Facebookers on the west coast have had fun, good-naturedly chiding their east coast cousins. “A 5.8 magnitude earthquake—and you’re hyperventilating?” After all, the 7.0+ magnitude quakes Californians have lived with for decades do make the temblor in Virginia this week seem a bit “wimpy.” But a quake is a quake. And the nervous chatter of “survivors” in the nation’s capital made for headline grist. Not to be outdone, The South Bend Tribune carried the testimonies of those in Michiana who felt the earth move (ever so slightly) “way out here.” All the while Hurricane Irene is barreling up the Atlantic with the usual late summer gusto of another tropical storm turned destructive. (Remember school beginning six years ago on the heels of Hurricane Katrina?) And the folks in Texas? They were praying hard that the storm would head their way, since their state is now gripped in the most ravaging drought in its long history. Ah, the weather and quakes—Mother Nature keeps changing the subject, doesn’t she? And as for the Arab Spring—nobody’s sure now where that “spring” is headed. Egypt struggles with her new lease on democracy. Syria’s lethal crackdown only worsens. Yemen is off the radar screen. Libya now is front and center—and nobody knows where Gadhafi might turn up or how that awkward revolution might turn out. As once again Israel and the Palestinians go at it—rocket for rocket, tit for tat. Some spring that was! Anybody want to discuss the global economy—Europe, the U.S., China? I didn’t think so. Because, truth be told, nobody knows. Period. Listen, do you suppose the entire planet—read, the human race—feels these mounting seismic tremblings? Could it be that all of us—God believers or not—with awkward uncertainty and mounting dis-ease stare into the unknown ahead of us? In 1921 W. J. Yeats composed his poem, “The Second Coming”: Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. “Full of passionate intensity”—the moniker of “this generation.” Then perhaps we all—God believers or not—could profit from a reflective brooding through an ancient gospel. “The Last Word: The Fourth Gospel for a Final Generation.” Because maybe the “Peace I leave with you” promise tucked near the end of the Jesus narrative (John 14:27) is earth’s most sought gift of all. And so the journey commences right here, right now. Never mind the earth beneath your feet—stay on course until the Gift is in your heart.
Pastors' Blog
By Pioneer Pastors
Just as the ubiquitous yellow school busses are revving up to begin another school year across the nation comes word about President Obama’s brand new $1.1 million mystery bus. Perhaps you’ve seen it on his road trip this week through some of our Midwest neighbor states—that new Greyhound-size black bus, with blacked out windows and red and blue police lights. Few details of the bus have been released, although the Christian Science Monitor website has conjectured what the imposing bus might be like. If it shares similarities with the familiar black presidential Cadillac limousine, nicknamed “The Beast” by the Secret Service, then it, too, is built like a tank, with “8-inch thick armor-plated sides, special bulletproof glass, and Kevlar-reinforced tires . . . mounted on specially designed rims that can continue to drive even if the tires are missing.” Similarly the new bus “is probably airtight, and likely has an advanced fire suppression system, oxygen tanks, and is built to withstand a chemical attack.” And on the bus, as in The Beast, “bags of Obama’s blood” are surely on board in the event of a medical emergency. But because the bus is significantly bigger, it no doubt contains more than The Beast’s tear gas cannons, shotguns and night vision cameras. How many satellite phones and communication wizardry—to connect with government officials and world leaders in the event of a terror event—is anybody’s guess. Actually, the Secret Service commissioned the Hemphill Brothers Coach Company to build two such busses, since the Republican presidential candidate next year will be given similar protection. Total cost for these two “mystery” busses? $2,191,960. (http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/The-Vote/2011/0817/1.1-million-bus-used-by-Obama-has-high-tech-defenses-but-what-are-they) So how are you planning to travel this new year? Forget about a bus. If you’re like me, you’ll be glad for your trusty old bucket of bolts to simply survive another winter! But would you like to travel even better than the President? The title for this new blog, “The Fourth Watch,” comes straight out of a dramatic emergency (as last week’s blog noted). “Now in the fourth watch of the night [Roman reckoning for 3-6 a.m.] Jesus went to them, walking on the sea” (Matthew 14:25). There’s no president alive who can travel like that! When Peter recognized it was Jesus walking the wind-lashed swells, he called out into the fury if he might come. “Come.” And Peter did, with all the bravado of a seasoned fisherman. “But when he saw the wind was boisterous, he was afraid; and beginning to sink, he cried out, saying, ‘Lord, save me!’” (v 30). In that split second the Savior grasped Peter’s flailing hand. “Walking side by side, Peter’s hand in that of his Master, they stepped into the boat together” (Desire of Ages 381). Did you catch that? Side by side, hand in hand with the God of the universe. No mystery bus or The Beast. Instead a walk through the fourth watch, through the raging storm, with the Savior. Which is why I hope you’ll join me next week at Pioneer or this website in a life-changing journey with Christ through the Gospel of John—“The Last Word: The Fourth Gospel for a Final Generation.” That Peter walked on water isn’t the surprise—that Jesus wanted him to is. So pray with me L. D. Avery Stuttle’s prayer: I cannot, dare not, walk alone The tempest rages in the sky A thousand snares beset my feet A thousand foes are lurking nigh Still Thou the raging of the sea O Master! let me walk with Thee.
