What Will They Remember?

The writer of Ecclesiastes makes an interesting statement near the end of his brief Old Testament work. He says:

Ecc 12:12  My child, there is something else to watch out for. There is no end to the writing of books, and too much study will wear you out.

He is right. There is no end to the writing of books. The writing may have been on ostraca, stone surfaces, scrolls of parchment, vellum, or copper, paper, or a digital tablet. In the end they all are only the surfaces upon which we write our thoughts, our ideas, and our literary contributions to humanity.

Moses gave the priests the equivalent of books as he neared his death, a record of all that God had given to him to use in governing the Children of Israel.

Deu 31:24-26  Moses wrote God's Law in a book, taking care not to leave out anything. When he finished, he said to the levitical priests, who were in charge of the LORD's Covenant Box, "Take this book of God's Law and place it beside the Covenant Box of the LORD your God, so that it will remain there as a witness against his people.

Josiah was given the Book of the Law and from it started a great revival in Israel.

2Ki 22:11  When the king heard the book being read, he tore his clothes in dismay,

The prophet Malachi records a scene from heaven

Mal 3:16  Then the people who feared the LORD spoke to one another, and the LORD listened and heard what they said. In his presence, there was written down in a book a record of those who feared the LORD and respected him.

Jesus read from the book of Isaiah although it was actually a scroll.

Luk 4:16-19  Then Jesus went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath he went as usual to the synagogue. He stood up to read the Scriptures and was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it is written, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has chosen me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free the oppressed and announce that the time has come when the Lord will save his people."

Even in the Book of the Revelation of John, additional books are mentioned.

Rev 20:12  And I saw the dead, great and small alike, standing before the throne. Books were opened, and then another book was opened, the book of the living. The dead were judged according to what they had done, as recorded in the books.

The writer of Ecclesiastes was right. Of the writing of books there is no end. Heaven itself is keeping a record in books of both our deeds and of those who choose the humblest deed of all. That humblest and greatest deed is to place one’s life in the hands of Jesus Christ, declare him Lord, choose to live for him and with him for eternity, and so find our names written in the Book of Life.

I like to write books – simple books, involved books, story books. Through them I can leave something for the generation that follows me. My name may not be remembered, but what I can record about what I have experienced in my few years may make this a better world for those who read them.

Books should help us learn so that we need not repeat the negative in what others have experienced. Books help us remember what has proven itself to be most important. As long as there are people, may the writing of books not come to an end. May the reading of books never slacken, especially the greatest book ever written, the Bible.

The Bible Is Rather Useful

An engineer friend of mine once gave credit to two of his supervisors for teaching him how to work in the control room of the local power plant. One boss talked about being able to come into the control room and determining the shape of things by scanning all the main indicator panels. This gave him a broad picture of the general status of the plant.

The other supervisor emphasized knowing the manual that described the operations of the plant. Knowing the technical workings behind those panels gave my engineer friend a perspective on how it was all supposed to work together.

Know the manual and you will understand the “why” and “how”. See the big picture and you get an idea of the “what” that is actually happening and how close it might be to what is supposed to be happening. The two sets of knowledge allowed the people with the day-to-day responsibility to succeed in stopping the plant from blowing up.

The Bible has often been called a manual for life. It won’t tell you the various forms of rock or how they developed. It won’t tell you why the sky is blue or the sun is yellow. It won’t tell you the history of Australia, China, or America. It won’t tell you how to cook pancakes or which cheese makes the best fondue. However, deciding what is right or wrong is hard to do without a biblical foundation.

A phrase I am coming to detest is “the new normal”. It seems to say that normal is whatever the majority or the loudest group of people says it wants. “The new normal” allows individuals with a fear of absolutes getting in their way to determine for themselves what they want to do. They change the laws or the wording or the definition in such a way as to support what they want. That is much easier than changing to fit into what had been seen as normal or according to someone else’s absolutes.

Since the Bible is clear in most areas about what makes for a society that allows for individual and corporate growth in mutually upbuilding aspects of life, rejecting those guidelines forces society and its members into what is termed “the new normal”. When the Bible is rejected, something else must be put in its place. If the divine origin of the Bible is rejected, then new guidelines of human origin are the only option. Who has the most insight into what these guidelines ought to be?

