The Need for a Blood Sacrifice

Posted on November 17, 2017 by russellmckinney

“Salvation” series: (post #6)

In our last post, we looked at the concept of blood atonement. That is the idea of the innocent (sinless) dying by way of the shedding of blood for the guilty (sinful). Adam and Eve were the first people to learn about blood atonement as God killed either one animal or two in the Garden of Eden in the wake of the couple eating the forbidden fruit. The animal skins served as coverings for Adam and Eve’s bodies, while the shed blood served as coverings for their sins.

Following that event, Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:22-24). Presumably, the animal killing and the casting out took place on the same day, the day the couple ate the forbidden fruit. The lesson here is that sin, even sin for which you have received atonement, always brings consequences.

The indications are that Adam and Eve settled in a place not far from Eden. Sometime afterward, Eve became pregnant, giving birth to a son the couple named Cain. Then she bore a second son, one they named Abel. That’s when things took another disastrously wrong turn.

Genesis 4:3-5 says:

And in the process of time it came to pass that Cain brought an offering of the fruit of the ground to the Lord. Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat. And the Lord respected Abel and his offering, but He did not respect Cain and his offering. And Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell. (N.K.J.V.)

The question we need to ask is: How did Cain and Abel even have a clue that they each needed to bring an offering to the Lord? The obvious answer is that Adam and Eve had taught them about blood atonement. Apparently, Adam and Eve continued to periodically offer sacrificial animals after they were banished from Eden. Then once Cain and Abel were born, the parents passed the practice down to the sons.

Abel, being a keeper of sheep (Genesis 4:2), did as he was instructed and sacrificed some of the firstborn from his flock (Genesis 4:4). But Cain, being a farmer (Genesis 4:2), went rogue by bringing an offering of his finest fruits and vegetables (Genesis 4:3). And what was the problem with Cain’s offering? It was the same problem Adam and Eve’s fig leaves had once showcased: no blood. Therefore, God rejected Cain’s offering (Genesis 4:4).

You say, “Oh, c’mon Russell, you are reading too much into the story. God could have rejected Cain’s offering for any number of reasons.” Really? Then how do we explain Cain being classified as an apostate in the Bible’s book of Jude (Jude 1:11)? Remember that an apostate is someone who has fallen away from revealed truth. Think about it, the only way that Cain could have gone apostate is for his parents to have revealed the truth to him about forgiveness of sin only coming through blood atonement.

If you know your Genesis, you know that rather than kill an animal and bring it to God, Cain killed Abel (Genesis 4:8). God cursed him for that, after which Cain left home and made his way to a place called Nod, which was east of Eden (Genesis 4:9-16). At some point, he took a wife — a woman who had to be one of Adam and Eve’s daughters (Genesis 5:5) — and fathered a son named Enoch through her (Genesis 4:17). Cain then built the world’s first city and named it after Enoch (Genesis 4:17). Enoch was the beginning of the line of Cain, an ancestral line of spiritually lost people who were all doomed to die in the great flood (Genesis 4:18-24).

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Adam and Eve produced another son. They named him Seth, and through him Adam’s line of saved people continued (Genesis 4:25-26). That line culminated in Noah. And did Adam and Eve teach Seth not only the concept of blood atonement but also the specifics of how to build an altar, kill and animal, and offer the animal as a sacrifice to God? Yes, they did. Let me explain how we know this to be true.

One thing you might not have heard about Noah is that he knew about blood atonement and how to offer blood sacrifices to God. The proof is found in Genesis 8:20. That verse identifies for us the first thing Noah did once the ark was unloaded in the new world. The verse says:

Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and sacrificed on it the animals and birds that had been approved for that purpose. (N.L.T.)

Someone might ask, “But if there were only two of each kind of animal aboard the ark, does that mean that Noah made those sacrificed animals extinct?” No, the explanation is that God had told him before the flood to collect seven (not two) of every type of animal that was “clean” and bring them into the ark (Genesis 7:2). A “clean” animal was a species that was eligible, in God’s eyes, for sacrificing.

The real question, though, is: Who taught Noah how to build an altar, kill animals, and offer them as sacrifices to God? Well, it must have been his father, Lamech, who had learned it from his father, Methuselah, who had learned it from his father, etc., etc., etc., all the way back to Seth.

Noah then taught the practice to his three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth. How do we know this? We know it because one of Shem’s descendants, Abraham, periodically built altars in his travels (Genesis 12:7; 12:8; 13:3-4; 13:18; 22:9), and on at least one of those altars he sacrificed a ram (Genesis 22:13). Furthermore, Genesis 22:7-8 clearly shows that both Abraham and his son, Isaac, understood perfectly that a built altar goes hand in hand with a sacrificed animal.

So, while it’s true that Abraham’s father, Terah, worshiped false gods in Ur (Joshua 24:2; Genesis 11:27-30; Acts 7:1-4), the family tree must have contained some remnant of the idea of building altars and offering animal sacrifices. How else would Abraham, upon his arrival in Canaan from Ur, have known that building an altar was a legitimate act of worship? And if Abraham ever needed a refresher course on the value that God placed upon the shed blood of animals, he got it when God instructed him to kill a heifer, a goat, a ram, a turtledove, and a pigeon as part of the ceremony in which God formally entered Himself into a covenant with Abraham (Genesis 15:1-21).

It is not surprising, then, that Genesis provides us with accounts of Abraham’s descendants also building altars and, apparently, offering blood sacrifices upon them. For example, Abraham’s son, Isaac, did so long after Abraham’s death (Genesis 26:25). Isaac’s son, Jacob, did as well (Genesis 31:54; 33:20; 35:1-7; 46:1).

And you’ve heard of Moses, haven’t you? He was another of Abraham’s descendants. But have you heard that Moses understood the doctrine of blood atonement and the value of a blood sacrifice? What most people don’t realize is that Moses’ first God-ordained request to Pharaoh concerning the Israelites was not that Pharaoh would release them completely from their Egyptian bondage. Instead, the request was that Pharaoh would allow them to journey three days outside of Egypt and offer sacrifices to God (Exodus 3:18; 5:3), sacrifices that would require the deaths of certain types of animals (bulls, rams, cows) the Egyptians considered sacred (Exodus 8:25-26).

As we know, Pharaoh refused that request and dug in his heels against Israel’s God. In the end, however, God won the victory by laying waste to Egypt through ten devastating plagues. The tenth plague was one in which God killed all the firstborns in Egypt in one night. But none of Israel’s firstborns were killed. Why not? It was because God gave the Israelites highly detailed instructions as to how each family was to kill a lamb and smear its blood on the tops and sides of the door frame of their house. God said, “When I see the blood, I will pass over you” (Exodus 12:13). This was the beginning of the Jewish holy day known as Passover. Passover is the celebration of the night that scores of lambs died so that scores of Israelites could live.

