Pastors' Blog

“‘People I associate with are looking at me like, are you guys crazy?’”  That was school committee chairman John Coyne’s comment when a measure he opposed was approved by a 7-2 vote of the Portland (Maine) School Committee (South Bend Tribune 10-19-07).  Why did that vote make the national headlines a few weeks ago?  Because it was a decision to allow children as young as eleven years of age to obtain birth control pills at a middle-school health center.   News indeed!

In defense of the King Middle School, it should be noted that school officials maintain that only five of the school’s 510 students would have qualified for birth control under the program last year.  And the policy does require that students have parental permission to use the health center at the school (although the students would not have to tell their parents that they were seeking birth control).

But all of that aside, dispensing contraceptives for children as young as eleven years of age is surely a social commentary on our times, is it not?  Is this where “the land of the free” is destined?  Does the early onset of puberty mean that we must keep revising our sexual health policies downward in order to accommodate younger and younger children?

But then, is anybody really that surprised it has come to this?  Didn’t the ancient prophet warn, “They sow the wind, and reap the whirlwind” (Hosea 8:7)?  After decades of prime time sex on America’s channels and screens of entertainment, are we surprised that our kids finally got the message?  That unbridled sex is not only the acceptable, but the preferred norm for our society?  Who can blame eleven year olds for thinking, “If my body can do it, I might as well do it”?  We have reaped the whirlwind.

In the words of Christian philosopher Francis Schaeffer, How then shall we live?  Or shall the community of Christ sow the same sexual winds and reap the same night-after whirlwind?  Our series, “The Chosen,” moves now to the heart of the dark game plan on the borders of the Promised Land: play the sex card.

But the good news is Christ offers us a winning hand!  And he does so with the profound declaration that our bodies “were bought at a price,” the crimson currency of “his own blood” (I Cor 6:19, 20; Acts 20:28).  Clearly, having emptied heaven’s treasury to redeem not only our souls but our bodies at the cross, it is in God’s own interest to protect his investment in us and to spare us sexual defeat.  All of his power to protect all of our purity—ours for the asking.  How could the headlines be better?

Two very different headlines this week ought to give us all pause.  Mother Nature’s awful conflagration in southern California has been front and center all week long for the American news media.  And why not?  The greatest evacuations in California’s history were the result of what may yet be the most devastating fires in that state’s history.  Fortunately the loss of human life was limited.  But the economic and ecological losses to that region of the state and nation are monumental and mounting.

Scientists and climatologists describe “the perfect storm” of unusually dry, hot autumn weather and a prolonged drought for the region combined with the blast of the easterly Santa Ana winds.  Some speak of “global warming,” others of “climate change,” but all wonder if this destructive convergence of nature’s forces is an omen of things to come.

This same week on the other side of the Atlantic, the German-based Energy Watch Group (www.energywatchgroup.org) released a study in London announcing that global oil production peaked in 2006 (much earlier than experts had expected), and that production “will fall by half as soon as 2030.”  Hans-Josef Fell, EWG’s founder and a member of the German parliament, said, “The world soon will not be able to produce all the oil it needs as demand is rising while supply is falling.  This is a huge problem for the world economy” (10-22-07, www.guardian.co.uk).

British energy economist David Fleming, in responding to this report, stated, “Anticipated supply shortages could lead easily to disturbing scenes of mass unrest as witnessed in Burma this month.  For government, industry and the wider public, just muddling through is not an option any more as this situation could spin out of control and turn into a complete meltdown of society” (ibid).  (An over reaction?  One doesn’t have to be a geologist or a prophet to predict that in order to sustain the world’s petroleum-based economies, military conquest and control of earth’s oil reserves may be the only political solution for economic survival.)

The point of these two headlines?  Apocalyptic prophecies of global ecological meltdown before the return of Christ (see Revelation 16) may not be so far fetched after all.

But how should the Adventist Christian respond?  First, let us be “green” and lead our communities in protecting the earth—practicing recycling, conserving fuel consumption (walk more, drive less), preserving natural habitats of wildlife and fauna, etc.  (See www.treehugger.com/gogreen.php for more suggestions.)  But second, let us be “going.”  The thinking class of earth earnestly seeks a solution.  What better time to go to them with the good news of Christ’s promise, “I am coming soon to make all things new” (Revelation 22:12; 21:5).   Mother nature and human nature both stand in need of deliverance.   More and more it is clear—the only lasting solution left for earth is the One who is soon to come.  Then shall we not go to them for him now?

