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Maybe you’ve heard about the gorilla in a zoo holding a Bible in one hand & a book about evolution in the other. He was looking confused, so someone asked, “What are you doing?” The gorilla answered, “Well, I’m trying to decide if I’m my brother’s keeper or my keeper’s brother.”
Clark Frailey
There’s a story I heard once, about an man who was trying to cut costs, so he began to gradually substitute sawdust in the oats of his mule. Everything was fine for a period, and the animal was satisfied with sawdust. Then he died. We see the same in spiritual life. We exchange truth with error in our believer’s lives and it’s great for awhile.... but before you know it they are dead.
Once the Devil was walking along with one of his cohorts. They saw a man ahead of them pick up something shiny. "What did he find?" asked the cohort. "A piece of the truth," the Devil replied.
"Doesn’t it bother you that he found a piece of the truth?" asked the cohort. "No," said the Devil, "I will see to it that he makes a religion out of it."
--Klyne Snodgrass, Between Two Truths - Living with Biblical Tensions, 1990, Zondervan Publishing House, p. 35.
God does prefer one way of living over another. And that which He prefers is based on a bedrock commitment to His word and His ways. And the results are always supernatural.
A TV camera crew was on assignment in Southern Florida filming the widespread destruction of Hurricane Andrew. In one scene, amid the devastation and debris stood one house on its foundation. The owner was cleaning up the yard when the reporter approached.
“Sir, why is your house the only one standing?” asked the reporter. “How did you manage to escape the severe damage of the hurricane?”
“I built the house myself,” the man replied. ̶...
Theologians tell a story to illustrate how Christ?s triumph presently benefits our lives:
Imagine a city under siege. The enemy that surrounds the city will not let anyone or anything leave. Supplies are running low, and the citizens are fearful. But in the dark of the night, a spy sneaks through the enemy lines. He has rushed to the city to tell the people that in another place the main enemy force has been defeated; the leaders have already surrendered. The people do not need to be afraid. It is only a matter of time until the besieging troops receive the news and lay down their weapons.
Similarly, we may seem now to be surrounded by the forces of evil?disease, injustice, oppression, death. But the enemy has actually been defeated at Calvary. Things are not the way they seem to be. It is only a matter of time until it becomes clear to all that the battle is really over.
Richard J. Mouw, Uncommon Decency, pp. 149-150.
Evangelish Robert Sumner told the story:
When George Gibson Polley was a boy in Richmond, he hit a baseball onto the roof of a six-story building. Since with most sandlot games, it was the only ball the boys had, George promptly climbed up the outside of the building and retrieved it. This was the start of scaling buildings that eventually earned for Polley the title “Human Fly.” Before his career came to a screeching halt at the age of 29 — not from a fall, but a fatal brain tumor — George scaled the outside of more than 2,000 buildings.
He climbed the Custom House in Boston, three buildings in a single day at Hartford, and one time he made it to the thirtieth floor of the Woolworth Building in NYC (at the time the world’s tallest) before being apprehended and arrested by a policeman. It seems that he did not have a permit. Most of the time, however, everything was legal and on the up and up, with store owners hiring him for grand openings and an assortment of sales. He could earn $200 a climb — more than many men were earning in over a month during those depression days.
While I cannot say for certain now, I think it was Polley who came to my hometown on two different occasions when I was just a boy. One time it was to scale the outside of the largest department store building in the city, located at the main intersection, the Chapman-Turner Department Store. the other time was to climb a new hotel located a block away. On both occasions, I recall standing on the sidewalk across the street, open-mouthed, heart in throat, gripping tightly my father’s hand, as Polley slowly, yet confidently, climbed to the top. Since it was standard fare in his act, I assume he pretended to slip and start to fall at least a time or two during each climb, hanging by his fingertips from a ledge.
Polley’s financial success launched a number of other “human fly” careers in those bitter depression days. One of the exciting dare-devils had been announced to climb a large department store building in downtown Los Angeles. A great throng assembled to watch and the man, slowly and carefully, climbed floor after floor up the outside of the building.
When he reached a point very near the top, the crowd watched him feel above his head, both to the right and to the left, for something he could use to raise himself higher. Eventually he spotted what seemed to be a jutting brick or a piece of stone. Since it was inches beyond his reach, he ventured everything on a cat-like spring, wrapping his fingers around the object.
While the crowd below watched in horror, the human fly fell with a scream to the sidewalk and was smashed into pieces. When medical attendants pried back his fingers to see what he had clutched, they found a spider’s web! he had risked everything on what proved to be dried froth! —Robert Sumner.
Tammy Faye Baker in one of those TV reality series went to a book signing and several other celebrities were with her – She was asked “What advice would you give to a parent who first finds out their child is gay?” – She responded, “Love them anyway – love them unconditionally” – she blew everyone away (especially Vanilla Ice) by her acceptance and her love. To be honest it was an extremely touching moment for me as well just to hear her talk of love. But I had to go back to some things the scripture says in about 5 places. That if someone is a so-called believer (AND THAT IS IMPORTANT!) and they are living in sin that we are to have nothing to do with them. Who said this? Jesus that loves everyone to the max guy - in Matthew 18:17 "If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.
-truth and love should never be separated – they go together - sometimes people do lack love in their pursuit of truth – that is why we have to grow in understanding and truth from the Word of God
There is a tale told of that great English actor Macready. An eminent preacher once said to him: "I wish you would explain to me something." "Well, what is it? I don’t know that I can explain anything to a preacher."
"What is the reason for the difference between you and me? You are appearing before crowds night after night with fiction, and the crowds come wherever you go. I am preaching the essential and unchangeable truth, and I am not getting any crowd at all."
Macready’s answer was this: "This is quite simple. I can tell ...
Pastor Vsevolod Lytkin from Siberia, recently spoke at a church in Minneapolis, Minnesota during a US visit. He described his personal journey to faith in Jesus Christ. Listen to his struggle:
His parents were atheistic university professors at a local university who raised their son to “think for himself”. During his teen years, he struggled with many spiritual questions. When the communists told him there was no god, he reasoned that their might be a God and so began a search for reading material where he might find the answers.
The only books of religion available at his local library were atheistic, but they often quoted verses from the Bible to mock or refute them. His greatest discovery was a set of encylcopedias on atheism from which he copied every Bible verse by hand from.
It was not very long before he began to pray to God and ask Him to forgive his sins.
II Timothy 2:9 "... for the Word of God is not imprisoned." How often do we have to WORK this hard to receive the word of the Lord?
Like a Beethoven concerto, the word of God is simple enough to be enjoyed by a child, and at the same time, deep enough to reward a lifetime of dedicated study. A three-year old can grasp the story of Jonah and the whale, and a Ph.D. in theology can spend a lifetime trying to fathom how God could become a man. The Bible rewards even a few minutes a day of reading. But it has an inexhaustible supply of treasures for those who are more diligent.
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