Tagged: Christianity
When words lose their meaning
A panda walks into a café and orders a sandwich. He eats it, then draws a gun and shoots the other patrons.
A surviving waiter, quivering as he looks up from the carnage, asks, “Why?”
Before walking out the door, the panda tosses the waiter a poorly punctuated wildlife manual and replies, “Look it up.”
The waiter searches for the relevant entry and reads aloud: “Panda. Large, black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.”
This joke serves as the namesake for Lynne Truss’s best-selling book, “Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation.”
It also reminds us how easily our language may be mangled – or manipulated – so that two people using the same words can intend totally different meanings.
Then war broke out in heaven – Revelation 12:7-12
Previously: The woman fled – Revelation 12:6
The scripture
Rev. 12:7 – Then war broke out in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon. The dragon and his angels also fought, 8but he could not prevail, and there was no place for them in heaven any longer. 9So the great dragon was thrown out – the ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the one who deceives the whole world. He was thrown to earth, and his angels with him. 10Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say: The salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of His Messiah have now come, because the accuser of our brothers has been thrown out: the one who accuses them before God day and night. 11They conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they did not love their lives in the face of death. 12Therefore rejoice, O heavens, and you who dwell in them! Woe to the earth and the sea, for the Devil has come down to you with great fury, because he knows he has a short time. (HCSB)
We are taken from the “great signs” of the pregnant woman and the great fiery red dragon (vv. 1-6) to a cosmic battle between Michael and the dragon involving good and evil angels. The conflict is severe, and Michael emerges victorious. Satan and his angels are thrown to earth. No longer does the “accuser of our brothers” have access to the throne of heaven. While the victory is won at the unseen level, John is careful to record that the Devil is conquered “by the blood of the Lamb” and by the testimony of Christian martyrs. The heavens rejoice in Satan’s defeat, but the earth is warned that the evil one descends with fury, knowing his time is short.
Who is Michael? When and where does this war in heaven break out? Whose loud voice in heaven do we hear? And why are the earth and sea warned of the Devil’s final days in power? These six verses are shrouded in mystery, yet they tell us a great deal about the angelic host and the ongoing battle between good and evil.
Are religion and science closer than we think?
A Missouri pastor recently sent me a Huffington Post article in which MIT Astrophysicist Max Tegmark assures us that religion and science are much closer than one might suspect, as evidenced by the results of a new MIT Survey on Science, Religion and Origins.
You can read the results and view the survey questions on MIT’s website.
Tegmark and his colleagues present a detailed survey of how different U.S. faith communities view the science of origins, particularly evolution and Big Bang cosmology.
Their conclusion: “We find a striking gap between people’s personal beliefs and the official views of the faiths to which they belong. Whereas Gallup reports that 46% of Americans believe that God created humans in their present form less than 10,000 years ago, we find that only 11% belong to religions openly rejecting evolution.”
She gave birth to a Son – Revelation 12:5
Previously: A fiery red dragon – Rev. 12:3-4
The woman is depicted as “pregnant” in verse 2. She cries out in labor and agony to give birth. Perhaps this is a summary description of Israel’s tortuous path to the virgin birth. God’s people have experienced slavery in Egypt, captivity in Assyria and Babylon, the destruction of their great city and temple, and a legacy of wicked leaders and false prophets. That the nation of Israel exists at all by the time of Roman rule is a miracle unto itself. But now the agonies of childbirth are about to give way to the joy of experiencing a most unique miracle as God becomes flesh in Jesus of Nazareth.
Despite his most sinister efforts, Satan is unable to destroy God’s people or prevent the birth of their Messiah. John describes it simply: “But she gave birth to a Son – a male who is going to shepherd all nations with an iron scepter” (v. 5). This reference is taken from the Greek translation of Ps. 2:9 – “you will shepherd [rule] them with a rod of iron.” The Hebrew text renders it, “[Y]ou will smash them with a rod of iron.” Either way, the emphasis is on the reign of a king.
Proof of heaven: 7 questions for Dr. Alexander
Christian apologetics is more than being ready to give an answer to anyone who asks a reason for the hope in us (1 Peter 3:15). Sometimes it means asking tough questions of those who deny — or sincerely misunderstand — the Christian faith.
A case in point is Eben Alexander, a celebrated neurosurgeon who recently granted an interview with FoxNews.com’s online magazine. Alexander knows a great deal about the human brain, and for years he used that knowledge to refute claims by those who said they visited heaven during near-death experiences (NDEs).
He believed NDEs were fantasies the brain produced under extreme duress. But as the magazine interview reveals, all that changed when Alexander had his own near-death experience, which he outlines in his book, “Proof of Heaven.”
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