As far as the east is from the west

The first 11 chapters of Genesis cover roughly 2,000 years of history. By comparison, Genesis 12 to Malachi 4 span another 2,000 years.

Skeptics will ask, “Why so much information in Genesis 1-11 about that time in history and so much less about the years that follow?” The answer is early Genesis provides the principle operating “ingredients” for everything.

One of the principles in the operation of the nations and of man, for example, is there are some directions in which history is destined to move.

“The direction God designed to be His direction is east to west,” explains Jordan. “That’s why the course of history has functioned that way, and as you go through the Word of God you’ll see it go that way.

“From Genesis 3, it’s clear the original birth of civilization began in the Middle East. If you take the word Eden in the Bible and look up the references to where it’s described, you’ll find one leg of it is over in Egypt, one leg is over where the Tigris and Euphrates are, where modern-day Kuwait is, and another leg is up north. If you take a line and connect the dots, you’ll have a triangle that will match the Fertile Crescent.

“Genesis 4:16 says, ‘And Cain went out from the presence of the LORD, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden.’

“Did Cain go toward God or away from God? That’s going away. When God told Israel to set up the tabernacle in the wilderness, He gave them very clear instructions: ‘When you come in, you’re going to go east to west.’

“That’s a pattern in Scripture. When Joshua was going to take Israel into the Promised Land, what did they do? They went over on the east side of the Jordan River, going into it from east to west.

“When Jesus Christ comes back to land on the Mount of Olives, and goes into Jerusalem, what does He do? He comes into the east. He goes into the eastern gate, which means He was going east to west.

“Whenever you go against this pattern in Scripture, you’re going in the wrong direction. In Genesis 12, God calls Abraham out of Ur to go west into the land of Canaan. But Abraham got all upset and went south. Was that a good idea?

“It’s fascinating to see how the course of history is designed to operate.  Look at Genesis 12:4-6. God said, ‘This is your land Abraham!’ Verse 10 reads, ‘And there was a famine in the land: and Abram went down into Egypt to sojourn there; for the famine was grievous in the land.’

“Abraham went down into Egypt. You know what direction that is? Wrong way! You say, ‘But if he had gone west, he’d have gotten wet in the Mediterranean Sea!’ That’s right; he ought to have stayed put! He was in the land God put him in! You say, ‘But the Canaanites were there!’ Yeah, they didn’t belong there!

"They’d had warning that God was going to give that land to Abraham so they went up there and took it over. They weren’t where they were supposed to be and that’s why later on God tells Israel, ‘Wipe them all out because that isn’t their land.’  That was God’s land deeded to the land of Israel.

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“When Israel was carried off in the east into Babylonian captivity, that was a bad thing. But when God began to move into the Gentile nations, He began to move west with them.

“When He went to the Media-Persian Empire, He went west. The Greek empire was west. Then comes Rome and into the Western world; the Western hemisphere. The extension of America west into Asia.

“So the idea of the kings of the east--what you really have going on there is you have history going back to where it originated in.

“There are two great nations in Asia: China and India. There’s some things about the Chino-Indian relationships that sometime you don’t hear a lot about.

“We’re seeing culture move back to where civilization began. Ultimately it’s going back to the Middle East. In Daniel 8, for example, you get some detailed information about the kingdom of the Antichrist in the last days . . . ”

Surrender self for absolute, complete, maximum fulfillment

Paul writes in II Corinthians 4, [11] For we which live are alway delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh.

“What that’s talking about is what Romans 12’s talking about; how it happens,” explains Preacher Richard Jordan.

“Romans 12 begins, [1] I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.
[2] And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

“There are three checkpoints in the issue of presenting your body to the Father for Him to use. In I Corinthians, Paul says [19] What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?
[20] For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's.

“Your soul is the issue of where your will is. He says glorify God in your spirit (obey God’s Word) and your body (that’s where it lives out). And it’s based on ‘the mercies of God.’

“When he says, ‘Present your bodies a living sacrifice,’ God desires a vehicle. He purchases you, puts His Spirit in you in order to dwell there and manifest the life of His Son in you. So our bodies are important vehicles.

“What do you do with a living sacrifice? Kill it. What’s Romans 6 say? [3] Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?
[4] Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.

“You’re buried with Him and then you’re raised with Him to 'walk in newness of life.' So what you really are is, ‘I’m crucified with Christ nevertheless I live.’ What am I? I’m a LIVING sacrifice. How did you get to be a living dead person? That’s part of the provision God made you in His Son. It’s ALREADY who you are.

