North Carolina Outlaws Climate Change

A Tale of Two Cities: America's Bipolar Climate Future - Spiegel Online

When Veronica White and Tom Thompson stand on the coastline of their respective cities, 680 kilometers (423 miles) apart, they gaze out at the same ocean, but see different things.

White, the commissioner of the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation, believes "we have to prepare the entire coastline for disasters, including storms and rising floodwaters." Thompson, a former city planner in New Bern, North Carolina -- an eight-hour drive to the south -- argues the opposite. "All this panic about the climate always amazes me, but people like to believe horror stories," he says.

Since 1900, the sea level in both cities has risen by about 30 centimeters (12 inches). According to calculations by a group of climatologists working for New York City, the sea level in that city could rise by more than three-quarters of a meter (2.5 feet) by 2050, and by one-and-a-half meters 30 years later. The group of experts warns that by the end of the century, average temperatures in New York could be as high as they are in North Carolina today.

According to the North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission (CRC), that state, like New York, will also see warmer temperatures by the end of the century, as well as a sea-level rise of more than one meter. But now the state government in North Carolina has muzzled the CRC with a new law that requires coastal communities to ignore its prognoses. The legislation states that the sea level off the North Carolina coast will not rise more quickly than it has in the last 100 years.

In the United States, two very different worlds have come into existence along the same coastline. In one of those worlds, people pay attention to climate predictions. In the other, they don't. While New Yorkers believe they have to do something against global warming, because it could spell the city's demise, the citizens of New Bern would rather put their faith in God's creation. In New Bern, climate change is a question of faith and conviction that touches on broader issues of American identity. Indeed, climate change has become central to a culture war over the future of America.

"If sea levels did go up by a meter," says Tom Thompson at the New Bern marina, "most of New Bern would be uninhabitable." He is 69 and despite his white hair, looks younger. He walks along the boardwalk, past a new riverfront park and the Hilton Hotel. All of it reflects his work as a city planner. Thompson has brought companies to New Bern, including Bosch-Siemens, which built a factory for electronic devices there, and he knows many people in the North Carolina business world.

He had just retired -- proud of the world he had created -- when the CRC delivered its prognosis that sea levels would rise by about a meter within the next 100 years, swallowing buildings, roads and public squares. It was the same number officials in other coastal states had come up with as a result of scientific research. For Thompson, however, that one-meter announcement was nothing less than a declaration of war, an assault on his legacy.

Shortly after the news appeared in the papers, Thompson worked from an office in the storage room of his wife's business, a home furnishings store on Main Street in New Bern. Sitting in a small space between two cuckoo clocks, Thompson began reaching out to the lobby he had once assembled to protect the local economy against regulation.

He called heads of chambers of commerce with whom he was on a first-name basis. He also spoke to the urban developers and chief executives of the companies he had brought to North Carolina. Thompson told all of them his horror story: of roads and highways that would have to be raised by at least a meter because of the predicted rise in sea level, of disappearing boardwalks and businesses fleeing the area. He also warned them that the building conversions, evacuation routes and property insurance would cost billions.

According to Thompson, some 5,200 square kilometers (about 2,000 square miles) of the state would be in jeopardy. His friends and business associates were alarmed. Was North Carolina about to become a billion-dollar grave?

Thompson told his story until, eventually, Pat McElraft, a Republican member of the state's General Assembly, wrote a paragraph into a bill known as HB 819, which included various anti-climate change provisions.

In April 2013, the North Carolina Department of Public Safety presented an official report on what a one-meter rise in sea level would mean to the state. The economic losses would be staggering, since the affected areas are covered with homes, office buildings and public facilities worth a total of $7.4 billion (€5.16 billion). Everything would have to be rebuilt to withstand the storm surges.

And why? "Just because a few scientists are claiming that that's what will happen," says Thompson. "But they have no evidence. We're supposed to spend money on something that might not happen at all."

Thompson is a God-fearing conservative fighting against the scientific finding that climate change exists. In his view, there are too many numbers and too many estimates that seem contradictory. To him, it feels more like a lottery than science.

It's early morning in Queens, New York. The sun is rising over the Atlantic, its shimmering surface broken only by gentle waves. Veronica White, 54, isn't exactly dressed for a fall walk on the beach. She is going to a gala dinner with the mayor in the evening, and she knows she'll be too busy to change her outfit first.

