Spirit of Truth/The Bible on Trial

Masks~ One of the things that tells us that life is no longer the same is the fact that with the Covid-19 situation comes the idea that to be safe when we go into publc spaces wes need to wear a mask. A few weeks ago the CDC issued a directive that anyone working in an essential business, and everyone that goes to and essential business MUST wear a mask in order to 'flatten the curve'. This is so that the number of people that get gravely ill from the virus will not overwhelm the hospital systems to the extent that there would not be enough beds, respirtators, and PPE to support their care. Well, we did flatten the curve to such an extent that, with a few exceptions, no one that actually died from Covid-19 did so without having recieved adequate care. And now it has come out from both the head of the CDC and the Surgeon General that healthy adults that are not sick with any virus or infection should not wear masks because doing so can actually harm lung function.  So should we wear a mask in public in order to not make other people uncomfortable, or not wear a mask so we as individuals can stay healthy. A conundrum for sure. The other thing masks do is hide faces from view. Interestingly, the number of shoplifting incidents at the hardware store where I work has risen precipitously, simply because theives feel safe taking things without paying because they KNOW they can get away with it, and there is nothing the store can do to stop them. There is a mask that is used by Christians to try to steal salvation from God. That mask is called "Salvation by Grace through Faith". It causes a person to be able to 'believe a lie as if it is the truth, without accountability'! What these 'believers' don't realize is that God can see through their masks, and see the unforgiven sin these people still carry. God will hold them accountable unless they remove the mask.

"Next"~ At one point in my life I was in marketing/sales of life insurance. As with all jobs, and even though I ended up NOT making this my lifetime career, the experience was valuable in several ways. One way that it was valuable was that I learned that I was not cut our to be in such a 'cut-throat' business. Another was that I learned that I could actually succeed in something I in which I had no natural interest, as I was rather good at it. But the most important thing I learned in the approximately 4 years I spent doing life/health insurance (including getting my license, and getting a section 6 and 66 investments license) was that the most important thing anyone in direct personal sales can learn is the word "Next". Most everyone at some point in their lives needs life insurance, just as everyone needs a car. And just as with car sales, insurance sales comes with a ubiquitous stigma that is attached to the person doing it. The success rate is very low for both of these endeavors, which necessitates a thick skin, and the ability to accept rejection on a massive scale. The more rejection, the more success. This is where the word "Next" come in. As soon as you recieve a rejection you must say to yourself - "Next", and search for another client. 'Truth' is also a commodity that everone needs, but not everyone is ready to confront head on when you make your 'approach'. Being rejected in the desemination of Truth is not a stigma, it is simply a fact of life. As a Bondservant of Jesus, it IS your job to present the truth of Salvation to everyone that  expresses an interest. It is NOT your job to try to force them to hear what you say, that is the job of the Holy Spirit. If they recoil when you preseht the truth your job is to let them go, trust the Holy Spirit will lead them to it, and say to yourself, Next!

Truth in the Age of Corona Virus~ All Truth is valid information, but all information is not true! And this has been proven time and again in the dissemination of information coming out of the mouths of those that are supposed to know the truth about Covid-19 and how to deal with the pandemic. Conflicting information is the order of the day, and it is very difficult for a layman to know what is true and what isn't, even though lives depend on this information. Various 'experts' have differing 'takes' on the What, Where, How and Why of dealing with things like face masks, (anti-) social distancing, mitigation, vaccines, respirators, treatments, quarantines, opening the economy, and lots of other information that we need to know to define our response, Where do we find truth in the age of the Corona Virus? No one to whom I have spoken is saying that Truth in this regard does not matter; NO ONE! As important as the truth of this situation is to define, this 'truth' is only applicable to our temporal and finite form in our time in the here and now. After all (to put it bluntly) we all want to live a happy, productive and LONG life here on earth, but if we live long enough we will all die one day. No one gets out of this earthly life alive.  If the Truth about the here and now is important,  then what about Eternal Truth? We most often don't think about the importance of this truth as often as we do the more worrisome truth of our daily lives. Yet eternity is a much longer time frame (should time even matter) than 'now', and deserves at least a passing consideration, yet we get caught up in daily life so thoroughly that it most often 'slips our minds'. God knows what we need to live both here, and there. "But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you." Matt. 6:28

