Making Life Work

By: John Klassek

    We had almost finished dinner at the restaurant when a man in a black suit approached us and asked whether he could perform a few magic tricks for us. I politely declined his offer.

    He then quite happily made his way to the next table. I couldn’t help but to curiously watch him ply his tricks there, and what he did was quite amazing. He threw a red ball into the air and it simply disappeared! The look of surprise and fascination was evident on the faces of everyone seated at that table. “Is seeing believing?” I wondered.

    A friend of mine once lamented that he had never seen any miracles in his life. He implied that our belief in what really matters might be enhanced by being witness to some supernatural...

By: Ronald L. Dart

    As I sit down to my Thanksgiving dinner this year, one of the things I am thankful for is that we still have Thanksgiving Day. And I find myself mildly surprised that we still do. With the ongoing, systematic drive to eradicate God from public life in this country, it is remarkable that Thanksgiving Day has been left alone.

    Even Christmas has been attacked. You can put Santa and his sleigh on the courthouse lawn, but not a nativity scene. The government can formally acknowledge the birth of Martin Luther King, but can’t acknowledge formally, as a government, on government property, the birth of a man who set more people free than Martin Luther King ever saw. And King knew that as well as anyone. He was a minister of the Christian faith, so he knew.

By: Ronald L. Dart

In the world you will have tribulation;
but be of good cheer,
I have overcome the world.

    I hope I don’t shock you too much when I say that the Bible is not a particularly comforting book. I know the hope it gives is comforting. I know the relationship with God it offers is comforting. But one night, I was paging through the Bible looking for some comfort and I wasn’t finding much. I wanted to read something to make me feel better, and I wasn’t finding it.

 

By: Ronald L. Dart

    Do you take your faith for granted? Or is it like a lot of married couples. We have been together so long, we can complete sentences for one another. We can take one another for granted, and at some level, that is good. I can take it for granted that my wife will be faithful to me. I can take it for granted that she won’t bust the budget. I do not even need to check on her credit card purchases. I only look at them to be sure there is no fraud. After 51 years of marriage, there aren’t a lot of surprises, nor should there be.

By: Ronald L. Dart

Was it Jesus’ intent to create a hierarchy of human government over the individual Christian? Does the Christian ministry sit in Moses’ seat for the church? This article explains what you always wanted to know about church government but were afraid to ask!

    Paul stood on the beach staring out to sea. This would be his last time in this place. It would have been good to have visited Ephesus once more, but it was not to be. It was just as well. He would not have been in Ephesus one hour before a coalition of Jews and silversmiths would have been plotting murder. There was no point in putting temptation in their way.

 
By: Ronald L. Dart

    Do you want to live forever? If there were something you could eat that would give you eternal life, would you want it? The search for a magic elixir, a fountain of youth, has preoccupied man ever since Adam was denied access to the tree of life. Legends of the ancient world told of a "Fountain of Youth." Ponce de Leon spent his life searching for it, but all he found was Florida.

    When you think about it, it is all the more strange that when Jesus finally told his disciples that there really was a "bread of life," many of them took that occasion to turn away from Him.

By: Ronald L. Dart

    The story of the Bible begins and ends with a tree. In the Garden of Eden, the Tree of Life held a central place. After the expulsion of man from the garden, we don’t hear of the tree again until the last book of the Bible.¹ There, man is in a very different environment called, "The paradise of God."² Once again the Tree of Life is central. But now there is not one tree of life, but twelve. They are on both sides of the river of life and they bear twelve kinds of fruit. Moreover, the leaves of the tree are for the healing of all people.³ It is those who do God’s commandments who have a right to the Tree of Life, and the permission to enter the City of God.⁴

By: Ronald L. Dart

    Is there really an ever–burning hell where sinners are tormented with fire and brimstone throughout all eternity? Is it only for the very wicked? What about the “unsaved”? The Bible tells us there is only one name given in heaven and earth whereby we must be saved–the name of Jesus. What about all those who have never heard that name? Do they go immediately to the torments of a fiery hell at death? What about babies and little children? Surely they don’t go to hell? Churches have an astonishing variety of answers to these questions, but what does the Bible say? How can we really know the truth?

