Roots by the River

In physical terms, the length of the road could not be described. No one can see the destination. If it were attached physically to this world, it would be possible to see the end. We could follow it by plane until we saw the end. It might be described in time. It has been traveled for thousands of years. People reach the city of Destruction one at a time when they die. Every day, people, tens of thousands of them, disappear from the road; they die. However, the road is so crowded that the dead are not missed or, if so, only for a short time. The destination does not seem to be the object of the people on the broad way. They are just pleased with the road, their companions on the road, and the pleasures of the road.

Other than being wide, Jesus does not describe the gate. In my past, I thought of a narrow gate as a garden gate and a wide gate as a cattle gate. This dream had a gate much wider. If we were describing the gate we would say “very, very” or “extremely” wide. In my dream I did not see any gate posts. They were beyond my horizon. Nor did I see a swinging gate. It was always open, of course wide open, and crowded with people entering it. It would seem that this should be a toll gate, but there was no evidence of any ticket dispenser. The absence of these allowed a conclusion that this was a free way. This was apparently a planned deception, for the broadway was a toll road and payment was made at the destination. Few, if any, of the people on the road know that there is payment at the end. Some people on the road suspect that there is payment required, but they are not worried because they think their credit is good. That is a minor error. The major deception is that they believe that the...

The beginning of this happened in a dream two days ago. I hesitate to write it because it may seem to emphasize the breadth and depth of evil. However, I know that where sin abounds grace abounds much more. In my dream I saw a broad way. I do not know that it was a one way street; it just seemed like it. The traffic was heavy and all of it going in the same direction. There seemed to be many other streets, none of them cross streets, all of them broad, crowded and going in the same direction. They were not all parallel; some of them merged to make wider highways of crowded vehicles and pedestrians. As my eyes scanned the landscape to the horizon I saw more and more broad ways. Some of them were high speed highways; some were very low speed-like parking lots of crawling life. Some of these ways seemed only for pedestrians, some for bicycles, or motor scooters; motorcycles; some for all of them together.

There is a city in China, Hanzhow, where the saying is, “If you can’t go to Heaven, go to Hanzhow.” Apparently it is the next prettiest place. I have not been to either, yet. However, I would like to tell you about another place here on earth. I am not yet sure that I will tell you where it is. Normally, I spend my time with people. This is to assure you that I sometimes look at the land. The state has the largest wilderness area in the lower 48 states with high mountains, forests and many white water rivers. It also has Grizzly Bears, Black Bears, cougars, wolves, deer, elk, moose, coyotes, and much fish. It also has hills that are very high, very steep, with no trees, and no fences perfectly rounded without any sharp edges. These hills are white, green, brown or golden. It is possible to spend days looking at them. It is like looking at the ocean. The towns and small cities are beautiful. In a half hour’s walk there are probably fifty different kinds of trees, including weeping birch...

I mentioned that the Apostle Paul has gotten bad press from the man on the street and others who talk as if they had read their Bibles. To partially correct this bad reputation, I will quote the Apostle Paul on love, repentance, and his personal, emotional attachments. Love: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 Repentance: “Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God's kindness leads you toward repentance?” Romans 2:4 Personal Attachments: “We were not looking for praise from men, not from you or anyone else. As apostles of Christ we could have been a burden to you, but we were gentle among you, like a mother caring for her little c...

I often hear people say they are only interested in the words of Jesus, not those of the Apostle Paul or other writers of the New Testament. Somehow they think that Jesus says kinder things than Paul. They not only do not know of the words of love by Paul and John, they do not know that Jesus was the greatest Hell-Fire preacher that ever lived. Let’s look on some of the words of Jesus. “The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the sons of the kingdom. The weeds are the sons of the evil one, and the enemy who sows them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels. "As the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. They will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their ...

There is a truth about murderers even if they are not caught and convicted. That is that they are caught and convicted by God. Here it is from Jesus. “Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city. Outside are the dogs, those who practice magic arts, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood. "I, Jesus, have sent my angel to give you this testimony for the churches. I am the Root and the Offspring of David, and the bright Morning Star.” Revelation 22:14-16 This applies to other than murderers. In fact, many of the murdered are guilty of being sexually immoral, idolaters, those who practice magic arts, and falsehood. We should not assume that the murdered are innocent. They might have been acquitted in a court of law here but they are not here. They are before the absolute just judge. There is a solution for murderers who are still on this ea...

