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It has been said that Satan’s best scheme was to convince people that he doesn’t exist. And, sure, many people think that there is no devil—that “Satan” is merely an excuse, to avoid ownership of there own bad choices. And, of course, that ideology doesn’t seem to accept that bad choices could have an outside influence. But refuting a “devil-less” theology isn’t my purpose in this article.

Perhaps it’s better to say that Satan’s best scheme was to convince people that he is Jesus. That’s a two-fer-one. On the one hand, evil people who worship Satan—whether wittingly or unwittingly—can convince themselves that they worship Jesus, after all. Many leaders in high positions are prime examples—of both the witting and unwitting servants of Satan… but so are many hypocrite Christians. We’ll avoid naming names because, again, that’s not our purpose here.

On the other hand, there is another advantage for Satan if he can convince people that he is Jesus: People who love the truth, but who have only been introduced to hypocrite Christians, often hate the so-called “Jesus” that they’ve heard about.  · · · →

I’ve lived in Asia four years and my feelings about China are unconventional and mixed.

China’s international policy seems the same with defense and intellectual property: They claim rights to everything. But, Beijing Communists are not Nazi’s, as the West often perceives. Nor is Chinese Communism the same as Russian Communism.

Hitler wanted to take over the world because he worshiped Satan. Russia’s Communism placed government above God. Beijing, on the other hand, just wants respect—from other nations and from religions inside their country. But, China is still learning how to gain that respect. Maybe they’d have more respect if they settled more and disputed less. No one respects people who boast their accomplishments at every opportunity, yet always attempt to dominate neighbors. China’s no exception. They’ll learn, though, contraire to conventional Western opinion.

As for religion, China is phenomenal. Under Beijing’s Communism, China’s Christian Church grew to become the largest, fastest-growing, and healthiest in the world.  · · · →

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// Yes—I grew up in a Conservative-Christian circle.

Until my sophomore of college, my father was an Agnostic, though he called himself an Atheist—mainly because he was searching for answers and wasn’t sure where he himself stood on the issue of God.

My mother was Christian, raised by my grandparents who were raised by Christians who were raised by Christians… But, no one ever forced institutional religion on me. Jesus lived in our hearts and we thought about Him and talked about Him all the time. Church was a place we went each week—it wasn’t the only place where we met Jesus. And we loved people, even if they didn’t love Jesus.

We often sang songs like God Bless America and joined See You at the Pole—the yearly morning prayer movement where we’d pray around the flagpole of our schools. That’s how I grew up. It’s what I believed.  · · · →

Salt and Yeast (mp3)

In Bible school, I worked in the catering department. Cooking always fascinated me. So, the head chef and I often got into conversation. What might a young Bible student and the head Bible chef talk about? Jesus’ teaching lends itself to plenty of topics… There is always the feeding of five thousand people with nothing but fish and bread, the fact that Mary assumed Jesus would do miracles in the kitchen at Cana, salt, fruit, pork, oil, wine (but don’t tell the Trustees at Moody,) and, of course… yeast.

“Once yeast gets into the dough, you can’t get it out,” the chef would tell me. “And there’s only one way I know of, so far, to kill the yeast once it’s in the dough: fire! And that probably means persecution.”

The yeast of the Pharisees is what we were talking about on that particular day of our Biblical-culinary-contextual exegesis.  · · · →