Post 26: Re-Examing My Beliefs?

Over the past three and a half years I have followed the beliefs of the Pentecostal denomination of Christianity. Pentecostals emphasize the supernatural side of the faith, rooting this in the events of Pentecost as laid out in Acts 2. However in the past year I've also begun learning the beliefs of the Southern Baptist denomination which doesn't quite stress supernatural events as much as the fact that one is saved by faith. I've also dabbled in Catholic and Messianic Jewish views. This has given me several different perspectives on what the Bible teaches.

What I'm thinking I may do some day is undergo personal study to figure out what seems most logical about things such as the Rapture, the Trinity, whether or not God is still giving out spiritual gifts like speaking in tongues and prophesy like He did in the beginning, what the meaning behind speaking in tongues is and the ways it ought to be used, the end times and how Revelation plays out, and other things that I could think of. A friend of mine is Christian, very intelligent, very faithful, yet he seems to deviate from the standard accepted believes of Protestants in a couple areas. I feel I should likewise examine for myself what the Bible says. I tend to interpret the Bible in a literal sense where possible so that alone could make me differ from Pentecostal teachings. I will need to do this some time in the future. Right now, I'm too busy with college.

Post 23: Survived that One!

Yes, another blog entry about the supposed 21 May Rapture. Look at a different blog entry on here if you'd rather not read this. :D

I had read something about this prediction several months beforehand but I gave little attention to it. It wasn't until the day before the predicted Rapture was to take place that CNN and possibly other news outlets started talking about it. It was annoying that they were saying it was "the end of the world," when it wasn't. According to Mr. Camping's theory, the end of the world was to be 5 months later.

Although I figured that it wouldn't take place, a little bit of me felt a little alerted. It was a good kick in the rear that Jesus's return could happen at any time. The Rapture is a doctrine of Protestant Christianity stating that Jesus will return to the Earth and take up all true Christians with him in Heaven. This idea was developed in the late 1700s and early 1800s. Due to this rather recent inception of the doctrine, I don't totally believe it anymore. I've only done a little research about it, but the Scriptures that support it could easily be used to describe the Second Coming at the end of the seven-year Tribulation. In fact, in the book of the prophet Isaiah there is a mention of it that mixes it with the Second Coming. Roman Catholics, who have been around for much longer than Protestants, don't believe in any sort of Rapture.

Another thing: the Rapture is said to be something so major that everyone in the world will know when it's happening and it will be immediate. But Mr. Camping said it would happen at 6 PM of each timezone. If that were so, it would give people in later timezones warning that they were going to be Raptured since I'm sure news outlets would announce the major disasters taking place in Raptured nations. So much for "like a thief in the night."

I was watching a program on television a few weeks ago called "Discovering the Jewish Jesus." The host, Rabbi K. A. Schneider, is a Messianic Jew which means he maintains Jewish traditions but observes the New Covenant (i.e., saved by faith and not by observing Mosaic Law). His show often shows how the Old and New Testaments are analogous, with parts of the OT prophesying and foreshadowing what would happen in the NT. He showed an interesting correlation between Moses leading the Hebrews out of Egypt and the End Times. Exodus 5-14 show a very stubborn Pharaoh refusing to release the Hebrews, who had become the slaves of the society. Thus in order to persuade the leader, God sent down ten plagues upon Egypt until finally the Hebrews were allowed out.

The Hebrews were still present in the nation of Egypt while the plagues were taking place. According to Rabbi Schneider, this event is representative of what the End Times will be like. As best as I can recall, he implicitly agrees with the Catholic notion of no Rapture. The Hebrews weren't removed from Egypt until after the plagues were finished. Likewise, the Christians and Messianic Jews of the last days will not be taken into Heaven until Christ's Second Coming.

I'm sure that there were people who heard about the 21 May Rapture and became believers or otherwise rededicated their lives to Christ. I imagine some of them were disappointed when it did not occur and have already abandoned that faith. Non-believers have doubtlessly mocked the event the whole time and now, thanks to this farce of a prophesy, they are now even more stubbornly hardened against God. I came across this amusing comment on the Interwebs: "Mr. Camping should be thankful that he lives under the New Testament economy. Under the OT economy and Torah law, he’d of found himself under a big pile of rocks, suffering the fate of a false prophet." (Source here.)

