Sunday Sermon Notes: August 5, 2018

Posted on August 5, 2018 by Don Merritt

Title: The Kingdom is Like…

Text: Mark 4:21-34

Two Short Parables

Mark 4:21-25

Parallel Text: Luke 8:16-18

This brief section contains two more short parables, the Parable of the Lampstands and the Warning for Hearers. First, let’s talk about lamps…

Lamps and lampstands are used several times in the New Testament as references to the Truth. Certainly, the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ was something that had been hidden since the Garden of Eden, which is probably why Paul referred to it as a mystery. The time was soon to come when everything would be made known, and Jesus’ Apostles were the ones who would make it known fully, beginning at Pentecost.  Clearly, His message is that there will be no secrets when the time comes.

The second short parable is slightly more difficult to catch the meaning of. We should see right off that when Jesus says that “whoever has will be given more…” in verse 25, Jesus isn’t talking about material possessions.

“Consider carefully what you hear,” he continued. “With the measure you use, it will be measured to you—and even more. Whoever has will be given more; whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.”

Mark 24-25

The “measure” mentioned in verse 24 is the care you use in considering what you hear. So, “Consider carefully” what you hear means that we should listen very carefully and really consider it; great care in consideration of what we hear will yield great benefits to our understanding of the truths that we will shine for the world to see about His gospel. If we take little or no care in this, the truth will do us no good at all, and that could have tragic results.

Thus, we can see that whoever has (truth) will be given more (truth).

Have you ever listened to a sermon that was really great, and had the guy in front of you, who spent the whole time fidgeting and looking at his watch, then comment how much he got out of the message?

How about those times when you were busy fidgeting and looking at your watch? Were those the times you left feeling as though you really got something wonderful from the message?

Well, maybe you have, but I haven’t! Nope, not when I wasn’t paying attention.

 

Parable of Seeds

He also said, “This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come.”

Mark 4:26-29

Parallel Text: None

When I was in school, I was pretty good in science. When it was time for the test on seeds and plants and how plants grow, I could recall all the answers to the questions. I could say that the cells in the plants grow and divide, and that the DNA of the plant determines how they will grow and what parts form and all of that, but can I say that I understand how all of this happens; really understand? No.

Maybe you understand it, but I don’t, even though I could explain what I learned about it. Maybe you noticed the subtle difference between knowing about and understanding…

In this parable, Jesus is talking about the Kingdom; after all, He is on the Kingdom Tour… He’s talking up the Kingdom.  I know a lot about the Kingdom, and even though there are those who know more about it than I do, I know more than most. Yet, can I say I fully understand it? No, not at all, for there is a component within the Kingdom that I cannot begin to understand fully, even though I know about it: The life power of God.

Down through the years, I have planted a great many seeds. I’m not sure that I fully understand it, but I know that if you and I plant enough seeds, a crop will grow, and if we keep our eyes and ears open, we will see and hear evidence that tells us that a portion of the crop is ready for harvest. Hopefully, we’ll decide to get involved in that harvest and help to bring some of it in, along with unknown numbers of others all around the globe, for this is how the Kingdom works. I have harvested many in whom others planted the seeds, and many others have brought in a harvest from seeds I planted; it’s all good!

This is what Jesus is trying to teach here: Plant seeds, lots of seeds. Pay attention, and bring in the harvest when and where the time is ripe. We don’t really need to understand every detail; we just need to plant, pay attention and harvest.

 

The Mustard Seed

Again he said, “What shall we say the kingdom of God is like, or what parable shall we use to describe it? It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest of all seeds on earth. Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds can perch in its shade.”

With many similar parables Jesus spoke the word to them, as much as they could understand. He did not say anything to them without using a parable. But when he was alone with his own disciples, he explained everything.

Mark 4:30-34

Parallel Text: Matthew 13:31-35

The Parable of the Mustard Seed is one of the best known of Jesus’ teachings; we cite it often as a teaching on faith, but that is not what this parable is about. The faith connection comes from Matthew 17:20, which is not a parable. Rather, the Parable of the Mustard Seed is about the Kingdom.  I doubt that Jesus was intending to give a lecture on botany here, but He clearly used frames of reference His listeners were familiar with: Mustard seeds are tiny, yet they grow into very large plants.

That is the point of the metaphor, tiny seed becomes very big plant. How does this apply to the Kingdom?

