what is truth?

Years ago I wondered whether it were possible to formulate a meaningful definition of the word "truth" -- apart from any reference to God.  I found that to be a far more difficult task than I could have imagined.  After three days of thinking about nothing else but to resolve that difficult question, I arrived in my mind at a definition of truth, which definition I still believe it to be valid and therefore useful.  Here, then, is my "secular" definition of truth:

revealing Antichrist -- part 3

The revelation of Scripture provides, to those who are indwelt by God's Spirit, that body of absolute truth which is indispensable for making sense of the world in which we live.  Bible knowledge--especially true knowledge of Bible prophecy, is the lens, as it were, which brings an otherwise blurred and uncertain image of world events into razor-sharp focus.  Seemingly disparate events spanning decades, or even centuries of time--as well as certain events which have not yet occurred, are thus capable of being understood within a much larger conceptual framework, one which explains those events in terms of their relationship to (all) other events.  All of which, events, are working together to bring to fruition, on the one hand, an ancient and diabolical plan of Satan and, at the same time but on the other hand, a much more ancient albeit a divine plan of God.

revealing Antichrist -- part 2

WHY is Antichrist coming?  That is a question not often asked.  Is God sending him?  No.  God sent His own Son, Jesus Christ, to be the Savior of the world.  And Christ said that he did not come to destroy men's lives but to save them.

But the world did not, and still does not, want Christ.  Nevertheless, the world does want a savior, of sorts.  Jesus said, in John 5:43, "I am come in my Father’s name, and ye receive me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive".  The world, in other words, will "receive" Antichrist.  They want him to come.  The whole world wants a savior--as long as that savior is not the Christ of God.

Muslims want their Mahdi.  New Agers want their Super-man.  Buddhists, their Fifth Buddha.  Hindus are looking for their Tenth Avatar.  And Satanists want...

God of terror

"Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord..."

2 Corinthians 5:11

I could find no image to represent the main thought of this message; the reality belongs to another dimension, one that far surpasses our ability to comprehend, much less to appreciate.

When was the last time you heard anyone use the above text--from the Bible--as the theme of a sermon?  In all my years as a Christian, I have never heard it used.

The world today is confronted with acts of 'terrorism' which are intended to shock the mind and instill fear.  Yet, as brutal and barbaric as any of those acts may be, they absolutely pale by comparison with the eternal fate of those who stubbornly and foolishly reject the grace of God in Jesus Christ.  The most horrific tortures which man can conceive and inflict upon another person necessarily come to an end in the death of the victim.

But the "terror of the Lord" shall never have an end.  Although apparently few understand why that must be so, yet the reason is rather simple to understand.  Every spirit which God brings into existence--whether it be an angel or a human being--is in some sense indestructible (I think it must have something to do with the nature of spirit, such that persistence of self-consciousness cannot be extinguished).

I cannot in the limited context of a blog adequately explain the difference between soul and spirit.  Suffice it to say, that all self-awareness--which includes all processes of thought, emotion and, importantly, of sensation--consist in the spirit: the essence of which is 'mind'.  In a very real sense, as I believe, much (if not all) of the eternal torments of hell and of the Biblical "lake of fire", occur in the mind of those who are eternally damned.  But that is not at all to say that those sufferings are not therefore 'real'.  For, everyone who dies without Christ is really, and eternally, separated from the beneficent power and influences of God.  Yet, their own self-awareness continues.

In that state of mind, the damned person--though now existing as a disembodied spirit--remains keenly aware of his or her own, continuing existence.  The mind must be furiously active: rapidly moving from thoughts of the impossibility of escape; now to thoughts of horror, being utterly and eternally ALONE in this, what the Scripture calls, "thick darkness", "outer darkness"; now to memories of what once was, and what could have been, if only God's Word had been taken seriously; now to sensations of thirst and hunger, and of longing for companionship--where the only companions may be the spirits of monstrous demons.  But never shall such minds--entirely separated from God and from His Creation--ever know even one moment of peace, of rest, much less of pleasurable existence.  We are not capable of comprehending such a reality.  Madness; insanity; perfect isolation; fear--of a kind unknown to any living person; utter hopelessness; pain--unending, unrelenting pain: all of that is but a foreshadowing of the "terror of the Lord", alluded to in the Bible.

God has prepared a 'place', a realm, specially created to be a prison and a place of punishments--devoid of any mercy, wherein Satan and his angels shall be tormented for ever and ever.  Neither hell nor the lake of fire was created for man.  Nevertheless, because that human persons willfully reject the goodness and mercy of God in Jesus Christ and, so, they align themselves with the spirit of antichrist: therefore, all such human persons too must be confined to that everlasting abode fitted uniquely to imprison God's intransigent enemies, "who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power" (2 Thessalonians 1:9).

People who end up in hell, do so because they don't take God seriously.

And then it's too late.

'post-Christian society' (part 1)

It is often said that what once was called Western Society is now 'post-Christian'.  But that phrase is not intended to define what contemporary (Western) culture has come to be.  Rather, it is an acknowledgement of the apparently insignificant influence of Christianity in contemporary culture. The above image is a photograph of a section of a wall in an abandoned church somewhere in Russia.  The image is powerful in its simplicity.  The upper and lower halves of the photograph convey extreme tension: the detailed drawing in dark tones, in the upper portion, suggests the faded realism of a Christian worldview; whereas, the starkness of simple graffiti spray painted on a bright, formless background, in the lower half of the picture, strongly suggests the purely subjective contextualism of postmodernism.  "Punk's not dead", but Christianity is, the image seems to say.

The Seven Seals in Prophecy and in History

Now available at Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com

This book is a game-changer in the field of Bible prophecy studies.  The author systematically and meticulously expounds the true meaning of the Scriptures involving the seven seals, in the book of Revelation.  The seven seals do not pertain to the Tribulation period (as that is wrongly supposed and widely taught).  Rather, the seals belong to this present time, that is, to the Church Age; and they indicate the approaching time of the Rapture of the Church!  This book presents many important insights which cannot be found among mainstream prophecy teaching.  It is a must-read, for every serious student of Bible prophecy.

the meaning of the Rapture

Although much has been written about the Rapture of the Church, yet, much of what has been written is wrong.  Neither the nature nor the timing of the Rapture has been well understood, though a lot has been written concerning those aspects. But in this short essay, I want to discuss the meaning of the Rapture; which, in the range of my studies, I have found very little that deals specifically with that.