All That Really Matters October 2, 2024
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Uncategorized.Tags: Bible, Christianity, Faith, god, Jesus
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Back when I was an atheist, and I believed this is all there is I was passionately interested in politics, economics, and current events. I was committed to working for my side and to defeating the other guy. Now that I’m a born-again child of God, a citizen of Heaven, and merely a pilgrim here[1] I follow the ever-changing kaleidoscope of civic events more like a soap opera.
Yes, I understand that within this bubble we know as the space-time continuum the ins and outs of who’s up and who’s down actually make a difference. For example, it will have a profound impact on the United States whether we hand the government over to socialist revolutionaries or if we deliver it to capitalists. However, in the grand scheme of things this makes about as much difference as which queen bee is laying eggs in which hive.
I came to this level of a wokeness after years of Bible study, prayer, and fellowship with God. Just as a caterpillar goes through a metamorphosis and becomes a butterfly, I believe humans go through much the same process. Only instead of a two-stage process like a butterfly we go through three stages.
First, we’re a fetus (in Latin fetus means little one) for nine months. Second, we’re born into this world and live here for as long as we do. And finally, we pass from this world into eternity. Let’s see: nine months, maybe 120 years, eternity. Which stage do you think is the real deal? The nine months prepare us for the 120 years and the 120 years prepare us for eternity. Two of these stages are merely steppingstones for the main event. Therefore, I contend that humans are in fact eternal beings who pass through two stages of development to become what we were created to be.
All that really matters in this stage of our development is the direction we’re facing when we leave it. Are we looking to God and putting our faith in Him? Or are we looking to the world still grasping for all it has to offer? Think of it this way: if when we’re a fetus inside our mother the umbilical cord is wrapped wrong or if there is a chromosomal problem, we could enter life with some sort of handicap that we will spend the next 120 years dealing with. In the same way if we enter eternity facing in the wrong direction, we will spend eternity dealing with the ramifications of that choice.
From my personal Christian perspective here’s the 411 on how we turn from the world and face in the right direction.
Everyone can see that this world is broken. Evil runs rampant. The bad are rewarded. The good are crushed. Sickness, poverty, and oppression are on display in every direction. If God is good, why would He create such a horror show?
The easy answer is He didn’t. When He was done with creation He paused and looked around. Surveying all that He had done, and it was “Good.”[2]
Then man turned away from God, embraced Satan, and God cursed the world while at the same time promising that a Savior would come who would step on Satan’s head and deliver humanity from the grip of the evil we chose.[3]
The price was a sinless sacrifice, the good for the bad.[4] No human could do it because none of us has ever or could ever live a sinless life. Therefore, God sent His only Son, Jesus, to be incarnated as a human, live a sinless life, and then offer himself up as a sacrifice for us all. After His sacrifice Jesus descended into hell and as an eternal being suffered the punishment for every sin that had ever or would ever be committed. Then He was born-again in the very heart of darkness, triumphed over Satan, and God raised Him from the dead.[5] Jesus led all those who had died waiting for this deliverance out of Satan’s grasp[6] and emerged on the third day with the keys to death and hell.[7]
After spending forty days instructing His disciples on how to carry the message of the best news ever to the world He ascended into heaven. Ten days later the Holy Spirit arrived and filled the new believers so that from then on, they were no longer earth-bound humans. They were instead wall-to-wall God twice-born children of the Most High God on a pilgrimage here with a mission[8] to share their experience to be witnesses.[9]
There it is in a nutshell. The word Gospel means “Good News” in old English. So, when you get filled to overflowing with all the bad news the world vomits up every day why not turn to the good news.
Don’t worry about what you can’t do anything about. Do you think if you missed one news broadcast or if you stopped watching them forever it would make any difference to what is happening on the stage of the world, or would the actors just keep reading their lines and playing their parts? The bad news impacts us more than we can ever impact it.
It’s like a joke making the rounds:
An English asks an Amish fellow, “Why isn’t the COVID rampaging through your communities?” The Amish fellow says without hesitation, “Because we don’t have any TVs.”
