Spirit of Truth/The Bible on Trial

Heavenly Music~ I am sitting here in my easy chair listening to an online radio service that is playing 24 hour Christmas music. This is not the kind you hear on commercial radio, with it's pop singers singing "Here Comes Santa Claus", with electric guitars and rock drums. This station  (KUSC.org/holidayspiritchannel) is playing some of the most Heavenly Music ever written, because it  celebrates the birth of the Christ Child in a joyous and loving way.  This got me thinking about what it was like to be near the manger in Bethleham on that day when Jesus was born. We have no idea what really happen there, at that time, beause there are no eyewitnes accounts in the Bible of what actually happened. In reality, the account in Luke that is use most to describe the birth of our Savior is most probably fiction. We do know that the description of the angel meeting  separately with Joseph and then Mary, and then the appearance of the 'Wise Men' in Matthew 2 is more reliable that that of the description in Luke. We do know that the music that has come from this event over 2000 years is some of the most beautiful ever written, and some is surely based upon heavenly inspiration. The truth of the actual events are best described for me in the 'music' of John 1, where the Word is revealed as Jesus Christ. What ever your perspective on Christmas, whether you actively celebrate the 'season' or not, the mustic that reflects that part of hte heart of mankind that seeks their Savior is poigniant and beautiul, and is an loving reflection of what it means to find truth in the sentiment of this joyous season, where we celebrate what Jesus has done for the world through His Kindom come to earth in the form of a human baby. So in this respect I wish for all of you a Joyous Christmas time, and for our Savior that came to earth to bring the truth from heaven.

The Best Christmas Present of All~ When you and your family gather round the Christmas tree on Christmas morning to open presents what will be the best present there? Will it be a new bike for Jimmy, or a talking doll for Jane? Will dad get a new putter, or mom get a trip on a plane? Each gift will be wrapped well in fine paper and ribbon, and no one is left out, not even the dog or the kitten! There is, however, a present that cannot be put in a box, or tied up with a bow; it is not something a hand can hold. It can only be seen with eyes and held in the heart, when heard by someone that loves the WORD of Truth; That WORD that was "made flesh and dwelt among us", that brought the hope of salvation to a world filled with lies. These words that Jesus brought from heaven, with which He testified to that Truth from above, The Truth the Father sent with Jesus that will bring all those that Love the Truth back to Him. Merry Christmas from your Friends at Spirit of Truth Ministry!

Comeback~ Making a comeback is hard to do. There you are, going along swimingly, family is wonderful, work is good, and you are feeling good and looking sharp. Then out of the blue you are blindsided by an event or a personal situation that simply derails everything. Suddenly you don't know which way is up. The pain of loss, the uncertainty of disease, the burden of an unlooked for financial catastrophe puts everythng in your life on hold.  All of us have experience something of this in our lives. And after the initial shock wears off we must decide what to DO about it. These situations demand action and accountability; we must take charge and overcome - or die! This death is most often not the literal kind. It is the 'dying' inside of giving up, or giving in to circumstance that sends our lives into a potientially fatal tailspin. These situations require a comeback, sometimes of epic proportions. We all have some understanding of what it takes to win over. Yet when faced with similar situations in our spiritual lives we have been told by our Pastors, teachers or even parents that all God wants from us is to "Give everything over to God, and let God deal with it." We have been assured that "His grace is sufficient" to solve all of our spiritual problems, and when we "Let Go and Let God" we will have found the answer to all of our difficulties. Unfortunately, doing this will not solve the problems in our physical lives, and neither will it solve our difficulties with our spiritual lives.  Jesus teaches us to make a 'comeback', by coming back to His Words and His Teachings that He gave to His own eyewitness disciples. WE must accomplish righteounes the was that Jesus taught by "Practicing the truth so we can come to the light" (John 3:21).  WE are accountible for our own salvation, and we must COME BACK to Him to do it.

Graduation~ Yesterday my son, Zach, defended his Ph.D. dissertaion, was passed by his committee, and has now been graduated into his Ph.D. in music composition at UCLA. He is now able to use the title Dr. Zachery Neufeld in his professional life. This is truly a watershed moment in his life, and will inform everything he does from here on in his career in both writing and performing music.  This accomplishment did not come easily, as you might well imagine. He finished his academics a little over 2 years ago, and has been in dissertation mode ever since. The striggle (in his own words) was to decide whether the effort to write his final dissertation was going to be worth the effort and heart ache that would be necessary to to accomplish the task. Many grad students at this level (in all disciplines) simply give up, because life gets in the way, and it is VERY difficult to justify the end result with the inconvenience and expense of doing the nearly impossilbe. Getting a Ph.D (or any doctoral level degree) is purposely made almost impossible to accomplish, in order separate out those that have the commitment and drive to succeed from those that simply 'wish' and 'hope' for success. This is also true for those that 'say' they want eternal life, but don't have the determination and drive to DO what is necessary to achieve it. Most 'Christians' want eternal life, but have come to believe that it is their RIGHT by the free gift of grace provided by Jesus death on the cross, and as long as they believe by faith they will be granted their graduate degree without the hard work of DOING the truth.  "For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it" Matt. 7:14.  "But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God." John 3:21.

