New "Truth for Today" Commentary

For several years, I have subscribed to the Truth For Today commentary series so that I automatically receive each new volume in this series as it is published. In the last two or three years, they have come off the press slowly, but a note from editor Eddie Cloer indicates that is changing. He says that four new volumes will be published in the next twelve months. The latest is 1 & 2 Thessalonians by Earl Edwards. Brother Edwards is the recently retired head of the Graduate program in Bible at Freed-Hardeman University. I've not spent any time with this commentary yet, but I am confident that it will live up to the standards set by earlier volumes in this outstanding commentary series.

If you are interested in the subscription plan, go to the Resource Publications website at http://www.resourcepublications.net . You may need to call or email them for details about the plan. Books cost $26.00 plus postage and handling.

Just a Little Mistake

I usually have several books in the process of being read at the same time. My office is always messy with books strewn about. Come over to the house and, at any given time, you're likely to see maybe a half-dozen books here and there which I am in the process of reading. Some I finish; some I lose interest and return unread to the library or to my shelves.



Yesterday, I received an order from Amazon which included a book I had known about for quite a while, but never read: Dr. Tom Olbricht's Hearing God's Voice: My Life with Scripture in the Churches of Christ. I've never met Dr. Olbricht personally, but I am familiar with him from years of lurking on the Stone-Campbell restoration history discussion list where he is an active participant. I've read only the first hundred pages of this 450-page book so I'll wait to offer any kind of evaluation until I've read the whole thing. At this point, I can say only that Dr. Tom is a most capable writer who has the ability to make his memories of the church of his youth about as interesting as some of the whodunits I like to read.



However, early on in the book I caught him in a factual mistake. He said that the person who claimed that God does not hear the prayers of sinners was a Pharisee who opposed Jesus (p. 30). If he had gone back and reviewed John 9 before writing that paragraph, he would have remembered that it was the blind man healed by Jesus who spoke the words recorded in John 9:31.



I do not mention this factual error to criticize or embarrass Dr. Olbricht. Everybody--even talented writers --makes mistakes, especially so if they are not careful to do their homework. Ann Rule is a well-known true crime writer whose recent book Smoke, Mirrors, and Murder includes a section on the Matthew and Mary Winkler case. According to Wayne Jackson, she included some inaccurate information about the Church of Christ in her discussion of the Winklers. Brother Jackson emailed Ms. Rule and offered her some gentle correction. He reported that she replied with a gracious note apologizing for the error and stating that she had based her comments "upon a fuzzy childhood memory, rather than current research." [Jackson's article on Christian Courier web site]. In that case, Ann Rule failed to do her homework and she 'fessed up to it. That was the honorable thing to do and it, in no way, detracts from her reputation as a star writer in her field.



The same is true of Dr. Tom. I haven't called his error about the blind man to his attention because there is no need to do so. He would obviously admit the mistake because he was clearly incorrect in what he wrote. That just means that he slipped up on a detail that he should have caught, but it does not detract from the book or his ability as a writer or teacher.



All of us who preach are occasionally going to make those kind of errors. We shouldn't. In an ideal world, we would always have our facts straight and say everything exactly right. However, it does not happen that way. We trust our memories when we shouldn't, either as we are writing sermons or we depart from our prepared material and go rabbit-chasing. Almost all preachers do that from time to time, and that impromptu speaking time is when we are most likely to say something wrong.



So, correct us gently when we misspeak. It is never right to be wrong, so I don't advise anybody to just let it slide if you catch a speaker in an error. However, it is not necessary to make a big deal out of the error unless you have substantial reason to think the speaker or writer is teaching intentionally something the Bible shows to be false. People who willfully go against the Bible deserve to be rebuked and condemned. Those who err because of tongue slips or faulty memories need to be corrected much more gently and carefully.

Satanic Soap Forces (But Not from Procter & Gamble)

I'm not the most perceptive of people when it comes to noticing small changes in my everyday environment. My wife can change her hair style and it might take me days to notice if she doesn't get impatient and call it to my attention. I think I've heard her use the word "oblivious" to describe me, and I couldn't object too strongly.

I've been showering every day with Irish Spring soap for a long time. It suddenly dawned on me a week or two ago that the soap bars seemed to be getting small more quickly than they used to. After considering and discounting other possibilities like me taking longer showers, I got a box of soap out of the storage pantry and read the small print. Aha! The bar is now 4 ounces, when it used to be 5 ounces. Discounting the cost of packaging, that is like a 20% price increase! In inflationary times, that is an old marketing trick. Don't raise prices; instead cut down on the size of the product. I remember back in the 1970s when we went through a previous round of rampant inflation that candy bars suddenly got considerably smaller than they had been before.

My reaction?

First, as a believer in a free market economy, I recognize that soap manufacturers have the right to market their products in whatever sizes they wish. Supply and demand is at work. If people quit buying four-ounce Irish Spring bars and start buying more five-ounce bars marketed by a competitor, then the Colgate-Palmolive company will likely go back to selling five-ounce boxes of Irish Spring. That's the way it should be.

Second, there is something a bit deceptive in the practice. It would be more straightforward -- more honest -- to raise prices if necessary rather than subtly reduce the amount of product the consumer gets for her money.

So that leads me to the analogy that, in this case, the soap company is acting a lot like Satan does. (Hey, Irish Spring is not a Procter & Gamble product so that mysterious "Satanic" trademark of theirs doesn't even figure into this at all).