“All Romans 12 is telling you is just live in the reality of who God's already made you. He’s not telling you to do something so you can be something. He’s telling you, ‘Go be who you are.’ Present your body as who God has made you in that body—holy.

“Romans 6:19: [19] I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh: for as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness.

“This is who you are so yield yourself to that. Go back to 13: [13] Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.

“He’s not saying, ‘Go make yourself these things.’ He’s saying, ‘That’s who you are so just let that be what the reality of your life is.’ You make a personal choice to say, ‘I’m going to make this what’s real with my body.’

“Romans 6:20-21: [20] For when ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness.
[21] What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? for the end of those things is death.

“You see, the holiness is the fruit of who you are. You’re not trying to make yourself holy. God has set you apart in Christ.

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“You need to have your own personal convictions about your life. ‘Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind’ is the issue of taking an understanding of God’s Word and APPLYING it.

“And as you walk in the truth of God’s Word about who you are in Christ, it’s not a bunch of rules and regulations where, ‘If I do this I get there.’ It’s just, ‘This is who I am,’ and you’re transformed.

“Again, Romans 12:2 says, [2] And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

“By the way, the world wants to conform you to its mold. How does it do that? Paul tells you in Romans 1. There’s a thinking process that produces conformity to the world.

“There’s a long passage in II Corinthians 3 comparing the glory of the Mosaic Covenant to the glory of the New Covenant and Paul says the glory of the New Covenant is so much bigger and better than the glory of the Old Covenant.

“Paul ends the chapter by saying in verse 18, [18] But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.

“The law won’t transform you but you get transformed when you’re changed from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of God.

“Galatians 5:18 says that the Spirit will not lead you to be under the law. The Spirit of God leads you to be under grace.

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“When you make the choice to ‘present your body,’ you make a choice to use your body for Him: ‘I’m going to let Him be the vehicle through which His truth lives and functions. I’m going to be filled with the fruits of righteousness.’ Fruits are the inward life and product of His righteousness unto the praise and glory of God.

“When you move from law (or performance-based acceptance where it’s what I do that gets me accepted and gets me blessed) to grace, it’s, ‘God’s provided it for me and I’m just going to let that be what lives and I’m going to yield to that. I’m going to present that as my thinking process.’ That’s where the transformation is; that’s where the changing is.

“Here’s why you want that. When Paul says ‘that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God,’ that’s not a ‘good, better and best’ kind of a thing. Something that’s good is valuable.

“You know what you discover when you do what that verse is talking about; what the will of God is? People say, ‘Well, if I present my body a living sacrifice and tell God to just use it for His glory, I’m going to miss out on a lot.’

“No, you know what you discover the will of God is? It’s a treasure; it’s valuable. And when you treasure Him, you make choices in life because you value Him more than anything else. That’s really how you make the choices.

“What do you really choose to make the most valuable in your life? That renewed mind gives you the capacity to prove and demonstrate, to say, ‘There is the thing that is of greatest value and treasure to me.’

“The way Jesus Christ is glorified in your life is when people see what you see. When others see that you value Him more than all these other things, that will make you different than everybody else around you and it will make you different for the right reasons. It’s the essence of maturity. It’s the demonstration of what maturity is really all about. Absolute, complete, maximum fulfillment is when I take my life and function in a way that produces all that.”

Pre-Flood Pride Parades, post-Flood Ham?

“Today Satan is weakening the nations through homosexuality, the sin that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah,” writes Bible scholar Dr. Noah Hutchings (www.swrc.com)  in his 1998 book, God Divided the Nations. “He is weakening the nations to prepare the way for the rise of a world government over which his own king, the Antichrist, will reign.”

The reference to “weakening the nations” comes from Isaiah 14:12, which reads, “How are thou fallen, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How are thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!”

What’s often forgotten is homosexuality dates back to the pre-Flood era.

“Before the Flood, sexual perversion was rampant,” confirms Hutchings, quoting terminology from Genesis 6:5-6, 12. “In all probability the Apostle Paul was referring to the destruction of the pre-Flood Antediluvians when he wrote Romans 1:26-27.

“...It would appear from the entire text of the Scripture that (sexual perversion) resulted from the union of fallen angels with women. We read of the fallen angels and their associations with sexual perversion in Jude 6-7:

‘And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day. Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.’ ”

Fallen angels aligned with Satan fornicated with females on the earth in the years preceding the Flood and the result of their sexual union was children who possessed unusual strength and grew to be giants. First Century historian Flavius Josephus says “these men did what resembled the acts of those whom the Grecians call giants.” 