If I was an atheist, I would be asking myself how it is possible that an obscure travelling teacher from first century Galilee is still a controversial figure all over the world twenty centuries after his death. Yes, that’s right, a carpenter’s son born in a stable who grew up in flyover country became the most influential figure in history, yet he never traveled more than a hundred miles or so from his birthplace.

After his death, a ragtag bunch of misfits from the provinces, just a handful of them mind you, unleashed a revolutionary idea in the minor provincial capital of Jerusalem. They were opposed by the greatest power the world had ever seen, and Mr. Atheist, you are still opposing this teaching today. How could this have happened? It’s simply incredible!

As Jesus told us, the Kingdom is like that. A tiny seed grows into the largest of garden plants, big enough to give shelter to the birds; it just wouldn’t seem likely at all… but there it is.  It isn’t reported in the text, but I have a hunch this is what Jesus explained to His disciples. Yes, they were obscure, true, they weren’t important big shots from famous and powerful families, and they were young, very young.  Yet, in spite of all outward appearances, they made a huge mark on history, and more importantly, they made a huge difference for God’s salvation plan, in spite of all apparent circumstances.

Don’t you suppose that Jesus would tell us the same thing?

You and I are mere mustard seeds in a sense, small, not really noticed in our celebrity crazed world, yet full of life’s power and potential. Should we allow it, He can and will do a mighty work in and through us and His Kingdom will grow and flourish in spite of all the odds, in spite of the naysayers, and in spite of the guffaws of others. Why?

That’s an easy one: Because the Kingdom is like that!

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Making Choices

Posted on August 3, 2018 by Don Merritt

As a simple matter of stewardship all of us make choices on how best to take care of that with which God has blessed us. We do this with our material possessions, we do this spiritually and we also do it with the blessing of our physical bodies. Yet if we’re honest, the choice that we make most often is to choose not to choose, at least not today. As I mentioned at the beginning of this discussion, that’s what I’ve been doing when it comes to diet for a long time and I think it is safe to say that my wife has done the same thing: That stops now.

Living as we do in a Western culture, we are blessed with a great many dietary choices, certainly with abundance of supply, and that can make choosing a little more difficult. Yet when you really get down to it, there really isn’t any great problem coming to grips with what we should not be doing. Everyone, doctors, nutritionists, informed laymen, all agree that a diet based around highly processed foods is a choice that bring a series of very serious consequences, either sooner or later. Obesity, heart disease, diabetes and cancer have all been linked to such a diet  the evidence is overwhelming. With that being the case, we conclude that continuing in the typical modern Western diet is inconsistent with the Scriptural principles of Christian stewardship.

With that starting point, we further conclude that processed grains, sugars, fats and prepared foods are not in our best interests to continue with and that we need to replace these things with whole grains and vegetables, natural oils and proteins, with a bias toward foods from plants as opposed to those from animals and animal products. In short, we’re going in the direction of Forks Over Knives and away from the Keto process. For me, two things have influenced me the most:

First is the fact that my wife has been ‘prescribed’ Forks Over Knives by her Endocrinologist as a corrective measure because of her serious health issues. A couple of months back, she tried doing this with some success, but found it difficult to get started with and stay on track (she likes to cheat on a diet). At that time, she was provided with materials, including recipes which on inspection revealed very quickly that they were probably medically correct, but put together by someone who simply doesn’t know how to cook. I was given recipes in which the basic culinary techniques required were wrong, and I must confess that I declined to use them for that reason.  Since then we’ve done a lot more research and I can cook the stuff, an important step.

The other thing that has really influenced me in this direction occurred on this blog when I wrote about a recipe that I tried from The Thomas Jefferson Cook Book. In my little discussion about it I happened to mention that it works for Forks Over Knives which led to a ‘conversation’ with fellow blogger Bette Cox who told me that Forks Over Knives had essentially given Bette her life back, reversing the effects of serious health problems. Bette and I have never met in person, but over the years we’ve known each other online, I have learned one thing about her: When Bette tells you something directly, you can take it to the bank; if she says that the approach was a game-changer in her life, she is telling the truth.

Thank you, Bette.

Even with all of that said, I still have a problem with going all the way vegan, and that is the need for B-12 supplements. After all of the harangue about processed foods, taking pills, capsules or drops seems a little off. What is more “processed” than pills, capsules or drops? I don’t care that the label says “natural”, these things are not natural unless you are picking them from a pill tree.

