Mighty Mag

I was attending a state-run primary school recently, during which time a teacher asked the class some basic, simple questions about the origin of Christmas. Surprisingly few children knew much about it. Most of the class didn’t even know the names of Jesus’ parents, or who Jesus was. So here, for your information,  is the true Christmas story, taken directly from the Bible:
Christmas is a celebration of the birth of a male child born a little over 2000 years ago, during the days of Caesar Augustus. The child was named Jesus, which means Saviour. His parents, Joseph, his legal father, and Mary, his biological mother, were related by direct bloodline to king David. His birth was announced by angels and marked by a brilliant star, which hovered over the building in which he lay. Many hundreds of years before his birth, the star, and more than 200 other specific details about him were predicted. For example:
He would be born in a town called Bethlehem; his mother would be a virgin; and when he grew up, he would be betrayed for 30 pieces of silver; he would die for all sinners; he would be buried in a rich man’s tomb; he would have his hands and feet pierced (as in crucifixion); and rise from the grave.
During his ministry Jesus raised the dead, healed all varieties of sickness, restored limbs and organs, and caused a small amount of food to feed thousands of people. He displayed power over the weather, stilled a storm, walked on the sea, and changed water into wine. He was also seen to be completely free of sin, and he spoke words which remain as the wisest ever spoken.
Christmas is a celebration of the coming of God’s Son Jesus, the kindest, most compassionate and perfect human who has ever walked this earth. Being the Son of God, Jesus was the perfect representation of God, so if you want to know what God, the real, true God, is like, read Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. These four booklets give us a perfect, four-sided portrait of God. Christmas is a time to remember that there really is a God, and that he continues to love this wicked world no matter how evil or rebellious it gets. Christmas reminds us that God – the true God, not Buddha or some other fictional fake – does not simply watch us in some detached, mystical or remote way, but has actually walked our streets, and shared our pain. It was for us that he came as a child, and for us that he died: the Bible says he is the world’s Saviour, and future Judge and King, so if you are a Christian, rejoice.
If you are a Christian, walk in the light, show by your life that you love Jesus. Obey Him as far as you can. Obey Him morally and spiritually. Obey Him in your speech, your actions, your choices, your choices. Show people you are different from, and not the same as the world. Why would anyone be attracted to Jesus if you were the same as the people who live without Him?
But if you are NOT a Christian, tremble with fear, because Jesus is also your future Judge, and if you have refused His death in your place, you must die that death yourself.

And if you are wondering whether the devil rules your life… the Bible says unbelievers are “taken captive by him (the devil) AT HIS WILL”. In other words, if you reject the Lordship of Jesus, you accept, by default, the leadership  of His opponent the devil, and you will share in the devil’s punishment.

The heading for this blog is not a directive. I would rather see church fellowships springing up everywhere, but what I am referring to is a newspaper item which turned up recently. As you probably don’t know, I live in an area which has had some rather severe earthquakes, and some of the casualties have been the older, brick and stone church buildings. The people who attend and support these small, community church buildings are now facing a choice between spending a huge amount of money on repairing and restoring the old structure, or spending a huge amount of money on building a new one.

My personal view is, pull the whole thing down, and sell the land.
In the district I live there is a mainline denomination which owns three large brick church buildings. At a rough guess I would say that, if these buildings and properties were sold they might bring in about a million dollars. If that was invested the interest rate return would be many thousands of dollars a year. That money could go the the deacons to be distributed to the poor or to finance good outreach projects – rather than disappear down the hole called Rates, insurance, maintenance etc. But what would all those Christians do without their buildings? They could start meeting in homes, just like the first church did. They could start discovering and using their giftings and minister as the Bible says they should.
On the other hand I must concede there is a place for church buildings. They provide a focus, a centre, where people can meet for four hours one day a week. Visiting speakers have a venue where they can speak to many all at once. But compare the big church building to a home, where people live seven days a week, and where people can meet every day, if they so wish. If I had a choice between a church building and a home, I would choose the latter every time. Why? Because the fellowship is more intimate, because each Christian who comes has opportunity to share what God is doing in their life, because the meeting is more like a family than a nameless crowd in a big building, because children fit in to a home meeting, instead of being sidelined to a separate room… and many other reasons.
So getting back to the earthquake, I see this event as a wonderful opportunity for church-attenders to evaluate their situation. Perhaps having no building is a blessing? Perhaps it means the people are forced to split into smaller groups and meet in homes – just like the first church did? Perhaps Christians who are anonymous and ignored in large meetings will find they have a place, and recognition, and a spiritual ministry, in a small home group? Perhaps the ruins of the old, traditional meeting place is a symbol of the end of an era, and a nudging by God that He would prefer His saints to get back to something closer to the way He originally planned it?
But as I said, I have no grudge or gripe against large church buildings. Just a desire to see Christians break free of Man-made traditions. The more we get rid of the crumbling ruins of our old worldly ways, the more effective we become as lights and salt in a community that needs to be saved.

