Roots by the River

This is an “open” letter to, or about, “closed” Christians. There are many kinds of “closed” Christians so there might be more than one “open” letter. One of the difficulties in this type of writing is that many “closed” Christians are so “closed” that they do not receive letters. First, I will define the minimum of truth that defines a Christian. “Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain. For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve.” (I Corinthians 15:1-5) Second, I will define the response to this truth. There are several works that are used in this re...

The Bible has many statements that describe unbelievers. Here are a few: “Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools.” (Romans 1:22) “The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.” (I Corinthians 2:14) “The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” (II Corinthians 4:4) “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed.” (John 3:19) All of this is inexcusable. It is understandable, but not excusable. The above statements are obviously true of all non-Christians of whatever description. They do not explain the...

The Old Testament is a history of sin. The cause: Adam and Eve. The history: Genesis 1:6. “The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.” (Genesis 6:5) 430 years in Egypt 40 years in the desert 400 years of Judges “In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as they saw fit.” (Judges 21:25) Israel, the Northern Kingdom, 9 dynasties, 200 years of kings, all of them evil Judah, another hundred years of increasing evil From Malachi to Jesus, another 400 years of sin Sin defined: “And where there is no law there is no transgression” (Romans 4:15b). “But whoever has doubts is condemned if they eat, because their eating is not from faith; and everything that does not come from faith is sin” (Romans 14:23). “Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness” (I John 3:4). Sin is ubiquitous. “As it is written: 'There is no one ...

William Jennings Bryan, about 100 years ago, was Secretary of State of the United States. He was a great orator and a committed Christian. He was a great leader in the abolition of war and for arbitration. Between 1913 and 1914 he signed twenty-six treaties of peace with foreign nations. The first World War began in August 1914. At present there are attempts in Qatar for the U.S., Taliban, and Afghanistan to make peace. Hamas and Israel have not been at the peace table since 2008. North Korea and South Korea signed a truce, but not a peace treaty in 1953 (60 years ago). Shiites and Sunnis in several different countries are at war. Even if there is a treaty signed by governments, there are great movements, the press, internet, and religions that will override the treaties. Jesus said, “You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom....

If you read something I have written previously, it is for one of two reasons: 1. I am too old to know that I have written it before. 2. I think you need the repetition. Here goes a possible repetition. Over the years (more than 60 of them), I have heard the following nonsense: “That is your belief. This is mine.” “That is true for you, but not for me.” This conversation can be about atheism, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, homosexuality, and all kinds of religious beliefs or immoral practices. One of the first of these remembered conversations was in the home of a family in Sasebo, Kyush. It was probably in October, 1950. It was with their college-age daughter, Suziko. We had been talking about the Daiutsu in Kamikura (idol Buddha). We were seated on the tatami at a low table. We were talking about the time this giant idol was made and about the prayer wheels in front of the idol. A prayer wheel is like a roulette wheel. It has many little posts on the perimeter of the wheel....

If we had to vote for truth or fiction we would probably vote for truth. If the vote were between truth and lies, there would be no question, we would vote for truth. However, fiction and lies are not synonyms. They would be if the fiction was about real people. If the fiction is about imaginary people then they might be more truth in the novel than in the biography. I am going to quote a few paragraphs by two great American women novelists of the 20th century. “Pa Kurtz was slight and wiry, all muscle and bounce. His wife had avoirdupois to spare and her leisurely walk was what is known in common parlance as a waddle” (Star Across the Tracks, Bess Streeter Aldrich, copyright 1949, pg. 18). She is the heroine in the story. “A door opened at the back of the hall, letting in light, and a woman came through it, a country lady of immense size and immense charm. She advanced with a stately swaying motion, shifting her great weight from foot to the other with patient humorous determi...

The New Testament was written when there were no printing presses and literacy was not for everyone, so oral communication was the means. It included reading aloud, teaching, and preaching. “After this letter has been read to you, see that it is also read in the church of the Laodiceans and that you in turn read the letter from Laodicea.” (Colossians 4:16) Oral communication requires listening, not just preaching. Listening is not just hearing; it is also paying attention. James expresses this several times. “My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.” (James 1:19) “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.” (James 1:22) “And that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” (Deuteronomy 30:20) “Let the wise li...

