Tag: Judges

Sunday Walk 60 – Doing What Is Right In One’s Own Eyes

In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes.

Judges 21:25, King James Bible 1769

The bottom line up front would be if I’m not listening to and obeying God’s word in my heart, validated through the Bible, but instead come up with my own ideas of what is good, I will need to repent of many if not all of those supposedly good deeds.

The road to hell is paved with the good intentions I follow where good is defined as what I find right in my own eyes. Eve, deceived by the serpent and with no objection from Adam, saw the forbidden fruit as “good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise” (Genesis 3). When they ate the fruit, they were doing what was right in their own eyes.

The 20th century Catholic philosopher, G.E.M. Anscombe seems to have been saying something like that in her classic paper, Modern Moral Philosophy, where she criticized moral philosophy from Kant onward. Her message, as I understand it, is there’s no moral law that a philosopher can come up with outside of that coming from a divine lawgiver.

When a philosopher tries to ground moral obligation on something other than God’s command the philosopher’s own good intentions become what is right in his eyes. Since he is the author of his particular moral system this makes him one of many self-righteous lawgivers. Walk down the path of that self-righteous moral philosophy and one walks down the road to hell either on this earth or hereafter. Injustice, addiction, and conflict are some of the results one can expect.

Over the past few centuries that Anscombe was critical of people had powerful means to implement what was right in their own eyes leading to autonomy from God. Such humanistic autonomy is best seen as rebelliousness. We live in a dark age regarding morality because we rationalize what we should do based on criteria like maximizing happiness or effective altruism rather than hearing God’s voice confirmed through the Bible. We don’t listen to God’s voice because we don’t believe there is a God to listen to, or if we do like Adam and Eve surely did, we think we know better.

So, how do we hear God’s soft voice and how do we distinguish it from the deceiver’s misdirection? That is the topic of the video series below.

Derek Prince, Four Requirements

Weekly Bible Reading:  Song of Solomon (Audio), Isaiah (Audio)
Commentaries: 
David Pawson, Song of Songs, Part 36, Isaiah, Part 37, Unlocking the Bible
Bible Project, Song of Solomon and Isaiah (1-39)

Foggy Reflection
Foggy Reflection

Sunday Walk 51 – From Witchcraft To Pornography

Derek Prince called witchcraft the “religion of fallen humanity” and associated it with rebellion, idolatry and the occult. Occult practices include the use of horoscopes, pendulums, or tarot cards. To give the devil his due, these practices work to some extent, but that’s just the bait, the demonic deception, the worm that makes the hook look attractive. When we take the bait we push the Holy Spirit aside.

When we yearn for the supernatural we should yearn for the real thing, not a demonic substitute. No fancy yoga position could ever replace repentance. No fortune teller could ever replace a real church.

Witchcraft can also be associated with activities that appear to have nothing to do with the occult such as watching pornography. People who think they are too smart to be fooled by fortune tellers are readily hooked by lust. If you are involved in this addiction, stop submitting to its demonic influence. If not, there’s a basket full of other addictions including gluttony, greed, fear and anger to avoid as well.

Lion of Judah, This Happens in the Unseen World When You Watch Pornography

Most of these ideas are relatively new for me and you are welcome to set me straight in the comments below.

Weekly Bible Reading:  Judges (Audio), Ruth (Audio), 1 Samuel (Audio), 2 Samuel (Audio)
Commentary: David Pawson, Judges and Ruth, Part 2 of 2, 1 and 2 Samuel, Part 1 of 2, Unlocking the Bible

Sunday Walk 50 – Good At Heart?

Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.

Psalm 51:10, King James Bible 1769

When I was a teenager my family and I watched the 1959 film The Diary of Anne Frank in our living room. Anne died in a Nazi concentration camp, but she left behind a diary of the events that occurred while her family was in hiding. A memorable part of the movie was when she expressed her belief that people were good at heart.

George Barna of the Cultural Research Center wrote recently that one of the top 10 most seductive unbiblical ideas embraced by Americans is ‘the idea that people are “basically good”’. That suggests that the memorable part of the movie about Anne Frank was seductively unbiblical.

The reason the idea that we are good at heart is wrong is because it is sentimental. It is a false form of consolation, because it looks for goodness in the wrong place. Rather than acknowledging that God is good, it claims that somewhere deep down inside of us we are.

To a society that rejects Jesus, we mythologize the Kingdom of God rather than preach it. To a society that blatantly intimidates with sexual addiction, we downplay the need for repentance. Alisa Childers wrote that one of the five signs that one’s church was becoming progressive is “[t]he heart of the gospel message shifts from sin and redemption to social justice”.

I’m still trying to figure this out. You are welcome to tell me what you think about people being good at heart.

I am grateful to Michael Wilson for presenting George Barna’s research and to Bruce Cooper for pointing out Alisa Childers’ criticism of progressive Christianity.

Final thought: After David impregnated Bathsheba, had her husband Uriah killed to avoid scandal, and was called out for it by Nathan (2 Samuel 11-12), he didn’t think much of his heart. He wanted God to create in him a clean one (Psalm 51).

Weekly Bible Reading:  Joshua (Audio), Judges (Audio), Ruth (Audio)
Commentary: David Pawson, Joshua, Part 2 of 2, Judges and Ruth, Part 1 of 2, Unlocking the Bible

View From the Top
View From the Top

Sunday Walk 49 – Weaponized Sexuality

Addiction weakens a person and undermines that person’s community. When addiction is socially promoted one needs to ask just who is benefiting? Anybody socially promoting addictive behavior is trying to undermine some community by weakening its members.

After reading Henry Makov’s excerpts from John Coleman’s 1993 book, The Conspirators’ Hierarchy: The Story of the Committee of 300, I began to suspect that any promotion of sexual addiction may well be part of a plan to weaponize sexuality and use it against families.

Here are some points from the plan that Makov highlighted.

  • Marriage shall be outlawed and there shall be no family life as we know it.
  • Children will be removed from their parents at an early-age and brought up by wards as state property.
  • Women will he degraded through the continued process of “women’s liberation” movements.
  • Free sex shall be mandatory.
  • Pornography shall be promoted and be compulsory showing in every theater of cinema, including homosexual and lesbian pornography.

There may be an even deeper level of conspirators manipulating this “Committee of 300”. Those deeper conspirators would be demonic and they have been at it since that snake entered Eden (Genesis 3). You could read the Bible as God’s efforts to bring disobedient, but redeemed mankind, the Bride of Christ, back to the wedding feast (Revelation 19). Weaponizing sexuality would be a way for those not invited to try to spoil the wedding.

Now I know that’s a lot to swallow, but assuming you see this as something to be concerned about, what should we do? This is what I’ve come up with.

  • Affirm that sexuality remain within a traditional marriage between a husband who was born male and a wife who was born female.
  • Don’t engage in political or cultural activities that degrade or satirize the family including husbands, wives or their children.
  • Persevere by putting on the full armor of God in anticipation of His Son, Jesus, the Bridegroom.

The first two respond directly to this weaponized sexuality. The last one is there to confront those underlying demonic conspirators. You may have other suggestions.

Weekly Bible Reading:  Deuteronomy (Audio), Joshua (Audio)
Commentary: David Pawson, Deuteronomy, Part 2 of 2, Joshua, Part 1 of 2, Unlocking the Bible

Blue Ridge Mountains
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