In a recent spate of Emails sent to me from what seemed to me to be an Evolutionist Club, I was struck by several things in the comments.

(1.) Offensive language. Swearing and blasphemy poured out of the text, making them very unpleasant to read, and I wondered why these people had so much rancour and hate in their hearts over what should have been an objective discussion.

(2.) Lack of science. I assumed that at least a few of these supposedly intelligent people would know something important from the area of real science to supply some sort of case to support their point of view. But no. Not one single, tiny bit of science was produced. Many claims, many assumptions, but no science.
And then came the best of all, a very polite, obviously educated teacher, who claimed to have been many years in schools sharing his knowledge of biology. I was genuinely pleased, because I thought at last I would be able to debate the subject and get some good material to think about. I welcomed him to a friendly to and fro.
But no. Even this teacher had no real science. Only theories, assumptions and bold claims. He reminded me of two atheists I heard in a debate. Dr.John Perkins and Dr. Richard Doyle. The chosen subject was: Is evolutionary science reliable? The first speaker began with the words “Evolution is a fact!” and from there he discussed the theory, but produced no science to support his opening statement. The other eminent gentleman did try to give some science but none of it stacked up.
For example, he showed a diagram of the many mutations a virus went through as it dodged the drugs sent to destroy it. He pointed at the diagram and said it showed evolution. But Hafter hundreds of generations had it evolved? Not a bit. It was still the same virus – still had the same name. Yet this was claimed as an evolutionary diagram. You start with a distinct, named virus and end with the same distinct, named virus, so where is the evolution?
One attempt at convincing me, by my biologist friend was his claim that bacteria exchange DNA (plasmids) and so increase their genetic information. But the science is faulty, because the information shared by the bacteria is not new. It is information which was already there in the first place. Like copying and pasting with a word processor – easy to increase the volume of text by duplicating, but not much else. Plasmids are copies of information, not new information.
During some of the exchanges with these fired up evolutionists I noticed a

(3.) third element. Whenever they came close to the Bible, they scoffed at it. I asked them why they thought so little of God’s Word and they erupted. It was amazing how violently some of them hated the Bible!
I already knew from the gospels how dark people’s hearts are, because Jesus repeatedly met well-dressed, educated, highly intelligent men called Pharisees and Sadducees, priests and others, who began by keeping their inner selves hidden. They spoke in educated tones. But after Jesus spoke to them many of them exploded with hate and rage, shaking their fists at Him and demanding His death. Obviously the light of truth had penetrated right past all their defenses.
Evolution is a pagan religion masquerading as science. It deserves to be exposed, but at the same time I also feel sorry for its faithful followers. They really want something to believe in but refuse to believe the Bible because it is just too bright.

You may be familiar with: ‘a wolf in sheep’s clothing’? When Jesus used this expression he was speaking about false teachers, and false prophets. He told His followers to “beware” of them. It may seem like a redundant question, but why exactly, should a Christian need to keep an eye out for these ‘under cover’ wolves?