Following that first Passover night, Moses ultimately led the Israelites to Mount Sinai. There, God imparted to them His law. And, not surprisingly, He built into that law various commands concerning the offering of blood sacrifices (Leviticus 1:1-17; 3:1-17; 4:1-35; 5:1-13). That explains why the rest of the Old Testament features an assortment of references to the people of Israel atoning for their sins by offering blood sacrifices to God. In the beginning of the law period, those sacrifices were offered upon the altar at the Tabernacle. Later on in Israel’s history, when the Temple was built to replace the Tabernacle, the sacrifices were offered upon the Temple’s altar.

And so, we see that what started in the garden of Eden with Adam and Eve wound its way down through Noah and his sons and eventually wound its way down through the centuries of the history of Israel. Even more than that, it continued on even into the early days of the New Testament. That’s when Jesus Christ came upon the scene. He would be the one to bring an end to blood sacrifices. He didn’t do away with the doctrinal concept of blood atonement, but He did change how the need for a blood sacrifice would be met. And that’s what we’ll talk about next time. See you then.

Posted in Christ's Death, God's Provision, Sacrifice, Salvation, Series: "Salvation", Sin, The Old Testament Law, Worship | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Blood Atonement

Posted on November 15, 2017 by russellmckinney

“Salvation” series (post #5)

When Adam and Eve became sinners by eating the forbidden fruit, God had all kinds of options as to how He could have responded. He could have given them a good scolding, patted them on the heads, and said, “Now don’t do that again.” He could have thrown down a couple of lightning bolts to kill them on the spot and created another man and woman to replace them. Or He could have deleted all of creation, including them, and started the whole Genesis chapters 1 and 2 process all over again from scratch for another try.

But God didn’t do any of those things. Instead, He personally came down to Eden and pronounced various judgments upon Adam, Eve, the serpent, and Satan (who at the time was still inside the serpent’s body). And then He did something completely unexpected: He shed blood in the Garden of Eden. As Genesis 3:21 says:

Also for Adam and his wife the Lord God made tunics of skin, and clothed them. (N.K.J.V.)

And the Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them. (N.A.S.B.)

And the Lord God made clothing from animal skins for Adam and his wife. (N.L.T.)

You’ll notice that Genesis 3:21 doesn’t explicitly say that any shedding of blood took place that day. This leads some to contend that presenting the event as the world’s first blood sacrifice is a faulty interpretation. As the critics say, “Preaching that God shed blood in the Garden of Eden in order to cover Adam and Eve’s sins is reading way too much into a verse that merely explains that God made clothes for them.” However, the killing of either one animal or two (perhaps God killed one animal per person) is undoubtedly implied by the use of the word “skin” or “skins.” For example, even though you don’t have to kill a sheep in order to sheer its wool and use the wool to make clothing, there is simply no way to make clothing from an animal’s “skin” without first killing the animal. No animal can live without its skin.

Furthermore, if Genesis 3:21 isn’t a record of the world’s first blood sacrifice, then why did Adam and Eve’s son Abel kill some of the firstborn of his flock and bring them to God as an offering? And why did God accept that offering but reject the bloodless offering that was brought by Abel’s brother Cain? (Genesis 4:1-7) For that matter, since neither Cain nor Abel had been born when God had made that clothing for Adam and Eve, how did those boys know to bring their offerings to God and how did Abel know that an offering should involve the death of an animal? The only answer is that Adam and Eve taught their sons what God had taught them about the importance of a blood sacrifice.

Further evidence that Adam and Eve taught their children about the necessity of a blood sacrifice when approaching God can be found in the New Testament’s one-chapter book of Jude. Jude’s purpose in writing his book was to warn the early church about apostasy, which is the falling away from revealed truth, and as examples of apostates, he cites: the unbelieving Israelites from the Exodus story (v.5); the angels who did not stay in their rightful place (v.6, read Genesis 6:1-7); the citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah (v.7); Satan (v.9); the prophet Balaam (v.11); the rebels who sided with Korah against Moses (v.11); and Cain (v.11). As Jude verse 11 says:

Woe to them! For they have gone in the way of Cain…

You see, if an apostate is one who has fallen away from revealed truth, and if Cain is listed as an apostate, someone must have taught him some truth somewhere along the way. And that must mean that Adam and Eve taught him the truth about sacrificial blood. He then went apostate when he rejected that all-important truth by going “in the way of Cain” to bring God a bloodless sacrifice of harvested crops.

Getting back to God killing that animal or those animals in Eden, He was working on multiple levels by doing that. First, He wanted Adam and Eve to see firsthand what the horror of physical death looked like because up until those deaths they hadn’t had any visual reference on that subject. What a site it must have been for them to watch that red stuff begin pouring out of a lifeless body!

Second, since Adam and Eve’s sinful state had now created a newfound shame within them concerning their nakedness, God was addressing the practical need of them requiring clothing. They had tried to meet this need by covering themselves with fig leaves, but those fig leaves weren’t acceptable to God. So, He made them animal-skin (hide) clothing.

Third, and most important, God shed that blood in order to provide Him with a way to forgive Adam and Eve for their sin. What Adam and Eve did not know, because God had never told them, is that He holds to the concept of blood atonement. Blood atonement is the doctrine that says an innocent life can be taken as payment for the sin debt owed by a guilty life. What did that animal (or those animals) do to deserve dying? Absolutely nothing. In that sense, innocence was involved. So, why did God do that killing? He did it to provide a substitutionary sacrifice for Adam and Eve. It’s that simple.

They didn’t know it at the time, but God had just evidenced to them a couple of major theological truths that He would later reveal more fully to the human race. One of these truths is summed up in Leviticus 17:11, where God says to the people of Israel:

For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul. (N.K.J.V.)

This verse explains why God wouldn’t accept Adam and Eve’s fig leaves as coverings for them. Those fig leaves might have covered the couple’s nakedness, but they could never cover the couple’s sins. Why not? It was because those fig leaves didn’t have blood. It’s blood that indicates life, and the only way that God will accept a substitutionary sacrifice is upon the basis of life-for-life. Actually, Adam and Eve’s fig leaves have been called “the world’s first religion.” In other words, it was the human race’s first attempt at addressing the sin problem. But it didn’t work because it didn’t approach the problem in God’s way.

The other major theological truth that God killing those animals evidenced is very similar to the first and is summed up in Hebrews 9:22. There we read these vitally important words:

…and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. (N.I.V.)

