Pre or Post Tribulation Rapture in 1 Thessalonians 4 and Revelation 20? Part 1 of 2
Recently I was discussing last things–eschatology–with someone who strongly asserted that 1 Thessalonians 4 and Revelation 20 refuted the pre-Tribulation Rapture position. He argued that 1 Thessalonians states that the dead in Christ shall rise first, and then the Rapture takes place, but the first resurrection, when the dead in Christ rise, takes place in Revelation 20 at the end of the Tribulation period; a post-Tribulation Rapture. Therefore, he concluded, the pre-Tribulation Rapture position was false.
Some reasons 1 Thessalonians teaches a pre-Trib Rapture are covered in part one below. In part 2, next week, Lord willing, we will look at Revelation 20.
1Th. 4:16 For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:
1Th. 4:17 Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.
1Th. 4:18 Wherefore comfort one another with these words.
1Th. 4:16 ὅτι αὐτὸς ὁ Κύριος ἐν κελεύσματι, ἐν φωνῇ ἀρχαγγέλου, καὶ ἐν σάλπιγγι Θεοῦ καταβήσεται ἀπ’ οὐρανοῦ, καὶ οἱ νεκροὶ ἐν Χριστῷ ἀναστήσονται πρῶτον·
1Th. 4:17 ἔπειτα ἡμεῖς οἱ ζῶντες, οἱ περιλειπόμενοι, ἅμα σὺν αὐτοῖς ἁρπαγησόμεθα ἐν νεφέλαις εἰς ἀπάντησιν τοῦ Κυρίου εἰς ἀέρα· καὶ οὕτω πάντοτε σὺν Κυρίῳ ἐσόμεθα.
1Th. 4:18 ὥστε παρακαλεῖτε ἀλλήλους ἐν τοῖς λόγοις τούτοις.
1Th. 5:8 But let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation.
1Th. 5:9 For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ,
1Th. 5:10 Who died for us, that, whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with him.
1Th. 5:11 Wherefore comfort yourselves together, and edify one another, even as also ye do.1Th. 5:8 ἡμεῖς δέ, ἡμέρας ὄντες, νήφωμεν, ἐνδυσάμενοι θώρακα πίστεως καὶ ἀγάπης, καὶ περικεφαλαίαν, ἐλπίδα σωτηρίας.
1Th. 5:9 ὅτι οὐκ ἔθετο ἡμᾶς ὁ Θεὸς εἰς ὀργήν, ἀλλ’ εἰς περιποίησιν σωτηρίας διὰ τοῦ Κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ,
1Th. 5:10 τοῦ ἀποθανόντος ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν, ἵνα, εἴτε γρηγορῶμεν εἴτε καθεύδωμεν, ἅμα σὺν αὐτῷ ζήσωμεν.
1Th. 5:11 διὸ παρακαλεῖτε ἀλλήλους, καὶ οἰκοδομεῖτε εἷς τὸν ἕνα, καθὼς καὶ ποιεῖτε.
Luke 21:23 But woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck, in those days! for there shall be great distress in the land, and wrath upon this people.Luke 21:23 οὐαὶ δὲ ταῖς ἐν γαστρὶ ἐχούσαις καὶ ταῖς θηλαζούσαις ἐν ἐκείναις ταῖς ἡμέραις· ἔσται γὰρ ἀνάγκη μεγάλη ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς, καὶ ὀργὴ ἐν τῷ λαῷ τούτῳ.Rev. 6:16 And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb:
Rev. 6:17 For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?Rev. 6:16 καὶ λέγουσι τοῖς ὄρεσι καὶ ταῖς πέτραις, Πέσετε ἐφ’ ἡμᾶς, καὶ κρύψατε ἡμᾶς ἀπὸ προσώπου τοῦ καθημένου ἐπὶ τοῦ θρόνου, καὶ ἀπὸ τῆς ὀργῆς τοῦ ἀρνίου·
Rev. 6:17 ὅτι ἦλθεν ἡ ἡμέρα ἡ μεγάλη τῆς ὀργῆς αὐτοῦ, καὶ τίς δύναται σταθῆναι;
Rev. 11:18 And the nations were angry, and thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead, that they should be judged, and that thou shouldest give reward unto thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, and them that fear thy name, small and great; and shouldest destroy them which destroy the earth.Rev. 11:18 καὶ τὰ ἔθνη ὠργίσθησαν, καὶ ἦλθεν ἡ ὀργή σου, καὶ ὁ καιρὸς τῶν νεκρῶν κριθῆναι, καὶ δοῦναι τὸν μισθὸν τοῖς δούλοις σου τοῖς προφήταις καὶ τοῖς ἁγίοις καὶ τοῖς φοβουμένοις τὸ ὄνομά σου, τοῖς μικροῖς καὶ τοῖς μεγάλοις, καὶ διαφθεῖραι τοὺς διαφθείροντας τὴν γῆν.Rev. 16:19 And the great city was divided into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell: and great Babylon came in remembrance before God, to give unto her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his wrath.Rev. 16:19 καὶ ἐγένετο ἡ πόλις ἡ μεγάλη εἰς τρία μέρη, καὶ αἱ πόλεις τῶν ἐθνῶν ἔπεσον· καὶ Βαβυλὼν ἡ μεγάλη ἐμνήσθη ἐνώπιον τοῦ Θεοῦ, δοῦναι αὐτῇ τὸ ποτήριον τοῦ οἴνου τοῦ θυμοῦ τῆς ὀργῆς αὐτοῦ.
