People Sharing Jesus

Ann Redding was a minister in the Episcopal Church for thirty years.  For a brief time she was an Episcoplian minister who was a practicing Muslim.  The church defrocked her.  I can almost hear the insane voices of our day shouting “intolerant” that the Episcopal Church would do such a thing as take away her credentials.  More than ever before those who want to follow Jesus had better carefully scrutinize spiritual leaders.  There is a spirituality loose in our culture that has nothing to do with truth.  No one who ever discovered Jesus in all of His glory could under any circumstance become a Muslim.  Any former Christian who professes to have converted to Islam never really understood the Christian faith.  (And likely does not understand Islam either.)  Imagine those who lived under Ann’s leadership.  Didn’t Jesus say something about “the blind leading the blind”.  Ask hard questions of those who lead you.  Learn about their values.  Ask them to talk to you about their view of salvation.  Ask them what they believe about Jesus Christ.  Ask them about thier view of his birth, death, and resurrection.  Don’t let them get away with metaphorical answers.  The excuse that you didn’t know you were following a wolf won’t be adequate when you stand before the Lord.

Dan Wooldridge

We are long past the days when people move to town looking for a church to attend.  Although there are still many who do so, they are in the minority.  The American churches have become good at building attractive buildings, promoting attractive events, and mirroring the culture in order to have contact with the population.  I am fine with buildings that glorify the Lord and events that communicate the good news of Jesus.  Mirroring the culture will actually do more harm than good.  When we are indistinguishable from the world, we cease to be salt and light.  There is another option.  We must take the message back to the streets.  Jesus was not crucified in a Cathedral between two candles but on a cross between two thieves.  He was crucified by the side of a road in a place where soldiers cursed and gambled and religious people behaved like the common rabble.  His message is needed in the state house and in the school house.  His message is needed in the marketplace and in the metroplex.  If we do not take His message back to the streets, the day is rapidly coming when most of our churches will be more like museums than houses of worship.  I have to go now.  I am needed in the streets.

Dan Wooldridge

Over the years, there have been thousands of Ben’s, Bill’s, and Becky’s who stood back from the Lord for what they believed to be intellectual reasons.  It is easy to ask questions about certain mysteries in the bible and in the spiritual realm.  In the final analysis, some of the most intellectual people who have ever lived on this planet confess Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.  They often raised all of the questions that skeptics raise.  They also raised hundreds of questions that most skeptics would never even think to ask.  A large percentage of those who stand back from Jesus for their intellectual reasons have not seriously engaged the message of the Bible.  They have not yet seen that it is profound on a level that is unequaled in the realm of literature.  They have not taken note that it is the all time best seller by millions and millions of copies.  They do not realize that the bible was literally the first book to come off of Gutenburg’s press.  Weighing the evidence of those who have taken a serious look and confessed Jesus as Lord that are also honest intellectuals, I make a statement that is sometimes hard for people to hear.  “People do not really have an intellectual problem with God; they have a moral problem with God”.  It is not that they cannot believe for that would indict the untold millions of studious and bright Christians living and dead.  It is that they will not believe.  Somewhere in their subconscious mind they do not want to surrender to the Lordship of Christ.  They want to maintain control.  That control is an illusion anyway.  We did not choose to be born.  We did not choose where we were born or to whom we were born.  Our choices are inevitably limited.  We must choose to believe on Jesus or not to believe.  We are not, and cannot be neutral.  To withhold our faith is to choose unbelief.  It is a walk into the darkness.

Dan Wooldridge

As the story for Becky continues, it is time to talk about the scientific aspect of the Bible.  Since Becky brought it up, let’s start with the fact that Methuselah lived to be 969 years old.  There are some scholars who try to reconcile the exeedingly old ages of the patriarchs in the bible with modern life spans by suggesting that they used a different calendar.  I believe this is unnecessary.  In many cultures there are stories about very long lives of earlier generations of people.  We now know more about aging than we did even a few decades ago.  Radiation from the sun is a major contributor to the aging process.  In the bible and in other ancient records of people, there is also the story of a great flood that “covered the mountain tops”.  (Genesis 6)  Before that flood, the bible says that rain as we know it did not happen.  The world was watered by a mist that came down from above.  We know from greenhouses and other artificial means of caring for plants that such a state could be produced by very different atmospheric conditions.  God could have easily extended those early lives for purposes all his own.  The Scripture teaches that the ages begin to shorten after the great flood. 

