A New You for a New Year January 1, 2025
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Uncategorized.Tags: Bible, Christianity, god, Jesus, Salvation
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Are you sick and tired of being sick and tired? Have you reached the end of your rope only to find out that it’s much shorter than you imagined? Was last year as good as you hoped it would be? Was it as bad as you feared it would be? Does the uncertainty of the future leave you anxious? Has your own mortality entered like a crack in the ice in your youthful belief in personal indestructability?
But wait there’s more…
Does the randomness of good happening to bad people and bad happening to good people leave you wondering if there’s any rhyme or reason to reality? Is looking for answers to these and many other questions like looking for needles in haystacks? Is the quest to find meaning in life like trying to nail fog to the wall?
If you’ve rejected Christ because of Christians don’t mistake the messengers for the message. Christ told his followers to lake His light to the world and most have spent the last 2018 years trying to build a lamp and pretending it was the light.
The message is as simple as receiving it: Confess Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead and you will be saved.
That’s it.
It’s not about joining the right club or following the right rules. We don’t need a seminary degree or someone with one to walk us through learning the secret handshake or the Abra Kadabra password. And there is no magic decoder ring. We don’t have to read the Bible from cover to cover. We don’t have to wear the right clothes, beard, or haircut. We don’t have to vote for the right candidates. We don’t have to take an oath to believe the same things that everyone else who confesses Christ as Lord does.
It isn’t about being good enough. That’s one of the great miracles of God’s economy. While we were yet sinners Jesus came and died so that we could live.
It isn’t about becoming a religious robot who says the right things at the right time to the right people in the right place. God is the One who created us with free choice, so we’re free to choose. It isn’t about conformity. God is the One who created us to be an individual and He doesn’t make junk. We are who He created us to be. He has placed us in a certain time and place so that we can become all He designed us to be and do all that He has called us to do. And that means what He created, placed, and called you to be, will be different than what He created, placed, and called me to be. You see it isn’t about cookie-cutter, repeat a formula, and follow the rule book club membership.
It’s about each of us individually confessing Jesus as Lord and each of us individually believing God raised Jesus from the dead and then learning to commune with God, to hear Him speak to us as individuals and then doing what He tells us to do.
If the questions at the beginning of this article float through our minds like storm clouds in a cloudless sky obscuring what should be clear. Let’s give up the battle to do it on our own. Let’s surrender and find victory in allowing God to count the victory of Jesus over sin and death to our account.
It’s so easy we can do it right here right now. We don’t need to be in a meeting, at an altar, or in a special building. We don’t need anyone to hold our hand or even know what we’ve done. We will know. God will know. And once we’re in his hand no one can snatch us out.
I confess Jesus as Lord and I believe in my heart that God raised Him from the Dead. That’s it. All done. The battle is over. The war between us and God is over, and we are one with Him. Welcome to a new you for a new year.
What’s All This ‘In Christ’ Business All About? December 4, 2024
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Uncategorized.Tags: Bible, Faith, god, Jesus, Salvation
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Sometimes we born-again believers talk in such a closed-circuit Christianese dialect that baby believers, old line denominational members, let alone your everyday garden variety sinner has no idea what we’re talking about. We throw around words that carry massive meaning to us but sound like in-crowd jargon to those hearing them from the outside.
Propitiation, justification, and salvation are all words that trip up nonbelievers as they tiptoe around the cross. Then there are phrases we think say it all but, leave those we want to reach scratching their heads and standing off instead of kneeling down. Phrases such as: substitutionary death, pleading the blood, I’m born-again, I’m Filled with the Holy Ghost, and here’s one that throws them all, in Christ.
A dictionary will help with the words. The phrases usually take a little time in fellowship with others to sort out and understand. I can’t try to explain them all here, but I will try to address one of the most cryptic phrases to the uninitiated, in Christ.
“In Him.” This is a major theme of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians and of the whole New Testament. It’s a central teaching and a foundational truth. If for some reason this sounds strange to your ears or is a new concept study to show yourself approved.[1] We should follow the example of some early believers who upon hearing the Gospel of Jesus Christ, “searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so.”[2]
We can’t allow our development as believers to be the responsibility of anyone else. Yes, it’s good and advisable to have teachers and mentors; however, we can’t rely on them alone. In his letter to the Philippians Paul told them to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling”[3] and this is advice that we should also take to heart.