One obvious answer: ‘because they pedal lies.’ They pretend to be Christians, true followers of the Lord Jesus, but under the surface they are actually out to devour and kill Christians!
There is a cult with the very grand name “Church of the latter day saints of Jesus Christ”. If you look at their name they actually claim to be a “church” and “saints” and followers of “Jesus Christ”, so they have a triple-barrelled disguise. They fool a lot of people into thinking they are a church, with saints who are followers of jesus Christ.
The Jehovah’s Witnesses are another cult that calls itself Christian. To rip the sheep skin off them, ask them if they believe Jesus was God the Son. They will say no. This totally disqualifies them as being Christians, because that is the cornerstone of Christianity. True Christians confess that Jesus is God, and therefore worthy of the same worship we should give to God the Father.
Stepping away a little from the original use of the saying about wolves in sheep’s clothing, we come to another type of person related to wolves: the “nice” person. These persons are friendly, helpful, hospitable. They live good, clean lives, and everyone likes them. But try scratching the surface and see what they are like underneath… ask them if they have kept the Ten Commandments, in their heart, or in their thoughts? They will say, if they are honest, that they have had thoughts of theft, greed, rebellion, hate, lust and so on. So the “nice” sheep is really quite a wild beasts underneath. There are a lot of “nice” wolves around.
Now look at another group, the atheists and evolutionists. These people can at times launch nasty, underhand assaults on Christians, but there are plenty of them who are calm, and considerate, and who like to debate the issues with politeness and objectivity… however, in my experience, if they are pressed often enough, and the Bible is used as a sharp tool to expose their hearts, they inevitably turn nasty, and snarl like true wolves. This is because they are wolves, but they don’t know how wolf-like they really are until someone comes along and needles them with truth foe long enough.
This is one of the big problems the human race has: it deceives itself into thinking it is good, or ‘Christian’, or “nice”, when in reality it is wicked.
I know because I was born of wolf parents, and would have grown up to be a fine example of a wolf, if Jesus had not found me.

I met him in a video shop. He looked about six, maybe seven. He still had a hint of innocence in his eyes, but as he scanned the titles I knew he was a seasoned Playstation gamer.

“Got any favourites?” I asked.
He took Grand Theft Auto off the shelf and held it up to me, almost affectionately.
My Dad and I play this one,” he said. I was impressed.
“That’s the game where you get to steal cars isn’t it?”
I must point out I was speaking kindly, and in a friendly way – not an inquisition)
“Yeah.”
“And kill people?”
“Yeah, but I don’t do that. Usually my Dad does that.”
“You can drive along the footpath and knock people down too?”
“They aren’t REAL people!”
“And you can go into police stations, and shoot all the cops?”
“Yeah.”
He looked a little uncomfortable. He was just young enough to answer my questions without deliberately hiding too much, but worldly enough to know his sinful little heart was being exposed. His Dad was approaching. He probably heard my last question. He called his boy out of the room.
I looked around at the titles again. Some of them were really fun, great games for kids, while other titles were labelled ‘adults only’, with covers to match: porn, violence, vacarious killing adventures with satanic overtones.
It occurred to me that the games room was a microcosm of the real world. Look at any average street and you’ll see adults and children, walking together. Many of the adults are already destroyed souls, empty husks of what they might have been, and they are leading their children into the same paths – cloning themselves in their kids. But how did they get to be like that?
I think the word incremental covers it. Bit by bit, little by little, like water creeping up cloth, or evening shadows moving across a valley… people don’t go from innocent child to dark adult overnight. It starts when they are very small, and it creeps over their soul as they make choices. (Even Hitler was once an innocent child)
In twenty years time, where will that little boy or girl be? As lost and ruined as his Dad, his soul filled with images of death, finding entertainment in smashing the faces of cops and pedestrians for the sake of a stolen vehicle, OR he might have heard the gospel and sworn allegiance to the Lord Jesus.
The fact is, while people at times treat life as a game, it is not. The reality of death is not something we can avoid click off and gain an extra life. Sin will be judged. Eternity will come. The game always ends.

