John’s life did not follow a nice rectangular grid. Brief was his time from birth to final breath.
Though short with winding dead ends, he was offered along the way many opportunities to serve, if he obediently chose to do so. Sometimes he obeyed. Sometimes he had better things to do.
In the end flames burnt those better things leaving John with only a few grains of pure gold, enough—indeed more than what some of the others had—but not enough to stop his tears since there could have been so much more.
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Denise offers the prompt word “grid” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.
1 Corinthians 3:14-15 14 If any man’s work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. 15 If any man’s work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire.
I put together this six-question multiple choice test to help people see if they have a biblical worldview, or not. There’s an answer key at the end as well as a consolation prize for those who do not pass the test.
A) There are two and only two genders.
B) People can decide for themselves how many genders there are and which gender they want to be whenever they want to be it.
C) My gender is none of your business unless I make it your business by insisting you remember my pronouns.
If you are on the beach looking at the ocean, where do you think all of that water came from? (Hint: Genesis 6-9)
A) The water came from Noah's global flood.
B) The water got there somehow billions of years ago.
C) Who cares where the water came from?
A) The diversity originated from God confusing the language of the people at Babel. Then the Babel dispersion began. From that dispersion language families arose.
B) The diversity happened somehow as the result of a long evolutionary process taking perhaps a million years.
C) However it happened, no god had anything to do with it.
A) Jesus will return for His bride. Our spirits will never cease to be. Our bodies and souls will be renewed. The only concern will be whether we are part of His bride, or not.
B) Humanity will go on for millions, if not billions, of years searching the stars for other intelligent lifeforms and then it will go extinct.
C) Whatever happens there will be no heaven, no hell, no nothing—--Get used to it!
Who is Jesus? (Hint: See this list of Bible verses.)
A) Jesus is God, the second Person of the Trinity.
B) Jesus, like Buddha and Socrates, was a great guy with sound moral teaching whom we should use as a model if we want to be good like he was.
C) Jesus never existed.
The Answer Key
How did you do on the test?
If you answered A for each of the above, then your worldview is biblical. If you answered B or C, even once, you need to ask yourself: What made you think those answers had any chance of being correct?
TheConsolation Prize
For those who flunked the test there’s still Buddha, Sarasvati, Gaia, Thor, Moloch, Lucifer and Cosmic Consciousness to name a few of the many options that remain. Pick one or more of them. Then think and think and think going down, down, down the rabbit hole until…
Until when?
…until you get tired of the futility and long for the real thing.
Robert walked up to the pastor while he was delivering the sermon, lay flat on the platform in front of the congregation and screamed at the top of his voice, “Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!” Then he rose and walked with indifference to the back of the church expecting a lecture of some sort from Jeremy because of the disturbance he caused. In his own defense he would argue that all he was trying to do was call on the name of the Lord to prove that such magic tricks don’t work especially for the likes of him.
Jeremy, who let Robert enter wondering what delightful mischief was on his mind today, waited for him unsure whether to reprimand or console. Without understanding what good it would do but with Robert’s permission Jeremy followed the request of a soft inward voice to put his hands on each side of Robert’s head and say, “Jesus!”
It surprised Jeremy to see Robert crumble to the floor weeping with an uncontrolled joy knowing finally that even someone like himself could never be the same again.
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Denise offers the prompt word “console” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.
This tale is fictional. However, if you have a born-again relationship with the Holy Spirit, what happened between Jeremy and Robert is not the result of magic tricks nor hypnosis. Hearing His soft inward voice should not be confused with talking to oneself (nor with some demon’s temptation to do something inappropriate). His voice will tell you what to do. You will not likely feel comfortable doing it, but He responds to your obedience out of love for you and those around you for His own glory.
For Stan the idea that anything might exist put a strain on what he could philosophically tolerate. Asserting himself he told his students that there wasn’t a single good reason why any of them were here.
But all of that was before the accident, the emergency room, the coma and the visitations. Things started to click when one visitor with attractive horns offered him a full twenty years in exchange for his spirit.
Stan wished he could have told his students what he discovered before his life support was removed. He consoled himself with the thought that they would find it more credible if they heard it from someone else.
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Denise offers the prompt word “strain” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.
The hostility between Steve and Bobby was miraculously resolved during the funeral of their older-by-twelve-years sister and Fred’s wife, Lily. During Fred’s eulogy for his wife he handed Steve and Bobby separate boxes containing mementos of their lives from infancy through grade school that Lily saved having watched over them many decades ago. He then handed them envelops with the words “Last Will” written on them containing a letter asking her two brothers to stop fighting with each other.
Touched by a sense of melancholy while going through the box he received from Fred, Bobby apologized to and forgave Steve who seeing this as a sign of weakness announced to all at the funeral that this long-overdue confession coming from the likes of Bobby was a miracle (which it may well have been).
In spite of that remark peace between them lasted until Steve insisted moments later that he get credit for being the one who apologized first which everyone at the funeral knew was a lie. Through the resulting commotion Fred called for silence and handed the brothers another envelop containing Lily’s second Last Will which simply read, “Didn’t I tell you two to STOP FIGHTING?”
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Denise offers the prompt word “melancholy” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.
1 John 2:9 He that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in darkness even until now.
Neither Timothy nor Martha had a clue how to grow stuff as they looked at the good ground in front of them having enough stones to make a small mountain. Some neighbors reminded them that when winter came they were going to starve. Every time they heard the word starve they giggled without knowing why.
Come summer the crops grew. Come harvest time the yield was a hundredfold. Come winter Timothy and Martha, ignoring the neighbors’ security concerns, opened their doors to those hungry enough to stop by to make sure no one in the village starved.