Missing in Action~ Why would God take the time to prepare an army of 'the Faithful' only to take them off the battlefield just before battle is engaged? This situation sounds unlikely, if not impossible, but this is what many Christians believe will happen at the end of time via the 'Secret Rapture' that will supposedly take the 'Faithful' out of harms way into the heavens before they go through the horrific events of the 'end of time'. The reason not to spend time in refuting this misconception is for one reason only, and that is the fact that the word of TRUTH actually matters in understanding salvation and the events of the end of time. If all you needed was 'faith' to gain eternal life, then learning and practicing Truth would not matter. Why go through the process of sanctification and all that entails if what we do has no bearing on where we end up? If the operation of salvation was literally based on the idea that all you had to do to be saved was to believe you were saved by faith through grace thef an army of the righteous going 'missing in action' before the final events would be a non-issue; it simply wouldn't matter to the outcome of who is saved and who is lost. On it's face it is ludicrous to believe that God would send His only Son to die on the cross to save people that have, by their actions, expressed NO interest in being obedient to the Commandments of the King of the Kingdom of God. Yet this is what ALL Christians believe IS true, because they have been instructed by a false apostle to believe that going 'missing in action' is an acceptable alternative in the fight to save the Kingdom of the Heavens from the "hour of testing, that hour which is about to come upon the whole world, to test those who dwell on the earth '. (Rev. 3:10). If you are missing in action you will also be missing from eternity.

Pay Attention~ One of my dad's favorite expressions was, "Don't keep your head in the sand."  When I was a boy I didin't really understand what he was saying; I mean, how do you stick your head in sand when you aren't at the beach? Why would you want to stick your head in the sand anyway? We had gone to the beach at Santa Barbara many times, and each of us four siblings had been buried up to our necks at least once. I found it to be very uncomfortable, and didn't like it a bit.  As I grew older I finally figured out that dad was speaking a metaphor, a life lesson hiddien in a single phrase. I now understand that there are two parts to this mataphor, one literal, and one spiritual. In my youth my dad would never have considered that there would be a physical component to this phrase based upon something called a cel phone. We have all seen people walking down the sidewalk looking down at their cel phones and nearly (or actually) run into something and hurt themselves.  People today are so attached to their cel phones that they can't look up from them to even acknowledge a comment from a friend, or the needs of their child. There is also a significant danger factor in this as well, and not just in being hurt by tripping and falling.  For many people they are so intent on their phones that they lose all 'situaltional awareness', and are actually being attacked by muggers that they neer saw coming.  The other meaning of my dad's saying is spiritual. We NEED to stay aware of our spiritual surroundings as well, otherwise we WILL become unavailable for learning the truth when it presents itself. We need to (as my dad also put it)  "keep our heads on a swivel", constantly watching for opportunities to find truth, so we will not "be deceived" (Matt. 24:4). If we watch and stay awake we will find Truth that will set us free.

Rockroller~ Yesterday Spirit of Truth Ministry provided a Past Program on Blog Talk Radio. This was a program from Nov. 26, 2012, and the highlight for me was hearing our good friend Dr. Rich (Humpal) interact with Dr. Don and myself (Dennis) as we fleshed out a topic concerning tempering boundaries.  I highly recommend that you go to our 'Episodes' page on our BTR web site (blogtalkradio.com/sot) and listen to this program. It will be well worth your time. After hearing this program yesterday Dr. Don (who was out of town with family) texted (in part): "WOW!!! I am sitting here stunned. To hear Dr. Rich's voice and his incredible clarity of thought, and your precise explanation of tempering boundaries, and going beyond what Jesus said was "on the spot". "What Dr. Rich said aobut legal and hear-say evidence are most appropriate for RIGHT NOW." Dr. Rich died suddenly April 5, 2013. You can read his obituary at: spiritoftruthministry.net/STM. He left a legacy that has reached thousands of people world wide, and will continue to do so in the future as Spirit of Truth Ministry continues to present the truth of the Words of Jesus each week via our programs The Bible on Trial and The Revelation of Jesus.  The thing that Dr. Rich taught us was that we should leave 'No stone unturned' in searching for and finding the truth. Dr. Rich posted on numerous blogs under that 'handle' Rockroller, because what he did was to roll the rocks of ignorance, deceipt and lies out of the way, exposing the truth that is undernieth, This was the purpose of Spirit of Truth Ministry back then, and it is our purpose still today and always. Join us in our journey from darkness into light, as we reveal the purpose of the Words of God in bringing the Kingdom of Heaven to a truth starved world.