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“What the people in Sodom and Gomorrah did was like what the (fallen) angels of Genesis 6 did—they went after ‘strange flesh,’ living contrary to their nature,” explains Preacher Richard Jordan of Shorewood Bible Church, Rolling Meadows, Ill. (www.graceimpact.org). “The name ‘Sodom’ has become synonymous with the whole sin of homosexuality.”

In the account about Sodom and Gomorrah’s destruction by fire and brimstone in Genesis 19, we’re told that when two angels (both male, as were all angels described in the Bible) entered Sodom just prior to its demise, Lot had to protect them from the lustful men in town who were adamant to have sex with them.

These Sodomites, in fact, were so determined to fornicate with these male angels being safe-guarded in Lot’s house that they were about ready to pounce on Lot and knock down his front door when the angels interceded and “smote the men that were at the door of the house with blindness, both small and great: so that they wearied themselves to find the door.”

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Hutchings is among Bible scholars through the ages who've speculated homosexuality first recurred after the Flood with Noah’s son Ham, who found his father unclothed and passed out from drunkenness (Genesis 9).

“As Noah lay naked in his tent, the Scripture declares that Ham saw him,” writes Hutchings. “The terminology used may imply more than just seeing with the eyes. For example, the Bible uses the verb ‘knew’ to explain the act of conception. . . We note the specific wording of Genesis 9:24: ‘And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him.’

“It would certainly appear that there was more involved here than Ham just stumbling by chance upon the drunken body of his father. We read in Genesis 6:9 that Noah was ‘perfect in his generations.’ Noah was not perfect in that he was sinless; he was perfect in that he escaped the corruption that had affected 'all flesh.' However, nothing is said about Noah’s wife, or the wives of Ham, Shem, or Japeth, so a genetic flaw may have passed on to Ham and Canaan through Mrs. Noah.”

The Genesis 9 account, says Hutchings, seems to suggest Canaan, the son of Ham who received Noah’s curse and fathered the descendants who later settled Sodom and Gomorrah, was also involved in the sin of Ham.

“He could have been with his father and a participant in the deed, or while Ham was gone to tell his brothers about their father’s condition, Canaan could have become equally guilty,” writes Hutchings. “We readily admit that our explanation of what possibly happened is conjecture; however, God would not have extended the curse to Canaan had he been only an innocent bystander. It is no wonder that Noah was upset because one of the sins that brought about the judgment of the pre-Flood society had now appeared in his own household.”

*****

Today, homosexuality proponents will incorrectly tell you the Bible either doesn’t have anything to say against homosexuality or it’s condemnation is limited to one verse in Leviticus 18: “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.”

Negative references to the sin can be found scattered throughout the Old and  New Testaments—Deuteronomy 23, I Kings 14 and 15, II Kings 23, I Corinthians 6 and Galatians 5.

“Paul lists homosexuality as part of the sins of the flesh, but can I remind you it’s not listed as any worse than drunkenness or adultery or anger and wrath,” says Jordan. “Sometimes people tend to think of homosexuality as the most evil sin, but when God lists it, He just puts it in the garden variety of sins. God looks at all sin the same. It’s all sin. It doesn’t mean it’s not serious or bad, it just means that sometimes we get fixated on one as opposed to another—usually we’re fixated on the ones we don’t care for and the rest of them we like to leave alone.”

*****

What God was warning the Israelites about in Leviticus 18 is how the Gentile nations had forsaken God and let sin become their lifestyle and that perversion as a lifestyle was rampant in their midst.

“When sin is not a way of life, you keep it in the closet, but when it becomes a way of life, you bring it out of the closet—this is just a principle of life,” explains Jordan. “It shouldn’t surprise you that as the darkness comes back in, these sins that were kept 'in the closet' get out into the open. As you see sin gain the open lifestyle in the culture, the culture adjusts to it.”

From the Old Testament, the consistent resurgence of homosexual activity into the lifestyle of the nation Israel came when Israel forsook God’s Word.

“Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people,” warns Solomon in Proverbs 14:34.

“When sin becomes a lifestyle for a person or a nation, it all comes out in the open, and when it does, it requires that the institutions that would check it and stop it, or limit it, be overturned,” says Jordan, referring to the God-given divine institutions of marriage (between a man and a woman) and family.

“There will always be a consistent social struggle with the sins of the flesh when God’s Word is not honored—that’s true anywhere you look in the Bible,” he says. “When a culture despises God’s Word and says, ‘We'll do it our way; we know better,' you’re inviting, and you’re putting yourself on a flight headed toward the destination of destruction.