Here again we see that for Adam and Eve to receive forgiveness for their sin, blood had to be shed. If their problem had been no more than them needing clothes, God could have handled that by merely shearing a couple of sheep, without actually killing the sheep. But Adam and Eve’s problem ran much deeper than that. They were now sinners, and God only forgives sin on the basis of blood shed via literal death. The innocent must die for the guilty. Anything short of that, and the sinner still stands condemned in his or her guilt. In that regard, fleeces from sheep wouldn’t have helped Adam and Eve any more than fig leaves did.

And here’s where we will put a period on this subject for now. Rest assured, though, that we will pick things up from right here in the next post. Now that we understand the concept of blood atonement, how far back it goes for the human race, and the incalculably high value God places upon it in regards to the forgiveness of sin, we can trace the concept down through history. Trust me, it will be an interesting ride. And where will it end? It will end with a man named Jesus dying on a Roman cross. Stay tuned.

Posted in Christ's Death, Death, God's Provision, Sacrifice, Salvation, Series: "Salvation", Sin | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

You Are a Sinner

Posted on November 13, 2017 by russellmckinney

“Salvation” series (post #4)

Now that we have determined that there is a God and that He is perfectly holy, we are ready to turn our attention to ourselves. That’s why I’ve entitled this 4th post in the “Salvation” series “You Are a Sinner.” However, as you read that title, don’t think that I’m singling you out for indictment. The post’s title could just as easily be “I Am a Sinner” or “We Are All Sinners.”

The human race became a race of sinners when its genetic, biological father, Adam, sinned by eating the fruit of the Garden of Eden’s tree of the knowledge of good and evil. While Adam’s wife, Eve, took the lead in that sin by eating the fruit first, Genesis 3:6 tells us that Adam was right there with her when she did it and quickly joined her in the sin. As the verse says:

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. (E.S.V., emphasis mine)

Actually, Adam eating that fruit was more blatant sin than Eve eating it. I say that for two reasons. First, it had been straight from God Himself that Adam had received the command not to eat that fruit (Genesis 2:15-16). God hadn’t even created Eve yet when He had told Adam to stay away from that fruit (Genesis 2:18-25). As for how Eve had heard about the command, evidently it had been Adam, in his God-ordained role as the spiritual leader of the home, who had passed the word down to her (1 Corinthians 14:34-35).

Second, 1 Timothy 2:14 teaches that Eve eating that fruit can be explained by the fact that she was deceived by the serpent (with the fallen angel, Satan, demon possessing the serpent’s body and speaking through it). Adam, on the other hand, was not deceived. In other words, Eve didn’t fully understand the ramifications of what they were doing, but Adam did. I’m in no way saying that Eve should get a free pass or that her lack of spiritual discernment should let her off the hook. I’m simply pointing out that her sin really was the result of her being deceived. In Adam’s case, though, he knew perfectly well that biting into that fruit would set him in direct violation to God’s command.

Some have theorized that once Adam saw that his wife had eaten of the fruit, his motivation for joining her in the sin was his great love for her and his desire to remain with her, even in a sin-lessened existence. This attempted explanation for Adam’s willful disobedience might make some sense, I suppose, but let’s not downplay the fact that his eyes were probably dancing at the site of that fruit as much as Eve’s were. Remember, Adam never objected to what she was doing, and he certainly didn’t stop her. His job as the head of the home was to do his best to keep Eve and himself innocent and righteous, but he failed at doing that.

And so, it was by way of this one catastrophic act that Adam introduced sin not only into his own physical body but into the physical body of each of his future descendants. That’s how he brought death to his entire race. God had warned him, “…in the day that you eat of it (the forbidden fruit) you shall surely die” (Genesis 2:17). This death was not only a physical death but also a spiritual one.

First, there is the fact of physical death. As Romans 5:12 says:

Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all have sinned…(N.K.J.V.)

It should be noted that the Hebrew wording of God’s warning to Adam literally means “dying you shall die.” This explains not only the fact of physical death itself but also the typical aging process that culminates in death. You see, Adam’s sin didn’t just introduce sin and physical death into his race, it also introduced weakening eyes, hearing loss, heart disease, cancer, strokes, breathing conditions, backaches, mental disorders, gum disease, lost teeth, sore joints, and all the other physical ailments that we humans must deal with as the aging process takes its toll on each of us. The Bible’s most descriptive and poetic passage on this aging process is Ecclesiastes 12:1-7. Those verses describe the aging body as a silver cord that becomes loosed, a golden bowl that becomes broken, a pitcher that becomes shattered, and a wheel that becomes broken. Obviously, each of those items is something that doesn’t function properly anymore.

So, there is surely the fact of physical death. But then there is also the fact of spiritual death. Passages such as Ephesians 2:1-5, Colossians 2:13, and 1 Timothy 5:6 teach that each person is born “dead in trespasses and sins.” To be “dead” in this way cannot refer to physical death because the people being described in these passages are still very much physically alive. What, then, does it mean to be “dead in trespasses and sins”?

Here again we must take things all the way back to Adam to find the explanation. When Adam ate of that forbidden fruit, he didn’t instantly die physically (even though the aging process that would eventually lead to his death was begun), but he did instantly die spiritually. To sum up, he became separated from God. He was no longer walking in perfect relationship with God, daily fellowship with God, or unity with God. Figuratively speaking, a great gulf now stood between Adam and his Maker. He was now cut off from God’s spiritual life (Ephesians 4:18) as well as God’s spiritual light (Ephesians 4:18; Romans 1:21; 1 Peter 2:9). For that matter, so was Eve. Thus began the sinful state of the entire human race.

One thing that most people don’t understand is that an individual doesn’t become a sinner the moment he or she commits that first sin. No, the individual commits that first sin because he or she is a sinner. Does a fish swim to become a fish or does a fish swim because it is a fish? You know the answer. Likewise, you don’t sin to become a sinner, you sin because you are a sinner.

And when did you become a sinner? It occurred at your moment of conception in your mother’s womb. In Psalm 51:5, David says of himself, “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me” (N.I.V.). To be conceived in sin means that you had Adam’s nature of sin and rebellion against God coursing through you from the first moment the spark of physical life was struck in you. This is the consequence of being a product of the tainted seed that began in Adam’s body and has flowed down through his entire race ever since. A newborn baby might have its mother’s eyes or its daddy’s nose, but there’s no doubt that it has Adam’s sinful nature. That sinful nature, in turn, will inevitably cause the child to commit specific acts of sin as the child grows. For example, Psalm 58:3 says:

Even from birth the wicked go astray; from the womb they are wayward and speak lies. (N.I.V.)

The conclusion of all this, then, is that the entire human race abides under the sentence and doom of sin. As Ecclesiastes 7:20 says:

Indeed, there is not a righteous man on earth who continually does good and who never sins. (N.A.S.B.)

Likewise, in Romans 3:23 we read:

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. (N.K.J.V.)

