ETERNAL LIFE...

Just the other day I was talking to God about a great many things from the scripture passage that I was reading in Isaiah. Concentration was difficult for me, because I remain deeply disturbed about the four Americans killed in Benghazi, Libya two weeks ago, and the ineptness our government to come together as one people during this crisis. Both Presidential candidates made a political football out of the loss of human life. "We the people," have no more hallowed ground...Everything is up for sale if you can make a buck or get a vote. We have replaced decency and dignity for our fallen with division, derision and dis-respect. Our chosen path is cluttered with our own man-made gods. We have a god of Wealth. We have a god of Power. We have a god of Deception. We have a god of War. We have a god of Sex. We have a god of Avarice. We have a god of Prejudice.  The list goes on, but you get the picture.

Out of this senseless tragedy, I see our great nation, once solidly founded on the principles of God, Family and Country, now flaying weakly in the wind, because we have abandoned all three of these principles. The one true God and Creator of Heaven and Earth, got thrown under the bus in the good old USA decades ago. The "One God" has been replaced by the many gods. We have excised our Creator virtually out of existence, because we chose, on our own, to worship elsewhere. God will not forget our 21st century idolatry, and will not forgive his rejection everywhere. I live in America, so I am particularly sensitive to my own culture, but this goes for all people from Sodom to Gomorrah and everyone in between.

Family value, family tradition, and family love is being replaced by Facebook, Google+, Kindle, iPads, iPhones, Email, Instant Messaging, Texting and Twitter. We have digitized and desensitized our children by trading in parental guidance and responsibility for You Tube and Reality TV. Discipline and Truth have been replaced by the new standards of modern life in the USA: Dollars, Votes, Hits and Clicks. All else is part of another ERA. If you are not pushing productivity by taking advantage of family, friends and acquaintances  you are "old school," or maybe "dinosaur" would even be more accurate. 

So where does this virtually extinct (pun intended) dinosaur come down on the subject of country? He literally has to hold back the tears, as he describes the country that once was...I suspect anyone who makes it into their 60's gains a modicum of knowledge and wisdom, no matter what country you live in at the moment. No matter what Glen Beck or Rush Limbaugh pound out every day about impending doom, don't believe all of it or be mislead by their supposedly "altruistic" intentions, anymore than you should believe ABC, NBC, CBS and FOX. Government and the power of the MEDIA have us in a vice, and they inculcate 300 million people everyday by telling them only what they want them to know, so that control and power remains in the same few hands. Our country runs in place very hard everyday without ever really solving the critical issues facing this economic and spiritual titanic.

If you are polarized on the left or the right, you have missed the 

point. The electoral process that was put in place long ago to assure fairness has literally put us to sleep, making certain that those in power remain entrenched, all the while burying us with information to the point of sheer lunacy. When will were understand that we get sold a bill of goods every time  and end up with nothing except the check. Now that check is so big, that even the largest economy in the world cannot pay for it... There is only one place to find pure, unadulterated truth. We have had parts of it for 5,000 years. The Word of God was written by men and divinely inspired by God. Look there for your answers. Look there for your guidance. Look there for your value system.

The world has 8 billion people alive and well as of this writing. Many billions more have died over the centuries of recorded history. Most likely more will populate this planet for the next millennia...All of them, past, present and future have one thing in common, and that is ETERNAL LIFE. Christians spend their time arguing about how and when you were saved. Catholics believe you must have final confession or absolution. Muslims believe that you must follow Allah and the teachings of Muhammad. Atheists belief in no after life, Hindus believe in re-incarnation. Well guess what, the truth is that all of mankind received this divine benefit of ETERNAL LIFE at the moment of your first breathe. You do not get a choice or a vote. It can't be bought, sold or rejected. Despite centuries of doctrine and division from all the scholars, the truth of it remains immutable.

