Believers Armed and Dangerous

In  March of 320 A.D., the Emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire, Licinius, issued an order that all Roman soldiers under his authority were to offer a sacrifice to their emperor. 

At that time, the Roman 12^th Legion was encamped at Sebaste in present-day Turkey.  Among that legion were 40 Christians who refused to sacrifice to Licinius.  They had been exemplary soldiers, well liked by all.  The Roman officers tried to persuade them to sacrifice but they refused.  They were first offered reward then tortured over several days.  The 40 men stood firm. Finally, the command came to execute them.   The forty brave men were stripped and marched onto a frozen pond nearby.  They were promised if any of them chose to sacrifice, that soldier would be spared.

Guards were stationed around the pond.  Tempting warm bathes were placed at the perimeter.  Throughout the night, the 40 freezing Christian soldiers could be heard praying for God to give them strength and singing His praises, but their voices faded.  One soldier was finally seen crawling to the edge of the pond and climbing into one of the baths.  The shock of the warm water was such that he fell into convulsions and died.  The soft prayers for strength continued now by the 39 remaining.

Suddenly, one of the guards, convicted and in awe of the valor of the Christians, his brothers in arms, shed his clothes and ran onto the ice to restore the count to 40 brave soldiers for Christ.  He died with the others after first receiving Christ.

When the bodies were collected for burning the following morning, a young man among them was found to be alive.  He was a local village boy, and his mother had stood all night and now wept as they piled the bodies into wagons.  One soldier motioned to the mother to come.  He told her she should take her son home and revive him.  Startled, she cried “Can I deny my son the joy of entering glory with his comrades?”  She then picked up her son proudly and placed him on the cart with the others.

There are hundreds of stories like this recorded throughout church history.  But, this post is about sin and what it is.

In English, we place an “a” at the beginning of some words to make them mean the opposite: “atheist” instead of “theist,” for example, or “amoral” rather than “moral.”  Greek has the same rule.

The Greek word for “witness” is “martyria” (John 1:7) from which we get the word, “martyr.”  You and I think of martyrs as those who gave their lives for their faith, people like the 40 soldiers.

One Greek word for “sin” is “armatia” (Matt. 12:31)   The “a” is added to the beginning of the word to create a negative.  So, actually, the word for sin means “not martyria:” “not a witness,” “not a martyr.”  So sin, then, is when we’re not martyrs.

When a person joins the military, he or she raises their hand and recites an oath which is understood as a commitment, a willingness to sacrifice everything up to and including their life to protect this country and its constitution.  We as Christians take a similar oath when we ask Jesus to take charge of our lives, when we make Him our Lord.  We pledge all we have up to and including our lives. 

While we may never be called upon to sacrifice as the soldiers did, we have taken the oath.  The willingness should still be there.  We’ve signed the bottom line.  Our lives are not ours but Christ’s to spend as He wishes. Anything less than that on our part is sin.

Our pastor just finished a study in First Thessalonians, and it has intrigued me to say the least.  The Thessalonian church was created during Paul’s second missionary journey.  We’re not told exactly how long Paul and his fellow workers stayed at Thessalonica, but he was there at least three weeks (Acts 17:1-2), and some commentators believe maybe five months.  Whether three weeks, five months, or something in between, the truth is Paul was in Thessalonica for a fairly short time. 

Some of their converts came from the synagogue, but most came from the Greek community (Acts. 17:3-4; 1 Thess. 1:9).  So, there were some with a background in the Old Testament, but not many.  Imagine the obstacles new converts needed to overcome.  The Jews needed to learn to worship and share with gentiles, to worship on Sundays, that the dietary laws no longer applied except abstaining from blood and meat sacrificed to idols.  The Greeks needed to give up sacrificing to their gods, to understand their new faith was directed at God for ending the discord between man and God.  The Greeks previously saw worship as just the opposite.  They were sacrificing to appease angry gods.  Their new faith taught God loved them and welcomed them into His kingdom.  Just overcoming those biases and prejudices must have taken some time.