Many modern people believe the Creation account in the bible to be rendered mythological by science.  To them I would call attention to Strobel’s, The Case for the Creator.  In his book he makes clear that far from disproving God, many modern discoveries are pointing to a mind being behind all of creation.  In fact the number of scientists who are believers has increased greatly in the the thiry plus years that I have been a pastor.  Some Christians insist on a very young earth which is only six thousand years or so old.  I have never seen that as necessary.  Time is a created thing.  Einstein proved among other things that there was a time when there was no time.  We should not be surprised to discover that things are not always as they appear.  Many of the assertions that were made in science books in my youth are now thoroughly refuted.  I am open to truth wherever I find it, but I reserve ultimate faith for the God who never fails and shall never be disproved.  He is the God who created time and is timeless.  Jesus is the one who was, and who is, and who is to come.

Dan Wooldridge

By now someone is scratching their head and asking if this pastor Dan is not a little loopy.  What is all of this “Becky” stuff?  Please be patient with me as I present these thought in a personal manner.  Becky is a real person.  I don’t know Becky, but I know that God is reaching out to her through these words and through the love of a friend.  Becky represents for me the untold thousands of young adults that I have had the opportunity to encourage to seek the truth about God.  Today my topic is the bible. 

To be sure, when we open the bible we are in a very unusual book.  In fact the bible is a library of sixty six books written over a period of more than one thousand years by as many as forty different authors.  Try to imagine such a collection so brought together that could be seen to speak with one voice about the things of eternal significance.  There has never been a book like the bible.  Even one book of the bible can be and has been transformational in people’s lives.  The collection of sixty six has changed cultures. 

Since I am a Christian, I want to start with the last 27 books which make up the New Testament.  There is a lot of foolish talk these days about the New Testament which suggests that the material within was written long after the time of Jesus.  That is utter nonsense.  The entire New Testament in its present form was written within fifty or sixty years of the matters addressed.  Most of the New Testament was written within thirty years or less of the events described.  Some of the epistles were written within the first decade after the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ.  My point is this.  You cannot develop legendary material in that length of time.  The material comes from eyewitnesses of the events.  In cases such as Paul, though he was not an eyewitness, he spent a good deal of time with those who were.   Most historians would never question the details of much of ancient history, and yet it is not nearly so well attested as are the Scriptures.  Those who claim that the Scripture is unreliable have made a choice not to take it seriously.  How would you explain that Jesus could have lived His whole life in the obscure land of Palestine which was a vassal state of Rome, and yet now be worshipped by more than a billion people?  The impact of His story is so deep within the history of the world that even nations who are not Christian in culture have been affected by Him.  One of the first books of the New Testament to be written was the first epistle to the Corinthians.  In the fifteenth chapter of that epistle, Paul states that over five hundred people were eyewitnesses to Jesus having risen from the dead.  In fact he says that over five hundred were gathered with Jesus at the same time for one of those post resurrection appearances.  Some say it was a dream or vision, but that simply is not credible.  Of those hundreds of early followers, many would become martyrs because of their testimony.  In fact all of the twelve disciples died as maryrs except for John according to most historians. 

Now what of the Old Testament?  It is difficult to understand the Old Testament without a thorough knowledge of the history of the time from which it arises.  It contains books of religious law, history, poetry, and prophecy.  It is important to know which kind of literature a given book in the Old Testament belongs to.  The books of prophecy sometimes speak to current events from the time of a given prophet, but sometimes they reach across the centuries and point to something from the time of Christ.  There are hundreds of Scriptures in the Old Testament that point to the time and life of Jesus.  There are also passages that speak about the end of human history. 

