evil – Auriesville Tubthumper

It Grieved Him at His Heart, Part 3

We have now come to the key chapter of Genesis that bears the burden of the subject at hand which is God being grieved at his heart for creating the wicked and degenerate people on the land. We are talking about mostly every human alive in that time with a few exceptions. I believe we are close to that again now. The Lord will never use a flood to destroy the earth again, next time it is fire.

I must note for clarity that the earth populated very fast with descendants of Adam and Eve. As you read the genealogy and see the lines of families produced from Adam and Eve you might have a major question. Why don’t we hear about these family lines and people? When reading Genesis there is evidence that enough offspring were generated from some key people to build entire cities. The human race was exploding! One thing to keep in mind is that the Lord allowed men to live long, long lives and procreate the world. A man can make a lot of babies in 1,000 years. The population at the time of the flood was great as it is now. The population was high.

For some examples, we have just learned of Enoch in the last post. Enoch’s father Jared lived 962 years. He fathered Enoch at the age of 162 and the Bible says he went on and begat sons and daughters for another 800 years. Enoch was taken up by God at age 365 but beforehand he begat sons and daughters one of which was Methuselah. Methuselah lived 969 years and begat sons and daughters. An important fact is that Methuselah was the father of Lamech who was the father of Noah. Lamech lived 777 years and again this man fathered many sons and daughters.

The point I need to make here is the Bible will focus on the line that leads to the Messiah, Jesus Christ. All other lines are unimportant to the story. Pay attention to Noah and his 3 sons he had at around 500 years of age. Shem, Ham and Japheth. If you are reading this you are a descendent of Noah and one of his three sons.

We are now in Chapter 6 of Genesis and up to Chapter 9 we will have a drastic change in the way God treats mankind. He allowed these men to live over 900 years but during that time they became too wicked. Mankind had broken every single command the Lord gave except the command to procreate the world. They kept that command well. God will severely limit how many years a man can live going forward. I won’t address the Sons of God and daughters of men here because there is a special post on that subject you can go to. Please do … you can click the link at bottom of this page. In short there was an outpouring of Satanic activity. One thing I will mention about the Sons of God and Daughters of men is that mixed marriages occurred that went against the will of God. Believers were yoked with unbelievers. All of humanity was depraved and wickedness in both word and deed was universal and unparalleled. We have a full account of the worlds degeneracy, it’s apostacy from God and the rebellion against Him. Back in Chapter one and verse 28 mankind had a blessing. (Be fruitful and multiply.) What has happened is man’s corruption abused and perverted the blessing to the point of a curse and the sin that God forgave became more exceedingly sinful. It says in Proverbs 29:16, “When the wicked are multiplied, transgression increaseth.” The more sinners there are the more sin increases and the multitude of offenders emboldens men.

And that brings us to the key verse which is verse six of chapter six. “And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.” (Genesis 6:5-8)

And then… woe to mankind… All humans and life except Noah and his family and what they were commanded to save in the Ark.

“For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth.” (Genesis 7:4)

“Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered. And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man: All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died. And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark. And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days.” (Genesis 7:20-24)

And so, at one time God saw that all was good, but now there was a change, a repentance, because it grieved God at his heart. He no longer saw it as good. Can you feel his grief? How terrible a situation where the evil became so bad that God had to wipe all life from the face of the earth and change the lifespan of man along with other things. It grieved him at His heart. Oh my…

Noah lived to age 950. And then we have a period called “The confusion of all things”, and the “Origin of Nations.”

Men unified to honor themselves and all spoke the same language. They built a huge city to keep together which was a breaking of God’s command to fill the earth. God separated them for their disobedience. He punished this evil attempt and separated mankind into small ethnic groups by confusing their universal language into many different dialects.

So now we have the origin of nations. The nations were all formed from the descendants of Noah’s three sons.

The first nation was the descendants of Japheth and would be Gomer (Germany), Magog, Tubal, and Mechech (Russia), Madai (Persia), Javan (Greece), Tiras (Italy), Togarmah (Armenia), Tarshish (Spain) and Kittim (Cyprus). Can you identify a land you are from?

