positive provisions for the poor.  When reaping the grain on their land during the harvest, the Israelites were commanded to leave the edges of their land unharvested as a provision for the poor (Lev. 19:9), that command also included a command to leave the gleaning, that is the overlooked sheaves which fell or whatever, for the poor to pick up..  They were also commanded to leave the leftovers from the harvest of the vineyards as well.

Those provisions provided an opportunity for generosity on the part of individuals to help the poor and destitute by leaving less of their land harvested or even deliberately leaving behind gleanings for the poor in the main part of their fields.  We find this custom not only mentioned in the Book of Ruth, but Boaz commands his workers to leave behind gleaning specifically with her in mind (Ruth 2).  In that story we see that some in ancient Israel were moved by the law to go beyond the mere commands and act positively to help the destitute among them.

Christians

Now we get down to where the rubber meets the road for us, the Christian era.  Throughout his ministry Jesus urged people to help those less fortunate than themselves.  He didn’t just tell people to, he reached out and did so himself.  The stories of his healing people of their infirmities are so numerous I won’t even attempt to list them here.  But the healed people, raised the dead, and, yes, helped people materially.  How do we know that?

Because we’re told that Jesus and the disciples had a box they carried which contained money and that Judas Iscariot was in charge of it (John 13:29).   It is implied in the telling of the story where Mary anointed Jesus with costly oil that the money was also used to help the poor and that Judas was stealing it from the box (John 12:4-6).  So our Lord set the example and taught his disciples to help those who needed it, materially if necessary.

We have the example carried forward in the early Church where the earliest gathering of them lived together and helped each other (Acts 4:32-37).  In fact we’re told that there was no one in need among them because of the generosity of their fellows (Acts 4:34).  So from early on Christians recognized a personal obligation to help others in everyway they could.  And James expounded on the importance of helping others in his letter to his fellow Christians (James 2:14-17).  But note closely the last verse in my citation, James tells us that if we don’t help those in need our faith is as dead as a corpse.

So what do we get out of all of the evidence we’ve considered?  Throughout the ages men who truly loved God were ready to help those who in need.  God set the example both in patriarchal times but also for Israel.  And that Jesus set the example, which his disciples followed.  Jesus did so willingly and liberally.  That should be a clue for us.  It’s not that we help people out of compulsion, but as footstep followers of Jesus we do so because we want to because our Lord and Master did.

True Christians help in ways large and small, from mowing the grass of a shut in or and elderly person to reaching into their own pockets to help family, friends, brethren, and even strangers.

I love to tell the story of a commune of Shakers I read one time.  They discovered some of their crops were being stolen.  Instead of going to the sheriff and insisting he catch and punish the thieves they decided the thieves’ need must be greater than their own.  So the next year and thereafter they planted more crops and had enough for their own needs even after the pilfering was done.  Can one think of a more Christ-like attitude than that?

Part of the key to having such an attitude is to remember that this world is passing away and we are but temporary residents in it.  Since everything ultimately belongs to God, we are but stewards of whatever goods he blesses us with and we are to use them to his good, much like the “dishonest” manager in Jesus parable at Luke 16:1-13 did.  And that was the point of the Parable, to use our wealth in a way which brings our heavenly father both glory and goodwill.

So we look for opportunities to do good where we can and to the extent we can.  Early Christians were known for that.  True Christians still are.

Bible Critics And Jephthah's Vow.

Greetings again!

The following examination of the subject of Jephthah’s daughter was recently composed as an answer to a question on Facebook.  I’ve changed the more personal parts of the examination to fit the purposes of this blog.  I hope you find it up building. 

Critics of God are mostly the ones who pull out the story of Jephthah and his vow.  the way the argument goes in part is that when Jephthah offer to give god whoever first came out of his house "as a fire offering" in exchange for victory that God gave him that victory and thus accepted a human sacrifice in violation of his own law when the first one to come out was Jephthah’s daughter, his only child.  That is used to portray God as both bloodthirsty and inconsistent in his actions.  It also has implications for the subject at hand which is why I brought it up.