Read the Bible in 67 Days! For a downloadable PDF version of this click here: ccmbooks.org There are many Christians who read the Scriptures sporadically in time and place. In other words, they read the Scriptures “now and then” and “here and there.” They gravitate to their favorite chapters. If asked the last time they had read the New Testament through, they would not be sure they had ever read it through. Consequently there is an appalling ignorance of the God’s Word in the body of Christ, and a consequent lack of obedience. Listening to the best Bible teachers in the world will not make up for the personal ignorance of the individual. There are several reasons why there is an unwillingness to read through the New Testament or the Bible: 1) “It is difficult to understand the “thees and thous.” 2) “I ran into the “begats.” 3) “When I don’t understand a verse, I stay with it, trying to understand it; so then I don’t progress.” 4) “It’s dull reading.” 5) “It’s too long; it woul...

There are many ways of studying the Bible. Two of these ways are: • Topical • Contextual I am going to dwell on the contextual. It is very difficult to come up with a wrong theology or heresy when studying the Bible this way. If I want to study one book of the Bible, I start by reading it through at one sitting. Tomorrow I read it through again. The next day the same. When I do this, it reinforces what I learned the first time, plus I learn something additional that I missed. I do this every day for a week. The second week I read the first half of the book each day. The third week I read the first chapter every day. When I am reading this first chapter I cannot possibly take it out of context. I know where it fits in the whole book. This is called deductive contextual study . I start with the whole and bring it down to one verse. If I want to have a group contextual study of the book, deduction is difficult, so I use induction. I start with verse one and continue verse b...

The following is the result of a conversation with and atheist Buddhist. From the conversation, I realized that we agreed on a few things: • It is difficult to prove a positive. • It is impossible to prove a negative. • Believing something doesn’t make it true, e.g., believing the earth is round does not make it round, and believing the earth is flat does not make it flat. As I understand it, there are three kinds of atheists. You can recognize them by what they say: 1. “I don’t believe in God.” “Don’t” modifies “believe.” It does not modify God. This kind of atheist is really saying, “There is a God in whom I do not believe.” He is not really an atheist. 2. “I believe there is no God.” Here, “no” modifies “God.” It is a belief statement. This man is really saying, “I have a positive belief in nothing (or “matter” or “naturalism” or Darwinism). That is a greater faith than I have. 3. “There is no God.” That is a dogmatic statement about a supposed “fact.” Once someone makes...

“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.” (Isaiah 5:20) A few years ago, a man was convicted of a double murder here in Moscow. He had killed his wife and the baby she was pregnant with. The baby was considered a human being who had been murdered. However, if a woman wishes to abort her baby, the baby is not considered a human being, and killing the baby is not considered murder. Apparently in this country we can have it both ways. We cannot have it both ways with God. There are two kinds of laws of men (of all nations): 1. malum in se : This refers to behaviors which are evil in themselves. 2. malum prohibitum: This refers to something which is evil simply because it has been prohibited. An example of the first is murder. All states have laws against murder. Making the law is not what makes the murder evil. It was already evil. An example of the second is a 55 mph speed ...

All false religions require complete loyalty to their teachings. To leave their teachings is to be lost in hell. This keeps people in bondage. They are afraid to leave. Islam says the Injil (the New Testament) was changed by Christians in the first five hundred years. Mormonism says the Bible (the KJV version) is inspired when it is correctly translated. Any place where it differs from Mormonism is “incorrectly translated.” As a result, Mormons do not read the New Testament. When they do read the Bible, faith is created in the idolaters, atheists, animists, Muslims, and Mormons, and they turn to the Father through the Son. “Everyone has heard about your obedience, so I am full of joy over you; but I want you to be wise about what is good, and innocent about what is evil.” (Romans 16:19) Do not study these religions. Become an expert in the Truth. In your contact with these people, love them, befriend them, be kind to them. But do not let your conversations dwell on Mohammed a...

“I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned!” (Galatians 1:6-9) Joseph Smith either wrote the Book of Mormon himself, plagiarized it, or got it on the golden plates from an angel. In any case, it is “a different gospel which is really no gospel at all” (vs. 6-7). All false religions change three things: 1. Who Jesus is: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). 2. The complete work of salvation on the cross: “And by that will, we...