Friend, you’re in this sinking boat and so am I, and in light of the fact that our Creator God is perfectly holy, it’s the worst possible boat in which we could find ourselves. Therefore, we should thank God the story doesn’t end there! We should thank Him there are more posts to come in this series. We should thank Him that He loves us enough to have provided a way by which we can have all our sins forgiven and be brought back into right relationship with Him. This provision has come to be known as the plan of salvation, and in my next post I’ll lay out the details and particulars of this plan. So, be sure to come back for that post, and we’ll discover together how unholy sinners can get to spend eternity with a holy God. Until then, hang in there, fellow sinner. We’re getting to the good part now.

Posted in Aging, Death, Disobedience, God's Holiness, God's Love, God's Judgment, God's Provision, Heaven, Human Life, Salvation, Satan, Series: "Salvation", Sin, Temptation, The Devil | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

God Is Holy

Posted on November 10, 2017 by russellmckinney

“Salvation” series (post #3)

If I traveled around America and asked each person to give me a one-word description of God, I’d surely get a variety of answers. I feel safe in saying, though, that the answer I’d hear the most is “Love.” And, for the record, that is a perfectly correct and thoroughly Biblical answer. As John 4:8 says:

He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. (N.K.J.V.)

The problem, however, with us Americans being so comfortable with God as a God of love is that far too many of us wrongly believe that His love always overrides His other characteristics. For example, the false doctrine of universalism springs from the depths of God’s love. Universalism is the idea that God loves each human being so much that, in the end, He will not allow even one of them to be separated from Him for eternity or to suffer everlasting punishment. Obviously, this teaching flies directly in the face of passages such as Matthew 5:29-30, 10:28, 25:46; Mark 9:43-48; 2 Thessalonians 1:9; Jude 1:7; and Revelation 21:8 just to name a few.

So, is God love? Yes, He is. But the fact is that the Bible doesn’t present love as being His chief characteristic. That place of priority goes, instead, to holiness. Think about it, if love is all there is to God, the Bible wouldn’t include all its passages about hell fire and eternal judgment because God’s love would render those null and void.

I’ll cite some passages here that speak of God’s holiness, but I want it known that this is just a small sampling of a very long list. If you want to find the entire list, you’ll have to do an in-depth search on the topic “God’s holiness.” The following passages (all from the N.K.J.V.) are just some that I’ve chosen:

  • As Moses spoke with God (in the form of The Angel of the Lord) at the burning bush, he was told, “Take your sandals off your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground” (Exodus 3:1-6).
  • God proclaimed His holiness when He said to Moses, “…for I the Lord am holy…” (Leviticus 20:26).
  • Joshua said of God, “…for he is a holy God” (Joshua 24:19).
  • When Isaiah, in a vision, saw God sitting on a throne, he saw seraph angels crying out to one another, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts…” (Isaiah 6:1-3).
  • When John, during his Revelation, saw God in heaven, he saw four living creatures, each having six wings, who do not rest day or night from saying, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, Who was and is and is to come!”(Revelation 4:1-8).
  • The Old Testament prophets referred to God as “The Holy One” (Jeremiah 51:5; Ezekiel 39:7; Hosea 11:9; Habakkuk 3:3).
  • God’s name is holy (1 Chronicles 16:10).
  • God sits on a holy throne (Psalm 47:8).
  • God speaks in holiness (Psalm 60:6; 108:7).
  • God cannot even be tempted to do evil (James 1:13).

And so, in regards to this “Salvation” series, now we know two facts about God. Fact #1: He exists. Fact #2: Everything about Him is holy. We must have these two facts fixed securely in our minds if we are ever to attain a correct assessment of our standing with God. We’ll get to that assessment in the next post, and so until then stay tuned.

Posted in Doctrine, God's Holiness, God's Love, Holiness, Salvation, Series: "Salvation" | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

There Is a God

Posted on November 8, 2017 by russellmckinney

“Salvation” series (post #2)

The heavens tell of the glory of God. The skies display his marvelous craftsmanship. Day after day they continue to speak; night after night they make him known. They speak without a sound or a word; their voice is silent in the skies; yet their message has gone out to all the earth, and their words to all the world… (Psalm 19:1-4, New Living Translation)

Any talk about salvation, a plan of salvation, or getting saved must begin with talk about God. After all, if atheism is correct, the very idea of salvation becomes pointless. Saved from what? Saved to who? Saved to where?

So, how do we know that God exists? Well, the go-to answer is still: creation. As one writer has said, “The Bible does not waste time proving the existence of God, because the evidence of Him is everywhere.”

Of course, atheists hold to the idea that nothing + nobody = everything. But that idea is simply ludicrous. They give me a hard time for believing in a Creator God when they believe that all this creation we live in just kind of “happened” on its own without any impetus, power, or intellect behind it. Please. That’s so illogical and nonsensical it makes my head hurt.

I’m reminded of a story from the life of Sir Isaac Newton. He once built a miniature replica of our solar system. At its center, the replica had a large golden ball that represented the sun. Revolving around the ball were smaller spheres that were attached to it by way of rods of varying lengths. These smaller spheres represented the solar system’s planets in proportion to how far each one is situated from the sun. The replica was made even more impressive by the fact that it featured cogs, belts, and gears working together in unison to make the “planets” actually move in an orbital pattern around the “sun.”

One day, when Newton had the replica set up and was studying it, an atheist friend of his happened to stop by for a visit. The friend marveled at the replica and watched as Newton worked it to make the “planets” orbit around the “sun.” The friend said, “My, Newton, what an exquisite thing! Who made it for you?” Without looking up from his work, Newton said, “Nobody.” In disbelief, the friend asked, “Nobody?” Newton replied, “That’s right. I said nobody! All of these balls and cogs and belts and gears just happened to come together; and wonder of wonders, by chance they began revolving in their set orbits and with perfect timing.” His point was made.

Currently, the leading explanation for how the universe began is a theory called “The Big Bang Theory.” The website space.com says the following about this theory:

The Big Bang Theory stands as the most widely accepted explanation for the origin of the universe. According to this theory, the universe began as an infinitely small, hot, and dense point, which rapidly expanded and continued to stretch out over 13.7 billion years. This initial period of rapid inflation set the stage for the vast and still-growing cosmos we observe today.

Okay, with this definition in mind, here’s a good question to ask: “Where did that infinitely small, hot, and dense point come from?” You see, nothing will continue to be nothing endlessly unless some kind of Creator God creates that “something” the advocates of The Big Bang Theory call a “point”? I mean, a “point” (even a small one) doesn’t just appear out of thin air. For that matter, thin air doesn’t just appear out of thin air!

