The Flight to Endor

I realize my title sounds like a scene from Star Wars. My readers who know their Old Testament well might recognize something else in the name. I will get to Star Wars eventually, but my inspiration for this piece is from the book of 1 Samuel. Samuel was the last in the line of judges who ruled Israel until God gave in to their whining and granted their wish for a king like everyone else. God advised Samuel not to take it personally because they had rejected Him not Samuel.

Enter Saul, Israel’s first human king. And my oh my, was he ever human. From his first appearance, or rather non-appearance, he proved to be anything but regal and certainly not godly. He hid from the crowd when Samuel came to anoint him, and his weakness and insecurity only became more evident as he took on the role of Israel’s king. The pivotal point in his short reign came when he became frightened while waiting for Samuel to bless his military efforts against the Philistines. Afraid his troops would abandon him before Samuel’s appointed arrival, Saul assumed Samuel’s priestly role and offered an illegitimate sacrifice. Before the ritual smoke cleared, Samuel arrived and rebuked Saul for his indiscretion. Because he disobeyed God and tried to write his own rules, the throne was taken from him and his descendants.

You might think Saul would have been chastened by his punishment, but he repeated his blunder almost immediately by disobeying God’s command to utterly destroy the Amalekites. Whether through greed or simple stupidity, Saul decided to keep some of the plunder from the defeated people, and he brought their king back to his camp alive. Again, Samuel arrives too late to stop Saul’s foolishness and confronts him. Saul tries to paint his disobedience as righteousness, pretending he was saving the spoils to offer them to God. Samuel is not fooled and delivers an even more devastating prediction of Saul’s demise.

At this point in the narrative, God instructs Samuel to anoint a replacement for Saul, none other than David, the shepherd-poet son of Jesse. The ceremony of anointing with oil by God’s prophet is intended to represent the spiritual anointing of the king by God. Saul had that anointing briefly, but at this point it was transferred to David. Saul on the other hand, in one of the most curious turns in the Old Testament, was visited by an evil spirit from God as a consequence of his disobedience. The rest of Saul’s reign is characterized by fits of rage and constant attempts to murder David. By contrast, David spends the next few years following God’s leading and respecting the chosen king, Saul, even though he is trying to kill him.

Now we come to Endor the city, not a planet in a galaxy far, far away. After Samuel died, Saul was desperate to know God’s will. He again broke a command of God and sought help from a medium, the witch of Endor. Things become curiouser and curiouser when Samuel actually does return from the grave to speak to Saul. The prophet’s message is not a happy one: “The Lord has done accordingly as He spoke through me; for the Lord has torn the kingdom out of your hand and given it to your neighbor, to David As you did not obey the Lord and did not execute His fierce wrath on Amalek, so the Lord has done this thing to you this day.”

This begins my Star Wars comparison. Saul lost his connection with the true Force, God, and sought help from the dark side. George Lucas was wrong to portray dark and light as equally powerful, but he was correct in his depiction of a cosmic battle between the forces of good and evil. Ever since Adam relinquished his regency of Earth to the Devil, humans have been caught in the crossfire of the heavenly battle. David astutely recognized who is the supreme force in the cosmic war, and he pledged his allegiance to God. Saul through his disobedience chose the other side.

We are given the same choice today and every day. Our options are both simple and difficult: simple because the only thing required of us is obedience; difficult because our human nature still rebels against the rule of God in our lives. If I were to translate Obi Wan’s advice it would be, “Use the Spirit, Luke.” The New Testament repeatedly tells us to walk in the Spirit, be led by the Spirit, pray in the Spirit, sing in the Spirit. Paul told the Ephesians that our real battle is in the spirit realm. The alternative to living in the Spirit is to live in the flesh, which doesn’t sound as ominous as Darth Vader or the Sith Lord, but the consequences of choosing the dark side are hellish – literally. The Apostle Paul warned the Romans that living in the flesh brings death and makes God our enemy. Living in the Spirit brings peace and avails us of the very power that raised Jesus from the dead.

Saul’s flight to Endor is repeated regularly by Christians who seek worldly wisdom instead of the wisdom that comes from above. James goes so far as to call worldly wisdom demonic. Pair that with Peter’s depiction of the Devil as a roaring lion seeking someone to devour and you have your Darth Vader. If we don’t set our minds on things above as Paul directed, we leave ourselves open for the enemy’s attack. Yoda was right to tell Luke that the Force is all around us; he was also right to tell him to choose wisely. Believers have an advantage Luke didn’t: the true Force, the Spirit of God lives in us. Turn from the dark world and access the force within you, then victory is assured. I know that is true – I’ve read the end of the Book: we win.

