Australian officials would like us to rebrand shark attacks as “negative encounters.” The swimmer who was bitten by a great white shark at a beach near San Francisco last month may not agree.

Officials in Texas are assuring the public that the Dallas resident who has the first-ever case of monkeybox in our state is “not a reason for alarm.” The infected patient in isolation at a Dallas hospital may not agree.

It is human nature to downplay threats we cannot control. For example, we say of those who die that they “departed” or “passed on.” But euphemisms cannot change the reality they describe.

As of this morning, 188 people have died in massive flooding in Europe. The death toll in the Surfside, Florida, condominium collapse stands at ninety-seven. At least sixty-five people underwent decontamination on Saturday following a chemical leak at a Six Flags water park near Houston.

Three people were wounded in a shooting outside the Washington Nationals baseball stadium that caused the game to be suspended. At least two people were killed and several others were wounded by shootings at three locations in Tucson, Arizona, yesterday afternoon. And the global death toll from the coronavirus pandemic stands at 4,089,175 at this writing.

American Christians are under unprecedented pressure by our secularized culture to compromise biblical truth and morality. But the inescapable realities of death and eternity beyond the grave demonstrate conclusively that every person we know needs to know what we know about death.

Martin Luther said, “Every man must do two things alone: he must do his own believing and his own dying.” Let’s see how the first helps us with the second.

Why nonbelievers fear death

It’s human nature to fear the unknown. The dread we feel that keeps us from venturing into a cave where a predator is waiting is a God-given response that may save our lives.

Even when our lives are not at risk, we understandably fear what we cannot predict. From going to a new school to beginning a new job or moving to a new city, we are naturally apprehensive of the future.

Death, of course, is the greatest unknown. Nonbelievers do not believe anyone has ever come back from the other side, so they have no empirical way to know what happens when we die. Do we simply cease to exist? Are we reincarnated? Do we spend eternity in heaven? In hell?

However, our post-Christian society has devised a solution. Postmodernism has taught us that our reality is the reality. Truth is “our truth.” Therefore, if we don’t believe there is an afterlife, we don’t need to be concerned with an afterlife. The man who declared to me “I don’t believe in hell” was convinced that his opinion settled the matter.

“I consider eternity as another possibility”

This is illogical in the extreme, of course. Denying that cancer exists doesn’t keep me from getting cancer.

Even more, this is a satanic deception. Our enemy wants nothing more than to delude us into thinking we don’t need what Jesus came to give. We are unlikely to repent of our sins and seek forgiveness if we don’t think we need to repent of our sins or seek forgiveness. We would not turn to Christ as our Lord if we do not need a Lord. If we can be our own god (Genesis 3:5), we’ll try to be our own god.

The poet Mary Oliver wrote: “When death comes / like an iceberg between the shoulder blades, / I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering: / what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?” As a result, she continues, “I look upon time as no more than an idea, / and I consider eternity as another possibility.”

She concludes: “When it’s over, I want to say all my life / I was a bride married to amazement. / I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. / When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder / if I have made of my life something particular and real. / I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened / or full of argument. / I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.”

Nor do I. Nor do you, I suspect. But her plan for being “married to amazement” and “taking the world into my arms” is to “consider eternity as another possibility.” If we see eternity as only a “possibility,” we will assuredly not be ready when we experience it as a reality.

Are you a practical universalist?

I hope you do not share nonbelievers’ agnosticism or atheism with regard to death and eternity. If you are not certain that you have made Jesus your Savior and Lord, please turn to him today. (For answers to frequent questions about Jesus and a way to trust him for salvation, please see my website article, “Why Jesus?”)

As we have seen, one of Satan’s great deceptions is convincing lost people that they are not lost. A second deception is convincing Christians that lost people are not truly lost.

Based on the clear teaching of Scripture (cf. John 14:6; Acts 4:12; John 3:18; Revelation 20:15), we may agree theologically that lost people need Jesus. But if we are not taking the risk to share Christ with them, our actions betray our supposed convictions.

In this case, we are practical universalists. We are not so certain that our lost neighbors, friends, and family members need Jesus to avoid hell and go to heaven that we are willing to share God’s love with them.

Here we face one more satanic deception: that sharing the gospel is “imposing” our beliefs on others. Postmodern secularists have convinced many Christians that tolerance is the highest value, that telling people they risk eternity separated from God in hell is intolerant and bigoted.

In fact, it is just the opposite. Sharing God’s love in Christ offers others the greatest gift they could ever receive. It is giving people the only key that opens the door to heaven. It is sharing the cure for spiritual cancer with people who are dying of the disease whether they know it or not.

We will say more tomorrow about what happens to Christians when we die. For now, would you ask God to help you help someone you know be ready to die today?

Denison Forum

Monty Williams is the head coach of the Phoenix Suns. His team won the first two games of this year’s NBA Finals, though the Milwaukee Bucks won Game 3 last night. If the Suns win two more games, they will achieve their first championship in franchise history.