This major theme echoes through the New Testament: we are “in” Christ. Thousands of years after it was first presented to humanity it continues to ricochet through this verse into our spirit. The born-again believer resonates like a tuning fork to this life-giving message. The message, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life,”[4] floods down the corridors of time like an avalanche of hope.
The birth, life, death, and resurrection of Christ is the living parable of love for all to see.
The birth[5] of Jesus[6] set forth in scripture, is a graphic portrayal of prophecy[7] fulfilled.[8] The Incarnation is the union of deity and humanity. It was divine love’s invasion into the realm of human selfishness. That which had been foretold for millennia finally arrived. Or as the author of Hebrews tells us, “God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds.”[9]
This invasion wasn’t by an army of angels though it could’ve been. It wasn’t by raising up Israel to conquer the world and imposing belief in the One True God by force though that could’ve happened. Instead this invasion took the form of a tiny, defenseless Baby born in a manger on the poor side of town.
His parents called Him Jesus and His name has filled hearts and souls of humanity with songs and praise ever since. The love brought by God through this one birth has given hope to the defeated, healing to the sick, liberty to those in bondage, and salvation to all who confess Him as Lord and believe in their heart that God raised Him from the dead.[10]
All this is based upon the finished work of Christ. This finished work is the ultimate revelation of divine love. Jesus gave His life freely in place of ours.[11] He voluntarily became sin in our place so that we could become the very righteousness of God.[12]
And we become that righteousness when we claim our place as a part of the body of Christ, the church so that when we stand before God He doesn’t see our sins and our shortcomings, instead He sees the absolute righteousness of His own Son. This is how we can stand before a holy God with no sense of shame, guilt, or inadequacy.
The New Testament describes this well, “The way God designed our bodies is a model for understanding our lives together as a church: every part dependent on every other part, the parts we mention and the parts we don’t, the parts we see and the parts we don’t. If one-part hurts, every other part is involved in the hurt, and in the healing. If one-part flourishes, every other part enters into the exuberance. You are Christ’s body—that’s who you are! You must never forget this. Only as you accept your part of that body does your “part” mean anything.”[13]
And this is what we mean by being “in” Christ. We have accepted our place as a member, or part of Christ’s mystical body: the church. It is no longer we who live but Christ lives in us and through us. And now that we know, let’s go forth and be all that God has called us to be, let’s allow Christ to live in us as we live in Him. Let’s allow Him to reach through us and minister to a world in need.
[1] II Timothy 2:15
[2] Acts 17:10-11 NKJV
[3] Philippians 2:12 NKJV
[4] John 3:16 NKJV
[5] Matthew 1:18-25
[6] Luke 2:1-20
[7] Isaiah 7:14
[8] Luke 1:35
[9] Hebrews 1:1-2 NKJV
[10] Romans 10:9
[11] John 10:18
[12] II Corinthians 5:21
[13] I Corinthians 12 NKJV
He is the Head We Are the Body October 23, 2024
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Uncategorized.Tags: Bible, Christianity, Faith, god, Salvation
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As the body of Christ, we are His hands, His feet, and we should strive to speak His words, see with His eyes, and love with His heart. We’ve been washed in His blood, and we are the redeemed.
And this is not merely a spiritual renewal though that is the foundation of all that flows from it. We are renewed when we reckon ourselves dead to this world and alive to God.[1] When we put off the old man born in sin in the line of Adam and are re-born in the likeness of our Savior, Jesus Christ, the second Adam.[2]
This action: cleansing the sinner of all guilt and making us able to stand in the throne room in the very presence of God with no shame or feelings of inadequacy may seem extravagant. Paul tells us that we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, and that all this is not some hap-hazard addendum.[3] No, it flows directly from all God’s wisdom and prudence.
This action on God’s part not only impacts the spiritual renewal of the believer. It also leads to a physical and mental renewal which the believer experiences here-and-now. This is the redemption of our bodies.
