The God Who Knows Me

I read "Today's Word" by Skip Moen fairly frequently. I've communicated with him once or twice and find many of his insights to be profound. Today was one of those times:

He wrote about Psalm 139:23-24 which reads, "Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting."

He goes on to the talk about what I've always referred to as the "prison of self". That might be a harsh way of describing the thought, but my thought is: I can never really know what its like to be someone else and they can never really know what its like to be me. As Skip puts it,

There is an "inner self" that remains obscure to anyone else, a kind of personal and private book that only we know, and that, in fact, can't really be communicated to anyone else because it is in reality our own experiences of being. No autobiography, no confessional, no diary can ever really capture what it means to be me."

He goes on to say..."except God." Many of us, myself included, have a conception of God (and Skip talks about this too) as being an observer. Back in college, there was a professor I used to meet with on a regular basis and it was more of a counseling type relationship and once he asked me, "When you picture God, where is He now and what is He doing?" I said, "He's over there sitting in a chair on the other side of the room with His head in His hands, shaking His head at me." I very much had, and still have to a degree, this conception of God as being an observer...

But what if he's more like, as Skip suggests, a conjoined twin? And maybe even more than that - He knows what its like to be me.

Skip's final thought for the day is what got me: "Adam longed for an answer to loneliness. So do we all. Loneliness is the most terrifying experience any human being can endure. But Eva (Ishsha) wasn't the real answer. She was a temporary relief measure. The real answer is the one David sought. The God who knows."

Biblical Illiteracy is Becoming an Epidemic

It's well-documented that I'm not a huge fan of The Gospel Coalition, but every once in awhile, they write something that is spot on. The article I read today entitled, "Your Church May Know Less Bible Than You Think (And What to Do About It), is written by Jen Wilkin and in the article, she shares some pretty damning new statistics from a recent survey conducted by Lifeway. To quote Lifeway's survey results directly, "Lifeway Research asked more than 2,000 American Christian churchgoers dozens of questions about general Bible knowledge. The average respondent scored 51. Around 2 in 3 (65%) earn an F, below 60. Almost 1 in 10 (9%) receive a D, between 60 and 69. Another 9% a C, between 70 and 79. Just 8% score a B, 80 to 89, and 9% reach A status, 90 and higher."

83% of the 2,000 people surveyed scored LESS than a B.

I just went to the website linked above...and you can take the quiz there. These are not particularly obscure questions. I scored 23 out of 25 (92%) and the quiz took me less than 5 minutes. There are questions about sayings in Scripture, there are questions about which testament various books of the Bible are in, and there are questions about order or events ("which event occurred last" among a list) and so on.

Do This in Remembrance of Me...

I wrote this years ago but never published it (don't know why). One of the main issues I have with modern theology is that it is so backwards facing...meaning, it is oriented toward the past. I don't believe this is the orientation of Scripture or orientation that Jesus taught his disciples to have. Our Faith is forward-facing, FUTURE facing. Yes, Jesus died for us and that's important, but His death and resurrection are all about the future; they are the absolute guarantee, in technicolor brilliance, that God is going to do EXACTLY what He said he's going to do. Jesus' death and resurrection are a sign that points towards a future rejoining of Heaven and Earth. I think I must have been thinking about these things when I wrote this:

If you aren't a follower/subscriber to the Apocalyptic Gospel Podcast, consider this my recommendation. The three teachers that are part of it, John Harrigan, Bill Scofield and Josh Hawkins, put out one episode per week (Wednesdays) and to-date have covered a variety of topics including Jewish Apocalyptic thought, the Kingdom of God, Election, the Parables of Jesus, etc, etc. This past week, they had an episode dedicated to the Biblical theme of a great Messianic banquet/feast at the end of the Age, an idea that is referenced both in the Tanakh (OT) and in the Messianic writings (NT). Let's start with a passage from the Tanakh that goes into some detail about it, Isaiah 25:

Trip Report: First 14er

Just got back a couple of days ago from a whirlwind trip to Colorado that had been several months in the making. My brother, brother-in-law and I have been talking for years about doing something epic together and while they have done some previous epics, this was the first time I was able to join them (along with their former college x-country coach). We originally were thinking of doing a Rim-to-Rim-to-Rim (also known as an 'R3') in the Grand Canyon, but mother nature and the National Parks Service forced a change to those plans...so instead, we picked a couple of '14ers' in Colorado. A 14er, if you don't know, is a mountain peak above 14,000ft. There are 58 of them in Colorado and the two we attempted were Uncompahgre (14,306ft) and Wetterhorn (14,021ft). The other guys had done a few 14ers previously and their experience provided some valuable insight for me as I prepared, but I started training in April for what would be long and strenuous day. The 'loop' is 18 miles and over 6,000ft of elevation gain. Coming in, I was feeling physically good, but still somewhat nervous, having never done anything like this before. I had a really good training season which prepared me well for a long day.

The first day and a half was all driving - the first day from the Chicago area to central Nebraska where I met up with the guys and then from there to Lake City, CO which is about 4 1/2 hours from Denver. We arrived mid-afternoon to an Airbnb right in the town of Lake City. After getting everything unloaded, we went and explored a little of what is a very beautiful mountain town.