The second nation was from the descendants of Ham and would be Cush (Ethiopia), Mizraim (Egypt), Phut (Africa), Canaan (the Canaanites of Palestine), Nimrod (Babylon and Assyria), Sidon (Phoenicia), Heth (Hittites), Jebus (the Jebusites, the occupants of Jerusalem before King David’s reign), Philistim (the Philistines) and Sin (Possibly the Asian people of China, Japan, India, etc.).

The last nation was made from the descendants of Shem and were through the line of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob: the nation of Israel. And through the Abraham, Ishmael and Esau: the Arabic countries of the Middle East.

I will end with a writing from the Anthropologist Arthur Custance, “And thus we conclude that from the family of Noah have sprung all the peoples of the world, prehistoric and historic. The events described in Genesis 6 to 10 and particularly the prophetic statements of Noah himself in Genesis 9:25-28 with respect to the future of his three sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, together combine to provide us with the most reasonable account of the early history of mankind, a history which , rightly understood, does not at all require us to believe that modern man began with the stature of an ape and only reached a civilized state after a long, long, evolutionary history, but made a fresh start as a single family who carried with them into an unpeopled earth the accumulated heritage of the pre-flood world.”

And so there you have it. So many times, God said it was good and it was, until the will of man and sin entered the picture. And it got so bad that God repented and it grieved Him at his heart. And then His wrath prevailed with the culmination of the great flood and the making of the nations of the future. All in the master plan. When I read this section it just tugs at my heart as a father. Can you imagine the huge family you have created becoming so evil you had to kill them all? Well, we cannot think like God thinks because we are human and he is the Almighty. I know what the death of a dream is and I know the love a father has for his children. All we can do is think like humans so it tugs at my heart. I hope you received something from these posts.

Click here to visit the Sons of God and Daughters of Men post.

God bless you,

The Tubthumper

It Grieved Him at His Heart, Part 1

“And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart”. (Genesis 6:6)

I chose the title for this because of the incredible reverse of sentiment from the Lord in only six chapters of the first book of the Bible. As the book begins we see God creating the world. It is a wonderful display of His awesome power and His purpose. He creates man and woman made in His image. Before long though, sin enters the picture and what was once bathed in innocence becomes shattered by the Fall. [The Fall was the willful disobedience of Adam and Eve.] They broke the fellowship with God and evil was unleashed causing the destruction to begin. One right after the other events began happening. We had Adam and Eve getting expelled from the garden of Eden, next we saw their first son become a murderer, evil bred still more evil and the world He created became so vile that God spoke those words I began with. God started out saying, “It was good”, He said it repeatedly but ended by saying, “I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.” (Genesis 6:7)

I hope you read and study the Holy Bible. It provides a fantastic spiritual history for you.

Before we get into the heart of things let us start with some background information about Genesis. There are 50 chapters in the book of Genesis comprised of 1,533 verses holding 38,267 words. The key word for the entire book is “Beginnings”. A key verse for the topic I am addressing is Genesis 1:27, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” The topic I am covering with this title is the first half of the book, “the four great events”. Another key verse is Genesis 3:15, “And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.” Please note that Christ is that seed of woman.

Genesis was written by Moses 1450 – 1410 B.C. and Moses was born at least three centuries after the events in Genesis ended. In actuality, the book was written by God but breathed through Moses. We will be dealing with what is called, “The Fertile Crescent”, in chapters 1-11 which spanned more than 2,000 years and 1500 miles. We will learn why God chose Israel to be His redemptive people by the time we end chapter 11. We will only be focusing on the first 11 of 50 chapters, therefore how God chose Israel will be covered with chapters 12 to 50. In this topic, we will be covering the four great events which are: Creation– God is the sovereign Creator of matter, energy, space and time. Man is the pinnacle of the creation. The Fall– Creation is followed by corruption. Man gets separated from God then gets separated from man. Despite the curse of the Fall, God promised hope of redemption through the seed of the woman (Chapter 3, verse 15). The Flood– As man multiplied, sin multiplied until God had enough and was compelled to destroy humanity with exception of Noah and his family. The Nations– the unity of the human race, we are all children of Adam through Noah. Because of the rebellion at the tower of Babel, God fragments the original culture and language of post flood and scatters people over the face of the earth. In a future segment, I will cover the second half which is, “The Four Great People”.

