{"id":2263,"date":"2019-03-14T00:30:50","date_gmt":"2019-03-14T06:30:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ndturner.com\/gracePlus\/?p=2263"},"modified":"2019-03-14T00:33:55","modified_gmt":"2019-03-14T06:33:55","slug":"gospel-vaccines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ndturner.com\/gracePlus\/?p=2263","title":{"rendered":"Gospel Vaccines"},"content":{"rendered":"

I never stop marveling at the way Christian peoples older than 1960 sacrificed so much for the future of their progeny.\u00a0 Especially the founding fathers, promising and many of them actually giving up their lives \u00a0 fortunes and their sacred honor.\u00a0 Then we started passing laws making it almost impossible for families to pass down their hard work to their children.\u00a0 We started wracking up debt which God knows how many future generations it will take to pay back. And we build national retirement systems and healthcare systems, which are just pyramid schemes on the backs of our children and their children. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Norman<\/a>We are selfish. We only care about ourselves, right now.\u00a0 I think this leads to a couple of large scale problems that are related.\u00a0 Vaccines and the Church.\u00a0 Vaccines work on a population level not on an individual scale.\u00a0 Inoculating a small percent of people doesn\u2019t really do anything.\u00a0 But when entire populations are inoculated many many lives are spared and many diseases have been irradiated all together.\u00a0 This is indisputable medical fact.\u00a0 But today we play the small game.\u00a0 We find the most diseased tree in a forest more healthy than any forest in history, that we know of (we don\u2019t know much about the ancients), and we make that tree the rule.\u00a0 But this was always the case.\u00a0 There are always a few people who react poorly to any medical treatment.\u00a0 That\u2019s just the way it is.\u00a0 But we can\u2019t define the process based on those few.\u00a0 At a certain point, maybe but that\u2019s a first world problem.\u00a0 You have to solve all the 3rd world problems first.\u00a0 And you can\u2019t lament every pioneer who got hurt along the way.\u00a0 Those men of old sacrificed for the greater good.\u00a0 They put their shoulders to the plow and carved out civilization so that their children would not have it so hard.\u00a0 They were playing the long game and so they won it.\u00a0 We amplify every small problem on blog posts and semi-news organizations to the point that we forget all the good that has been accomplished.\u00a0 We pick nits.\u00a0 We are focused on our narrow selves instead of the large scale as it relates to disease and many other things.<\/p>\n

There are a lot of examples but I am reminded of one concerning air travel.\u00a0 We all want everything to be safe, but the reality is that accidents do happen. It\u2019s because sin is in the world.\u00a0 Despite modern man thinking he can overcome anything, the problem is not a lack of education or a lack of government safety.\u00a0 Sometimes there is no one to sue.\u00a0 But it might seem like a good idea to demand 100% success in airplane flights.\u00a0 No accidents ever.\u00a0 And it might be possible, but it would cost a fortune.\u00a0 As a result air travel would be so expensive that people would drive instead.\u00a0 But since driving is much less safe than even mediocre air travel, the end result would be more people dying in cars.\u00a0 This perceived problem of the imperfect plane is exacerbated very similar to the vaccine that harmed that one kid.\u00a0 A plane crash makes the news everywhere.\u00a0 But the fact that over 100 people die every day in auto accidents goes unnoticed.\u00a0 This is the problem of the seen and the unseen from Bastiat.\u00a0 Focusing on the small personal thing can result in the greater system going to pot.[I actually wrote this before the recent grounding of Boeing 737 Max planes, but the overreaction proves my point.]<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s the same with the Gospel.\u00a0 We think it\u2019s all about us and our church or our town or our country.\u00a0 If things aren\u2019t working out then it\u2019s the end times or something.\u00a0 I always remember old Christians talking to each other when I was a kid.\u00a0 They reminded me and one other that no one is necessary.\u00a0 God is doing a big work, he doesn\u2019t need you.\u00a0 The Church has grown for 2000 years, and is still growing today. There were many losses along the way, caualties, lost battles. \u00a0 But you can\u2019t focus on these look at the glorious big picture.\u00a0 I can\u2019t remember the movie, but I\u00a0 have an image in my head of a War movie where a tremendous victory has been won.\u00a0 The parades are marching down the streets of the America confetti everywhere.\u00a0 But even as all the celebration is going on, the military is knocking on the door of small town America and handing grieving families a flag.\u00a0 There are always casualties in war on the winning side.\u00a0 And this is a war.\u00a0 Since the introduction of the camera, we don\u2019t win wars anymore, because we don\u2019t like to see even one casualty.\u00a0 We focus on the grieving family instead of the parade.<\/p>\n