I heard it on the radio. A man whose friend had died was talking about the pain and suffering his friend had gone through just before the end. He said words to this effect: “When I saw how much pain ‘X’ went through I said “This man has paid for his sins.”
The Bible says sin can be paid for by only one thing, and it is definitely NOT personal pain. No amount of pain could ever pay the price for sin, because God does not require pain for sin. To switch to an analogy, imagine going into a shop to buy a loaf of bread and offering to pay for it by hopping on a pile of nails twenty times? Or try paying for milk at the Supermarket by slapping your face? Shops don’t accept personal pain, or discomfort as payment for what they sell, and God cannot give forgiveness for sin unless the correct offering is made to Him for it.
I know the analogy is clumsy, but it points in the right direction.
Pleasure cannot pay for sin either. Singing beautiful songs to God doesn’t change anything, neither does playing beautiful music for Him, or dancing or running, or going to war and fighting for your country, or slaving away at the stove for years, or giving your life for your children, or donating all your money to a charity… its all the wrong currency. God might be impressed at your dedication, and self-sacrifice, and sincerity, but just like a shop accepts only the designated currency, God accepts only the specified ‘thing’ for sin.
Now imagine a child who has just lost his temper and deliberately, and knowingly smashed a window. The child wants to make things right with his Dad, so he offers to pay for the window repair. That’s a nice thing to do, but his Dad is still angry with him because of the offence, not because of the broken window.
The child then offers to do the lawns, weed the garden, wash the dishes, make the beds, do the cooking, and also complete all his homework for the next year, but his father is still angry. Why? Because the boy is not really SORRY!
Suddenly the boy sees the anger in his father’s eyes and he realises that the broken window is nothing compared to the broken relationship. He starts to cry, goes to his father with his eyes down. He is ashamed. He asks his Dad to forgive him…. The father forgives his son because now his son has come with empty hands, no bribe, and the right attitude.
This is where Christianity really shines, because it supplies the missing link between sinful humans and perfect, holy God. Jesus became our SUBSTITUTE, and paid the price for our sins. He made it possible for God to forgive us, because He paid the price for us.
God wants us to realize that we cannot be His friends unless we die for our sins – or someone dies in our place. That Someone was Jesus, who took our place, and made it possible for us to be forgiven. God really loves us, and He wants fellowship with us, but it has to be on His terms, not ours.

If you time yourself, you can go from explaining, in simple terms, Creation to the Law to the Cross to Salvation, and you can do all this in about ten minutes. That’s about all the time you need to bring a sinner from the beginning of time, to sin, to the Saviour, and on into the Kingdom – if the sinner is interested of course.

But having raced through the whole Bible like someone reading all of Shakespeare’s plays in half an hour, is that all there is to God’s Word, and once someone is saved do they need anything else?
It is true, you could spend the rest of your life thinking about these few simple, fundamental doctrines, and never stray far from them, but this would be like preparing an enormous feast, with hundreds of dishes, and then asking guests to eat only the olives. This would be like visiting a country like India as a tourist and being confined to the hotel until your flight out. This would be like being given the entire collection of Mozart’s music and being restricted to three small piano pieces.
I am deliberately labouring the point here because it is so important. Is Christianity just a brief outline of the main themes and the Gospel? Is it just one ten minute message, which has to be repeated with variations Sunday by Sunday, year after year, until you die of old age. Is this all Christianity has to offer?
Absolutely not. But when you listen to many TV Bible teachers, or attend various mainline churches, you’d think there wasn’t much in the Bible except for a few simple moralistic lessons.
The fact is, the feast is enormous, the continent is vast and the repertoire is huge. The Bible is not just a few olives, or a hotel room, or a couple of short piano pieces.
The Bible contains a vast treasury of wisdom. It has practical advice about money, agriculture, animal husbandry, weather, law, justice and many other topics. It has huge amounts of history, tied up with real events and prophecy. It has threads of mathematics, symbolism  music, poetry, drama and insights into people, kings, queens and servants. It is a feast, a continent and a musical collection of enormous proportions.
This brings me to my other point: the Church is called to be a world-educator.
Primarily I believe it is every Christians ‘job’ or duty to present the gospel, the ten-minute message, to everyone whenever the opportuinity comes along. But after that I believe the Church has a far larger job. It has the whole world to educate. God has called the Church to teach the world, to instruct, to guide, and to reveal wisdom. People everywhere need to know the truth in many different areas, not just the gospel. I also believe that when Jesus returns, he will be looking for Christians who have gone further than the basics, who have a large enough vision to see the world and all the different nations in it as pupils, and themselves as teachers. The return of Christ will herald, I think, a global teaching age.

One great thing about blogs is the ability one has to express one’s opinions, regardless of whether anyone else agrees or disagrees with them, or even reads them! One can say almost anything one likes, and having written it down one is in the position of having to defend or capitulate on those opinions. It is like raising a flag, and saying ‘rally to this’ or ‘shoot this down!’ 

