What an outsider thinks of the American police.

Years ago (about 2001) my wife and I had the opportunity to visit our children who worked in the United States for 18 months.  At one time we went by train from Boston to Philadelphia.  We arrived at ten o’clock that night and just walked to the apartment where they lived.  For us who come from a country where we will not even consider something like that because it is too dangerous, I was amazed.  There was police everywhere and we felt very safe.  

Many years ago the Person who did only good and had only good intentions was vilified, cursed, shouted at, insulted and in general made out to be the worst kind of offender.  Today we see the same attitude towards the police in America.  They are there to help and protect the citizens.  Yet they are vilified, shouted at, abused, et cetera.  To me it is amazing that even under such hostile conditions they just carry on.  Nobody denies that they make mistakes, especially under tense situations.  They risk their lives, yet they are treated as skunks.  

There is a type of parallel here. 

• Take Jesus out of the equation and what will happen?  Chaos, as the devil has full control.  
• Take the police out of the equation and what will happen?  Chaos.  The devil will love that!  

We are non-Americans but we have the greatest respect for the police force of the United States.  They surely need support. 

Did Jesus evolve?

Many years ago when God called me, my wife and I joined a small church.  Coming out of a background of zero knowledge of either God or the Bible, some things puzzled me.  How could I be sure the Bible was the words of God?  Another  problem was… Jesus.  It baffled me where He came from?  Later I just decided He must have fallen out of heaven.  Or He evolved.  

With time came more insight.  God already introduced His Son in the first few chapters of Genesis 1-11:9.  Personally I doubted if the Garden of Eden and Satan’s entry into it could be explained by evolution.     

Besides that, Jesus was part of the eternal Triune God.  The reason for Him to become Son of Man made sense:

• Sin and rebellion entered the world through the deceit of the devil,

“You will not surely die, ‘the serpent [Satan] said to the woman.’” Genesis 3:4.  

Satan deceived Adam and Eve.  Expelled from the Garden, sin became part of life.  Cain, their eldest child, became the first ‘convert’ of Satan.  God warned him, 

‘But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door.  It desires to have you, but you must master it.’  Genesis 4:7b

Cain could not master sin.  Humans cannot resist the cleverness of the devil.  

• God came to the rescue.  Someone, in the image of man, would be our Deliverer,

‘He [Seed of the woman, Jesus] will crush your [Serpent’s, Satan’s] head and you will strike His heel.’  Genesis 3:15b

Jesus would be the Saviour to redeem us from the power of the devil,

‘The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.’  1 John 3:8

God already hinted at the Great Escape from the dungeons of the devil in what He did for Adam and Eve, 

‘The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.’ Genesis 3:21

God Himself made the clothes and dressed them.  It is a remarkable reference to salvation through the shedding of blood – a vivid picture of God’s grace and mercy. 

The lesson for me? 

Jesus did not fall out of the air.  He did not evolve.  God in His wisdom planned it all before creation,

‘He [Jesus] was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake.’  1 Peter 1:20

Glory! 

Are the 66 books God’s Word?

As a young believer I was given a Bible, told to read it, and pray.  That was it.  Nobody attempted to give me any kind of Bible lessons, or an introductory course to help me understand what that intimidating Book was about.  

The Holy Spirit taught me to begin, as with any other ordinary book, at the beginning of the Bible.  The first verse is, 

‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.’  Genesis 1:1

It forcefully struck me that everything came to exist solely by the words God spoke:  

“And God said, ‘Let there by light, and there was light.'” Genesis 1:3

I saw that, ‘And God said’ occurs 8 more times in Genesis 1:6,9,11,14,20,22,24,26. 

As I continued to read and study, I found many more details that embroidered on that miraculous beginning.  For example, Psalm 148:5 says,

‘Let them [creation] praise the name of the Lord, for He commanded and they were created.’ 

Throughout the Bible there are more details that God Created with words.  In the New Testament in a book by the apostle Peter, I read,   

‘But they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water and by water.’  2 Peter 3:5

What I began to understand was that God, in a sense, ‘scatters’ information about a subject across the books of the Bible.  OK, so I knew I had to seek God and His plan in all 66 books.

Then my next problem arose (it seemed to me as if I was born a doubter).   Was the Bible really the Word of God?  The sentence in a book I read, ‘The Bible is the product of man, not of God,’ had a powerful impact on me.  So how could I be sure it is God who speaks through the 66 books?  It sent me to dig deeper into the Scriptures to see how God answers that one….