08. Chapter 7: Intermission

Chapter 7

Intermission

Who can make a tree? Who can make an eye? Who can make a brain? Who can fill an endless expanse of space with stars and planets? Have you ever stopped and thought about God as “creator?” The next time you look out the window, look at one of the trees you see. Did that tree just happen to spring into existence through spontaneous generation, apart from a “creator?” The next time you walk by a mirror, look at one of your eyes. Look closely at how those colors are coordinated, how they appear as the intricate brush strokes of a master painter. See how the pupil expands and contracts as you move to and from the mirror. And what about the human brain? You can close your eyes and see thoughts and memories the same way as if you were watching a television screen. Who can create something like this? And what about those wonderful stars and planets that fill our night skies? A couple of years ago I became fascinated with astronomy and bought some very large binoculars in order to view the vast number of stars that can be seen in our night sky. What initially led me to become fascinated with astronomy was the fact that while it was still dark each morning on my way home from my night shift job I would see these big “diamonds” above the horizon and they began to pique my interest. These brilliant diamond-like dots turned out to be planets. In certain months of the year, you can see Jupiter, Saturn and Venus easily because they are the most brilliant. When magnified twenty times the power of the naked eye, one may see the different colored bands upon the surface of Jupiter. One may also see the rings of Saturn. Venus is a treat also because it appears to go through different phases of shading just like our moon goes through at different times of the month. Wanting to see even more of these objects in the universe that God created, I bought a large, fancy, motorized telescope that held the promise of showing me these wonderful objects more closely than I had ever dreamed, yet, as many of you have found out the hard way, we cannot fall for every sales pitch that comes our way. I spent hundreds of dollars on this new motorized telescope. It was a very pleasurable process of acquisition because I had a great time shopping for it on the Internet and the anticipation of its arrival filled me with unbridled enthusiasm as I tracked the package via UPS. When it arrived in its heavy, massive box, I quickly unpacked the contents and assembled this massive structure. I read the directions, loaded the motor with batteries, polished the lenses and waited anxiously for the sun to set. I plotted the coordinates, pressed the button, and the gears of its motor whirred with a pleasing sound that absolutely thrilled me to no end. But after this massive telescope made three full rotations, the batteries were completely drained and the apparatus would not move at all. I leaned the hulking tube upward and peered through the lens to get a glimpse at the gas cloud which can be found in Orion’s belt, yet, it appeared no differently than it did using my twenty-power binoculars. In fact, my binoculars showed astronomical bodies far better than this particular telescope was able to do. I kept the telescope for several more days trying to convince myself that it was worth all of the fuss, but soon I came to my senses, shipped it back and received a quick refund of the total cost. The point of this unfortunate scenario is to teach you that worldly goods do not satisfy the deepest longings of our hearts. They may thrill our senses for a few moments, but then the thrill goes away. Solomon, the richest and wisest man who ever lived, said something very profound that still echoes in my mind when I am tempted to chase the empty promises of merchandise.

Ecclesiastes 5:10 says, “He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver; nor he that loveth abundance with increase: this is also vanity.” What he is saying is that if someone loves silver, that person will never be satisfied with enough of it. No matter how much he or she has it will never be enough. Many years ago, when Rockefeller was asked how many millions it would take to make him happy, he replied that it was always “one more.” He was rich beyond dreams, yet, he always wanted “one more” million. I wonder if Rockefeller ever came to the same realization to which Solomon arrived when he said that everything in this life (apart from God) was vanity, or as we would translate that word today, emptiness.

So, in light of what we all know firsthand to be true of worldly possessions, that virtually all of us have bought something we just knew would radically change our lives for the better but came to find out that it did not make us happy or satisfy our deepest longings, why then do the health, wealth and prosperity preachers of today’s brand of Christianity try to get us to focus on these fleeting things rather than upon the gift of everlasting life? In addition to falsely teaching us that God wants to give us a lot of wealth in this life, most of them also present a polluted form of salvation that cannot save a lost person from the wrath to come. While it is true that God blessed believing Jews primarily with wealth in the Old Testament, His focus toward Gentile believers in the New Testament and beyond is that we be content with food and clothing. Money and wealth are perhaps the most dangerous things that God can entrust to us today because if we have enough of it, we simply won’t need Him or rely upon Him as much as we would, otherwise. So, Christ’s focus in this dispensation of grace is that we come to a saving knowledge of Him. When we have done so, He promises that He will take care of our basic necessities (Matthew 6:33).