Animism is not the same as idolatry. It is the direct worship or placating of demons. It is found from Finland to New Guinea. It is in Africa, Latin America, the Pacific Islands, Australia, and Siberia. Animism is found in thousands of languages which cannot speak to each other. There were no missionaries to propagate it. It is everywhere. These demons are believed to dwell in rocks, trees, houses, mountains, and streams. They do not dwell in these created things, but they are real and dwell in people. Jesus cast demons out of people. “They went to Capernaum, and when the Sabbath came, Jesus went into the synagogue and began to teach. The people were amazed at his teaching, because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law. Just then a man in their synagogue who was possessed by an evil spirit cried out, ‘What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God!’ ‘Be quiet!’ said Jesus sternl...

We do not know that God thinks about Islam specifically, other than this. The religion is made up of one fifth of the world’s population, who have all believed the lie that the Koran is literally the word of God in Arabia. Jesus died for these people on the cross. Here is what Islam believes about Jesus: 1. He was born of a virgin. 2. He is a prophet of God. 3. He is going to come again. Here is what they do not believe: 1. He is the Son of God. 2. He died on a cross. 3. He rose from the dead. “Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain. For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our ins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, an...

I received an anonymous post on my recent blog about idolatry. Here it is: “What does the Bible say about those portraits of Jesus that are so common?” The portraits were made after the Bible was written. What the Bible says has to cover everything that occurs after it was written. “You saw no form of any kind the day the LORD spoke to you at Horeb out of the fire. Therefore watch yourselves very carefully, so that you do not become corrupt and make for yourselves an idol, an image of any shape, whether formed like a man or a woman.” (Deuteronomy 4:15-16) Jesus said in John 4:22-24, “You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.” There is a physical description of Jesus in Matth...

God gives much more revelation about people who worship false Gods than He does about atheists. “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’ They are corrupt, their deeds are vile; there is no one who does good. The LORD looks down from heaven on the sons of men to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God.” (Psalm 14:1-2) This is repeated in Psalm 53:1: “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’ They are corrupt, and their ways are vile; there is no one who does good.” People are born with a tendency to sin: “Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned—or before the law was given, sin was in the world.” (Romans 5:12-13) People are born sinners, but they are not born fools; they have to become fools. “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. A...

In this nation under the Constitution we have freedom of religion and freedom of expression. We are grateful for this freedom. This freedom allows all kinds of false religions and other expressions of evil, and they take advantage of it. Our nation is flooded with evil of all kinds, taught on TV, the internet, the universities, books, magazines, and churches. God, however, does not tolerate them. God is not under the Constitution. We should think as God thinks. Here, from God’s revelation, is what He thinks about this evil. Today I will start with idolatry: “You saw no form of any kind the day the LORD spoke to you at Horeb out of the fire. Therefore watch yourselves very carefully, so that you do not become corrupt and make for yourselves an idol, an image of any shape, whether formed like a man or a woman, or like any animal on earth or any bird that flies in the air, or like any creature that moves along the ground or any fish in the waters below. And when you look up to the sky...

Three months after the Exodus from Egypt, two million Israelites arrived at Mt. Sinai. Before the Ten Commandments were given, God spoke to Moses (recorded in Exodus 19): “‘Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ The people all responded together, ‘We will do everything the LORD has said.’” After the commands were given (three times), the people had 40 years in the wilderness, several years of conquest, 400 years of judges, 400 hundred years of kings, and 600 years of captivity and occupation until the time of Christ. All of this, except a few years of light, was saturated with sin, gross wickedness. That was about a total of 1480 years. This was the holy nation . There is a similar statement made to another group of chosen people. “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, To God’s elect, exiles scattered throughout the provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge...

Thank you for your prayers and gifts. We had 4,000 copies of How to Be Free From Bitterness inserted into “The Moscow-Pullman Daily News”. We now have a cartoon gospel tract titled “Are You a Good Person?” ready to be inserted. I would appreciate your comments on the strategy. Communication in print is not a substitute for personal contact. I am still personally involved with needy unbelievers and fouled-up believers almost daily here at my house. At my childrenʼs request, I am working on my autobiography. Heather is typing it into a computer and Doug and Nancy are reading it as I produce a few pages at a time. I have a slight problem: I have never kept a diary, and I am now 85 years old. If any of you knew me and Bessie in the past and remember events, dates, and/or have pictures, please send them to me. Hold down on the flattery. My memory is fairly good, but there are blank places. “Sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth. Sing to the Lord, praise his nam...