I have read the Koran.  I have read the Book of Mormon.  I have read many of the Asian writings that underpin Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, and so forth.  There is no comparison between any of these and the bible.  In fact, all of these put together do not compare to the bible.  No holy book comes close to the historical and geographical detail of the bible.  The science of archaelogy has verified the bible as to accuracy on hundreds of occasions.  Archaeology is a relatively new science, and yet it has already exposed some of the careless talk of skeptics as misinformed or uninformed.  A good example would be that skeptics used to say that Moses could not write and therefore could not have written the first five books.  We now know that is absurd.  The level of learning at the time of Moses greatly exceeds what “the experts” used to say.  For further reading find a copy of Lee Strobel’s The Case for the Real Jesus or for that matter his The Case for Christ.  Become familiar with the work of Josh McDowell.  Look for a book written by a man who grew up as a Hindu in India.  He is Ravi Zacharias.  His book is Jesus Among Other Gods.  There are literally thousands of highly intellectual scholars who have written on these subjects.  Happy reading!

Next time I will talk of the patriarchs who are reported to have lived hundreds of years.

Dan Wooldridge

Don’t stumble over the title.  Becky represents anyone and everyone who has not yet settled the question of the truth about Jesus.  God’s love is expressed in revealing the truth to us.  As Jesus once said, “the truth shall make you free.”  Jesus is clearly presented in the New Testament as being the Son of God.  That sonship, however, is expressed in His oneness with God and the Holy Spirit.  In one sense the bible presents all people as children of God, but Jesus is the only begotten.  He is not “a son”, but “the Son”.  The New Testament says that all the fullness of God dwelt in Him.  (Colossians 1:19)  Is there any evidence that this is true?

The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is the fundamental issue that powerfully demonstrates the truth of all that He said and did.  If Jesus rose from the dead, then the world is a different place than it may appear on the surface of things.  The New Testament powerfully witnesses to His resurrection.  It underscores His brutal death.  It declares His resurrection as an event which left the tomb empty.  He arose bodily.  It lists His various appearances after He arose.  It reveals that His body was somehow different; somehow glorious; and nevertheless still a body.  His closest followers were transformed into men and women of great hope and courage by the event.  Many of them would die as martyrs because they fearlessly shared the truth about Him in a world that often did not want to listen.  (Much like our world today)  In less than one hundred years the entire civilized world had heard of Jesus and even secular historians had to write about Him in order to make sense of the sweeping changes that His life and teachings were making in the world around them.  Today the sun never sets on His church.  He is worshipped every week in hundreds of languages and on every continent and in every country on the planet.

The first followers were prepared to grasp the significance of the resurrection of Jesus by noting the teachings of the prophets in the Old Testament that had foreshadowed His coming.  They were also prepared by the many miracles that He did during His years of public ministry.  He healed sick people, made blind people see,  walked on the surface of water, fed multitudes with a few morsels, commanded the wind and waves, and spoke words unlike any man had spoken before.  They learned of the unusual nature of His birth and the prodigy of His youth.   They learned about the meaning of His crucifixion as fulfillment of a Divine plan of forgiveness.  Isaiah the prophet in the fifty-third chapter of his prophecy described the  death of Jesus for sinners seven hundred years before it occurred.

The evidence that Jesus was unusual is overwhelming.  Even non-Christian scholars must admit that no man who ever walked on this earth has had such a profound impact as He has.  Becoming a Christian is not just examining the facts.  Becoming a Christian is not even merely acknowledging that certain things about Jesus are true.  Becoming a Christian is entering into a relationship with Him.  It is receiving Him into ones heart by faith.  It is surrendering to Him as Lord and beginning to live life by His teachings and example.  The facts establish a basis for faith, but faith opens the door to heaven.

Dan Wooldridge

I really don’t know Becky, but one of the members of my church does.  I use the title above in order to lay the foundation for sharing truth about God.  The motive of all the truth that God reveals to us is His love.  He loves all of the “Bills”, “Bens”, and “Beckys” in the world.  He also loves the Osamas, the Obamas, and the Dalai Lama.  It is can be very hard to understand God’s love in the light of the many fearful warnings in Scripture.