The story is found at Judges 11:29-40 for those who may not already know.  The fact that God’s spirit comes down on Jephthah and moves him to make the vow also makes it look even worse.  However, can we really imagine a judge of Israel doing such a scandalous thing?  Although I imagine you do realize there was something symbolic in it what is takes is both a little knowledge of the law beyond what we’ve already discussed, and the Ancient Hebrew language to put all the pieces of the puzzle together properly.

God’s law strictly forbade human sacrifice, and especially the local one of sacrificing ones children in the fires:

Lev 18:21 And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through [the fire] to Molech, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God: I [am] the LORD.

Lev 20:2 Again, thou shalt say to the children of Israel, Whosoever [he be] of the children of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn in Israel, that giveth [any] of his seed unto Molech; he shall surely be put to death: the people of the land shall stone him with stones.
Lev 20:3 And I will set my face against that man, and will cut him off from among his people; because he hath given of his seed unto Molech, to defile my sanctuary, and to profane my holy name.
Lev 20:4 And if the people of the land do any ways hide their eyes from the man, when he giveth of his seed unto Molech, and kill him not. Lev 20:5 Then I will set my face against that man, and against his family, and will cut him off, and all that go a whoring after him, to commit whoredom with Molech, from among their people.

So given these commands how can we get to the truth of Jephthah’s vow and what really happened?

The first thing to keep in mind is, Semites often have a habit of speaking in ways strange to us, exaggerating things blowing them up, kind of a bit like bargainers in most markets around the world. One good rule of thumb is to remember that the bible is an eastern and Semitic book, not a Western one and has to be read with that in mind

Another thing to keep in mind is that our understanding of Ancient Hebrew, especially Hebrew from before the Babylonian conquest is incomplete at best, so nuances in the text may very well be lost to us.  I think that is partly the case in the text where Jephthah’s vow is recorded for us in the first place, as I’ll demonstrate as we go on.

The real key to understanding the passage and what really occurred is at the end of the passage in verse 40 where the Hebrew verb “tanah” (תנות, H8567) is used in describing just what the daughters of Israel did every year for four days every year.  Most translations render it to say that they “mourned” for Jephthah’s daughter on that anniversary.  That makes it sound like she was sacrificed at the altar, doesn’t it.  But that is a very inaccurate rendering of the form of the verb as it’s used in the verse.  The verb basically gives the idea of   “to tell again, recount, rehearse,”   And can also mean to lament or wail.  However, one form of the verb carries the idea of “to celebrate” (BDB, pg 1072) and that’s the form of the verb we see used in the verse.  I know... ancient Hebrew verb forms can be quite strange to the Indo-European language mindset because in their most ancient forms they conjugate for intensity instead of time.  This is strange for us but needs to be taken into account.

So what we’re being told in the verse is that every year the daughters of Israel went to Jephthah’s daughter for four days out of the year to celebrate her sacrifice and support her keeping her father’s vow.  So where was she?  The law allowed for different kinds of service to Jehovah, including service on the grounds of the tabernacle and later temple where a person dedicated themselves to the service in a helping capacity, as if they were a sacrifice.  And as far as Jephthah was concerned his daughter might as well have been.  By making his vow he essentially agreed to give the person up to God’s service as thoroughly as if he’d sacrificed them in the fires.  It being his daughter made the sacrifice especially hard since she was his only child and any hope for the continuation of his line, which was very important to any Jew at the time, went down the toilet.  So indeed it was a great sacrifice for both him, and her.

So we find in this instance that the charge that God is a bloodthirsty monster who countenanced a gross violation of his own law doesn’t stand up to close inspection.  We can give an answer to those who criticize, but our faith in The New Testament’s portrayal of him as a kind and loving God is reinforced for us.

Resources For Those Who Want To Learn The biblical Languages.

Greetings my readers:

Sorry I've been lax with keeping up my blog.  I've been busy elsewhere, including going through one surgery and about to undergo another in a few days.  It's occurred to me that those who end up here might include people who are interested in learning the languages of the Bible but don't kn ow where to start.  Here are a few handy resources online.  They'll be sites of various kinds with different kinds of resources from lessons to audio files of God's word in the biblical languages.

