The Hoax

 

THE HOAX

     How would you like to purchase a nice Ford truck for $7,000?  How about an extremely nice sectional sofa for $400?  How about a tractor for $1,400 and a freezer for $200?  These were just a few of the 35 items listed yesterday in a Facebook post from a friend of mine.  The 35 items were accompanied by photos that caused increasing excitement as I viewed each one.  The post had been up for 3-hours already and I was fearful that most of these amazing bargains had already been snatched up.

     I called my friend with a list of items that my son and I had decided to purchase, excited about this amazing opportunity.  As soon as my friend answered her cell phone, she laughed saying, "Are you calling about the items for sale?"  

     I said, "Yes!"

     She said, "It's a hoax.  Somebody hacked my Facebook page.  I've already had 26 texts this morning and numbers of phone calls."

    I felt like a deflated balloon.  I'd fallen for the "If it looks too good to be true, then...." hook, line and sinker, and with checkbook in hand!

     The definition of hoax is, "an act intended to trick or deceive people; a widely publicized falsehood created to deceive its audience with false and often astonishing information."

     Yep!  That sums up the Facebook hoax to a tee.

     The question is -- how did so many of us fall for something that on closer inspection seems way too good to be true?

     I guess we might say, we believe what we want to believe, not to mention a well-told lie can be very convincing.  Notice that the definition of hoax only used words like, "trick, deceive, falsehood."  The word "lie" was never used.  The father of lies (aka Satan) prefers to have that blatant and telling word candy-coated.  He loves it when people use the term, "little white lie."  It's as if he's created a little cupcake with white icing that contains a poison pill.  If it looks good, people will swallow it.

     I'm convinced that there is a spiritual message in everything we encounter and experience.  This cleverly designed Facebook hoax is just one example of a believable lie.  

     From the beginning of time, in the Garden of Eden, Satan has been lying and deceiving  people.  When God created a vast and beautiful garden for His precious creations, Adam and Eve, He told them there was only one thing in the whole world that they could not do -- only one thing!  

     Satan/aka Lucifer, the recently fallen angel who was ridiculously jealous of God, wanted to cause havoc on this beautiful, pure scene because he knew it would cause pain to his new enemy, God.  So, he spoke smooth words to Eve, telling her lies mixed with truth in such a way that he deceived her into thinking that taking a bite of the forbidden fruit was actually a good thing to do (read Genesis 3:1-8).

     Oh, my!  It was a lie followed by a sin that changed the entire world!  And, the strange thing is - Satan has been repeating a similar lie to mankind ever since - and it still works!

      Satan and his minions have continued throughout history seeking to deceive and turn people from God.  And millions of people have been just as deceived as Eve.  Scripture tells us, "And no wonder!  For Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light," 2 Corinthians 11:14.  Once again, he wraps his ugly, deadly lies in a beautiful box and ties it with a bow - and people stand in line to receive his gift-wrapped box of death.

     The apostle John warned us, "Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world," 1 John 4:1.  John further tells us in his gospel what Jesus said, "If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed.  And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free," 8:31-32.

     Ah, truth!  Truth is the opposite of a hoax and it is the opposite of Satan.  Who doesn't want to be free?  I've never known anyone who would choose to be a captive in a cage over freedom.  Jesus is Truth and He offers freedom to all who will believe in Him.

     So, the next time you see or hear of something in the world that seems too good to be true, test it against the truth of God and - don't click on any links!

Flight

    Larry and I enjoyed a week at the Outer Banks in North Carolina earlier this month.  We revisited the Aviation Memorial situated behind the Visitor's Center near the entrance to the Outer Banks.  This impressive memorial that celebrates the first 100 years of flight is tucked back in the trees and is a hidden gem I recommend.

    There is much of interest there, but I want to key in on a poem written by a young John Magee and give you my spiritual take on it.

   When I read the poem High Flight, written by a young man named John Gillespie Magee, Jr., I saw more than even what he intended within the descriptions of flying through the open space of sky. 

    John, who was a 19-year-old American serving in the Canadian Air Force as a Fighter Pilot and a wartime poet, was inspired to write this joyous poem by a flight he took in a Spitfire on August 18, 1941.  Sadly, John was killed in a plane crash just four months later on December 11 in England.  His poem went on to become what is considered the most famous aviation poem ever written. 