So, I’ll be using small amounts of meat and limited dairy more in the form of a garnish than anything else; meals will no longer be centered around meat. The nice thing about a garnish is that it goes on last, so my wife can decline it if she needs to.

The process I’ve described in these posts was last week’s news. This week was the start. I can report to you that it’s easy, no problem sticking with it; not even a thought. Any time you make a change in life, even one that is intended to be permanent, the initial part can be tough. Old habits have a way of sneaking into the picture when you forget to be intentional with what you’re doing. When that happens early on, it’s easy to trip up, and I only know one way to get around that: You need to have a bit of an attitude. It’s me against “them” and “they” are going down. Obviously, “they” and “them”, sometimes “he” or “him”, are fictional strew-men, not people, but making a head game keeps me on trach for things like this. It works great to finish the job of weeding a big flower bed on a hot summer day too. However you do it, there’s nothing like a little attitude used in a positive way.

That’s my story, thank you for putting up with it. I am confident that we have a sustainable life-change that will yield excellent results and that is entirely consistent with Christian stewardship for both health and finances, since it will reduce our grocery bills in the process. I’ll give another little report at the end of October and let you know how it’s going. In the meantime, if you’ve been thinking that you should also make some changes for health’s sake, I hope this series has been helpful to you.

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Continue in Him

Posted on August 3, 2018 by Don Merritt

And now, dear children, continue in him, so that when he appears we may be confident and unashamed before him at his coming. If you know that he is righteous, you know that everyone who does what is right has been born of him.

1 John 2:28-29

I don’t know about you, but sometimes I sit back and think about everything involved in following our Lord and it all just seems a little overwhelming.  Thinking about who He is, what He is, His love for us, His call to us… and all of the implications of these things… Wow!

I don’t want to mess this all up!

Oh sure, I’m confident in forgiveness for sins, and I understand that He is loving, merciful and not interested in a “gotcha” moment, no that isn’t it at all; I don’t want to grieve Him or let Him down.  In the text we’ve been looking at, John seems to sense the same kind of thing.  He’s taken us through all of these amazing attributes, and he’s taken us through the facts of life in a spiritual battlefield, and now suddenly, he seems to take a little step back to survey the scene, and just as though he were reading my mind, he writes these two verses.

Wow!  What do we do now?  John’s answer is “continue in Him.”  Yes, that’s right; continue in Him so that when He appears we may be confident and unscathed by this world of ours.  By “continue in Him,” I think John means that we should simply keep on living in Christ’s image, as He taught us, doing what He did, following His Father’s purpose and not being distracted. We do know that He is righteous; so then, we do know that everyone who does right is born of Him.  By “right,” John must mean that they do the things that He would do, so while Jesus is the Model for all of us to follow, when those around us follow His model, we have someone to show us the way when we are confused.

Wow! Once again, the answer is simple, if not always exactly easy.

Yes, dear reader, let’s just continue in Him…

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I Have this Theory…

Posted on August 2, 2018 by Don Merritt

I know from the comments that many of you have gone down this same road that we have concerning nutrition, eating right and stewardship of our bodies; it can be a daunting task. With all of the conflicting “science”, not to mention the way that the standards and scientific evidence seems to change all the time; you know, something is healthy, then it isn’t healthy, then it’s good again.

It’s hard for the average person to know much of anything for certain.

I think that’s why so many find themselves flirting with conspiracy theories: “Those studies are rigged by big-business, special interests and government corruption. “ “The Truth that They Don’t Want You to Know”.

If you ask me, that’s just lazy thinking. No doubt some studies are more reliable than others, but all of those plots- I doubt it.

So, I’ve been trying to look at this whole subject another way…

From the first, I’ve framed this as a matter of Christian stewardship, so why not look at it from a more Biblical point of view and ask if there are clues in the Scriptures. We know two things right off: First, we know that God gave us the teeth of an omnivore; we can eat both plants and meats. We also know that when the first humans were created, God put them in a garden and made the fruit of all of the trees and the plants of the garden theirs to eat, except one: they apparently were plant-eaters when in God’s perfect environment, when Man stood naked and unashamed before God.