By: Ronald L. Dart

Did Jesus adjust God’s ancient laws of clean and unclean meats? The answer shouldn’t be hard to find. It should be right there in the four gospels.

    Everyone is concerned about health these days. Hundreds of books have been written on the subject, and yet people often neglect to consider what the best selling book of all time has to say about healthful eating habits.

By: Ronald L. Dart

    It was the last night of the revival. The congregation was softly singing: "Just as I am," and the preacher was standing in front of the pulpit with both arms raised in invitation. He knew there were people present who needed to make a decision for Christ. "Jesus Christ could come tonight," he urged. "Will you be ready for Him?"

By: Ronald L. Dart

 

“There are two kinds of people in the world,” intoned the preacher, “the saved and the lost. There is no middle ground with God.”

    Now there is a sobering thought. If indeed there are only two kinds of people in the world, and if I am “people,” I must be either saved or lost. And if I’m not consciously aware of having been saved, then I must be lost. And if I’m lost...

By: Ronald L. Dart

    There are times when events in the modern world and the events written in the Bible converge, and when they do, they often shed light in both directions. The world and the society we live in is very different from the ancient world, But the hearts of men really are not very different. And, of course, God never changes at all. And in these simple truths, we can learn some very important things.

By: Lenny Cacchio  

No doubt you are the people, and wisdom will die with you! (Job 12:22 NKJV)      Christians have a problem. We know. And we know that we know. And this knowing can get us into trouble. The Apostle Paul said that “knowledge puffs up” (I Cor. 8:1), and certainly those with lots of knowledge can become arrogant about it.     There was once a Pharisee who went into the temple to pray. Jesus tells us that this man gave a very special prayer of thanks. He said, “God, I thank you.” That’s a noble way to start a prayer. But notice what he thanked God for: “ … that I am not like other men.” (Luke 18:11).     Here was a man who on the outside appeared to be everything God expected him to be. He didn’t cheat people. He didn’t sleep...

By: Lenny Cacchio

    Do you remember what it was like when you first realized you were in love? Do you remember what it was like to walk hand in hand on a cool spring evening sharing your hopes and dreams, looking forward to the future with excitement and perhaps a bit of trepidation?     But the years go by and the monotony of daily living often dulls that first excitement. The flush of first love gets buried in the world of earning a living and building a life. The petty annoyances of life can steal our joy, and it’s hard to get it back.     Our lives as Christians can be that way too. I get reminded of this every time I meet people who are new to the faith. So often they virtually bubble over with joy and with eagerness. The word of God is...

By: Ernie Klassek

    NO, DO NOT BE SURPRISED—the time is coming when all those who are dead and buried will hear His voice and out they will come— those who have done right will rise again to life, but those who have done wrong will rise to face judgment!

    That is how J. B. Phillips rendered some words of Jesus in St. John’s Gospel.1

    St. John described a similar scenario of people coming back to life in another book: "Then the sea gave up its dead. Death and the world of the dead also gave up the dead they held. And all were judged according to what they had done." 2

    All. When we read that word we think of every human being—past, present, and future—our ancestors, people here and now, and those yet to come.

...

By: Lenny Cacchio

    Jesus said, "My kingdom is not of this world" (John 18:36).  Of course it isn’t.  If it were, we wouldn’t have among other things a protracted and painful presidential election campaign that further exposes the fault lines in our national landscape.

    No candidate is the perfect combination of the patience of Job, the wisdom of Solomon, and the fighting spirit of David.  Nor should we expect such.  The best we can hope for is a government that provides us with security, some basic services, and fair adjudication of laws while not infringing upon our freedom to pursue our God-given purpose and talents.

    Sadly, not everyone sees it that way.  Some theories of government emphasize redistribution of wealth.  Some...

