A Meeting in the Desert

Acts chapter 8 shows the contrast between a CINO (Christian in name only) and a true believer. Lets concentrate on the latter.  Philip was directed by The Angel of the Lord to go down to the Judean desert. Philip is directed by Holy Spirit GPS to navigate to an individual sitting in his chariot, reading. This individual is the treasurer to the nation of Ethiopia whose queen was named Candace. The history of Christianity in Ethiopia is an interesting study. Some say that Jeremiah had the Ark of the Covenant hidden in this mysterious land at the time of the Babylonian invasion of Jerusalem so that it could remain safe from confiscation. Anyway, imagine this man, alone in his chariot, stopped to read something that was so fascinating and perplexing. This is a picture or what is known as a "type" of God illuminating truth to someone that is reading the Word of God. He must have been startled when out of the blue, Philip comes up to him and asks him what he is reading. The man says he just returned from the temple in Jerusalem to worship and was headed back down to Ethiopia. Most likely Candace gave the treasurer an allowance to purchase some Scriptures if he found some for purchase. What he was immersed in reading was the book of Isaiah. Isaiah was a prophet that had written down what God told him to prophesy to the Hebrews of the northern kingdom way back 600 years before this desert meeting. Isaiah was to warn God's people of a fierce enemy to the northeast known as the Assyrians. He also named a conquering Persian king by the name of Cyrus 100 years before he came into Isaiah's homeland, booting out the Babylonians that had booted out the Assyrians! Imagine Jeremiah showing this Cyrus Isaiah's book and pointing to his name that had been written down by the prophet long ago. We are not told if Cyrus became a believer in the One True God, however he was one of the best kings as far as justice, law and ruling that Persia had ever had. So Philip asked the treasurer what he was reading. He specifically told Philip that he was reading the part of the book that referred to  "A Man of Sorrows" which is what we know as chapter 53 of Isaiah. He was wanting to know if Isaiah was speaking of himself or someone else. If someone is reading the bible and they come upon something they don't understand and they ask the Lord to reveal the meaning of it, the Holy Spirit will answer that prayer. This is a picture of that. The portion of the book he was reading had been written down hundreds of years ago. The scribes had copied down the words for generations to come. A perfectly preserved copy was found in this area of the desert known as Qumran in 1947. The dry climate had preserved this copy that was place in a jar in a cave at the time Jesus walked the earth by a sect of Judaism known as the Essenes. Isaiah 53 speaks of a man that had been tortured, disfigured, and suffers death. Why? To bear the sins of many. A perfectly innocent man. The only acceptable sacrifice that could be made. The Son of God. The Lamb of God. The perfect sacrifice for the sins of fallen man. To all that believe.... The treasurer wanted to know who this man was. Philip told him it was his Savior Jesus. This meeting in the desert happened before Saul's conversion on the road to Damascus, but is every bit as amazing. It shows a sinner saved by grace by reading and given understanding of the Word of God. Soon after as they started riding south in the chariot, they spotted some water. The treasurer asks Philip if he could have a baptism there. Philip said if he truly believed that Jesus was his Savior in his heart he could get baptized.  Note the order here.... he had to believe first, then be baptized. Not the other way around. John 3 has it in the right order: First believe- then be baptized. Baptism is a command that the Lord gave us that believe in Him showing the world that we are Christians. Does baptism save you? No. It is what we do after we are saved to show that we are washed of sin by the blood of Jesus' perfect sacrifice. Nicodemus came to Jesus in secret to ask him questions. Nicodemus knew about baptism. He was a Jewish scholar and knew baptism showed a washing of repentance. Before Jesus died on the cross, baptism pointed to this future washing of sins to come by the ultimate sacrifice. All of the baptisms that Nicodemus could have had did not make a bit of difference if you didn't believe in the Messiah. Nicodemus' Messiah was speaking to him face to face when he told him a man must be born again not of water but of spirit. This happens at the moment of conversion and a man testifies to his belief by the act of baptism. Does it seal your salvation. No. It is a command. The dying criminal next to Jesus on the cross believed but did not get a baptism and yet we know he was saved. Why? Because Jesus told him that he would see him shortly in Paradise. Does infant baptism save a person. No. That infant does not have the understanding to believe. The Ethiopian treasurer went home a new man and spread the Gospel to his countrymen. There is still a strong Christian presence in this country to this day. Praise God.

About (Part 6)