So, Paul must have been quite a teacher.  Can you imagine being one of the new Thessalonian converts?  You faithfully attend Sunday morning and Wednesday night services for five months.  Remember Paul and his friends worked “night and day” to support themselves (1 Thess. 2:9), so their teaching time was limited.  Then they’re gone.  It was not Paul’s policy to appoint recent converts to leadership roles either (1 Tim. 3:6).  So, it would seem Paul left Thessalonica without appointing a pastor or elder.

You might expect the Thessalonian Christians had Paul’s epistles to other churches to help guide them.  The problem is, though, that 1 Thessalonians was almost certainly Paul’s first epistle.  So, there were no other epistles circulating through the churches except, perhaps, James which was written to the Jews who were driven from Jerusalem (James 1:1).

Timothy was sent back to Thessalonica some time after he and Paul had left, just to check on them and help fortify their faith, but other than that, they were left to fend for themselves.

I’m sure by now you’ve gotten the idea these guys were left without guidance, leadership, or teachings from an outside source.  So, why didn’t the little church fold?  Funny thing is, just the opposite happened.  In Paul’s letter to them, they were heartily commended for their model of Christian purity and for their witness (1 Thess. 1:8).

I guess what I find so amazing is the work of the Holy Spirit in that little church.  They grew both in number and in fame so that their practice of the gospel became well known in the region (1 Thess. 1:8), to the point that it drew persecution from the city’s population (1 Thess. 2:14). 

God doesn’t leave us alone when we seek to know His truth and pursue His gospel.  He doesn’t “teach us to swim to let us drown” as they say.  I’m sure Jesus’ promise to be with us always was relied upon heavily and held closely again and again by the Christians in Thessalonica.  It should ring true for us just as strongly today.  We can rest assured we will never be left alone, never forsaken.  God is with us.

I’ve told the story in an earlier blog of my friend Ed Sullivan who had been a Christian for just a week but knew enough to be saved and shared what he knew resulting in a woman coming to Christ.  The Thessalonian church may have been like Ed, sharing what they knew.

I run into people as I’m sure you do who tell me they couldn’t share with others.  They claim they don’t know enough.  Like Ed, the Thessalonian church didn’t look at what they didn’t know but what they did know, then lived it and shared it.  We could all take a lesson from that.

I have several college age young people in my class at church, and it occurred to me to compare and contrast my Christian faith today with the way I lived it at their age.  Actually, I met Christ when I was 28, so not exactly college age.

I told them my faith today is much less stressful.  I no longer worry about the little things.  God has taken us older Christians through so much that it is much easier to depend on Him for our needs and to support us in the things we do for Him.  As we age in Christ, we become no less dedicated, just a little mellower.  A bit of a warning here, though: our trials and challenges sometimes are much larger as we mature.

When I was saying this to my class, I was thinking of two particular passages.  The first was Genesis chapter 22 which speaks of Abraham when God asked him to sacrifice Isaac.  The chapter begins with “after these things.”  I believe it means after all the things Abraham went through beginning in chapter 12 when God called him out of Ur up to chapter 22.

The things Abraham went through, the mistakes he made, the lies he told, the trials God put him through, and the victories he experienced had all prepared him for God’s request that he would sacrifice his son, to trust and serve God faithfully. 

We older Christians are like that.  We’ve been through the trials, we’ve seen God work in our lives and in the lives of others.  Our faith has grown stronger because of it.  We have learned a lot about God’s grace, His patience, and His plan.  We doubt less and trust more now. We still face out trials and obstacles but with a little less dred. James says that in the beginning of his epistle. He says our trials produce endurance or patience. So, the more trials we face, the more patient we should be.

Then I thought of 2 Chronicles chapter 20 where Israel was about to be slaughtered by a huge combined force from surrounding nations.  What did the Israelites do? Jehoshaphat stood before the people and praised God for His blessings and asked for His help.  God’s response was, “I got this.”  The people were not to worry.  God would conquer these nations for His children.  The next day, the Israelites went out.  They marched to the battlefield singing “Give thanks to the LORD, for his steadfast love endures forever.”   When they reached their destination, they found the enemy armies had been wiped out, all of them.  The armies were so large it took the Israelites three days to glean the goods and precious things from the dead.  And, they marched back to Jerusalem singing praises again.

