Do you honour Jesus Christ as Lord?

On By DonaldIn Apologetics, Bible Exegesis, ChristologyLeave a comment

What sort of honour do you give to Jesus Christ, and to what extent?

Many people know that He claims to be the Son of God, but this washes over many of them as if it is just another item of news.

Rather, it is so significant that it cannot be ignored and deserves to be investigated.  Jesus said: “The queen of the south shall rise up in the day of judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: for she came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and, behold, a greater than Solomon is here” Mat 12:42.

Some people minimise the concept of the Son of God and make out that He is an inferior creation of God, failing to give credit to the full meaning of this term.  Let us listen instead to what Jesus says about Himself:

“The Father judges no man, but He has committed all judgment to the Son, in order that all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father.  He that honours not the Son honours not the Father Who sent Him” Jn 5:22-23.

The Father has a definite purpose in committing the work of judgment to His Son.  Not only is it an honour to Him Whom men despised as Saviour Isa 53:3, that He should also be appointed Judge, but Jesus tells us that it goes further than this.  It is in order that all men should honour the Son in the same manner as they honour the Father.

Do you do so?  Do you honour the Son in the same manner as you honour God? If not, then Jesus says that you are not even honouring the Father, far less the Son.  “He that honours not the Son honours not the Father Who sent Him” Jn 5:23.

What if people will not do so?  Truly there are many such, who will not do so during their time in this earthly life, but they will be forced to do so at the Judgment Seat of Christ.

“God also has highly exalted Him, and given Him a name which is above every name: that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” Php 2:9-11.

Now compare this with the Lord’s speech in Isa 45:23 “I have sworn by myself, the word is gone out of my mouth in righteousness, and shall not return, that unto Me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear”, quoted by Paul in Rom 14:11 “For it is written, As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God”, which Paul puts in the context of “for we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ” Rom 14:10.

Every knee shall bow to Jesus Christ as Lord – either in mercy in this world or at the Day of Judgment.  Which will you choose?

 

 

The majority of mankind will be saved

On By DonaldIn Apologetics, Baptism, Bible Exegesis, Doctrine, History, Ideas, Millennium, Salvation, Scripture3 Comments

It is not uncommon to hear the depressing and unbiblical doctrine that only a minority of the human family will arrive in heaven.

Various biblical texts are wrongly used to support this unbiblical idea.

  1. Jesus was asked: “Are there few that be saved?” Lk 13:23.  Jesus replied with neither Yes nor No to this, but that many would be too late, out of complacency, and to make sure that you are not among them.
  2. Jesus said: “Narrow is the way which leads to life, and few there be that find it” Mat 7:14.  However, Jesus does not say that there will always be few.  There were few in His day, and there may be few in your locality, but it is not always so.
  3. “A remnant shall be saved” Rom 9:27.  Paul wrote this in the context of there being many unbelieving Jews in his day.  It will not always be so.  Paul was dealing with the small number of Jews in his day who believed in Jesus as the Messiah  by showing that it was predicted by Old Testament Scripture.  This is not a comment on the whole number of the saved.
  4. Jesus said: “Fear not, little flock” Lk 12:32.  The disciples were a little flock in Christ’s day, but He went on to say, “it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”  The little flock is not a comment on the whole number of the saved.
  5. Jesus said: “When the Son of man comes, shall He find faith on the earth?”  Lk 18:8.  This is commonly misinterpreted to mean that the world will get worse and worse and so the Christian church will always be in the minority.   Rather, Jesus is speaking about the international apostacy at the end of the world after the Millennium – see Rev 20:7-8 – so that Jesus will then come quickly on the last day Jn 6:39,40,44,54 and Jn 12:48 to judge mankind.  So Lk 18:8 is not a comment on the whole number of the saved.

The Bible teaches the opposite of this depressing doctrine.