And just as Christ is redeemed now so is the believer who is in Christ Jesus. Our bodies will someday be glorified fully in the presence of God, but in the here and now we taste the first fruit of our redemption in the total renewing of our lives.[4] For as members of the body of Christ, as children of God, as joint heirs together with Jesus we are born of one baptism and filled with one Spirit.[5] We are the body and Christ is the head.[6]
However, since we are born of the flesh as descendants of the first Adam. Conceived, born, living in sin, and the members of a lost and degraded race, we must be redeemed and sanctified before we can enter the kingdom of God. Remember we were chosen in Christ Jesus before the foundation of the world. Once we have accepted Christ as our Savior and believe in our hearts that God has raised Him from the dead this inheritance is our possession
However, we must possess our possessions for them to do us any good. If we don’t accept the love of God in and through Christ Jesus, they are just so many gifts lying about unaccepted.
The life is in the blood.[7] And it is the shedding of His blood that is the first action in the unfolding of our redemption. This is the Good News and it’s the best news ever. Christ poured out His blood so that we might be freed from our burden of sin. There is no longer an unbridgeable gulf between God and humanity. The sin life, the sin nature that the first Adam assumed when he disobeyed God and then passed on to all his offspring has been washed away in the blood of Calvary.
Lord, let us see with your eyes, hear with your ears, love with your heart, and touch with your hands. As we strive to be about Your business send us somewhere to be a blessing to someone somehow.
He is the head we are the body
As the body of Christ, we are His hands, His feet, we should strive to speak His words, see with His eyes, and love with His heart. We’ve been washed in His blood, and we are the redeemed.
And this is not merely a spiritual renewal though that is the foundation of all that flows from it. We are renewed when we reckon ourselves dead to this world and alive to God.[8] When we put off the old man born in sin in the line of Adam and are re-born in the likeness of our Savior the second Adam.[9]
This action, cleansing the sinner of all guilt and making us able to stand in His presence with no shame or feelings of inadequacy may seem extravagant. However, in the verse we are currently examining Paul tells us that we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins and that all this is not some hap-hazard addendum. No, it flows directly from God’s all wisdom and prudence.
This action on God’s part not only impacts the spiritual renewal of the believer. It also leads to a physical and mental renewal which the believer experiences here-and-now. This is the redemption of our bodies.
And just as Christ is redeemed now so is the believer who is in Christ Jesus. Our bodies will someday be glorified fully in the presence of God but in the here and now we taste the first fruit of our redemption in the renewing of our lives in totality.[10] For as members of the body of Christ, as children of God, as joint heirs together with Jesus we are born of one baptism, filled with one Spirit, we are the body and Christ is the head.[11]
However, since we are born of the flesh as descendants of the first Adam conceived, born, living in sin, the members of a lost and degraded race we must be redeemed and sanctified before we can enter the kingdom of God. Remember we were chosen in Christ Jesus before the foundation of the world. This inheritance is our possession once we have accepted Christ as our Savior and believe in our heart that God has raised Him from the dead.
However, we must possess our possessions for them to do us any good. If we don’t accept the love of God in and through Christ Jesus, they are just so many gifts lying about unaccepted.
The life is in the blood.[12] And it is the shedding of His blood that is the first action in the unfolding of our redemption. This is the Good News. Actually, it’s the best news ever. Christ poured out His blood so that we might be freed from our burden of sin. There is no longer an unbridgeable gulf between God and humanity. The sin life, the sin nature that the first Adam assumed when he sinned and then passed on to all his offspring has been washed away in the blood of Calvary.
Lord, let us see with your eyes, hear with your ears, love with your heart, and touch with your hands. As we strive to be about your business send us somewhere to be a blessing to someone somehow.
[1] Romans 9:11
[2][2] Romans 5:12-19
[3][3] Ephesians 1:7-8
[4][4] Romans 8:1-11
[5] Galatians 3:26-29
[6][6] Colossians 1:18
[7][7] Leviticus 17:11
[8] Romans 6:11
[9] Roams 5:12-19, I Corinthians 15: 20-22 & 45-49
[10] Romans 8:1-11
[11] Galatians 3:26-29
[12] Leviticus 17:11, Leviticus 17:14, Deuteronomy 12:23
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.
Resurrection Reflections April 13, 2022
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Uncategorized.Tags: Born-again, Coronavirus, resurrection, Salvation, shelter-in-place, t Owens
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As we hunker in the bunker and wait for the Death Angel to pass over it’s good to remember that being negative is positively one of the worst things we can do. Not only is it a waste of time, it’s depressing. God tells us in many ways “Do not worry” more times than He tells us “Do not steal.” And we all know what stealing is. Can any one of us by worrying add a single hour to our life or add an inch to our height?