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Denise offers the prompt word “security” for this week’s Six Sentence Story.
Matthew 13:23 But he that received seed into the good ground is he that heareth the word, and understandeth it; which also beareth fruit, and bringeth forth, some an hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.
Douglas Petrovich presented a framework for building a sound chronology of the Old Testament at the 2023 Chafers Theological Seminary Pastors’ Conference. If one chooses appropriate assumptions one can come up with a chronology that is faithful to the Bible and also synchronizes with Egyptian and Assyrian chronologies. This confirms the reliability of the biblical record as history.
To build this chronology one needs certain dates that one has confidence in to serve as “tent pegs” as Petrovich calls them. Reaching consensus on what those tent pegs are is not easy but it is achievable. Having that chronology allows one to date and make sense out of the archeological data. That we need to go through so much trouble to construct such a chronology is reason to believe that mankind is very young.
Construction Begins on the First Temple—967 BC
I Kings 6:1 And it came to pass in the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel, in the month Zif, which is the second month, that he began to build the house of the Lord.
Can we find what year Solomon began to build the first temple in our calendar? James Ussher in his Annals of the World gave the date as 1012 BC. Edwin Thiele was able to establish an absolute date based on Assyrian records linked to a solar eclipse which occurred in June 15, 763, in The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings. This allows one to come up with 967 BC as the year Solomon initiated the building of the first temple. There is a discrepancy of 45 years between these dates. Rodger Young clarified the issues around this discrepancy in Ussher Explained and Corrected arguing in favor of the 967 BC date which Petrovich accepts.
Israelite Exodus from Egypt—1446 BC
Accepting 967 BC and the information in 1 Kings 6:1 about the Exodus occurring in the 480th year one can date the Exodus back to 1446 BC (967+479=1446). From this date and knowing the Israelites wandered for 40 years in the desert (Numbers 32:13) we get the year they crossed the Jordan into Canaan as 1406 BC (1406+40=1446).
Jacob Moves His Family to Egypt—1876 BC
If one concludes as Petrovich does (see his Origins of the Hebrews, 2021) that the Israelites spent 430 years in Egypt, the “long sojourn”, rather than 215 years, the “short sojourn”, then the date the long sojourn began would be 1876 BC. It becomes another tent peg (1446+430=1876). The date the short sojourn began would be 1661 BC (1446+215=1661).
The reason for the 215 year discrepancy is due to textual variants of Exodus 12:40. The Masoretic Hebrew text gives 430 years in Egypt. The Septuagint Greek text said this period of time included time in Canaan.
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This lecture highlights the resolution of difficulties permitting one to construct a sound Old Testament chronology. At 19:25 in the video Petrovich lists the major dates going back to Abraham. At 55:15 he presents the Egyptian chronological scheme.
William Lane Craig, the professor of philosophy at Houston Baptist University and research professor of philosophy at Talbot School of Theology, asserts, “Adam plausibly lived sometime between around 1 million years ago to 750,000 years ago, a conclusion consistent with the evidence of population genetics.” (The Historical Adam, First Things, October 2021).
Much of the Old Testament chronology presented above goes back less than 4000 years. However, it involves controversy as to when something actually happened. This should make anyone pause who claims that humanity has been on this earth for much longer than 8000 years. Why? Becausethere is no historical evidence to justify that claim. Furthermore Biblical textual variants do not even justify ages as old as 8000 years.
From available historical evidence we know we can go from stone age to space age in about 5000 years. That means if humanity were around for 100,000 years (let alone the million that Craig finds plausible) we would have historical records going back 90,000 years assuming a generous 10,000 years to go from stone age to space age.
If we had such historical records then there would be no doubt about what happened a mere 4000 years ago. We would have archived video recordings of Solomon holding a press conference broadcasted live to the entire world via satellite in 967 BC about the construction of the temple. We would know precisely when that press conference started. Constructing a sound biblical chronology would not be the problem that it is today.
Since we don’t have that kind of historical record it is reasonable to doubt the non-historical dating methods and speculations that extend mankind back hundreds of thousands of years. Mankind is nowhere near that old.
Ralph ran his mind like an audio device on permanent replay. He believed in neither demonic nor angelic spirits which made the demons giggle with double delight.
What overflowed through his mouth further challenged his pretenses of being rational. Additionally all the time he spent muttering to himself made him wonder precisely whom those meditations were meant to impress.
To keep reality afloat in spite of his doubt that reality was really real he wondered if reality might well be an AI program simulating who knows what or whether there were some female identity trapped inside his male body all of which surprised even Satan who laughed at the inanities unrenewed minds wasted their lives on. As the day ended Ralph tried to put his spirit to sleep while his spirit struggled to wake him up.
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Denise offers the prompt word “replay” for this week’s Six Sentence Story.
Philippians 4:8 Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.
Jake’s rationalizations tried to redirect the waterfall of reality away from himself so he could avoid getting wet. If the latter rain came his soul was so dry he might start smelling like petrichor. And if he got filled to overflowing who knows what might happen?
From mountain sources water splashed down boulders like conviction eroding away the resistance of his stony heart.
Jake remembered reading somewhere that given the current rate of erosion the entire mountain would be at sea level in less than fifty million years assuming reality lasted that long. He wondered how long his heart could hold out.
James 5:7 Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain.
Along with Romans 11 Sid Roth mentioned the following Scriptures.
Psalm 122:6Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee.
Genesis 12:3And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.
Exodus 33:17-18 17 And the Lord said unto Moses, I will do this thing also that thou hast spoken: for thou hast found grace in my sight, and I know thee by name. 18 And he said, I beseech thee, shew me thy glory. 19 And he said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee; and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy.
Poetry, Short Prose and Walking 