Jesus Made the Cross a Symbol and Paul Took It Further
The word “cross” is found in the New Testament 28 times. The mere expression “cross” doesn’t mean anything without some explanation. Jesus started us off by using it in Matthew 10:28:
And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me.
*1 Corinthians 1:17-18: 17 For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel:: not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect. 18 For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.*Galatians 5:11: And I, brethren, if I yet preach circumcision, why do I yet suffer persecution? then is the offence of the cross ceased.*Galatians 6:12-14: 12 As many as desire to make a fair shew in the flesh, they constrain you to be circumcised; only lest they should suffer persecution for the cross of Christ. 13 For neither they themselves who are circumcised keep the law; but desire to have you circumcised, that they may glory in your flesh. 14 But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.*Ephesians 2:16: And that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby:*Philippians 3:18: (For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ:Colossians 1:20: And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven.Colossians 2:14: Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross;
Romans 6:6: Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.1 Corinthians 1:23: But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness;1 Corinthians 2:2: For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified.Galatians 2:20: I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.Galatians 3:1: O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you?Galatians 5:24: And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.Galatians 6:14: But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.
The Feeding of the Five Thousand: How Old Were the Bread and the Fish the People Ate, That Jesus Gave Them?
When I go to the grocery store and I select my items, I don’t very often think of the process. I just push the cart and put into it what’s on my list. My wife was gone for quite awhile recently, so I grocery shopped. A few times I picked up one or two of those tubes of hamburger you’ve maybe seen. It didn’t occur to me when I did that a calf was born, it grazed in a field, grew to full grown size, was herded into a truck, shipped to a meat plant, driven into a building and was butchered, then parts of that full grown cow were ground into beef, which was squeezed into a tube and through various machinations of the supply chain, arrived in my store in Southern Oregon.
I didn’t look at that tube of hamburger and assume that it just sprung up there in the meat department of Walmart with the appearance of age. I know it didn’t. However, something different happened when the Lord Jesus Christ served the five thousand bread and fish in Matthew 14:13-21. I now know that just one cell of a fish exists according to a very complicated code of DNA, information from powerful and intelligent design antecedent to its emergence, let alone the origin of the matter from which it formed. Further along, there’s the fish eye, it’s gills, brain, internal organs, scales, and fins. Its musculature, that allowed for its under water propulsion, becomes the fleshly substance of a meal, also the subject of future digestion and incorporation into a human body.
Everything everyone ate at the feeding of the five thousand had the appearance of age. That was the miracle of it. Sure, it would have been a great miracle if everyone was able to stand or sit there that day and wait for a seed of wheat or corn to grow into the grain necessary to mill to flour, work into dough, and baked to yummy goodness. How long would that take? Perhaps the moment of the feeding was actually an age, once we’ve decided that we’re permitted to conform measurements of time to our preferred version of a scriptural narrative. We all know that a loaf of bread couldn’t have appeared in a moment according to known dating systems, so to help with the believability of Matthew 14:13-21, we allow for our own adaptation and maneuverability of the story.
No. Jesus created bread and fish, skipping the time and the process. He went straight from point A to B or A to Z, depending on how many steps you want to imagine were skipped. That’s the wonder of His power, wisdom, and love. God by nature is supernatural and He divinely intervenes in His creation however He wants. He is not bound by the very natural laws He originated. He’s more than the state highway police traveling as fast as He wants to enforce His own laws.
What’s harder? An instantaneous universe with an apparent appearance of fourteen billion years or thousands of separate bread loaves and fully grown fish? Think of even the milling process for flour. Where was the mill stone? There was none. Flour itself was skipped. What’s harder, the instantaneous creation of matter or the instantaneous formation of that matter to a mature appearing universe? Both are impossible, except with God. If you can believe the first, you can also believe the second.
Without faith, it is impossible to please God.
Make Your Child a Millionaire With This American Express Platinum Roth IRA Loophole?
Before reading this post, please remember that the Bible forbids any “trust in uncertain riches” instead of in the “living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy” (1 Timothy 6:17). If you are reading this because of money, but you are not born again, nothing in this post will benefit you eternally. Click here to find out how you can be saved from sin, death, and hell through the Lord Jesus Christ.
Also, please keep in mind that I am not a financial advisor, a tax advisor, or anything of the sort. What is below is just my opinion and I am not giving you advice about doing anything. If you want financial or tax advice, consult a professional, not me.
Also, if you have troubles paying off credit cards in full each month, maybe my opinion that you should stay far, far away from them is correct. I would encourage you to read my series on the dangers and rewards of credit cards here.