In order to receive truth, you must believe that truth exists.  All religions make truth claims.  But even a casual examination will reveal that they cannot all be true.  Their claims exclude one another.  Christianity usually gets labeled as being exclusive, but actually it is no more exclusive than any other world religion.  In order to receive truth you must not rely on careless scholarship or urban myths about the issues.  There are too many people talking about religion today who have never seriously analyzed the various truth claims or the evidence that supports them.  A good example of this would be the Da Vinci Code.  The premises behind that book and movie are beyond ridiculous.  One hour of serious study by a total novice would reveal that there is no credibility whatsoever to those assertions.  They are not only untrue; they constitute poor fiction.  Finally, one needs to distinguish between truth and faith.  Even when one is reasonably satisfied that something is true, it is not the facts, but our faith that ushers us into a relationship with God.

Now let us suppose that only one billion people out of more than six billion people on the planet are at peace with God.  Only God knows for sure what that number is.  How could God allow the people who make up the remaining billions to be eternally separated from Him in a place called hell?  Sometimes we ask the wrong questions.  Try this question instead.  What should God do with people who reject him because they either didn’t get adequate information or did not like the message He gave them?  If there is a God, and I certainly know that there is, we cannot sit in judgement on Him.  Even if God were a tyrant, it would be ridiculous to suggest that we could correct that.  Here are some factors to consider when trying to answer the question about what God should do with those who reject Him.  The evidence is that all people will spend eternity somewhere.  When God creates a life, He creates it in an indestructible way.  The body dies, but apparently the spirit or soul does not.  Those who would suggest that he let everyone into His eternal kingdom must first admit that they don’t understand the afterlife as well as God does.  Imagine that in the afterlife everyone lived under water.  Imagine also that being saved meant getting the equipment to breathe under water built into your future spiritual body.  The point this strange illustration makes is that those who do not trust the Lord and find the truth are totally unequipped to deal with heaven.  It could not and would not be heaven for them.  Nothing in their being has been prepared for life in the presence of God.  They spent no genuine time with Him in this life and therefore could not be ready to meet Him on the other side.  Secondly, what do we really know about hell?  The bible gives us several descriptions.  Jesus is our primary source of authority.  He speaks of outer darkness.  He speaks of fire.  He speaks of endless bickering.  Frankly I know enough about humanity to know that some people are living a lot of that right now.  I do not believe hell is a torture chamber.  I believe it is a place of endless darkness and endless waste.  The word “gehenna” which Jesus used to describe hell was a word that referred to a garbage dump that continually burned with fire.  Hell is the place where wasted lives wind up.  The bickering could well be the endless frustration and remorse of missed opportunities.

Think about this awhile and meet me later as we talk about things like 1. Who is Jesus? 2. Why should I read the bible? 3. What evidence is there that the bible is reliable? 4. Doesn’t science prove the bible to be untrue? (A side note on that will deal with the exceedingly long lives of some of the key characters in Genesis will be included in this.)  I hope you will keep reading.

Dan Wooldridge

As I pointed out in my last post, when you believe Jesus to be the Son of God you can no longer see God as out of touch with our suffering.  In Jesus Christ, God has suffered with us.  He is “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.”  (Isaiah 53)  Just as redemption and hope came out of the suffering of Jesus, God can bring good results out of bad circumstances in our own life.  The person who can best identify those good results is the one who has endured the suffering.

