Updated: Trust The Shepherd, Not The Hireling
Mark Twain, in Mississippi River pilot parlance, might have described our situation today as finding our nations, and ourselves, running close to the chutes on a falling river, approaching low water on the shallowest part of a reef, during an inky black, new moon night, the lunar disk providing no light. It’s a bad place to be if you didn’t want to lose a steamboat on the muddy Mississippi River in the 1850s. This is somewhat analogous to our current latter day journey. Deceitful waters carry us along in muddied theological darkness. The falling river, low water of our decaying corrupt society, where disaster awaits, increasingly drives us ever closer to the danger-filled stumpy shores of Babylon the Great.
Book Excerpts
I still remember the hot, cloudless day in August when I first stepped foot on campus even though it is more than fifty years ago now. I had turned down a full scholarship to Yale for a Master’s degree in finance. So here I was at a small bible college to get a degree in theology. While some viewed my choice of bible college over Yale as a great lapse in judgement, I felt quite the opposite. To me a choice between a degree in finance versus theology was the classic choice between mammon and God.
Sneakers
The "immortal soul" doctrine is a fiction of the Roman church, which is contradicted by the six basic tenets of Christianity in the New Testament. [Heb. 6:1, 2; see the Sneakers article, Name Those Tenets]. The sixth one, as the apostle Paul pointed out, is eternal judgement. Eternal judgement takes place at the great resurrection where those who have lived and are in the grave, are raised from the dead and judged according to their works. [Acts 24:15]. This great judgement that takes place is a decision to eternal life or eternal death. No immortal souls obviously. This is referred to as the second death. [Rev. 21:8]. It is not going off to a location with an immortal soul as with Heaven or Hell, Purgatory or Limbo. Hence, at the great resurrection, it's those who are written in the Book of Life, eternal life, opposed those who are not, eternal death. [See Rev. 20:6, 12]. And the tumultuous predicament we find ourselves in as Christians, with the noticeable emerging Beast of Babylon the Great, his image, his mark and the number of his name, 666, all go back to the simple choice we were given way back when.