Are these crazy times, or what? With a bit of self-talk, I actually enjoy careening roller coaster rides (mostly when they're over). But the plunging ride Wall Street and the global financial markets have taken us on these last few days as the result of America's credit rating being cut--no amusement park fun at all. With the nation's retirement funds on the line, the innocuous bromides the talking heads are dispensing are small comfort: "sit tight," "be patient," "don't panic." Especially when one market analyst this week had the temerity to describe this ride as "America's final plunge" (http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-america-%E2%80%9Cmakes-cut%E2%80%9D-%E2%80%93-so-what-happens-next).
Crazy times these are. "London's burning" is now more than a nursery rhyme. And Syria's burning, too. And summer vacation isn't even over yet.
Welcome to the Fourth Watch--a new blog in print and online (www.pmchurch.tv) --a running, weekly commentary on the times that are fast becoming the fourth watch of history.
For centuries the ancient Jews divided their nights into three watches. But with the ascendency of Rome, by New Testament times Jews had adopted the Roman four-watch night: first watch (6 - 9 p.m., called "evening"); second watch (9 p.m. - midnight, called "midnight"); third watch (midnight - 3 a.m., called "cock-crowing"); and fourth watch (3 a.m. - 6 a.m., called "morning" --see Mark 13:35 for all four). The fourth watch was the last watch before the break of day, the darkest hour of the night before the dawn.
And not surprisingly it was the watch Jesus mastered. "Now in the fourth watch of the night Jesus went to them walking on the sea" (Matthew 14:25). But are you surprised? Wouldn't the blackest hour of the night belong to the God "who knows what is in the darkness, and light dwells with Him" (Daniel 2:22)?
So how dark is the night you're traversing these days? Darker than your physician understands? Darker than your closest friends will ever know? As stormy and dark and uncertain as this civilization's economic fourth watch? No matter how dark life has become, one terse line from the Gospel story declares that in the blackest watch of all, Christ walks the dark and the storm. No shadows, no storm, no night so dark but that he hurries to you, too. You do not walk alone. "In the darkest hour [the fourth watch], Jesus will be our light....In every condition of trial, we may have the consolation of his presence" (RH 4-15-1884).
Which makes William Whiting's prayer the right prayer for a university on the eve of a new year and a civilization in the fourth watch of the night, doesn't it?
O Christ, whose voice the waters heard
And hushed their raging at Thy word
Who walkedst on the foaming deep
And calm amidst the rage didst sleep
Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee...
A prayer for the Fourth Watch. Amen.
Do you remember learning to count? What kinds of things did you count? What kinds of things do you count today? What kinds of things should you be counting? This summer I started recounting some things. Our family went to Italy this summer. My daughter was taking a college class (yes, my little girl is now in college), my husband and I were spiritual leaders on the trip. I experienced the collision of two worlds. Although I had had my reservations, I was not prepared for the visceral, emotional, physical, and spiritual reaction I would have. I am praying that today’s sermon will not be a travelogue, or a monologue, but that the Holy Spirit will engage your heart in a dialogue as you see the collision of two worlds for yourself.
