Summer is here! Gone are those ole bulky winter clothes and all those layers! The ultra freedom of summer clothes surrounds us again. This summer, women will go to the beach wearing bikinis or something even skimpier. Probably that same woman would never consider parading around on the beach wearing only a bra and thong-type underpants, but I ask, “What is the difference in the amount of body she would be revealing?” None! The only difference is in the fabric used to make the garments! It would be scandalous to go out in public dressed only in one’s underwear – wouldn’t it? Leaving the beach scene of near-nudity, look at the offering for relaxed outings: the briefest of stretch pants, topped with a knit, spaghetti-strap shirt. Another possibility is a one-piece stretch top that will barely cover the torso – breast down to upper thighs. Oh, this blueprint is better; it’s a little longer, and at least it does have spaghetti straps! Then, there is the blue knit top, also with the spaghetti straps. Of course, the degree of immodesty is the choice of the wearer: will it be a top that is loose and exposes only the upper part of the body, or will it be three sizes too small so that it is stretched like a second skin? Then, there is a subdued choice: a black straight skirt. Should we wonder what folks will see when the wearer sits down or bends over? Another offering are shorts for

Most archaeologists pride themselves on the claim that they enter into their studies with open, scientific minds, unimpeded in the fairness of their conclusions by any preconceived belief in any “god” or any “inspired message” from God. They overlook the obvious: that the mind of man invariably will attempt to resolve the question of his origin – and one believes either that there was a Creator or that there was not. Most “open minded” scientists and archaeologists long ago accepted the theory that the universe is 15-20 billion years old, and that everything in existence developed through an “evolutionary” process. So, most actually begin their assessment of all things from a very close-minded hypothesis of no God and no message given from His vantage point of knowledge. Therefore, the Bible is the prime target for rejection and ridicule, in open refutation of its claim to be inspired by God. It is lumped with all other “holy” books and mythical histories. Matter-of-factly and without hesitation, the characters of the Bible are dismissed or remade into whatever suits the imagination of the “scholars.” In such an analysis, Abraham is pronounced as being not an individual person, but a composite “hero” of 500 to 1000 years of oral traditions of Hebrew nomads. (Such casual guessing about the time supposedly involved tells us a great deal about the accuracy of the rest of the fabrication!) Moses, if such a person existed historically, was actually a prince of royal Egyptian blood who had to be

Two men walked along a road on a bright summer day. Bob stooped to retrieve a small sheet of paper fluttering at his feet. “What’s this?” he asked. “Oh. Nothing important — just a young child’s school paper, maybe even homework. Look, what a struggle it was to form the numbers — he’s probably in first grade. And here he’s missed an addition problem: 2+2=5! Wrong!” he laughed. “No, your explanation requires purpose and intelligence,” Bill disagreed. “I would say that over several million years that paper slowly and gradually formed itself. What seems to be a child’s writing and arithmetic problems is only the effect of weathering through the ages.” Bob looked incredulous, but he said nothing. A little further down the way they topped a rolling hill. Stretching away as far as the eye could see were fields of knee-high ripening grain. “The man who runs this farm is a powerful organizer!” he remarked. “What kind of planning and equipment would it take to cultivate and harvest thousands of acres like this?” “You’ve got it wrong again,” Bill responded. “This just looks like a farm, but it isn’t that at all. Millions of years ago little rows began to develop, and then finally when the soil was just right seeds began to blow in from great distances and to settle here. The result is what you see, but it took millions of years to happen.” “Do you mean no thought and no expertise went into this at all?”

On the one hand, the Scriptures speak of the Christian being clothed with Christ, being washed in His blood in baptism, and as wearing His righteousness. As we go about our daily lives, people are to see Christ in our behavior. On the other hand, the Scriptures speak of Christ dwelling in the Christian: “…that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith” (Ephesians 3:16-17). This means that whatever we do and wherever we go, we take Christ with us — that He is in us (Romans 8:9-10).

I wake in the morning to the consciousness of the presence of God. My heart words thankfulness to Him that while I slept He continued to be watchful and loving, caring for all the parts of life that required His attention. Satan trails a thought through my head. “You haven’t seen God. Suppose He is, as the skeptics say, only a crutch in your head. What then?” In willingness to be fair and open-minded, I try that concept. What then? There is blankness in my heart. The warm love I had directed toward God dries up at its source. My feeling of security disappears. I no longer have an anchor and a certainty to life. There is no longer a sense of direction about where I am going, ultimately. With nothing greater in my head than myself, no purpose greater than the demands of today’s physical existence — because tomorrow may not come, and there is no eternal existence on the horizon — blankness, and then fear and futility flood every crevice of my mind. Without God, it is worse than, “Nothing is left.” It is, “I still exist, and all of the challenges of this world still exist, and yet I face this existence with the acceptance of the dead fact that I have no help. There is no one greater than this frightened self to turn to.” I marvel that suicide is not imminently on the horizon for all of those who lose faith in a Higher Being.