Ok, on to the beginning. As I was reading the book of Genesis I connected with several things I hadn’t before. The presence of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, reproduction of its own kind, the unknown population and the amount of grief the Lord experienced. Each time you study a part of the Bible the Lord will allow you some more meat to digest. So He opened my eyes on these.

I won’t go verse by verse through the first seven days of creation because you can read that for yourself. I will note however that in verse 4 of the first chapter God said the first, “it was good”. In verse 10 when the waters were separate from the land called earth he said the second, “it was good”. I want to mention that God made the stars to light the earth at night and he separated the light from darkness because we were meant to be in the light. Good goes to light and evil goes to darkness. See verse 16. I would also like to point out from verse 11 that He made the grasses and the herbs and the plants and fruit, “Whose seed is in itself.” In other words, it will always be the same. You can’t see wheat growing into a corn stalk or rice becoming apples because it is whose seed is in itself. How awesome is that. In verse 12 He said, “it is good” once again and again in verse 18 He said it. Then in verse 21 we see that God saw that it was good. God then made man and women in His own image. He formed Adam form the dust of the ground. No rain had occurred yet, nor had the ground been tilled.

Before we get too far into chapter 2 of Genesis I have a question for you. Have you ever thought about the fact that Jesus was there during the creation? That is an incredible thing to get our arms around as human beings. He was there. He always was, even at the beginning we can see the mystery of Jesus Christ. The very first verse speaks of the plurality in the Godhead. It is indicating the Trinity. God is the Hebrew word Elohim. El is a singular term for God and the im ending makes it plural so we have, “In the beginning Gods…” There are other signs and types throughout Genesis which I will visit later, but for now we can already see Jesus the Christ at work in the creation. In Colossians 1:16 it claims it was by Him (Jesus) that all things were created. In 1 Corinthians 8:6 it says all things came from God, but they came through Jesus Christ. Hebrews 1:2, 10-12 says that through Jesus the universe was made and Psalm 102:24-27 refers to Elohim as the One who’s hands made the universe. We must understand that Jesus was speaking the truth when He said He was one with the Father. Let us look at Genesis 1:26, Who is the us? It’s the Father, the son and the Holy Ghost. Jesus was there and was an instrument of the creation. In Genesis 3:8 who walked with Adam and Eve in the Garden? God the father is a spirit. (John 4:24) Only Jesus Christ takes on a form. (Hebrews 10:5) We will re-visit this later with the introduction of Melchizedek but there already is plenty of evidence Jesus Christ was there before the world was ever created and is still with us today. The same today as yesterday. Amen! When I think of this I can only say wow! And remain totally amazed and in awe.

Next time I will address the Fall in Chapter 2 and the evil overcoming mankind before the flood that brought that grieving to the Lord. For now, please read Genesis and be encouraged by it. The evil and darkness that is in the world can seem bleak but God has a plan. We have hope. You are in His plan and salvation is available.

To jump to part 2 click here.