The TVs, radios, magazines, and papers may carry the news, but only the Bible has the Good News. It all comes down to choices: “choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the river, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”[10] In other words no matter what, we’re all going to serve somebody. It will either be any one of the countless gods of this world or the one true God.
How do you make that choice? Is it by joining the right church? Is it by attending the correct services, worshipping in a certain way, or following any of the endless rules the world invents to complicate and build a barrier between us and the God who wants us to join His family? No! Not only has He made it simple He has made it easy. All we need to do is confess Jesus as the Lord of our life and believe in our hearts that God has raised Him from the dead and we will be saved.[11] That’s it. Do that and we have joined God’s family. Then we can pour ourselves into His Word so that its life-giving Spirit will fill us and recreate us.
Forget about the bad news and study the Good News instead. Let’s “Eliminate the negative, accentuate the positive, latch on to the affirmative, and don’t with mess mister in between.”
Or to put it another way, “Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim, in the light of His glory and grace.”[12]
[1] 1 Peter 2:11-12
[2] Genesis 1:31
[3] Genesis 3
[4] Isaiah 53:1-5
[5] Colossians 2:15
[6] Ephesians 4:8
[7] Revelation 1:17-18
[8] I Peter 2:11-12
[9] Acts 1:1-11
[10][10] Joshua 24:15
[11] Romans 10:9
[12][12] Hymnal.net, accessed 5-15-21, https://www.hymnal.net/en/hymn/h/645
Who Are We September 25, 2024
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Uncategorized.Tags: Bible, Christianity, god, Jesus, Salvation
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Who can ever know us better than we know ourselves? Obviously, the answer is no one. Yet most people spend much of their life in frustrating attempts to figure it out. We’re like a man who looks into a mirror and as soon as he walks away forgets what he looks like.
I have that experience in an outward way daily as my inner man who feels like he’s in his mid-thirties remembers that outwardly I appear for some reason to be in my late sixties.
I’ve heard people say that life can be confusing because it doesn’t come with an instruction manual. I always feel bad for these people because they haven’t discovered there is a set of instructions for being a human being on the planet Earth. It’s called the Bible and it’s a really good book.
If we ever decide that this one book was in fact inspired by God in a literal sense, that its words are a God breathed revelation written and preserved through thousands of years just so that we can learn the meaning of life, the universe, and everything and no, it isn’t 42. It can change our life. At least I know it did for me.
You see, I’m one of those radicals who believe to the deepest depths of my soul the Bible is God’s Word for humanity. I have a simple belief … God said it … I believe it … that’s it.
This life changing revelation teaches us God created a perfect world. Man was given the keys to the kingdom and made God’s overseer. We turned away from God and gave the keys to the Devil. God is a just God. He wanted us to have dominion over his creation but we gave it away so He couldn’t just take it from the one we’d given it to and give it back to us.
Imagine our Daddy bought us a brand-new car. He wanted us to have the car. He wanted us to enjoy the car. He gave us the keys and the title. It’s our car. Then we give the car to someone else. That isn’t who Daddy wanted to have the car, but we gave it this other person. We gave them the keys and signed the title over to them. Now it’s their car. It was legal transaction so it wouldn’t be fair or just if Daddy just took the car from that other person and gave it back to us.
It’s the same way with God’s creation. By turning our backs on God and following the devil we turned the whole thing over to our enemy and we became his slaves. That’s what original sin is all about. We inherit the sin nature from our father Adam then each of us adds to the burden of sin on our own. The sin from the first to the last must be paid for if God is to return the title deed to creation back to humanity. And the only way for that to happen was for someone to carry all that sin through a perfect life, pay the penalty for sin, which is physical and spiritual death, descend into hell, and take the keys back from the devil. No human could ever do it because none of us has ever or could ever live a sinless life.
So God had to do it himself. He became flesh. He lived a sinless life. His death on the cross was a physical and spiritual sacrificial substitution for all of us. He went down into hell. He took the keys away from the devil. He rose from the dead. He ascended into heaven. And now as the new Adam of a new human race He declares any who believe in Him to be His children which means we can stand in the presence of God without any feelings of guilt or shame. We are completely forgiven and made sinless because we are united with Jesus through faith. When God looks at us, He sees Jesus. He gives us back the keys.