With all the above in mind, I would like to express an opinion on the ‘Christian life’ – from start to finish. As I see it, there are three distict areas which a Christian passes through. I call them Start well, Run well, and Finish well.
START WELL covers the initial stages, when a sinner goes from being “dead in trespasses and sins” as the Bible puts it, “walking in darkness”, “alienated” from God, and heading for hell… and then suddenly they see themselves in the light of God’s Law, they acknowledge their sinfulness, and they kneel at the foot of the cross and accept the Saviour. This is true conversion. It is powered by God, and it leads to true repentance, often tears, real godly sorrow.
After that comes RUN WELL, which covers the whole Christian life, from cross to grave. It involves gradually learning God’s rules, obedience, trust, faith, confession, witnessing, and growing as a child of God. It also involves some suffering, trials, difficulties, and in a small percentage of cases, torture and death.
But there is another aspect to RUN WELL which is not usually brought up. We live, presently, in what I call ‘the age of inheritance’. These days, just prior to the return of Christ, are an opportunity, a great and grand opportunity, for Christians to give of themselves and in return to receive one day a reward for what they gave. God repeatedly promises to reward Christians for their service. If we “deal with a slack hand” we miss out. If we are “diligent” we pile up some fantastic, amazing inheritance which probably can’t be described in words.
Attached to this inheritance idea, is the need for Christians to understand what they we saved for? What does God want them to do?
I remember when I was at secondary school I asked God what He wanted me to focus on, and plain as day He said to me “Engilsh and Art” so I have tried to stick to these two things. God may have spoken to you too, or pointed you to a task, but it is up to you to decide whether you want to “set your face as a flint” and stick to that calling… or let it slide.
And finally FINISH WELL. The Christian life doesn’t end when the last song in a Christian Music Festival is played. It doesn’t end when you’ve been to church a few times. It ends when you die. God wants us to remain active, and faithful, and diligent right up to the last breath. Die with your boots on. Die in the battlefield, with the sword still in your hand. There is no retirement plan for Christians
So there you have it, as I see it. Start well – no fake conversions please! Start with deep commitment. Sign up with your blood, and shut all boltholes. Run well regardless of how easy or hard your life may be. Keep in mind there is a reward waiting if you are obedient. And finish well, like an old warrior, still swinging your sword as the sun sets over the battlefield. Your reward is waiting for you – will it be large or small?

The following is an edited version, of an extract from Doug Copp’s article about “The Triangle of life”: “My name is Doug Copp. I am the Rescue Chief and Disaster Manager of the American Rescue Team International (ARTI), the world’s most experienced rescue team. The information in this article will save lives in an earthquake. 

I have crawled inside 875 collapsed buildings, worked with rescue teams from 60 countries, founded rescue teams in several countries, and I am a member of many rescue teams from many countries…
I was the United Nations expert in Disaster Mitigation for two years.. I have worked at every major disaster in the world since 1985, except for simultaneous disasters.
The first building I ever crawled inside of was a school in Mexico City during the 1985 earthquake. Every child was under its desk. Every child was crushed to the thickness of their bones. They could have survived by lying down next to their desks in the aisles. It was obscene, unnecessary and I wondered why the children were not in the aisles. I didn’t at the time know that the children were told to hide under something.
Simply stated, when buildings collapse, the weight of the ceilings falling upon the objects or furniture inside crushes these objects, leaving a space or void next to them. This space is what I call the “triangle of life”.
The larger the object, the stronger, the less it will compact. The less the object compacts, the larger the void, the greater the probability that the person who is using this void for safety will not be injured. The next time you watch collapsed buildings, on television, count the “triangles” you see formed. They are everywhere. It is the most common shape, you will see, in a collapsed building.”
He goes on to say that the best place to be is beside an object, not under it. Lie down beside your bed, or beside the car, or beside a cupboard, and stay away from doorways.
His article is quite long and detailed, but when you finish reading it you realise that for many years millions of people have been AND STILL ARE being MISINFORMED. Despite their sincerity, and real concern, if someone tells you to hide under your bed, or in a doorway, they could be signing your death certificate!
The point is, if someone tells you there is no heaven and no hell, no matter how sincere and caring they are, they’re wrong. And if someone tells you you don’t need to repent and trust in Jesus alone for your salvation, no matter how sincere they are, they’re wrong. Just as those kids were crushed under their desks because they followed the wrong advice, millions of people are heading into hell for the same reason.
If you don’t believe me, read the gospel of John and listen to what Jesus said. He should know because He was and never will be, wrong.