As commissioner of the Parks & Recreation Department, part of White's job is to protect New York from climate change and rising sea levels. She and her staff of roughly 6,000 employees are responsible for the city's beaches and coastal areas, monuments like the Statue of Liberty, Central Park, the High Line and about 1,700 other city parks, 500 community gardens and 2,500 street medians known as Greenstreets. But Rockaway Beach, where she is now standing, is perhaps the best place for White to explain why New York is worried about climate change.

The view from the shore of the Atlantic, with its calm, blue waters and a few well-fed seagulls, seems perfectly idyllic. But when you turn around, the devastation becomes all too apparent: a beach that could no longer truly be called a beach.

Rockaway Beach after Hurricane Sandy

In October 2012, when Hurricane Sandy, dubbed a "Frankenstorm," struck the East Coast of the United States, Rockaway Beach was washed away, swallowed up by a raging storm surge.

What's left of the beach is now several meters below the coastal road, surrounded by sand bags. The boardwalk is gone. "It flew up into the air and, when it was all over, pieces of it were spread around the entire community," says White. The Rockaway community was flooded and littered with sand, overturned trees and utility poles with torn cables dangling from them. Residents were all but paralyzed. "We spent months just cleaning up," says White. "God, it was so discouraging."

She walks quickly along a makeshift wooden platform and looks down at the construction site on the beach, where workers are pounding planks into the sand. They're building a barrier designed to protect Rockaway Beach from being washed away by the next storm. In the coming months, the US Army Corps of Engineers will bring in 2.7 million cubic meters (95 million cubic feet) of sand, which will be piled up and secured with the help of protective walls, geotextiles and beach grass, so that Rockaway Beach can become a real beach again. But will it be enough?

Even before the storm hit, the majority of New Yorkers supported Mayor Michael Bloomberg's plans to transform their city of superlatives into the world's greenest metropolis. "But Sandy brought home to people what climate change really means," says White, "just as 9/11 showed New Yorkers what's at stake in the war against terror."

White concedes that a single storm cannot be directly attributed to climate change. But she also points to the models developed by the New York City Panel on Climate Change (NPCC), which indicate that by the end of the century, storms like Sandy will likely occur once every two years. In New York City alone, the storm killed 44 people, destroyed thousands of buildings and hundreds of thousands of cars, and caused $19 billion in total damage.

And as the sea level rises, the consequences of every storm surge will spread to larger areas and affect more and more people. About 400,000 New Yorkers live in flood-prone areas today, a figure the NPCC estimates will double by 2050.

Sandy also caused damage in North Carolina. The Outer Banks, a group of barrier islands and one of the state's most popular tourism destinations, were cut off from the mainland for a period of time. But residents are accustomed to storm damage and have gotten used to rebuilding destroyed houses instead of investing a lot of money in precautions to avert future damage.

In Tom Thompson's world, they call it faith in God. It's a world in which a government that provides for its citizens is not seen as a moral necessity, but as an immoral temptation that makes hardworking people lazy. And it's a world shaped by the fear of a nanny state that deprives citizens of their freedom.

In Thompson's worldview, only socialists and cowards prepare for the worst. Although North Carolina had a Democratic governor until the beginning of the year, and a majority voted for President Barack Obama in 2008, it remains a state that defends its lax gun laws, closes abortion clinics and where many people flatly refuse to believe in the existence of climate change.

And so North Carolina continues to plod along, blithely ignoring the warnings of the scientific community. When the law was passed in July 2012, then Governor Bev Perdue merely warned: "North Carolina should not ignore science when making public policy decisions." She was referring to climate change. Nevertheless, she refused to veto the law, which dictates to the sea how high it is permitted to rise off the coast of North Carolina. Perdue did point out that the issue would be revisited in four years.

"If we discover in 10 years that the sea level is truly rising at a faster pace, we can always start building roads at higher levels," says Thompson. "But why start now?"

Lovers of Self

2 Tim 3:1-5
But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come.
For men will be lovers of self,…
Holding to a form of godliness,…
Avoid such men as these.