So you had a bad day at work and come home and throw your Christianity in the garbage.\u00a0 Well maybe it\u2019s not so dramatic but we do the same thing in many small ways.\u00a0 Because we think it\u2019s about us being saved from our problems right now.\u00a0 Instead of saving the whole earth from the enslaving rule and reign of demonic powers.\u00a0 I was surprised to travel the world and hear different people talk about their nations.\u00a0 Almost every people has pride.\u00a0 And often it is pride in old accomplishment.\u00a0 They are in a sense has-beens.\u00a0 Uncle Rico lived back in 1982, but the Greeks lived back in 300 BC. when Hellenic culture brought many good things to the world.\u00a0 The Acropolis today is no longer a shrine to a pantheon of gods is is a shrine to a Greek people who founded Western Civilization.\u00a0 The Italians look back with pride on the Renaissance when their art and culture raised the bar for the world.\u00a0 The Spanish once ruled the seas.\u00a0 French once had the lingua-Franca.\u00a0 The coptic Christians and the Armenian Christians seem to fight over who has the older church.\u00a0 The Egyptians point to the pyramids.\u00a0 The Chinese claim an almost-science older than anything in the west.\u00a0 The sun never went down on the British Empire.\u00a0 And then there is America.\u00a0 I think we are at that tipping point.\u00a0 The MAGA hat is the sign of the end.\u00a0 We are becoming has-beens, harkening back to those better days when we won WWII and\u00a0 saved the world.\u00a0 When we advanced manufacturing of everything, invented the modern world and went to the moon.\u00a0 This time has the air of the Greek man on the sidewalk surrounded by graffiti sprayed on horrid modern human hives, reminiscing about the good old days 2300 years ago.\u00a0 Or the Armenian girl in Lebanon assuring me that she is part of the oldest church in the world.<\/p>\n

The Jews are still looking for the messiah to bring them back to the glory days of Solomon, and the king who would make the world their footstool.\u00a0 The Muslims think they were promised the world.\u00a0 And endless angst fueled destruction has been the result.\u00a0 But we \u2018Mericans are falling into the same trap.\u00a0 The world was not promised to America it was promised to the body of Christ, the congregation of God\u2019s people, the Church.\u00a0 It includes everyone.\u00a0 Maybe God leaves this land barren without one single Christian and moves his focus over to Korea or China or West Africa.\u00a0 So be it.<\/p>\n

It is a strange thing because on the other side from the \u2018Mericans living the glory days of the 4th of July , are the crazy secularists, burning everything down.\u00a0 Even a lot of \u2018Christians\u2019 are in this camp, foolishly destroying all the tenants of their faith.\u00a0 Their misplaced faith isn\u2019t in this nation it\u2019s in multinationalism, globalism, pluralism and ultimately in the uber selfishness of sexual perversion.\u00a0 This conflict has come into vivid contrast the past few weeks in the Methodist church.\u00a0 While many liberal branches sell out to the PC culture of perversion, the churches in Africa are standing firm on orthodoxy.\u00a0 They will inherit the Earth.\u00a0 Destroying the idols of both the nation worshippers and the diversity worshippers.<\/p>\n

We need to pull our heads away from the self centered world we build on our portable phones and look around at what is going on in the bigger screen God lays out for us every day.\u00a0 We were not promised perfect comfort and ease if we accepted Jesus.\u00a0 It\u2019s not about us.\u00a0 Church isn\u2019t about feeling good for the rest of the week.\u00a0 It\u2019s not a cry in for the gay guy and his supposed persecution.\u00a0 We were promised that Jesus would rule the world and if we accepted this truth we would be spared the destruction and further, we would be blessed.\u00a0 It\u2019s a war and we are called to fight for the hearts of the world enslaved to all these old lies.\u00a0 But we can\u2019t enshrine ourselves in the stone memorials of our past victories never to fight again.\u00a0 We can\u2019t live in the good old days.\u00a0 The work is not finished.\u00a0 We want to finish the race faithfully. Our best day should not be the 4th of July 1776, or the 8th of May 1945, it should be tomorrow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I never stop marveling at the way Christian peoples older than 1960 sacrificed so much for the future of their progeny.\u00a0 Especially the founding fathers, promising and many of them actually giving up their lives \u00a0 fortunes and their sacred honor.\u00a0 Then we started passing laws making it almost impossible for families to pass down […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t