It also is not a good idea to go crazy with credit cards if you are about to try to get a home mortgage or something like that, although in my opinion the deal below is good enough to make it worthwhile even then.
There are two parts to this post. In my opinion:
1.) Contributing to a Roth IRA is a great financial vehicle
With the important caveats above in mind, in my opinion I believe there is a way to get more into your Roth IRA or a child’s Roth IRA without violating the $6,000 yearly contribution limit.
Why does this matter? Consider the Roth IRA calculator at the Biblical Financial Stewardship section at FaithSaves. Let’s say you add $1,000 into a Roth IRA at the age of 18 and never contribute to it again until (if God spares your life and the Rapture does not happen first) you reach the age of 65. If you got the average stock market rate of return of around 8%, the $1,000 would have become $37,000. Not bad to have your money grow to 37 times its original amount–all tax free at withdrawal. If you put $2,500 into a Roth IRA at age 18 and contributed $2,500 a year to it until you were 65, you would have over 1.2 million dollars with a average rate of return of 8%. If you put the same amount of money in the Christian-based, clean mutual fund the Eventide Gilead Fund, and earned the 18.63% lifetime rate of return it has earned since its inception (I am not saying that is realistic and you should not count on that), putting $1,000 in at age 18 and leaving it alone would net you $3,000,000, and $2,500 a year would get you over $48,000,000.
What if a five-year-old child was able to get $1,000 into a Roth IRA and never touch it until age 65? At 8% the $1,000 would become over $100,000! At 18.63% the $1,000 would become $28,000,000! At 8% the $2,500 / $2,500 scenario above would yield the five year old child over $3,000,000 at age 65, and the (likely too rosy) 18.63% rate of return on the Eventide Gilead Fund would leave the child with $450,000,000.
2.) A Loophole to Put More into a Roth IRA
It is, therefore, wise to max out a Roth IRA at the $6,000 limit if you can do it. However, there may be a way to get more than $6,000 a year into a Roth IRA without violating IRS rules. (Let me remind you again that I am not a tax professional nor a financial advisor.) You don’t want to violate IRS rules because the penalties are not very nice. So is there a loophole?
The American Express Platinum Card with Schwab allows you the option of redeeming the membership rewards points you earn from the card at 1.25 cents each. Points are deposited into your Schwab account (any ordinary citizen can open a Schwab checking or Roth IRA account). The Membership Rewards points you earn with Schwab are not cash–they are just points. The IRS has traditionally not recognized these as taxable income for that reason. Furthermore, when you redeem them into your Schwab account, you are not contributing income, but Schwab is depositing a bonus into your account. It is kind of like the way that sometimes brokerages give you a bonus if you roll money over from another institution to them; they sometimes add a bonus to your account, but it is not money that you contributed.
Right now the Schwab Amex Platinum card comes with an opening bonus of 100,000 Membership Rewards (MR) points. That can be deposited for $1,250 into a Schwab account–including a Roth IRA–and since you are not making a contribution, but Schwab is giving you a bonus that is not based on cash but on non-cash Amex Membership Rewards, it does not affect contribution limits (in my opinion, which I believe I have very good grounds to think is correct, but I am not a tax professional.)
A child can only put into a Roth IRA what his own income is–so if he makes $100 from mowing lawns, he can put that (or you can make him put it) into a Roth IRA. But since the Amex MR points are not cash, you could deposit them into his Roth IRA, and to the $100 he earned from mowing the lawn you could add $1,250 as a bonus. If you earned a lot of Amex MRs through other means, you could sock away a huge amount of money into his Roth IRA and secure your child’s financial future as much as it can be done with uncertain riches.
So let’s say you opened the Schwab Amex Platinum card and deposited the $1,250 opening bonus into his Roth IRA at age 5. You have just given your child $126,571 at an 8% rate of return at age 65. If the (high) rate of return on the Eventide Gilead Fund were to continue, at 18.63% just putting the bonus in from opening the Schwab Amex would give your child $35,300,000. Of course, the value of $1 is highly likely be less at that time because of inflation, but this is still a very, very good investment return–and you pay no tax at all when you take the money out at 65.
I don’t know the future and I have no way of knowing what will happen with investments as time moves on, but in my opinion it would be a wise financial decision to put as much as possible, as young as possible, into a Roth IRA.
The facts above were convincing enough for me to apply for the Schwab Amex Platinum, and to use practically the complete stash of Amex points that I had, not for amazing travel as I have been accustomed to using them, but for cash, specifically into a Roth IRA. I just got the opening bonus on my new Schwab card and, as I write this, have just moved the points from that opening bonus and practically all my other Amex Membership Rewards points into a Schwab Roth IRA. It was easy to do–maybe a five minute process to redeem, and about another five minutes to buy some God-honoring Eventide mutual funds.
The Amex Platinum card has a lot of extremely luxurious benefits. You get:
1.) $200 hotel credit
2.) $200 airline incidental credit
3.) $200 Uber / Uber Eats credit
4.) $240 Digital Entertainment credit (Audible, Peacock, etc.)
