This sculpture
of Moses carrying the
10 Commandments is on display at
the United States Supreme Court.
KEN
RYLAND'S COMMENTARIES:
Commentaries on the issues of the day for the Christian
reader:
Prophecy, persecution, the commitment to excellence. Read
commentaries on
-- Who Is My
Enemy?
-- Israelites, Gentiles, & the New Covenant
-- On the Cusp of Extreme Evil
-- Prophecy Basics -- The Antichrist
-- The Great Thanksgiving Day Disappearing Act
-- Is New York City the Babylon of Rev. 17 & 18?
-- When Will the Tribulation Begin?
-- Recapturing Excellence
-- Why Study Prophecy?
-- Great Joy in Tribulation
WHAT
WE BELIEVE:
Contains articles on Christian Living, links to
Christian Web sites, and Bible-study aids.
**Artículos
en español**
NEWSPOINT:
Preparedness for the end times. Information and
links.
HOME-SCHOOLING: Many resources for successful home-schooling
Are you ready to run with
horses?
Jeremiah 12:5: "If you have run with the footmen, and they have wearied you, then how can you contend with horses? And if in the land of peace, in which you trusted, they wearied you, then how will you do in the floodplain of the Jordan?"
How ready are we indeed when we are really put to the test? Which one of us would have been ready if we had been in the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11, 2001?
May the Lord grant each of us His strength to pass our test and His mercy when we have done all and still come up short!
The Judaization of the Church over the past few years has done more
damage to the body of Christ than any direct attack by Satan himself. In fact,
Satan could not have devised a better plan for pitting one Christian against
another than to create hostility over the use of words. Truly, if the Church
appears to be impotent in spreading the good news of the Kingdom of God, it is
not Satan's fault. It is our own. We are too busy fighting with each other over
how to pronounce the name of the Father and the Son to bother ourselves with
bringing the life-giving message of the Son of God to a dying world.
My disgust for this sort of thing is that this insistence on using just the right words portrays God as petty and small-minded. If God's righteousness demands only the use of certain names to address the Father and the Son, what does this say about, "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life," and "while we were yet sinners, he died for us."
The apostle Paul, himself a
Pharisee, fought hard against those who tried to force new Christians to become
"more Jewish." One of the great sins of the Pharisees was that they tied heavy
religious burdens on the backs of the people. These same Pharisees are alive and
well in the Church with their sacred names and Jewish rituals. If a man or woman
is Jewish by birth, then let them be Jewish to the full. As natural Jews they
can still love Christ. But stop trying to convert Christians into Jews. Rather,
we should be trying to make God-fearing Jews into Christians. Is that not the
commission that our Lord gave us?
One of the most shameful examples I
have heard of recently was the demand of a pastor that his congregation give up
the usage of the word "Jesus" and use only "Yeshua." The woman lated this
experience was so stunned that she did not know what to do. During a church
meeting the pastor asked all those who "named the name of Jesus" to come forward
to the podium. After these unsuspecting people reached the stage, the pastor
told them that they had to renounce the use of the name "Jesus" and use only the
proper Hebrew name, "Yeshua." My first thought when I hear this was, "If you
deny me before men, I will deny you before my Father." My other thought was to
rebuke the idiot pastor for his crass and blasphemous use of the person of
Christ.
The pastor's rationale was to say
that the Greek word "Iesous" was pagan. Of course, there is no scholarly
proof of such a statement, bu ells well with the everyone-is-out-to-get-us
crowd, and there are some very poorly written and researched papers (mainly on
the Internet, not in scholarly journals) that make such a claim. They are
generally written by people who have little or no knowledge of Greek or any
language other than English, and their knowledge of English is dubious in many
cases (just check their mistake-ridden, so-called research). Most would not know
a dictionary or a spell checker from a hole in the ground.
Trust me on this: God understands
Greek, Hebrew, English, and several other languages. He knows what you mean when
you are on your knees pouring out your heart to Him in English or Russian or
Vietnamese -- even if you use the word "Jesus," or whatever its transliteration
may be in another language. Do these people really think that some poor martyred
African nomad who only knows Christ as "Jesus" will be rejected when he stands
before the Lord in the resurrection simply because no one bothered to teach him
the word "Yeshua?" I tell you the truth; such a person will be received into the
Kingdom long before someone who puts stumbling blocks of words and rituals
before the people.
The really silly part of this whole
thing (actually there are several really silly parts) is that these people can't
agree on whether Jesus should be called Yeshua, Yashua, Ye'Hoshua, or any of a
dozen other take-offs on the pronunciation. But remember; only one of these
pronunciations will give you entry into God's Kingdom (I hope I'm in the right
pronunciation group).
My admonition to any Christian is
to put away such foolishness. Just call upon the Lord with a pure and sincere
heart, and He will hear you. The plea of our hearts should be the same as that
of the apostle Paul, the Pharisee: "... Circumcised the eighth day, of the stock
of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the
law, a Pharisee; concerning zeal, persecuting the church; touching
the righteousness which is in the law, blameless. But what things were gain to
me, those I counted loss for Christ. Yea doubtless, and I count all things but
loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I
have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win
Christ, and be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the
law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is
of God by faith: That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the
fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death (Philippians
3:5-10).
The essence of Christianity, as the
apostle Paul says, is to "know him, and the power of his resurrection...:" Let's
put our faith in that, and not in mere words. Anything beyond this is simply
babbling high-sounding syllables devoid of the music of faith in Christ alone.