How I ever fell into believing there was no God at all is still a mystery to me. When I was 13-years-old, I met the most beautiful girl at church named Debbie. She was the mayor’s granddaughter. I really liked this pretty girl with long, dark hair. To make a long story short, we ended up dating each other on and off for the next eight years. The last year we dated we became serious. She would tell me over and over that she wanted to marry me, but in the end, she left me for another fellow. I went through a serious depression afterward, and when I had come through, I became determined to never again be hurt so deeply by a woman. The famous musician Chuck Berry used to say, “Don’t let the same dog bite you twice.” With that logic in my mind, I simply quit dating altogether. I think that losing Debbie played a major role later on in my becoming a complete atheist. After being convinced by my college professors in classes such as philosophy, biology, etc., that there was no “God” at all, I then gave myself over to the worship of science. I buried myself in studies, in hobbies, in friendships that never lasted, and in the various low-paying jobs that I held over virtually the next two decades. Let me tell you something about atheism — it is a complete lie. I was a fool of the grandest sort. Let me lay it on the line, so to speak: people who are not partial toward either wanting or needing God in their lives, who neither choose to give deliberate consideration toward their own existence nor to that of a supreme being, who become self-absorbed by scientific methods of thinking and of solving things, who are self-contained in their own ways, who walk according to their own wisdom or to the wisdom of great but secular minds, and who delight in being glorified by humankind are, I dare say, deteriorating inwardly at a rate of speed commensurate with the level of their ignorance until, most inevitably, they spiral downward and eventually implode under the gravity of their own emptiness. In a nutshell, that explains atheism. It wasn’t until I was in my early 30’s that I believed God was real. It wasn’t until I was in my mid 30’s that I got saved. It wasn’t until I was in my late 30’s that I began dating again, and I will touch upon my dating life a bit later in this chapter because it ties in rather well with the overall theme of this book.

Let me just confide something in you, if you will allow me. This work I have produced causes me a great deal of sadness; after all, I am a human being, and since I became born again in Christ through faith in His death and subsequent resurrection from the dead, i.e., the “gospel message,” I have been given a love for people-in-general that I did not possess before I came to Christ. In a sense, for me to appear iconoclastic to you, the reader, by seemingly tearing down pastors and ministries that do a great deal of good in many areas, makes me feel awful because it goes against my new nature; however, what these ministries are telling people to believe is false in terms of salvation, i.e., how to go to heaven, and I have a God-given duty to try to set the record straight. It’s not “me” who wants to do this, rather, it’s the “Holy Spirit” through me that wants to help you see Christ’s truths. Because Christ took up residence within me the very moment I trusted Him as my savior, I cannot sit by and allow so many false plans of salvation to keep bombarding people’s minds without saying something about it. I cannot sit by and allow it to go on without trying to help “somebody.” I tell you the truth — if God helps only one person in the world to get born again after reading this book, then the lifetime of experiences that I have lived which, by His design, have brought me the necessary insight and education to be able to write this book at this particular time and place of my life, including the production costs, it will have all been well worth it.

But, then again, you might be asking yourself, “Who is this person, what are his qualifications, and why is he questioning the authority of such learned men and women?” To that I say, “I am a born-again Christian who sees anti-biblical teachings being passed off as infallible truths in so many of these ministries — teachings that, according to Christ Himself, will take a person to the eternal lake of fire, and I have to say something about it.” In a nutshell, the reason for all of this is because I care. But above all, Christ cares. He just happened to pick me for this humble task, at this unique point in our history. I am nobody special. I am merely a tool that Christ was able to use for this particular purpose.