 

Related posts: Judge me by my size, do you?; Look in the Mirror; Friendship With the World

Happy Birthday to Me

On April 21, 1963, I met Jesus in the waters of baptism. Let me Clair-ify that. The church tradition I was raised in taught that a person did not get regenerated (aka saved) until the Holy Spirit did the job during the act of immersion into Christ. They did not teach that the water saved but that the water of baptism was the vehicle through which the Spirit saved. So, in my former way of thinking, I was saved when I got baptized.

I have since come to the realization that the Spirit does not always wait for a believer to “get wet” to perform the regeneration. The Bible makes it clear to me that repentance and confession causing one to place faith in Christ’s atoning sacrifice is sufficient unto salvation. In other words, I now believe that baptism is something that takes place after one has made a profession of faith. Baptism is an important, perhaps I would say necessary step of obedience, but I don’t believe failure to be baptized would keep a person from being saved. However, if someone refuses baptism after being told it is an important step of obedience, I would have to ask if that person has truly given his or her life to Christ. Why would one not obey a clear command of Scripture?

That said, I cannot give an exact date for when I became a Christian. I now believe that at some point prior to April 21, 1963, I understood my need for redemption and made a childlike submission to Christ. I know this because when I went forward on that fateful Sunday to be baptized, I already knew that Jesus was my Savior. The other thing that leads me to believe I had already been regenerated is that fact that I wanted to complete the steps my parents believed were required for salvation. I remember thinking that if I did not get baptized, I would not be following their prescription for salvation; I did not want to miss out on seeing them in Heaven one day. According to Paul, none of this would have been true for me had I not already been regenerated.

So, as I approach my sixtieth re-birthday, I am reminiscing about my life in Christ so far. I will say that I did not experience a dramatic conversion the way some people do. I was never a really bad boy, although I had my naughty moments. The worst thing I remember about my behavior is that I was a kleptomaniac. I realize that came from the sin of materialism (wanting, wanting, wanting things). I still battle materialism to a degree, although I haven’t stolen anything in decades. It wasn’t so much my coming to Christ that cured me as it was my father’s belt and my knowing I had failed him when he learned I had stolen from a classmate at school. My father’s words, “This hurts me more than it will hurt you,” made a life-long impression on me.

About ten years after I made a public profession of Jesus as my Savior, I learned that He was also supposed to be my Lord. This came about through the influence of two of my older sisters (I had four sisters). They became involved in the charismatic movement in a big way. They sent me tapes and took me to meetings when I visited them. I was skeptical of their radical claims concerning physical health and wealth (the prosperity gospel), and I remain so to this day. However, the thing that really struck me about my sisters’ faith was how seriously they took what the Bible has to say. They believed they were supposed to expect things in the Book to have an effect on our daily lives. Imagine that!

I had begun attending Bible college during my introduction to the charismatics, so I poured myself into study and prayer about its validity. I determined that their focus on miracles and material prosperity did not fit with the overall message of the Scripture. However, I did become convinced that the average Christian church was ignoring the power and provision of the Holy Spirit. (See Despising the Downpayment)  Along with my understanding of Jesus as Lord I began to practice the presence of the Holy Spirit as a guide and companion (the biblical term is paraclete). I was unsure what God wanted me to do with my life, so I fasted and prayed for guidance. On the second day of my fast, I heard a voice (it seemed real) saying, “You are a teacher.” That was reasonable since I had earned a teaching degree, but there were no job offers from the public schools.

It was at that time that I began my career as a Christian school teacher. Over the next twenty years I taught at several schools and went back to school myself and earned two master’s degrees with the intent of continuing to a doctorate. However, I became disenchanted with the way Christian education was being handled and suffered ministry burn-out. By that time, I had begun writing a Bible-based historical fiction novel, Wings of Mentridar, so I decided to become a long-haul trucker thinking in my downtime I could finish the book. I was planning a two-year sabbatical.

As it happened, I found I loved driving for a living, so my two-year break became twelve. I did finish the novel, but could not find a publisher, so I self-published. I continued writing and that became my ministry focus. I have since self-published several books, and my blog is approaching five hundred articles. My teaching is limited to Sunday school and Bible studies. When the economy caused my trucking business to collapse, I went back to teaching for my last few years before retirement. I ended my teaching career doing what I had always dreamed of: teaching teachers to teach English.

I have been “retired” for seven years now. I use the quotes on retired because during those years I worked part-time at Home Depot for three years, and I regularly do projects for people who sometimes pay me for the work. The park where we spend the winter in Arizona has seemingly selected me as the go-to handyman. We have several widows and divorcees, and I realized recently that I have helped most of them with one project or another. It seems that I have stumbled into fulfilling the biblical command to care for widows and orphans.