Loving yourself, as discussed in the post “Loving Yourself”, requires action. Love in the Bible is usually an action verb requiring you to do something. Loving your neighbor means giving him drink when he’s thirsty, food when he’s hungry, clothes when he is naked, etc., etc. In loving ourselves we automatically do all those things for ourselves. But pop psychology would have us do much more for ourselves so that we feel good about ourselves; is that what Christ wants from us?

Matt 16:24
Then Jesus said to His disciples, "If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.”

If Jesus loved Himself would He have spent 40 days in the mountains fasting? Would He have voluntarily suffered the pain and humiliation of the scourging and the cross? No! He endured such things because He loves the Father, not Himself – “nevertheless, not My will but Thine be done!”

2 Tim 2:11b,12a
For if we died with Him, we shall also live with Him. If we endure, we shall also reign with Him.

Dying, enduring, these are not words of love unless the dying and enduring is for someone else. Dying and enduring are sacrificial acts – acts of agape love. But agape love takes no thought of self, it is selfless and sacrificial. Is it possible to be selfless for your self? It’s an absurd contradiction!

Definition: Agape is selfless, sacrificial, unconditional love, it gives and expects nothing in return. It is the highest of the four types of love in the Bible.

The lowest type of love in the Bible is Eros. It might be better defined in English as lust rather than love. As Plato pointed out, Eros doesn’t have to be physical. We certainly lust for things that are not sexual – this is Eros. It has an element of selfishness in it and is the only one of the four biblical words for love that does.

In my opinion, loving yourself can only be accomplished as Eros, lust, the lowest form of love. It is the very thing that scripture teaches us to die to so we can live to agape.

I’m not saying you can’t love yourself and love others with a godly love. I’m saying that if you do, one has nothing to do with the other. The first is sin (according to A.W. Tozer); the second is God!

Loving Yourself

The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, who can know it? Jer 17:9

I spent much of yesterday conversing with followers a certain evangelist on Facebook. I was drawn into it by a friend who re-posted the evangelist's post where he fairly gushed about loving himself. I was more than slightly nauseated.

My heart goes out to those people whose ears are being tickled by anti-Biblical doctrine that is nothing but new age psychobabble. They are in for a very rude awakening, and I doubt that most will have the ‘deep-soil’ foundation to ride out the storm.

Loving one’s self is a quick trip up Feelgood Mountain for romantic Christians. You are like Peter, James and John, who were chosen by Jesus to go up the Mount of Transfiguration with Him. There they saw wonderful things such that Peter wanted to remain there and build temples. But what did Jesus do? He immediately led them down into the demon-filled valley of death.

What waited for them there was the torture and death of everything they believed in. To make matters worse, Peter denied Jesus 3 times, cursed Him and retreated to his fishing boat abandoning Christ and all he believed.

The walled City of Hong Kong - easily the worst slum in the world
before it was torn down

Some people believe that they can live on the mountain all the rest of their lives, but they cannot. Their faith will be tried and tested and stretched beyond belief. It will be painful and if you persevere, you will know God better than you do now.

Jesus retrieved Peter from his boat and commissioned him to go forth and preach the Gospel. Peter finally understood Who Jesus really was and what He expected of him. Until we are made broken bread and poured out wine, we will never be ready to be sent out. We may have the Holy Spirit and we may go out, but we will not be ready.

We will be like Jackie Pullinger, who, with great enthusiasm, went to the old walled city of Hong Kong – the worst slum in the world, and preached the gospel. For years she had not one convert. It was only after she realized that she had to stop preaching Jesus and start being Jesus that she began to change lives.

She had very little to her name but she sacrificed all of it, even her own bed at times. Very soon she began leading people to Christ and delivering them from drug dependencies. Before long she began the enormously successful St Stephen Society which set thousands of drug addicts free through prayer in southeast Asia and turned them to Christ.

She accomplished more than she could have imagined but only after she gave up everything she had including her self-image. There was no room for self-love there, if there had been, she would have wasted her entire life in that hell-hole.

Almost Christian - the Post-modern Church

What follows is a very disturbing interview with the author of "Almost Christian". Using data from the National Study of Youth and Religion, Kenda Creasy Dean describes what most 'Christian' teens in America believe. Furthermore, she does not blame their apathetic beliefs on poor listening skills or bad communication skills from the pulpit, but she states flat out that they believe what they believe because that is exactly what they are being taught. And if that is what they are being taught, then it must mean that we, the older generation, believe that same thing, in general.