When Williams received the Michael H. Goldberg Coach of the Year Award from the National Basketball Coaches Association this season, he said, “God knocks the ball out of the park and I get to run the bases. It is a blessing and a privilege to be able to coach this team, alongside this staff, for this organization—it is a ‘get to,’ not a ‘got to.’”

But it is one thing to praise God when we succeed—it is another to trust him when we suffer.

Williams learned about saving faith in Christ from Ingrid, the woman who became his wife. Through her example and prayers, he came to trust in Christ personally. As he entered the NBA, the two married and started a family.

In 2016, Ingrid was killed when a driver under the influence of methamphetamines hit her car. At her funeral, Williams testified, “In my house, we have a sign that says, ‘As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord’ (Joshua 24:15). We cannot serve the Lord if we don’t have a heart of forgiveness.”

He added, “Everybody is praying for me and my family, which is right. But let us not forget that there were two people in this situation. And that family needs prayer as well. And we have no ill will toward that family.”

Sir Richard Branson flies into space

Sir Richard Branson made headlines yesterday when his Virgin Galactic space plane flew to an altitude of more than fifty miles before returning to earth.

However, our planet’s atmosphere extends 6,214 miles into space. Our moon is 238,900 miles from us; our sun is 94,499,000 miles away. The next nearest star is 24,984,092,897,479 miles from our planet. The edge of our Milky Way galaxy is estimated to be 25,000 light-years away. The edge of our universe is thought to be 46,500,000,000 light-years away.

Jesus made all of that (Colossians 1:16), and his Father measures it with the palm of his hand (Isaiah 40:12).

I don’t mean to depreciate Sir Richard’s achievement, just to put it in context: the God whom Coach Monty Williams trusts and serves is worthy of our trust and service.

When we face the inevitable crises of life, we can turn to ourselves, our capacities, and our achievements, or we can turn to the One who created us, endowed us with our capacities, and enabled our achievements. We can trust creatures or their Creator. We can trust our wisdom or his word.

“The only correct map of the human heart”

I make this point because truth and biblical truth are under assault in our culture as never before. A recent study reported that only 42 percent of Americans (and only 31 percent of adults under the age of thirty) believe God is the basis of truth. According to Gallup, only 24 percent of Americans consider the Bible to be the literal word of God. This is the lowest percentage in Gallup’s forty-year trend on this issue.

By contrast, in Reading the Bible with the Founding Fathers, historian Daniel L. Driesbach demonstrates that many of America’s leaders across our history had a profound belief in objective biblical truth. For example, Abraham Lincoln said of the Bible, “It is the best gift God has given to man. All the good the Savior gave the world was communicated through this book. But for it we could not know right from wrong. All things most desirable for man’s welfare, here and hereafter, are to be portrayed in it.”

John Adams stated, “The Bible contains the most profound philosophy, the most perfect morality, and the most refined policy, that ever was conceived upon earth.” Benjamin Rush, another of the founding fathers, called the Bible “the only correct map of the human heart that ever has been published.”

Then he added, “All systems of religion, morals, and government not founded upon it must perish, and how consoling the thought—it will not only survive the wreck of these systems but the world itself.”

“The aim of the spiritual saint”

Christians in every generation have faced their battles. For followers of Jesus today, our conflict begins with the existence of objective truth and the trustworthiness of biblical truth. I plan to say more about this battle tomorrow, but for today, let’s close with this fact: the foundational way we can persuade skeptics that the Bible is truth is to experience and manifest that truth in our lives.

If we meet Jesus today in his word and worship, others will see Jesus in our words and lives. If we truly experience him this morning, we will manifest him this day. If we seek to know Jesus in everything we do, we will make him known in everything we do.

Paul, after listing his astounding personal achievements (Philippians 3:4–6), said of Jesus, “For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ” (vv. 8–9).

Oswald Chambers observed, “Self-realization leads to the enthronement of work; whereas the saint enthrones Jesus Christ in his work. Whether it be eating or drinking or washing disciples’ feet, whatever it is, we have to take the initiative of realizing Jesus Christ is in it. Every phase of our actual life has its counterpart in the life of Jesus. Our Lord realized his relationship to the Father even in the most menial work.”

Chambers added, “The aim of the spiritual saint is ‘that I may know him.’ Do I know him where I am today? If not, I am failing him. I am here not to realize myself, but to know Jesus. In Christian work the initiative is too often the realization that something has to be done and I must do it. That is never the attitude of the spiritual saint, his aim is to secure the realization of Jesus Christ in every set of circumstances he is in” (my emphasis).

What is your “aim” today?

Denison Forum

Kieran Moïse has always been known for what the Washington Post describes as “a stunning Afro that stood high and wide above his head.” For the last six years, he has not cut or trimmed it because, as his mother explained, “he really hated haircuts.”

When Kieran was accepted to the Air Force Academy, he knew he would have to cut his now nineteen-inch Afro. He lost a close friend to cancer when Kieran was in the eighth grade. So, he decided to make his hair cutting into a fundraiser for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, and donate his hair to Children With Hair Loss, a Michigan nonprofit that provides free human hair wigs to children and young adults facing medically related hair loss.