Today is what the mercantile world has termed 'Black Friday'. This is a day where people of a certain 'religion' flock to their places of worship to honor thier 'god', by sacrificing printed paper to the priests of these places of worship, for the purpose of finding happiness of a certain type. This is a convoluted way of saying the people with more money than sense crowd into stores that have through clever marketing convinced people that they will get a better deal on certain 'lost leader' items by shopping today than they would normally get by just going in on any other day. This works like magic.  There are those of us, however, that see through this 'ploy' (in the immortal words of Inspector Clouseau), and stay far away from the crowds and the madness this situation carries with it. We prefer the quiet solitude of a good book, or walking the dog, and the peace that comes when we realize that life is much more than getting a 'good' deal. Given this perspective, we here at Spirit of Truth Ministry will be taking today off to be with our families, and extend the blessings of Thanksgiving another day. We hope you will enjoy the 'Best Of' program from a Thanksgiving program past (11/26/2011) that we have provided for your listening enjoyment, and we will see you tomorrow (Sabbath, Nov. 30, 2019) at 10 AM PDT for our regular live broadcast of The Revelation of Jesus, with Rick Sterling.

Thanksgiving~ We are coming to my favorite holiday of the year, Thanksgiving. Family, good food, wonderful conversations and interactions with loved ones, and remembering good times and Thanksgivings past. When I think about it, there is a kind of emotional sappiness about Thanksgiving which I love. But the most important thing about the Thanksgiving holiday here in America for me is that there are NO gifts and presents required for admission. All that is required is that you get together with friends and family, and enjoy each others company.  That is not to say that I don't like Christmas, I do. But for a musician Christmas is a LOT of work to prepare for the concerts and church music commitments that require hours of rehearsal, and sometimes travel. I DO LOVE IT. The thing I don't like about the Christmas season is that it starts so early these days; the store where I work part time already has all of our Christmas merchandise on display for sale way before Thanksgiving, and this is just wrong. All this is well and good, but what we do forget to be Thankful for this time of year, and should be thankful every day of the year is that Jesus took time out of his busy schedule running the universe to come to this earth and bring the TRUTH from God about salvation to a truth starved world that had been co-pted by lies. These lies are so insideous that people have become thankful for those very lies, believing that what they have been taught about salvation is true.  Yes, we should be thankful for the 'good news' of salvation, but if you believe what the church has taught about how salvation works you are thanking the God of the Universe for those lies, and this will end up killing you. We must LEARN the Truth in order to be thankful for it. Beware the deception and you will be able to be truly thankful for Salvation of God through the words and teachings of Jesus! Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Truth hurts~ This past Monday we had to put our old dog to sleep.  Previous to this sad event Charlie, our 12 year old German Shepherd/Malamute/Wolf had for a week basically stopped eating his normal amount, and was progressively less each day. So a week ago this Friday I took him to the vet, where after an abdominal exam the vet said that we needed to do x-rays and an ultra sound to confirm a tumor. The results were conclusive; Charlie had a large tumor near his spleen-a hemangiosarcoma. The vet told us that there was a surgery that she could perform to remove the tumor, and that we would not know for sure if it was a cancer until the lab results came back; but that given his age, and the fact that in 85% of male GDS's this type of tumor is cancer, the best option would be to put him to sleep. The vet said we needed to make the decision by the following Monday, due to the critical nature of the size of the mass, and that even though Charlie was not in pain this could change in a heartbeat if the spleen ruptured. This news was devastating to our family. On Saturday we made the hard decision. We called the vet and made and appointment to put Charlie to sleep the following Monday. We gave Charlie a delightful two days of 'bucket list' events, including taking him to George's German Market for Brats and Beer (which he loved), for a walk in his favorite park, and our children came over on Sunday and we celebrated his life by making him the center of attention, thoroughly loving him up. He died a happy and content dog, with no pain, with his family surrounding him. This truth hurt, but we did the right thing for Charlie! The truth hurts of salvation hurts everytime it goes counter to what you want to believe. When you discover the tumor of lies in your life you have a difficult choice, to die withi it, or cut the lies out and live eternally.