This ancient Scottish hymn, Behold, the Mountain of the Lord, is one of my favorites. I don’t know about you, but I need pumping up today. Aunt Joan is in the hospital again, and of course there’s the nooze of the country and the world: If the Lord Our God didn’t give us hope, how would we live?
This rendition by Godfrey Birtill is my favorite. Turn up the volume and sing along. Let the neighbors think you’re crazy.
Like the lady on the Christian radio show said, so many years ago: “When times get tough–sing louder!”
Let’s sing this, then: Our God Is an Awesome God, performed by Michael W. Smith. At least turn up the volume!
As I sat in the laundromat today, the TV nooze–you just can’t escape it–presented a story that distressed me.
It was the trial of a band of merry carjackers who killed a man because they wanted his car and whatever might be in it. We were shown the victim’s widow addressing the convicted trigger man in court: “You took away everything I had, all my hopes and dreams, because you decided to play God, deciding who should live and who should die, deciding you had the right to kill because you wanted something that you hadn’t earned.”
God has given the civil government the authority and the duty to avenge these wrongs, and yet the government all too often refuses to do that (see Romans 13). Instead, the court is expected to sentence the trigger man to 30 years in prison–three square meals a day, color TV, weight room, and the company of like-minded savages. That is not justice. Again, the civil government has failed to carry out its function. The victim is still dead; his wife is still a widow; his children remain fatherless.
Adam and Eve inherited Original Sin by listening to the serpent’s promise that they themselves would be “as gods” if they disobeyed the real God (Genesis 3:5), and we, their descendants, have been doing it ever since.
The 20th century was a festival of murder. Think of Mao Tse-Tung, who killed at least 40 million people as part of his mad scheme, the Great Leap Forward, to transform China into a leading industrial power in five years. And that was only one of countless examples.
We haven’t learned a bloody thing. Today the Humanist Manifesto II declares there is no God, but that’s no problem–“using technology wisely,” we can do all those things God should have done: we can do His job. Paradise on earth. Just break a few more eggs, and we’ll have our omelet. Meanwhile, The Smartest People in the World wage war against reality itself while the Davos crowd, invoking Man-Made Climate Change as their warrant, works tirelessly toward a world government.
Like, we should trust them?
Our country’s founders were blessed with the wisdom to impose strict limits on the central government–limits which The Anointed of our day work ceaselessly to overthrow. If I’ve learned one thing from observing the nooze and reading history, it’s that the Original Sin, the will to be as God, features an insatiable lust for power over other human beings.
Which brings me back to the carjacking case. What was that, but an untrammeled will to power over the rightful owner of the car, and a decision to exercise it by killing him? You don’t have to bump off 40 million of your countrymen to be a little tin god: a single murder will do just as well.
God has a plan to heal the human race and regenerate His whole creation. He will do it in spite of us. For this cause Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was born, and died on the cross, and rose from the dead… and will return.
Come, Lord Jesus, come. Because we are not fit to do God’s job; but you are.
One of these days I ought to write about the occultism that was going on in the typesetting room of the old Bayshore Independent. I do not mean that as a figure of speech.
For the time being–at least until I get back from the laundromat–there’s this.
Erlene thought we might like this one: Till the Storm Passes By, by the Gaither Vocal Band. I can’t say whether the big storm has started yet, but there sure have been, and are, a lot of smaller ones.
Susan asked for this one: In Need, sung by the Praise and Harmony Singers. Isn’t it wonderful, what human voices can do as musical instruments? Make a joyful noise unto the Lord.
There isn’t all that much “Christian fantasy” out there, so each badly-written book hurts the market that much more.
BTW, this wasn’t the first time I suggested turning Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son into a novel. Come to think of it, you could do that with any number of His parables. Only Jesus Our Lord, though, could pack so much meaning into so little space.
This is just one of the eight or nine thousand hymns Fanny Crosby wrote: He Hideth My Soul, sung here by Nathan and Lyle with family and friends, in Denton County, Texas. Relax and let it sing to you.
I’ve got the dentist this morning, affectionately known to his patients as “Vlad the Impaler,” my state’s new Democrat governor has announced his plan to turn this into a “super-sanctuary state” for all illegal aliens, and a happy hunting ground for their street gangs, and then I received some very sad news from a friend–all in all, Erlene’s suggested hymn for the day, Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus, could hardly come at a better time. This one’s sung by Alan Jackson.
And to think this was written well before the Perpetual Democrat Tantrum began on Election Night 2016… These people definitely don’t play with a full deck.
https://leeduigon.com/2015/11/05/dems-say-the-darnedest-things/