However, the devil is tricky and deceptive. He tries to work subtly to lead people away from Christ and his truth. 2 Corinthians 11.3 says, "But I am afraid, lest as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds should be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ." Like the soap company, he tries to pull switcheroos when we aren't paying attention. "This 'new and improved' gospel message is a lot better than the old one," he would have you believe. "It doesn't make such hard demands on you." "This new gospel makes people like you; it's guaranteed to reduce persecution by 50%." Maybe he doesn't whisper those exact words in your ears, but you get the idea. He is all about compromise and getting people to take the easy way instead of following Christ with determination and dedication. On superficial examination, people might think it's the same ol' religion, but Satan's subtle changes have taken away much more than 20% of it's value.

When salt loses it's saltiness, it is good for nothing [Matthew 5:13]. When true disciples of Jesus lose the essence of what makes them Christians, everything worthwhile has been abandoned.

Having to buy a new bar of soap more often is only a minor inconvenience. Losing your Christianity because of Satan's wiles is a much more serious matter.

Saints

I didn't go to church much when I was a young kid. However, I had at least a normal curiosity about the world around me and remember being confused about the idea of saints. My introduction to the idea came from TV and books where I learned about people with names like Saint Xavier and Saint Dominic. Now in north Alabama in the 1960s, you didn't run into a lot of folks with names like Xavier and Dominic. So the strange names just reinforced the idea that "saints" were remote, other-worldly people.

When I was 13, I started attending church regularly and was soon baptized into Christ. I became acquainted with some godly people and eventually learned that these people are the real saints -- the ones who fit the description you find in the Bible. I think of the elders' wives in the church I attended as a teenager. They had names like Nadine, Opalene, Flostine (beginning to see a pattern here?) , as well as Alice, Gladys, and the like. I haven't checked, but I doubt you would find a single Opalene or Flostine on the Catholic list of saints.

On the other hand, these women fit very well into what the New Testament says about saints. "Saint" is simply a noun form of sanctified. Saints have been cleansed by the blood of Christ. They have been made holy as their sins were washed away in baptism. As I've grown in my understanding of the Bible, I've come to understand that all this is much simpler and plainer than many church people would have you believe.

You hear the gospel message, believe that it is true (which means you believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God), repent -- turn away from your sins, confess your faith, and are baptized to wash away your sins. There are scriptures to back up each of the items in that list, but it means more if you find them for yourself.

When you follow that simple plan, you become a Christian, a son or daughter of God in His spiritual family. In other words, you are a saint.

And you don't even have to wait until years after you're dead!

Getting Ready

I haven't been on an overseas mission trip in a while, but I have made quite of few of those journeys in the past. I've been to Africa six times and to different countries in South America a total of five times. Getting ready for such a trip takes a lot of preparation. Back in 1999, I spent a month in Tanzania working with Cy Stafford in the early days of the work he has done very successfully in the Arusha area. While getting ready for that trip, I experienced one of my "organized periods" which seem to come-and-go in my life. So I made a detailed checklist of things to take with me. Some of the items were recommendations from Cy; some from my own experience as a past missionary in West Africa. Anyway, I had it down to a science and both my pieces of luggage were crammed full with items I thought would come in helpful during a month in Africa. My attention to detail paid off as I ended up with several items that we needed (and which none of the other campaigners had thought to bring) such as plastic clothes line and clothes pins. I'll admit though that I brought quite a few things that were readily available at the grocery store down the street from where we were staying. It's always that way going to Africa because it's so hard to know what will be available and what won't. Even if you have been to a place before, you can get tricked because availability varies from time to time with many items.

Bob Pritchard wrote a bulletin article a few days ago comparing getting ready for an upcoming mission trip he was taking to the preparations Christians should be making for our journey into eternity. Jesus told the apostles that He was going to prepare a place for them (John 14:1-4). When He comes again, that place will be absolutely ready for its intended occupants. It will be in turn key condition. When I read the descriptions of the heavenly city in Revelation 21, I don't know how much of that to take literally and how much is figurative. I do know, however, that heaven is going to be perfect. There won't be any musty carpet or spotted windows in that heavenly abode. It will all be just what we need so that we have no disappointment, no yearnings, no frustrations. The plumbing won't ever get stopped up. The electricity won't ever go off. Everything will be just exactly right.

Here in this life, traveling can be frustrating. If you're driving, you have to contend with heavy traffic. Even a minor fender-bender can back up interstate traffic for miles. Traveling by air offers a whole plethora of possible aggravations from being hassled by airport security to late departures and missed flights to lost luggage. No one could blame you if you decided to just stay home and avoid all the fuss.

That heavenly journey, though, will go just right. Christ isn't our co-pilot; He is the pilot. His flights always arrive on time and without incident. Whenever the time is right, Jesus will come again. All that are in the grave will hear His voice and come forth (John 5:28-29). Those living on the earth will be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye (1 Cor. 15:50-52). Believe me, this is a journey we don't want to miss.

However, we have to be ready. If you're flying on a plane trip, chances are you have bought your ticket weeks in advance. You know exactly when the plane is scheduled to take off and you know that you have to be there at the gate ready to board the plane when the call goes out. They wait only a few minutes for you. On today's crowded flights, there is usually somebody waiting standby ready to grab your seat if the airline releases it.

We don't know when Jesus is coming to take us to Judgment Day. No timetables have been published. There are only two possible destinations on the itinerary. But we must be ready. Heaven is a prepared place for prepared people. If Jesus comes and we have not made the necessary preparations for the journey, we're in a hopeless state. There will be no more time and no more opportunities to get ourselves ready for eternity.

Wisdom says simply that every human being ought to get ready and stay ready to meet the Lord for eternity. Are you listening?