We find ourselves gods unto ourselves with authority over everything except our own lives. Where someone may disagree, then it becomes the law of fang and claw. He is right who can make the biggest threat. Morality is determined by popularity or fear. Whoever has the biggest gun makes the laws. This becomes the new normal. Biblical foundations are rejected because they deny the divine right of the individual. The fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil is grasped once more.

To choose to live as Christ in the midst of a society seeking a new normal is difficult without that biblical foundation. The manual for life offers the guidelines for a life that builds up others. At the same time it emphasizes the value of the individual. This does not spring from a foundation of human superiority, but from the absolutes of divine love shown on the cross of Calvary.

If it is difficult for an individual to live as a believer in Christ without a strong biblical foundation, it is impossible for a body of believers called a church to fulfill its calling as the Body of Christ without a clear understanding of what the Bible contains. The Body of Christ does not make up its own rules. It does not follow the dictates of society. It does not accept a new normal that contradicts the nature of God and his eternal plan for his creation. It accepts the existence of absolutes, God’s absolutes.

Just the Facts, ma'am (and sir)!

It happened again and no doubt I will see a lot more of it in the upcoming season of Advent. It is one of those little burrs that get under my saddle and leaves me gritting my teeth and and wanting to scream. The Bible has been translated into perfectly good English. Sure, various translations may offer variations on nuances, but you can still pretty much get the facts straight. Read the Book and get the facts straight! Use the Bible with integrity.

The most recent incident took place with a preacher who described the fall of man into sin in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3). The passage is often used to show that the first man was not guilty of sinning first but rather the first woman. How this excuses the man I am not sure. In the current case the preacher said that the man was not there and the woman made the decision without him implying that if he had been present, he would have been strong enough to stop the whole terrible event. Problem was, he was there, standing beside her. Read the Book!

Another misuse that I hear all too often is that from creation to Noah's flood it never rained. Sorry, that doesn't show up in my KJV, NASV, ESV, or any other translation. It is not even in the old Hebrew. The verse quoted says that, "And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and not a man to till the ground" (Genesis 2:5, KJV). The rather obvious implication here is that there were no plants because there was no rain. When it rained, we got plants. Noah had lots of plants and so did everyone before him all the way back to Adam. Read the Book!

Genesis is not the only part of the Bible that can get misused. In II Kings 2 we find the story of the final hours of the prophet Elijah. All my life I have seen paintings of the prophet's departure from earth into heaven. Consistently the pictures have him riding a chariot of fire into the clouds. Only the scriptures describe Elijah ascending in a whirlwind and the chariot remains behind to keep Elisha the servant away. Have some integrity and read the Book!

With only a little more than three months to go until Christmas, we are already seeing store displays going up touting the season. We will get a good view of all the iconic emblems including trees, lights, reindeer, fat guys in red suits, angels, shepherds, and mangers in stables. We will also get to see on a regular basis three tall, stately men dressed in fine robes. The problem is, even if you accept the traditional date of the birth of Jesus in mid-winter (it was probably in the spring), the magi did not arrive for another eighteen months or so and they found Jesus with his parents living in a house (Matthew 2). Have some integrity and read the Book!

These may all be innocent oversights or perhaps embellishments to create more interest in the story. Even so, we must be careful in our use of the biblical texts lest we start influencing our theology and daily life decisions because of a loss of integrity. A retired pastor, Ray Hodge, twenty years ago compiled a list of statements of dubious veracity (Familiar Quotations, True and False). A couple of them reveal how we misquote the Bible.

The most obvious one comes from I Timothy 6. We often hear, "Money is the root of all evil." The actual wording in the Bible includes more explanation, "The love of money is the root of all evil." Money has no moral nature. Our tendencies toward greed and fear of being without drive us to crave money and the power and security we believe it can provide.

One biblical misquote Hodge does not include is from a Greek fable and is often placed in the Bible. "God helps those who help themselves." The reality is that God wants to be generous to all and particularly to those who CANNOT help themselves, the poorest, the widows, the orphans, and the homeless stranger. We make and accept these misquotes when we refuse to approach the Bible with integrity.

Like the good detective on the television program Dragnet was prone to say, "Just the facts, ma'am".