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Describing the downward spiral that occurs in a person’s life when God’s Word is despised and sin is indulged in, Romans 1:28-32 explains that along with the sin comes haunting guilt, mental and emotional disturbances, abnormal personality changes, etc.

“The sin is not in being tempted, the sin is in yielding to the temptation. . . It becomes a sin once it becomes a practice,” says Jordan.

“The way we oppose it is by being different because we’re in Christ. God makes people different. As Paul says, ‘Such were some of you, but you’re washed, you’re sanctified, you’re justified.’ The way you oppose sin is by turning on the light, holding forth the gospel.

“It doesn’t make any difference whether you’ve been associated with the homosexual lifestyle or you’ve been a pristine, virginal clean religious nut. Outside of Christ, one is just as far from God as the other.

"God doesn’t save people because they go to church, and He doesn’t send them to hell because of the way they have sex. He saves people because they’re in His Son, and He sends them to hell because they’re not—because they’ve chosen to go to hell in spite of His love and grace for them.”

Why this apostasy differs from Timothy's

“The world Timothy ministered in is the one we’re heading for,” Preacher Richard Jordan explained recently to a large crowd of young preachers.

“We’re in a transition period right now; you still have guys like me around. Timothy and Paul did not face the type of apostasized Christianity we’ve faced in the past; they faced a pagan world that thought like what our world is heading for. The apostasy of Christendumb has had 2,000 years to develop itself. That’s what’s crumbling.

“II Timothy 3:13-14 says, [13] But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived.
[14] But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them;

“You see how he says, ‘But continue thou’? We’re not in verse 13, we’re in verse 14. We’re going to live in a world that’s like verse 13, but Paul’s telling us what we’re to do in that world.

“What do you first have to do? Learn it. As you learn it, it will give you assurance. Assurance doesn’t come because you talk yourself into it. Assurance comes from the truth of God’s Word taking root in your heart. As Paul says, ‘Rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught.’

“II Timothy 3:15 says, [15] And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.

“That salvation is not initial salvation and justification unto eternal life; that’s salvation from the problem of verse 13; from the apostasy in the chapter. Context is king. There’s all kind of salvations in the Bible.

“In I Timothy 4, Paul warns, [1] Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils;
[2] Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron;

“He tells Timothy in the last verse, ‘[16] Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine; continue in them: for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee.

“Paul’s saying, ‘Pay attention to the doctrine, because in doing so, you’ll save yourself and them that hear thee.' He’s not talking about getting saved from hell; he’s talking about being saved from the apostasy. The salvation here is from the apostasy and from being led away.

“By the way, at this point Timothy had a lot of Scripture. I read a thing the other day where a guy’s saying, ‘Well, we know that in the New Testament times they didn’t have any concept of a canon of scripture.’ I thought, ‘That fellow fell off a stump and hit his head.’ But that’s what they all tell you: ‘Oh, it wasn’t until the 4^th and 5^th century when the canon…’

“Listen, your New Testament scriptures were written, collated together, copied and distributed before 70 A.D. That’s what the evidence in the Scripture says. If Peter can talk about all of Paul’s epistles in II Peter 3, don’t you think people had them? Sure they did.

“You think the church at Thessalonica sent the original manuscripts to the church at Ephesus to read? Well, if you do, you fell off a stump and hit your head.

“Paul tells the Corinthians, ‘[37] If any man think himself to be a prophet, or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord.’ There were prophets in those churches who could identify, ‘That’s scripture and that’s not.’ They had a mechanism to do that.

“Your Bible didn’t come along as an afterthought of a bunch of mossy-backed religious prelates somewhere who couldn’t figure out whether Jesus was God or Mary was His mother. That’s the same crowd that says they ‘fixed’ your bible.

“That’s the same crowd that tells you the Church gave you your bible. It’s all backwards. You know what it is? It’s all religious nonsense and fortunately it’s something that the wintertime is allowing to be pushed away. Things disintegrate in the fall and in the wintertime you clear the ground. We’re seeing the ground being cleared about us.

“It’s the economic stuff, social stuff, arts and culture stuff being swept away too. You remember how in the mid-’70s the ‘Blue Laws’ that said you couldn’t be open on Sunday suddenly came crashing down in the space of a year?

“The reason something like that falls so quickly is the underpinning of it is gone. We’ve got laws nobody understands why we have them for so then it’s, ‘Let’s just get rid of it.’ You’re seeing that happen in our culture now where kids today know nothing about the founding of our country or its history. Your kids are blanks to what America used to be. All of that comes crashing down in the wintertime.”