Both plans came to fruition. His hair was mailed to the children’s hair charity, and the fundraiser ultimately brought in more than $38,000 for St. Jude’s. Kieran is now at the Academy, where his mother says, “He’s going to do great things. I have no doubt.”

Pete Davidson is getting his tattoos removed

One of the ways God redeems all he allows is by using past suffering to make us more sensitive to present needs and future opportunities to help others. The loss of Kieran’s friend to cancer led him to do what he could for cancer patients. When we use our suffering to serve, we become what Henri Nouwen called “wounded healers.” And our story touches more lives than we may know.

Here’s another example in the news: comedian Pete Davidson is getting his tattoos removed. He says the process is incredibly painful and will take another two years to complete.

He teamed with smartwater to promote last Monday’s first-ever Rehydration Day, a day dedicated to getting Americans rehydrated after the July 4^th holiday weekend. As a result, he made a video in which he had arm tattoos lasered off while confessing, “I’ve made a lot of questionable choices, and a couple of them need removing.” Then he added, “Now I’m trying to make smarter choices, hydrating with smartwater and stuff like that.”

When we recognize our “questionable choices” and use them to serve others, our humility earns us the right to share a positive message. If we follow Jesus, such compassion born from his grace enables and empowers us to share that grace with the world.

Presbyterian denomination takes stand on homosexuality

However, part of sharing God’s grace is standing against decisions and deceptions that harm those we are called to serve.

For example, the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) recently adopted Overture 23, a statement that those who “profess an identity (such as, but not limited to, ‘Gay Christian,’ ‘same sex attracted Christian,’ ‘homosexual Christian,’ or like terms) . . . are not qualified for ordained office.” The overture, which was approved overwhelmingly 1,438–417 on July 1, explains that such an identity “undermines or contradicts their identity as new creations in Christ, either by denying the sinfulness of fallen desires . . . or by denying the reality and hope of progressive sanctification, or by failing to pursue Spirit-empowered victory over their sinful temptations.”

The chair of the committee recommending Overture 23 stated that it is not intended to exclude Christians who are gay but remain celibate. The overture must still be approved by two-thirds of the denomination’s regional presbyteries and then again by a majority at the General Assembly scheduled for next year in Birmingham, Alabama.

One pastor who spoke in favor of the overture called it “most consistent with the gospel—and because it’s consistent with the gospel, it is by definition compassionate.”

I agree with that pastor and commend PCA leaders for taking a biblical stand on such a pressing cultural issue. Not everyone would agree with me, however.

Why I disagree with Philip Yancey

Bestselling author Philip Yancey was asked in an interview with Religion News Service, “If you could talk to evangelical leaders right now or to people in the pew, what would you tell them?” Yancey, perhaps best known for his insightful book What’s So Amazing About Grace?, stated: “So often the church seems more interested in cleaning up society, you know, returning America to its pristine 1950s. That’s the myth we have—we are making America pure again, cleaning it up.”

He added: “Jesus lived under the Roman Empire, Paul lived under the Roman Empire, which was much worse morally than anything going on in the United States. They didn’t say a word about how to clean up the Roman Empire, not a word. They just kind of dismissed it.”

Yancey then called us to “remember why we are here. We love people, we serve, and we show them why God’s way is better. Let’s concentrate on that rather than tearing people down or rejecting them or denigrating them in some way. We’re here to bring pleasure to God. I believe we do that by living in the way God’s Son taught us to live when he was on earth.”

I appreciate Yancey’s reminder that we love people by serving them. But I disagree completely with his belief that Jesus and Paul “didn’t say a word about how to clean up the Roman Empire.”

Jesus’ earthly ministry did not extend beyond Palestine, but he addressed specifically the hypocrisy of the religious leaders (Matthew 23) and the urgency of serving those in need (Matthew 25:31–46). Paul’s ministry did extend throughout the Empire; he addressed directly the sexual immorality and other sins of his day (cf. Romans 1:26–32; 1 Corinthians 6:9–10; 1 Timothy 1:8–11). And don’t forget that John the Baptist was martyred for opposing the sexual immorality of Herod the tetrarch (Matthew 14:1–12).

As Yancey notes, part of loving people and serving them is showing them “why God’s way is better.” However, God’s way includes sexual purity (cf. Matthew 5:28; 1 Corinthians 6:18; 1 Thessalonians 4:3–5; Colossians 3:5) and holy living (cf. Galatians 5:19–26; 2 Corinthians 7:1; Hebrews 12:14).

William Wilberforce’s “two great objects”

As we have seen today, we serve others best when we do so out of humility that recognizes our own weaknesses and compassion that empowers us to seek their best. Then we will pay any price to impact our culture with God’s transforming word and grace.

William Wilberforce testified, “God Almighty has set before me two great objects: the suppression of the slave trade and the reformation of manners.”

What “objects” has God Almighty set before you?

Denison Forum