As with almost anything that happens it doesn’t take long for Christians to start asking, “Do you think these are signs of the End Times?” The Bible tells us we’ve been in the End Times at least since the writing of the book of Hebrews in the New Testament. All I can do is repeat what Luke told us so long ago, “Now when these things begin to happen, look up and lift up your heads, because your redemption draws near.”
Wars and pandemics shake our world. In a moment we’re in a brave new world wondering, “Will we ever get back to the way it was?” Things can seem so dark, so forbidding, so bleak it’s easy to lose our focus on Christ and the life He’s given us in the middle of so much sickness and death. If we focus on the negative, we may lose sight of the positive reality: Christ triumphed over death. He conquered it through His death on the cross where He died so we may live.
He lived a life of love and perfection. He died a death of hate and rejection. He rose to share joy and perfection. Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. Accept Him and find life. Reject Him and reject life.
God is so vast yet so personal, so sublime yet so simple. We are His creation, yet He adopts us as children. He sustains the universe and all that’s in it, yet we ask Him to find us a parking space at MegloMart. The wisest humans who’ve ever lived could never devise a system of religious rules or disciplines that can lead us through the snare of the flesh to the liberation of the spirit. Or, as Paul expresses it, “For in Christ, neither our most conscientious religion nor disregard of religion amounts to anything. What matters is something far more interior: faith expressed in love.”
In these times of stress, we need to stand strong, keep our eyes on the prize, and refuse to waver. The government may try to become our all in all but believing that will be the surest way to fall. We may be riveted on the daily briefings and the emergency alerts in the natural, but in the spirit we need to turn our 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.
“Don’t be misled no one makes a fool of God. What a person plants, he will harvest. The person who plants selfishness, ignoring the needs of others — ignoring God! — harvests a crop of weeds. All he’ll have to show for his life is weeds! But the one who plants in response to God, letting God’s Spirit do the growth work in him, harvests a crop of real life, eternal life.”
Here’s some good advice from the days of a war long ago which was also based on truths from the Bible:
Johnny Mercer began his #1 hit by saying, “Gather ’round me, everybody.
Gather ’round me while I’m preachin.’ Feel a sermon comin’ on me. The topic will be sin and that’s what I’m ag’in’. If you wanna hear my story
then settle back and just sit tight while I start reviewin’ the attitude of doin’ right”
Then he crooned:
You’ve got to accentuate the positive
eliminate the negative
Latch on to the affirmative
But don’t mess with mister in-between
You’ve got to spread joy up to the maximum
Bring gloom down to the minimum
have faith, a pandemonium
Libel to walk up on the scene
To illustrate my last remark
Jonah in the Whale, Noah in the ark
What did they do
just when everything looked so dark
They said we better
accentuate the positive
eliminate the negative
latch on to the affirmative
But don’t mess with mister in-between.
As I reflect upon the Resurrection, I can see this is still good advice today.
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, Global Studies, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2022 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
A New You for a New Year January 5, 2022
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Uncategorized.Tags: Dr. Robert Owens, New Year’s 2022, Salvation
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Are you sick and tired of being sick and tired? Have you reached the end of your rope only to find out that it’s much shorter than you imagined? Was last year as good as you hoped it would be? Was it as bad as you feared it would be? Does the uncertainty of the future leave you anxious? Has your own mortality entered like a crack in the ice in your youthful belief in personal indestructability?
But wait there’s more…
Does the randomness of good happening to bad people and bad happening to good people leave you wondering if there’s any rhyme or reason to reality? Is looking for answers to these and many other questions like looking for needles in haystacks? Is the quest to find meaning in life like trying to nail fog to the wall?
If you’ve rejected Christ because of Christians don’t mistake the messengers for the message. Christ told his followers to lake His light to the world, and most have spent the last 2000 + years trying to build a lamp and pretending it was the light.
The message is as simple as receiving it: Confess Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead and you will be saved.
That’s it.
It’s not about joining the right club or following the right rules. We don’t need a seminary degree or someone with one to walk us through learning the secret handshake or the Abra Kadabra password. And there is no magic decoder ring. We don’t have to read the Bible from cover to cover. We don’t have to wear the right clothes, beard, or haircut. We don’t have to vote for the right candidates. We don’t have to take an oath to believe the same things that everyone else who confesses Christ as Lord does.
It isn’t about being good enough. That’s one of the great miracles of God’s economy. While we were yet sinners Jesus came and died so that we could live.