Learn Biblical Languages 

Greek:

Hellenistic Greek 

A Grammar of Septuagint Greek. 

Vine's Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words 

Greek New Testament Audios in Earasmian Pronuncuation. 

Greek/Latin New Testament Audio readings 


Hebrew:

Hebrew For Christians - Learn Hebrew. 

Ehud's Assisting You to Learn-- Hebrew Bible 

 Hebrew-English Bible/ Mechon-Mamre

Rivers In The Desert - Hebrew New Testament, Both audio And Learning resources 

Aramaic:

Aramaic NT Resources 

Peshitta Aramaic New testament 

Aramaic Lexicon - William Jennings 

Recources For Syriac Studies 

These are all resources I've found helpful.  The Greek audio files in the Erasmian pronunciation  is the standard taught in language courses for Ancient and Koine Greek and the one the charts are based on.  As I find more good resources I'll try to update this page for my readers.  

Christians And the State.

“If we are going to have a separation of church and state, we’re going to have a separation of church and state.”

Those are reportedly Al Jackson’s words in explaining his support for the Government’s recent mandate that all religious institutions, save a very narrow exception for churches themselves, must provide for contraceptive services in their employee insurance, even if they have moral objections to doing so.  At first glance that statement seems irrational, that is until one recalls what folks on the political left in our country mean by “separation of church and state.”  When one digs beyond the superficial when it comes to the idea of separation of church and state what one finds is to them it really means the church is to stay out of the state’s business and out of public life.  It doesn’t mean that the state must stay out of the church’s business.  They consider the state the highest expression of man’s hopes and desires and every other institution under the sun inferior.  Thus all others must bow to the dictates of the state without exception.  When that is understood Mr. Jackson’s words make perfect sense.

Normally I prefer to stay out of political issues; this is a religious blog after all.  However, the controversy over the mandate provides a perfect opportunity to have a look at the issue of the relationship between Christians and the states they live under.  So I’m going to take the bull by the horns.

Jesus was once asked once asked whether it was proper for a Jew to pay the Roman tax.  That was a hotbed issue in his day as the Jews resented their Roman masters and the taxes they imposed.  Their scriptures told them they were a “Gods” to the Gentiles and many felt that as such they shouldn’t be subject to the tax imposed by imperial Rome (Ps. 82:6).  Jesus’ answer is quite instructive and forms the basis for the relationship between the members of the true Church, those called to be co-heirs with the Christ in heaven, and the state (Rom. 8:14-17).

Here is the passage:

“Tell us therefore, What thinkest thou? Is it lawful to give tribute unto Caesar, or not? But Jesus perceived their wickedness, and said, Why tempt ye me, ye hypocrites?  Shew me the tribute money. And they brought unto him a penny.  And he saith unto them, Whose is this image and superscription?  They say unto him, Caesar's. Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's.” (Matt. 22: 17-21)

Notice how deftly he turned their question back on them.  Still, he gave a very profound answer to the question, one which every Christian should keep in mind.

As Christians we occupy a pretty unique position in this world.  Paul explains to use that since we are called out of this world to be future rulers with Jesus Christ we are really members of the ruling class of that future government.  As such we are in the position of ambassadors telling the world about that kingdom and what it will do for mankind (2 Cor. 5:18-20).  As such we live under rules much like temporal ambassadors do.

Modern ambassadors fall under certain international conventions and treaties giving them a different position in the societies they have to function and live in.  Generally speaking they are exempt from the laws of the lands they live in, but for the sake of peace they are expected to follow those laws unless their duties require them to break them.  So while an ambassador has the liberty to ignore, say driving laws and cannot be prosecuted for breaking them, he or she will generally follow them, unless special circumstances require they be ignored, for the sake of safety and good will.

Those exemptions exist for a reason since ambassadorial personnel routinely conduct activities which are illegal in their host countries, such as intelligence gathering, and couldn’t perform their duties without those exemptions.  As subjects of another government their allegiance is to that government and they must follow its laws and demands.  There is a caveat, however.