So my friend, it was never about the after-life...It is guaranteed to all mankind. The only thing up for discussion is whether you choose to spend that after-life with God or without God. It does not matter if you choose not to believe or not to participate, wherever you live. When you take your last breathe in this life, you, your children and your grandchildren will enter an after-life. Stop listening to the pundits and talking heads, who want to debate the definition of your soul. In the end, it all comes down to you and you alone. Give God a chance and receive the only gift that lasts more than your lifetime. The next life is not "priceless" like the cute MasterCard commercials. Despite your sin and our collective sin, "His hand remains extended" at great personal sacrifice by our Lord and Savior.

God Bless,                                   

TDD 

HE IS SUCH A TOOL!!

Since I seem to get along with kids much more than adults of late, I have started once again to pick up their lingo...My daughter described a particular guy in her life "such a tool." Of course I am thinking hammer, crescent wrench or screwdriver, but she meant something totally different. He was an "idiot who had become dull, uninteresting and boring." How you get that from tool is kind of interesting. You see, it all started years ago with a phrase we all know. "He is not the sharpest tool in the box." It's kind of like, "a few cards short of a full deck," or better yet, "his stairs don't go all the way to the top."

No matter how you slice it, being a "tool" is derogatory and a current part of modern colloquialism. Personally, I get a kick out of following new, modern, terse statements that our youth use daily to add color to their descriptions of each other. However, in Isaiah 10, God used a very similar metaphor 2500 years ago. I guess the Scripture is correct when it says, "there is nothing new under the sun."

Most of this chapter is dedicated to the judgement and destruction of Assyria. Ancient Assyria had the current country of Iraq pretty much in the center of it, stretching to Egypt in the West to the Persian Gulf in the East. It stretched North and South from very close to the Black Sea to the southern tip of Egypt. Basically it was huge, swallowing modern day Israel along the Mediterranean.

God observed his people being abused by the Assyrians every day for years, and the beginning of Chapter 10 is where God says through His prophet Isaiah: "Woe unto those who enact unjust laws and oppressive decrees, depriving the poor of honest justice, making helpless widows and orphans a primary target." God has used Assyria to punish Israel once again for their faithlessness, because they had once again traded in the Almighty for power and wealth. Sound familiar? How many times a month in 2012 do we commit the same senseless sin? 

Isaiah further says that the anger of God is going to allow Assyria some additional time to plunder Israel while exposing us to what God was really thinking:

1. Don't these Assyrians know that I am using them to bring Israel back to himself?
2. Why don't they understand the they might be the hammer, or the saw, but El Shaddai holds all the "tools" in His and wields the true power behind them?
3. So Assyria, in fact, was not the sharpest tool in the box, but with the support of God, they accomplish His will, and then arrogantly boast of their strength.
4. This upsets our God, but not as much as there continued influence on the Jewish people. The Israelites continue to worship other gods and graven images...

The message here is simply, how many times does it take the Jews and the Gentiles (Assyrians), before they will accept the one true God as their maker, their master and ultimately their salvation? So now hit the fast forward button to 2012. "How many times, all you Jews and Gentiles in the modern world, will I have to chastise you in an effort to teach you genuine loyalty, fealty, and adoration. Down through the centuries before Christ and after Christ, we continue to disappoint our God collectively and individually. Thankfully, at the end of verse one, God says, "Even after all of this, including my wrath, my hand remains stretched out."

You see God's wrath or anger is always RATIONAL with a distinct purpose in mind. We may not understand, but "righteous

indignation" has a time and purpose in our lives. The problem is that when we get angry, irrationality pushes its way to the top, often before the next breathe. God is following a very rational plan for all people of this globe. We are the ones that invalidate that plan at every turn. God's wrath is delicately balanced with His grace. The line between them is perilously thin, and yet we ignore him, disgrace him and yes, even disgust him with the dark side of our lives. We literally disrespect our Creator, almost every day, and yet his hand remains stretched out to the all of his people, no matter your family heritage, geographic location, or current belief system. This offer was made global, long before we coined the word for modern usage. Return to the one true God with a humble heart, and then assist in making His message "viral."

God Bless,

TDD