If you’re a young Christian reading this, remember God is telling you “I got this” when you’re worried about the trials you might be experiencing or face those who stand against you in your quest to live a righteous life.  While you might think you’re alone, He’s there and in charge.

As some of you know, back in March I was “pushed” by a Christian friend to contact the local community college asking if they would be interested in a class about the truth of Christianity for the community education department. 

I sent an email to the school fully expecting to have it laughed at.  The next morning I was asking God what would I do if they actually accepted the class.  You know.  God will cause these sorts of things to happen, allow impossible things to take place if it will give glory to Him.  I was nervous, but he told me “I got this,” and I was at peace.  The next Monday, I got a response to the email telling me the school would like to offer the class in the Summer.  I was certain they misunderstood what the class would entail, so I sent them a detailed outline explaining exactly what I would like to do: teach what Christianity believes and why we believe it’s true.  Their response was that they would like to offer it in the fall as well.  This Thursday will be the last session of the first summer class.  God has blessed. 

I recently asked the school if they would be interested in a class on the first three centuries of church history, and they loved the idea and said they could offer it in the spring.

Sometimes, you just have to go with what God moves you to do.  When a blessing or a solution seems impossible even ridiculous, just remember what God told Jehoshaphat: “I got this,” and head on out to the battlefield praising God for His love endures forever.

Ezekiel 26:2-5 (ESV)
²  “Son of man, because Tyre said concerning Jerusalem, ‘Aha, the gate of the peoples is broken; it has swung open to me. I shall be replenished, now that she is laid waste,’
³  therefore thus says the Lord GOD: Behold, I am against you, O Tyre, and will bring up many nations against you, as the sea brings up its waves.
⁴  They shall destroy the walls of Tyre and break down her towers, and I will scrape her soil from her and make her a bare rock.
⁵  She shall be in the midst of the sea a place for the spreading of nets, for I have spoken, declares the Lord GOD. And she shall become plunder for the nations,

Prophecy has always been a difficult thing for me.  I’m kind of a black-and-white sort of person and prophecy seems so grey sometimes.  When I took the Liberty Home Bible Institute course years ago, I had to actually memorize the notes on the prophecy section in order to pass the final.

So, prophecy kind of stumps me at times.  The passage above doesn’t.  It tells us a lot about what God said through Ezekiel about what would happen to Tyre.  Let’s see how accurate God’s prophecies are.

1.  Many nations would come against Tyre.
2.  The nations would bring down her towers
3.  They would scrape her soil from her and make her bare rock.
4. She shall be found in the midst of the sea.
5. She would be a place for the spreading of nets.

I don’t know what the odds of those five predictions actually happening are, but they seem extremely precise and extremely improbable.  Did the predictions come true?

• When the prophecy was written (around 595 B.C.), Tyre was a large and important city in the Mediterranean
• From 597-586 B.C., Nebuchadnezzar placed a siege against Tyre in an attempt to conquer the city.
• He finally breached the walls of the city, but before he did, the entire population of mainland Tyre escaped to the island a half mile offshore which was also called Tyre. 
• Nebuchadnezzar had no navy, so he gave up the attack and went back to Babylon frustrated.
• Nearly three hundred years later, in 332 B.C., Alexander the Great sought to overthrow the island of Tyre but he had no navy either.
• Alexander used the stones and even the rocks and dirt scraped from the old city site to build a causeway to the island for his soldiers to travel on.
• Alexander eventually reached the island and conquered it with the help of the Phoenician Navy.
•  So, many nations came against Tyre, the Babylonians, Alexander, and the Phoenicians as predicted.
• The walls and towers of Tyre were brought down as predicted.
• The soil of the city was scraped into the sea leaving nothing of the once great city but bare rock as predicted.
• And, the city was moved to the island in the midst of the sea as predicted.
• The result of all this is that even today at the site of the ancient city of  mainland Tyre, the fishermen spread their nets to dry them as predicted.  There are no rocks to snag or tear the nets.

What are the odds?   One might think Someone knew all this would happen ahead of time.