Time keeps tickin', tickin' into future

Both today’s Sunday school study and sermon focused, in part, on how little time we really have left for our earthly walk with the Lord.

About our flesh-and-bones life, James 4:14 reminds us, “It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.”

I have an old kitchen plaque saved from my childhood home that reads, Only one life, Twill soon be past, Only what’s done for Christ will last. ‘To me to live is Christ.’

Paul, the only Bible writer to receive revelation from the resurrected Jesus Christ, encourages Believers in limitless ways to comprehend our citizenship is in heaven and that our role while still on earth is as “ambassadors for Christ.”

“Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth,” advises Paul in Colossians 3. “For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.”

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Under the title “Care of the Vineyard,” a favorite Bible commentary writer of mine, Cora Harris MacIlravey (circa 1916), reminds us, “Time is rapidly fading away, the things of the earth and of the natural are sinking out of sight and becoming as shadows. There is a glory falling upon our union with our Lord, which is shining more brightly as the days go by. It seems that there are only a few more mileposts to pass, only a little more time in which to perfect our relation to Him and our separation from all else, and then shall we rise to meet Him in the clouds; and thus be forever with the Lord . . ."

Looking at verse 2:16 from Song of Solomon (“My beloved is mine, and I am his: he feedeth among the lilies”), she writes, “He has warned (the Shulamite woman) that she must put away those things that seem so small to her, but which will eat the vines in her vineyard and destroy all promise of fruit. The word ‘spoil’ has the meaning of ‘strangle.’ While this thought is not applicable to the damage the foxes do in a grape vineyard; it is a vivid expression of the way in which the little sins and neglect strangle the vines in our lives, preventing the power of the life of Jesus Christ from flowing to the highest branch and to the tiniest twig; preventing His life from being manifested to the glory of God; preventing the fruit from maturing.

“Although the bride has not seen the Bridegroom, He has spoken to her in love and assurance, in gentle warning and encouragement. She is assured of her union with Him, which is eternal and indissoluble. Her heart is filled with rest because He is hers; she is apprehending that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate her from the One who died for her, and from His love.

“In deep settled peace, she rests in the assurance that, though she is unworthy and many times unfaithful, He abideth faithful for He cannot deny Himself. As she recalls all He has done for her, she comforts and strengthens herself in Him and His undying love. She rejoices that, whether together or separated, whether seen or unseen, her Beloved is hers and she is His. Literally: ‘My Beloved is for me and I am for Him.’

“There is nothing so precious as to apprehend that our Beloved is ours and we are His. There is such joy and sense of holy possession in the thought that our Beloved is ours. . . He is ours that we may let Him fill our lives and hearts, that we may draw upon His strength at every step. His beauty and attributes are for us that we may put them on. . .

“The bride rejoices not only that her Beloved is hers, but that she is His. She is His because He created her, because He has redeemed her, because He has loved her with an everlasting love. She is His love slave, by free and joyful choice. She is His to protect and defend. No harm can befall her, no evil can come nigh her when His banner, ‘Love,’ is over her, and marks her out as His own  possession. She is His that He may fight her battles; she is His to correct and chasten, to mold and shape; she is His that He may perfect that which concerneth her and make her more than conqueror. She is His to feed and nourish; and He alone can bring her home to Glory, and seat her upon His throne as His spotless spouse. She is for Him alone.

“Let us lay our wills down at His feet, that His will may more closely encompass us. Let us yield that He may purify and fashion us into His own glorious image. Only as we abandon ourselves to Him without reserve, can we enter into this relationship. . . Every power and every faculty—all, all must be His and for Him alone; for Him to use as He pleases.”

Untold black history via noble man

One of the great stories in black history that goes untold is about the Moravian missionaries who, in the 1700s, sold themselves into slavery to come to America from Africa aboard slave ships and spread the gospel to their countrymen in the new world.

The story actually begins, though, with Christian hero Nikolaus Ludwig, count von Zinzendorf, who was born into one of Europe's most noble families in 1700 in Dresden, Germany.

The Count's father died when he was an infant and he was sent to the castle of his grandmother, an influential member of the Pietist religious reform movement begun in Germany in the 17^th century as a protest against the secularization of the Lutheran Church.

Pietism stressed salvation through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ whereas Lutheranism had hardened into a scholastic system centered on following the denomination's self-made doctrines.