Dean's book should be required reading for everyone in ministry.

Kenda Dean is an ordained United Methodist pastor in the Baltimore-Washington Annual Conference and Professor of Youth, Church, and Culture at Princeton Theological Seminary, where she works closely with the Institute for Youth Ministry. In this interview, Kenda discusses her book Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers is Telling the American Church.

The term "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism" is used quite a bit in your book. What does that mean, and what are the implications of it?

MTD is the term coined by Christian Smith, the lead researcher in the National Study of Youth and Religion, describing what he saw as the "default" religious position of American teenagers. You could summarize it this way: Religion helps you to be nice (it's moralistic) and feel good (it's therapeutic), but otherwise God stays out of the way except in emergencies (it's Deist). That's what most teenagers think. The ways they described God in the study were revealing; God was either the cosmic butler (staying out of the way until called upon to meet my needs) or the divine therapist (God's main goal is to help me feel good about myself).

But the study went further. Since the NSYR also found that teenagers mirror their parents' religiosity to an astonishing degree, Smith and his colleagues believe that MTD is not just the default position of American teenagers; it's the default religion of American adults, too. They conclude that Moralistic Therapeutic Deism has "colonized" American churches and is now the "dominant religion" in the United States, having "supplanted Christianity." That's one heck of a claim. In other words, young people don't subscribe to Moralistic Therapeutic Deism because they've misunderstood what we've taught them in church. They subscribe to it because this is what we've taught them in church.

At the very least, MTD is a very self-serving spirituality. It is what Christianity looks like once you jettison Jesus and a conviction that love involves sacrifice and not just warm, fuzzy feelings. It's what you get when churches forget that God has not called us to exist for our own well-being. And it's a short step away from thinking that God's primary goal is to help me feel good "at the expense of everybody else." MTD comes close to a divinely sanctioned sense of entitlement. I think teenagers are absolutely right not to take this form of so-called "Christianity" very seriously. I don't think it represents the gospel well at all.

Your book title Almost Christian comes from a sermon John Wesley preached in the 1700s about people going through the motions of religion without a commitment to Christ. It seems there might have been the same findings had this (NSYR) research been conducted then. How do you think things differ today?

Great question—because of course, every generation of Christians struggles with acculturated Christianity. So on the one hand, the NSYR is this generation's reminder that Christianity is being co-opted by the reigning cultural ethos—and for us, that means absorbing the values of therapeutic individualism, consumer capitalism, and pluralistic relativism, so our primary goals include feeling good about ourselves and being nice to people so we don't step on toes.

Of course, Christians should get along with others—and then some. Jesus never actually mentions being nice, but he says a lot about compassion and justice (which are a lot harder than being nice). And Christ calls us to love people who are different from us, even our enemies—and we do this because we follow Jesus, not in spite of it.

But churches over the centuries adopted some very nasty habits, even to the point of doing violence "in Jesus' name" (which is heresy, flat out). So one thing that is distinct about 21st century Christianity is our need to follow Jesus in a way that does not simultaneously place Christians at the center of the universe. Our solution has been to throw the baby out with the bathwater: be religious, but not "too" religious. Be good, but don't be passionate. Be "almost" Christian, as John Wesley put it, but not "altogether" Christian. Don't love God with your whole heart and soul and mind; it's too dangerous.

This interpretation misunderstands the problem completely. I was visiting a Methodist-affiliated college recently with my daughter, where the admissions counselor spent much of his presentation emphasizing that students should not be put off by the university's Christian affiliation—that in spite of it, "we welcome everyone." I wanted to jump out of my chair! Who is training these admissions counselors on Christian theology? It's because of our Christian identity that we welcome everyone! People who follow Jesus practice radical welcoming, but this is not the way Christianity is generally viewed.

Jesus asks not for our membership in a club or our attendance on Sunday mornings, but for our very lives. Following Christ to the point that it shapes our identity is an "altogether" thing. The more intentionally we pattern our lives after Christ, the more we genuinely extend ourselves for people who are different from us. That is what the New Testament church was all about, which I take to be the prototype for churches even today.