By: Lenny Cacchio

    In his book Deliver Us from Evil, Dr. Tom Dooley relates a punishment the Viet Minh inflicted upon their countrymen for listening to evil words.  The Viet Minh were the predecessors to the Communist Viet Cong of the Vietnam War.

    Says Dr. Dooley of some of their victims, "Each of them had a big scar where an ear should have been.  I remembered that in the Roman Catholic province of Bao Lac, near the frontier of China, the Communist Viet Minh often would tear an ear partially off with a pincer-like pair of pliers and leave the ear dangling.  That was the penalty for the crime of listening to the evil words.  The evil words were the words of the Lord’s Prayer."

    At my first reading of this account, I was shocked...

By: Lenny Cacchio

    Getting frustrated with things in general is a normal response to much of what we see in this old world.  I’m no exception, and as I told someone not long ago, "You and I should run for Congress, and we’ll solve everything once we get there."

    That, of course, is not true.  First, we could never be elected in today’s political environment, and secondly, we must not be naïve about the power of the establishment.  I’m reminded about a not-so-obscure prophecy in the Book of Revelation the interpretation of which has been horribly skewed.  Brace yourself, as I am about to give you a different understanding of this passage:

    "Then the angel carried me away by the Spirit to the desert.  There I saw a woman sitting...

By: Lenny Cacchio

    The last time I checked, God’s scorecard doesn’t look too good.  Of the six billion people on the earth today, 4 billion of them adhere to a set of beliefs other than what is broadly termed Christianity (source: http://www.adherents.com/). Even if we assume for a moment that all those who claim the label of "Christian" really are Christians in deed as well as name, it means God isn’t doing very well in the battle for souls.

    Add to this the historical reality that the explosion in the world’s Christian population is a comparatively recent phenomenon (the past 500 years), and we must wonder why God seems impotent, if it so be that Christianity’s traditional truth claims are...

By: Lenny Cacchio

    There is a chapter in the Book of Revelation that contains a curious passage with some rarely heard phraseology.  Verses 4 - 6 of Revelation 20 read:     "I saw thrones on which were seated those who had been given authority to judge. And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony for Jesus and because of the word of God. They had not worshiped the beast or his image and had not received his mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ a thousand years. (The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended.) This is the first resurrection.  Blessed and holy are those who have part in the first resurrection. The second death...

By: Lenny Cacchio  

“How Long, O Lord, Holy and True?” – (Revelation 6:9)

    In The New Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (Bridges-Logos Publishers, copyright 1997), Harold J. Chadwick states that there were more Christians martyred in the 20th century than in all previous centuries combined (p 323).  Such a statement is not at all outlandish if one thinks of the millions murdered by Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, and even right now in places like Africa, Pakistan, Indonesia, China, and other darkened corners of the world.

    It should also remind us to be thankful we live in a land that guarantees religious freedom.  Because we have been honored with the blessings of liberty, we have little appreciation for the tribulation that much of the world,...

By: Jim Ross

    I remember the first time I met JD. His real name was Jack Douglas Rader, but everybody called him JD.

    I was attending my first ever "handgun silhouette" target match. That is a form of target shooting that involves using .44 magnums and other even more powerful handguns to try to knock over steel targets at ridiculous distances for a handgun. In this kind of competition, you need a "spotter" to stand or sit behind you to use a spotting scope or binoculars to tell you where your shot went when you miss. As a beginner you miss a lot. I was a beginner.

    So, there I am at this target match, by myself, a stranger in a strange place. All up and down the firing line there are very loud noises coming from the .44 magnums...

By: Lenny Cacchio

“Did I not choose you, the twelve, and one of you is a devil?” (John 6:70 NKJV)     Truthfully, I liked Scott until he got involved in politics. That’s when something about him changed. Maybe the political parties send their people to a special school to learn the craft of political persuasion, or at least they go to party powwows to plot strategy. In any case, words issued forth from Scott’s mouth that sounded suspiciously like the words that issued forth from almost everyone else of his political persuasion. But it was curious to me how his political opponents all seemed to have skeletons in their closets that only a select few seemed to know. His generosity was such that those skeletons were being shared with me.     Several...