5.) $100 Saks 5th Avenue credit
6.) $100 Global Entry credit
7.) $179 CLEAR credit
8.) $300 Equinox credit
If you used all those credits, the card would save you over $1,500. Furthermore, they are calendar-year credits, so if you decided to open the card but then decided you didn’t want to keep it, you could use the credits this year and next year to get $2,000-$3,000 in savings before cancelling it, on top of the $1,250 opening bonus of 100,000 Amex MRs. You also get things like access to very nice airport lounges, Hilton gold status (free meal when you stay at a Hilton and room upgrades), and many other benefits.
For these ultra-premium benefits, Amex charges a nasty annual fee of $695. (If you keep a lot of money with Schwab they will refund you $100 or $200 off the annual fee, but that is only if you hold $250,000+ or $1,000,000+ with them.) Furthermore, the credits are not worth their face value but are worth what you would pay for them. For example, if you use Uber Eats once a month anyway, you might value the Uber Eats credits as near $200 in cash, but if you don’t care about the Equinox fitness credit (I don’t), you would value the Equinox credit as $0. Would I pay $100 for a Saks 5th Avenue $100 gift card? Nope. Most of their stuff is too expensive, although they do offer discounted items online. Would I pay $40? Maybe. If I paid $20 a month on Audible already for a subscription or audio books, then the $240 credit on digital entertainment is worth a straight $240. If I don’t, and have no use for the other options for the digital entertainment credit either, but I would pay half of that face value to buy audio books, then the credit is worth $120 to you. The $200 credits for their hotel collection is nice, but you can’t pick any hotel you want, so it is not quite worth a straight $200, although to me it is worth at least $100, I think, maybe more since when you book with Amex the hotel gives you nice things like expensive amenities, free breakfast, etc. In any case, that’s the sort of thing you have to do to value these credits.
In the first year, at least, getting 100,000 Membership Rewards (MR) points worth $1,250 makes the annual fee worth swallowing. Is the card a keeper after that? Perhaps, and perhaps not; it depends on how you value the credits and benefits.
The Amex Platinum has some bonus categories that earn 5 points per dollar spent. In non-bonus categories, it only earns 1 point per dollar. I therefore combine it with the Amex Gold card, which earns 4 MRs per dollar at grocery stores and dining, and the Amex Blue for Business card, which earns 2MRs per dollar on all spending categories where another card does not already give me something better. These can be redeemed into a Schwab IRA at 1.25 cents each–bypassing taxation and contribution limits (so take whatever rate you pay in income, social security, etc. tax on income and multiply the cash value of the points by that amount). The Blue for Business is a business card, but if you teach lessons, or sell things on Ebay, or do work as a handyman, etc. you have a business and can get a business card.
Membership Rewards can also be transferred to travel partners for very good travel redemptions–for example, you can transfer them to airline partners and fly, for example, in first class on ANA to Japan or to Europe and back for 60,000 MRs each way–which could be the cost of flying economy in cash, but instead you are flying in an amazing first class cabin that could cost you $20,000 if you paid cash. But this post is about Roth IRAs.
Schwab is reducing the cash redemption value of their points from 1.25 cents each to 1.1 cent each on September 1. I highly doubt that they are going to eliminate the cash redemption option entirely; I believe they will keep it, just at the lower value. But with that upcoming devaluation, now is the time to go crazy getting American Express Membership Rewards points and putting them into a Roth IRA at maximum value. If you have multiple Amex cards you can pool all your points and put them all into the Roth IRA. You could combine opening bonuses, for example, by getting a Schwab Amex Platinum (100,000 points, $1,250 tax-free into Roth IRA redemption value), an ordinary Amex Platinum (another 100,000 points, $1,250 tax-free into Roth IRA cash redemption value), an Amex Gold (60,000 MRs, $750 tax-free into Roth IRA redemption value) and an Amex Blue for Business (10,000 MR opening bonus, or $125, with no annual fee and 2 MRs per dollar, a good keeper card for the long term), and get $3,375 that you never have to pay tax on put into a Roth IRA to grow tax free. If you did those four cards, and put them into an IRA of an 18-year old and got 8% until 65, just the credit card bonuses, if you never contributed again, would be over $125,000 at 65. If you put them into a Roth IRA of a 5 year old, at 65 it would be $341,000. If you get more than one Platinum card you can then double up on all the credits (or for the first year you can both use the credits now and then again in the new year so that you can triple-up or quadruple-up on them if you and a spouse both get the cards; that could be $800 for use at hotels, as well as $800 at Uber Eats or Uber, $800 for airline incidentals, etc.; you could get enough credits for a nice trip as well as a financially beneficial Roth IRA contribution.)