You spend a significant portion of your book encouraging the church to reclaim its central identity as a missional community. Where do you think the church has gone wrong here?

I wish we didn't need the word "missional" to describe the church. It seems redundant to me. Mission is the business the church is in; if the church isn't missional, it isn't the church.

Of course, the fact that we need to make mission into an adjective tells us that we don't view churches this way. As Christendom began to crumble and churches began to feel threatened—you know, fewer people, fewer dollars, less social capital and power in society—churches did what all anxious people do. We circled the wagons and began protecting our own instead of looking for ways to follow Jesus into the world. That's actually a sign of a paradigm shift. When the tectonic plates of our reality start to change, we hold on more tightly to what we have. It's the perfect petri dish for cultivating self-serving spiritualities like Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.

Being Loved by God

On Feb26th, 2012, Pope Benedict tweeted: "If only everyone could experience the joy of being Christian, being loved by God who gave his Son for us!"

Yet even this simple, lovely prayer resulted in no-end of criticism, such as: " God loves everybody!"

Does God love everybody? Can that generality be applied to every single individual? God hated Esau and refused to forgive him though he sought it with tears.

But the big issue here is not whether God loves all of us, but whether we experience that love. If love is only a feeling then we can never know God's love. But with God's love - love is an action verb. He commands us to love our neighbours by feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, sheltering the homeless, visiting the shut-ins, and clothing the naked.

When we 'experience' the joy of being loved by God, it is like being looked after by a loving neighbour. He takes care of our needs. He blesses us and you can feel His blessings and, at times, His very presence.

When you 'know' the Son of God for Who He really is, then you can 'experience' the love of God. Until then it is just a concept.

Pre-trib Rapture Assaulted Again

In John 17:15 Jesus was praying for His disciples. He prayed, “I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one.”


My view on the rapture is not pre-trib, mid-trib, or post-trib. If there is a rapture, it will occur either when Jesus returns or there may be a very limited pre-wrath rapture. Pre-tribbers believe that the entire Great Tribulation is the day of God’s wrath and so pre-wrath must be pre-trib. 

One in the field will be taken and one left

But there is very good reason to believe that the testing that the letter to the church at Philadelphia refers to is, in fact, at the end of the Tribulation not the entirety of it. How so?


In Rev 6: 16,17 after the 6th seal has been opened, the great kings and leaders of the earth are found hiding in caves and calling on the mountains to fall on them to “hide us from the Presence of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb; for the great day of their wrath has come, and who is able to stand.”


So those who had been through the majority of the Tribulation did not see it as God’s wrath until nearly the end of the period. That calls into question the interpretation of the timing of Revelation and there are several differing viewpoints. 

It makes no sense, however, to read it as a linear time-series, that is, chronological. But rather, it makes the most sense to read it as a series of view-points. 

Pastor Daymor Moses equates it with watching replays of a football game. You have a camera on the quarterback, another on the running back, one on each of the wide receivers, one on the lines, etc., and each shows a different perspective of the same brief time-span. 

This is more or less how I have come to understand the timing as well, although it is not necessarily understandable at all.

With that in mind, the 6^th seal and the great day of the wrath of God and the Lamb comes very late in the Tribulation period. Let’s look at another perspective:
1 Cor 10:11 Now these things happened to them as an example, and they were written for our instruction, upon whom the ends of the ages have come. These things refers to the Exodus story of the Israelites. “Upon whom the ends of the ages have come,” is us. 

Therefore, those of us in the last days are to study the Exodus story for wisdom and revelation. And what do we find there?


We find the wrath of God coming upon Egypt (a type of the world), as Moses seeks permission to lead his people out of bondage. We see ten plagues that God inflicts upon the land of Egypt, many of which are quite devastating. 

What happens to the Israelites (a type of us) during this time? They are protected through most of the plagues.


When Aaron turned the Nile into blood, Moses had advance notice and may have warned the Israelites to store up drinking water. They may have suffered through the frogs and the gnat infestation, but then God separated them from the Egyptians for the rest of the plagues - I will put a division between My people and your people. Ex 8:23. 

They did not suffer the swarms of insects, their livestock were not afflicted, they did not get the boils the Egyptians suffered, nor the hail storms.

