Mark Graham May 28th, 2011

I like sharing some back and forth with folks about experiences of faith. Sometimes holding an umbrella over a friend to cover the rain that falls on all. Sometimes dashing under anothers umbrella. Sometimes standing alone, cold and wet in the rain waiting for the storm to pass – and living to tell about it.

When i imagine a capacity to judge (unfortunately), I normally do it from 'been there, done that' or 'i am him' (rather than there by the grace of God go I). And then by this I am helped back to reality in time for dinner – so-to-speak.

It was not always so for me. Such is the nature of wisdom and its application…time.

Spiritual warfare is won in trust and abandon to Jesus. Everything else is distraction and hazardous to the campaign. I know this (now) because upon reflection I find that in a moment at age 30 i believed the whole bible was true – before I ever read it. How rational is that? How do you argue with that? I don't know, maybe you can take that and show people why in this text or that. Or in your smile and in your distress.

You got to be thankful for intentional bridge-builders. Mr. Armstrong is like the Prussian generals coming here to get the early American farmers in shape and into soldiers – moving in unity and purpose.

Bruce Szwast May 28th, 2011

Okay. What kind of history did we make in the past week? And how does that history fit into the grand scheme of things? Of course only men have schemes, but God has definite plans. This week was I helping to 'pave the way' in obedience or was I just 'in the way'?

At work, I am still resisting an attempt by our 'buyout company' to combine two successful products (each with happy customers) into one. Of course theirs is the choice, and we are trashing our product and our customers to obtain this goal. Sounds immoral to me, and I do not see it working (ever).

I have been contemplating the concept of obedience here – please man or please God. I have also been contemplating a forced retirement and working full time on making my real swing as good as my practice swing. Golf that is, more or less.

Some time back we attended a somewhat conservative Presbyterian Church in a liberal denomination. The pastor and congregation were 60's generation and so was the service. I liked it very much, but I had to wince each time I heard the pastor, who was mixing the gospel with secular thinking (let us all get along in peace and love and forbearance), with comments like global warming is a threat (when I know that we could reduce the earth's temperature at least a degree by closing our mouths on the subject), or that there are too many people on the planet (when I know that God gave us a planet big enough for our needs and disobedience), or we have no problem with women in the pulpit.

Well this week I learned that same pastor retired recently (his assistant – a pretty good guy left earlier) and I have to think that a church in a denomination that says, do what is right in your own eyes, is struggling over which of the 3 or 4 sexes they want in the pulpit.

And of course we have the fallout from Harold's faulty date prediction of an inevitable Judgment Day. The scoffers are breathing a little easier now, at least for another 5 months. When I heard that Harold used Thiele's inaccurate chronology of dating Noah's Flood, I knew Harold was really in trouble.

But in all fairness to Harold, he has two things right: God's Judgment is coming and he is still preaching the way of salvation. I do have a further remembrance of the movie 'On the Beach' and the last scene: a bearded and forlorn looking man on a street corner holding a sign that says 'The End is Near'. At least Harold's sign says John 3:16 on it. Keep those cards and letters coming in folks. Live and learn, I hope and pray.

And finally about the Catholic Church, and this is history also. A lot of people forget that the origins of the Catholic Church were those who paved the way for Christian successes in the early centuries. And I suspect that bickering over doctrine only weakened the Church and allowed secularism and error to dominate the Church until the Reformation. And of course the Church of the Reformation did a much better job of agreeing on doctrine. Right!

I know, it is all about Jesus and what He accomplished, but the Bible seemingly gives us so much to bicker over. Maybe some bickering is healthy, it keeps us alive. And just maybe most of the issues we bicker over are not about faith at all, but more about practice. That just leaves those false teachings to deal with. Enough trouble for any day.

And one more finally, I have been entertaining a thought recently and I need to process it: Is it the Church's job to convince the world by getting along with them of more importance than to stand against the world which is going to be judged for the things we are all guilty of in one way or another? Walk down that road for a while, with Jesus of course.