I was thinking about how incredibly difficult it is to obey God’s commands. I mean, look at the very first recorded instruction He gave to Adam: “Do not eat that fruit!” It must have taken Adam and Eve days to work out exactly what God meant by that command. Just look at it yourself and see how convoluted and open to interpretation it is! Only a lawyer could fully understand what God might have been implying by the words “do not” and “eat” and “that fruit!”.

Its the same all through the Bible. Difficult commands everywhere.
On Mount Sinai God really ‘upped the anti’ by giving not one but TEN commands. People have struggled to understand them ever since. Really difficult commands, such as: “Don’t worship idols, don’t lie, don’t steal, don’t be greedy, don’t kill other people…” These are all so deep and mysterious, perhaps we will never know what they mean?
Some of the positive commands are just as tricky. Abraham was told to “Leave Ur.” I bet that confused him.
“What do you mean by “LEAVE, Lord?” and is “Ur” the same place as my city, or do you mean some other place?”
God told Samson not to cut his hair. Poor Samson, he had no idea what God meant by that.
All through the Old Testament its the same thing, and then just when it looks like there might be some hope for us, Jesus comes and gives His commands. Its a wonder there are any Christians around, because His instructions are so obscure and almost impossible to decipher!
Matthew records some of these cryptic commands.”Don’t hate, or take revenge (chapter 5), don’t foster or go after lust, don’t hang on to morally bad things, be forgiving (chapter 6), don’t hoard material possessions, and so on. Obscure command after obscure command.
If you’re brave enough to wade through the New Testament gospels, and survive the mystery that far, you then plunge into the rest of the book, and there’s Paul the apostle, waiting for you with his lists of strangely coded directions. He tells us things like “Men should love their wives” and “Servants, be obedient to your masters”, and “Don’t complain or grumble.”
Eventually it dawns on most people that the Bible is too complicated to understand, and too hard to obey, so they turn away and get into the things they would rather do, things which usually involve sin. They may hear someone quote the Bible and say “Repent” but what does that mean? Surely not “say sorry and go the other way?” It couldn’t be that simple!
Jesus said “I am the way, the truth, and the life. Nobody comes to the Father but by Me.”
Some people have wondered if, by this comment in John 14:6 that Jesus might mean he is the exclusive, and unique way, truth, life and entrance into heaven. It sure sounds like that, but hey, we live in the 21st century. Meanings change. Jesus might have meant that ‘in His opinion’ He was all those things. Perhaps also He was misquoted? It couldn’t really be that Jesus is the ONLY way to the Father could it? What about all those other religions with their claims? Did Jesus really stand against every religion in the world and say they were all wrong!
All too difficult. No wonder there are so many unbelievers in the world. If only God had made His commands simpler, and easier to understand… there would surely be a lot more Christians if we understood God’s words better!

There is nothing wrong with happiness. It is a good thing to be happy, even momentarily. I thought I’d better start by saying this, in case anyone thought I was about to start knocking happiness. But momentary means short-lived, temporary, transient. It is the sort of happiness that we think back on with nostalgia, and wish we could enter again. We wonder why happiness doesn’t last? Why does it come to us suddenly, lift our spirits, and then retreat, leaving us with such a longing we spend our whole lives hoping to catch it again.