It is not obvious that the Israelites escaped from the plague of locusts, but I think it likely. However, I think it unlikely that they missed the plague of darkness that covered the land for 3 days. 

And, of course, they were saved from the final plague, the death of the first-born, by the covering of the blood on their houses. This is a foreshadowing of the covering of the blood of Christ on Christians. And yet, they were still in the land!

It was only after this most terrible judgment that Moses (the type of Christ) led the Israelites out of Egypt. And then what happened? God’s final judgment on Egypt occurred at the Red Sea. 

The Israelites miraculously crossed the Red Sea just before the Egyptian army is destroyed in it. If that isn’t a clear picture of the Great Tribulation, I don’t know what is?

People, we need to prepare ourselves to go through the Great Tribulation. Putting our hope on the fairytale of a pre-trib rapture will not get you ready. 

I believe most Christians will escape a lot of the judgments that will come upon the earth during those horrific 7 years, but I also believe that most Christians alive during the Great Tribulation will be martyred. 

Are you ready to be martyred? Or are you hoping for a fairytale ending?

(see also: The Rapture – Hope or Hype)

Truth

The first definition I came across was, “instead of lies and supernaturalism.” Supernaturalism; where did that come from? What was this, the beginning of an attack on faith?

Then I found this astounding revelation, “on veridical truth, as opposed not only to proven falsehood, lying and promise-breaking but also to institutionalized religion and other forms of supernaturalism.” So it is an attack on faith. (Veridical, by the way, means real, actual, or genuine.)

It would appear that veridical truth is not opposed to non-institutionalized religion. You gotta be careful what you read on the internet; there is all kinds of clap-trap.

Later I found a better definition, “conformity with fact or reality.” I also found that the word is Anglo-Saxon in origin and has an element of “faithfulness” at its roots. Isn’t that ironic?

Also, the Biblical definition of the word is, “opposed to falsehood,” “fidelity” (which has an element of faithfulness), and, of course, Jesus referred to Himself as the Truth.

My search for truth in Christianity will take me in many different directions. I invite you to come along and help me on this quest. Much of it will question popular doctrine, especially those which have become popular in the last 50 years or so. You will see a number of articles with “Romantic Christian” in the title. This is one of the terms I use to describe what I believe are Christians who have strayed from Biblical truth.

There are so many Christians, including entire denominations, big ones, that have romanticized Christianity to the point where it is not the least demanding, not at all difficult, there is no real requirement of us, no cross to carry, in fact, it’s become just a warm, fuzzy way to supplement our lives and make them better. This, of course, has nothing to do with Christianity.

Christianity is about restoring a fallen race to the God Who created them. It demands much of us; it is exceedingly difficult at times, but always with help available; it requires obedience, submission, sanctification, sincerity, sacrifice, discipline, and truth. And it requires us to pick up our cross daily.

The cross has lost its meaning in recent decades. It used to mean a burden, or difficulty in one’s life meant to help that person grow in character and closer to God. Paul’s cross was the ‘thorn in his side, the messenger of Satan” that the Lord afflicted him with to keep him humble. Modern Christians, Romantic Christians, reject that kind of stuff and will go to great lengths to reject such crosses to their own detriment.

The Romantic Christian and Sickness

A Romantic Christian does not believe that God can do anything that he perceives to be evil, such as making us sick?

But God does make people sick! In John 11:4, Jesus said (re: Lazarus), “this sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified by it.” Was it not God who struck down Lazarus? Certainly Satan would not be interested in glorifying the Son of God.

Similarly, John 9:30 re: the man who was blind from birth, “it was neither that this man sinned, nor his parents; but it was in order that the works of God might be displayed in him.” Again, was it not God who gave this man blindness from birth? Our adopted daughter was born with many handicaps, was she not formed in the womb by God?

The Lord doesn’t just use sickness to glorify Himself, but also to discipline and sometimes as a threat if His people don’t repent… The Lord prophesied through Micah (6:13), "So also I will make you sick, striking you down, desolating you because of your sins."

