Love Truth Blog

I listened to some Sixpence recently, and one of their seasonal tracks played—Angels We Have Heard on High—and the refrain Gloria in excelsis Deo keeps resounding in my head. But what is this “glory” that one can give or possess? We can say that in one sense glory is action world, conveying the idea of praise. Hence, Gloria in excelsis Deo means “glory to God in the highest.” We can glorify God. Glory is also a quality that characterizes a person, place, or thing, which can be visible or invisible, and it sets the possessor apart as worthy of receiving adoration, honor, and praise. Scriptures especially highlight the glory of the Lord or the glory that God possesses. The most frequently used Hebrew word in the Old Testament translated “glory” is kavod, which conveys the idea of weight or worthiness. One can speak of the kavod of men and women with respect to their wealth, or reputation. But, there is also the glory of Yahweh, which is what He reveals to people about Himself ...

“Whatever it is, we’re all infected.” I guess all the Waking Dead fans will get this. These chilling words were relayed by Rick Grimes to a group of survivors of a zombie apocalypse. Grimes first heard them from a Center for Disease Control worker named Dr. Edward Jenner. The most distressing element for these words, at least for the characters in the story, is that it brought them to realize that would eventually become a zombie walkers, save a fatal wound to the head. So the story goes... Human sinfulness in many ways is just that ominous. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:9-20, 23). Whether it is missing the mark in failing to do what is right or acting upon what is wrong, each one of us has incurred a debt of transgressions, and none can deny their own sinfulness. “Whatever it is, we’re all infected.” Death, the unnatural tearing apart of body and soul, is end to sinful humanity (Rom. 5:12; cf. Gen. 3). Far from being part of some positive “circle of li...

Today is December 21, 2012. My guess is if you can read this the whole global meltdown has not happened and…well…this is one more false prediction of the worlds end that never panned out. It really can cone to no surprise in that such prognostications are wrong 100% of the time. All the hype surrounded speculations made about the Mayan Long Count calendar, which ends a “Great Cycle” lasting 5125.36 years, which was one of several ways those ancient Mesoamericans reckoned time, the others being the Haab , the Lords of the Night, and the Tzolk’in [1]. Did the ancient Mayan culture that flourished in Central America between AD250 and AD800 really have anything to say about the twenty-first century? Unlikely! The equating of the completion of the “Great Cycle” with the end of the world is a “modern invention” and whatever the Maya believed about the future, they expected life to go on pretty much the same forever [2]. Sandra Noble, executive director of the Foundation for the ...

Someone wondered if Jesus Christ’s resurrection is patterned after our own resurrection, would we retain our scares just as the Lord did? Appearing to the apostle Thomas, the resurrected Lord said, “Reach here with your finger, and see My hands; and reach here your hand and put it into My side; and do not be unbelieving, but believing” (John 20:27). The Lord revealed His scares to demonstrate that He did die upon the cross, was buried, and rose again on the third day. This was a divine manifestation to help build faith in His disciple. Whether or not the scares disappeared at Christ’s ascension is not mentioned in the Bible. To the question of what the resurrected body would be like, Paul wrote, “So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown a perishable body, it is raised an imperishable body; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there ...

There is nothing better than getting outside and enjoying the sunshine, blue skies, and cool breezes. Inasmuch as nature can be wonderful, she is also capricious. Devastation by earthquakes, lightning, hurricanes, floods, hail, tornados, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions are just some of the more fearful and ominous displays of nature people witness. New technology allows many of us to find out where these things happen virtually in real time. The sting of these natural evils is bitter, but is this the way things were supposed to be? In Romans 8, the apostle Paul writes: “For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together unti...

“We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.” God entered into this world in the person of Jesus Christ as part of a plan to redeem lost sinners. The Lord had even prepared a prophet named John the Baptist to herald the arrival of the Christ. None of this was out of the blue; rather, God had spoken through the Old Testament prophets that a Messiah would be coming. However, when the long awaited Messiah had arrived, many people rejected Him. Jesus compared those who rejected Him as mutinous children resting opportunities to have fun with others. “We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn,” said the Lord (Matt. 11:17). John the Baptist called people to repent; yet, many wept not for their sin, but dismissed the Baptizer as a demoniac. Jesus Christ, the Son of Man, pronounced the arrival of God’s kingdom, and there was every reason to celebrate; yet, many complained that He was a “drunkard...

Something I have been wrestling with concerns the message of Genesis 1-11 in relationship to the origin of the universe. The whole issue of the Bible, and science. One of the challenges is attempting to understand the text in light of its Ancient Near East context and determining what the biblical writer sought to communicate. What did Moses want to tell the Israelites wandering in the wilderness some thirty-three-hundred years ago? Complicating matters are contemporary questions related to geology, astrophysics, astronomy, and other sciences addressing the question on the age and origin of the universe. In what way does the biblical text relate to these sciences? Moses does not appear to be directly answering questions on astrophysics, biology, genetics, or subjects in science. The prophet sought to teach people how to enter into a relationship with Yahweh, the one who spoke the universe into existence. Science addresses one set of questions whereas the Bible a different set...