People die everyday. People are murdered every day. People are mass murdered. In recent history, the last 75 years, mass murder has occurred in Germany. Russia, China, Bosnia, Ruanda, Darfur, Zaire, Iraq and Uganda. Our sense of righteous interference is strongly qualified by several things. 1. the cost to us in money and lives 2. Who is being killed, Chinese, Russians or Africans? Rich, important people or poor people. Muslims, Communists, Animists or Christians? Do we have our own view of ethnic cleansing? That is we look the other way if the people being killed are not of our religion or race. Do we have the same sense of justice that we have for a murderer of a white little girl in this country? Would we have the same intensity to find the killer of the kidnapped, raped and murdered little girls in North Uganda. This is happening by the hundreds right now.

Fifty-eight years ago, last October; I passed from death to life. That was in my sophomore year; I had just turned twenty-years-old. Eighteen months later my life began to have an effect on my classmates and those senior and junior to me, both positive and negative. This positive-negative effect continued for the next seven years on active duty in the Navy and ever since in civilian life. During the last 58 years I saw men turn to Christ and have the joy of having their sins forgiven. I also saw the harassment they got because of Jesus Christ. Some of them came through the persecution and some of them caved. What happened in the cities in the Book of Acts happens to every new Christian. It is “revival and riot” an individual level all over this world. Jesus said it this way: “All this I have told you so that you will not go astray. They will put you out of the synagogue; in fact, a time is coming when anyone who kills you will think he is offering a service to God. They will do such th...

There are a few things that are associated with a Holy Spirit revival. A great sense of sin is experienced both by Christians and unbelievers. Sometimes this sense of sin is the result of Holy Spirit preaching. Sometimes it is unrelated to preaching; it just happens. Consequently, there is repentance toward God, confession of sin and restitution among the believers. And confession that Jesus Christ is Lord by the unbelievers. Because of this confession, repentance and restitution, the community of believers has great love and joy. Because the confession that Jesus is Lord the new believers suddenly love the believer that they hated a few minutes before. There is a great change in the moral climate of the community, even if a majority of the community is not touched. Here are a few of the changes: 1. There will be much less profanity. 2. There will be much less drunkenness. 3. There will be fewer pre-marriage pregnancies, abortions, and divorces. 4. There will be much less sexual promis...

Here are two words that have different meanings with the same root. They are “credible” and “credulous.” Credible: offering reasonable grounds for being believed. Credulous: ready to believe, especially on slight or uncertain evidence. Many Christians are credulous. Fairly often I receive a long e-mail that has been forwarded to me of something wonderful that God supposedly has done. At the end of this wonderful letter I am instructed to forward to ten or thirty or everyone on my mailing list within ten days. If I do I will receive a great blessing, normally in lots of dollars. If I do not follow the instruction then something bad will happen to me. God could well have done this wonderful thing, but when I see the instruction at the end I know the whole thing is a lie or euphemistically, a fabrication. Satan is the master liar. A good liar does not go around saying “I am a liar, do not believe me.” He says that he is telling the truth. The false prophet does not say, “I am a wolf in sh...

My great-grandfather Lewis immigrated to Nebraska from Wales with his father-in-law, my great-great-grandmother Joseph. They each homesteaded 160 acres given to them free. My grandfather Leggat came from Scotland when he was four. The Wilsons came from Scotland in the 17th century. Other than work and weather there was no hassle. A little over fifty years ago when I was in graduate school in Monterey, California a young Japanese couple came to the United States to attend a Christian college in Kansas. Their plan was to return to Japan as evangelists. While they were in Kansas their daughter was born. They did not want her to be an American citizen so they had to register her at a Japanese Consulate. The scenario went something like this. They sent the required information to the Japanese Consulate in New Orleans. The consulate wrote back and said they had the wrong consulate. The sent the information to Chicago. Chicago wrote back saying that they had to send the information to Los Ang...

Recently, I have seen bumper stickers that say “Don’t pave paradise.” I have two problems with this statement. 1. Paradise is already paved—with gold. “The twelve gates were twelve pearls, each gate made of a single pearl. The great street of the city was of pure gold, like transparent glass.” Revelation 21:21 2. I grew up in places where there was no pavement. The roads were either very hard or very bumpy or they were sloughs of mud. When pavement came into this world, it seemed like paradise.