I am not an iconoclast. I take no pleasure in pointing out the biblical inconsistencies and errors in someone else’s preaching, yet, due to the eternal consequences of such erroneous teachings, I am now standing up upon this global platform in order to announce certain biblical truths against which no offensive tactics, no matter how logical or intimidating they might be, will ever be able to fully twist, misinterpret or negate their God-given intent of clearly communicating Christ’s promise of the free gift of everlasting life through childlike faith in what He alone (without our help) did for us by His death on the cross and subsequent resurrection from the dead.

Perhaps the most horrible thing about trusting in one of these unbiblical plans of salvation that I mention throughout in this book is the fact that when a person breathes out their last breath of life at the moment of their death, the next breath that they inhale occurs in a special holding place called hell. The unimaginable grief and sadness that one must feel when he or she finds themselves in this place could never be described with mere words. I tell you the truth, this is the most basic and honest reason for which I am writing this book: I don’t want people to go there. I don’t want people to close their eyes forever in this life only to wake up the very next instant to the terror of realizing they didn’t make heaven. This reality fuels me as I write this book and as I pray that God will use it to great effect in His desire for everyone to trust in His Son, Christ, for the free gift of everlasting life that He has made available to us (instantly) through childlike trust in Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection from the dead as the only means of reaching heaven and avoiding eternal death and separation from Him in the lake of fire.

I would like to recount some incidents that tie this chapter to every chapter in this book in order to help you understand more fully the horror that lost people will face when they die, as well as the horror they will face when they are eventually sentenced at the Great White Throne Judgement. A couple of years ago I met a woman named Cristy and was immediately infatuated with her. Not long afterward, I fell head over heels in love with her. Her big eyes and pretty smile made me feel like a million dollars. Each time I saw her, I would give her some little gift, such as a candy bar or some sort of gadget. Giving her things was an expression of my love. She liked me a lot, too, and she always greeted me with a smile. For the longest time I could never fully tell the color of her eyes because each time we met her pupils would get so big that her eyes simply appeared as black as coal. As the months passed by, I would give her candy and say hi, but because we were both shy we would give each other notes rather than speak face-to-face for any length of time. My nerves and adrenaline, along with the thrill of new, budding love, would overwhelm me and I would just have to walk away from her. She loved receiving my gifts each time I saw her, and as a result, she paid me perhaps the greatest honor anyone has ever paid me by giving me a cross-stitched portrait of Christ that she stitched with her own hands. She literally spent months making that gift for me. The day I received this gift from her, I was convinced beyond any doubt that this was the woman whom God intended for me to marry. The very next day, I bought her an expensive pair of the very best diamond earrings I could find at the mall. I was in love with her, and so very, very thankful to God for bringing me such a beautiful, feminine, soft-spoken woman with deep red hair and skin the color of a glass of milk. But something happened. To this day, I’m not quite sure exactly what happened, but I have an idea as to why our relationship never worked out and I will explain that idea, shortly. Anyway, after I gave her those sparkling, virtually flawless diamonds, her smiles and her energy seemed to lessen, and so I gave her more and more gifts to put a smile on her face, but she eventually moved away and did not tell me where she was going. I was completely devastated. My soul, so to speak, was literally ripped from my body. I cried uncontrollably for months. It was, without question, a form of death that I went through. For a solid month I hardly ate a thing and lost over 20 pounds because I could not stomach any food. My throat and my chest and just about every other part of my body became sore because the crying gave way to deep heaving to the point where I could not catch my breath between sobs. Not long afterward my heart began skipping beats, and several times I felt my heart slam against my chest wall and it frightened me. Grief over losing Cristy was actually destroying my health, my mind, and my trust in the goodness of God. When I would walk through the stores and shoppes, I would see things that I used to buy for Cristy, and I would begin crying, sometimes uncontrollably, and would have to walk out of the store. This went on daily for months. I was literally dying over my loss of Cristy. A friend from my past, Missy, suggested that I join an Internet dating service. While I had no interest at all in talking to or in dating anyone other than Cristy, I realized that, for my health, I could no longer live with this grief, so, I joined a very well-known Internet dating service as a free member because I simply couldn’t afford their price. Within a couple of days of joining this dating service, Lora came into my life. I was still very sick over losing my Cristy, but I gave Lora a chance, anyway. We began e-mailing each other every day, and a very special friendship began to take root. She told me that she was a Christian and that she was also lonely and wanted God’s best both in life and in marriage. Lora and I really clicked. We began talking over the phone every day, for hours and hours. I would get little text messages from her that really made my day and eased the pain of losing Cristy. Lora and I began confiding in each other our deepest desires. Her warm voice, honesty, and wonderful sense of Christian morals began to make me reel with delight to the point where I, quite literally, began to fall in love with her about a month after the dating service matched us up. Convinced that God had brought me my bride-to-be, I went back to the mall and bought the most brilliant pair of diamond earrings I could afford and then gave them to Lora on our first date. We met for coffee and I got lost in her deep blue eyes and quirky smile. We began holding hands and an hour later I gave her the diamonds. Lora was the first girlfriend I’d had in 18 years, and I was on top of the world with delight in the fact that God had brought me a beautiful woman with dark hair, a sweet spirit, and the longest fingers I’d ever seen. My love name for her was “Ladyfingers.” Lora filled the great void in my life that occurred as a result of losing Cristy. Now, because my way of showing love is to give people things, I began lavishing upon Lora many, many gifts. I gave her so many things that, as I look back upon it now, I realize that I made her uncomfortable with my excessive gift giving. As our friendship grew with one another, so did love and closeness grow. I was truly in love with Lora, but the after effects of losing Cristy were still too fresh, too unresolved, too powerful to ignore, that I again began to fall into the depression caused by the loss of my first love — Cristy. I became very moody. I would write the darkest and most bleak things in my e-mails to Lora. I began doubting God’s love for me again and I soon began to fall into a form of spiritual depression, also. Lora began to notice changes in me, too, and one day, out of nowhere, she called me and said that our relationship was over. My life began to spiral out of control again and I fell into the deepest sense of personal rejection and despair. Not only had I lost Cristy only five months before, but now I’d lost both Lora and my faith in God’s good character, for surely if God loved me He would not allow these things to keep happening to me. I then became bitter, and the next day, in a calm, controlled burst of cold anger, I told Lora to send the diamond earrings back to me. Several days later, in complete denial of what had just occurred, I crawled back to Lora, begging her to reconsider. She never did. That was the last I ever heard from my Lora.