The opening Membership Reward point bonus for each card requires certain spending in the first months after opening the card, but if you are not able to meet that requirement through ordinary spending (don’t just buy things you don’t need in order to meet the opening bonus, obviously) you can just do things like pay your taxes ahead of time with a credit card (and get refunded for an overpayment after you file), or pay utility or other bills ahead of time, or meet minimum spending requirements while helping the poor by getting Kiva loans, which probably gets you your money back in just a few months to around a year, etc. I have invested in a lot of Kiva loans and am thankful to be able to help needy people while meeting spending requirements, and I have had a default rate of under 1% over a long time frame. (Of course, that doesn’t mean that this very low default rate will continue into the future, nor that you will also have a default rate that low, but it is very possible.)
By the way, you can take out the principal that you put into a Roth IRA before age 65 without penalty. You just can’t take out the interest / gain before 65 (with certain exceptions) without a tax penalty.
In my opinion (again, not as a financial professional or a tax professional), this is a fantastic opportunity. You can apply for the cards below if you are interested. They are affiliate links except for the Schwab Platinum, which is not.
Click here to sign up for the Schwab Platinum Card and get points worth $1,250 along with lots of other benefits.
Click here to add another regular Amex Platinum to get another $1,250 worth of Amex MRs and another $200 in Uber / Uber Eats credits, airline credits, etc.
Click here to add an Amex Gold card to get another $750 worth of Amex MRs and 4 MRs/5% cash back on groceries, restauraunts, etc.
Click here to add an Amex Blue for Business card to get another $125 worth of Amex MRs and 2 MRs on all spending up to $50,000 a year.
Note: the offers above are the ones that I have; I have not checked to see if there are better ones for any of these cards, but if there are, by all means take them instead.
If you think I am crazy for getting all these credit cards, that is fine. In my opinion, if you pay cash for everything and just put a lot in a Roth IRA the more conventional way, while riches are uncertain, you will be very likely to be glad that you did. If you think all these cards are a very good opportunity, I agree, although, again, this is just my personal opinion, I am not a financial or tax advisor, and I am against using credit cards if a person pays high interest rates on them instead of paying them off.
Finally, please also consider the post here on tithing or giving more than 10% under grace on what you earn on investments.
–TDR
Profane
Reading through the Bible for my second time this year, I arrived at Leviticus again and the word “profane” stood out to me. It is found 26 times in the Old Testament of the King James Version and seven in the New. Fifteen of those total times are in Leviticus.
In eighteenth century English dictionaries, to profane something is to violate something sacred. The Universal English Dictionary in 1706 defines “profane”:
Ungodly, unholy, irreligious, wicked; unhallowed, common, ordinary: It is often opposed to sacred.
The Hebrew word, translated “profane,” also many times means and is translated “to bore or to pierce.” Something is added that is not natural to a thing when it is pierced. It is violated. I like to use the analogy of a dirty dish placed with the clean dishes.
Here are the fifteen usages of the English word “profane” in Leviticus, all found in five of the chapters.
Leviticus 18:21, And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God: I am the LORD.
Leviticus 19:12, And ye shall not swear by my name falsely, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God: I am the LORD.
Leviticus 20:3, And I will set my face against that man, and will cut him off from among his people; because he hath given of his seed unto Molech, to defile my sanctuary, and to profane my holy name.
Leviticus 21:4, But he shall not defile himself, being a chief man among his people, to profane himself.
6, They shall be holy unto their God, and not profane the name of their God: for the offerings of the LORD made by fire, and the bread of their God, they do offer: therefore they shall be holy.
7, They shall not take a wife that is a whore, or profane; neither shall they take a woman put away from her husband: for he is holy unto his God.
9, And the daughter of any priest, if she profane herself by playing the whore, she profaneth her father: she shall be burnt with fire.
12, Neither shall he go out of the sanctuary, nor profane the sanctuary of his God; for the crown of the anointing oil of his God is upon him: I am the LORD.
14, A widow, or a divorced woman, or profane, or an harlot, these shall he not take: but he shall take a virgin of his own people to wife.
15, Neither shall he profane his seed among his people: for I the LORD do sanctify him.
23 Only he shall not go in unto the vail, nor come nigh unto the altar, because he hath a blemish; that he profane not my sanctuaries: for I the LORD do sanctify them.
Leviticus 22:2, Speak unto Aaron and to his sons, that they separate themselves from the holy things of the children of Israel, and that they profane not my holy name in those things which they hallow unto me: I am the LORD.
9, They shall therefore keep mine ordinance, lest they bear sin for it, and die therefore, if they profane it: I the LORD do sanctify them.
15, And they shall not profane the holy things of the children of Israel, which they offer unto the LORD.
32, Neither shall ye profane my holy name; but I will be hallowed among the children of Israel: I am the LORD which hallow you.
Profane, you can see, is an adjective, noun, or verb. As a verb, the Hebrew word (chalal) means, “to be commonly used.” The Hebrew word is also translated in the King James Version, “pollute” (Numbers 18:32). An understanding of “profane” must be taken in contrast to sacred, hallowed, or holy.