"Stories abound of (Zinzendorf's) deep faith during childhood," writes the Rev. John Jackman at Zinzendorf.com. "As a young man, he struggled with his desire to study for the ministry and the expectation that he would fulfill his hereditary role as a Count.

“As a teenager at Halle Academy, he and several other young nobles formed a secret society, 'The Order of the Grain of Mustard Seed.' The stated purpose of this order was that the members would use their position and influence to spread the Gospel.

“As an adult, Zinzendorf later re-activated this adolescent society, and many influential leaders of Europe ended up joining the group. A few included the King of Denmark, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Archbishop of Paris."

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Zinzendorf, as Jackman recounts, was participating in his “Grand Tour” (a rite of passage for young aristocrats), visiting an art museum in Dusseldorf, where he was deeply affected by the Domenico Feti painting Ecce Homo, or "Behold the Man."

 It portrayed Christ on the Cross with the message, "This have I done for you—now what will you do for me?"

"The young count was profoundly moved and appears to have had an almost mystical experience while looking at the painting, feeling as if Christ Himself was speaking those words to his heart," writes Jackman. "He vowed that day to dedicate his life to service to Christ."

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In 1722, shortly after Zinzendorf married a cousin and assumed his duties as a young noble in the court of King August the Strong, he was approached by a small band of Pietist Christians from Moravia, a region of the Czech Republic, who requested permission to live on his lands.

These underground Believers were in search of refuge from Counter-Reformation suppression and persecution. While Moravia had become a large empire that adopted Christianity in the 9^th century, the empire fell in the 10^th century when the region was conquered by the Magyars and then subsumed into the Holy Roman Empire.

Zinzendorf permitted the Moravians to settle on his estate in Saxony, upon which they then settled a town they named Herrnhut, or "the Lord's Watch."

Increasingly intrigued by the story of the Moravians, Zinzendorf, in 1727, came to spend all his time at his Herrnhut estate, working with the Moravians, who were experiencing a period of serious division that Zinzendorf's leadership helped quickly dispel.

"Largely due to (Zinzendorf's) leadership in daily Bible studies, the group came to formulate a unique document, known as the 'Brotherly Agreement,' which set forth basic tenets of Christian behavior," explains Jackman. "Residents of Herrnhut were required to sign a pledge to abide by these Biblical principals. There followed an intense and powerful experience of renewal, often described as the 'Moravian Pentecost.' This experience began the Moravian renewal, and led to the beginning of the Protestant World Mission movement."

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Zinzendorf was attending the coronation of Christian VI in Copenhagen in 1731 when he met a converted slave from the West Indies, whose tale of his people's plight so moved Zinzendorf that the Count brought him back home to Herrnhut.

As a result, two men from the Moravian movement were sent to the island of St. Thomas to live among the slaves and preach the gospel.

"This was the first organized Protestant mission work, and grew rapidly to Africa, America, Russia, and other parts of the world," writes Jackman. "By the end of Zinzendorf's life there were active missions from Greenland to South Africa, literally from one end of the earth to the other. Though the Baptist missionary William Carey is often referred to as the 'Father of Modern Missions,' he himself would credit Zinzendorf with that role, for he often referred to the model of the earlier Moravians in his journal."

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In the space of 25 years, approximately 600 Moravian missionaries carried the gospel to the four corners of the world. Unbelievably, some of those converted in Africa then made the faith decision to sell themselves into slavery in order to voyage the oceans with the gospel.

"They took the money from their own sale, put it into the missionary box and accompanied their countrymen to they-didn't-know-where to bring the gospel to the slaves in the new world,” explains Preacher Richard Jordan of Shorewood Bible Church.

"Today you go across the southern and central part of our country, and down into the Caribbean, where the black slaves were brought to America, and you'll find the gospel all through that part of the world.

"I'm from Alabama and the gospel was there, not because white men took it to them when they arrived, but because Black Africans were willing to sell themselves into slavery to bring the gospel to their own people. There's the lineage and the heritage you and I stand in.

"The next time you think you think you’d rather have a Lexus than a Chevy, think about some dear brother in Christ willing to sell his whole life, and take the price of his life, and put it in the mission box, and then accompany his people, and go through the harsh living conditions, and the rough circumstances, and whatever else, so that Christ in him could accompany his people and minister to them."

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Zinzendorf would later travel to America himself on a gospel mission and is credited with founding the town of Bethlehem, Pa., where his daughter organized a school later to become Moravian College.

"His overwhelming interest in the colonies involved evangelizing the native Americans, and he traveled into the wilderness with Indian agent Conrad Weiser to meet with the chieftains of several tribes and clans," writes Jackman. "As far as we have been able to identify, he is the only European noble to have gone out to meet the native American leaders in this manner."