That exemption isn’t absolute.  If caught blatantly disobeying their host country’s laws they may be declared persona non grata and deported.  In certain cases, such as murder their governments didn’t sanction, their government may choose to remove their immunity and hand them over to authorities for prosecution.  That has happened.  Do you see where I’m going with this?

In the thirteenth chapter of Romans Paul tells us to be obedient to the laws of the nations amidst which we live (vs. 1).  Then he goes on to outline why and what benefits we derive from doing so in the next seven verses.  This is in line with Jesus’ comment to “give Caesar that which belongs to Caesar.”  Caesar coins the money, so it is his and we who have placed our hope in the heavens are but stewards over that money which our heavenly father blesses us with for our efforts to provide for our selves and our families.  And for the sake of smooth daily living obedience to the laws of the land are a must.  After all, how far will one get if they decide they don’t have to stop for red lights or stop signs?

Yet we are citizens of another government, members of its ruling class in training.  That means we do have a higher loyalty and its laws are our priority.  That is what is meant by giving God’s things to God.  Since the nations don’t recognize God’s government, and certainly don’t recognize it as having a prior call on our loyalties, that can bring us into conflict with them.  That conflict can lead to our being expelled from those lands by imprisonment or even execution.

Those of us who live in the United States of America are fortunate.  Our land has the right to practice our faith enshrined as one of its primary laws, one which is intentionally made difficult to change.  God put that government and its law in place for a reason.  That freedom of religion led to a rediscovery of genuine truth and the establishment of a Christian movement based on those rediscovered truths.  That also led to the truth being spread to much of the world, including nations very hostile to it because that movement had a secure base from which to operate.  For this we are very grateful to our God and heavenly Father.

We are seeing those liberties eroded day by day, as the situation which inspired this blog amply demonstrates.  There are men determined to bring everyone and everything into total subjection to the state under the progressive model we see elsewhere on this earth.  Yet, as Christians we shouldn’t be overly anxious over the matter.  And while we live in this land as God’s ambassadors we will continue to “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's.”

How Do I Justify Being A Christian.

Today a friend on face book posted a question she was asked.  “Since Christianity has been responsible for more violence and death than any other thing, how can you be a Christian?”  Since she asked how we would handle the question I posted a simple answer.  However, I’ve been thinking about the question and decided to post my thoughts on the subject.  So how do I answer?

First of all I question the premise of the question.  I’ve seen various figures around on the net and decided to dig a little.  The figures depend much on how you define things and what you do or do not consider “Christian” nations.  For instance some folks lump the neo-Pagan Nazis with their massacre of around 20,000,000 people into the “Christian” category simply to pad the case against Christianity because the nation they ruled was nominally Christian.

I finally decided to go with an essay by one Kirk Durston, National Director, New Scholars Society.  He cites a figure put forward by a political scientist, Rudolph J. Rummel, who figures about 284,638,000 people were killed for either religious or ideological reasons throughout human history.  Of that number 151,491,000 were killed in the last one-hundred years with Communism, Nazi Germany and Nationalist China accounting for 141,160,000, nearly 50%.  Communism by itself accounts for about 110,000,000 of those deaths.

I can hear atheist readers rejoicing over that one.  “That means that over half of those killed were killed by Christians.”  Not so fast.  The remaining people were killed by Christianity and all other religions and ideologies combined.  The figures for how many deaths can be laid at Christendom’s feet vary from 2,000,000 up to 50,000,000.  Even if I’m generous, that means that the violence and death toll for 2,000 years of Christian history is less than one-half the death toll of Communism in the last one-hundred years alone.  There is no real comparison!  So “Christianity” is nowhere near as deadly as modern atheist and secular ideologies.

Now that we’ve taken care of that, let me state for the record that I am not about to defend the horrible record of cruelties and abuse of their fellow man by people calling themselves Christian.  It is horrible and all of those who are called by that name should be appalled at the abuse heaped on God’s name by such a terrible record.  I condemn it from the deepest wellsprings of my heart.  So how do I justify being a Christian with that record associated with the name?