I was just catching up on some blog reading, and came accross the following: " I lost my inheritance to the doomsday prophet! – CNN Belief Blog - CNN.com Blogs " The headlines tells it all, a woman left the lion's share of her estate, about $300,000 to Family Radio, the ministry of false prophet Harold Camping, who predicted the rapture would occur on May 21, 2011 and then revised it to be some sort of "spiritual" happening after things didn't pan out. Well, I'm sure there are worsts stories by others who got burned by the false prophet; however, no matter how one slices it, beliefs have consequences, and what one believes can alter the trajectory of one's life and relationship forever. The words of Moses are apropos: " You may say in your heart, 'How will we know the word which the Lord has not spoken?' When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the thing does not come about or come true, that is the thing which the Lord has not ...

Well, Harold Camping’s d-day declaration came and went. He is been proven once again to be a false prophet. He might have declared the church age is over and called Christians to flee their churches and gather around his teaching, but Christians are to flee Harold Camping. Here is what I will predict. D-day declarations will still continue. The next one is set at December 21, 2012 with the alleged end to the long count Mayan Calendar, but this too will also fail. There shall be many radio, television, and internet personalities arising up to claim they know they exact date of doomsday, but none shall ever pan out. Sadly, I predict there shall be many who shall be misled into this end time madness, some of them at great cost to their families, finances, fellowship, and future. People make life changing decisions based upon these false prophecies. In the most recent one, some have even gave up their life savings to put up billboards warning about May 21, 2011 — a false prophecy that ca...

William Miller predicted Jesus’ second coming would be on October 22, 1844. Rev. M. Baxter of the Church of England predicted the Battle of Armageddon would occur in 1868. Former Millerites turned Seventh-day Adventist set 1874 as the year of Christ’s return. Jehovah’s Witnesses struck out with predictions of Christ return in 1914, 1925, and 1975. Hal Lindsey in The Late Great Planet Earth predicted the rapture would occur before December 31, 1981. Lester Sumrall said I Predict 2000. Edgar Whisenant thought between September 11 and 13 of 1988. The Korean Hyoo-goo movement predicted October 28, 1992. Grant Jeffery though the end would be in 2000. 1 The common denominator of these doomsday predictions, and all others, they are 100% wrong 100% of the time. So when Harold Egbert Camping predicted the rapture would occur in September 7, 1994, no one should have believed him then, and now that he is saying its May 21, 2011, we can be certain this doomsday date prediction will also fail. ...

Is Mahatma Gandhi in hell? A while back I watched this YouTube video with Mars Hill Michigan pastor Rob Bell asking this very question. It was a little teaser for his book Love Wins: A Book about Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived . It was certainly a provocative piece, and this preacher with rock star status on the liberal lane of the emergent church highway 1 really got the social media pages buzzing with accusations about him slipping into universalism. After reading the book, my take is that Bell really finds the Christian doctrine of saints being resurrected to eternal life and sinners to eternal condemnation to be “misguided and toxic” (vii). He indeed desires readers to examine their concept of heaven and hell with the intent to open doorways into other ways of understanding the doctrine of hell asides eternal conscious punishment, to understand that heaven and hell can be experienced in the present as well as in the future, and to be open to the ideas th...

I was scanning though channels on the television, and came across a feature on the History Channel called “Bible Tech,” which explored the ways the ancients may have constructed things like Noah’s Ark, the Tower of Babel, and Herod’s Temple. During the Herod’s Temple segment, the narrator rightly indicated that Jesus made a prediction about the temple’s destruction. The Lord said, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left upon another which would not be torn down” (Mark 13:2). However, just prior to the commercial break, under the heading of “Trivia,” the following flashed upon the screen: “Although Jesus predicted the destruction of the temple in the Gospel of Mark, many scholars believe that Mark was written after the temple was destroyed.” There might be a number of scholars who believe “Mark was written after the temple was destroyed;” however, a case can be made for an even earlier completion of this Gospel. It is important to observe that neither the Gospels...

“This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophets: ‘He shall be called a Nazarene’ ” (Matt. 2:23, NASB) Matthew 2 tells about magi from the East coming to the land of Israel to worship the infant Christ, Herod’s plan to kill the Child by ordering the execution of all male children two years old and under in Bethlehem, and an angel leading Joseph, Mary and the Child to safe haven in Egypt, and then leading them back after the death of Herod, but to avoid any trouble with Herod’s son and successor Archelaus, directing them to settle down in Nazareth. Matthew then declares, “ This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophets: ‘He shall be called a Nazarene’ ” (v. 19b). Many have difficulty understanding how Matthew connecting Nazareth the Old Testament prophets, particularly because no particular prophet ever says, “He shall be called a Nazarene.” There is no mistake on Matthew’s part. He is not citing a specific Old Testament prophecy. He actually uses of “prophets” i...