  1. Believers inherit a kingdom Lk 12:32, whereas the devil and his hordes are consigned to a pit Rev 20:3 and then a lake of fire Rev 20:10 and Mat 25:41.  “In My Father’s house are many mansions.” Jn 14:2.
  2. There is an innumerable number of saved human beings already in heaven Rev 7:9.
  3. Even the majority of angels are on Christ’s side Rev 12:4.
  4. World population is growing exponentially and there have been more human beings living on Earth in the 20th century than in all previous centuries put together.   In the Millennium Rev 20:2-7, the kingdoms of this world will “become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever” Rev 11:15.  This Millennium will be more than enough time for the Lord’s people to outnumber the ungodly on Earth.
  5. It is possible and even probable that untold numbers of babies miscarrying in the womb, and infants dying in infancy, have arrived in heaven.  See Charles Haddon Spurgeon’s sermon on 2Kings 4:26, who supports this view in spite of his two unbiblical comments against infant baptism.  A more definitive treatment of the subject is The Theology of Infant Salvation by R. A. Webb, 1907, reprinted by Sprinkle, 1981.
  6. Jesus will have the majority at last: “And He is the head of the body, the church: Who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things He might have the preeminence” Col 1:18.  Jesus will not be beaten by the devil and his hordes.  Jesus is a winner, not a loser.  “None of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled” Jn 17:12.

The ungodly will find themselves belonging to a minority of losers, on the wrong side of history, to their everlasting shame and dismay, while the godly will inherit the kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world Mat 25:34.

The ungodly are hazarding this gift of eternal life through their supercilious unbelief.  Jesus challenges them: “If I say the truth, why do you not believe Me?” Jn 8:46.  Jesus invites them to examine themselves and to look at themselves in the mirror.

Control freakery is running wild

On By DonaldIn Behaviour, IdeasLeave a comment

Prime Minister Theresa May was pilloried because she did not express public grief over the Grenfell Tower disaster in a politically correct manner.

It reminds us of the public mood at the time of Princess Diana’s tragic death.  Instead of allowing the Queen to grieve in her own way, the public demanded that she grieve publicly according to its politically correct opinion.

Public figures are now expected to express their grief over tragedy according to an unwritten politically correct script determined by the mood of the time.  This is control freakery.

Let people form their own judgments about how to express their grief.

Melanie Philips made a similar point tonight in BBC Newsnight’s Viewsnight.

Prince Harry has also criticised his being made to walk publicly behind his mother’s coffin as a 12 year old boy, although it is claimed that this was a family decision rather than a bureaucratic one.

Biblical mnemonics

On By DonaldIn Bible Versions, Scripture1 Comment

Ps 117: the shortest chapter in the Bible.
Ps 119: the longest chapter in the Bible.
Ps 118: the middle chapter in the Bible.

Ps 118:8 “It is better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in man.”

1188/2 = 594.

There are 594 chapters before Ps 118 and 594 chapters after it if one includes the whole New Testament.

These are rather uncanny coincidences in view of the relatively late formulation of the chapter divisions in the Bible.

The Hebrew Bible has a different order of books, so these statistics apply only to the English Bible with its order of biblical books, but this is where it gets complicated and loses the simplicity of the above mnemonic.

Strictly speaking the middle chapter of the English Bible is Ps 117, but this is Ps 116 in the Hebrew Bible.  However if the English Psalms were numbered the same as the Hebrew Psalms, the middle chapter of the English Bible would be Ps 118, as in the simple mnemonic above.

So, one can remember 1. the middle chapter in the English Bible is also the shortest chapter in the Bible, but 2. to remember how many chapters are involved the mnemonic above carries more information.

There is greater disparity in calculating the middle verse of the Bible because of the different numbering of verses in the Psalms, where the Hebrew Bible sometimes makes the title of the Psalm a separate verse, whereas the King James Version incorporates the titles into the first verse.  Some websites claim that Ps 118:8 is the middle verse of the Bible, while others claim that the King James Version has an even number of verses and, on this reckoning, the two middle verses are Ps 103:1-2.

The shortest verse in the English Bible is “Jesus wept” Jn 11:35.  The Greek version of this text has three words, and the Hebrew version of Job 3:2 “And Job spake, and said” has three words also.