It is simple; the religious/political nations we know today as Christian are Christian in name only.  They represent a fallen Church which left the teachings of her founder and reached out to become a temporal power.  And they pay lip-service to the teachings of the one they claim to represent.  As such they bring reproach on the names of both their founder and his God and stand rightly condemned.  I choose to follow the founder and his teachings with all my heart and thus am proud to be called Christian, or Christ like, the meaning of the name.

When Jesus founded the Church he didn’t found a nascent world ruler which was supposed to grow and take bloody rulership.  He founded a movement.  Those are two different things.  Jesus intended the Church to declare the Gospel, or good News, to people of all nations as a witness and make disciples out of people from those nations (Matt. 28:18-20).  That was not a mandate to go out and take over the whole world and force it into submission like the mandate Muhammad gave Islam.  There is no permission in that command to take temporal power, for that temporal power will be taken once the true Church is empowered in heaven (Rom. 8:15-17; Rev. 20:1-6).  As a movement it was to operate anywhere under any ruler during conditions both friendly and hostile.  As a movement it couldn’t be stamped out and could go about its current mandate to make disciples out of people everywhere and did so to some extent or another throughout the Gospel age.

As a Christian I follow Jesus’ teachings to love God, my neighbor and my fellow Christians.  That means I obey the laws of the land such much as is physically and spiritually possible and do my best to harm no other person except in self-defense.  And I’ll try to avoid situations which make that necessary to the greatest extent possible.  In doing so I am fulfilling God’s law, as Paul pointed out at Romans 13:10.  Far from bathing in the blood of innocents true Christians have more often than not been among the victims.  Instead they’ve been a movement for peace and love, however dimly their lights were able to shine through the obscurity of persecution.

That, my friends, is how I’m able to justify being called by the name Christian despite the bloody record charged against it.

Durston, Kirk; Retrieved at, http://www.newscholars.com/papers  /Killing,%20Christianity,%20and%20Atheism.pdf

Thoughts to ponder this season

Greetings my friends and readers:

Let me pause just a bit for a reflection more than anything else.  Right now we are in the midst of the holiday season, leading to the climax of the celebration of the birth Jesus on the day traditionally set many centuries ago.  So let’s reflect on a few thoughts.

Sadly enough this is the season many who do not like the Christian faith love to trot out the pagan side of Christians, that the date and many of its customs were adopted from the pagans that surrounded the early church as it went from being a persecuted minority to the Roman empires state church.  I won’t dispute that nor defend the celebration.  Really, from the fourth century on the new “Universal,” or “Catholic” church adopted so much from the pagan world that the Apostles and early Christian wouldn’t recognize it as Christian if they were set right down in the middle of it today.  But that’s not the point.

The holiday was meant to focus people’s attention on our savior under the guise of celebrating his birth, which was no insignificant event because of what it led to.  Whatever day he was born Jesus came to this earth for a purpose, to make it possible for all of us, every one of us both the living and the dead to have the chance Adam took away from us to enjoy eternal life when he took the very first bite of the fruit from the forbidden tree (1 Tim. 2:3-6).

“For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” (1Cor. 15:22)

More than two thousand years after the event many of the devout are so focused on for all the wrong reasons this perfect man, miraculously conceived in a virgin for the purpose of standing in Adam’s stead gave up that life as a sacrifice to redeem us all and give us that chance for eternal life that Adam gave away.  What is more, he also purchased for some the unfathomable opportunity to be a nation of rulers and priests (Rev. 20: 4-6) who partake of the divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4).  And as if that weren’t enough, by making that sacrifice he answered forever the charge Satan made to Eve that God acts out of improperly selfish motives for all of eternity (Gen. 3:4,5).  Yes, it is the end not the beginning which is really significant and on which we should focus our minds.

So as we go about our lives during this season, whether we celebrate the day or not, let’s ponder the real significances of the event being celebrated, the event which was just the start of the path to the best gift of all the inestimably precious gift of eternal life which will be laid out before all at its due time.