God bless you,

The Tubthumper

The Noble Savage

“Do impulses toward sadistic cruelty lurk in the depths of every human psyche?”- Anthony Storr

“Man with all his noble qualities still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lovely origin.”- Charles Darwin

The Creational Male is the first of the six stages of manhood. We are definitely not saints because for every heavenly thought we have there is the downward pull of our devilish and sinful flesh. We could have the most noble desires and within us is seated the unexpected savagery of man. Margaret Mead said, “We as men (and all of humankind) are noble savages“

This first stage on the masculine journey is the only stage that also includes the females 0f the world. Every other stage is totally exclusive to males. The use of the word Adam is uniquely creational and we are creational kind of guys. We were not created to be alone or to benefit ourselves and we owe something back to our creator. It is written that man does not live on bread alone. (Deuteronomy 8:3) We are the Lord’s earthly representatives. We should have a relationship with the living God and we should also have a benevolent relationship with the earth and our fellowmen. (Which includes women.) “O Lord, I know that the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.” – Jeremiah 10:23 Genesis 1:28 tell us of our duty regarding wisdom, care and stewardship of God’s creation. We have accountability. We are to include justice, kindness, and humility before God. This was given to Adam. If we men try to run away from our Creator and try to run from our responsibilities we are really running from ourselves and running from what it means to be manly. All men have the holy spirit following us around. When we realize what it is that we are rejecting and running from and know that it is the creator and the character of Christ we fall down prostrate and see the Creator that we were created for. This is called repentance, it’s in the Bible and repentance is a manly thing. If we don’t accept this we will never be the men we should be.

Turning again to the word Adam, we find that we are to have a certain relationship with women, our feminine counterparts. “ And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him. And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.” (Genesis 2:18-25) There is much more to this than the thought of opposites attract because the Lord created men and women as opposites. What a mystical and magical thing there is with this relationship. It’s as if God certainly had a sense of humor. If you are married you know exactly what I mean. And as a man, when I get out of the shower in the morning and look in the mirror at the equipment that was made on me I can tell I was created to go with another.

Please remember your worth, men. Because we are creational we have a dignity and we have a value. Our worth does not come from our performance or what we achieve but rather it comes from our being, from our birth. We have incredible value just because we are, because we were made, not because of what we accomplish. It should be encouraging to know you have value and the value is for no other reason than you are you. When we get disgraced and our dignity gets dinged which is really called pride in our society, it just tells us who we are and what we are, Creational Males.

Well, that original high esteem and dignity we were made with by God didn’t last too long. Probably if Adam had not sinned we would have been immortal. Young men always deny the sense of mortality that us older men begin to feel and realize. It’s that foreboding sense of mortality and the deterioration of the human body that God said would be limited because of the curse. We thought we would live forever and not have a heart attack, lose the ability to do things on our own, or literally lose our minds. When you pass a cemetery just know that people are just dying to get in there. I am amused when people are talking about the end while getting legal affairs in order and they say, “If anything happens to me”. Hey brother, I’m here to tell you, “something will definitely happen to you, you will die.” Every one of us will die and turn back to dust. (Numbers 16:29 and Psalm 90:3) We are dependent. Yes we are. My very breath is in my creators hands. (Ecclesiastes 12:6-7) I sleep trusting Him to keep me breathing during my sleep. The very sleep is His gift. (Psalm 127: 2)

Lastly we should address this noble savagery. “This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.” (Galatians 5:16) Whether male or female we humans always have the battle raging between flesh and spirit. The intent of the heart in men and women (all humans) is evil from youth. “And the Lord smelled a sweet savour; and the Lord said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake; for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done.” (Genesis 8:21) It is very hard to explain how in “civilized countries” we have the surprising level of violence, greed, human degradation and depravity we see. Underneath our noble presence and our refined culture lurks a sea of horrific evil. We may appear to be saints but underneath is a savage. How is this? Why is this? Should we be surprised by the savagery of our souls?

We are made in God’s image, yes we are. We posses immense capability for good. However, because we are creational beings we also have a freedom of choice that allows us to be drawn to unholy paths and become the most evil of creatures. Until we realize the evil we are capable of it is difficult to believe the presence of Christ means so much. It’s sobering to know what it is we are saved from. For folks to think the world is made up of just good or bad people is a naive. To say we are the good guys is crazy, We need to remember what is written in Ecclesiastes: “We have vanity, we have evil, and we even have insanity in our hearts.”