1 Corinthians 9:3-14 (ESV)
³  This is my defense to those who would examine me.
⁴  Do we not have the right to eat and drink?
⁵  Do we not have the right to take along a believing wife, as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas?
⁶  Or is it only Barnabas and I who have no right to refrain from working for a living?
⁷  Who serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard without eating any of its fruit? Or who tends a flock without getting some of the milk?
⁸  Do I say these things on human authority? Does not the Law say the same?
⁹  For it is written in the Law of Moses, “You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain.” Is it for oxen that God is concerned?
¹⁰  Does he not certainly speak for our sake? It was written for our sake, because the plowman should plow in hope and the thresher thresh in hope of sharing in the crop.
¹¹  If we have sown spiritual things among you, is it too much if we reap material things from you?
¹²  If others share this rightful claim on you, do not we even more? Nevertheless, we have not made use of this right, but we endure anything rather than put an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ.
¹³  Do you not know that those who are employed in the temple service get their food from the temple, and those who serve at the altar share in the sacrificial offerings?
¹⁴  In the same way, the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel.

I’m afraid this might seem a little “soap boxy” but I’m going to post it anyway.  I’ve been on enough church boards, panels, and in enough church leadership roles to see what the life of a typical pastor is like.  I have enough pastor friends to somewhat understand their job.  One of my friends, Lloyd, pastors a church of emotionally, physically, and intellectually disabled adults.  He does it because he loves it and wouldn’t do anything else.  He has to work away from the church to make ends meet.  Lloyd is getting older, and his health is failing, but he’s there every Sunday.

Another friend, Fred, has been a pastor of a little southern church for decades.  He has a PhD and could do greater things, but he still pastors the little church he loves.  These men aren’t in it for any kind of financial reward.  They are God’s instruments and should be honored as such.

Really, the main point of the passage is that clergy may, and usually should, be paid.  Paul argues that it is only right that the church in Corinth should provide for his living expenses.  As with pastors and missionaries today, much of Paul’s time was not doubt spent in study.  A pastor friend of mine once told me he needs to study an hour for every minute of sermon time.  Think about that.  Think about Easter week when a pastor may have a Wednesday night service, a Good Friday service, then there’s the Easter service.  How much time do you suppose is spent in study that week?  And that’s above his time counseling, visiting the sick and shut-ins, endless committee meetings, administrative stuff.  The list goes on.

Sometimes pastors have jobs outside the church because the church can’t afford to completely support them.  These are bi-vocational pastors.  It’s a fancy word but not a fancy lifestyle.  When I was a young man, I worked at a paint factory.  There was a forklift driver I worked with who would gobble down a quick sandwich and immediately spend the rest of his lunch break working on the next Sunday’s sermon.  The fellow worked hard all week in order to both feed his family and to afford to pastor a church too small to pay him.  I’m sure his evenings were spent in studying as well.

Years later, our family car broke down, and I hitched a ride with a passing motorist who was driving from his Orange County church to speak at a small church 60 miles away that couldn’t afford a pastor.  He did this every week because the need was there.  The pastorate is definitely not a job but a calling for these men.  Mega churches are far from the norm.  The average American church has 89 adults.  The last church I attended has about 1,000.  The one I’m at now has more like 400.  There are a lot of churches like ours.  That means there are even more churches with fewer than 50 people.  The typical pastor isn’t getting rich by any means.

A friend now gone, Pastor Dan Vasquez, at one time carried his paychecks in his wallet sometimes for weeks on end because he felt the church needed the money more than he did at the time or there simply wasn’t the money in the bank to pay him.  This is the type of men standing every Sunday in our church pulpits.

Paid clergy should be expected if you expect your clergy to be fulltime.  Like anything else, a church that will not or cannot pay their pastor will get what they pay for.  A pastor cannot spend 40 hours at work every week supporting his family then work another 40 hours (usually much more) in church ministry, and keep a family together.  Something has to suffer, and more often than not, it’s the family.  Enough said?