The following Sunday I went to church with my family which was the Lutheran church I had attended since my teen years and in which we were married in. In the Lutheran church there is a certain pattern to the service called the Liturgy. Depending on the church seasons, you turn to a certain page in the Lutheran Hymnal and follow the pastor and congregation in reciting certain passages of the scriptures in a singing manner. There is also usually a gospel reading, an epistle reading, a sermon, hymns and lastly a benediction. Now, for the first time, I really was listening to the liturgy with my new spiritual ears. Psalm 51:10-12 was being read/sung as part of the liturgy as it had been on a majority of services going back as far as I can recall. This time, however, it spoke to my heart and I could barely recite the words. This is what had actually happened to me! God had created a "new heart" within me. A new heart with a new spirit...His Spirit, the Holy Spirit. As best as I can recall, I am not sure what the occasion was, but I met with the pastor shortly after this "heart opening" Sunday service and expressed to him that I felt like more emphasis should be placed on the true power of the gospel and how each member of the church should be shown what it meant that Jesus had come as a man and crucified and rose again to save each individual and that it was a personal thing and not a church thing. I told him how the Old Testament prophecies had Jesus all throughout them but how I felt most people did not truly understand the impact of that. Sadly, my words were met by a blank stare that I can only interpret as a lack of understanding of the new birth of which I was trying to put into words. Now here is how the Lord will direct your paths... the following Sunday as I looked around at the congregants, I wondered how many of the Lutherans attending truly were saved, not because they were members of this church or because they were baptized as infants, or because they had their Confirmation in their teens, or because they partook in Communion every month or attended church every Sunday or were involved with charitable activities or even because they simply had the head knowledge that Jesus had died on the cross for the sins of the world...but simply because they personally had accepted Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior having asked God to forgive their sins and accepting Jesus as Lord not as a denomination, congregation or by benediction, but in the only way one can be saved... personally, one on one. Just as I was thinking on these things, I opened my folded bulletin and found inside a light green colored pamphlet. Yes, I even remember the color. It was titled: "but when you get asked...Have You Been Born Again?" It was a Lutheran treatise on what baptism according to Lutheran doctrine was and why a Lutheran should not be concerned or offended when confronted by born again Christians posing that question. I really took this pamphlet as my "pink slip" for leaving the Lutheran church. So now, how was the Lord to direct my next steps and to what church was I to attend? (to be continued...)

About (part 3)

    In high school I got caught up in the Erich von Danikan books like Chariots of the Gods?. I would read every UFO book I could get my hands on. Trying to explain ancient artifacts, megalithic structures and making it all compatible with the Bible and UFO sightings took up a lot of my reading time. Without the guidance of the Holy Spirit, I can see where people will get carried away with these ideas. I believe that UFOs and aliens will play a part in the deception that is coming upon the world. Lying signs and wonders. More about all this is later blogs.
     One summer I was invited to work on my cousin's farm in Wisconsin. I was 17. Communion Sunday came around and I was going to church with my cousins. The Lutheran church we attended was called WELS which stands for Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod. This Synod is also considered more conservative than other Lutheran churches like LCMS. Just before the service started I was politely informed by one of my relatives that I could not partake in The Communion portion of the service because I was of a different Lutheran Synod. Well frankly, that bothered me. Where were theses Synod people? I wanted to protest this. I now believe God used that experience to get me thinking.
    Sitting on the steps of the auditorium at my high school one day at lunch period a girl I never met sat down next to me. She asked me if I was saved. I said I was a Christian and went to a Lutheran church. She asked if I was born again. I must have just looked at her with a perturbed look. She asked me if I died today if I knew without a shadow of a doubt if I'd go to heaven. I said I would hope so because I believed in God and the bible and that Jesus was the Savior of the world and because I was a Lutheran. She quoted the place in the bible right before the famous John 3:16 where Jesus tells Nicodemus that in order to be saved and go to heaven one had to be born again. Boy was this girl irritating. She was way overboard in her religious attitude. She ended the conversation by saying that I could be absolutely SURE of my going to heaven when I died. I thought in my mind that she was very conceited in her thinking. I mean, how could you KNOW. You try to be good. You go to church on most Sundays. You take Holy Communion. You belong to the Lutheran church. You were baptized as a baby. It is believed that this infant baptism requires God to impart the little guy with His Spirit which starts going to work in his little life right away. You no longer are a heathen baby. You are no longer on the road to hell. When you are confirmed at puberty this kind of "seals the deal" and means that the baptism "stuck" because you have memorized the Apostle's Creed and the teachings of the Lutheran Church and you are rewarded by being able to partake in Holy Communion with the grownups. It does not matter that the baby is unaware of what is going on. God is pouring out His grace in the Sacrament of baptism according to the infant baptism teachings.
     I married in 1975. My wife was a RCC(Roman Catholic). In fact she had gone to a Catholic school until high school. I didn't think much on our different religions because my grandfather was Catholic while my grandmother was Lutheran. We married in my Lutheran church. We would go to the RCC church for "Midnight Mass" as Christmas and a few other times as a kind of compromise. After college when we had children we needed to discuss things in a little more depth. We agreed that the mother should raise the children in the faith of the mother. When I was little, I thought catholics were going to hell because they believed in purgatory and they were so mean to Martin Luther and his friends. In my college years I looked at the Catholic church as having more rituals, more candles, more stained glass, more robes and drapes and using more languages(Latin) in their services(masses), than.the Lutherans. I really knew very little about the Catholic church at this point. My wife had us go to a Catholic church while I attended college and get married a second time just to make our marriage more "official" in her mind. I went along with it reluctantly. I understood. When our children came into the picture I found out that we more or less signed them over to the Catholic faith when they were baptized Promising to have them grow up in the Catholic faith. I see now that this was God using circumstances in our lives to make us think. I remember in college we lived in married housing which was an efficiency apartment down the road from the campus. Right next door to us were a couple of those pesky born-again Christians. Always inviting us to picnics and bible studies and such while everyone else we knew were going to parties and getting high. But anyway after college and having kids and having gone through the official channels we felt we needed to do concerning the Catholic child raising thing we compromised again. We agreed to go mostly to my  Lutheran church except for Midnight Mass and special occasions. (to be continued)...