There is a very important purpose for which I’m sharing this extremely personal information with you.

First of all, God allowed this pain in my life for special reasons. These reasons are now very, very clear to me as for why He allowed the overwhelming grief and loss of my hopes, my dreams, and the future I could have had with either one of these two incredible women. God allowed me to have a double shot of the most painful grief I’ve ever experienced in my life so that I could, with an even greater sense of urgency and conviction, make crystal clear to you the results of what will happen if you place your trust in a false plan of salvation. This is why He allowed me to suffer:

You can live for Christ, you can love Christ, you can serve Him with all of your might, time, talent and wealth. You can pray to Him, read your bible, get water-baptized, join a church, witness to people, and do every wonderful work contained within the realm of Christianity, but if you fail to trust Jesus Christ alone for your salvation, He will “dump” you. He will dump you the same way Cristy dumped me after I gave her my best. Christ will “dump” you the same way Lora dumped me after I devoted my life to serving her. Christ will “dump” you like yesterday’s garbage when you stand before Him in your filthy rags (your works) without His grace that He made freely available to you through simple trust in what He did for you by His death, burial and resurrection from the grave. In every sense of the word, if you fail to trust Christ alone as your savior, He will “dump” you. And the most overwhelming hurt, rejection, and loss will engulf you. And, perhaps, you will remember reading this book. You will remember the “chance” that Christ gave you to get things squared away with Him, eternally, but you didn’t think any of this applied to you. As you stand before Christ at the Great White Throne Judgement and are sentenced by Him to the eternal lake of fire, He will not be able to help you in any way. Reader, if you reject Christ’s offer of eternal life, you will be “dumped.”

Revelation 20:11-15 : “And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.”

You “will” be “dumped.”