It isn’t about becoming a religious robot who says the right things at the right time to the right people in the right place. God is the One who created us with free choice, so we’re free to choose. It isn’t about conformity. God is the One who created us to be an individual and He doesn’t make junk. We are who He created us to be. He has placed us in a certain time and place so that we can become all He designed us to be and do all that He has called us to do. And that means what He created, placed, and called you to be, will be different than what He created, placed, and called me to be. You see it isn’t about cookie-cutter, repeat a formula, and follow the rule book club membership.
It’s about each of us individually confessing Jesus as Lord and each of us individually believing God raised Jesus from the dead and then learning to commune with God, to hear Him speak to us as individuals and then doing what He tells us to do.
If the questions at the beginning of this article float through our minds like storm clouds in a cloudless sky obscuring what should be clear. Let’s give up the battle to do it on our own. Let’s surrender and find victory in allowing God to count the victory of Jesus over sin and death to our account.
It’s so easy we can do it right here right now. We don’t need to be in a meeting, at an altar, or in a special building. We don’t need anyone to hold our hand or even know what we’ve done. We will know. God will know. And once we’re in his hand no one can snatch us out.
I confess Jesus as Lord and I believe in my heart that God raised Him from the Dead. That’s it. All done. The battle is over. The war between us and God is over, and we are one with Him. Welcome to a new you for a new year.
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, Global Studies, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2022 Contact Dr. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens Facebook @ Drrobertowens or visit Dr. Owens’ Amazon Page / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens
What is Christmas Without Christ? December 24, 2021
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Uncategorized.Tags: advent, Christmas, Jesus’ birthday, Salvation, the reason for the season
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What have Santa Clause, Frosty the Snowman, It’s a Wonderful Life, roasting chestnuts, hippos, hula hoops, and barking dogs got to do with Christmas?
They may bring warmth to our hearts. They may bring a smile to our lips. Or they may make us groan. Whatever they do to each of us what they all have in common is that they’re glued to Christmas like barnacles to the hull of the good ship lollipop. They’re the accumulated cultural baggage that increasingly obscures the real meaning of a revolutionary blessed event under the camouflage of a socially acceptable winter break.
The ABCCBSNBCCNNMSNBCPBSNPR Cartel tells us constantly that we now live in a post-Christian America. They exalt in proclaiming the end of Christ’s dominant influence on Western Civilization. As a result, we’ve descended from a city on a hill to a modern Sodom and Gomorrah. Our elites call evil good and good evil.
Ever since the nine black-robed masters of America decreed back in 1962 that God was expelled from school we’ve witnessed the steady degradation of our society. The coarseness and vulgarity we’re deluged with on a daily basis was unknown in earlier days. What we call prime time entertainment was once known as pornography. What were abominations and generally accepted as perversions have become the norm while believing them to be against God’s Word is now considered some type of mental disorder. The cabal of self-appointed paragons of pomposity that masquerade as educators, politicians, and journalists cap their war against God when they glory in the right of self-interest to sacrifice the lives of the innocent and demand that the government not only endorse it but subsidize it.
As a natural outgrowth of the city of man’s war against God that defines America’s progressive culture comes the war against Christmas.
Back in the dream time we used to go to Christmas programs at our children’s schools and listen to the little darlings sing The First Noel, Oh Little Town of Bethlehem, and O Come O Come Emmanuel. Now we listen to them sing songs in foreign languages or do beautiful arrangements of sounds that don’t even have a meaning intermixed with a few songs about winter, snow, or maybe animals. It may all be Woke but it sure doesn’t have anything to do with the reason for the season.
Just in case all the tinsel and the twinkling lights have blinded us to what that reason is let me elaborate.
Christmas is all about Jesus the Christ born as a human so that he could bear the sins of the world, die a substitutionary death in our place, rise triumphantly from the grave and ascend into heaven so that we who believe can live in and through Him. That’s what it’s all about. Christmas must be linked to Easter to have any meaning. I’ve met people who never realized that the Jesus in the manger on Christmas was the same Jesus who hung on the cross on Good Friday. I did not meet them in the jungles of some remote island but in America with a church on every corner. This is a clear case of Santa with a coke in his hand winning the advertising debate over the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world. It may all be Woke but it sure doesn’t have anything to do with the reason for the season.
