Last Sunday a little boy of about six or seven years old came to church
wearing a button down dress shirt that was one size too large and a man’s
clip-on necktie. The end of the tie reached almost to his hips, but he was
beaming with pride at being able to dress-up like a man. Isn’t this just the
same picture of believers when we first try to put on the Armor of God? The
only piece of the armor that actually fits is the Helmet of Salvation.
1 comment:
Gail;
-----Maybe the armor would fit better if the sword were less sheathed in public. It is human nature to rue the image of being naive and gullible. And naiveté and gullibility are just the colors popular intellectuals have mixed for painting anyone who dares believe the Bible was inspired by God, historically accurate, and spiritually authoritative. Ironically, the preponderance of today’s population gullibly swallows the twisted reasoning swirled up from the last two centuries’ biases against the truth about life, having its frame of mind naively stirred with these biases into thoughts jealously restricted to only what can be seen, heard, smelled, touched, or tasted in the tiny slice of all time called the present, this piece of time when God has chosen by His own accord to limit His undeniably obvious interventions in human affairs from which He hammered and honed to a razor edge that soul slicing sword. It is yet too often sheathed in public for fear the genius intellectuals have proved it dull.
-----It is not the sword of His Spirit merely by His writing it, but also because He Himself swings it. For one hundred fifty years laughing and giggling biblical criticism has cultivated dense and protective thorn thickets around scientific excuses for faithlessness. No commoner dare chop at them for the official and authoritative technical sounds of their fiber.
-----But God is no commoner. The shrieking laughter and mocking at His face with accusations of His Word’s being authored and redacted by sixth century priests and scribes are not thickets too dense for His clearing. Sixth century priests, bigoted in their exclusionist thoughts being able to know the intricacies of life six centuries earlier, let alone details of Egyptian life nine centuries before their time is absurd. So the Bible had to be full of fantasy and myth according to the mocks of the intellectuals. Yet, according to the Bible, Joseph was sold for what is now known to have been the fifteenth century Egyptian price of a slave, not the sixth century price expected by later authors. Potiphar, Potipherah, Asenath, Zaphenath-paneah are all names now known to bear fifteenth century Egyptian elements, not those known to the sixth century. And Joseph’s ride in Pharaoh’s second chariot while arrayed in fine linen and wearing a signet is now known to have been a common ritual at a man’s promotion to high office of that time. The Semitic etymology of Pi ha-hiroth, “the mouth of canals” now corresponds quite well to the recently discovered defensive canal in that area of Israel’s encampment. David has long been railed as a fictional “King Arthur” until the Tell-Dan stele turned up reference to “The House of David” and the recent archeology of Khirbet Qeiyafa unearthed his defensive outpost on the Philistine border. I would love to go on about the seal of Jeremiah’s secretary, Jezebel’s amulet, the very wall from which she was pitched to her death, and myriads of other discoveries all corresponding with the detail of the Word only its claimed authors would have known. Space forbids. Suffice this small sampling to see God Himself chopping away the thickets of biblical criticism. The sword is still sharp, still two-edged, and still an honor to unsheath in public.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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