Delving a bit deeper into The Big Bang Theory, atheist Matt Williams, on the website phys.org, writes:

Today, the consensus among scientists, astronomers and cosmologists is that the Universe as we know it was created in a massive explosion that not only created the majority of matter, but the physical laws that govern our ever-expanding cosmos. This is known as The Big Bang Theory.

Here again, we’re supposed to believe that “nothing” suddenly exploded and out came a whole bunch of matter. Really? Doesn’t that theory raise more questions than it answers? I mean, “nothing” doesn’t just inexplicably explode and produce “something,” let alone produce the primordial elements of what would become our ENTIRE UNIVERSE. I’m no astronomist or physicist, but my head is starting to hurt again.

Somebody else says, “Aliens created it all, even this universe in which we live.” Fine, let’s run with that idea for a second. All it does is set the fundamental question back a bit further by making it: “Who created the aliens?” At the risk of me repeating myself, nothing will continue to be nothing endlessly unless a creator God interjects Himself into the process and creates something. As one fellow has said, “I’m amazed at how much stuff evolutionists (and I would add in atheists) start with to tell us how everything came into existence.”

Hey, listen, I don’t claim to have God all figured out myself. I don’t know why He does do this and doesn’t do that or why He allows one thing but doesn’t allow another. But me turn atheist and believe that our indescribably structured and ordered creation — a creation that operates in finely tuned orchestration like a gigantic machine with a zillion moving parts — just happens to be here apart from a Creator God? Sorry, that ain’t happening. No, there HAS TO BE a God out there somewhere. You can love Him or hate Him. You can agree with Him or disagree with Him. You can believe in Him or not believe in Him. But He’s out there somewhere, and He’s very much real. And to know that, all you have to do is look around at the creation in which you find yourself.

Posted in Atheism, Creation, God's Omnipotence, God's Sovereignty, Life On Other Planets, Salvation, Series: "Salvation" | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Gate into Heaven Is Still Narrow

Posted on November 6, 2017 by russellmckinney

“Salvation” series (post #1)

“Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.” (Matthew 7:13-14, N.K.J.V.)

There’s an old negro spiritual that contains the famous line: “Everybody talkin’ ’bout heaven ain’t a goin’ there.” Incorrect grammar and spelling aside, that line gets it dead right. That’s why I want to use this post to begin a new series entitled “Salvation.”

According to a 2025 article published by The Center for the Study of Global Christianity, 32.3% (2.6 billion people) of the world’s total population profess to be Christians. The next largest religious group consists of Muslims, who make up 25.2% (2 billion people) of the population. So, despite the fact that in many places Islam is growing faster than Christianity, Christianity remains what it has been for centuries now: the largest religion in the world. 

But wait a minute. Didn’t Jesus say the way to life is narrow and few people find it? That certainly doesn’t sound like the makings for the world’s largest religion, does it? How, then, do we reconcile these contradictory facts? Well, that’s a really good question, one that I’ll try to answer.

For one thing, even if 32.3% of the world’s population truly are Christians, that means 67.7% are not. Consequently, there are more than two lost people to every one Christian. Proportionately speaking, that would have to make the gate that opens into life narrow in comparison to the gate that opens into destruction.

For another thing, though, we simply cannot overlook the Catholicism factor in regards to the reported number of Christians. Unfortunately, the world’s Catholics all get classified under the general heading “Christian” even though Catholicism isn’t the same as biblical Christianity. It is, instead, a bizarre mix of biblical Christianity and Roman paganism that was begun when Rome’s emperor Constantine set himself to the task of “Christianizing” his empire.

Constantine knew that him forcing his citizens to completely do away with their pagan practices would result in chaos and uprising, and so he skillfully enacted a plan by which he and his bishops, over the course of several years, took those practices and figuratively baptized them into Christianity. This baptizing extended to Rome’s pagan worship services as well as its pagan holiday celebrations. I won’t take the time here to say any more about all that, but under this site’s category labeled “Catholicism” you’ll find several posts where I delve into the topic much more extensively. Read those if you like. For the purposes of this post, however, suffice is to say that any study that automatically regards Catholics as Christians skews that study to a point of making its numbers useless.

To be clear, I’m not prepared to say that all Catholics are lost. Nevertheless, I do believe that most of them are. You see, Catholicism is a man-made, works-based religion that elevates Peter to the status of the first Pope, Mary to the status of perpetual virginity, and the Catholic church to the status of the “true” church. Not one of those doctrines holds up in the light of scripture, and that casts serious doubt on anyone who supposedly becomes a Christian via that religious system.

For this reason, I don’t hesitate to say that we can dismiss out of hand the nonsense that 32.3% of the world’s population are authentic Christians. How can that be when a 2022 report released by the Vatican showed that 1.36 billion of the world’s professing “Christians” are Catholics? That’s more than half the world’s supposed “Christians.”

As for how many genuine Christians there are in the world, only God knows the number. Undoubtedly, though, that number is relatively small in relation to the world’s reported population of 8.062 billion. Again, even if we give every Catholic automatic credit for being an authentic Christian — and we shouldn’t — the world’s Christian population would still only sit at 32.3% of the total population. Doing a bit of math then, if 32.3% claim to be Christians, but 50% of those are Catholic, I think we can reasonably assume that the true percentage of Christians around the world is no higher than 15%. Actually, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if the number is much, much lower. I say that because it’s not like every person in all the other subcategories of Christianity — Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Pentecostals, Lutherans, Episcopalians, etc. — is legitimately saved, either.

But, of course, the real question for you is: “Are you a genuine Christian?” That’s the question I want to help you answer over the course of this series. In order to find your answer, this series will focus on doctrine that is drawn directly from the Bible’s teachings. We have to make this a doctrinal series because, when it comes to the all-important subject of salvation, only the Bible’s teaching will do. So, I hope that you’ll take the time to read and seriously consider each of these upcoming posts, and even more than that I hope that you are right now on your way to heaven. If you aren’t, this series will explain to you how you can pass through that narrow gate and get on the way that leads to eternal life.

Posted in Assurance of Salvation, Catholicism, Eternity, Heaven, Salvation, Series: "Salvation" | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Bigger Doesn’t Necessarily Mean Better

Posted on November 2, 2017 by russellmckinney

The idea that divine favor manifests itself by way of worldly success goes back a long way. History shows us two things about the races of antiquity. #1: They all worshiped some form of god or plurality of gods. #2: They all believed that when your god (or gods) liked what you were doing, it would be evidenced by things going well for you in life. And the items on the list of evidences were always the same: rain, abundant crops, plenty of food, protection from enemies, victory over enemies, health, women bearing children, and good times in general.

But we don’t have to consult history to understand this, do we? The fact is that most people around the world today still believe this basic premise about God. For that matter, my guess is that most CHRISTIANS believe it.