I was visiting after the conclusion of another seminary class. I was sharing with one of my friends how I enjoyed the diversity of Andrews University. Our conversion turned to how much progress our country has made in civil rights. I asked what has been her experience as an African American growing up since MLK and the civil rights movement. She was a little younger than myself so I expected a pretty mild testimony, especially as my friend came from the North. My friend shared how her father was blessed to be able to earn an education and get better employment. She shared how excited they were to move into a “nicer” neighborhood in the NY suburbs. But when they arrived, the neighborhood was not very “nice” to them. They were called the N-word regularly and treated as though their presence was polluting the community. One time on the way home from school she and her siblings even had dogs sent after them! In self-preservation the children scrambled up on cars roofs to get out of reach of the attacking canines. The police were called and upon arrival scolded the children to get off the cars, but did nothing about the neighbor who sent his dogs to attack them! I remember thinking “What?! This continues to happen in my lifetime?” As our conversation came to a close she mentioned that it was nice talking to a white person who seemed interested in her experience and struggle as a black person. As God has blessed me with many more cross cultural friendships, I continue to struggle with what is my role in all this as a white farm boy from the North. What ought a Seventh-Day Adventist disciple do to address the ongoing racial divisions and inequalities in a nation that was founded with “…all men are created equal…”? - Pastor Walter Rogers
This morning we are going to examine a story that took place long ago in the village of Bethany. It’s a story you may have heard many times; however, it is full of meaning for us in the 21st century. Something profound took place that day in Bethany. Luke tells the story in his gospel, chapter 10, verses 38-42. Now let’s join Martha as she tries to go to sleep.
It felt as if the night would never end. Why? Because her mind was whirling a thousand miles a second as she rehearsed all she planned to do the following day. Finally she must have drifted off to sleep because her alarm, the lusty cock-a-doodle doo of her neighbor’s rooster, announced it was time to get up.<
Rolling out of bed and onto her knees, she offered a prayer of thankfulness and a request for guidance for the day’s activities. Then, with energy and anticipation, she prepared to face the day. Today was special; company was coming…
(In setting the scene, I have adapted excerpts from a sermon prepared by NAD women’s ministries leaders, Jean Parchment and Carla Baker. I have also quoted from the book, “Daughters of Grace: Experiencing God Through Their Stories” authored by a favorite writer, Trudy J. Morgan-Cole.)
This one’s a no-brainer, even if it was a hot, steamy afternoon. Twenty-year-old Sean Schmidt from Buffalo, New York, was racing down I-190 this week with a friend, when the open sunroof proved a temptation too strong. Suddenly standing up on the passenger seat, Sean pushed half his body through the opening into the glorious rushing air. And there he remained. Until a state trooper raced up behind him with cruiser lights flashing. Doomed, Sean crawled back into the car, grabbed a small bag of marijuana and tossed it out before being pulled over. Unfortunately for Sean the bag landed on the trooper’s cruiser. Guilty on both counts—not wearing a seat belt and possession of marijuana. Let’s face it—sometimes our guilt is a no-brainer. The evidence is simply too obvious. “Guilty as charged—on all counts.” My conscience knows well that familiar verdict. No doubt yours does, too. Which is why Calvary is such compelling good news for all of us sinners. “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8 NIV). The charges were dropped while we were as guilty as Sean Schmidt! In fact, before we even pleaded guilty. “By His wonderful work in giving His life, [Jesus] restored the whole race of man to favor with God” (I SM 343). Two thousand years before we were born, Christ by his death restored the human race to favor with God—all charges dropped—it is the astounding truth of this God who “justifies the ungodly” (Romans 4:5). And it is this truth we, who are ungodly and guilty, must receive here at the foot of the cross. “For since we were restored to friendship with God by the death of his Son while we were still his enemies, we will certainly be delivered from eternal punishment by his life . . . all because of what our Lord Jesus Christ has done for us in making us friends of God” (Romans 5:10, 11 NLT). Can you believe it! For the likes of you and me and Sean Schmidt, that this is the best news of all is the greatest no-brainer of all, isn’t it?