What is Christmas without Christ? It’s a worldly hedonistic overly commercialized gift giving/receiving orgasm perpetrated by humanity’s enemy to keep us from knowing that Christ came to set us free, to reconcile us to God, and to make a way for us to live as a new creation in a new creation.
Not to be Grinch, let me wish everyone a Merry Christmas. Let’s enjoy our family and friends. Let’s celebrate our traditions as we remember Jesus is the reason for the season. Let’s wake up and smell the frankincense and myrrh for without Christ in Christmas all we have is “mas.”
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, Global Studies, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2021 Contact Dr. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook @ Drrobertowens, or visit Dr. Owens’ Amazon Page / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens
The Day I Was Born Again September 8, 2021
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Uncategorized.Tags: born again, Dr. Robert Owens, Jesus saves, Salvation
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I can remember when I was born-again. I came up from me knees a new creature living in a new creation, old things had passed away and everything had become new. I had this life changing experience in a church where that kind of thing was not supposed to happen.
In this church they shared the Lord’s Supper at every service. This was the first time I felt I was ready to partake of the bread and wine. While kneeling at the altar rail I reflected upon my recent study of the four Gospels. I had come to a place where I thought this Gospel is either the truth or it’s a lie. If it’s the truth it is undoubtedly the most important message ever delivered. If it was a lie, it was just one among many.
As a person who had studied History daily for many years, I knew that all of the writers of the Gospels had been martyred. This led me to reflect, “If these men had written a lie, they would have known it was a lie and that Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, there is no salvation, and the whole thing was a hoax.”
I also knew that before they were martyred, they were given a choice, say what they’d written was a lie and worship the emperor or stand by what they’d written and die. All of them chose to die. The thought that four men would all choose to die to promote or perpetuate a hoax didn’t sound or feel believable to me.
All this had been running round and round in my mind for weeks. Finally, as I knelt at that altar I decided, “It has to be true.” Right then and there I prayed, “Jesus, I want you to be the Lord of my life. I want to give my life to you. I repent of my sins, and I ask you to save me.” That was it. I believed God had raised Jesus from the grave and I accepted Him as my Lord.
Instantly I was translated into an ecstasy of joy. I raised my hands and I praised God for hearing my prayer and for saving me. From that moment on I knew beyond all doubt that Jesus is God, that He came to earth to save the lost, and that He will meet us wherever we are and accept us no matter what we’ve done. From that moment to this I have known the intimacies of the new birth and no one nor no thing can ever separate me from my Savior.
That was what happened on the inside deep within my being as my spirit which had been dead to God came alive. On the outside I stayed at the altar after everyone else left and returned to their seats. I stayed there throughout the rest of the service and for about another half hour after everyone left the sanctuary and moved into the fellowship hall.
I was completely oblivious to any sound or movement around me. I had no awareness of the passage of time. I was bathed in the joy of God, surrounded by His presence, communing with my Savior, wrapped in His love.
When I returned to normal consciousness I got up, I looked around dumbfounded at the empty sanctuary. To me I had only been at the altar for a few moments. I followed the sound of people talking into the fellowship hall. As I entered, I began praising God. I told them all, “I’ve just been born again!”
Everyone, the pastor included looked at me as if I was crazy. You would have thought I had just said, “A unicorn jumped over a rainbow and gave me some candy.” The President of the Church Council told me, “We don’t go for any of that Born-Again nonsense here. If you’re going to act like that drag it down the street someplace else.”
I was confused. From my reading of the scriptures everyone must be born again if they want to see God and His kingdom and here was a leader in the Church telling me this life changing experience was somehow out of place in this particular church.
But I knew what I had just experienced, and no one was going to convince me that God hadn’t just touched me, that He hadn’t wiped away my guilt, and made me new. No one could convince me that I hadn’t just been born again.
The Pastor seeing my look of confusion took me aside and asked me what had happened. When I described the miracle as clearly as I could he told me it was probably an emotional response to a thought-provoking sermon.
Imagine if you lived on an island where everyone crawls instead of walks. It has always been this way, and this is the only way anyone can ever remember it being. Then one day a person stands up and starts to walk. Everyone is shocked. They are scandalized. The leaders of the community express the thoughts of the majority, “I mean whoever heard of such a thing, someone walking instead of crawling.” Turning on the lone walker they cry in unison, “Get back down here and crawl like you’re supposed to! What if others start this walking business? Do you want to destroy our traditions? What if the children see you and start walking instead of crawling?”