However, they were told to be fruitful and multiply, and to fill the earth and have dominion over all of the plants and animals in it.  We also know that the earth is very diverse in ecosystems, climate and terrains, and each has a different variety of foods available for human consumption. As people began to appear on the scene and move away from Paradise to fill the earth, they would need the ability to eat whatever was available to them in order to survive, and this was God’s original intention, even before the events of Genesis 3. After Genesis 3 however, even Adam and Eve were banned from the Garden, and had to survive as hunter-gatherers, and thus, we can conclude that God was very intentional in creating us to be omnivores.

In our little case study here, we considered two videos, each representing opposite approaches to nutrition. Both cite evidence supporting their approaches, and they appear at first to contradict one another, but if you think about it, that contradiction is only present if we assume that they must be mutually exclusive.

What if they aren’t?

If we think about God’s intention that we should fill the entire earth, and the diversity in food availability and conditions on the ground, and then remember that the first video which based its approach on the diet of Aboriginal people of Australia, and the second which looked at the rural peoples of China and the Philippines, and then consider the significant differences in those locations, why should we be surprised at the difference in diet? Why would we be surprised that even though they appear to be opposites, that they would both result in good health, when the subject, humans created by God, were designed to succeed and flourish everywhere?

Both “extremes” agree that the diet related health problems came from the intervention of modern Man into what God created to be perfect. If that is true, then wouldn’t the answer to the riddle center around the removal of those interventions, namely processed and artificial foods?

It seems to me that if we eliminate all processed and artificial foods from our diets, and stop overeating, we should free ourselves of the likelihood of diet-related health problems, reverse any that we have already which are reversable and gradually achieve the weight that is ideal for us. The only proviso that I would have to add to that is that we should be careful that what we eat covers the nutritional requirements of the human body, which is to say that if leafy greens are my favorite food, I’ll can’t eat only leafy greens− does that make sense?

Maybe this is way too simple, maybe I’m crazy, but at first blush it seems to make sense: what do you think?

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A Warning

Posted on August 2, 2018 by Don Merritt

So far in this letter, John has given us a reminder of the supremacy of Jesus Christ; who He is, what He is and His nature. John gave us a comparison and contrast of what the “Light” is, and who is and who is not “in the light.” Then John reminded us of who we are in Christ and how amazing that is.  In the previous section, John warns us not to love this world, and now John is taking us to the front lines on a battlefield, where it becomes plain why he has taken us on this journey to show us just who we are, and just who “they” are.

Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.

1 John 2:18-19

This is the first mention of the term “antichrist” in the Bible. It means someone who is against or in place of the Messiah.  In these verses, John mentions twice that we are in the “last hour,” which is interesting when you consider that many will suggest today that there are more hours to come.  Whoever these antichrists were, or are, they appear to have been hanging around us, and then to have gone rogue. If nothing else, in these two verses, we can be sure that these rogues were hanging around, but they were never “us.”  Recall the descriptions of in the light and in the darkness in vv. 1:5-2:11… These characters were the ones in darkness.

But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth. I do not write to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it and because no lie comes from the truth. Who is the liar? It is whoever denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a person is the antichrist—denying the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also.

1 John 2:20-23

Now we have a little more information: The rogues John is talking about deny that Jesus is the Messiah.  That is a bald-faced lie, and those who are in the truth would never make such an assertion, so these guys were not in the light. No person who denies that Jesus is the Messiah is in the Son, and if a person is not in the Son, they are also not in the Father.  They are antichrist, and there are many of those in the world.

As for you, see that what you have heard from the beginning remains in you. If it does, you also will remain in the Son and in the Father. And this is what he promised us—eternal life.

1 John 2:24-25

These two verses are the warming: Make sure that you hang on to what you know about Jesus Christ.  If you do, you will remain in Him and inherit eternal life. Do not listen to the rogues. By the way, this is why I said above that John has taken us to the front lines on a battlefield.  It is a spiritual battlefield in a spiritual war, where the antichrists in our midst will attempt to pry you away from the Truth.  Resist, and do not listen to their lies!

 I am writing these things to you about those who are trying to lead you astray. As for you, the anointing you received from him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about all things and as that anointing is real, not counterfeit—just as it has taught you, remain in him.