Despite all of this, I was enlightened to the impending return of Christ. I've long held that my life is one big bet: that Christianity is true and Jesus is coming soon. If it's false, then oh well. I won't know until I'm dead, and since I won't be conscious due to lack of an afterlife I won't regret it. If I'm right then I lucked out big time. I personally believe that the Second Coming is really soon. I'm a couple months away from being 20, and I feel I may not make it to 40 before Jesus comes again. So while I still have the time, I need to get myself into gear and try to strengthen my faith and relationship with God.

On a related note, I came across a website showing statistical analysis of prophesies listing when the Rapture and Second Coming could take place. Don Koenig admits that his predictions may be off by millenia but the numbers are fascinating and they show that things are about to get very serious very soon.

Post 11: Farsighted Faith

During my preteen years I was in a depression that required me to go to counseling to get out of. One of my habits was sitting close to the TV, maybe a yard or two away from it. As a result of this habit my eyesight was ruined. I wear glasses now so I can see and when my eyes were last checked, my vision was around 20/85. It has probably degraded further because of all the time I've spent in front of computers, however recently I've begun taking preemptive measures to stop the damage.

I'm short-sighted. A fancier term for that would be "myopia". If I take my glasses off, I can see up close things just fine, and usually take off my glasses when reading. However, without my glasses distant things start to blur. The glasses put everything in perspective for me.

Surely if you have more than ten brain cells, you should be able to see the analogy I just made here.

Something I noticed either today or yesterday that really struck me: on one of the message boards that I visit regularly, there was this one dude who really pushed the limits as to what he could and couldn't say. I have a Christian name on the forum and he sent me mean private messages and made two threads badmouthing Christianity. Simply put, he was a troll. And for the longest time he didn't get punished because he had held back just enough to not break the rules. However recently he was banned. Now he has a new account and is less questionable.

Often people will spend years waiting for God to fulfill a prayer and help them out of something, and it's very easy to get frustrated and give up. For example, I have fought on and off to gain control of my words. I'm normally quite impulsive when I speak and there have been plenty of times where the results were disasterous. Yet I haven't been able to fully capture control over what I say. Many times I've lost patience and given up.

My faith, and unfortunately I'd say the faith of most of the body of Christ, is short-sighted. Our spiritual myopia causes us to want instant results. It's human nature to want everything done right away, ASAP. Sometimes, God will do that. But many times, things are delayed for months or years. 

The banning of that troll demonstrated that even when nothing seems to be happening, justice will be carried through. Your healing will be done. That loved one you pray for will be saved. What is needed is for us, and this includes myself, to be in a sense farsighted.  Look ahead into the future. Picture the problem being solved. Believe God will have what need to be done accomplished. Start doing what needs to be done to ensure that it'll be accomplished. And between the time you start that step of faith and God makes that move that brings that desire to realization, just keep chugging. Keep doing what needs to be done. Don't focus on current situations that seem to indicate failure or nothing at all happening. The future is an uncertain thing. You never actually know what lies ahead until you experience it. Not every outcome has signs to indicate that change is coming. I didn't know that I would be told how much I was messing up my Bible study, when I was planning to speak on what a relationship with Jesus is.

Post 8: Less Shawn, More God

The past few days have been pretty intense, spiritually. New things are popping up (I just love all of this new stuff!) and I would like to share them.

For starters, I've come to find just how much of a sinner I still am. There are many problems that I have. I'm a complainer, selfish, glutton, and pervert to name a few. I expect myself to be able to act in a way that promotes God. I have the desire to be an excellent witness. And while my standards for myself aren't perfection (because I can never achieve that) or so I believe, whatever they are I still fall short of them.

I don't act godly because I'm trying to win God's favor. I have been in His favor for 2.5 years, starting the moment I agreed to make Jesus Christ (in Hebrew "Yeshua Messiah", which in English means "Jesus the Anointed One") the leader of my life and acknowledged what he did on the cross. I do these things out of a love and desire to be obedient to God's commands, and also because it is to my benefit.