Something sacred is kept separate, not mixed with the common. By mixing it with the common, it is profaned or becomes profane, which is the opposite of holy. By adding something common to something sacred, the sacred is profaned. It is no longer hallowed or kept separate. The common is something not sacred, so it is of a different nature than the sacred or the holy. For something to remain holy, it must be kept distinct, and a difference must be kept between the holy and the profane in order to keep sanctified that what is holy. This is especially in important in worship and Leviticus is a guidebook for worship.
To keep something hallowed that is sacred, one must understand it’s nature. What makes it holy? What is this act, thing, or person in its essence? Then only something of that essence or of the same kind can be associated with it, brought into contact with it, or linked with it or correlated to it. It’s worth reading all the usages above from Leviticus.
The first usage in Leviticus of “profane” reads, “neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God.” It does not explain what that is. It assumes the reader knows what that is.
“The name of God” is who God is. It’s what characterizes Him in His Person and Work. To profane His name is to associate or correlate with Him something that is contrary to His nature. It disrespects Him. It dishonors Him. It mischaracterizes Him, and this is very serious to do to God, so God adds, “I am the LORD.” John Gill writes about this: “I [am] the Lord; who would avenge such a profanation of his name.” God isn’t going to allow someone to keep profaning His name.
I’m going to select a few of the above examples to give the sense or understanding of “profane.” Leviticus 21:12 says, “Neither shall he go out of the sanctuary, nor profane the sanctuary of his God.” To profane the sanctuary is to make it common. It’s a sacred place and it is treated as a common place, not unique to God. This is not just profaning God, but profaning God’s sanctuary, something closely associated with God.
Leviticus 22:1-2 say,
1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 2 Speak unto Aaron and to his sons, that they separate themselves from the holy things of the children of Israel, and that they profane not my holy name in those things which they hallow unto me: I am the LORD.
Those who had become common and, therefore, not holy, were not qualified to offer holy sacrifices. God would be profaned by the unholy offering the holy. The person himself could profane God and the worship of God and the thing offered could be profaned so as to profane God and the worship of Him. Common things, which are unholy, are to be kept out of worship. They may not even be evil — they’re just common. Something is made common when it is not treated in a unique or sacred manner, but is treated like everything else.
How people understand God in their imagination comes in a major way through association. Not only does God take offense at it, because it disrespects Him, but it also gives people as much as anything a wrong view of God. Someone will have a lesser view of God, a diminished understanding of Him, and that will affect a person’s life. He may not believe in the true God or live in accordance with the true God.
As much as anything today as an application of profane is the mixture in worship in the contemporary churches what is common with what it holy. Professing churches give God profane worship and they profane God. They give Him something worldly, lustful, and distorted so as to blaspheme God. The people then become like their worship. They themselves are profane and this just results in even further profanity of God and of their lives. The world doesn’t know God because of the correlation of the common or the profane with God in professing churches. The people of these professing churches are made common and profane as they blaspheme God with their profanity.
A Test of Faith: Doing What You Know to Be Good Rather Than What Is Merely Permissible
Is what God wants you to do what you want to do? There may be no law that requires you to do what God wants you to do, but doing what He wants is still a test of your faith, that is, a test for whether you truly believe in Him or not.
The Gnostic History of Images of Jesus Christ
Images of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, should not be made for the reasons explained in the appropriate articles in the studies on ecclesiology here. But did you know that the Gnostics were the first ones to makes images of the Savior? Note the following:
The Gnostics, in their enmity to God the Father, had proscribed his image, but being favourable to the Son, they painted and sculptured the figure of the Saviour, of all dimensions, and under various forms. It … appears … that we are indebted to Gnostics for the earliest portraits of Jesus. “It was for the use of Gnostics, and by the hand of those sectaries, who attempted at various times, and by a thousand different schemes, to effect a monstrous combination of the doctrines of Christianity with Pagan superstitions, that little images of Christ were first fabricated; the original model of these figures they traced back to Pontius Pilate himself, by a hypothetical train of reasoning, which could scarcely deceive even the most ignorant of their initiated disciples. These little statues were made of gold, or silver, or some other substance, and after the pattern of those of Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, and other sages of antiquity, which those sectarians were accustomed to exhibit, crowned with flowers in their Conciliabula, and all of which were honoured with the same degree of worship. Such, indeed, is the positive assertion of St. Iræneus,* confirmed, or at least reiterated by St. Epiphanius.† This superstition, which on the same principle permitted painted images of Christ, was peculiarly in vogue amongst the Gnostics of the sects of Carpocrates; and history has preserved the name of a woman, Marcellina, adopted by that sect, for the propagation of which she removed from the farthest East, to Rome; and who in the little Gnostic church, as it may be called, which was under her direction, exposed to the adoration of her followers images of Christ and of St. Paul, of Homer and Pythagoras. This fact, which is supported by the serious evidence of St. Augustine,‡ is, besides, perfectly in accordance with the celebrated anecdote of the Emperor, Alexander Severus, who placed amongst his Lares, between the images of the most revered philosophers and kings, the portraits of Christ, and of Abraham, opposite those of Orpheus and Apollonius of Tyana, and who paid to all a vague kind of divine worship.§ It cannot, therefore, be doubted, that this strange association originated in the bosom of certain schools of the Neo-Platonists, as well as in several Gnostic sects, and we may thence infer, that the existence of images fabricated by Gnostic hands, induced Christians, as soon as the Church relaxed in its primitive aversion to monuments of idolatry, to adopt them for their own use.*”[1]
* St. Irenæus, Advers. Hæres. lib. i., cap. xxv., a. 6, édition de Massuet.
