The Edict of Milan

I recently attended a conference, calling itself an “alternative conference to those applauding Emperor Constantine and the signing of the Edict of Milan.”  This year marks 17 centuries since Emperor Constantine signed the Edict, legalizing Christianity in the Roman world.  It’s called the Edict of Milan because he signed it here in Milan.

On the surface, it seems like the Edict was a good thing for Christianity.  After about 300 years of persecuting and exterminating (feeding Christians to the lions, soaking them with oil and lighting them as torches, and crucifixion), instead of ending Christianity, it had continued to grow.

Constantine was no fool.  He decided that if you can’t beat them, join them.  So that’s what he did.  Was he sincerely converted to Christianity?  Only God knows, but probably not.  The Edict was a political move to bring Christianity under government control—the opposite of the Biblical model, in which the government is under the control of God.  The result was the ritualization of what had until then been Spirit-inspired rites (the Lord’s Supper, for example).  And little by little through these rituals, the human doctrines replaced Biblical soundness (infant baptism and praying to saints, for example).

On December 8, 1854 the Immaculate Conception became a doctrine of the Catholic Church—a fact that many Catholics are unaware of.  Many Protestants don’t realize that the Immaculate Conception is not about the sinless purity of Jesus, it’s about His mother, Mary, being born sinless.  Of course, if Mary was a sinless, divine person, then Jesus could never have died for our sins.  The only way that He could die in our place is if He was 100% human in body.  If you’re interested in reading more on the subject, here’s a link:  Immaculate Conception.

Ironically, the Edict, which was called the “Edict of Tolerance,” gave birth to a new anti-Semitic form of Christianity: Replacement Theology (link for those interested in knowing more about that).  Before the 4^th century, Christians were very much aware of their Jewish roots.  But with the government-controlled version of Christianity, came a way to control the Jews.  Despite having been scattered all over the known world, the Jews continued to grow in population and most refused to convert, but remained Jewish.  Replacement Theology basically says that God gave up on the Jews and turned His attention and affection onto the Christians, instead.  Of course, this doctrine shows a basic lack of understanding about God: He is not a man and He does not change His mind (Numbers 23:19).  God is more than able to love Christians while still loving the Jews.  It’s like being a parent.  My sons are as different from each other as brothers can be, but I can and do love each of them equally.  If I, as a flawed human mother, can love my children equally in their differentness, can’t God also love both the Christians and the Jews?  Of course He can!

There were professors and clerics (Catholic, Evangelical, and Jewish), docents and intellectuals that spoke at the conference.  They spoke on their particular areas of expertise, and in the end we were given the opportunity to sign a petition declaring repentance and true tolerance for the Jewish people and for the State of Israel.

Recently, I have lost some friends.  These are Christian people who disagree with me on the true nature of grace.  They have decided to stop being friends because I believe that grace does more than save your soul.  (You can read more in my blog posts: Stop Complicating the Simple Things, Gracious Grace, Dis-Graceful Conduct, Generous Grace, and Blessed Reassurance, Part One.)  I wanted to agree to disagree—extending grace to them—but they were unwilling.  One of these former friends showed up at the conference, and was so surprised to see me there that when I greeted her warmly, she smiled and kissed me back.  Then she scurried away from me, ostensibly to find a seat, and never said another word to me.  This is at a conference about a new declaration of tolerance?  I tried not to let it hurt my feelings, but I am human, and I did have genuine affection for this person.  She used to be my cell group leader, for crying out loud!

This morning, the Word that the Lord gave me is Isaiah 65:17: “See, I will create new heavens and a new earth.  The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind.”  In meditating about this verse, I realized that God isn’t saying that we won’t have the ability to remember, but rather that we won’t have the motivation to remember.  It’s like when you’re on vacation in a beautiful, tranquil place.  It’s not that you don’t remember the stress of your daily life, it’s just that there’s no motivation in that setting to do so.

