Insightful Musings on the Scriptures
by
Raymond P. Sparre
Northwest University class of '67
Greetings, dear people
I’m broadcasting today from a room in a condominium hotel at Gearhart. We tried a little walk to the beach earlier, but kind of got rained out. We are here with my cousin and wife. At present the two wives are out shopping. Us guys are hanging out here. One of the challenges I just resolved was connecting to internet via their wifi service. I had to call the support line to get help at succeeding. I asked the guy where he was located. He said, “Off shore.” I said, “Off shore as in India?” He said, “No, as in Philippines.” Interesting. Anyway, I’m now able to send this.
Yesterday, we called in at a store near Astoria. Across the road was a Verizon store. I wanted to ask them why my phone’s battery is now going dead every day before the end of the day following their updating it with a bunch of new super-duper upgrades. To make a longer-than-expected story short, we ended up getting new phones and a new plan. Hopefully, that will resolve a lot of things, including poor signal strength resulting in a lot of dropped calls back home. We’ll see.
Have a blessed day doing what you need to do.
Love, Dad/Ray.
There’s nothing new about this controversy. It’s still very much with us today. People are still divided in their regard for Jesus. Is He the Christ or isn’t He? Is He worth listening to or is He a brilliant idiot?—or con artist? Does He speak truth or is it all a wild fabrication? Is he doing miracles by the power of God or by the power of the devil? Is He truly sent from God or is He a regular guy from Galilee? I suppose that the debate will go on and on till the end. Whatever the judgment is that people make concerning Jesus, one thing is for sure if the Biblical record is true: THIS JESUS OF NAZARETH/GALILEE DEMANDS A DECISION! A verdict (vote) must be made. No one can hear the things He said or the issues He raised or the claims about Him without drawing conclusions—even if some of those conclusions for a period of time may be imperfectly understood. In the final outcome, when we are called from the arena of debate and deliberation, there are only two answers to choose from on the voting form: YES or NO. And it is really the hand of omniscience that marks the final ballot FOR YOU—it is not marked BY YOU alone. During the course of the controversy one may carry around a verbal or tentative decision card that says YES, but one’s accompanying behavior is monitored and made to be the weightier factor in the final outcome. Behavior really is the evidence of true belief. A verbal YES must be accompanied by a behavioral YES in order to count as a final YES.
Without doing a careful word study, let me add one more thought gleaned from this focus verse. Notice that the text says that they were “divided because of Jesus”—not “over” or “about” Jesus. I did check several translations and “because of Jesus” seems to be about the most accurate rendering. QUESTION: Is it valid to suggest that if there is no real Jesus, there is no real debate? Without Jesus, all that’s left is a huge quagmire of human opinion—“much to do about nothing.” There would be no sides to the SAVED and LOST issue. All would be condemned. All would perish. Based upon an overview of Biblical revelation, this Jesus really is the pivotal determiner of eternal destiny—“divided because of Jesus.”