We must honor our leaders.  As I recently told one of my pastor friends, “I’ve seen your job, and I don’t want it.”  He smiled because it’s a calling for him.  The long hours, the lives touched, the hearts changed, the addictions left behind.  That’s his reward: God using him to reach others.  So, let’s think twice before we grumble about the pastor’s pay.  He probably works a lot harder than most of us and still shows us that Sunday morning smile.

Hebrews 2:14-15 (ESV)
¹⁴  Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil,
¹⁵  and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.

We are slaves to Satan because his realm is the threat to eternal life with God.  We are released from the threat of lifelong slavery to Satan by the promise of lifelong freedom from death.  We as Christians no longer fear death.  Sure, we don’t look forward to the process leading up to our death.  Sometimes that process is short.  Sometimes it takes time.  But, the resulting death is not something the Christian fears.

With those who do not believe, death is a thing to be feared.  It’s the end of this existence, no more fun, not more love, nothing more.  It is the Christian who has hope of joy after death.

Blaise Pascal, the French mathematician and philosopher offered a wager for our lives, and it turns out the wager is forced upon us.  Either we bet giving our lives to God is truly the path to eternal life, or we bet there is no God, that this life is all there is, and there is nothing after death.  Pascal says if the believer is wrong, he has wasted 70+ years.  If the non-believer is wrong, he has wasted eternity.

The non-Christian may seek to help others, contribute to causes, even volunteer at charities.  But, their rewards are given here in the smiles they receive, the gratitude offered, the self-satisfaction they feel.  With all they do to reach out to humanity, theirs is still a short-lived reward.  It lives only as long as they do.  These good works are what they have to rely on, but the fear of death is still the fear of an end to all that they are.

On the other hand, as the writer of Hebrews says, the Christian should not be bothered by death, should not be a victim of “lifelong slavery.”  We Christians look forward to death.  We are not the slaves to it but servants of the Most High God.  The smiles and gratitude of those we help are not the greatest reward.  We have a greater blessing awaiting us.

Christians are not lifelong slaves to the threat of death.  We believe we will not truly die.  Our bodies may stop working biologically.  We see that often.  I’m 71.  Mine is slowly winding down.  There are things I can’t do now that I could when I was 20.  But, my spirit is no different from the one I’ve always had.  I believe it will survive my body.  My spirit does not fear death because it will never have to face it.

I’m betting non-Christians believe a lie.  They may believe this life is all there is, or believe they have the truth and will spend eternity as a part of the great altogether, maybe be reincarnated further up the chain.  The alternative is facing whether Christ was truthful when He said this:

Matthew 7:23-24 (ESV)  ²³  “And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’” 

As Christians, we are not the elite or even anything at all on our own.  But, God has assigned us the job of showing and sharing Christ with others.  Our lives and our words should help people see the glory that awaits them if they break those chains of the lifelong slavery of the fear of death, be set free by accepting Christ’s sacrifice, and enter into eternity with Him.

Is it true tolerance is a virtue?  Well, tolerance requires differing viewpoints before we can be tolerance.  We can’t be “tolerant” of ideas we like or if only one view is allowed.    

When we prohibit other beliefs, the result is intolerance, even fascism.   Antifa and similar groups attempt to squelch all views but theirs.  That’s the opposite of anti-fascism. 

The Reverend Martin Luther King and Simone de Beauvoir crusaded for views contrary to American standards of the time.  While there was violence involved, the true transformation came from discussion, analysis, and acceptance of those ideas.  America’s mind was changed.  Nice example to follow, don’t you think?

But, America’s marketplace of ideas is becoming less tolerant – less willing to discuss beliefs.  I’m sure you’ve heard “old white men are ruining America” in political speeches and commentaries.  I have.  That statement is racist, ageist, sexist, and intolerant.  But, no one seems to hear.  Imagine if a politician or talking head were to say the equally intolerant, “young black women are ruining America.”  Intolerance has become acceptable, and few are noticing.

When speakers like Ben Shapiro visit university campuses, students “valiantly arise to prevent intolerant views from being expressed.”  They’re intolerant of intolerance?  Funny, huh?   No one seems to teach students to think critically anymore.

