My Adventures with God Ch 42 - Is my Story Worth Telling?

Ch42: Is my story Worth Telling?

Am I having second thoughts about continuing with my story of adventures with God? Yes I am!

I notice I have readers from around the world. This makes me ask: is my story going to help you in your situation for your walk with God?

It is a story of remaining faithful to God under persecution: that is good as far as it goes, but some of you face levels of persecution that make my troubles look trivial.

It is a story of people whose hate rules their lives seeming to win (in a worldly sense). But the hatred I endured while significant by Australian standards looks so petty compared to say survivors from Rwanda!

It is a tale of betrayal by the church hierarchy – but that too pales into insignificance compared to what we are now learning that all churches did to victims of pedophile priests.

But it is also a story of survival and a testimony that God's grace is sufficient and that is worth hearing!

So perhaps my tale has value, and with humble tribute to those who have been confessors and martyrs in a much more real sense throughout the history of Christianity down to the present, I will tell it.

Dominant themes in this story:

Start with God's love for his people, even when they rebel against him.

This is a theme that leaps from almost every page of the Old Testament. It is also a theme of Jesus teaching. Just take one parable, the “wicked tenant farmers”. Remember how in this parable the owner sent messengers again and again, but they were rejected and ill treated. Finally he sent his only son. Whom they killed. Jesus enemies realised that he was talking about them. Then they completed the story by killing Jesus – God's only beloved Son whom he had sent into the world.

The story of Vermont Anglican church is like a tiny echo of this. This church had gone wrong. God had warned them. (I only learned this much later but the parish had accepted as genuine a prophecy given my a member warning them that they were rebelling against God – but they had not obeyed it.) Then God sent me there to try to win them back to him – and two thirds of the church showed themselves receptive. One third reacted more like the religious leaders of Jesus day did to Him. But Jesus did warn us that people would treat his followers the way they had treated him!

Continue with how the evil one uses those who are in his thrall.

Hatred: Jesus said “they hated me without reason”. In this story we meet people whose hate defies any logical explanation of being produced by events.

Pride: In this story we meet people whose “self” is their god.

Lies: Jesus said that the devil was a liar and the father of all lies. In this story you will meet people who turn truth upside down. They are on the side of “Right” (so they convince themselves) so whatever aids their cause must be “The Truth” and anything that hinders their quest is “A Lie”. This is instructive because it is a behaviour pattern shared with the so called “progressive socialists” prevalent in the Western world at present.

Vengeance: Jesus taught “Forgive as God has forgiven you”; the Old Testament sough at least to curb vengeance to “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”; Lamech, a figure mentioned in Genesis boasted “if Cain is avenged seven times, Lamech is avenged seventy-seven times”. You will meet in this story people claiming to be super-Christians whose thirst for vengeance knew no bounds.

Folly: you will see a church hierarchy groomed to shelter and facilitate people doing evil. This case is very minor compared to the way church hierarchies around the world were groomed by pedophiles to protect them, allow them to continue to prey on their victims and even shield them from the police! However It is another warning to “put not your trust in princes (or bishops!), mere humans who cannot save”.

End with God triumphant!

This is the way every human story ends – whether seen here on earth or whether revealed only on the Day of Judgement or some of each: in Christ God has won the victory, nothing can thwart his eternal purposes and our labour in the Lord is not in vain!

Christ is Risen: He is risen indeed!

Christ Is Risen

He is Risen Indeed.

We Christians have been a bunch of complete mugs. Over many decades we have harboured people who claim to be Christians but say they don't believe in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Instead of telling them the truth: “you are not Christians”, we have made them professors of theology, priests and even bishops!

We could learn a lesson from the secular world! Imagine for a moment a local soccer club.

Imagine one of the players turns up to practice with a hockey stick over his shoulder. Imagine a conversation that goes like this:

Coach: “OK lose the hockey stick … this is soccer!”

Player: “Don't be so last century coach! I really believe that now soccer should be played with hockey sticks!”

Coach: “No, no no sunshine! This is soccer not hockey. Lose the stick!”

Player: “Well I've been re-reading the rules coach. To me when the rules say “feet” this is just a metaphor for "stick" – so I say we should use hockey sticks!”