    Here is a picture of the engraved poem at the entrance to the memorial:

    After reading the poem, my mind immediately envisioned our perfected and glorified bodies flying freely through space once we are in Heaven.  Why would I imagine such a thing?

    It's because I believe we will be able to fly, just as John described in his poem, but without the need for an airplane.  Here's an excerpt from my book, "The Rapture -- Imagining the Day that Changes the World Forever."  I just added a new chapter to the book this week, it's entitled "Glimpsing the Wonders of Heaven."

    Here's what I wrote in the book: 

 ~My Take On This Brilliant Poem - 

       When I read this poem, I see the risen, perfected bodies of Christians flying through the sky, unfettered and free.  I see the “craft” the poet speaks of as being our resurrected bodies, unencumbered by earth and sin, perfected into the likeness of the resurrected Christ – who could walk through walls and transport from one location to another in the blink of an eye – as well as rise up through the sky to Heaven as His disciples watched.

      Jesus Christ walked on the earth for 40-days after He was resurrected following His death on the cross.  During that time, He ate food, talked and taught His followers, appeared and disappeared.  He even walked along the road to Emmaus for miles talking with two followers and then joined them for a meal.  As soon as they recognized that He was Jesus, “He vanished from their sight,” Luke 24:31.

      The Apostle Paul wrote to the Christians in Philippi, “For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. / who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body, according to the working by which He is able even to subdue all things to Himself,” Philippians 3:20-21.

      So, when we are raptured or resurrected from the grave, our bodies will become perfected with abilities like Christ’s own body.  We’ll have strength and abilities we’ve only dreamed of.  I believe that one of those wonders will be the ability to fly through the air, much like Jesus did when He ascended to Heaven.

     When you read this poem, imagine experiencing the joy and freedom of soaring across the beautiful blue sky with arms outspread, feeling the wind in your hair, rejoicing in the God who created and redeemed you.

     At the end of that chapter, I included this paragraph:    When the trumpet sounds announcing that Jesus is catching up His children to join Him in Heaven, we’ll experience our first flight of freedom.  In that moment, we’ll soar up into the sky to meet the Lord in the air.  And -- put out our hands "and touch the face of God.”

   "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" 1 Corinthians 15:55 KJV

 

    

 

The Water of Life

 

     These beautiful pink hydrangea flowers have brought me much joy during their short life.  For a month, they stood straight and tall with these lush blossoms proclaiming the glory of God.  Even their crisp bright green leaves are pretty!

     As the weather turned warmer and the flowers began fading, one day the leaves hung limp and the flower head lay to the side.  They looked pitiful!  I realized that they were in dire need of life-giving water and so I filled the watering can and gave the plant a nice, long drink.

     Within hours, the faded blossom heads had righted themselves and once again stood up tall - and even looked brighter.  The limp leaves perked up too and seemed to rejoice at their renewal.  It was an amazing transformation.

     Nature offers so many spiritual messages and this one is no exception.  I'm reminded of Psalm 63:1, where David says, "O God, You are my God; early will I seek You; my soul thirsts for You; my flesh longs for You in a dry and thirsty land where there is no water." 

      We all need water to live and without it, we grow weak and limp like my poor flower.  The prophet Isaiah wrote, "Therefore with joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation," 12:3.

       Water is life.  Jesus offers us just such water.  He says to us, "Whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst.  But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life," John 4:14.

     God tells us in Isaiah 44:3, "For I will pour water on him who is thirsty, and floods on the dry ground; I will pour My Spirit on your descendants, and My blessing on your offspring."

      This verse compares life-giving water with the life-giving Holy Spirit in a way that we can see how vital each are to a healthy life.  Without God's Holy Spirit working in and through us, we will be weak and limp - we will be sad.  We need to drink in the Word of God each day so that we will be spiritually hydrated.  We all want our lives to be as beautiful before the Lord as the wonderful blue and lavender hydrangeas in the picture above.  We need to stay close to the One who gives us strength, purpose and peace.  

       Let's stay fresh in our walk with the Lord each day - inspired by these crisp green leaves and radiant pink flower as it stands upright before its Creator.

       Let's say, with David, "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.  He makes me to lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside the still waters.  He restores my soul; He leads me in the paths of righteousness for His name's sake..." Psalm 23:1-3.