Many accuse Christians as being intolerant.  When we say no one is saved without Jesus or that the Bible is true, we’re not intolerant any more that claiming 2+2=4..  We are only intolerant if we try to silence the opinion of others.

We can discuss opposing views with those who hold those views.  We can tell them why we think we’re right and why we believe they’re wrong.  We can even walk away and not listen to them.  No one says we have to listen.  It’s when we actively try to keep them from expressing their views we become intolerant.

Jesus tried to convince the Jewish leaders in John chapter 8 that they were wrong, but He never tried to shut them down.  Today, He works the same way.  He is tolerant of those who hold opposing views to Christianity.  He doesn’t try to keep them from expressing their views.  Many of the letters of Paul in the New Testament dealt with outsiders trying to influence the views of Christians.  Paul’s response was to watch out for those false teachers but never to keep them from sharing their views.

True, Paul did become intolerant of the actions of some.  We are all intolerant of the actions of others.  We are intolerant of child molesters, murders, human traffickers, etc.  But, it is the beliefs of others we are to allow.  We are not to allow for evil actions.

So, how do you and I react to someone who disagrees with us?  Are we tolerant of what they have to say? Or, are we generating a lot of heat with very little light?  Let’s look closer to home.  The problem may be us.

The subject came up this week whether those who never heard the specific gospel of Christ could be saved.  What happens to these folks?  Do they just die without ever knowing Christ?  Like in the “Christian world,” many do.  Is there a chance for them, though?

Christian theologians are all over the map on this one.  And, I’m no theologian. So, you can and should certainly take my view with a large measure of salt, but here goes. Please let me know if I’m wrong.

What do we know?  We know God is not willing that any should perish (1 Tim. 2:3-4).  But, we also know people who don’t believe Jesus is God will die in their sins (John 8:24).  So, some will perish.

We know that Christ is the only way to God (John 14:6), yet we know there were people saved in Old Testament times because of a promise without ever hearing of Jesus of Nazareth.    

Romans 1:19-20 says so much can be known of God by just looking at His creation that the sinner who has never heard of the risen Christ has no excuse.  How can that be?   We can know a lot about God from examining His creation, but is there enough information there?

The Bible tells us Jesus is God (John 1:1; Heb. 1:8; Titus 2:13) and that Jesus is the Creator of our universe (John 1:3; Col. 1:15-17).  So, what the seekers will learn from creation, they will learn of Christ our Creator.  They can see His love and kindness in the love of a mother for her child.  They can see His grandeur, His love of order, and His power simply by looking at the night sky.  They can see His love of beauty in a flower, and by the intricacy of the human body.  They can also see His justice in man’s desire to keep order and God’s mercy in the mercy man shows to his children.   They know there is more than just the physical when they see a person is “no longer there” when their body dies.

The primitive native living along the Amazon, has an innate moral standard.  He can see and judge men’s sins.  If we do wrong, we are answerable to other men.  “But,” they might ask, “what if we do wrong against the Creator of all things?  How do we make that right?  Has God made allowances?  Wouldn’t the same Creator Who made this love also love with greater power and greater fairness?”

The tribesman can see a God of love, a God of mercy, but also a God of justice.  This may be all that is needed for the him to ask for this God to reveal Himself more fully to him.

The tribesman’s prayer can be answered in a number of ways.  Risking their own lives, missionaries seek out these people to share the gospel with them.  Missionaries can be an answer to his prayer.

Supplying Bibles is also a method.  The Wycliff Bible Translators go into places like the jungles of Peru, live with the people learning their languages, creating a written language for them, and printing Bibles for them in their own languages.

God in Christ can also reveal Himself in dreams.  Today, there are records of Muslims coming to Christ because of dreams and visions they’ve had.  Such books as Seeking Allah but Finding Jesus and Dreams and Visions tell the stories of Muslims coming to Christ in a number of ways including dreams and visions in lands where Christian missionaries are either executed or simply not allowed entry.

Two questions still remain, though.  What happens to those who have not been reached by missionaries, Bibles, or dreams, and why evangelize these people if they can learn all they need to know from creation?