Happiness comes suddenly: like the joy a kid gets when he sees a wonderful birthday gift, or the sigh of deep satisfaction as we gulp down a cool drink on a hot day, or the hot bath we sink into on a cold day, or the beautiful pleasure a mother feels just after a baby has been born to her, or the crazy happiness some people feel at the sight of a large amount of money, or the wonderful feelings people get at reunion with a long lost friends.
The odd thing is, the more we seek joy and happiness, the more we find them ‘teasing’ us. They run just ahead, like a butterfly. They seem to be almost within reach, but as we grasp them, they fly away. Perhaps this is why so many people remember their childhood in terms of happiness, as compared to the present? Perhaps this is what motivates many people in their searching, restless world travels, or their building of a business, or house, or family? Perhaps the desire to find that remembered pleasure is what pulls them through trials and difficulties, because they believe that “when they have that thing” or when they “achieve that goal” they will rediscover the happiness they once tasted?
I say perhaps because I suspect it is only part of the answer. I think there is an even deeper answer, further down.
Imagine you were given a patch of sand and told to dig for happiness. You are told also that a great treasure lies under the sand. You start to dig and soon you come to a layer of gold coins. You rejoice, because for some reason, most humans seem to think that happiness and money are connected, and I’m presuming you are one of them. You gather the coins and walk away, feeling very happy, but you weren’t told that further down, under the coins, were diamonds, and under the diamonds were some other priceless things, and if you had continued to dig down you would have come to a spring of water that gave you eternal life and restored you to endless youth. Would you stop at the coins, if you knew there was ‘eternal life’ further down?
Another question: what if you drank… now you would have eternal life PLUS the things of this world. Would that make you happy? Wouldn’t it be like eating chocolate for every meal, for ever?
So if you are following me so far, you will probably see where this is going. Many people dig down to the coins and stop there. Some try further down, some even reach the water, but after the spring there is something EVEN BETTER: it is RELATIONSHIP.
The Source of the spring is a person called Jesus. He is eternal. A relationship with Him means eternal joy.

It was just a joke. We were laughing about how funny it would be if people were arrested and thrown in prison if they told a lie. “There wouldn’t be many people out of prison!” we laughed, “As soon as a lie was uttered, someone would ring the Lie Police and the sirens would go, and the uniformed men would bash the door down and drag the liar out. He or she would be screaming and shouting, protesting that it wasn’t fair, but it would do no good. Into the slammer and lock the door, maybe even throw away the key. “Hey man, you’re doing time for the crime!”

Or how about prison for some other offence, such as speaking rudely to parents? How about ten years behind bars for stealing something. It doesn’t have to be a BIG bad thing. One lolly stolen from your sister, or a sticker, maybe a cookie when your Mum’s back is turned?
It was all just a joke. So funny to think of such an enormous punishment for such a petty crime…. but then again, what we call petty crime, God calls sin. What we call insignificant, God calls important.
The Bible says God is holy, and pure, and morally perfect. He is like a sheet of white paper, with no blemishes, or shadows. Even if you examine that sheet of paper with an electron microscope, you won’t find a single atom out of place – all of them will be pure white. God CANNOT tell a lie, and He CANNOT think an evil thought. Unlike us He can’t ‘play’ with sin. God is INCAPABLE of being morally wrong. That is His character and that is His standard.
Humans on the other hand, have variable standards. Under the guise of the words ‘adult’ or ‘consenting adults’ we (nationally) tolerate prostitution, and drugs, (even legalize them) and bad temper, (brawls at the pub) and even petty theft (‘perks), and filthy language (‘swears like a trooper, we say, ha ha) and so on.
Like a fireman not bothering to put out a small fire until it hits a forest and starts licking at someone’s house, we only take action when sin reaches a certain threshold.
Our standard of morality is nowhere near as perfect as God’s standard. Our standard is slack, and ‘tolerant’ and it allows for excesses. It allows people to watch pornography, and swear and blaspheme, and drink and smoke, and sleep around. We live in a cultural environment in which abortion is not see as a horrendous crime. We have accepted war as a normal part of international relations. We accept bribery and corruption, and greed, and avarice and violence, as part of a ‘normal’ world…. but God still has His standards, and He never changes, so while we may think we have done well to run a ramshackle justice system to keep things from totally breaking down, God meticulously prepares His case against every sinner, and waits for the day when each of them stands before Him to answer for their crimes.
What crimes? Read the Ten Commandments. If you have kept them all, in letter and spirit, you will be acquitted  but if you have broken any of them, even once, you will be held guilty, and judged accordingly.
Unless of course you have accepted Jesus as your substitute, and your Saviour.

