3/21/2009 - Originally published over a year ago, but I'm gonna bump this up to the top of the list for a while. This one says a lot about me, and my worth before God. I think it's time to revisit this one...

If you wanna hang out with the "god of love", go to church - or social gathering/home church, or shopping mall church, or coffee house church, or mega-church. You can find the "god of love" as easily and in the same places as the "...god of thunder and rock and roll..."

If you want to get a glimpse of the REAL God - Go to the Bible. That's about the only place you will find any mention of him these days... You won't find many churches or many people willing to show you the REAL God or the REAL human condition.

Far too many of them are far too busy trying to downgrade God and upgrade Humanity - trying to swap the glorious God for the corruptible image of man

If you are still reading, I want you take careful notice of something: There is a large movement afoot in the world, and the worldly church to paint a difference between "Christianity" and so called "Western Theology" or "Western Christianity."

But there is no such thing. It's not a matter of "western this", or "eastern that" or "Greek orthodox" the other...

SIN IS A HUMAN CONDITION and it affects every last man, woman and child on the face of the planet in exactly the same way and there is exactly one, and only one remedy: The Unadultered Gospel Of Jesus Christ.

But like I just said - good luck finding it these days. One of my site banners is: The day comes when there will be a famine in the land. Not a famine of bread or water, but a famine of hearing God's word. Men shall seek from sea to sea, from north to south (FROM EAST TO WEST), running everywhere trying to find it. But they shall not find it.

Why? Because of the types of Brian McLaren, N.T. Wright, Shane Clairborne, Rob Bell, and a hundred others like them - and all their blogging minions spreading their false gospel.

Here's the truth - from November 11th, 2008:





Have you ever had the opportunity to look at something through a microscope? I have a very nice binocular high power microscope that I bought on eBay a few years ago. I love looking at things like pond water through it.

I've spent hours, and hours exploring a single drop of water. Through a microscope, an area merely the width of a dime is a vast universe, full of stange (and sometimes rather terrifying) creatures.

It's so small, that sometimes a mere bump of the table will send things spinning out of view - lost forever because it would take forever (it seems) to find that spot again. That tiny spot, in that tiny drop of water that you were just looking at just a moment ago is lost for all eternity.

And have you ever had the opportunity to look at something through a decent quality telescope? Not too long ago, the Hubble Space Telescope returned some images that were just astonishing.

As I understand it, they turned the Hubble to look out into deep space. It took an entire month of "staring" at a single small spot of the sky, about the width of a dime held at arm's length against the night sky. Hold up a dime, at arm's length from your face, and look at how small a space that is.

In that tiny sliver of the night sky, here is what Hubble saw:






Now look at the same picture again:






See the small box in that picture? Inside that small box (About 1/20th the width of a dime at arm's length), when blown up, is the following:






And again, the box in that picture, (about the width of a HAIR at arm's length), when magnified, reveals something very much like the following:





Inside the box of this picture, in the tiny speck seen below, is an area very much like our own earthly existence in our own galaxy.




Everything in our Solar system; the sun and all our planets, exists inside that tiny speck!

The sheer size of the universe is truly beyond comprehension. I cannot even find the words that begin to describe how unbelievably immense it is. And yet, God holds all of it in nothing more than the palm of his hand - as though it were a small diamond that he was examining.

I always wondered why - if we live on the outer arms of a galaxy with a center THAT enormous, and THAT brilliant and bright - why we could not see it filling all of the sky at night? It turns out that the darkness in those spiral arms are clouds of dust and interstallar debris. A dust cloud so vast and so immense that it blots out our view of the center of the galaxy that we live in. What we call the "Milky Way" is really just a small amount of that enormous light that gets through the enormous dust clouds and reaches the earth - ever so faintly.

We live, truly, and literally, "in the shadows" - the perpetual penumbra of God's glory. Imagine what it might look like if you could see that huge galaxy center of ours! [But I digress...]

When we walk outside at night, we are exposed to deep heaven. Distances so great that if we considered them a HEIGHT from which we might fall, instead of a distance, we might be (and ought to be) terrified.

The universe is vast beyond your wildest imagination. The pictures above all come from that tiny sliver of sky, no wider than the width of a dime at arm's length. But it is that way in every direction that we can look. A million different dimes, in a million different directions, and you see the same thing. Trillions of stars buried in billions of galaxy's, each containing millions of planets orbiting stars just like ours.

I'm tempted to say something more about that, but I won't. I'll leave it at that: The universe is massive beyond your wildest imaginations, and yet to God, it's microscopic and insignificant in comparison to Himself.