Many of us look at things going on in the world and see a lot of things getting out of hand. But tis the season to know that things do not have to be that way. Things can be different. Charles Wesley’s “Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus” is a wonderful Advent hymn, which reminds us that a better world is possible. It  goes… Come, thou long-expected Jesus, Born to set thy people free; From our fears and sins release us, Let us find our rest in thee: Israel’s Strength and Consolation, Hope of all the saints thou art; Dear Desire of every nation, Joy of every longing heart. Born, thy people to deliver; Born a child, and yet a King! Born to reign in us for ever, Now thy precious kingdom bring: By thine own eternal Spirit, Rule in all our hearts alone; By thine all-suficient merit, Raise us to thy glorious throne. The message of the Old Testament can be summed up in the world “promise,” whereas the New Testament word is “fulfillment,” both point to Jesus Christ. Wha...

What is “the second death” all about? Revelation 2 includes a letter to the Christian community in ancient Smyrna written by the prophet John on behalf of the Lord Jesus Christ, who is “the first and the last, who was dead, and has come to life” (v. 8). 1 The letter is meant to encourage believers in Smyrna. They were reminded that the Lord knew of their tribulation and poverty, albeit they were spiritually rich (v. 9a). He also knew the persecutors were “a synagogue of Satan,” and that they would endure tribulation and imprisonment for a season of “ten days,” but they were to “be faithful until death” (vv. 9b-10). The Lord then offers the following promise, “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. He who overcomes will not be hurt by the second death” (v. 11). The concept of “second death” is further elaborated in Revelation 20, wherein John makes the following contrast: “Blessed and holy is the one who has a part in the first resurrection; over these ...

Browsing the news online, I came across Time magazine Matti Friedman piece entitled Clashes Erupt at Sacred Jerusalem Site. It concerned a clash between Muslim worshippers and Israeli riot police, which ended in some injuries, particularly a Palestinian woman who suffered a head injury from a rubber bullet. This all happened near the Western wall, perhaps a artifact from the Jerusalem before it was destroyed by Rome in AD70, near the what Jews call the Temple Mount and Muslims call the Nobel Sanctuary. The trouble centers on social, political, and theological differences between Muslims and Jews in the region, but the catalyst is an Israeli decision to include two West Bank shrines on a list of national heritage sites— the site that Jews call the Cave of the Patriarchs and Muslims call the Ibrahimi mosque, and the other site is Rachel's Tomb, adjacent to the city of Bethlehem. Of course this is just one more squabble in a whole series of squabbles that erupted beginning with Isr...

Bill Wiese, a former real estate broker, purports that on November 22, 1998 at 11:00 p.m. he fell asleep alongside his wife Annette and woke up 3:00 a.m. the next morning in the fiery pit of hell, which he describes in a book entitled 23 Minutes in Hell (Lake Mary, FL: Charisma House, 2006). Naked inside a fifteen by ten foot stone prison cell, Wiese testifies to being tortured by four demonic creatures that stood ten to thirteen feet tall that had the form of humans with grotesque reptilian features. After crawling out of his cell, he witnessed a full panorama of hell’s utter darkness and unquenchable fire. He felt intense physical physical pain, experienced an unquenchable thirst, smelled foul odors far worst than any putrid thing in the world of the living, heard the screams of a myriad of tortured souls, and felt the utter hopelessness of those who come to realize escape to be futile, for God kept out of his thought process the very idea of a savior (1-14). After 23 minutes in...

The mysterious Long Count Mayan Calendar completion date of its 5125.36 year cycle on December 21, 2012, along with a few promotional Web sites ( http://www.thisistheend.com/ and http://www.theinstituteforhumancontinuity.org/ ), has for Roland Emmerich's 2012 (Sony Motion Pictures) paid off. Released November 15, 2009, the movie “opened at No. 1 domestically with $65 million and pulled in $225 million worldwide.” [1] The 2012 movie actually navigates around any deep exposition on Mesoamerican mythology; rather, it centers on the drama of average people in the midst of a worldwide catastrophe, which brings out humanities greatest virtues and vices. 2012 begins with Dr. Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor) discovering that solar flairs have caused increased amounts of neutrinos to bombard the earth, thus heating up the earth core to the point where an inevitable near future apocalyptic event would occur, which would include a gravitational pole shift, earthquakes, volcanic erupti...

Here is some food for thought... There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done." - C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce

A while back I heard about a video posted on Youtube that made the connection to Luke 10:18 to demonstrate that President Barack Obama is the antichrist. So I checked out the video and did not know whether to laugh at what could be ranked as a joke for being the worst cast of biblical interpretation ever, or cry at the fact that many people viewing the video would actually think it true. The idea presented in the video is that the Luke 10:18 phrase “heaven like lightning” in Hebrew should be translated baraq o bam-maw and serves as a cipher for the name of Satan’s antichrist is unfounded. Of course getting from point A to point B requires numerous leaps in logic that stretch credulity beyond the breaking point. First, those who read Luke 10:18 in context can readily see that Jesus reference to Satan’s fall from heaven like lightening referred to something that had already happened when the Lord spoke those words, namely the success of the preaching of the Gospel by the seventy evangel...