It’s not that crawling is better than walking. We all know that it isn’t. It’s just that this is the way things have always been so that is seen as the way they should be. Anything different is rejected out of hand, no consideration, no inner reflection, no comparison of two different options just instantaneous and total rejection.
This is just how it seems when people who have never experienced the new birth, have never experienced the unrivaled intimacies of a loving God bringing life to the dead spirit we inherited from Adam try to tell us who have, to settle down and follow traditions.
Instead of the eternal everlasting death we all deserve due to our Adamic inheritance and our own sin God in His infinite mercy and love gives us eternal life. And He has not only given us life He gives us the very life of Christ the life that defeated death. In a foreshadowing of the life-giving power of Christ once some Israelites were about to burry a man when a sudden attack of the enemy forced them to forego using a new grave and they placed the body in the tomb of Elisha the prophet. As soon as the body of the dead man touched the bones of the prophet the man came back to life. And so it is with every spiritually dead person who comes to the cross of Christ who surrenders themselves and accepts Jesus as Lord.
We must never let anyone convince us that humanity can be perfected outside of God’s plan of salvation and through Jesus Christ. Nothing, not education, politics, economics, genetic engineering, theology, philosophy, or psychology can forge a way to life for the spiritually dead except through Christ. All of these things can be helpful tools. They can all help us make sense of a fallen and disordered world. But they cannot save us. They cannot change us from fallen and lost people into what we were created to be: children of the Most High God.
And it is purely through grace that this is even possible. We cannot earn our way. There is no twelve-step plan to salvation. There is no self-help program that will deliver us from evil. In His great love for humanity God opened the way through Christ’s sacrifice and His resurrection for the dead to live, the fallen to rise, the blind to see, and the lost to be found.
May every one of us, descendants of Adam, the lost and the spiritually dead repent of our sins, turn from the world, and accept the glorious gift God offers us. Let’s embrace the life Christ has won for us.
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, Global Studies, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2021 Contact Dr. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook, Twitter, Gab, or MeWe @ Drrobertowens, or visit Dr. Owens’ Amazon Page / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens
August 10, 2021
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Uncategorized.Tags: Dr. Robert Owens, Jesus saves, life in Christ, redemption, Salvation
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We Can’t Do It On Our Own
There is something about us that makes us want to make everything about us. If there is any way to make it appear to anyone, everyone, or even just ourselves we will move any mountain, swim any sea, or rationalize any action to see ourselves as the center of the universe. And salvation falls into this same pattern.
For this reason, every religion man has ever devised has been built upon works. We must earn our way to heaven. That way we can take the credit.
I taught Comparative Religion for several colleges. During the semester as we covered the major and many minor religions of the world I would right on the board a section on each one. In these sections I wrote what it takes to receive salvation or make it to heaven in these different religions. At the end I asked the students to review all the sections and see if they could spot one striking similarity and one striking difference.
Inevitably at least one, often several, would discern that every religion except one required people to earn their salvation. And only one, Christianity, said salvation comes through faith alone.
Several times after this exercise students sought me out after class and accepted the Lord as their personal Savior. One time a woman brought in her whole family, and they all confessed Christ as Lord and professed their belief that God had raised Him from the dead.
We know there is a profound and life altering difference between a mental assent that Christ is Lord and a knowledge that God raised Him from the dead and a living faith in these two realities. The very faith we use to accept and profess is a gift from God. However, God gave us our intellect. He doesn’t mean for us to check our mind at the door when we enter His presence.
Learning the truth is a fundamental step towards accepting the truth.
The heart of the matter is a matter of the heart. Humanity does not need another teacher, a leader, or a new way of looking at life. The problem is that since the fall of Adam man has been spiritually dead. We are separated by an uncrossable gulf from God and each other. What we need is spiritual re-birth and reunification of fractured humanity.
Once we are re-created in Christ our feet are on the highway of holiness leading to life in, through, and with our Savior, but we aren’t merely passive passengers along for the ride. Because once we’re saved, we have work to do.