Yet the problem I have had stems from the fact that I constantly rate how I am doing based upon that standard I have set for myself... and I always fail. The answer came on unintentionally. A friend of mine, whose blog can be found here, calls himself a Zen Christian. At the time, I didn't want to ask him about it directly as I didn't know how personal an explanation would have to be. I came across another blog, and this person had a creative solution: just BE Christian, and don't beat yourself up when you fail. Let the love of Jesus flow out through you.

I like this way of doing things. Then I wondered, "How can I bring my personality to match Jesus'?" See, at work, home and (eventually) school, I'm likely the closest thing that the lost ones around me will see to Jesus. If you remember a post from a while back, I mention my Myers-Briggs personality type: ISTJ. I'm organized, practical and factual. The disciple Thomas (aka the doubter) was ISTJ. Jesus on the other hand was not an ISTJ. It's hard to tell exactly what his type is, but based on observations from the Gospels it seems he is an -NF-, possibly INFP. (I guessed ENFJ.) My interests are probably not what Jesus would have liked. For instance, I play an interstellar combat game, Starfleet Commander, something Jesus wouldn't play. I want to go to college for computer science and am a sci-fi writer - two things unlike Jesus.

My conclusion was that my personality should not be a carbon copy of Christ's. God put in me these differences - a love for sci-fi, technological know-how, a desire to write - for the purpose of spreading the Gospel in whatever unique areas I may find myself in. The reconciliation of personalities comes in how I behave in these areas. The traits of Jesus - holiness, kindness, wisdom, patience, purity - these are the things that are to flow out of me.

Something else I wanted to happen was a greater amount of experiencing God. Faith is nice and I'm sure I have a good amount of it, but I don't want to coast on that all my life. I desire to see God act more in my life, do things that unmistakably point to him. I wrote down some ways:

• Miraculous events - always nice.
• Meditating on the Bible - understanding who God is by how he is recorded in the Bible.
• Worship - this can lead to more obvious, tangible experiences.
• "Hearing" God through thoughts - I have had situations where a thought has entered my mind that has such authority behind it that it can only have come from God.
• Conscience - that little voice in the back of your head is God prompting you.
• Feeling God's presence - not sure how this is done.
• Letting characteristics of God flow through you.
• Observing how God is working in the world and your life - coincidence? Maybe not.

In related, but different news, I am going to be heading up a Bible discussion group at the Christian youth center I attend, the Haven House. It'll be on alternating Thursdays, and it'll have prayer, inspirational real life stories and discussions on Bible topics. This works really well for me because I've always had a bit of a teacher streak in me, in the spiritual sense of the word. I'm good at analyzing things to find out what they are and then relaying that information to others. Now is my chance.

Sorry, I wrote this entry on two separate days. I may not have said everything I originally intended to. If so, then I'll just edit this post and add the info.

Post 1: Encounter at Blogspot

I must admit, I've never had a blog before. The closest thing to one is the cheap blog-like thing that you get with your MySpace page but really, who uses those? I know I don't. Heck, I rarely do much on MySpace nowadays - I, like most people, have switched over to the more mature magic that is Facebook.

What in the world is a blog anyway? According to the New York Times Almanac 2007, a blog is "A diarylike Web site, usually containing the personal thoughts of the site's owner as well as links to other sites of interest." (p.816). The term "blog" is actually the shortened form of "weblog" - literally, an online journal. So this, then, is my online journal. Let me introduce myself.

Hello! My name is Shawn, but many people refer to me by my nickname Dexter. I got that in the seventh grade when a girl named Brittany noticed that I had a striking resemblance to Dexter from "Dexter's Laboratory". I was short, wore glasses and as she later found out, extremely intelligent. I have kept the nickname going for six years so far, having a t-shirt made by someone who was rather obliged to give me some kind of gift. Online, I usually go by the name Youssarian. This comes from the name of the socially troubled meerkat from "Meerkat Manor", which in turn comes from the main character of the book "Catch-22"!