In the end we die and our physical bodies go back to dust where they came from. Our soul does to either Heaven or Hell. And yes there is a Hell. See my post called Hell is Real. So I’ll end this one with the fact that decay always wins. (Psalm 49:10-12) “For he seeth that wise men die, likewise the fool and the brutish person perish, and leave their wealth to others. Their inward thought is, that their houses shall continue for ever, and their dwelling places to all generations; they call their lands after their own names. Nevertheless man being in honour abideth not: he is like the beasts that perish.”

Credit goes to The Masculine Journey by Robert Hicks.

Come back for stage two which is Zakar: The Phallic Male. Click here to jump to stage two.

Yours truly,

The Tubthumper

Why? Evil and Sin, Why?

The bombers at the Boston Marathon got me thinking about something I read recently about evil and the universality of sin. It is indisputable that all are sinners and it has been estimated that some 40 billion human beings have lived (or are living) on this earth since God created Adam, the first human. It would not be unreasonable to suggest that perhaps one third of these 40 billion people lost their lives at the hand of another human being. So then, hundreds of millions of living flesh and blood creatures (people) have been stabbed, shot, stoned, strangled, gassed, bombed, burned, buried alive, hung, drowned and yes, blown up by other living flesh and blood creatures. (people) Each person has been given a sin-gauge at birth which is called a conscience. Unfortunately some gauges only have faulty operation and the voice of conscience is defiled. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9) The exceeding wickedness of sin is unfathomable. We can expect more to continue because the world has rejected the preventive actions of the Word of God, the Son of God and the Spirit of God. Gird your loin’s people for the battle is raging on.

So why has God allowed sin and evil? Couldn’t he have stopped it?

Simply put it is because God created man with a free will. When he created Adam and then Eve he created them with a high reasoning capacity and the ability to make choices. It was obviously the choice of God not to create humans as robotic and controlled. He wanted to give the humans he created in his own image some real freedom. He offered Adam and Eve a multitude of choices among lots of perfect and good things but he also offered them the choice of an evil thing.

God did not create sin or evil, however he did create the potential for sin by creating the tree of good and evil. He declared that tree off limits and it was the choice of Adam to go against his creator that has allowed sin to permeate the world. The day that Adam made that choice he made it for all of mankind. Sin was immediately imputed to the human race, you and I and all the rest of humanity. God had the ability to create a world where there was no sin and no human suffering. He chose not to restrict our freedom. God created both angels and men as intelligent creatures possessing moral natures that could determine and choose between right and wrong. What if God had stopped Lucifer (Satan), and Adam one second before they sinned. If that happened He would have, in effect, have violated their moral natures and reduce them to mere walking robots. That is how I see it. There is another suggestion some scholars present.

Actually he did create everything perfect and without evil. It says in the beginning of Genesis that all of His creation was good. In verse 6 it says that “God saw all that He had made, and it was very good.” Then something terrible happened. An extremely damaging thing happened to all of creation at that first sin. The Bible says in Romans 8:22 that “… all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.” Adam and eve wanted space and control and they got it. Along with it came the sin, death and evil that permeated the world.

The question many ask is, “why did God let anything like that happen?” After all, He is God!

God could have prevented sin but he chose not to. He did it for the same reason that we all move ahead to have children. He did it out of love. It was likely a desire to have a relationship with a being created in His image, much like we want to have a relationship with our children in our own image. (But now, who can know the mind of God? No one can.) God made the choice to bring Adam and Eve into the world with the risk of choice and we choose to bring children in the world when they have choice. And our children often make choices that pain our hearts in unimaginable ways. Love is always the most costly of any actions that anyone can take.

God created the potential for sin because it was the only way he could create humans with the potential to love and the potential to produce goodness. He had to offer the bad with the good. Or the good with the bad, if you will. But it was not God that made sin a reality. It was man. Satan introduced sin into the universe but it was man that introduced it to our world.

