Night of the Twister

It’s the summer of 1999 and I’m in college and wanting to go into youth ministry. So, I traveled with the local youth guy to a youth minister conference. One evening, I was excited because the keynote speaker was a man that I had just heard do a rather good presentation earlier that week. As the lights dim, he exclaims, “I know I was assigned this other topic but tonight I really want to talk about Y2K”. He then goes on to speak about how an Old Testament prophet was warning us about the danger that were coming. The Bible was proclaiming the danger we were all facing when the computer could not handle the new date.

I could not believe how this speaker was twisting the Scripture to justify his paranoid belief. I remember trying to look around during this to see if anybody was buying this. I couldn’t tell the temperature of the crowd (it was dark) but it seemed like the guy I was sitting beside was. I left shortly thereafter and went to bed bumfuzzled. I guess there were a lot more folks like me because the next day the organizers were doing full damage control, dismissing the speaker and what he said.

As you may remember the whole Y2K bug didn’t amount to anything. This guy may have sold some books and got some attention, but his idea was dead wrong. And worse He made it seem like God was wrong too.

… speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction.”

2nd Peter 3:16

If we try to make God's word agree with us, we take the real risk of twisting the Scriptures to say things they are not saying. Instead, we need to look at what is said and make us fit to it. We need to be careful we do not let our own opinions and agendas shape what God has proclaimed. We need to “rightly handle the word of truth” not bend it to fit our desires.

Comments

Why Does A Lion Tamer Use a Chair?

Ok, I know you have seen the image. A lion tamer enters in the cage of the beast and forces it to obey his commands using a whip, a gun and a chair. Now you can see how the whip and gun could come in handy but you might be wondering why a chair would intimidate an animal as powerful as a lion? Clyde Beatty taming a lion with a chair It's not that the lion is afraid of the chair -- it's that the lion is confused by the chair. Cats are single-minded, and the points of the chair's four legs bobbing around confuse the lion enough that it loses its train of thought. Casually put, the chair distracts the lion from wanting to claw the lion tamer's face off. The powerful creature could destroy the chair in moment’s notice but instead it is distracted into submission. It’s not too much different than how Satan controls us today. By the power of God we could overcome anything that he would use to subdue us. We can overcome the evil one (1 st John 2:13-14). ...

The Right to Arm Bears

In the book of 2 nd Kings 2, we have one of the most unusual, violent and curious passages in scripture. It involves the prophet Elisha siccing a couple of bears on some kids that were mocking his bald head. As a guy that is a little light on top that has been around some surly kids, I can feel for the guy. But seriously a bear attack? On kids? What is going on? ….young lads came out from the city and mocked him and said to him, "Go up, you baldhead; go up, you baldhead!" When he looked behind him and saw them, he cursed them in the name of the LORD. Then two female bears came out of the woods and tore up forty-two lads of their number. 2 nd Kings 2:23-25 It might help to explore the passage a bit more. The baldhead statement: This was an identifying mark of the prophet as opposed to Elijah who was hairy (1st Kings 1:8) a jab to say you are not him. The taunt to go up: Elijah has just been taken into heaven by the Lord a sight seen by ...

The Mighty Gulf

It is hard to get people on two sides of an issue to come together. Each has their own viewpoint, their perceptive, their own foibles, their own understanding. To gain any common ground there must be something in common. Something or someone that can bridge the gulf between the two. Could there be a greater gulf than there was between God and man? How could a holy perfect God find a way to connect to the fallen, imperfect mankind? How can one without temptation connect to those who are beset by it? How could limited mortal beings understand an omnipotent eternal God? In 1 Timothy 2:5, we read, “ For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus .” The phrase mediator here describes a person that bridges the gap, a go-between. Jesus was one who could stand in both worlds. A perfect holy one who can understand our temptations, a man who would die yet live eternally, One who was God yet became flesh and dwelt among us. ...

Ecclesiastes 12:10

Search This Blog