Be Well, Stay Safe~ There is a greeting for our current Covid-19 world situation that reflects the mind set of the population, it is "Stay Safe"! I hear it at the hardware store where I work part time, i hear it from the cashier at Stater's Market as I leave with my groceries, or when I am at George's German Market buying some great German coffee, or a cabinosi. It has become a ubiquitous farewell that says that we care about each other, and want the other person to 'live through it'! I have even gone so far as to add the phrase "Be Well" in front of "Be Safe", which accounts for my concern for their mental and emotional well being, as well as their physical being. But I have been thinking about the ramifications of what "Be Well, Be Safe" actually implies, and I have decided to just say "Be Well" and no longer say "Be Safe". That is because the expression of "Be Safe" means that safety of our physical being takes precedence over everything else in our lives, including our hard won freedoms that are innumerated in the Constitution and Bill of Rights of the USA.  It is becoming more clear by the day that the people of the United States (and of the world) are tired of their rights being abrogated simply to satisfy some 'guidelines' that may or may not be working. Safety comes at a deep cost, and that cost is often more expensive than it is worth. Salvation also comes with a deep cost. Christians believe that 'cost' has already been paid by Jesus on the cross for their personal sins. Christians feel 'safe' in this knowledge, but that safety is an illusion. Gaining safety through 'salvation by grace' comes the loss of the freedom of Salvation that Jesus taught His own disciples. To gain salvation you must learn and practice obedience to the Covenant of the Kingdom.

Inconvenience~ The most annoying issue involving COVID-19 and my personal perspective is the inconvenience generated by all of the protocols that have been issued by the various levels of civil governments, and the petit-demagoguery of certain Governors and Mayors that are excersizing an inordinate over reach of power by taking political advantage of the situation. Our rights as guaranteed by the Constitution and Bill of Rights have been supplanted by the fear of an illness that has been portrayed in the media as 'evil', and if we don't defeat it it will kill us all. This, even though when viewed from a purely statisical and medical viewpoint is no worse, or even less deadly for the vast majority of the population than the yearly flu. No matter, we are now in a vast pandemic the likes of which have not been seen since the Dark Ages (according to the MSM), and has shut down the economies of the world, putting millions of people out of work, and destroying countless lives and fortunes.  And yes, I do take this personally. I resent the intrusion into my private life by a system that allows this to happen, simply because those 'in the know' don't want to allow the truth of how all of this works to be broadcast to the masses. If they did allow the truth to come out panic would subside, and people would be able to get on with their lives, unabated by fear of the unknown. In the same way our rights under the Covenant/Constitution of the Kingdom of Heaven have been supplanted by the lies of the Prince of this World, causing Christians to panic when they are told that they must DO something as individuals in order to guarantee their salvation under that Covenant. This is way too inconvenient for them to believe, preferring the idea of Grace to the idea of accountability for their actions. Truth IS inconvenient, and is not popular.

Paranoid~ "Just because people THINK you are paranoid does NOT mean that someone is NOT out to get you." This statement is a 'truism'. And in today's Covid-19 climate this statement applies to many people, more often than not. What is true and what is not is lost in the clutter of conflicting 'facts' about the WHAT, WHERE, WHY AND HOW of the pandemic. People are posting all sorts of weirdness on Facebook about how much of what the governments of the world are saying is actually true, and how we should react to to, adjust to, and deal with the virus in our daily lives. Is all of this real, or is it a HOAX? And WHY and for what purpose would people in power deliberately give out false information to people that just want to live and be well? Many people can't believe that anyone, or any country, would be so callous and heartless as to perpetrate a wide spread virus on the world in order to take down an entire economy and infrastructure as we have in the modern world in such a way as to make fear the order of the day. The idea of a Grand Hoax is that the identity of it is so implausable as to be absurd, but the underlying facts ARE true.  And if you broach the idea of this grand hoax in public YOU are deemed to be paranoid, and are then written off as a nutcase. This is true in the world of religion as well. Who would possibly believe that one of the worlds great religions, Christianity, was founded on a Grand Hoax by the respected 'apostle' Paul, and was set up in such a subtle way by Satan as to mute and disrupt the flow of information about how salvation really functions, that Jesus brought to earth from His Father, making that information seem harsh and heartless, and something a loving God would never do? Pointing out this hoax makes a person a paranoid fool in the eyes of the sincere believer.