So how much is $100 trillion? In an interview this week, Bill Gross, head of Pimco (an investment firm that, according to CNBC, “manages $1.2 trillion in assets and runs the largest bond fund in the world”), suggested that “the US is actually in worse financial shape than Greece and other debt-laden European countries” (www.cnbc.com/id/43378973/). While the media have focused on our national debt of $14.3 trillion, little is being said about entitlement monies guaranteed to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security (close to another $50 trillion), or about the debts the government incurred bailing out the financial system after the 2008 and 2009 crisis. Pull all that together, Gross maintains, and the money the government owes is “nearly $100 trillion.” Even if his numbers, based on government figures and estimates, are on the high side—the truth of the matter is that $100 trillion (or any amount of debt close to it) is enough to sink the most robust of economies. And “robust” our economy is not! Just like Greece.
So perhaps Bob Rodriguez will get more air time this time around. A friend of mine, an executive in the insurance industry, sent me a piece CNN ran on Rodriguez last week (www.finance.fortune.cnn.com/2011/06/06/bob-rodriguez . . .). Here’s how it opens: “He’s the mutual fund manager with the best record in the past quarter-century, and he correctly predicted the last two stock market crashes. So why aren’t people listening when Bob Rodriguez says another calamity is looming?” Rodriguez is CEO of a $16 billion money management firm First Pacific Advisors. So accurate were his two previous crash predictions that Barron’s magazine called him a “prophet,” Wall Street Journal declared him one of the “doomsayers who got it right,” and MarketWatch labeled him one of the “four horsemen of the market.” CNN’s online piece goes on: “His new prophecy: If we don’t fix the budget—soon—the economy faces disaster. ‘I believe that within two to five years we’ll have a crisis of equal or greater magnitude of what we just went through’ he says. ‘And it will emanate from the federal level.’”
But why bother with the mounting financial warnings imbedded in our global headlines? Because we are an apocalyptic community of faith—and our mission is inextricably bound to the imminent return of Christ. The more serious the crisis earth is facing, the more earnest must become our witness to the Savior and our appeal to come to him while there is yet time. Wouldn’t it be the height of tragedy if the community assigned this mission were duped by the mirage of economic security?
No wonder the Apocalypse warns: “And the merchants of the earth will weep and mourn . . . for no one buys their merchandise anymore: . . ‘The fruit that your soul longed for has gone from you, and all the things which are rich and splendid have gone from you, and you shall find them no more at all. . . . For in one hour such great riches came to nothing’” (Revelation 18:11, 14, 17). Trillions of earth’s fortune gone overnight. That isn’t the prediction of Bill Gross or Bob Rodriguez. It is the warning of God to a generation on the eve of Christ’s return. “In one hour” our economic house of cards is prophesied to collapse.
$100 trillion? Chump change really, when your heart is set on eternity. Which, come to think of it, is the only safe haven left for our meager holdings here below. Isn’t it?
The books are beside my bed and collecting around my desk - and I love it. Bill Hybel’s Just Walk Across the Room that I am hoping to finish is propped up next to my desk along with a collection of Robert Frost’s works and the History of the Reformation by J.H. D’Aubigne, who E.G. White quoted extensively in her volume The Great Controversy. The Great Controversy in turn is sitting by my bed on top of a stack that I am currently reading including Sanctified Life (that is just a great book to have handy), one of C.S. Lewis’ titles, Malcom Gladwell’s The Tipping Point, and then one of my favorite collection of essays from Robert Fulghum. It is from this final book I got my idea of eating a chair.
Fulghum tells of giving a ride to two college students headed to their summer job. Their philosophy teacher had given them an extra-credit assignment: Do something unique and memorable this summer-not dangerous or foolish, but something creative, inventive, and instructive. They were to write up what they learned and how to apply it to their philosophy of life.
So. They are eating a chair.
They bought a plain wooden kitchen chair and using a rasp have been turning it into sawdust. Then at every opportunity, granola in the morning or salad in the afternoon, they would sprinkle it on their food. When Fulghum met them they had eaten a leg, two rungs, and a back piece.
Had they learned anything? They said so. They learned how “amazing long-term goals can be achieved in incremental stages. Like how something seemingly idiotic affects your thinking about other things you do... Some things cannot be had except on a little-at-a-time, keep-the-long-term-goal-in-mind, stay-focused basis.”
I think eating chairs might help us all out. See the long-term goal and stay focused on it.
For our graduating academy seniors, his commencement weekend may seem like that goal… and certainly it is one to be proud of. Congratulations!