There is one other suggestion that some scholars give for the allowance of sin. That God allowed man to sin so that he might display His awesome grace. Before Adam was created God was already exhibiting his omnipresence (in being everywhere at once), his omnipotence (in setting the galaxies into motion), and his omniscience (in creating angels). However, there was one attribute that was closer to his heart than any other. It was his grace. Where there is no sin there is no need of grace. So that is why some think it was allowed. As Paul wrote, “But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound” (Romans 5:20b).

I don’t think I can accept that one because of the price. My goodness… take a look what God had to do to correct the situation. He had to give His only begotten son to pay the price and to free us from eternal punishment due to what was started by Adam. Love is always the most costly of any actions that anyone can take.

Have a Godly day,

“The Tubthumper”

Your Worst Enemy, Part 2

Part 2… Click here to start at beginning.

People are unaware and ignorant to his devices while this dirty fighting foe uses guerrilla warfare and is on our path every moment pursuing us. He is stalking every part of our households, he is walking the streets of our towns, he is present in many of our churches, he is in our courts and governments, he is seducing and deceiving, ruining body and soul of mankind, men, women and children, he is breaking up our families and sowing seeds of hatred, strife, evil and murder. We see Satan’s damages all around us and yet we remain passive and almost regard them as normal. The power to beat it is close at hand if we would just connect with it.

Satan continually seeks to overcome God’s people by working to break down the barriers that separate us from the world. “In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.” (2 Corinthians 4:4) If you haven’t decided to follow Christ and live under His laws then you are servant of Satan. Sorry to have to put it so bluntly but that is the truth. Those with an unregenerate heart have love of sin and a willingness to cherish it and excuse it away. Those that have turned to Christ have a renewed heart and a hatred of sin and should be determined to resist it. When a Christian chooses to keep company with the ungodly and share in the ways of the world they expose themselves to great temptation. Satan is hiding close by and he will work very hard to pull the wool over your eyes. A continual indifference to the world will cause you to become more and more blinded to the assault. We must be different. The world must be able to identify a difference between one who professes to be a child of God and one who does not.

By conforming to the world we have converted our churches to the world. You cannot convert the world to Christ by becoming more like them. We must be different. The more familiar you get with sin the more you will see it as acceptable and you will be lulled into a comfort zone around the master of evil. If we knowingly place ourselves under temptation we will likely fall sooner or later.

Satan works most successfully through those who are least suspected of being under his control. So he goes after those most admired and honored. He uses anyone but specializes in going after the prize. He goes after people with talent, education and culture. These talents and qualities will grace the character of Christians and work in favor of true religion but they must be consecrated to God otherwise they become a powerful weapon for evil. Many a man of intellect and polish has become an instrument of evil in the hands of Satan. Remember the example of Solomon. Solomon obtained the wisdom that earned him the wonder and admiration of the world. Then he turned from his source of strength to rely upon himself and he became susceptible to temptation. This allowed the evil one to use this wise man more effectively to complete the evil mission.

Satan is working constantly to blind you to the fact that you, “wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” (Ephesians 6:12) And another warning, “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.” (1 Peter 5:8) And, “Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.” (Ephesians 6:11)

Ever since the fall of Adam the enemy has been exercising his power to oppress and destroy all he can. He is preparing right now for his biggest and his last campaign against the church of Christ. Everyone who is seeking to follow Christ and regards themselves as a true child of the King will be in major conflict with this relentless enemy. The more we try to be more like Christ, the more we will be in the cross-hairs of the sights in the attacks of Satan. All of our people that are active in the cause of Christ will be able to join in the testimony of Paul, speaking of serving the LORD with all humility of mind, with many fears and temptations.

Satan attacked Jesus Christ with all he had. He went at Christ with all the subtle temptations he could and the fiercest advances but Christ was repulsed at every conflict. The battles between Christ and Satan were fought on our behalf. The victory of Christ made it possible for us to conquer as well. Jesus Christ will provide strength to all who will seek it. No man can ever be overcome by Satan without giving consent. Satan has no power to control your will. He has no power to force you to sin. He can distress you and he can tempt you or try to confuse you but he cannot overtake you without you giving the willful go ahead. Satan can cause you a lot of agony but he can never defile you. Christ has conquered Satan already. This should give you the courage to fight on through the battle against sin and against the evil one. You have the power to defeat your worst enemy!