† St. Epiphanius, Hæres. cap. xxvii., a. 6. See on this subject the dissertation of Jablonsky, “de Origine imaginum Christi Domini in Ecclesia Christiana,” s. 10, in his Opuscul. Philol. vol. iii., 394–396.
‡ St. Augustin, de Hæresib. cap. vii.: “Sectæ ipsius (Carpocratis) fuisse traditur socia quædam Marcellina, quæ colebat imagines Jesu et Pauli, et Homeri et Pythagoræ, adorando incensumque ponendo.” (See the dissertation of Fueldner, upon the Carpocratians, in the Dritte Denkschrift der Hist. Theol. Gesellschaft zu Leipzig., p. 267, et seq.)
- Æl. Lamprid. in Alexandr. Sever. cap. xxix. “In larario suo, in quo et divos principes, sed optimos (et) electos et animas sanctiores, in queis et Appollonium, et quantum scriptor suorum temporum dicit. Christum, Abraham et Orpheum, et hujusmodi ceteros, habebat ac majorum effigies, rem divinam faciebat.” Such is the lesson proposed by Heyne for the employment of this text. (See the dissertation of Alexandr. Sever. Imp. religion. miscell. probant., &c., in his Opuscul. Academ. vol. vi., p. 169–281; see also on this subject the dissertation of Jablonsky, De Alexandra Severo, Imperatore Romano, Christianorum sacris per Gnostico initiato, in his Opuscul. Philol. vol. iv., p. 38–79.
* Such, we are told by M. Raoul Rochette, is the inference drawn by the pious and learned Bottari, from the testimony quoted above, Pitture e Sculture Sacre, vol i., p. 196; and that his opinion, formed in the bosom of orthodox Catholicism, has been adopted by all Roman antiquaries.
[1] Adolphe Napoléon Didron, Christian Iconography; Or, the History of Christian Art in the Middle Ages, trans. E. J. Millington and Margaret Stokes, vol. 1 (London: George Bell and Sons, 1886), 243–245.
So if you use images of Jesus Christ to (mis)represent Him in curricula for children’s ministries, or around the 25th of December you make a little image of Jesus and put it in a stable, you are not only violating the Second Commandment by engaging in a form of (likely unintentional) idolatry, but you are following the ancient Gnostics.
Maybe it is time to immediately stop making, using, condoning, promoting, or contributing in any way to the use of images of the Son of God.
–TDR
The Elimination of Practices and Activities Deemed Dispensable By the Truth About Real Gain
You can do certain things. They’re permissible, sure. They’re not wrong per se. Paul argue that’s not how we should choose to do things. We might like them. They might be fun.
Paul could have made money off of his preaching. According to him in 1 Corinthians 9, he even deserved it. Those who preach of the gospel, he said, should live of the gospel. However, he willingly gave up that support for the sake of the gospel. As an evangelist or missionary, taking monetary support for preaching the gospel could diminish the effects of his preaching.
The money Paul could have made was a type of gain. It’s still a well-known type of gain. Gain is an economics term, like “capital gains.” Adam Smith in his classic, Wealth of Nations, begins chapter ten by saying:
The five following are the principal circumstances which, so far as I have been able to observe, make up for a small pecuniary gain in some employments, and counterbalance a great one in others.
Then he names those five principles circumstances and elaborates on them. You see his use of the word “gain.” He uses it 17 times in that chapter. In the next paragraph, he writes:
Honour makes a great part of the reward of all honourable professions. In point of pecuniary gain, all things considered, they are generally under-recompensed, as I shall endeavour to show by and by. Disgrace has the contrary effect. The trade of a butcher is a brutal and an odious business; but it is in most places more profitable than the greater part of common trades. The most detestable of all employments, that of public executioner, is, in proportion to the quantity of work done, better paid than any common trade whatever.
He says that honor is the reward of certain honorouble professions, rather than “pecuniary gain.” “Pecuniary” is “related to or consisting of money.” He implies there are other types of gain, like honor. Honor is a kind of gain, not pecuniary, but one to be chosen over money apparently. The profession brings honor, if it doesn’t bring money.
The Apostle Paul refers to gain again and again in scripture, and this is seen in 1 Corinthians 9 in a section that most label as a section on Christian liberty. I respect that idea that 1 Corinthians 6-10 is about Christian liberty. I don’t mind it, but it is worth looking at it from the perspective of the definition of real gain.
God created man for a relationship with Him. The Lord Jesus said in Matthew 16:26,
For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?