More importantly (as hard as that is to believe) is the project that God has launched… we call it our life. This doesn’t end at graduation, at marriage (amen!), at a job promotion, or even at retirement –
The LORD will fulfill [his purpose] for me; your love, O LORD, endures forever—do not abandon the works of your hands. Psalms 138:8 NIV
Because of His enduring love He won’t ever give up on any of us. And if you for a moment doubt this – remember one of the disciples fled from the arrest of Jesus…not only fled… but fled naked. If there was anyone that Jesus could have given up on – that would have been my pick. But we know that Jesus didn’t give up on them, and He went on to use them to change the world… including our lives.
You are like eating a chair- Jesus will do what He can, a little at a time, keeping very much the end goal in mind…and not stop until He is all the way done.
Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. Phillipians 1:6 NIV
—Pastor Micheal Goetz
“JESUS IS COMING TODAY!” If you’re reading this on May 21, 2011, then that is precisely what the followers of Harold Camping are declaring today—Christ is returning to this earth at 6 p.m. (presumably Pacific Time, since Camping lives in Oakland, California). With his return approximately two per cent of this world’s population will be immediately raptured to heaven, leaving the rest of earth’s inhabitants to be destroyed. In an elaborate theological schematic (which I have purused on-line), Camping predicts the return of Christ on May 21, 2011, and five months later the Judgment Day destruction of earth and the universe on October 21, 2011. Harold Camping, a former civil engineer, is the 89 year old founder of Family Radio—a Christian broadcast network that now includes 66 stations globally. He is not a stranger to apocalyptic predictions, having announced that Christ would return on September 6, 1994. His post-September 6 explanation, as he recently told London’s Independent newspaper, is that “at that time there was a lot of the Bible I had not really researched very carefully. But now we’ve had the chance to do just an enormous amount of additional study and God has given us outstanding proofs that it really is going to happen” (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-preacher-warns . . . ). Camping has developed an intricate but convoluted system of mathematical calculations that assigns numeric values to biblical themes (redemption, heaven, wrath, judgment, et al), and then multiplies them in order to arrive at time frames. For example, this is from his online paper: “Let us return now to the 722,500.07 days from April 1, 33 A.D. (the day Christ was crucified and died) until May 21, 2011 (the day when God’s salvation plan has been altogether completed and all of the true believers are brought, or raptured into Heaven). The number 722,500 is made up of two sets of identical significant numbers. Each number is intimately related to God’s salvation plan: 5 x 10 x 17 x 5 x 10 x 17 = 722,500. The atonement or redemption demonstrated by Christ’s suffering and death on April 1, 33 A.D. (the number 5) is 100% completed on May 21, 2011 (the number 10) when all the true believers are raptured into Heaven (the number 17)” (http://www.familyradio.com/graphical/literature/tracts/frames/index.html). Based on those “calculations” sincere followers of Camping have erected 2000 billboards and crisscrossed every state of this nation with brightly painted camper vans proclaiming the end of the world today, May 21. But why blog at all about a small apocalyptic movement the secular press has patronizingly dismissed? Here’s why: because while I unequivocally reject Harold Camping’s misguided at best calculations for the end of the world, I must confess to a quiet admiration for the chutzpah of his followers who have risked public ridicule in order to share with the world their deeply held conviction that Jesus is soon to return. I, too, call myself an “adventist” (one who believes in Christ’s soon coming)—what is more, I am a Seventh-day Adventist—but how many of my friends and neighbors have heard me recently testifying to my belief that Jesus is coming soon? Call for a show of hands in worship, and mine quickly shoots up. But ask for a public testimony outside of my congregational comfort zone, and I am strangely silent. Are you the same? What’s wrong with us? Listen to the humbled but still bold Big Fisherman, Peter: “The end of all things is near” (I Peter 4:7). No equivocation there—and he was writing nearly two millennia before our day. “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope you have. But do this with gentleness and respect” (3:15). Clearly “hope” is not dependent upon a calculable date for Jesus’ return (who himself declared such calculations futile—Matthew 24:36). Hope rests instead upon the bedrock promise of Christ himself: “Look, I am coming soon!” (Revelation 22:12) And it is that divine and biblical certainty that must compel us who still call ourselves “Adventists.” May 21 will come and go. But taking a page from the play book of Harold Camping’s followers, shall we not—as followers of the soon-coming Christ—determine that what will not come and go is our fervent hope and hope-filled witness for our Savior?
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