1 John 2:26-27

John invokes the anointing of the indwelling Holy Spirit in urging us to remain in Christ.  Consider this: Here is a warning that there are those who try to lead us astray, to turn our backs on our Lord.  They are fighting against us in a spiritual war, and this can sound really scary.  Oh, it’s great in the movies, when their innocent victims are lured into evil by magical powers, having no way to resist.  Take heart! John is pointing out to you and me that we have within us, at our disposal greater firepower by tenfold: He is the very Holy Spirit of God, the third Person of the Godhead.  If we are focused on our relationship with our Lord, and we take these “battles” to Him, there isn’t even a contest, for “greater is He who is in me, than he who is in the world.”

One final thought and that’ll be it for now… You know all those stories and books and movies about evil forces that lead the righteous astray?  “The Exorcist” “The Omen” etc., etc…? They really freak people out, which is why they make so much money, right?  People become afraid, and being afraid becomes a distraction for some.  At the same time, you have in these verses a very simple way to discern who the liars and antichrists are; a third grader can understand it.  You also have a solution to defeat the lie that a third grader can understand: stand on the truth of the Word of God, and reject outright the lie.

As simple as this is, many will be so creeped out by the stories and the idea of spiritual warfare, that it almost makes me wonder if these stories of myth, legend and popular fiction are actually part of the lie itself, so that we won’t fight back, and our superior firepower will never be brought to bear on our foe.  Hmmm… do you think we need to have a healthy relationship with the Lord?

I do!

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Photo of the Week: August 2, 2018

Posted on August 1, 2018 by Don Merritt

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A Tale of Two Videos part two

Posted on August 1, 2018 by Don Merritt

Today I’ll be giving you my general impressions of the video Forks Over Knives, just like I did for The Magic Pill yesterday. Both are available on Netflix, and easy to find on Google.

Forks Over Knives Trailer

The Good

  • The video was well-produced, interesting and held my attention. If you watch it, you won’t be bored.
  • I thought the case studies were quite good, they were informative and believable; I didn’t walk away thinking anybody faked anything, and that doesn’t happen very often.
  • I was impressed by the fact that the main characters in the video were the same people who had conducted the majority of research that was cited, and that they were able to explain clearly what they had looked at and how they came to their conclusions.
  • The story in the video was based upon the people of rural China and the Philippines and how it was found that they did not suffer the same kinds of food-related illnesses that their counterparts did in the urban areas of those countries. Even better, after a huge study was conducted by the Chinese Government on this subject, one of the researchers in the video went to China and re-did the study, expanding it in scope and size to confirm the earlier results in coordination with his Chinese counterparts which made their findings all the more credible, in my view.

The Bad

  • At one point in the video they took us through a study that showed a relationship between the growth of two types of cancer and one specific animal protein and how the presence or non-presence of that protein had a major impact on the cancer, causing it to grow when present, only to have it shrink when absent, which I though was very interesting. However, later they made it sound like all kinds of cancer would be aided by the presence of any animal protein, and they didn’t show any evidence for that.

The Ugly

  • I constantly heard the term “plant-based foods” in the video (as opposed to “animal-based food”) and this may only bother me but, that sounds like they’re hiding something, namely the fact that their diet approach is vegan. If it’s vegan, why not just own it? Actually, the way I learned it is that the entire food chain is plant-based. It’s possible that I’m just a victim of my training here, having been a political writer for decades, but I’m always suspicious when people do this.

Where both sides agree

Both Keto and Forks Over Knives agree that:

  • Cancer, Heart Disease, Diabetes and Obesity are primarily caused by diet.
  • These killers can be very rare indeed in a society that eats properly.
  • Proper and healthy eating habits must exclude processed foods including processed fats, sugars, grains, and other highly processed items.
  • Both agree that if you follow the advice of the other one, you will die of one of these diseases.

To my way of thinking, both of these are extremes; I highly doubt whether or not either one can be sustained as a lifestyle choice for most people. Make no mistake however, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t hear them both out, because they both have valuable information that we can all use. For instance, why would we want to continue eating processed foods? Why wouldn’t we want to eat whole and natural food?

Everyone agrees that the one is problematic and that the other is very good.

I think there is a lot more for us to learn, so let’s get back together tomorrow and see what that might be.

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About This World

Posted on August 1, 2018 by Don Merritt

Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.