The Genealogy of Jesus

 

   As I studied the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew 1:1-17 and in Luke 3:23-38, I tried to understand what the differences in ancestery might mean.  From Adam to David, the ancestors are, of course, the same, but after that we see a list of different names.  As I thought about it, I wondered if God might be showing us that our legal lineage is more important than our physical lineage?

    

    When we look at Jesus' legal lineage through his step-father Joseph, we see a long list of kings that came after David.  This added to Jesus' right to be King.  Not only that, but the gospel of Matthew is considered to be the book that proclaims Jesus as King, the Lion of Judah.

    Then, we have the list of ancestors in Luke, which is the line of Mary, the mother of Jesus and therefore His physical line.  There are no kings after David, just ordinary men, yet even so, King David as ancestor in Mary's line also gives Jesus the right to the throne of His "father David."  Also relevant is that the gospel of Luke is considered the story of Jesus as a Man.

    It's mind-boggling to realize that God had Mary and Joseph's family trees worked out even before He created the first person Adam!  Through each generation, God knew and controlled the gene pool being handed down until He revealed His choice of Mary to be the physical vessel to be the link between humankind and Heaven.

    It's a mystery, a wonder, a miracle and an act of the most amazing grace!

    At first, I thought surely Jesus' lineage through Mary whose physical gene pool He shared was the more important.  But then, I began thinking of the importance of a legal lineage.  When a person is adopted into a family, that person becomes a legal part of that family, sharing in the inheritance and all the aspects of what it means to be part of that family - as if he were born into that family.

    I began to think of the spiritual aspects of a physical versus legal lineage.  Physically, we are descended from Adam - a natural man - which means we were born a sinful human (not Jesus, of course, who was perfect).  But then, when we were born again as a Believer in Jesus Christ, we became a child of God, adopted into His family.  We are legally a child of God through the price that Jesus paid to cleanse us from our sin.  

    "But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name; who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God," John 1:12-13.

     And so, for us, our legal lineage is by far the more important.  As far as the importance of the physical versus legal lineage of Jesus, I shall leave that up to Almighty God to determine.  I'm just so thankful that He came, that He loved us enough to die for us, that He rose again, and will soon come back to bring us to Himself.  And so shall we ever be - with the Lord.

    

Time

     I'm fascinated by the concept of Time.  From the moment of our conception until we draw our last breath, we are bound by Time.  Our very heartbeat is measured by Time.  A normal heartbeat is 60 to 100 beats per minute, known as "bpm."

    We have 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 24-hours in a day, 7 days in a week, and 56 weeks in a year.  Our lives revolve around a ticking clock.  

     The antique clock pictured above is literally a ticking clock (I purchased it from an uncle in NC many decades ago).  The pendulum on this clock swings back and forth to mark each second of time.  The swing movement causes a definite "ticking" sound that is a constant reminder that time is passing.

    Sit in a quiet room with such a clock and the constant tick-tock quickly becomes very noticeable.  However, after you've lived with such a clock for a while, you no longer hear the ticking sound as it becomes a background noise your brain dismisses.

     

     Although our every heartbeat is bound by Time, such a concept is so deeply engrained into our very existence that we dismiss the sound and walk through life with little thought to the passing of Time.  I was struck by this thought when I recently heard the song, What are We Waiting For? by King and Country, and the line:  "Why are we wasting all the time like someone's making more?"

    I thought, "Wow!"  We all waste time -- time that is then quickly in the past and no longer usable for us; it's gone, never to be available again.  No one is making more time for us.  That's why the apostle Paul wrote to the Ephesians, "See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time..." 5:15-16.

    When God created the world, He also created Time.  God has always lived outside the boundary of Time.  Before the earth was created, there was no such thing as Time, and once the earth is re-formed by God for His kingdom in the future, Time will once again cease to exist and Forever will begin for us.  Our finite, Time-bound minds cannot comprehend such a life.  But, that's okay.  God is the One in control of all that stuff and we can trust Him to bring it all to a satisfactory completion.  One of the things you can count on is that God always has a plan and a purpose for everything.

    So, what should our attitude toward Time be?  We need to ask God to, "teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom," Psalm 90:12.  And the way we can do that is to follow the words of Jesus:  "Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you," Matthew 6:33.

    When we seek God's Time management in our lives, we will have time enough and when our Time on earth is up, we can say with Jesus, "I have glorified You on the earth.  I have finished the work which You have given Me to do," John 17:4.

    I love the Latin phrase, carpe diem - seize the day!