This might sound like a silly question, but do you have a culture? And if you think you have a culture, how would you describe it?
Many people have grappled with this question, and I am not going to try and answer it with one tiny blog but as a Westerner, Caucasian, with English as my first language, a product of both secular and Christian schooling, in a democratic Westernised society, I can take a few tentative stabs at an answer.
In my opinion I would describe my culture, the generally accepted ‘Western’ culture, with its roots in Athens and Rome, with a smattering of other stuff from many other nations… I would call it Technological. This is not to say that other nations do not use technology, but there has never been a culture so saturated with technology as the Western one. It is bursting with it: new fabrics, new materials, new processes, new insights and discoveries in the basic things of matter and physics and astronomy and other areas, Whatever it is, my culture is there with a gadget or a supercomputer or a branch of science based on it.
Western culture is also interested in the rule of law, as opposed to dictatorship. We also do not openly parade or sell and buy slaves, and we have a liberal view regarding drugs, alcohol, relationships, and the occult. Freedom of religion has opened the doors to every kind of belief, and freedom of expression has allowed people to say whatever they like, regardless of how offensive it is.
We have the telegraph, television, radios, satellites, high-tech industries, books, DVDs, CDs, genetic manipulation, highly specialised medical treatments and amazingly sophisticated medicines. We have roads, airports and harbours. We have machinery from the nano-scale, (electron microscopes), right through to mighty earth-movers. We can push individual atoms, or mountains, around. We have international flight in ‘plastic’ planes, a postal service in electronic and paper form, modern housing, space travel and the Internet. All these things combine to make my culture ‘Western’.
But mixed throughout it is something else, which is not usually recognized as important: the golden thread of Christianity. It is this Christian influence which keeps my culture from collapsing. Democracy itself DEPENDS on Christian ethics, so does business, finance, and industry. Without a high moral standard as taught by Christ, Western culture would have no strength to resist corruption and dissolution. If Christianity was removed from my culture, it would not be ‘Western’, and it would not last long before it disappeared.
Western culture is like a wonderful car, which, for all its flash features, is quite useless without the power of fuel.

Grandad was walking around the garden with his five year old grandson.

“See those thistles?” said grandad, “Do you know why we have them?”
The grandson smiled. He’d heard this story so many times.
“Because Adam and Eve sinned,” he said, smugly.
“That’s right,” said grandad, “When God first made the world it was beautiful and perfect, but when Adam and Eve sinned God made thistles grow in it.”
grandad was pleased. Not many people understood the origin of thorns and thistles. Some poor, deluded people thought thistles grew spikes as they evolved, over millions of years. But modern science had snuffed this idea out now that the absolute limits on inheritance of genetic traits was known. A plant can grow spikes ONLY if it has the genetic information to grow them. This is why only some plants grow them, and others never can and never will.
“It was such an easy command,” said grandad, “All God told Adam and Eve to do was NOT EAT from one tree. They had hundreds of beautiful, yummy fruit trees to pick fruit from, but ONE tree was out of bounds.”
“I would have obeyed God,” said the grandson still smug.
“You can pick from that tree, and that tree, and that tree,” said grandad, sweeping his arm around an imaginary orchard, “And from all those trees over there, and all the trees on that hillside, and all those down there… peaches and apples and plums and pears and greengages and cherries and mango and every other kind of fruit!”
“But not THAT tree!” chuckled the grandson.
“But then Satan came along, and he said to Eve, “You know, God doesn’t want you to eat from THAT tree because if you do you’ll become just like Him! You’ll be wise, and powerful and you’ll be able to take over His job!”
“That was a lie,” said the grandson.
“And what happened?”
“They died.”
“Yes, they died. Not right away, but after a few years Adam and Eve were old, and then they died. If only they hadn’t disobeyed God!”
“I wouldn’t have disobeyed God,” said the grandson again.
granddad spoke kindly and gently.
“Remember last night, when I told you to get into bed? Remember how you said no, and ran about the house shouting?”
The grandson said yes.
“It was such an easy command,” said granddad  “All I told you to do was to get into bed.”
The grandson was not smug any more. He was thinking.
They walked on down the path, chatting about the garden, while the birds whistled in the trees, and caterpillars nibbled on the cabbages, and bees buzzed around the purple flowers on the thistles.