Did you hear about the Pittsburgh man last week who went in to a Giant Eagle supermarket and paid for a head of lettuce with a $1 million bill?  That’s right—one million dollars.   And he asked for change!  The wide-eyed but suspicious clerk notified the manager, who promptly confiscated the bill.  Whereupon the customer promptly flew into a tirade, smashing the electronic funds-transfer machine beside the cashier and grabbing the scanner gun.  Police arrested the man.  When later asked by a reporter for comment, a police spokeswoman replied, “It’s a bit different.” It certainly is!  The U.S. Treasury has never printed a one million dollar bill.  Since 1969, when the Grover Cleveland $1,000 bill was taken out of circulation, the $100 bill has been the largest banknote in circulation.   And the man asked for change. Bogus bills and counterfeit banknotes.  You aren’t going to fool anybody with a million dollar bill.  But ATF agents with the Department of Treasury are on constant lookout for counterfeit $20 and $100 bills.  Why?  Because counterfeits are based upon the genuine, not on somebody’s wishful thinking. Obviously, it is the existence of the genuine that makes the counterfeits possible. Which is why today’s teaching, “How to Stone the Prophet,” is so critical.  God has always offered the genuine.  And since the beginning, the dark moral counterfeiter of earth (whom we know as the devil) has attempted to pass off his counterfeits of that divine genuine.  And not surprisingly, given the length of time the devil has had to practice and perfect his cunning counterfeit, more than a few have been duped and deceived. In fact so confusing is the deception, that now there are some who have reversed reality, and are declaring the genuine to be a counterfeit, and the counterfeit to be the genuine! Which is why I hope you’ll prayerfully examine this teaching.  Download it from this website as a podcast, and ruminate over it with your MP3 player.  Pull out your Bible, and review the evidence.  The counterfeit is so prevalent that this may be the first time you’ve ever examined the genuine.  Take your time.  Too much is at stake to be wrong.  The Spirit of God will guide you, if you ask him. And that $1 million bill?  Police now believe it was a promotional piece from a Dallas-based ministry that distributed thousands of religious pamphlets with a picture of President Grover Cleveland on a $1 million bill.   You see, when it comes to identifying the genuine, not even a church will do.  So, stick with the Word of God.

Even if you’re afraid of heights, this is one pinnacle I wish you could stand upon.  Many consider it one of the most sacred sites in all of Dark Ages history.  Today I’ve invited my young friends from the School of Architecture here at Andrews University to share with you the story of that unforgettable day when together we stood atop the Castelluzzo, that infamous rock tower high above the alpine valleys of northwest Italy and immortalized in John Milton’s sonnet, “On the Late Massacre in Piedmont”:
Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold;
Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old,
When all our fathers worshiped stocks and stones,
Forget not: in thy book record their groans . . . .

But how can one brief moment of worship possibly capture the crimson drama of the Waldenses?  And why make their intrepid preservation of the light of Holy Scripture through five hundred long years of  spiritual darkness our theme for Alumni Sabbath?  After all, the world and Christendom have long forgotten the “Bloody Easter” (April 24, 1655) massacre of those hapless innocents—a crime against humanity so unspeakable that when Sir Oliver Cromwell read the eyewitness accounts of the slaughter, he declared a day of fasting and prayer across England.  But why should we care today?

Because in the fulfillment of the Apocalypse’s cryptic words in Revelation 12—the vision tale of a woman fleeing from an ancient Serpent into a barren wilderness and there hidden by God for the long, dark ages of medieval Christianity—in that fulfillment still witnessed to by the silent rocky sentinels of the Piedmonts is the unspoken assurance that the God who has preserved ancient truth through the crimson centuries since Calvary, the same God who raised up this university over a century ago, is the very God who will yet proclaim that very truth to this generation through the remnant seed of that very woman.  For that reason their story is ours.

For as surely as Almighty God called upon the men, women and children of those cloistered valleys long ago, he is calling upon the men, women and children of this generation to embrace the missional legacy of the Waldensian people, captured in their Latin motto, Lux lucet in tenebris.  “The light shines in darkness.”  Indeed it did.  And indeed it must.  Yet.  In your life and mine.  Shine into the gathering darkness of a culture and world desperate for even the fragments of the only Light who can yet heal this world he loves.