That’s it in a nutshell.
Who are we? We are who He says we are. We’re His children. We’re living stones built up into a spiritual temple where He himself dwells. He says if we confess Jesus as Lord, acknowledge Him as the boss of our life and believe God raised Him from the dead we will be saved. He doesn’t say we might be saved. He doesn’t say we could be saved. He says we WILL be saved. Believe it. Receive it. Live it. Walk out of this vale of tears and into the light of the Son of His love.
Who are we? You can be anyone you want to be. As for me and my house we will follow the Lord … we will be who He says we are … His children.
Who Are We? April 4, 2019
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Religion, Uncategorized.Tags: Bible, Dr. Robert Owens, getting saved, God’s Word, plan of salvation, Salvation
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Who can ever know us better than we know ourselves? Obviously the answer is no one. Yet most people spend much of their life in frustrating attempts to figure it out. We’re like a man who looks into a mirror and as soon as he walks away forgets what he looks like.
I have that experience in an outward way daily as my inner man who feels like he’s in his mid-thirties remembers that outwardly I appear for some reason to be in my late sixties.
I’ve heard people say that life can be confusing because it doesn’t come with an instruction manual. I always feel bad for these people because they haven’t discovered there is a set of instructions for being a human being on the planet Earth. It’s called the Bible and it’s a really good book.
If we ever come to the conclusion that this one book was in fact inspired by God in a literal sense, that its words are a God breathed revelation written and preserved through thousands of years just so that we can learn the meaning of life, the universe, and everything and no, it isn’t 42. It can change our life. At least I know it did for me.
You see, I’m one of those radicals who believe to the deepest depths of my soul the Bible is God’s Word for humanity. I have a simple belief … God said it … I believe it … that’s it.
This life changing revelation teaches us God created a perfect world. Man was given the keys to the kingdom and made God’s overseer. We turned away from God and gave the keys to the Devil. God is a just God. He wanted us to have dominion over his creation but we gave it away so He couldn’t just take it from the one we’d given it to and give it back to us.
Imagine our Daddy bought us a brand new car. He wanted us to have the car. He wanted us to enjoy the car. He gave us the keys and the title. It’s our car. Than we give the car to someone else. That isn’t who Daddy wanted to have the car but we gave it this other person. We gave them the keys and signed the title over to them. Now it’s their car. It was legal transaction so it wouldn’t be fair or just if Daddy just took the car from that other person and gave it back to us.
It’s the same way with God’s creation. By turning our backs on God and following the devil we turned the whole thing over to our enemy and we became his slaves. That’s what original sin is all about. We inherit the sin nature from our father Adam then each of us adds to the burden of sin on our own. The sin from the first to the last has to be paid for if God is to return the title deed to creation back to humanity. And the only way for that to happen was for someone to carry all that sin through a perfect life, pay the penalty for sin; which is physical and spiritual death, descend into hell, and take the keys back from the devil. No human could ever do it because none of us has ever or could ever live a sinless life.
So God had to do it himself. He became flesh. He lived a sinless life. His death on the cross was a physical and spiritual sacrificial substitution for all of us. He went down into hell. He took the keys away from the devil. He rose from the dead. He ascended into heaven. And now as the new Adam of a new human race He declares any who believe in Him to be His children which means we can stand in the presence of God without any feelings of guilt or shame. We are completely forgiven and made sinless because we are united with Jesus through faith. When God looks at us He sees Jesus. He gives us back the keys.
That’s it in a nut shell.
So who are we? We are who He says we are. We’re His children. We’re living stones built up into a spiritual temple where He himself dwells. He says if we confess Jesus as Lord, acknowledge Him as the boss of our life and believe God raised Him from the dead we will be saved. He doesn’t say we might be saved. He doesn’t say we could be saved. He says we WILL be saved. Believe it. Receive it. Live it. Walk out of this vale of tears and into the light of the Son of His love.
So who are we? You can be anyone you want to be. As for me and my house we will follow the Lord … we will be who He says we are … His children.
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2019 Contact Dr. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens or visit Dr. Owens Amazon Page / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens
Dr. Robert Owens Chronicles the History of the Future 