Promised Land

In considering these things even further, I remembered a sermon I heard by Chuck Missler in which he described this world as a digital simulation of the real world: An Extraterrestrial Message.  I recommend watching that sermon (follow the link) because it is one of the most amazing explanations of the proof that the Bible is a supernatural book.  His point is that Heaven is a more real reality than this world.  I really like Chuck Missler because he’s unashamedly and unapologetically both Christian and intellectual.  The 2 are not mutually exclusive!

I understand very well why the Bible says that all creation groans to be set free from the bondage of decay (Romans 8:21-22).  I am groaning for it, too!  I look forward to the day when all these injustices (as with the Edict) and misunderstandings (as with grace) are a thing of the dim past that is not worth remembering.  God is good!

A Pipsqueak and a Fish Story

I came across an article in the NY Times titled Seeing Darwin through Christians Eyes, in which a Christian politician proposed naming February 12 (Charles Darwin’s birthday) as “Darwin Day” as a measure to “recognize the importance of science.”  Many Christians believe that evolution is a credible theory.

Note that the Theory of Evolution is still only a theory.  There are major gaps in the fossil record that science cannot explain.  There are also evolutionary leaps like the Cambrian Explosion that disprove the gradual change that Darwin theorized.  There is also the issue of Irreducible Complexity that would seem to be an evolutionary leap within the organism.  Lee Strobel explains irreducible complexity better than I can (The Case for a Creator).  Basically, irreducible complexity shows that there are some complex organs that seemed to come from nothing, for example the flagellum, a whip-like organ that works like a propeller.  There is no pre-flagellar organ.

Note also that at the end of his life, Charles Darwin recanted his own theory of evolution—something that is still hotly debated.  Whether he did or not, there are still such enormous gaps in the fossil record that even 154 years after the publication of Origin of the Species it remains only a theory.

Lots of Christians believe in evolution: 58% of Catholics, 54% of Orthodox, 51% of mainline Protestants, and 24% of Evangelical Christians.  So why do so many Christians believe in evolution?

I have a theory of my own.  My theory is that a lot of Christians believe that God needs their help.  They don’t really believe in an omnipotent God.  I’ll give you a couple of very common examples:

1. How do you picture Samson (Judges 13-16)?  Most people immediately picture in their minds someone who looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger: big and muscular, right?  Wrong!  Why would the Philistines want to know the secret of his great strength?  If the secret of his strength was his big muscles, they wouldn’t have to ask.  After all, nobody asked what made Goliath strong.  Samson’s strength was supernatural and had nothing whatsoever to do with the size of his muscles.  Most likely, Samson was a proverbial 98 pound weakling (at least in appearance).
2. Most people think that Jonah was swallowed by a whale.  But the Bible says “a great fish,” (Jonah 1:17).  I checked and the word whale is not found in the Bible.  Although whales have been spotted off the coast of Israel, it is very rare that they enter the Mediterranean Sea.  There was a whale sited off the coast of Israel on May 12, 2010 (Whale Sighted off Israel).  There is also the strange case of James Bartley, who was swallowed by a whale and survived.  It is said that he was in the whale’s belly for 15 hours, and the experience bleached his skin and left him blind.  If you can believe that God provided a whale at that precise time and place to swallow Jonah (thus allowing him to breathe, being a mammal) and protected his body from the whale’s corrosive stomach acids.  How much more of a leap is it to believe that it was a literal fish?

Many people, even Christians, treat these Bible accounts as myths, stories to tell children.  Here’s the thing: do you believe in a God that is able to make a man supernaturally strong without big muscles? Or preserve Jonah’s life (and skin and eyesight) for 3 days inside a fish? Or create the whole universe simply by speaking it into existence in just six 24-hour days?

Only you can answer for yourself, but my answer to all 3 questions is yes.  I don’t have to know exactly how He did it to believe that He can do it.

If your prayers are not being answered, could it be because you don’t believe in a God that is able to help you?  Jesus didn’t do many miracles in His hometown because of the people’s lack of faith (Matthew 13:58).  Maybe you’ve been overexposed to lukewarm Christianity—a Christianity that teaches a big, muscular Samson and a whale that swallowed Jonah and evolutionary creation.  If your idea of God is too small, ask for wisdom.  James 1:5 says: “If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.”  Wisdom is what you need to believe in a truly omnipotent God.  And all you’ve got to do is ask for it.  God is good!