    

Beauty and Heaven

    A carpet of pink cherry blossoms spread across my daughter Sara's deck and transformed it into a magically beautiful scene that brings a smile to my face each time I see it!  Only God could scatter the blossoms from that tree in such a delightful pattern.  Two days before Sara took that picture, I'd been visiting her and found a small area of pink blossoms on the deck.  I thought they were so pretty, I took a picture of my feet on that spot:

     Even though I was so happy to find this little area of fallen blossoms, it was quite small in comparison to the amazing show God created two days later.  

     This reminds me of the glimpses of beauty God offers to us on this sinful earth.  While evil prevails on so much of the earth, there are still bright spots of beauty and goodness.  There are still spots where we can stand on dainty pink cherry blossoms and delight in their beauty.  We can gaze up at an amazing deep blue spread out above our heads on some days and then see gigantic banks of clouds on other days.  We can watch brilliant colors of sunsets and marvel that there are never two that God paints the same.  We can be amazed at the delicate beauty of so many colorful flowers in the garden.

     And it's not only the beauties of the earth around us, but glimpses of God working in our lives, and in hearts and lives around us that bring delight and amazement.  It's as if God is giving us appetizers of what is in store for us in Heaven some day.  He is whetting our appetite for our future life by giving us glimpses of beauty and wonder that are so marvelous we can hardly contain the joy they bring.

       God is so good and loving -- praise ye the Lord!

"Eye has not seen, nor ear heard,

nor have entered into the heart of man

the things which God has prepared for those

who love Him," 1 Corinthians 2:9

Jesus said, "In My Father's house are many

mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you.

I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and

prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive

you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also,"

John 14;2-3

Games, Rules and Life

    My 13-year old grandson Declan and I enjoy playing a game called Qwixx together.  The game involves throwing four colored dice and two white dice and requires skill in choosing which number combinations to use during your turn.  Whoever has the highest points when the game ends - wins.

     A few weeks ago, I was excited to get my highest score and win the game.  I must confess, however, that Declan was helpful to me as we played.  His mind is so quick and sharp that when I roll dice for my play, he tells me what my play options are before I've even had time to register the numbers on the die.  It's quite impressive!  I'm also pleased that he has such a kind spirit that he likes to be helpful.  Although he enjoys winning, kindness and helpfulness to others overrides competiveness in him -- and that thrills me!  Note: I do still make my own decisions as to which numbers to use and where (:

     There are rules to the game of Qwixx -- as there are in every game.  The creator of those games make the rules and expect players to follow those rules.  Indeed, if you're ever in a tournament for a game, the rules must be strictly followed.  However, when you play the game with friends, and if the players choose to change or tweek a rule or two, what's the harm?  

      There is a rule in Qwixx that requires the loss of five points if you're unable to use any of the numbers on your dice during your turn.  Declan and I don't like that rule, so we disregard it and enjoy the game more that way.

       And yes, I have a spiritual point to this little story.  If we looked at life as a game, then the Creator of that game would be the One to make the rules and the players must follow the rules to play the game properly.  

        God created life and every living thing.  He also made the rules for how this life should be lived to the fullest and in the right way.  If we consider life as a game, we need to know that the stakes are life and death high and the rules must be followed to win.

        The thing is, we cannot win this game without help -- it's beyond our capabilities.  No one is that good -- we all fall short.  The good news is that there is One who will make us a winner if we choose Him as our Champion.

         In fact, choosing Him is the only way to win.  We're told in the important book that tells us all about life and the rules for right living, the Holy Bible:  "Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through Me," John 14:6. 

         People change and tweak the rules of life constantly, but there is one rule that is unchangeable -- there is only one way to win in life and that is through the One who gave His own life for you and me.  He paid the price for our shortfall (our sin) and He is the supreme Winner Who offers life eternal for everyone who will accept His offer. 

         I'd say that is an offer too good to refuse!  And the amazing thing is that this gift is totally free!  Romans 6:23 says, "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."   

         Don't risk losing it all by refusinig to accept this gift!  It's a win-win.  Not only do you have a guaranteed spot in Heaven some day, but you also have a much better life while you're still on the earth.  Accepting Jesus as Savior means you have access to peace and joy that you never imagined; power through the indwelling Holy Spirit, and hope that makes every day brighter.  

           Choose to win!

"But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory

 through our Lord Jesus Christ," 

1 Corinthians 15:57