Near the end of his life, the Apostle Paul said, “I have fought the good fight, I have completed the race, I have kept the faith.” I have certainly fought – not always in a good fight. Sometimes I have fought against people who were trying to get something good through my thick skull; sometimes I have even fought against the Holy Spirit. As I finish my sixtieth year in Christ, I am asking myself if I have finished the race. I can also say with Paul, “I am hard pressed between the two options, having the desire to depart and to be with Christ, for this is very much better. But to stay on in the flesh is more necessary for your sake.” I have no death wish, but I do have an increasingly strong desire to be with Christ. However, as long as He has things for me to do here, I will stay in the race until I complete it. The one thing I can say is that through sixty years of mistakes, missteps, and misunderstandings I have kept the faith. I am looking forward to that glorious word, “Well done good and faithful servant….  Enter into the joy of your master!”

 

The Best Version of the Bible

I am often asked which Bible version I believe to be the best. As with most things having to do with Christianity, there is not a simple answer. Before recommending anything, I usually ask what purpose the reader has in mind. I believe devotional reading of the Bible and in-depth Bible study involve different approaches. The best study Bibles are sometimes awkward to read while a good devotional Bible may not provide the accuracy necessary for serious study.

When choosing a Bible for any purpose, the first thing to notice is what method of translation was used. There are four basic categories: word-for-word, meaning-for-meaning, thought-for-thought, and paraphrase. These categories fall into a scale of equivalence with the original languages from strictly equivalent to loosely related. The chart below shows where some of today’s popular versions fall on the equivalence scale. The versions on the far right would be the easiest to read and most like modern English. Those to the left may be more difficult to read, but they are closer to the original text and thus more suitable for in-depth study.

The strictest translations try to replace each word in the original text with a corresponding word in the target language. This can present problems since the target language may not have a word that matches the original precisely. A perfect demonstration of this is found in the Amplified Bible published by the Lockman Foundation. Their stated goal in Bible translation is four-fold: 1. These publications shall be true to the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. 2. They shall be grammatically correct. 3. They shall be understandable. 4. They shall give the Lord Jesus Christ His proper place. The Amplified Bible provides a best-choice word (word-for-word) which is followed in many cases by a list of English synonyms that may also carry some of the original meaning. Lockman’s New American Standard Bible (NASB) is a good example of a best-choice word-for-word translation. Its major drawback is the translators’ attempt to keep the original grammatical structure wherever possible; this leads to awkward English syntax in some passages.

I believe God inspired the Scripture in a word-for-word format; by this I mean that the words written by the original authors were the exact words God wanted to be written. I do not believe God used a slavish robotic method; rather I think He orchestrated the lives and thinking of every Bible author so that the words they chose were the words God intended. That is my version of sovereign inspiration. For this reason, if I am going to study the Bible closely, I want to get as close to the original text as possible. Because I have studied the koine Greek in which the New Testament was written, I can go behind the translators and make my own decisions as to the meaning of the text. There are several good resources available today that make it possible for a serious Bible student to explore the Greek without having studied the language. The same is true for biblical Hebrew, the language of the Old Testament (of which I am not a scholar). Using this approach is my recommendation for the most rewarding in-depth study.

All that said, I have to admit that there is another “version” of the Bible that is superior to all others. I am referring to that personal version that every believer has available through the indwelling Holy Spirit. Jesus told His disciples, “The Spirit is the one who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.” As I said in my last post, the life Jesus refers to is that special quality of life that comes only through union with Christ. His words take on special, life-giving meaning of infinite value when they are empowered by the Holy Spirit. If we read them without the light of the Spirit, they are of the flesh which “profits nothing.”

This tracks perfectly with what Paul told the Corinthians. He said that the natural man, the soulish man, the man counting on the flesh cannot grasp the things of God because they are spiritually discerned. This explains why some people can read the Bible for a lifetime and never be converted. It also reveals why so much that masquerades as church programming has no lasting value. This too is mentioned by Paul when he calls the actions of the carnal Corinthians wood, hay, and stubble as opposed to gold, silver, and precious stones. Only that which is done in the spirit has eternal value. This was put poetically by C.T Studd years ago: “Only one life, ’twill soon be past / Only what’s done for Christ will last.”

I am often asked what version I read. My first Bible was the American Standard Version, a 1911 translation that was almost as arcane as the KJV. I switched to the New American Standard When it came out in the 1960’s, which I read for years before discovering the New King James. Both were very suitable for study and devotional reading. When the ESV was introduced, I found it to be both accurate and easy to read. A few years ago, I began using a Bible study program on my computer called Logos produced by Faithlife. They sponsored a new digital translation called the Lexham English Bible which I have been using for study ever since. For the last several years, I have read through the Bible every year, choosing a different translation each year. I have found that a number of the newer versions are true to the original text and accessible to the average reader.

Bible study is an essential discipline of proper Christian living. Choosing the right Bible is a matter of personal preference given the parameters I mentioned above. The most important factor in Bible reading is not the version, it is the attitude. Any version can be quickened by the Holy Spirit; the ink and paper are only a vehicle for the Spirit words on the page. The Bible is a supernatural book. Reading the Bible without seeking the Holy Spirit’s help is a waste of precious time. Not reading the Bible at all is a waste of life.