Let’s say that we polled each Christian right now and asked the question: “How do you know when God is pleased with a person’s life?” What answers would we get? Undoubtedly, those answers would typically involve health and wealth, not necessarily in that order.

Similarly, in terms of how God makes His favor known upon a local church or a national denomination, the answers would involve “big” things: big attendance, big offerings, big budgets, big buildings, big reputation, etc. This especially holds true here in America, where we Christians have concocted a bizarre potion that combines religion and consumerism to create our own version of church. As we tend to see things, the bigger the church or the denomination, the more God is blessing it. In other words, if you want to find where God is really working and pouring out the highest levels of His favor, follow the crowd.

Of course, the problem with this basic premise is that even a cursory study of the Bible disproves it. Consider the following ten classic examples:

  1. God didn’t start the human race with hundreds of people. He started it with one man: Adam.
  2. God didn’t save the human race from the flood by loading thousands of people into an ark. He did it by loading the immediate family of one man, Noah, into an ark.
  3. God didn’t mass convert an existing race of people and call them the nation of Israel. He started with one man, Abram, and started a brand-new race.
  4. God didn’t use a large number of people to sustain Israel in the midst of an unprecedented seven-year famine. He used one man: Joseph.
  5. God didn’t raise up a team of elders or an army of soldiers to lead the people of Israel out of their Egyptian bondage. He raised up one man: Moses.
  6. God didn’t send a team of prophets to bring about a mass revival in the city of Nineveh. He sent one prophet: Jonah.
  7. God didn’t save all the Jews in Medo-Persia from certain extinction by organizing thousands of them to protest. He saved them by using one woman: Esther.
  8. God didn’t send the Messiah into the world by way of a vast army. He sent Him by way of one teenage girl: Mary.
  9. Jesus didn’t begin His missionary efforts in the Samaritan city of Sychar by calling together all the citizens of the city. He began by having a conversation with one citizen: the woman at the well.
  10. God didn’t impart His singular revelation about the future to a team of apostles. He imparted it to one apostle: John.

Continuing with this theme, God’s chosen nation of Israel in Old Testament times was small in comparison to other nations. Even when Israel was at its zenith under King Solomon, its size wouldn’t have come close to rivaling the coming sprawling empires of Assyria, Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome. Israel rose to prominence because God fought for it, not because it was so spectacular in geographical size.

Similarly in the New Testament, Jesus chose 12 men to be His apostles. That number stood in contrast, for example, to the 70 men of the powerful Jewish Sanhedrin Council. Also, the churches described in the New Testament were house churches (Romans 16:3-5; 1 Corinthians 16:19; Colossians 4:15; Philemon 1:1-2; James 2:1-4), with the sum total of all the house churches in a single city constituting the “church” of that city (1 Corinthians 1:2; 2 Corinthians 1:1; 1 Thessalonica 1:1; 2 Thessalonica 1:1; Revelation 2:1; 2:8; 2:12; 2:18; 3:1; 3:7; 3:14). Church buildings accommodating large congregations didn’t come into existence until Emperor Constantine “Christianized” the Roman empire in the 4th century.

The New Testament’s only mention of a church of thousands being assembled together in one place occurs in the days immediately following the birth of the church, when the entire church was content to abide in Jerusalem. Those Christians met daily in the outer court of the Jewish temple because that was the largest meeting place in the city (Acts 2:46; 5:42; Luke 24:52-53). They started with approximately 3,000 members (Acts 2:41), grew to approximately 5,000 (Acts 4:4), and kept growing from there (Acts 5:14, 6:7). However, it should be noted that even though those Christians met daily in the temple, they did their “breaking bread” (a reference to Communion, the Lord’s Supper) from “house to house.” (Acts 2:46; 5:42). 

As might be expected anytime you get that many people trying to work together as one, problems arose. First, a Christian couple named Ananias and Sapphira sold a parcel of land they owned but did not contribute the full sale price to the church treasury. Normally, that kind of thing wouldn’t have been an issue, but the early church in Jerusalem operated by way of a communal system in which the members voluntarily sold their possessions and gave all the profits to the church treasury. The apostles oversaw that treasury and took from it to distribute as each Christian had need (Acts 2:44-47; 4:37). So, by contributing only a portion of the profits from that land sale, Ananias and Sapphira lied about their offering. What followed was the exposing of their deceit, which resulted in God striking both of them dead (Acts 5:1-11) as the church’s first examples of the committing of the sin unto death (1 John 5:16-17; 1 Corinthians 11:30).

A second problem arose when some of the church’s Greek-speaking Jews registered a complaint against some of the church’s Hebrew-speaking Jews. The complaint was that the Greek-speaking widows were being neglected in the daily distribution of food. This charge may or may not have been legitimate, but either way it served as the impetus for what some believe was the first “deacon election” as seven qualified men were chosen to oversee the daily distribution (Acts 6:1-7).

It is obvious, however, that the Jerusalem church was a unique situation and wasn’t intended to be God’s ideal for what churches should look like going forward. For one thing, as I said, those thousands of Christians all sold their possessions and put the earnings into a communal treasury for the apostles to oversee and use to meet the needs of the church members. Not only was that setup completely voluntary on the part of those church members, no other mention of such a setup is made in regards to any other church in the New Testament.

For another thing, it couldn’t have been God’s will for all those Christians to permanently remain in Jerusalem under that big church umbrella because Jesus had clearly left instructions for His followers to go into all the world and preach the gospel (Mark 16:15-16; Matthew 28:16-20; Luke 24:44-49). Looking back through the lens of history, it seems obvious that this was one of the reasons why God allowed them to be uprooted by way of intense persecution. That persecution began with Peter and John being arrested (Acts 4:1-22) and culminated in Stephen being stoned to death (Acts 7:54-60).

Following Stephen’s stoning, a young Jewish zealot named Saul of Tarsus took the lead in persecuting the Jerusalem church, and the unrelenting persecution inflicted by him and others finally forced many of the Jerusalem Christians to flee the city and scatter to Samaria and other regions of Judea (Acts 8:1-4). Not surprisingly, the verses that immediately follow that scattering find Philip preaching Christ in Samaria and many Samaritans believing in Christ and being baptized (Acts 8:5-25). Clearly, such an expansion of the gospel was what God had always had in mind, but it never would have happened had Phillip and all the rest of those earliest Christians remained in Jerusalem as one local church.

You say, “But Russell, don’t you believe that God can bless a large congregation and use it in His service?” Yes, I do. I’m not suggesting for one moment that large congregations are automatically wrong in God’s eyes any more than I’m suggesting that every small congregation is automatically right in His eyes. The point I’m trying to make is that we Christians need to lose the mentality that bigger must make better, might must make right, and affluence must make godliness. Friends, it just doesn’t work that way. That’s what human nature teaches, not what the Bible teaches.