Fight on…God bless you all,

‘The Tubthumper’

DESIRE TO KILL

It has been over a week since the horrific killing of all the little children at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. I haven’t done much writing since then. I knew I needed to write something about it but couldn’t bring myself to face it down until I was ready.

My heart was sick when I saw the pictures of the little children. Parents thought they were safe in kindergarten class at school. They should have been safe. They should have been safe like we all were when in kindergarten a long time ago. Do you remember those days? These kids were not taken by guns but they were killed by a crazy, selfish, jealous, evil young man. This man was no different than the very first murderer that bloodied his hands within a short time of the earth’s creation. His name was Cain and this started a long time ago. Killing has been a part of our society for ever.

Just to illustrate this is not the first and won’t be the last I submit the story of the “Bath Massacre”. It was America’s first school bombing and shattered lives just like last week but this was back on May 18, 1927. That mass killing of 38 children and six adults happened 85 years ago in a very small town in Michigan named Bath. The killing was done by a farmer named Andrew Kehoe, and he blew himself up as well. This man was a school board member; in fact, he was the treasurer and school caretaker. He was well known and trusted. He was having financial difficulties and taxes went up so he blamed the school for his problems. That morning he beat his wife to death and set his farm on fire. While the firefighters were busy with the fire on his farm he rocked the school with explosives. When he was seen in his car and people ran over to him he detonated a massive bomb inside his car and shrapnel killed the school superintendent and others. This was fairly similar to the mass killings last week and remains as the number one deadliest school killing in our nation’s history.

In the beginning, after God had created the earth he rested on the seventh day. And then, “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul” (Genesis 2: 7). Then The LORD made the Garden of Eden and put the man there. You know the story. The man, Adam, was told that he could eat freely of any tree except the “Tree of Knowledge of good and evil”. Then the LORD caused Adam to fall into a deep sleep and took one of his ribs and made a woman. Then the serpent tricked the woman into eating from the tree of knowledge and she also talked Adam into eating it as well. God was angry! He cursed the serpent and kicked them out of the garden and nothing would ever be the same. Sin and evil became a part of mankind.

In the 4^th chapter of Genesis we read that Eve had two children. The first born was Cain and the second was his brother Abel. Cain was a farmer and Abel was a sheep herder. Cain gave an offering to the Lord from the ground and Abel gave an offering to the LORD of the first of his flock. The LORD respected the offering of Abel but didn’t pay so much respect to Cain for the offering he gave. Apparently Abel’s offering was one of faith and Cain had no faith. Cain was beside himself and very upset. He was wroth, which means angry and irate. His countenance fell so he was moping around. God asked him what was wrong and Cain explained. God’s answer was that He would give Cain a second chance and if he gets it right then it will be accepted. God also mentioned sin at Cain’s door. So God knew there was sin in Cain’s heart. So what did Cain do? He killed his brother Abel. Just like that! He snuffed the life out of his only brother. Why? Because he was jealous and he was only concerned with self and he was sinful and did not have the love of god in his heart. He had little regard for the life of others. Is that any different than what happened last week? I don’t think so.

So you see… this killing, this evil, this sin has been with us from the beginning. It will be with us until God reigns over chaos and evil in the end as written in Revelation. That day is coming soon.

Since the beginning all civilizations have been trying to figure out why. They want to know why men are willing to put their own lives in jeopardy to extinguish the lives of others. This has been puzzled over since Cain slew Abel. The theme of murder is used dozens of times each and every week by television script writers. It has inspired stacks of novels and multiple volume stories. Legal philosophers, sociologists, psychologists and psychiatrists have theorized endlessly to no avail. The cause of murder still remains a considerable mystery to those that do not study God’s word. But we, the studied Christian’s know. We know the core of where it comes from. Students of murder can spot only the visible and apparent reasons for it – greed, jealousy, fear, revenge, or a sudden insane anger that seizes a person and, a moment later, blots out all memory of his deed. (Or so they say. There are not any guilty people in prison you know.) Ted Bundy referred to the killer as “the entity”. No killer wants to take responsibly and he never did. But maybe Bundy was onto something. Maybe it was “the entity”.