As I’ve shown, I believe we and the Peruvian native have sufficient evidence presented in creation to understand enough about the Creator to ask that Creator to lead us and guide us.  I believe Romans chapter 1 tells us we are held responsible for what we know and how we apply it.  I also believe, since we are told God is not willing that any should perish, that He will provide a way for the seeker to find Him. I think 1 Tim. 2:3-4 promises everyone will have a chance. They can reject God’s offer, but they’ll be given a chance.

Romans chapter 1 also tells us many will end up worshipping the creation rather than the Creator.  They used to make images of wood, stone, and metal and worship those rather than the Creator.  Today, people worship at the altar of materialism, secular humanism, evolution and other creation-centered beliefs thinking the universe is all there is or that the incredible intricacies of the cell, DNA in particular, are the result of randomness, matter in motion, and eons of time. 

The seeker can find God and share a relationship with Him if he wishes.  Evangelizing the lost with the gospel simply gives them the full story and raises the odds of someone coming to Christ after being fully informed.

Well, there it is.  My view of what happens to those who never hear of Christ.  They are given enough information and can act with a sincere heart.  They are without excuse as Paul tells us. Like the Old Testament saints, they have a promise to lean on.  

Yes, no one comes to God the Father except through Christ our Creator.  We find Christ through his special revelation, the Bible, but it seems those who don’t hear the gospel can also find Him through His creation: general revelation.

I must admit I used to believe animals had no souls.  After all, there is no outward evidence that they are self-aware or self-reflective, and that was my criteria for having a soul.  I equated personhood with having a soul and thought if animals were persons, how would it be moral to kill and eat them?

Dr. Hugh Ross in his article on soulish animals points out that the word, “create” is only used three times in Genesis chapter 1: for the creation of the earth (vs.1), for the creation of animals (vs. 21), and for the creation of man (vs. 27). 

Ross poses that this indicates the word for “create” (bara Heb.) may mean something special about the creation of these creatures.  He thinks it means they/we all have souls. 

C.S. Lewis in his book The Problem of Pain says while we may think of dogs, for instance, as persons, it is only because we use pronouns indicating gender.  We say he and she to describe our pets.  Lewis says this is misleading.  He says while we may see an animal in pain, it would be a mistake to say, “He is feeling pain” since there is no one in there to feel the pain.  He says it would be more accurate to say, “There is pain going on in the animal but it is not being felt by a person.” 

I tend to agree with Lewis to a point.  I still don’t believe the vast majority of animals are self-aware or that any except humans are self-reflective.  Animals don’t think about what they think about or understand abstract thought as humans do.  But, is that what qualifies one as having a soul? 

Over the years since reading The Problem of Pain I’ve studied my dog, Gus, to see if he displayed soulish traits.  He was handy and easy to examine.  It seemed only natural to use him as the subject of my research.  What I noticed was quite striking, to me, at least.  Dogs learn, they love and hate.  They are sad and happy.  They dream indicating they can remember things without the need of repetitive conditioning.  I’ve even seen Gus make decisions and communicate his wishes.  He used to stand in the bedroom doorway and stare at us every night to tell us it was time for us all to go to bed. 

One of the pre-Socratic philosophers tells of sitting in the woods one day and seeing a rabbit run up a nearby path.  The rabbit turned down one of the forks in the path.  Shortly after, a dog appeared obviously chasing the rabbit.  The dog stopped and sniffed one fork in the path then took off up the other fork, the one the rabbit had taken.  Was the dog following the scent of the rabbit? No, he only sniffed the fork the rabbit did not go down.  “The dog made a logical deduction without testing the second fork”, observes the philosopher.

Aristotle believed souls exist in all living things including plants, though they were of various qualities and getting more complex as the organism becomes more complex.  The soul of a petunia, for instance, would be a very simple one compared to the complexity of Koko the gorilla who could sign more than 1000 words in a modified form of American Sign Language.  She could use those signs to share ideas with her trainer.  Koko even seemed self-aware.  That was a gorilla. The human soul is even more complex.

To get back to Doctor Ross and his interpretation of Genesis chapter 1, it does seem animals have souls of some sort.  Like Aristotle, I believe Man’s soul is special and unique.  We can think abstractly and self-reflect because we are made in God’s image.  I also believe “soulishness” may apply to animals like Gus. 