Posted in Church, Deacons, Evangelism, God's Work, Greed, Ministry, Money, Persecution, Prosperity, The Sin Unto Death, Worship | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Racism Exists Everywhere

Posted on October 30, 2017 by russellmckinney

And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings… (Acts 17:26, N.K.J.V.)

In game 3 of the 2017 World Series between the Houston Astros and the Los Angeles Dodgers, Astros first baseman Yuli Gurriel hit a home run off Yu Darvish, the Dodgers starting pitcher. As Gurriel touched home plate and made his way back to Houston’s dugout, the cameras stayed on him. Following the jubilant celebration that ensued as his teammates congratulated him, Gurriel took his seat on the bench. He didn’t know the cameras were still on him, and that’s when he made a gesture and linked it up with a comment.

For the gesture, he placed his hands on the corner of his eyes and slanted both eyes upward. For the comment, he mouthed a single word. The world found out later that the slanted eyes were meant to mimic Dodgers pitcher Yu Darvish, who is Japanese, and the mouthed word was “chinito,” which is Spanish for someone of Asian descent. Gurriel speaks Spanish because he is Cuban.

Following the game, Gurriel was swamped by reporters asking him to explain his actions. In an effort to downplay the whole affair, he said that he was just joking with his teammates about the fact that maybe Darvish had mistaken him as a fellow Japanese player and had consequently thrown him a good pitch to hit. Unfortunately for Gurriel, that explanation didn’t make much sense because he doesn’t look Japanese in any way. Furthermore, Yu Darvish wasn’t known for taking it easy on his fellow Japanese players.

So, the following day he clarified himself by saying: “Yesterday I was commenting that I’d never had any success against Darvish, and the gesture was saying that I wish that he would look at me like one of them (referring to Japanese players) and maybe he’d throw me an easy pitch so I can do something. At no point did I mean that in an offensive way. On the contrary, I’ve always had a lot of respect for them (Japanese players).”

What Gurriel didn’t explain was his use of the term “chinito.” While that word can be used in a way that isn’t derogatory, it can also be used in a way that is highly derogatory. It is, after all, very similar to the word “chink,” which is definitely offensive in regards to Asian people. What makes the difference is the context in which “chinito” is used. As for how Yuli Gurriel meant it that night of the 2017 Word Series, only he and God know for sure.

For Darvish’s part, he couldn’t have handled the incident with any more class following the game. While acknowledging that Gurriel’s actions were wrong, he accepted the apology and used all the attention to encourage everyone to learn from Gurriel’s mistake, show more love, and take a positive step forward in race relations rather than focusing on anger. As he put it, “No one is perfect. That includes both you and I.”

Rob Manfred, on the other hand, wasn’t so quick to forgive. As Commissioner of Major League Baseball, he demanded a meeting with Gurriel the following day. During that meeting Gurriel expressed his remorse, promised to offer a private apology to Darvish, and agreed to undergo sensitivity training. Manfred appreciated Gurriel’s remorse but suspended him for the first five games of the next season. In announcing the suspension, Manfred said, “…there is no place in our game for the behavior or any behavior like the behavior we witnessed last night. There is no excuse or explanation that makes that type of behavior acceptable.”

Many fans were initially upset that Gurriel wasn’t suspended for any games of that World Series, and Dodgers’ fans grew increasingly upset when Gurriel helped the Astros win game 5 of the Series, and ultimately the entire Series itself, by hitting an important home run in that 5th game. But other fans pointed out that a five-game suspension without pay at the start of the following season would hit Gurriel more in the bank account. While Major League players don’t get paid for postseason games such as the World Series, they do get paid handsomely for regular season games. Gurriel was under contract to make $12 million in 2018, which meant that his suspension cost him approximately $320,000.

Now, it is not my intention to get into the right or wrong of Rob Manfred’s decision to allow Gurriel to continue playing in that World Series. I’m not even prepared to state unreservedly that Yuli Gurriel’s explanation was nothing more than a lie he concocted to cover his rear. Again, only he and God know the truth about that. All I want to do here is make the point that racism exists in almost every corner of our globe. Whites can be racist against blacks. Blacks can be racist against whites. Hispanics/Latinos can be racist against the Japanese. The Japanese can be racist against the Koreans. The English can be racist against the Irish. The Germans can be racist against the Jews. The Jews can be racist against the Palestinians. The Australians can be racist against the Aboriginals. The Saudi Arabians can be racist against members of poorer Arab countries.

Yes, racism is a complex issue, but what’s for certain about it is that it is never of God. The Bible teaches that the same blood courses through the veins of all races (Acts 17:26) and that Jesus Christ died on the cross as the substitutionary sacrifice for the sins of all races (John 3:16). It also teaches that heaven will be inhabited by the saved from all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues (Revelation 7:9). This is God’s eternal take on the subject, and it’s one that we should work hard to keep front and center in our minds.

To do that, we should start by admitting that most of us have some racist tendencies, regardless of whether or not we ever get caught acting on them. That admittance is step one. To take step two, we must ask God to help us overcome our racism and learn to see all people as He sees them, as people for whom Jesus died that they might believe in Him as Savior and thereby be forgiven of all sin and granted eternal life.

Even by taking these two steps, we won’t completely eliminate racism in our world. To believe otherwise is to believe in fairy tales. Racism is simply too ingrained in the fabric of Adam’s fallen race, of which we are all members. What these steps will do, though, is allow us to start cleaning up our own thoughts, comments, attitudes, perspectives, opinions, gestures, and actions in this realm. And if each of us can at least do that, we’ll have accomplished a lot.

Posted in Christ's Death, Current Events, Favoritism, Heaven, Persecution, Racism, Slavery, Sports | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

“How’s Russell Doing These Days?”

Posted on October 27, 2017 by russellmckinney

I thought I’d use today’s post to provide you — my regular readers — with a snapshot of my life and ministry these days. It’s not that I consider my personal affairs to be so important that you’all are just dying to hear them. No, all those character-building experiences and lessons in humility that God has been running me through the past thirty years or so have definitely done their job. Instead, I offer these thoughts merely as a way to keep the blog personal and homey. You need to know who you are reading, right?

On the church front, I’m finishing up my ninth month at Oak Grove Baptist Church in Nebo, NC. After serving as the pastor of the non-denominational and non-traditional Disciples Road Church for over eight years, I’ve found the transition back into the realm of the traditional, rural, Southern Baptist Convention church to be a relatively easy one. Not much changed during the years I was at Disciples Road. Thus far, I’ve spent most of my time at Oak Grove getting to know the people, working to better stabilize the church’s attendance, and trying to bring more organizational structure to the way the congregation goes about its weekly business. I can’t say that we’ve grown in attendance all that much, but the attendance has become more consistent, and I like to think that we are getting things in order for future growth. I was especially touched to receive no less than 26 (and counting) cards from my church members for October being Pastor Appreciation Month.