If Bundy was thinking “the entity” was Satan he would very likely be correct. It sounded kind of strange back in Genesis when a serpent tricked Eve into eating the fruit of that tree. Was it a snake? No. The serpent was not a talking snake. The serpent is identified in the last book of the Bible, the book of Revelation, as Satan himself. Satan beguiled Eve by taking the form of a serpent and using his evil and clever skill to scam her into it. We must remember that Satan did not force her to eat that fruit and he didn’t force Adam. They had to choose to do it. And we also choose daily between good and evil and between being in the world or of the world. So how do people get to the place where they can take another human life (or many human lives) simply to benefit some little feeling inside them? It is when the evil one has taken residence in the person. Certainly the professionals can put labels upon labels on top of it but at the root it is sin, it is Satan they follow and not God and it is a turning away from God.

In The Mind of the Murderer, W. Lindesay Neustatter remarks, “. . . motive, without the whole background in which it is set, tells little of the criminal’s psychology.” He classifies murderers as the schizophrenic (with delusions of persecution), the hysteric, the mental defective, the paranoiac (victim of a systemized delusional insanity), the epileptic (with epileptic automatism and amnesia), the constitutionally unstable psychopath, and finally the chap who is simply depressed possibly due to low blood sugar (momentary malnutrition). J. Reid Meloy, a forensic psychologist and author of The Psychopathic Mind; and Violent Attachments, says that such crimes occur as the result of a build-up of anger, frustration and planning, which undermines the already-fragile sense of self. They don’t take failure lightly and cannot tolerate humiliation. Having no way to relieve their stress, they let the steam build until it just explodes into violence. Their families are generally the easiest target and they have no inner defense against the flow of rage. Once it’s done, they often return to a sense of equilibrium and if they don’t also kill themselves, they often feel much better.

Jesus referred to Satan as “the ruler (prince) of this world”, (John 14:30). Jesus also spoke of two masters that people have the choice of serving. The two he spoke of were God and Mammon, (Luke 16:13). You see, Satan rules Mammon which is where most of the population put their treasures. People don’t actually need to choose Satan directly. Once they choose to serve Mammon as the master then Satan knows he has someone he can get to. Satan is very crafty. He gets to the weak willed that serve Mammon and takes over their lives. That is where the seed of this propensity to kill is sown. The origin that it comes from. Without realizing it this person falls into working on Satan’s side without even knowing it because they do not understand Satan’s schemes.

When Satan comes against you, be sure he has no power over you. He will have no power if he finds the love of Jesus Christ in you and finds you following the Holy Spirit instead of the ways of the world (Mammon). Follow the world into paganism and you could be the next bomber or shooter. I know you think I am over exaggerating this. But am I? Am I really?

Our land has moved away from the roots of a belief and faith in God. ‘In God We Trust’ is not anymore worth more than the bills it is printed on. Evil is taking over. Evil is at the heart of these killings. We know where it comes from. It was not a gun that killed all those children. It was an evil and sinful mind that like Cain had no faith in God. Put the blame where it belongs.

The gates of Hell have prevailed against the “church” and its leaders today. The tolerance of sin has made us powerless in this battle against Satan. Because of this failure we will likely see more of the kinds of things we witnessed last week. God forgive us. We need a genuine Holy-Spirit revival that will deliver believers from the love of the world and drive the prince of the world out of our churches. We need a healing in our land. Before Jesus went to the cross, He told His disciples, “The prince of this world comes and he has no power over Me”, (John 14:30). He, who has ears to hear, let him hear.

Next week we celebrate the life of the King. He is the only answer to this issue.

Merry Christmas to all,

“The Tubthumper”