The Old Testament has 3 – 9 = 39 books

The New Testament has 3×9 = 27 books = 66 books in total.

  1. there is one God.
  2. there are two natures in Christ: His divine and human natures.
  3. there are three Persons in one Godhead: the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.
  4. there are four Gospels and the four corners of the Earth – north, south, east and west – suggest comprehensiveness.
  5. there are five books of Moses and five sections in the book of Psalms.
  6. six is reckoned to be the number of imperfection – and 666, the number of the beast Rev 13:18, is the apotheosis of religious imperfection.
  7. there are seven days in the week, and seven is the biblical number for perfection.
  8. eight is the biblical number of new beginnings: circumcision was on the eighth day and Christ’s resurrection was on the eighth day.

The Hebrew Old Testament has three sections; there are four Gospels in the New Testament, and the prophecy of Isaiah in the Old Testament is sometimes called ‘the fifth Gospel‘ because it has so much of Christ in it.

 

Gmail disarray

On By DonaldIn Campaigning, Computers, Consumer affairsLeave a comment

Can anyone explain why editing an email in the Gmail editor may look okay when you send it, but the recipient may receive it with altered editing – font, font size, broken lines, etc?

This is a general problem known since at least 2011 but never solved by Gmail.  It is so unpredictable that one should not use Gmail for serious emails.

The only safe solution is to send important documents as an attached PDF, although one workaround is to compose the email in Google Docs then cut and paste it into Gmail.

Another suggested workaround is to select the whole email message, change the font size to small and then change it back to normal, and it is claimed that it will read properly in the recipient’s email.

It is astonishing that Gmail has never sorted this in six years.

 

RBS and the SNP

On By DonaldIn History, PoliticsLeave a comment

Can someone explain why Royal Bank of Scotland, bailed out by the tax-payer, is held accountable for shareholders losing their money after being duped by Fred Goodwin and co?

If RBS had not been bailed out, it would have failed and shareholders would have lost out.  Being bailed out by the tax-payer, it is essentially a different bank.  Why are tax-payers paying for investors being duped? paying once to rescue the bank and second to rescue those to whom they are not responsible?

The logic is similar to the SNP’s blaming Westminster for Scotland’s ills.  We remember Alex Salmond supporting Fred Goodwin in his disastrous and uncosted take-over of Dutch bank ABN-Amro after Barclays bank dropped out of the takeover battle.

The RBS bail out was not the only time that England helped out Scotland.  The Darien scheme was another financial disaster which contributed to the Act of Union so decried by the SNP.  But they had only their fellow Scotsmen to blame for it, just as RBS shareholders have Fred Goodwin and co to blame, not the tax-payer, to whom they should be thankful that they did not lose absolutely everything, although near enough.

Nor do Scottish schools teach our young people about England helping out Scotland at a critical stage in the Scottish Reformation, which led on to Scotland becoming the most literate nation on earth and contributing to the development of the British empire.  Scottish children are told only a selective part of our nation’s history, and although Germany has spent ten years preparing for the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther’s inauguration of the European Reformation on 31/10/1517, Scotland’s Reformer is unceremoniously ignored by its populace.

 

BBC Radio nan Gàidheal interview

On By DonaldIn Developing Christian Policy, Ideas, PoliticsLeave a comment

The full BBC Radio nan Gàidheal (Gaelic radio) interview with Dr Donald Boyd, the leader of the Scottish Christian Party for broadcasting on 19th May 2017, which was only partially broadcast on the day.

Dr Boyd was asked about the SCP vision for Inverness and the Highlands, and he was asked in conclusion what the SCP would do to promote the Gaelic language.

He pointed out that Gaelic road signs are unnecessary but of much more use would be to teach school children the meaning of the Gaelic names of the mountains on Highland maps, helping them to understand the geography of the Highlands and to increase interest in one of the main features of the Highlands.

He repeated his 2015 claim that the Scottish National Party has no specifically Scottish vision for Scotland and the Highlands, and this is the reason for voting for the Scottish Christian Party instead.