And yet, God is mindful of every one of these things to the infinate depths of them. From the very smallest of creatures in the drop of water, to the outermost expanses of space, God views it all as though it were through a microscope - but instead, he simply views it directly as though he were right there. Because He is. Not even so much as a single atom spins, anywhere in this universe, that God is not mindful of it's inner workings to the minutest detail.

The Bible tells us that every man can know that God exists, because what can be known about him is made plainly evident in creation - in the pictures of the Universe that I just presented, for instance. God's tremendous glory is demonstrated to anyone who will simply go outside at night and look up and realize the vastness of what they so casually, and so fearlessly walk beneath every day and every night.

God is unbelievably, and unimaginably, and inconceivably glorious.

So far all that I've told you is public knowledge. Even demons know and belive all that I've told you so far.

What can it mean to say that we "know God?" We can't even begin to know His creation, and yet we so casually claim, "Yeah, me and God are tight, Bro! God is my homie..."

While we cannot even begin to comprehend that tiny sliver of sky, no wider than the width of a dime, nevertheless, how terrifyingly true it is to say that He knows us?

A true experience of God would be absolutely terrifying. The Bible tells us that it is a fearful thing to come into contact with God. Not terrifying as in "thrilling". Not "terrifying" like a roller coaster ride at Six Flags... Terrifying as in "insane with fear that drives us to insane madness - screaming with primal terror that hardly any of us have ever really experienced." Yeah, that kind of fear.

And yet, the Bible describes God as being very tender, and caring about us. When he has all of this massive and beautiful creation, why does he care about preserving us and this one tiny speck of his creation that we have perverted and polluted? He could as easily just take the tip of his finger and smear us out of existence with no more effort than a painter dabs a bit of paint over a small smudge mark that he doesn't like.

There are a hundred sermons that I could preach on just that subject alone.


As I said in my article, "The Sum of all Fears", in describing myself:

I am a vile creature. Of all the people on earth, there is probably none more wicked, more depraved, more rebellious, or more sinful than me. If you could open up my spiritual heart, and look inside, you would see a dark tumbling mass of wickedness, sin, deceit, hatred, malice, perversion, immorality, and every other evil you could think of. In my heart, I am at least the equivalent of the worlds most notorious murderers, rapists, cheats and thieves. Hitler is not some extreme example of evil; he is a typical example of evil - just as I am.

God created hell specifically for people like me.

If there is one verse in the Bible that speaks, specifically of me, it would be this:

"I will make thy grave; for thou art vile..."

God wrote that verse just for me.

The point that I'm getting at in this article is just this: Why does God bother to save a wretch like me? When I return evil for His goodness. When I willfully and deliberatly, and even happily break every law, and every commandment He has ever given me from the day I was born right up to this very present day. Don't think for a moment that I'm describing some former life. Some life I lived long ago before I "got saved." I'm talking about my life right now!

When I spit in his face and scream "Crucify Him!", why does he regard me with compassion? When I blaspheme Him, and revile Him, and HATE Him, why does He love me? When I defy Him, and rebel against Him, and clentch my fist in His face and say "Away with you! I HATE YOU!", why does He look at me and say, "I forgive you, for you know not what you do."

Why does he do that? Why? Why?

I'm not worth it. I have nothing to offer. I don't bring anything to the table. I don't add to God's bottom line one iota. He gains nothing by saving me. I'm no bargain. I'm no "good deal". I am simply not worth it, and I can offer him not a single good reason why he ought to save me, and He Himself has quite a few good reasons why He ought not to. And yet..., for some reason known only to Him, he decides that he will grant me pardon, and refreshing, and joy unimaginable, for absolutely nothing in return.

Why does he do that?


Because He can.


Because He is the only one who can!

You, who so casually talk about God's Glory... think about how glorious and wonderful a God is THAT!

If all of the splendor of the universe doesn't convince you of God's glory, then doesn't THAT?

In the end, God saves us because he CAN and because he WANTS TO. It has nothing to do with anything that you say, or do. It has a little bit to do with what you believe about Him (we call it Faith), but even that part He takes care of for you.

He saves you for His own purposes, and for his own name's sake. And because His glory is blasted to the farthest reaches of this huge universe by doing so, and for no other reason.

When I, on those rare occasions when God grants me a "vision", when I see myself for who I truly am inside, when I see the true worthlessness of my spiteful, hateful, evil nature, THAT is when I most clearly see the Glory of God. THAT is when I cry out in gratefulness - not for what I've done. Not even for what God has supernaturally enabled me to do. But just gratefulness that He is strong, and that He is able to "save to the uttermost them that come to Him by Jesus Christ."

The real subject matter there is "Jesus Christ." But my life hangs on the words "...to the uttermost."

It means a lot to me that God can save to the uttermost.

Because in my case, I have no doubt whatsoever: that is exactly what it will require.

How about you?