Bible Shorts

An arrogant and self righteous article by one Desmond Morris has made some strange claims. Along the lines of "the existence of aliens would disprove the existence of God", we have "the existence of cavemen disproves the existence of God".

He comes up with the usual boring and worn out arguments;

"This is shattering news and will create fascinating problems for both political and religious leaders."

"Darwin put a stop to this nonsense with his theory of evolution, but amazingly the blindingly obvious truth he discovered is still resisted by large sections of the human population."

" I can already hear the fanatics claiming that he has been put on earth by the Devil"

This little man who is shaking his dusty fist in the face of his immortal creator shouting "I don't believe in you!" needs to consult the religions which he so joyfully chastises.

If the little ape-man found on a remote island were three billion years old, it wouldn't be a problem to me or my faith.

Did the Devil put the skeleton in the cave? Of course not! I don't know where Desmond Morris got that idea from and I'm yet to find someone who believes that the Devil's job is to put skeletons in caves.

First of all, before any of the hearsay and doctrinal evaluations, the theory of evolution is yet to stand against the fact of lives changed theough the Spirit of Jesus in their lives, the people healed both physically and emotionally. Does Mr. Morris realise that there is currently more evidence to prove that there was a man called Jesus who died and rose from the dead than there is to prove that we come from monkeys who hid in caves with little pen-knives?

Furthermore, the Bible covers only seven millenia of earth's existence (we're approaching the end of the sixth millenium, there's just over one to come). It makes clear that there was something before that (yes, before Adam)! So finding a creature that existed before Adam is 'claimed' to have been 'created' causes me no nightmares (as he suggests). Indeed, he is the one who is still struggling to find answers to the big questions of the universe. They still want to know what was in the beginning, before the Big Bang.

It must be terrible to live in a world like his; empty, devoid of meaning and clearly lacking evidence to support that which he sees as his reason for being.

Acts 20:28"Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood. I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them".

The church was established upon Jesus Christ who fulfilled the law of God as was given to Moses yet died as someone having broken it in its entirety in order to take our punishment upon Himself. The church, taught by Apostles, established righteousness and truth based on the belief that in the four thousand years of God's revelation from Adam to then, God's law had not changed and neither had God changed - but in the Gospel (the good news of salvation throught Jesus), anybody who believes in Jesus can have all their sins forgiven and be saved from a world that is corrupted through lust.

Yet it would seem that some of those who want to be part of the Church of Jesus Christ (for it is His church and nobody else's), refuse to join unless it changes to suit their moral beliefs. The fact that God has long stated that some things are out of bounds, has done little to hold back the desire of an unregenerate world to inflitrate the church and change what the church believes.

And so we have it today, that where God has taught that "2+2=4", the liberal theologians are insisting that the church changes its view to "2+2=5". On what grounds do they base their belief?

These people who are coming into the churches of our land and trying to change the theology are making a mockery of God and the Bible and, also, the church itself. They may be tearfully sincere when they see their goals coming close to success, but the bottom line is that they are wolves in sheep's clothing and they are misleading others.

Paul said that if anybody preaches a different Jesus, a different Gospel or a different message to that which was delivered to him and the other Apostles by Jesus Himself, then that person is to be anathema, cursed.

This isn't about tradition, it's about integrity and sticking to what God has said. If the church abandons God and His word, what is there left to distinguish the church from anybody or anything else?

Jesus died for the 'whosoever', yet there will always be those for whom the inclusiveness of the Gospel is not enough; they will want to distort the gospel and make it what it isn't, because they don't want to be what they're not.

Listen, if the Gospel is not what you are looking for (and there are many for whom free eternal life and forgiveness is just a pipe-dream and a fantasy), then don't think that you can make it into what you want it to be. You take God as He is just as He takes you as you are, but under His terms no not at all. If a member of the UK Conservative Party wants his policies to match those of New Labour, then why don't they join New Labour!?

Jesus doesn't care where you've been or what you've done in that He will not reject you for having a past full of anything and everything that the Bible says is wrong; He wants to give you new birth, a new start and that means putting behind you the things that are of your sinful nature. Under no circumstances does He call us to celebrate our sins and never will He say that what the Bible calls sin is actually Ok because it's the 21st century.

His way or no way.

In a remarkable article detailing how the Islamic Quran teaches that Muslims should respect the right of Jews to the land of Israel, the writer quotes a moderate Muslim teacher who says; "Most Muslims, he laments, do not read the Quran for themselves and instead rely on imams and preachers to do the reading and interpreting for them."

While I firmly believe that the Bible, in consisting of the Old and New Testaments, is God's word to us, I also think that all Christians need to learn from the above statement. Maybe it could be rephrased and attributed to a Christian teacher; "Most Christians... do not read the Bible for themselves and instead rely on pastors and preachers to do the reading and interpreting for them".

Christians who don't read their Bibles run the risk of ending up giving Christianity a bad name and even misrepresenting that which the Bible teaches. People who say that "God is love and so will never punish anybody for anything" have clearly not read their Bibles, as is the case with those who support lifestyles and practices which are clearly against Biblical teaching.

When a preacher stands in church and says that Jesus wasn't born of a virgin, didn't really die or didn't really raise Himself from the dead, he is showing that his (or her) reading of the Bible is through the secular eyes of modern short-sightedness, through the belief that because times have moved on, God has also moved on - forgetting that the whole history of the human race spans less than the length of God's blink.

How arrogant we are to think that God should be the one to read our statements, our beliefs and our trends. No. If Christians are to grow and see God working in and through their lives, they (we) must be willing to do things His way, or not at all.

God says to His people in Hosea 4:6 "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I also will reject you from being My priest. Since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children". Pretty serious stuff!

2Peter 1:5 says "Now for this very reason also, applying all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence, and in {your} moral excellence, knowledge.." - this knowledge is 'study knowledge', knowledge you gain through putting your head into it and putting it into your head.

So switch off the TV and go read something more useful instead.