1 John 2:15-17

Now that we are clear on who we are, and what the realities of life in Christ are, John turns to the world around us. John isn’t referring to the natural world, he’s referring to the world of Mankind; the culture, society, the impulses, the way things are here…  in this I don’t mean “culture” in the sense that John is speaking against literature or music or opera or culture in that sense, but instead the impulses and ways of people and society.  If we were to say that we live in a “dog eat dog world,” we would be referring to the impulses and ways of this world; that is more like what John is getting at. John is telling us that we are not to love the world or anything in it and if we do, we have a spiritual problem for sure.

The “lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” are often cited as the three main categories of sin.  Clearly these do not come from God, for as John puts it, they come from the world. If you think about it, so much of what people consider important has more to do with impressing others than with anything else.  Why are we so often driven by career advancement?  Why do we need so much stuff?  Why is your living room fancier than your bedrooms?  Why do you need the fancy car instead of the economy car?  Must I spend $100.00 on a tie? Why do we want what somebody else has? Our knee-jerk answer to these kinds of questions might be “sin”, but John goes deeper than that; this comes from the world.  Jesus nailed the thought down when He said that we “prefer the praise of men.”

In the final analysis, this world, its ways, and everything in it will pass away, but the love of God endures forever. Our Lord showed us a life that was lived for the love of God.  Isn’t that where our love should be? I’ve heard people say that we are here to fix the world, but I must state clearly that this is a mistake. We were never commanded to fix the world, no− the world is passing away!  We are commanded to share the love of God through Jesus Christ with people, so that they may be saved from the world’s fate.

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A Tale of Two Videos part one

Posted on July 31, 2018 by Don Merritt

Introduction

To be fair, I want to mention a couple of things before I begin. First, I am not approaching this subject as an advocate of anything other than the Christian Etic of stewardship. You are entirely free to agree or disagree with my choices; I have no stake financially or otherwise in any of this. I’m simply reporting what I’ve found on a subject that we should probably consider seriously as stewards of our own bodies. Second, in comparing these two videos, I have a natural inclination in the direction of Forks Over Knives because I was influenced many years ago by reading Jane Body’s Good Food Book which advocates a high carbohydrate, low fat approach to nutrition, which the Keto proponents trash in their video. It has more or less been the way I have approached nutrition and menu planning for the last 30-plus years, and while I have not always followed closely, it has been my general way of looking at things.

Here We Go…

Getting started, I found the two documentary videos on Netflix, both are widely touted by their supporters, one that advocates the Keto approach to diet that is called The Magic Pill, and one that advocates Forks Over Knives, a vegan approach, called Forks Over Knives. To be completely honest with you, they both make amazing health claims, they both have their points, and they both have their problems, in my view. Two observations strike me as telling about them: First, they both make nearly identical health claims, which seems odd to me, since each arrives at their result by doing what the other says will kill you. How can a person not ask how they could both be right? The other point is that each one has as part of its appeal, a grand conspiracy of government and industry to keep the Truth from the people about nutrition, and that strikes me as silly, for in my experience, this world we live in, is really not all that well organized; sooner or later, someone spills the beans.

My General Impressions

The Magic Pill Trailer

The Good:

  • The video was well-produced, interesting and held my attention. If you watch it, you won’t be bored.
  • I thought the case studies were quite good, they were informative and believable; I didn’t walk away thinking anybody faked anything, and that doesn’t happen very often.
  • I also walked away with the impression that the people in the video were sincere in what they were telling us, that they really believed what they were saying.
  • The basis of the video came from actual observations of the Aboriginal people of Australia. They showed how this ancient people of hunter-gatherers were damaged by the introduction of the rich Western diet, and how that introduction into their culture resulted in the people there, who had never really experienced heart disease, diabetes, obesity and cancer went in a relatively short time from healthy to very unhealthy when they made the transition. The introduction of the Western diet decimated them, and it appears clear that that diet, our diet, was to blame, and that reverting to a diet more like the one they had eaten for thousands of years seems to have reversed the situation.

The Bad

  • They had no problem giving sources for some of our dietary thinking of the past, but their sourcing of their own statistics was not much in evidence in the video.
  • Their approach to diet is expensive, even one of the people in a case study said that to be healthy costs a lot of money, and that would certainly be the case if the main thing you are eating is meat, particularly when that meat must be range fed. I live in Iowa, good luck finding that here, this is corn country, and we have corn fed everything, not range fed.