During the colonial period, the Moravians would start numerous churches and schools for the settlers and Native Americans, then turn them over to whatever Protestant denomination they perceived to be the strongest in a given region.

Zinzendorf came to know John and Charles Wesley, both of whom had been converted through contact with the Moravians. The Wesleys later founded the Methodist Church and, according to Jackman, "retained warm affection for the Moravians throughout their lives."

Of this tremendous legacy of the Moravian missionaries, Jordan summarizes, "These were Bible-believing dispensational people who understood the gospel, the grace of God and their identity in Christ. They may not have all the dispensational things we do, but they walked in the light they had, and we stand on their shoulders today.

"Remember that ONE person can have that kind of an impact, and you can be that one person, because the same Christ that was in them is in you and it's in me.

"If you want to make a difference in the world you live in, you make a difference by just being who God made you in Christ and letting that be what works in your life, giving yourself wholly over to it. Paul says, 'Present your bodies a living sacrifice.' "

Always look on the shiny side of life

As someone who once wrote obituaries for the Elmira Star-Gazette (I was bureau chief for Tioga Co., N.Y. and Bradford Co., Pa.) I learned to appreciate the skill and loving touch that goes into capturing the life of someone who’s just died.

Among unforgettable obits I’ve saved in a file over the years is Marina Berzins’, appearing in the Hartford Courant.

The elderly Berzins, who came to the U.S. as a teenager, escaped her native Latvia during World War II, along with her mother and older sister, to find refuge in a string of displaced-persons camps run by the United Nations in the American sector of Germany. Her father, a lieutenant colonel in the Latvian army, had been arrested and sent to a Soviet labor camp in Siberia.

“Being a child, it was absolutely fantastic,” Marina’s sister says in the obit, referring to their life moving from camp to camp, where families lived together in large ramshackle barracks rooms separated only by hanging blankets and with walls so poorly constructed snow would drift through. “It was a great life, but not for adults.”

Childhood memories from this period included “playing in the woods, gathering berries and mushrooms and (attending) classes taught by refugee teachers. There were piano lessons on one out-of-tune piano, occasional ballet lessons, scout troops. Food was often scarce (and egg was a great treat), and camp residents used to barter cigarettes and chocolate from the aid packages for scarcer goods.”

The family arrived in America with little money or education and no ability to speak English. Marina’s sister noted, “When you are children, things are not hard to adjust, but for the older people it was much harder.”

Marina’s son, an artist, recalled how his mother always considered herself fortunate: “She tried to reinforce how lucky we were to live in a country like the United States.”

Marina’s daughter, a software engineer at MIT, testified, “She instilled in me a sense of the importance of education. You can make your own destiny if you work hard. Knowing how difficult her life was, there was always a sense that things could be turned around.”

A longtime friend said of Marina, “She was the ultimate optimist. Nothing bad ever happened. She was fun to be with, and people liked to be around her.”

Unbelievably, Marina met her second husband in a chance encounter at a local mall in the 1980s when he instantly remembered her face from the U.N. camps of her war upbringing.

“She ran into Evarists Berzins, a Latvian whom she had first known in one of the camps where she had spent her youth,” read the obit. “He had once given her a ride on his bicycle handlebars and had never forgotten her smile, her self-confidence and her beauty. He called her by her nickname, Marite.”

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Life is lived in your perception of reality and if you focus on what you have to be thankful for, choosing to see the good in every personal situation, you’ll be better for it.

The common theme that runs through all forms of depression is self-pity.

“I don’t care what it is, where it came from, or how it’s induced, depression always has an element of self-pity in it,” Jordan says. “You know, your emotions have no intellect; no thinking capacity of their own. They’re going to respond to what you’re thinking as if that’s really what’s happening, and there’s a formula for depression that’s as accurate and as consistent as anything in algebra or geometry, and it starts with bad, erroneous thinking.

“When the problem, the injury, or the insult comes, and they do come, you respond with disappointment. And if you take an injury, insult, or rejection, plus anger, multiplied by self-pity, you’ll get depression every time without exception. You’re on the road. It will first be despair, and then it’ll be depression.

“And as long as you’re thinking about it, brooding about it, remembering to remember it—remembering to be hurt, angry, insulted and rejected—you get blinded by self-pity, and you’re blinded to the resources God has provided for you. And the difficulties you face get to be overwhelmingly large, and it becomes like the (refrain) from Hee-Haw: ‘Gloom, despair and agony on me. Deep, dark depression, excessive misery. If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all. Gloom, despair and agony on me.’