I think it is an interesting commentary on the religions of the world that all of them are willing to admit that Christ can be followed as a spiritual leader, but at the same time, the broad statement is made that anything, everything in religion is all right as long as it is covered by the canopy of “love” or “sincerity” or “honesty.” So, while other leaders teach their own religious doctrines, they lack the courage to deny completely the right and authority of Christ in the spiritual realm. There has been only One Man who has ever walked the face of the earth who has allowed room for no other authority and Who has had the audacity to make the claim, “I am the way, the truth, the life; no man cometh unto the Father but by me.” That is a claim with which every human being must deal. A man may choose to live in ignorance of it; he may ignore it after he knows of it; he may ridicule it; or he may find peace and security in it — but every man has to face that claim and react to it in some way. For myself, I have faced it and accepted it as truth, because I cannot deny the mountainous evidence that supports it. For yourself, you can ignore His claim and hold yourself in willful ignorance of its veracity. Nobody can make you do otherwise. Of all the desire in the heart of someone

“That’s just a figure of speech. Of course, we cannot pray all the time!” My father and I liked to build things together. He was the lead, and I was the helper. I thought I was going right up that ladder of competency until he passed away, and then I discovered that I was a very good follower, bereft of my leader, but we made a good team. Of course we did a lot of talking and serious planning about our projects before we started, and then, as we worked, we discussed the suitableness of the materials, we checked measurements, we did the cuts, the gluing, the nailing, the sanding, varnishing – the whole works, and then we sat back and admired the finished product. It was a good feeling of accomplishment, shared between our hearts. As we worked, though, sometimes we talked, sometimes we discussed the project or a problem, sometimes we worked in silence. However, always our thoughts were together, and always we were conscious of the other’s presence and of what the other was doing, as well as what we were doing together. To me, that is what that beautiful verse has come to mean, as I have puzzled over it and have gone deeper into what it is saying about our relationship with our spiritual Father. God and I are in a great building project together. He is the lead, and I am the helper. He talks to me through His Word. I talk to Him

When John the Baptist came preaching, what was his message? When Christ began to preach, what was His central theme? When His disciples were sent out, what were they told to preach? When the disciples went into all the world preaching the Gospel, what was their message? Acts 8:5 and 12 define the message for us: “…Philip went down to the city of Samaria and preached Christ to them… When they believed Philip as he preached the things concerning the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, both men and women were baptized.” Again, what had Jesus preached? “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 4:17). In the Gospel accounts, how many times was the kingdom — the coming of the church — the core of the message? Jesus said, “…theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:3, 10), and “…you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven” (20). He commanded, “But seek first the kingdom…” (6:33). “Not everyone…shall enter the kingdom of heaven” (7:21). “And Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom” (Matthew 9:35; 4:23). The Gospel accounts show that Jesus proved Himself to be the Messiah by the works He did through the power of the Holy Spirit, but His message of words was not so much on the subject of Himself as on the kingdom! He was preparing His listeners for the day when He would begin to draw

Satan is the vigilant, never-resting enemy of God. The Scriptures clearly state that before the creation, God knew that man would fall, and He made the complete plan for his redemption: through “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Revelation 13:8). What would the death of Christ accomplish? It brought together His followers, in one body, as they are called out of the world and born through the waters of baptism into the family of God, which He calls “the church” (John 15:19; Ephesians 1:10; John 3:3,5). Colossians 1:18 declares, “And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence.” The book of Ephesians is rich with definitive statements of what it means to be “in Christ.” Certainly, there is no salvation outside of Christ, and Ephesians 1:22-23 underscores the statement made to the Colossians: “And He put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.” God’s plan from before the creation was to call people out of the world, washing them clean of their sins in the blood of His Son, and bringing them by that birth into the body of Christ — the church of Christ — separate from the contamination of the world. The oneness and the glory of that sanctified body fill the remaining pages of

Some people say that a woman is nothing more than a servant to a man, even though he is her husband. She is good only to bear children, to keep the house and to prepare the food. Some religions teach that a woman cannot be saved in the body of a woman. She must be first reborn as a man. In rejection of this thinking, the Women’s Liberation Movement, which has swept through the developed nations of the world, declares that woman is in every way the equal of man. Not only does this movement seek to establish equality, but its ultimate goal is to gain power for the women of the world to overset the established authority of men. This attitude has created a sense of competition between women and men that results in enmity, bitterness and broken homes. Our concern is to learn what God has to say about the role of woman and her relationship to man. Neither the pagan view nor the Liberation Movement is directed by God. When we turn to the Bible, we can clearly see the work, the role and the position of woman as God intended it to be. Is woman inferior to man? In the first book of the Bible – Genesis – we see the answer to this question. God had created animal life and, last of all, He made man. Then, He “brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living