The first thing you need to know is that I am a devout Christian. In late 2007 I was watching a show on History Channel that explained all the prophecies that point to the 2012 Apocolypse. There were too many to be a coincidence. When people hear Apocolypse, they think the Christian Apocolypse as indicated in the book of Revelation. I was one of those people and it converted me. Way to go History Channel! I also had a spontaneous healing of a sore throat courtesy of a Christian friend's prayers, some time before that.

A lot of people call themselves Christian because they simply believe in God. But that is not enough! I'll tell you this right now, Satan and his demons believe in God, but are they Heaven-bound? No they are not! True Christian faith requires an active trust and working based on your faith. And that is what I do. I read my Bible every day, I pray, I attend church Sunday morning and youth group Sunday evening, and on occasion I give offerings. I don't have a job so I can't really tithe. Besides all that, my personality has been radically changed. Things like perversion and lust, which in the past I enjoyed, now are detestable to me. Things I used to say and do, I no longer do. Even the way I look at the world is different. I used to be pro-abortion, for instance, but now I am against it. Indeed, in the past I was quite liberal, but over the past many months I have shifted to a conservative mindset.

Around July/August of 2008, I began attending Victory Assembly of God in Buffalo, New York. I became a regular attendee of the services and of the youth group. I was baptized in water there, on my last day there. After graduating high school as the third-smartest person in the graduating class, I moved to Independence, Kansas and two weeks later began attending First Assembly of God Church.

The Assemblies of God are a subdivision of the Pentecostal denomination. As such, we translate the Bible more literally than others and emphasize the power of the Holy Spirit, the third Person of the Holy Trinity. Thus we are the ones with the most of baptism in the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues.

Alright, what else do you need to know? My favorite show is "Star Trek: The Next Generation" as well as all the other series of the Star Trek saga, except probably "Star Trek: Enterprise". Yess I know, nerdy! Ever since I was young, though, the show and the movies have mesmerized me with the positive outlook as to how the world can be, not to mention the incredible technology in it. My favorites out of the eleven are "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home", "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier" and "Star Trek: Nemesis". My absolute least favorite is "Star Trek: The Motion Picture". I have not yet seen the 2009 remake, simply titled "Star Trek", but I plan on it!

After that, my favorite show is "Meerkat Manor". This show has survived four seasons, with it being renamed "Meerkat Manor: The Next Generation". For the first three seasons it centered around the lives of a group of desert mammals called suricates or meerkats. The particular group was called the Whiskers, led by their dominant female named Flower. Despite her name she was tough as nails. A good nickname for her would have been the Iron Lady. Her mate and dominant male was Zaphod. These two led the group through foraging for food, dealing with unruly daughters and encountering opposing groups (at first Lazuli, then Commandos and Zappa). Towards the end of season three, Flower died and her oldest daugher Rocket Dog took charge. The group dwindled in size under Rocket Dog's command. There is probably going to be no season five, because just about all of the original meerkats have died!

My current obsession is a show on Discovery Channel, "The Colony". It's an experiment where ten people are living in a post-nuclear war world in southern Los Angeles, and they're given various things to try. It's pretty cool, and now that the people are well into the project (as of writing this, that is), it's become their reality. There are cameramen and off-camera medic teams, which makes it less life-like, but nevertheless cool.

You may notice that almost all of my posts will have a title. It's little more than a novelty, really, just a basic summary of the contents. This one's title is Encounter at Blogspot. This is a variation of the title of the two-part first episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation", Encounter at Farpoint.

Living up to the part where a blog links to other sites of interest, here are some useful ones:

http://www.google.com - Google

http://www.dreamviews.com - Dream Views, a website dedicated to the act of lucid dreaming

http://www.bibleforums.org/forum - The Bible Forum which I belong to. Very helpful for my walk in faith

http://www.freewebs.com/shawnc1991 - My personal website, which links to various things I have: Dext3r Productions, my currently discontinued graphing calculator programming hobby; Dext3r Ministries, my evangelical project; a link to my written works; and more that I can't think of.

That's my introductory post. My next one will really serve the purpose of a weblog: journaling. Until then, God bless and happy digging.