Very nearby the place we stayed

After exploring we drove to the local grocery store to get some food supplies and ended up settling on tacos for dinner which ended up hitting the spot perfectly. After organizing our gear, we all attempted to get some rest, but when you have a 2am wake-up call and an adventure ahead of you, sleep can be evasive...and it was. I think I got about 4 hours of actual sleep. I felt pretty good once I was up - the adrenaline kicked in and we were out the door by 3am.

The Dangerous Idol of "Safety"

Piggy-backing off of my last post about 9/11, I wanted to revisit an old topic - one that I've written about before and which I believe has some potential to be a 'history-repeating-itself' type thing in the very near future. The context for previous writing on this topic was COVID. At that time, as most of us remember, there was a big, scary new virus on the scene and so, as governments do, the government stepped in with a bunch of ideas, which soon became more than just ideas, about how to slow the spread. First it was the '15 days to slow the spread' lockdowns, along with masking and social-distancing guidelines, which turned into labels of 'essential' and 'non-essential'...and which led to the closure of many businesses. Then, as a vaccine was developed, they started with strong recommendations to 'get vaxxed' and continue to get new vaccinations against new variants, etc. Then pretty soon we had vaccine cards, and suddenly employment was tied to vaccination status (for some). All this was done in the name of 'safety' and while I'm sure that some of these measures saved some lives, they undoubtably also took lives. For example - how many people who had life-threatening illnesses and who were hospitalized ended up dying because no immediate family was allowed to come and sit with them? How many people, facing isolation because of government safety recommendations, or seeing their entire life's work crumble like a house of cards because their business was labeled 'non-essential', ended up deciding to end their own lives? This is what I mean when I say that these measures ended up taking lives.

On 25 Years of Remembering 9/11

While I could do without the emotionalism of 9/11 remembrances 25 years on, I have found that I'm endlessly fascinated with people's stories of where they were that day. EVERYONE remembers. I've yet to meet a single person (of remembering age) who doesn't remember basically that entire day. Whenever the topic comes up, I always ask what that person remembers about that day and it's always interesting to me. Somewhat ironically, 9/11 remembrance is also the reason I first felt like an old man...I was asking a couple of co-workers a few years ago about 9/11 and they didn't have any memories...because they were either infants or not born yet.

The Golden/Eastern Gate

 

Eastern "Golden" Gate - Temple Mount

I did some research on this awhile back and found it pretty fascinating so I'm sharing it here. It involves a lot of prophecy as well as well as end-times/return-of-the-Messiah stuff, so it's really an interesting real-world reality that points to the truth of Scripture.

What is it?

The image at the top of this post is picture of the Eastern Gate of Jerusalem leading into the Temple Mount, and which faces the Mount of Olives. It has been called by many names, but some that you might recognize would be "The Golden Gate" and the "The Mercy Gate". Josephus, the 1st century Jewish historian, mentions the Eastern gate in some of his writings and tells us that it was considered the far northeastern extremity of the inner sacred court of the 2nd temple. Obviously the gate that stands there today was not the same one Josephus mentions, since the 2nd temple was destroyed in 70 A.D.

Significance in Scripture - Outside of prophecy

• Jesus entered Jerusalem through this gate on a donkey on the first Palm Sunday, and likely went in and out of this gate many times during his life, walking between the temple and the Mount of Olives
• Some commentators suggest that this is the gate where Peter and John healed the lame man at "The Gate called Beautiful" (Acts 3:1-10)

The Prophecy

The prophecy, and where the Eastern/Golden Gate comes into focus for end-times events, comes from Ezekiel and Zechariah:

"The He brought me back by way of the outer gate of the sanctuary that faces east, but it was shut. The LORD said to me: "This gate will be shut; it will not be opened, and no one will enter by it. For the LORD, the God of Israel, has entered by it; therefore it will remain shut. Only the prince may sit in it to eat a sacrificial meal before the LORD; he will enter by way of the porch of the gate and will go out by the same way."" (Ezekiel 44:1-3 NET)

**Sidenote, it's worth reading the whole of Ezekiel 44 because it goes on to talk about how there will an earthquake that splits the Mount of Olives into two, and that two streams of living water will flow from Jerusalem, one stream flowing eastward toward the Dead Sea (thus bringing it back to life) and one stream flowing westward towards the Mediterranean Sea.

"On that day [Day of the LORD] his feet will stand on the Mount of Olives that lies to the east of Jerusalem, and the Mount of Olives will be split in half from East to West, leaving a great valley. Half of the mountain will move northward and the other half southward." (Zechariah 14

So - to summarize, Zechariah is seeing a vision of the Day of the Lord and it says that the LORD himself, or Jesus, will physically stand on, or return to, the Mount of Olives (opposite the Eastern Gate). Ezekiel is receiving a prophecy about the End that seems to indicate that Jesus will go in and out of the Eastern Gate (the prince, someone who is not a mere man). There is also the obvious reference to that gate being sealed.