   I am a pastor today because at the age of nineteen I suffered something akin to a nervous breakdown.  I had incredible pain and the symptoms usually associated with only extreme cases of nervous disorders.  What made this so odd is that I had nothing to be nervous about.  I went through a battery of tests and nothing was found that could explain my distress.  Deep depression settled over me.  I had no recourse but prayer.  Out of that heart cry to God I stumbled on a morning.  It was Sunday morning and I forced myself to go to church.  I really did not feel like being out in public.  I had lost sixty pounds off my football frame of over two hundred pounds.  I looked sick and people could not resist asking about my health.  I knew everyone in the small town where I lived and so more than anything else I wanted to hide.  That morning a converted Jew gave his testimony.  He was lively and funny.  Out of a crowd of over three hundred in attendance he sought me out that afternoon to learn more about me.  When I told him of my strange suffering, he looked me in the eyes and said God is calling you to preach.   You are a preacher.  I was stunned.  Since he was speaking that evening I went back to hear him.  I really didn’t listen to his message that night because I could not get out of my mind the words he had said that afternoon.  When the invitation was extended I walked forward and asked for prayer.  I simply said to the pastor that I may be experiencing God’s call on my life.  Several came and knelt with me in prayer.  After the service dozens told me that they had already expected this.  Many of them were former teachers in Bible study and at public school.  The confirmation of their many insights into my life made me certain that this was God’s plan.  I returned home, lay down, prayed myself to sleep, and woke up healed.  God had removed the symptoms completely.  By the end of the week I had been invited to fill a pulpit in a nearby city.  I was nineteen.  God has opened more doors than I can walk through from that day to this.  Suffering forced me to a level of introspection and soul searching that I could never have done without the pressure.  A poet once said it this way, “I needed quiet, so He drew me aside.”

Dan Wooldridge

Some people believe God must either be powerless to relieve the world of suffering or else not truly care about us.  Is there another possibility?  The pages of the New Testament reveal the depth of God’s concern.  The coming of Jesus included the suffering of Jesus.  This suffering revealed God willingness to get into the middle of our fallen world and take on its trials and griefs.  For the next few moments consider the fact that God is able to see a reality which is currently unavailable to our eyes.  It is the tendency of humanity to tie all of our hopes and dreams to this world.  In the average mind, if it doesn’t work out in this present time, then it just doesn’t work out.  Almighty God sees this world as something like a stage upon which the drama of redemption is being played out.  He has the script in hand.  He knows the outcome.  He understands the various roles and experiences as a rich masterpiece of His own creation.  Only such a God could “make all things work together for good to those who love Him and are the called according to His purpose.”   At some point we all must live with mysteries.  The question “Why?”  is not nearly so important as the question “to what end?”  Only God sees where all of this is going.  Only He finally decides what is just.  We are left with only one ultimate responsibility and that is to trust Him.  There will not be one person who will enter heaven’s glory saying, “I wish I had not trusted the Lord so much.”  The key to a life that glorifies Him is all bound up in trusting in the Lord with all of our heart.  That is easier on the good days, but it is necessary everyday.

Dan Wooldridge

The problem of suffering has snuffed out the spiritual life of untold millions of people who truly wanted to believe in God, but concluded that it was futile because of the existence of so much suffering in our world.  As one who has experienced some suffering and witnessed an enormous amount over a lifetime, I want to speak to this issue.  There are three important truths to get your mind around in order to even begin to look at the problem of suffering.    1. ALL SUFFERING IS RELATED TO SIN.  We simply must realize that we are fallen creatures in a fallen world.  The impact of sin on this world is far greater than any of us can imagine.  Paul says in Romans 8:22 “The whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth . . .”  He continues to speak in the passage of the coming redemption for the created order itself.

2. SOME SUFFERING IS RELATED TO SPECIFIC SIN.  God has long ago determined to grant all of mankind a choice between good and evil.  When evil choices are made.  Evil consequences follow.

3. NOT ALL SUFFERING IS RELATED TO A SPECIFIC SIN.  The one in the best position to see if their suffering is the result of their own choice or the choice of another is the person at the center of a trial.  We need to be careful about attaching blame to those who suffer.  Jesus made this obvious in the ninth chapter of John with the healing of a man who was born blind.

Once these things have been established, we need to realize that suffering is often the cause of our turning away from sinful pride and casting ourselves on the mercy and grace of God.  God is grieved by our suffering, but he can bring redemption and purpose to the worst of circumstances. (Romans 8:28)  The history of the Christian faith is filled with the story of trials and tribulations that have been turned into triumphs because someone turned to God in the midst of their suffering.  Never forget that the Cross was a terrible act perpetrated by evil men and a tyrannical government.  From heaven’s view, the cross was the turning point from which God would one day “wipe every tear from our eyes.”   (Rev. 7:17)

Dan Wooldridge