Let it Reign!

I recently had the privilege of hearing Pastor Alexandre Guzzardi preach.  Pastor Guzzardi is one of those rare individuals with an honest-to-goodness supernatural gift for preaching God’s Word.  Not everyone who preaches has a gift for preaching, which doesn’t make them bad preachers, it just means that they may be more scholarly, and therefore, lean more toward the teaching gift than the preaching gift.  There’s nothing wrong with that.  I enjoy teaching, too.  In addition to his gift, Pastor Guzzardi is also a delight to hear because of his bust-a-gut-laughing hilarious delivery (not all of which translates with such hilarity into English, and some is purely visual).

Pastor Guzzardi, who is Brazilian, lives in England, and has for many years.  But he preaches in Italian.  Since the pastor of my home church in Milan is Brazilian, I am used to hearing Brazilian-accented Italian, but it really throws some people.

The “it” in my title is the Body of Christ, and “Destined to Reign” was the title of Pastor Guzzardi’s sermon.  In Genesis 1:20-21 God filled the waters with fish and other sea creatures, and the air with birds.  In the Amplified version it says, “Let the waters bring forth abundantly and swarm with living creatures, and let birds fly over the earth in the open expanse of the heavens,” (emphasis mine).  And in verse 24 it says, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creeping things, and [wild] beasts of the earth according to their kinds,” (emphasis mine).   The sea creatures are actually made of water, and the land creatures (including humans) are actually made out of earth, and in Genesis 2:7 we actually get to see God at work making the first man, and indeed, he is made from the earth.

Pastor Guzzardi said that when a creature gets too far away from the environment it was made from, it is in mortal danger, for example a fish out of water or a land animal in the middle of the ocean.  Then in Genesis 1:26 it says:

God said, “Let Us [Father, Son, and Holy Spirit] make mankind in Our image, after Our likeness, and let them have complete authority over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the [tame] beasts, and over all of the earth, and over everything that creeps upon the earth,” (emphasis mine).

(Note that the word “tame” that the Amplified version inserts is something I disagree with.  Before the fall (and this is clearly before the fall), all the animals were tame.)

Other versions use words like dominion, rule, and reign, it all amounts to the same thing:  humans were made to rule over the earth and all the creatures on earth and in the sea and skies.  Then Pastor Guzzardi showed a picture of a flower, like this one:

He said, “People sell their souls, rob from their mothers, and even kill to have this.  It’s an opium poppy.  If you don’t reign over the earth, the earth will reign over you.”  Then he showed another picture:

He said, “People sell their souls and lose their families to have this, too.  Paper money is made mostly of cotton.  If you don’t reign over the earth, the earth will reign over you.”  Then he showed other pictures:

He said, “Men sell their souls and walk out on their families to have this.  Women sell their souls and leave their children to have this.  We just read that these bodies are also made from the earth.  If you don’t reign over the earth, the earth will reign over you.”

Anything you can think of comes from the earth and can rule over you, if you don’t rule over it.

We have been given the authority to reign on the earth and over the earth.  When sin entered the picture, we forfeited that authority to the devil.  But through Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, He bought back our right to reign.  But we have to take authority, which is an active thing.  It won’t do us any good just to know that we have authority, we have to take it and use it.  If we don’t reign over the earth, the earth in one way or another will reign over us.

The only one who doesn’t have any legal rights on this earth is the devil.  True, he tempted and tricked us out of our authority, but without a physical body made from the earth, he has no legal right to rule over the earth.  He is called the prince of the power of the air because he has no physical body.

Great sermon!

And here’s how I took authority over the earth:  when I was almost too tired to keep going, and do what I needed to do, I took authority over the earth (specifically the earth that my body is made of), and I said, “I speak strength to keep going over my body.  Thank You, Jesus for giving me back the authority to reign over the earth!”  And I did feel stronger and was able to complete my work.  Then it occurred to me that we can do the same thing with sickness, injury, and any other earthly need.  Jesus was the perfect example of a man who reigned with authority over the earth.

Reign on!