The human soul is a marvelous immaterial thing, a gift from God.  With it, we share much of our Creator’s attributes to a lesser degree.  We love, are saddened, are self-aware, and think abstractly.

Do animals go to heaven, then?  Well, there will be horses there (Rev. 6), so maybe they do.  Gus is gone now.  I miss him. If animals do have souls, maybe I’ll still get to see my buddy Gus again.

Slavery is a topic often thrown at Christians by skeptics to try and prove an inconsistency in either God’s nature or in Scripture.  “How could a righteous and good God endorse the evil of slavery,” the skeptic may ask.  “After all, the Old Testament doesn’t just allow for slavery.  It actually endorses it and gives laws directing how slaves should be treated.  Is this the loving God you keep telling me about?”

It’s  true.  The Bible does endorse slavery and tells how slaves are to be treated.  But, let me ask a question here at the start:  “Is slavery always evil?”

According to the log of Christopher Columbus’ physician, when Columbus arrived in the Caribbean archipelago he found the local natives, the Caribs, were cannibals invading other islands, capturing prisoners for meat.  With some tribes, they actually raised them like cattle and “harvested them.”

Columbus saw enslaving the Caribs as the most efficient way to end their cannibalism.  Once enslaved, they were evangelized ending their dietary preferences.  Was enslavement to save the barbaric slaughter of thousands of indigenous people evil?  My point, of course, is that slavery is not always evil or even the wrong thing to do.

Now let’s look at slavery in the Bible.  Most of the Old Testament laws concerning slavery are found in Exodus chapter 21.  Bear in mind that this was a different time and a different culture.  There were no government welfare programs, no prisons or jails.  The legal system was very simple and very direct.

Most slavery in the Old Testament is not like that of the pre-Civil War South.  Let’s look at the Israelites first. They could sell themselves as slaves in order to support their families, and as such, they were fed and clothed by their masters.  The slave was released after six years. He was to be treated well (Lev. 25:43).  If a poor master were to beat the slave to the point of losing an eye or even a tooth, the slave was to be freed.  So, masters needed to be humane.

Crimes were often punished by slavery (Ex. 22:1-4).  An Israelite who could not pay his debts was expected to work as a slave for his creditors.  After the debt was paid, he was to be released.  When a slave was released after his term, he was often given gifts by the master (Deut. 15:12-14).

On now to slavery as it pertains to those captured during war.  Those slaves were not granted release after six years as the Israelites were.  These slaves could be beaten severely, and sometimes they would be beaten to death.  Their death was not considered of the same value as the life of Hebrew slaves.  If a non-Hebrew slave was killed by someone other than their master, the price of the slave was to be paid to the master.

Now, that all sounds perfectly horrible.  How could God allow such things to happen even to foreign enemies?  But, what exactly was the alternative? 

Normally, most survivors of war were slaughtered.  The Israelites, however, would place captives into their society as slaves rather than killing them all.  Realistically, the Israelites couldn’t allow them to simply be set free in order to rejoin the enemy forces and attack once again.  They couldn’t let them run free in the lands controlled by Israel or they might regroup and start the battle from within.  No, the sensible thing was to enslave them so the masters could control their actions and keep an eye on these people. 

So far as beating the foreign-born slaves, captive enemies were not likely to work willingly to please their masters.  At time, no doubt, physical persuasion would be necessary rather than allowing freeloading.  It was still preferable to the death they would have faced on the battlefield.

Slavery in the New Testament was a Greco-Roman custom, not endorsed by the Bible.  However, the New Testament teaches equality between the Christian master and the Christian slave.  They are told, as well, to treat one another humanely and with respect.

It was the Christians who put and end to slavery in Europe and in the United States.  While it is true that many Christians believed slavery was approved of just as many Bible critics do today, in fact the New Testament taught human equality which eventually resulted in an end to the legal slave trade.

So, don’t fall for the A Loving God Could Never Allow Slavery argument from the skeptics.  It doesn’t take into account all the facts.