On the home front, Tonya is in her 26th year teaching math at Bowman Middle School in Bakersville, NC. You might think that teaching gets easier as you gain more experience and grow older, but that’s not the case. To the contrary, each year seems to take a little bit out of you as you give yourself to your students. When Tonya first started teaching, she noticed that the older teachers were crankier than the younger teachers. Now she understands why. Of course, it probably hasn’t helped that I’ve got her teaching a children’s Sunday School class at Oak Grove and serving as the chairperson of the Kitchen Committee. She also directed our Bible School this past summer. I guess it’s safe to say that when I reentered Baptist life, so did she.

Our oldest son, Ryan, is enjoying his junior year at Johnson University, a Christian university located just outside of Knoxville, Tennessee. His grades are great, and this year he’s rooming with the RA (Resident Assistant) of the boys’ dorm. He’s on track to complete his degree next year and earn his teaching license in Physical Education K-12/Sports & Fitness Leadership. Afterward he’ll look for a job as a PE teacher and coach. He’s also deer hunting and fishing every chance he gets these days.

Our younger son, Royce, is doing well in his junior year at Mitchell, our local high school. His grades are great too, but he still doesn’t know what he wants to be when he grows up, unless professional video-game player is an option. He recently finished up his last year of eligibility in Asheville’s Fall Ball baseball league. For the past three falls we’ve put in the hour drive both ways for him to play in that league. It was a good experience for him, but I don’t mind admitting that we weren’t sorry to see all that driving become a thing of the past. He’ll be on Mitchell’s varsity team this coming spring, and the games he played in Fall Ball have definitely made him a better player. He’s also loving the fact that he now has his driver’s license and gets to drive himself to and from Mitchell each day.

Finally, on the blog front, the blog’s number of views are currently on pace for another good year. If the pace holds through December, this year’s views will easily exceed last year’s and will come in either just above or just below the number from 2012, which was my second-best year all time. While 2014’s record year will remain the goal to reach, it’s encouraging that my followers are now at an all time high of 99. A follower, as you might know, is a person who receives an email notification each time I publish a new post. It’s also encouraging that the number of views the blog receives from people outside the United States continues to climb. In the past 12 months, people from 129 countries around the world have viewed something I’ve written. I don’t even know how to process that in my little mind, but it sure brings a smile to my face to think about it.

Well, I guess that’s about enough for today. I trust it goes without saying that I’m beyond thankful for each of you who ever reads anything I’ve posted, but I’ll go ahead and say it anyway: THANK YOU!!! It’s obvious that God is using this blog as a blessing to a whole bunch of folks in a whole bunch of places, and I believe He will continue to do so. If you have the time, please say a little prayer for me that He will continue to bless my family, my ministry, and this blog. And, for my part, I promise that I’ll continue to write whatever He leads me to write. That’s not always what I want to write, just as it’s not always what you want to read, but at least we’re all in this thing together.

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The Very Real Problem of Fear

Posted on October 25, 2017 by russellmckinney

One hot day in July, a farmer sat lazily on the porch of his shack, whittling on a piece of wood. A neighbor dropped by for a visit and asked him, “Did you get your cotton harvested yet?” Without looking up from his whittling, the farmer answered, “Didn’t plant none. ‘Fraid of the boil weevil.” The neighbor nodded his head understandingly and said, “Yes, those little insects can sure bankrupt a man by laying waste to a good field of cotton. I can’t say as I blame you.”

Continuing his search for grounds of conversation, the neighbor tried again. “So, have you got a good stand of corn?” he asked. The farmer, still looking down at his whittling, said, “Didn’t plant no corn neither. ‘Fraid of drought.” Again, the neighbor nodded his head knowingly and said, “I can’t blame you there. This weather has gotten so crazy that nobody can tell if or when it’s going to rain.”

Now the neighbor was feeling embarrassed over his lack of knowledge about the man’s farm, but he decided to try one more time. Cautiously he said, “Well, if you didn’t plant any cotton or corn, I guess you planted potatoes. How are they doing? Does it look like you’re going to have a good harvest there?” But the farmer didn’t change his actions or his tone as he replied, “Ain’t got no taters neither. ‘Fraid of the tater bugs.” One more time the neighbor nodded his head in agreement as he said, “Yes, I hear those pesky beetles can ruin a whole field if they get in there good. And you don’t want that happening to you.”

By this time the neighbor was thoroughly ashamed of himself for not knowing more about the farmer’s fields, and so he figured it was time for some apologizing. He said to the farmer, “I beg your pardon for not keeping up with you better. I’ve just been so busy myself lately that I haven’t paid much attention to what’s been going on over here. So tell me, what did you plant this year?” The farmer, still not looking up from his whittling, dryly answered, “Nothin.’ I just played it safe.”

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt once famously told the American people, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” At the time, America was in the throes of the Great Depression and people were running to their banks to withdraw all their money for fear they would lose it if the banks closed. Roosevelt was trying to curb that rising tide.

While I understand the need for the reassurance Roosevelt offered at that moment in history, the fact is that this world really can be a frightful place. All the reassuring words in the vocabulary won’t stop a job termination, an eviction notice, a bad medical diagnosis, a judge’s sentence, a catastrophic weather event, a terrorist act, etc. It’s like the little boy who got bit by a dog. His mother said, “Now son, if that dog hadn’t sensed fear in you, it wouldn’t have bitten you. I believe your real problem was your fear, not that dog.” To that the little boy replied, “No, my real problem was that mean ole’ dog. I wasn’t one bit afraid until he came along.”

As you read this post, you might have something in your life that has got you scared right now, and I’m not going to minimize your very real problem by chiding you with, “The only thing you have to fear is fear itself.” No, I’ll give you credit that what you’re dealing with is truly fear worthy. All I’ll say is that Jesus Christ stands ready and willing to help you overcome your fear.

One of Christ’s favorite exhortations to His followers was, “Fear not.” Those words held true for the likes of Peter, James, John, and Matthew, and they will hold true for you as well if you will believe in Jesus as your personal Savior and ask Him to help you with what’s got you scared. Whether it’s a boil weevil, a drought, a potato beetle, a dog, or something else, He can provide you with help and guidance. So, turn to Him today and experience the emboldening that only He can bring.

Posted in Adversity, Attitude, Belief, Comfort, Courage, Death, Doubt, Faith, Fear, God's Love, God's Omnipotence, God's Provision, God's Sovereignty, Inner Peace, Needs, Problems, Sickness, Trials, Trusting In God, Worry | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment