Godless Ghosts (cont'd)

Recently I wrote on Pascal's wager, which goes like this: “If there is no God and you live for Him, then when you die (and all consciousness and memory of whatever you did in your life vanishes, so whether you sin or serve all is forgotten as if it never happened), you have lost nothing. If there is a God however and you reject Him, then you will have lost everything”

Problem is of course Pascal was thinking in a totally Christian environment, so the god in his wager he assumed to be the Christian God. But Pascal's wager could work with a variety of god's without telling you which one was the right god, so you could live your life for god, but the wrong god, and you lose anyway.

And now of course it is very common for people to believe in ghosts, an afterlife, extra sensory perception and miracles with NO god. With multiple universes and dimensions with multiple conflicting laws of nature possible, they like to think anything is possible and nothing is explainable, or that everything miraculous is attributable to unknown, yet-to-be-discovered natural laws.

And that's exactly the kind of atheist I was. No arguments or rationale convinced me that there is a God and that Jesus is the only way to truly know God. I was not convinced by argumentation about fossils and floods. No, I was convinced by a spiritual revelation of God's loving presence channeled through a Christian explaining and qualifying it as in and through the name of Jesus alone. This is the kind of evidence the world needs now. They need to experience God and the gifts of His spirit directly through Christian agents who verbally qualify it as in and through the name of Jesus alone. And that is why we need revival with signs and wonders accompanying.

Hit and Run

In the city of Tual, Maluku, Indonesia I got on a minivan bus at the side of the road when there's this loud bang and clattering right by the minivan and I look out and there is an old man of about my age laying face down in the middle of the street obviously just knocked down by this motorbike which is also laying down beside him and the driver as well crawling out from underneath the bike! Then some people rush up and help the old pedestrian to his feet as the motorbike rider also stands up staring in shock and dread at the old guy. Then our minvan driver slowly pulls away from the curb into the night and some random guy out of the crowd runs up to the scene and punches the side of the minivan cause he thinks the minivan was involved! Suddenly I am aware of a possible nasty scene developing with a mob gathering accusing the bus driver of involvement, and with us in the middle of it all as easy marks to blame it all on and pay everybody compensation!  But before these thoughts could even solidify in my mind or say anything the driver had already eased away wisely getting us out of there. Now I understand why people do that here!

Imagine No Religion

Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Turkey, Greece and the Balkans and all North Africa and the Mediterranean were Catholic and Orthodox lands up till the 600's. (See map: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Justinian555AD.png)

About the beginning of the 600's the Muslims started conquering and subjugating these Christian lands, forcing conversions. The Muslim empire continued conquering and expanding into Christian lands for 500 years, that is from the 600's through the 700's, the 800's, the 900's and the 1000's. Finally in 1096, after 500 years of losses to Muslim expansion, the Catholic nobility of Europe decided to fight back and try to liberate the Catholic and Orthodox lands now occupied by Islamic forces.

In general the Catholics lost and the Muslims won. (See map: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Eastern_Mediterranean_1450_.svg)

While parts of the Balkans were regained along with Spain eventually, yet descendants of the Muslim invaders still occupy parts of the Balkans to this day, and the eastern part of Orthodox Greece and part of Cyprus is still occupied by Muslim invaders. The Chirstian majorities of Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, Iran, Arabia and Egypt and all North Africa were mostly forced to convert to Islam. Islamic traders, missionaries and armies were then free to expand from country to country further and further afield;  West all across North Africa to Morocco and across to crush all of Christian Spain, ever East along the coasts of Asia as far as China and on into the Pacific, and South along Africa's East coast deep into the Southern hemisphere as far as Madagascar.

The mainly Catholic response to Muslim imperialism, now popularly called The Crusades, lasted around 200 years. This belated Catholic resistance to 500 years of Muslim expansion into and conquest of Christian lands, and the Muslim response that crushed the Crusades, resulted in between 200,000 and 1.5 million deaths on both sides over 200 years.

But squabbles between the world's great religions really has nothing over the record of modern athiest states. Just as Europe's Catholic nobility finally fought back after 400 years of Muslim invasions of Christian lands, so also when atheist Nazi Germany attacked and occupied Catholic Poland in 1939, the Poles and their allies fought back, immediately drawing Christian England, Canada and Australia into the 2nd WW.

For the record:

Soviet revolution:               killed 9 million
Soviet forced starvation:    killed 4 million 1921-23
Stalinist Russia:                 killed 20 million
Nazi Germany:              
   in death camps                killed 12 million
   outside camps                 killed 54 million
Communist China:             killed 60 million

Total Deaths Attributable
to Athiest states:                 156 million killed

John Lennon sang “Imagine no religion.” We don't need to. It is too clear where athiesm leads.

Sources: http://necrometrics.com/20c5m.htm#RCW

http://www.paulbogdanor.com/left/china/deaths2.html

Street People Receive Knighthood

Avoiding things that can harm you is perfectly natural. Perfectly.

Ancient Hebrew tradition has a proverb warning young Israelite men to avoid loose women. But Jesus did the opposite. He chatted with a woman of bad reputation and in the process transformed her into a saint.

Ancient Hebrew tradition commanded avoiding lepers. But Jesus did the opposite, instead reaching out His hand and touching a leper and in the process healing him. 

If you believe that Jesus is God's unique incarnation and that there is restoration with God through no other name, then you have the right and ability to bask inside and incarnate God's powerful Presence, the same Presence that raised up Jesus to life from the dead. But you must be willing to go against conventional wisdom.

Whom did you avoid last week?
Seriously. Think about it.
An annoying relative? A bore? A street person scrounging for bottles? Someone who hurt you?

Don't trust in the approval of the beautiful, the influential, the talented and strong. 

Trust rather in God's approval. He wants you to go love the poor and the weak.

Go against society. Cross the room. Walk away from the cool, the smart and the rich and rather go spend time with the marginalized. And God's loving Presence through you will transform them before your eyes into angels, your royal siblings.