Lizards~ About a year ago my wife and I were adopted by a neighbor cat named Sparky. We already had three cats and two dogs, and frankly didn't need another feline mouth to feed. But this was immaterial to this absolutely cute and adorable cat. A modification of Shakespeare's immortal words in the play Julius Caesar, "She came, She saw, She conquered." So now she is a member in good standing (excluding our black and white cat Boo) of our family, and has even been accepted by Maggie our Min-Pin. There were, however a few things we did not know about Sparky until she took up permanent residence in our household, the most annoying of which (according to my lovely and gracious wife) is that she loves to hunt for lizards in our yard, and then bring them in through the cat door that allows entry into Becky's bathroom, and hence into the house. So far they have nearly always been alive when this happens, and this REALLY upsets Becky, especially if I am at work and not able to capture the creature and deposit it back outside. We can't be mad at Sparky, because she is only doing what 'comes naturally'. Cats are hunters by nature and are programmed by that nature to share their 'kills' with their 'family'. This is always inconvenient when it involves either dead or (especially) live prey. In a similar way to cats humans are also programmed by their natures and time-modified genetics toward sinning. Yet unlike animals we humans have the ability to change our natures and the genetic tendencies of our intellects to be able to "practice truth in order to come to the Light" (John 3:19-21) so that we may have eternal life. To DO this we MUST know what is the truth. It is crucial to have a standard of Truth that is reliable and Singular and Absolute. This Truth is found in the Words of Jesus that He gave to His disciples.

Freedom or Safety~ "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety". - Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, "If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free." (John 8:31-32) The message is simple, yet profound in both civil and spiritual life: becoming and staying free always comes at a cost. The world is seeing this play out right before our eyes every day. More and more freedom is being taken away from the people of America and the world because our governments are saying that by doing this we will be more safe from the COVID-19 pandemic. Nearly every aspect of our lives are being controlled by 'executive orders', that have no strength of actual law behind them, and in fact abrogate existing laws, and even our (USA) Constitution. We are told that this is "for our own good". In the USA 26 million people have been put out of work because keeping the community 'safe' from this virus is more important than keeping out economy up and running. And herein lays the 'law of unintended consequenses'; that in order to keep safe from one thing we are told we must give up another. And now these out-of-workers must begin to rely on the government for their livelyhoods. Freedom is gone and replaced by safety. Jesus said that if we wish to know truth we must first become His disciples. But in doing this we will most certainly put ourselves in great physical and spiritual jeopardy. Satan HATES truth, and when we decide FOR truth Satan will come down on us 'like a ton of bricks', and try to prevent us from finding it. Satan knows that if we find the truth that Jesus brought from the Father then he will die forever. Truth is not safe, but it is LIFE!

Join Spirit of Truth Ministry today at 10AM PT for our flagship program The Bible On Trial. Rick, Dennis, Don and Larry will be continuing to discuss issues involving a new concept of the prophecy of the end of time, and also how the 'apostle' Paul has changed the Gospel of the Kingdom as taught by Jesus to His own eyewitness disicples, into his private 'gospel of God'. This program tests what is said by Paul and others in the New Testament with the very words of God in the Old Testament, and the words of Jesus in the New Testament, to see whether there are conflicts. This is a fascinating study, and you will be glad you joined the discussion.

Thy Will Be Done~ Years ago I had a massive heart attack. I was 58 years old, and the day before my heart attack I was at the gym on the Stair Master going like gang-busters. I did not know that at any moment I could have had a heart attack right then and died on the spot. One of the most poigniant memories i have of that day was that whan I was laying on my lawn with an elephant sitting on my chest, with my head on my daughter's lap, waiting for the ambulance to arrive, and listening to her voice telling me to not close my eyes, while she was on the cel-phone with the 911 dispatcher. It was a LONG 10 minute wait for fire/rescue to show up. In the midst of the pain, and all that was going on around me I remember saying only one very short prayer; Father, thy will be done! That was it. At that moment I was too busy listening and consentrating on the voice of my daughter, then listening to the voices of the emergency personel as they prepared my for transport, to go into a lengthy discourse with God as to why He should save my life. I didn't even think about trying to 'reason' with God as to my need to stay alive in order to see my daughter be graduated from high school, or my son from University. I didn't go into why my wife needed me to mow the lawn and cook dinner, or how much my friends would miss me. Nope! I was busy trying not to die, and all I had time for was one short, heartfelt prayer. And that was enough. As we have all now been made aware with this COVID-19 issue life can turn from being 'normal' into something that we have never had to deal with before. When we are not in our comfort zones, and in a world we don't recognize and don't want anything to do with. we need to already prepared in the truth, because then all we will have to fall back on is the knowledge, understanding and wisdon where we can  just say, "Thy will be done".