The Ugly

  • The Magic Pill completely misrepresented the high carb, low fat diet because they entirely neglected to mention that the carbs are whole, not processed. At one point, they dramatized the dangers of the other approach by saying that it includes Lucky Charms and Coca-Cola, which it most certainly does not, and you can reference Jane Body’s best seller for the proof of this, and I’m sure the people who produced the video either know this, or with reasonable diligence, they should know it.
  • Personally, I thought they relied way too heavily on the conspiracy angle as they kept coming back to it throughout the video.

OK, this has been a good start, next time I’ll give my view of the good, bad and ugly of the Forks Over Knives video, see you then.

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I Write to You Because…

Posted on July 31, 2018 by Don Merritt

Today, we have an amazing text, one that I have never really appreciated until a few years ago.  It just hit me: Wow!

I must have been a victim of my training, because this is a transitional passage between John’s introductory section and the rest of the letter.  In verses 1:1-2:11, John has been going through this comparison and contrast that shows his readers who is and who is not in Christ.  Great section, lots of insight! Now, he is giving the reasons he has written the letter, and after this he gets into some very deep thoughts.  We often just blow by this little transition and wade into the content that begins in verse 15 but hold on a minute− the transition is amazing:

I am writing to you, dear children,
    because your sins have been forgiven on account of his name.
I am writing to you, fathers,
    because you know him who is from the beginning.
I am writing to you, young men,
    because you have overcome the evil one.

I write to you, dear children,
    because you know the Father.
I write to you, fathers,
    because you know him who is from the beginning.
I write to you, young men,
    because you are strong,
    and the word of God lives in you,
    and you have overcome the evil one.

1 John 2:12-14

Do you see what this is?  It isn’t so much the “who” John is addressing, it’s the “why” that is important, contrary to so much that has been written and discussed over the years.  Let’s restructure these verses:

If you are in Christ, John is writing to you BECAUSE:

1. YOUR sins have been forgiven on account of His name.

2. YOU know Him who is from the beginning.

3. YOU HAVE OVERCOME THE EVIL ONE.

4. YOU know the Father.

5. YOU know Him who is from the beginning.

6. YOU are strong.

7. The Word of God lives in YOU.

8. YOU HAVE OVERCOME THE EVIL ONE.

Did you notice the tense used here?  Each of these “because” statements is either in present or past tense, indicating that they are facts at this very moment, not something to come in the future. I’m sure that I need not mention that there are no “buts” in any of these statements. Now, as for the “who,” there are three “who’s” in the passage, “dear children,” “fathers” and “young men.”

“Dear children” as we have already seen is one of the ways that John addressed the community of believers; it is an inclusive term.  “Fathers” can either be literally a father of children, or it can refer to the head of the household, and in Scripture this is often the case; certainly, it is when referring to a patriarch.  In those cases, something that is true of the father is true of the household.  It seems to me that here, because of the inclusive reference at the beginning, the inclusive meaning is also true of fathers, particularly since there is nothing in the text that would indicate specificity of intent.  “young men” are the heads of households yet to be born, and I think we can take this reference to mean that not only are these things true in believing households of today, but they will also be true of future generations of believing households.  You might wonder about a household of one, but remember that in John’s day, households of one were extremely unusual if not non-existent; they are actually quite a modern development. Looking at the list of statements again, it seems that we can take them to refer to all of us who are in Christ. That is also the context of the previous and following sections…

Notice that there is some repetition.  Numbers 2 and 5 are the same, but 2 comes after a reference to the Son, while 5 comes after a reference to the Father.  If you know Jesus, then you also know the Father.  Having overcome the evil one is mentioned twice also, numbers 3 and 8. Both are directed to young men, and it seems to me interesting that it is repeated the second time in a series of three statements made to young men.  Now if we have an accurate understanding of “young men,” then let’s consider these future heads of household.  They are the future, but they are also young.  They are the ones who need encouragement and the mentoring of the Elder Apostle the most, and so they, who will bear the spiritual battle in the future, need a little more instruction than those who are experienced, the veterans we might say.  Here, John gives an extra assurance that they are strong, filled with the Word, and have overcome.  I would guess that this is as much comfort to John’s “young men” in their day, as this whole list should be to us in our day. This is particularly true when we get into the rest of this letter: John is getting his readers prepared for what is coming.

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