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, Global Studies, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2021 Contact Dr. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Parler, Facebook, Twitter, Gab, or MeWe @ Drrobertowens, or visit Dr. Owens’ Amazon Page / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens
Don’t Just Live Be Alive August 3, 2021
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Uncategorized.Tags: Dr. Robert Owens, Jesus saves, life in Christ, redemption, Salvation
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All of humanity have physical life while we spend our moment upon the stage of the world. Most have a soulish, or mental life whether we exercise it or not. But only those who have been born-again and united with Christ have spiritual life.
Try to imagine a human being who has no wisdom or understanding, no mental activity beyond what it takes to move, eat, and exist. This person might be in great shape, but their true humanity would be gone, and they would exist more as an animal than as a human.
This is how it is when we have not been born from above or re-born of the spirit. We may be in great shape, we may even be famous, or rich, handsome, beautiful, and acclaimed by all but we wouldn’t be a child of God. We would be dead in our spirit and separated from all that truly makes life worth living: union with our Creator.
Like casting pearls before swine trying to explain spiritual things to anyone who hasn’t been joined to the Body of Christ and received the Holy Spirit is like trying to hold the opposite ends of a magnet together, they repulse each other by their very nature.
Think for a moment of any funeral you’ve ever attended. There was grief present. There may have been tears. There might even have been stunned silence as the mourners contemplated the suddenness of death and the transitory nature of lie. One thing that is never there though is the one in the coffin taking any notice of any of this.
And that’s just how it is with the spiritually dead. The life of God’s Spirit is going on all around them. His Spirit is upholding and maintaining the integrity of all creation. His Spirit is alive and working in all the born-again Christians walking around them all day every day.
There is no more recognition of the passage, the work, or the presence of God’s Holy Spirit among the lost than there is recognition of all the life going on around a corpse in a casket. The spiritually dead read the Bible as it was just another book. They think of God as if He were a moral principle, the force, or a myth. They think of being born-again as something other people do, something that makes no sense, or else they don’t think about it all.
A person who is blind isn’t startled when you turn on a light. A person who is deaf doesn’t jump when you yell at them. It’s the same with those who are spiritually dead and living comfortably in sin, they couldn’t care less that God is holy and that He will not abide sin. They are neither frightened of the consequences of their sin nor are they enthralled with the rewards of salvation. They are blind. They are deaf. They are dead. When we speak of the deep things of God to these walking dead, we might as well be speaking to a brick wall. We are casting our pearls before swine. There is only one message we should seek to share with the lost: repent of your sins, accept Jesus as your Savior, and find life.
The whole meaning of the Gospel, the good news delivered to humanity through Jesus Christ, is seen in His resurrection.
Sin, death, and the devil are defeated when Jesus triumphed over them in the pit of hell disarming principalities and powers making a public spectacle of them as He led captivity captive. We must never forget that He was perfectly sinless and that He was delivered to the executioner for our transgressions and then He was raised for our justification.
Jesus didn’t come to die and then rise again to raise our awareness or further our education. He didn’t live a sinless life and then suffer for the sinful merely to provide us with a moral guide. God didn’t sacrifice His only Son to establish a cultural tradition. No, the passion of the Christ happened so that humanity may learn the truth about God’s love for us and His provision of a way to return to Him and become His children. This is the truth, and the truth has been revealed so that we may be free.
When someone has been missing for a certain length of time the authorities begin looking for them. If when they find them, they’re dead, after notifying their nearest family what else is there left to do except burry them. Because once we’re dead, we begin to decay rather quickly.
Preaching the Word without the anointing of the Holy Spirit is no more than searching for dead bodies. For without the Spirit there is no life. An old story says that once a man had a heart attack and died in a spiritually vacant church and it took the EMTs half an hour to figure out which one was the physically dead among all the spiritually dead.
Having scoured the highways and the byways for those willing to give up an hour on Sunday morning and pay their tithes these blind leaders of the blind can do no more with the breathing corpses than burry them in an upholstered pew. They preach a socially relevant something being careful to end the service in time to make it to the local buffet before all the other stained-glass graveyards get out.
It’s amazing but true, many who have never experienced the new birth will dispute with those of us who have what it is, how it operates, and what it does within us. Leave the laws, traditions, and ceremonies of the world behind and find the freedom that God wants you to have in Christ Jesus and don’t just live, be alive.
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, Global Studies, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2021 Contact Dr. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Parler, Facebook, Twitter, Gab, or MeWe @ Drrobertowens, or visit Dr. Owens’ Amazon Page / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens
Dr. Robert Owens Chronicles the History of the Future 