Well we all know how this is going to end! It will be some variation on “lose the stick or get lost!”

So why have we put up with people wanting to pose as Christians, even take prestige and pay as Christian theologians and prelates when they publicly deny the core belief of Christianity.

Just two tales of the inroads this madness has made:

1. When I was twenty or so I wanted to become a “local preacher” in the then Methodist Church (it became the “Uniting Church” just after I went over to the Anglicans).

I had a long-standing and sincere faith, but I had never studied theology. There was a course of  study required to be a local preacher. I embarked on this. In a nutshell the thrust of this course was that pretty much everything I had believed was naive and actually something close to a fairy tale! In particular Jesus was basically a good teacher whose death was unintended and unforeseen by him and the resurrection story was a myth invented by the early Christians. In reality, said one text book, his body was still in some unknown grave.

Readers can guess who destructive this rubbish was to my faith! Two events saved me.

The first was my presentation – having passed the exams – to the local preachers of our circuit. Most of these were old no-nonsense Christians. One just looked at me. It may have been barely more than a glance, but a glance that conveyed more than I can put in words. His glance cut deep. It was a glance that said: “You are not one of us!” That glance hurt – but it started my healing!

God, as all who know him have found, is incredibly kind. He is also incredibly severe. He loves us too much to let anything mar our eternal joy as his children. “Circumstances” pushed me into attending an Anglican church where there was sound doctrine. Eventually God manoeuvred me into a theological college. No, not the Uniting Church one, not even the university faculty I thought I wanted to study in, but Moore College – a brutal Calvinist institution. It was not nice, I was not happy there, and eventually I got thrown out.

(for details see http://lifeuniversegod.blogspot.com.au/2014/05/7-we-go-to-anglican-church.html and the couple of posts after it).

It was a severe mercy that God sent me there … but a great mercy. Over the course of three years at Moore, everything I had absorbed from the Uniting Church course was shown for the garbage it was, and thrown out of my soul. I was back to believing in the real God.

2. My second story is only a decade and a half old. My sons attended a prestigious Anglican school in Melbourne. My second son Tim was in senior year when this story takes place. It was approaching Easter. There was a chapel service for the whole school. The senior chaplain preached. He was was explaining to the boys that the resurrection story was not actually true.

Tim who even then was well over 6 foot tall, barrel chested and broad shouldered was a conspicuous figure. Hearing the chaplain preach this Tim jumped to his feet. He pushed his way along the row of students to the aisle. By now all eyes were fixed on this senior student doing the unthinkable in a chapel service! Tim said not a word. He turned and marched head erect out of the chapel!

Later several of the school masters who were devout Christians furtively came up to him and whispered things like “Well done!”

These stories are a little indication of how people who are no Christians at all have managed, not just to hide under some rock in the Christian Church, but have become its spokesmen!

Does this matter? What follows if the resurrection was a lie?

Jesus Said “I have come that (my sheep) may have life and have it to the full … I am the Good Shepherd … and I lay down my life for my sheep … I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again.” (John Ch. 10) If Jesus did not rise from the dead he is no messiah … just a liar!

The apostles from the day of Pentecost preached the resurrection as central:

“Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles wonders and signs … was handed over to you by God's deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you with the help of Gentiles put him to death by nailing him to a cross. But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him … God raised this Jesus to life and we are all witnesses of it. … Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah” (Acts Ch. 2)

“With great power the Apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus...” (Acts 4:33)

Paul put it bluntly:

“If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be lying witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he he raised Christ from the dead. … If Christ has not been raised your faith is futile: you are still in your sins. … If only for this life we have hope in Christ; we are of all people most to be pitied.

But Christ has indeed been raised, the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. …”

These are only a taste of the unanimous teaching of the Bible – but enough to show that if the resurrection is not true in the fullest sense then Christianity is but a cruel lie.

Hence those who do not believe it are in no way Christians. Such persons who lurk in church positions are not even fellow travelers, they are at best masqueraders who have so little integrity that they will take the name and the pay of an organisation whilst they work to destroy its core belief. At worst they are ugly saboteurs.