Loyalty: adj. 1. “Faithful to the lawful government, or to the sovereign to whom one is subject. True to any person to whom owes fidelity.” When used with the above definition, “loyal” is a good word. However, the word “loyal” and the practice of loyalty have gone far beyond that definition. At the best the practice of loyalty is innocent and the worst, it is mindless fanaticism. Sometimes it embraces apostasy. Example of innocent loyalty is when it is to a certain brand of beer, running shoes and perhaps a sport team. No promise of fidelity is being upheld. There is no requirement of loyalty. In all of these practices loyalty has a good reputation. Loyalty is encouraged and taught as a good thing regardless of the objective we are loyal to. This happens in churches and whole denominations. People are taught loyalty and in turn practice it. They think it is a good thing. Loyalty can also be expressed in being men followers. St. Paul says that this is immature and carnal. All of this ki...

“Vicarious,” we may not know the meaning of the word but we are living vicariously much of our time. We get vicarious pleasure out of books, movies, adventures, romances and athletic events. Our pleasure is not the pleasure of participation in the event. It is the pleasure of identifying in a substitutionary way with the hero. This vicarious pleasure gets more real with “virtual” action. However, there is a vicarious event that is real, very real. It is real and effective. It is the death of the Lord Jesus Christ for the sins of the world. “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:6-8 “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” 2 Corinthians 5:21 “We are therefore...

Paul in his letters raises objections to what he himself is writing and then answers those objections. Here is his dialogue with himself about sexual promiscuity. His first paragraph: “Everything is permissible for me"—but not everything is beneficial. "Everything is permissible for me"—but I will not be mastered by anything. “Food for the stomach and the stomach for food"—but God will destroy them both. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never! Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, "The two will become one flesh." But he who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit.” 1 Corinthians 6:12-17 Objection -“Everything is ...

When Moses told the second and third generations the story of the Exodus he knew that those who were between 40 and 60 years old were present during the march and could remember it. He reminded them of that scary night at Horeb. “Remember the day you stood before the LORD your God at Horeb, when he said to me, "Assemble the people before me to hear my words so that they may learn to revere me as long as they live in the land and may teach them to their children." You came near and stood at the foot of the mountain while it blazed with fire to the very heavens, with black clouds and deep darkness. Then the LORD spoke to you out of the fire. You heard the sound of words but saw no form; there was only a voice. He declared to you his covenant, the Ten Commandments, which he commanded you to follow and then wrote them on two stone tablets. And the LORD directed me at that time to teach you the decrees and laws you are to follow in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to poss...

In the last hundred years there have been many civil wars, most of them conducted by communist guerrilla armies (I lost a good friend in the Philippines in a Huk ambush). In our antagonism toward communist guerrilla armies and now our antagonism to terrorists, we might not see the difference between guerrilla warfare and terrorism. Recently, Fidel Castro and his brother, General Castro, said that they were against terrorism. General Castro said that if any of the El Quaeda prisoners escaped into Cuba, they would be captured and returned to the Americans. Che Guevara, the Argentinean guerrilla leader who helped Castro take cuba, knew the difference between guerrilla warfare and terrorism. Here is his distinction in his book Guerrilla Warfare : "It is necessary to distinguish clearly between sabotage, a revolutionary and highly effective method of warfare, and terrorism, a measure that is generally ineffective and indiscriminate in its results, since it often makes victims of inno...

There are several types of spiritual ignorance that keep people in darkness. 1. They are natural men. They do not have the Spirit of God. They are normal. “The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them because they are spiritually discerned.” 1 Corinthians 2:14 2. The enemy of our souls has blinded them. “The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” 2 Corinthians 4:4 3. He chooses to remain ignorant of the will of God. “If anyone chooses to do God’s will, he will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own.” John 7:17 4. They love darkness because they do evil. “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into ...

Before this series of expressed thoughts are over we will touch on things like profession, location, whether we should marry, if so to whom, when and where. Before we get to these, there are more important things. They are more important and they also make the secondary things easier and more likely to happen. They are: 1)our salvation 2)our holiness First, our salvation is the will of God. “This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all men—the testimony given in its proper time.” 1 Timothy 2:3-6 Do we want the will of God? “In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead.” Acts 17:30, 31 Do we want t...