There’s that word “gain.” The implication here is that someone profits nothing, even if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul. Luke 9:25 says,
For what is a man advantaged, if he gain the whole world, and lose himself, or be cast away?
In the King James Version, Paul uses the word “gain” five times. He writes first in 1 Corinthians 9:19,
For though I be free from all men, yet have I made myself servant unto all, that I might gain the more.
To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak: I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.
But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ.
If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha.
What Formed Crater Lake?
Certain questions, like the title of this post, seem rather remote and disconnected from every day life. Like I like to put it to people, “It seems like an island that has nothing to do with the mainland, so why paddle out to that.” The world, however, takes great note of these questions and their answers. We should have the true answer and be able to state it — not to every such question, but to such questions. We introduce the world to the real world. They are stuck in their alternative reality and we are responsible to deliver them from it. I know that today people state it as taking the red pill, but if this is a pill, it’s probably not red or blue, but the concept itself is valid.
After about a year in Oregon, a friend and member of our church in California came up to visit on the weekend, we went door-to-door evangelizing Friday and Saturday, had Sunday services, and yesterday, we drove up to Crater Lake, which is also a national park about an hour and a half drive from where we live. Crater Lake is beautiful. It is essentially the top of a mountain that has been hollowed out with no outlet and water has accumulated there through various means over a long period of time. It looks like a crater filled with the brightest blue, almost transparent water. In the lake is another old volcano that also has a crater, a mini-island within the crater, a mountain within a mountain. It was hazy, when we visited Crater Lake on Monday, because of wind blowing smoke up from fires in California. Nevertheless, the views, as we drove all the way around and hiked to two locations and got out of the car at least ten times to look, were awe inspiring (if you click on the pictures, they get bigger and better).
Requisite now for national parks, which are very often very beautiful, are historical and apparent scientific explanations. Crater Lake is the deepest lake in the United States and it is the ninth deepest lake in the world. At many of the scenic overlooks were placards and displays that talked about the formation.
The explanation for Crater Lake is that it was Mount Mazama, which became an active volcanoe, which erupted 6,000 to 8,000 years ago which blew out twelve cubit miles worth of material to form a cadera, the gigantic crater. That bowl filled up with water from huge snows and the melting of the snow pack in the winter. Since there are no inlets or outlets, it is very pure water, some of the purest of the world, and it is estimated the water completely changes every 250 years through the exchange of evaporation and precipitation.
If you read the descriptions on any of the placards or displays, there is no mention of God. God does not enter into the explanation. He should. Crater Lake formed by means of a universal flood over the entire earth from which the original water also came. Yes, it has since been replenished in the way described, but was a lake at the time of the great flood, revealed in Genesis 6-9 in the Bible.
God was angry with mankind and so He revealed to a righteous man, named Noah, that rain and a flood and destruction were coming, because of man’s sin. Man was sinning and unrepentant of it. Violating the moral law of God brings consequences. God doesn’t allow man to interminably get away with sin. He reacts with righteous indignation and true justice.
God is also merciful, because He instructed Noah to preach to mankind to warn him for 120 years. God also provided for a way to escape the destruction of the flood, an ark. Noah and his family would build the ark to save whoever would repent and believe. No one did, so except for the eight people in Noah’s family, everyone died.
The flood changed the topography of the earth. Water came from beneath the earth’s surface and from above. A feature of the earth before the flood was the firmament, waters which protected the earth from factors that would greatly shorten people’s life spans. Proceeding from God’s power, waters broke forth from beneath the surface of the earth and rained down from above it.
The pressure of the water that covered the earth completely changed the topography of the planet. There was a tremendous upheaval that is responsible for what the earth looks like now. This occurred by the powerful judgment of God and then the natural forces that followed from that. Genesis 10 talks about the division of the earth. It took awhile for the earth to settle. The population was very small and in one location and everywhere else were massive changes from which are repercussions still today.
The forces at work from the worldwide flood caused volcanic eruptions and huge shifts of the earth’s crust, leaving still the consequences of sin in the way of volcanic and seismic activity. The earth still often shakes with the shifting of plates and destroys what’s on the surface, leading to further death. Giant waves form and hit the shore of populated area, destroying life and property. The weather that followed the flood has continued to wreak havoc everywhere and all the time with the far less stable living environment than what existed before the flood. Life changed drastically and it was all because of sin.
God’s judgment of sin formed Crater Lake. It also formed the Rogue Gorge, which is nearby Crater Lake about 45 minutes away.
These formations are beautiful to see. They are powerful. All of them have arisen from the power of God’s destruction of a former world because of its sin. No one mentions that at either location, but it is true and it is the most important story at both Crater Lake and Rogue Gorge.
Further judgment is coming to the world. God has already warned about it. He wants His children, His saints, to preach about it. It’s obviously nearer today than it ever has been. Even the smoke over Crater Lake reminds me of that future fire that will destroy the world. Like Noah and his family could be saved, God offers salvation. Let’s not miss that. A former world was destroyed without repentance. Only those who repent and believe in Jesus Christ will escape the next judgment of God.
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