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“Unrealistic expectations and misplaced dependencies represent the antithesis of grace.

“Realistic thinking is to understand where you are in the program of God, who you are, and just what is meant by the grace of God—to live in the reality of God’s grace to you in Christ, and to have grace thinking dominate your life instead of the unrealistic thinking of a performance system.

“When you don’t have grace thinking, and you have unrealistic expectations, you’re not really thinking about what God’s really doing; you’ve just got ideas of your own. And you have misplaced dependencies. You’re trusting your sufficiency or someone else’s; you’re walking in unbelief.

“Life’s a lot tougher in its reality than most evangelicals and the Charismatics want you to believe it is. If you think you’re just going to thank God for all the (troublesome) things in your life, you’re nuts. I’m sorry. God never told you to be grateful for all those things that come into your life. He says in them, in all things, give thanks. How do you do that? You look away from yourself to who God’s made you in Christ.”

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“Whatever you depend on to give you purpose and meaning and life, that’s what’s going to control you.

“Really the only real sin that you constantly have to deal with is the sin of unbelief. The sin of not trusting the sufficiency God has given you in Christ.

"All the other things—all the sins of the flesh Paul names— adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings—all of those are really symptoms of your lack of faith in the sufficiency of who God’s made you in Christ.

“The way you cure depression is not by focusing on the symptoms, it’s focusing on the source. The battle’s in your mind, first and foremost.

“Imaginations are designed to be programmed by our conscious mind and it’s the things in our imagination that effect our emotions.

“The devil doesn’t program them, you program them. Or you allow them to be programmed by the intake your mind is having. They can be re-programmed, re-directed by your conscious thinking. So you cast down all this uncontrolled involuntary thinking that comes into your mind. Cast it down, ‘bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.’

“The way you re-program your imagination is through the conscious application of sound doctrine. That’s the objective of sound doctrine. And that’s the only way you’re going to control what Paul calls our ‘vain imagination.’ ‘Vain’ means empty, useless thinking. Not based on truth, but based on error.”

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“The radio has FM and AM dial and we can choose which band we’re going to listen to:

“The one band is error, and it says, ‘Worry and worry early.’ God says, ‘Be careful for nothing.’ Don’t be anxious or worried about anything. Which station do you listen to? Truth or error?

“God says He’s perfected forever all those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus. How are you going to get any better than that? You’re complete in Christ, ‘blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places.’ This is who God’s made you.

“Which are you going to believe? You say, ‘But look at what I’ve done,’ and God says, ‘Yeah, I know, look at what I did.’

“Where are you looking? What station are you listening to? He says, ‘Reckon yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God.’ ”

“Bottom line, godliness with contentment is where it’s at. As Paul says, ‘I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content.’

“You can’t worry and trust God at the same time. So when you’re worrying, you’re not trusting God. It’s impossible to be depressed and thankful at the same time. All you need to get out of depression is to be thankful.

“Understand that neither height, nor depth, or anything can separate you from the love of God and say, ‘I’m going to be thankful to God, in whatever happens, for who I am in Him.’ You bring those thoughts into captivity to the reality of truth, and that’s a depression-buster. The path to freedom is first you decide you want to be free.”

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Jordan tells an inspirational story of a blind teen-aged girl’s testimony at a Bible youth camp:

“She’d been blind from birth. Had never seen the light of day. She’d heard the gospel and gotten saved. The last day of youth camp, we were having a camp fire, and all the teens were giving testimony for what they thanked God for.

“One was thanking Him for the trees, and for getting him up that morning, and all that stuff, and somebody was thanking God for this and that, and this young girl got up and said, ‘You know, I want to thank God.’

“Everybody was looking at her, thinking, ‘What could this blind girl be thanking God for? Blind from birth and has to live all of life blind to all around her.’

“She said, ‘I’ve been listening all week, and I’ve learned about how much God loves me. I’ve learned what He’s done for me in Christ, and what a wonderful future He’s assured me, and how He’s equipped me right now to live a resurrected life in its details.’

“She added, ‘You know, I thank God I was born blind. Because that means I have virgin eyes. The first thing I’ll ever see is the one who loved me and gave Himself for me.’

“When I heard that story, I thought, ‘You know, there’s a girl who’s got it!’ She’s so filled with the love and grace of God that self-pity is turned to thanksgiving, turned to joy unto a ‘peace that passeth all understanding.’ That’s how you have victory every single day.”