There was a time not so long ago — in my early years — when a woman was treated with deference and respect. “Ladies first” was the rule, as doors were opened for them, and they traditionally walked in front of men. A man stood up and gave a woman his seat. Even a rough man would refrain from the use of bad language in the presence of women. A slur spoken against a woman could cause a fight in defense of her good name. A woman was shielded and protected from the harshness and dangers of the world, insofar as was possible. That is not to say that there were not hardworking, courageous women who struggled alongside their husbands with the challenges of life. There were certainly cases of abuse of women, men who took advantage of their physical weakness and of their inability to protect themselves legally, emotionally and physically. There were bad women, and there were bad men who made life miserable for the women under their power. However, the majority of women were protected and deferred to as the “weaker sex.” They and their children lived in the security of a husband who stood between them and the world. Legally, not much in the line of “rights” was defined because the very culture itself safeguarded the majority of women. “Woman’s Suffrage” had brought freedoms and recognition in areas that were just and fair: women had gained the right to vote and to inherit property. Working conditions

Cultures, ways of thinking and national behavior are formed largely by predominant religious teaching. The old statement, “East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,” is a declaration of the tremendous differences in thinking between large sections of our world. In times past, not many Americans personally knew “foreigners.” Today, newcomers from other cultures live in practically every small town in the States. What is the result? First, there is curiosity about the new people and meeting them, they may seem likeable, or they may seem aloof. Getting past the strangeness in dress and the heavily accented English, it then may seem that they are not so “foreign” after all. However, in the majority of cases, if the acquaintance is developed to any depth, there will be an unfolding of differences of thinking and values that will seem incomprehensible to the Christian mind. The feeling of being up against a thick wall will often arise in conversations, a feeling of helplessness in the efforts to really penetrate and understand the thinking. The longer the acquaintance continues and the deeper it becomes, the more of the subtle differences one will discover. These are not because of the geographical differences in birth places, but because of the religious-cultural differences that have molded our thinking and values as well as theirs. The following quotes are statements, headlines and doctrines in pagan lands: “A man may have four wives, if he provides for all of them equally…” “Don’t trust

Humans define the dividing line between humanness and other life forms as the “awareness of self.” A better wording would be the “awareness of soul.” The “self” that is enwrapped in the physical body, invisible to the physical eye, yet is the core existence from which all that is human emanates, can be none other than the soul — the inner man, the spiritual essence of our dual being. This consciousness of the invisible self is the bedrock of fact — not of “question,” not of “supposition,” not even of “faith” — but the bedrock of fact that the unseen spirit world is real, that the soul springs from a parent spirit Being Who gave it existence and life, and toward Whom it reaches as though bound by invisible cords. When the soul has not been paralyzed by deliberate training in rejection of its Creator’s existence, universally and historically man has believed in the reality of the Creator and the unseen spirit world (Romans 1:20-22). He has rightly worshiped that Being as the One deserving of homage, even of sacrifice. He has been overwhelmed within himself with the eternal majesty and greatness of God in comparison to himself. In moments of extreme joy, when the spirit within man seems to swell in happiness to the point of almost bursting the confines of his physical body, worshipful words of “Oh, God!” wing heavenward. In moments of deepest anguish, when the spirit within man seems crushed with agony to the point of

Snap! Crack! Snap! Crack! The sound works its way down the rows of pews from the front to the back of the auditorium—the sound of Christians in the twenty-first century remembering their Lord’s death, as He commanded.     You wouldn’t have heard that sound in the first-century church. Back then, they were very little removed in time from the days when the Law given to Moses was in force. God had been very specific about minute details pertaining to the observance of feasts, when and how it was to be done, often stating how they were to prepare their bodies and their clothing in preparation for coming into His presence. He gave measurements and ingredients—a recipe—for grain offerings. He described the kind of animals He would accept as blood and burnt offerings. He drew the architectural plans for the tabernacle, for each piece of furniture in it and for the placement of each piece. He gave tailors’ measurements and weavers’ designs for the curtains for His place of worship.     There was a reason for these precise requirements. By making exact regulations and by demanding that they be respected and followed, He was creating a constant realization in the hearts of devout Israelites that He is Holy above all, Lord over all and the ultimate authority to Whom every soul must bow. Moses explained this to his brother Aaron after his sons had been slain by God because of their desecration of His worship. “And Moses said to Aaron, ‘This