And sometimes as punishment or judgment for sins… Elijah prophesied to Jehoram in 2 Chr 21:14,15 "Behold, the Lord is going to strike your people, your sons, your wives, with a great calamity, and you will suffer severe sickness…"

And, also for discipline… In 1st Cor 11:27,29-32 Paul explains the consequences of partaking in the Lord’s Supper unworthily; “Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner, shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord. For he who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself, if he does not judge the body rightly. For this reason many among you are weak and sick, and a number sleep. But if we judged ourselves rightly, we shall not be judged. But when we are judged, we are disciplined by the Lord in order that we may not be condemned along with the world.”

Now, we know that Satan cannot touch Christians without permission from the Lord. The Lord gave permission for Satan to strike Job, and also Paul. The “thorn in the flesh, the messenger from Satan” required the Lord’s permission, and in Paul’s case was almost certainly initiated by God for the sake of keeping him humble (to keep me from exalting myself) II Cor 12:7. So if God gives permission, or approves of Satan afflicting Christians, is He not then ultimately responsible?

That it was a sickness, there can be little doubt. Paul himself called it his “weakness”. There’s no way possible that that can be construed as the strife he suffered in his long list of calamities. It is plainly obvious that Paul had a problem with his eyes. Gal 4:15 "Where then is that sense of blessing you had? For I bear you witness that, if possible, you would have plucked out your eyes and given them to me." And 6:11, "See with what large letters I am writing to you with my own hand." I believe the one verse confirms the other, and if I’m not mistaken, that is considered reliable exegesis.

So why then doesn’t the Lord just bring conviction on us rather than giving us some terrible disease? This is the attitude of many romantic Christians who apply the promise that the Holy Spirit will convict us if we are in error to every situation. You can’t do that!

Generally the Holy Spirit will convict us of sin, but generalities are generalities. A generality is a general statement that covers a range of things, rather than being concerned with specific instances. There are by definition almost always exceptions to generalities. One thing is for sure though; sometimes He just can’t seem to break through our defences. For instance: Didn’t the Holy Spirit convict Peter and James, the pillars of the church in Jerusalem, when they slid back into the bondage of the law? It seems to me that they didn’t come under much conviction until Paul rebuked them (Gal 2).

And what about David, that man after God’s own heart; that writer of songs and prophecies; that killer of lions, bears, and giants? Wasn’t he convicted of adultery with Bathsheba? Wasn’t he convicted of murdering her husband and several others of his best warriors, and ordering Joab to implement his murderous plan? Obviously, he wasn’t convicted until Nathan came alongside, and opened his eyes to what he had done (2 Sam 11 & 12).

Perhaps all these people were convicted, or at least the Holy Spirit attempted to convict them, but they may have been unwilling to receive the conviction. I don’t know. Fortunately, the apostles and David had the humility to listen to the word that was given them. But where was the conviction, or the humility, for Jim Jones, Ted Haggard, Jimmy Swaggert, and others like them?

The Romantic Christian

Are you a romantic Christian? No, I’m not asking if you buy your wife flowers, or make your husband intimate suppers. I’m asking if you have romanticized Christ.

To romanticize means to deal with or describe in an idealized or unrealistic fashion. It’s hard to romanticize Jesus; He’s our creator, He is, was, and always will be perfect. But somehow many of us have come to distort the church that Jesus started, and to make it into something so user-friendly, so soft and furry, so undemanding, that it is nothing like the faith the He initiated.

So, what does a romantic Christian believe? For one, a romantic Christian may believe that when times get tough, Christians get outa here. I had a pastor one time who liked to shout from the pulpit, "Jesus might come at any moment, maybe before this service is through, and take us all away to Heaven. " That he was articulating the beliefs of many Christians and some of our largest evangelical denominations, is a tragedy that would turn the early church fathers apoplectic.

The theory of the pre-tribulation rapture will be explored more fully later, but, for now, I will say that it is probably the chief cornerstone of the romantic Christian. What could be better than to get out of here before things get really nasty?

One of the big problems with that is that most people who look closely at Christian demographics will tell you that somewhere between 3 and 10% of people who believe they are saved and going to Heaven, are genuinely saved. The remainder show little or no change in their lives; no discernable moral difference from secular people.

Consequently, 90 to 97% of “Christians” will likely be left behind if we have a pre-tribulation rapture. Not a very romantic thought, is it? Certainly not what Tim LeHaye would have you believe.