How To Define A Christian

The largest religion in the United States is Christianity. According to a religious identification survey in 2008 over 76% of Americans identify themselves as Christian, with over 56 million Roman Catholics and over 116 million other Christians for a total of over 173 million. 20% either claim no religion (the Nones) or refuse to answer the survey, with just under 4% claiming some other religion. The numbers for mainline Christians are rapidly falling as the numbers of non-denominational Christians rise. The Catholic population grew by one percent since the last survey ten years prior, but is still a percentage point lower than it was 20 years ago. Check out the tables for further information about the growth of Eastern religions like the Muslims, for instance.

One question remains in all of these numbers. How do you define or identify a Christian? The Bible gives a clear and forthright answer in two passages:

"By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already" (1 John 4:2-3).

"Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking in the Spirit of God ever says "Jesus is accursed!" and no one can say "Jesus is Lord" except in the Holy Spirit" (1 Corinthians 12:3).

Here's what I'm seeing in these blunt statements:

1. A Christian believes in the Incarnation, that is, in what we just celebrated during the Christmas season. God came among us in human form, born as a man child from the womb of the Virgin Mary.
2. He was not conceived through the union of a man and a woman. Rather he was conceived by the powerful working of God's Holy Spirit who overshadowed and enveloped Mary (Luke 1:35-37).
3. This child was named Jesus, a name that means "The LORD saves from sin." The name points to Jesus' office or calling to be the messianic king foretold by ancient prophecy (Matthew 1:19-23). 
4. Not only is Jesus the Messiah, the king descended by lineage from David, he is also true God, the Son of God, in fact God with us (Isaiah 8:8-10 and Isaiah 9:6-7). 
5. Those who have been reborn by the working of God's Spirit acknowledge and accept this. For them Jesus is LORD, that is, the God of the First Covenant, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the great I AM. This was the claim of Jesus himself (John 6:48-51; John 8:12-19; John 8:57-59; John 10:6-14, etc.). 
6. Moreover, this LORD offered up His life as the full and complete sacrifice and final payment for the sins of all mankind (Hebrews 9:11-16) and rose victorious on the third day. 
7. He lives now, is ever with us and will return at the end of this age (Matthew 28:18-20).  

Those who deny these truths or who try to make Jesus merely an example of how a pious person should live are not Christians. They who wish to call themselves Christian, but who deny the divinity of Jesus are led by another spirit. The Apostles called this the spirit of the antichrist. Much has been and will continue to be written and taught about this spirit. For my purposes here it is sufficient to point out that this is an attitude and a belief opposite to everything the Bible and historic Christianity has ever taught.

We Christians quarrel and argue among ourselves about many details of our teachings, but if we are Christians at all we accept what is written above. 

Do Christians Believe In Magic?

Do Christians believe in magic? That all depends . . . upon whom you talk with and what your definition is of the word. With Christmas but a few days away I'm thinking about the Wise Men who came for a visit a couple years after Jesus was born, but who inevitably appear in Nativity scenes as if they dropped in that great night, along with the shepherds.


Those men—three, ten, two or however many—were called Magi. Those men came from the East—the lands between the rivers. There they were considered magicians, men acquainted with mysteries and forces beyond the normal course of events. To ask if you believe in magic is then also to ask if you believe in the Magi who followed that mysterious star that went before them.


Why did they come? Why did they bring their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh? What mysteries did they know about? What was their magic? I'd like to work with those questions for a couple days as we who do believe in the Savior prepare to join millions around the earth to kneel with the Magi before Him.


The question of magic and the Bible is also a very scholarly topic. Books are written about it, conferences are held and learned men pontificate about it. They use complex phrases like "magico-religious phenomena" and "the modern system of classifying magic fails to accurately represent the mentality of the ancient civilizations under observation." I think that means that magic and religion were quite mixed together in those old days. And I think these modern wise guys tell us that we have misunderstood how the ancients thought about magic.


But back to our ancient Wise Men.


They came from somewhere in the Persian empire (modern Iran). That empire started in the seventh century B.C. under Cyrus the Great, way back in the days when the Israelites were sent home after being slaves of the Babylonians for seventy years. It continued until Alexander the Great overthrew them in 330 B.C. One of his generals began the rule of the Seleucid Empire. They were followed by the Parthian dynasty, ruling at the time of Christ's birth and never conquered by the Romans.


The Magicians who visited the Christ Child were likely priests, not kings, of the caste of the Medes. Herodotus tells us that the Magian priests formed one of the two councils of the Parthian empire. God-fearing Jews—Parthians, Medes, Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia were present at the first Pentecost (Acts 2:5-12). Those Jews were descendants of the Jews who had not returned to the Holy Land after the Persians set them free.


The Biblical Daniel was one of the Magicians during the days of the Babylonian captivity (Daniel 1:20 and Daniel 2:2). These wise men interpreted dreams and visions, read the stars and gave counsel to the king. Daniel wrote about the coming of the Lord Jesus (Daniel 7:13-14). So we must assume that his writings and teachings were preserved among the other wise men and that the Magicians who came to worship Jesus knew about and believed in the promise of the Savior.


To ask whether you believe in magic, therefore, is to ask whether God rules over all that He has created and grants revelations and wisdom to those whom He chooses. From this viewpoint the Bible is a great and wondrous book of Magic. More on this next time. 

Do We Christians Believe in Parallel Universes?

I have to say that Jeffrey Jacob "J.J." Abrams is a brilliant and talented man. Writer, producer, director and musician, he keeps on pouring out wildly popular movies and TV series. He is both an Emmy Award and Golden Globe winner. He's obviously an amazing man--and he's only 43. 

J. J. Abrams - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Recently I viewed Fringe, a TV series he has written and is directing. I'm planning to watch them all. Information on FOX follows: 


Set in Boston, the FBI's Fringe Division formed when Special Agent OLIVIA DUNHAM (Anna Torv) enlisted the help of institutionalized "fringe" scientist WALTER BISHOP (John Noble) and his son, PETER (Joshua Jackson), to save her partner and lover from a mind-bending death. Through unconventional and unorthodox methods, the FRINGE team imagines and tests the impossibilities while investigating unbelievable events, macabre crimes, and mystifying cases involving pyrokinesis, neuroscience, cryonics, genetic engineering, astral projection, and other fantastical theories. When the unimaginable happens, it's their job to stop it.


What are Abrams and Fox tapping into? What draws people like me to watch this stuff? My children watch it. My grandchildren watch it. So what's going on? Why the interest in aliens, parallel universes, demons, angels, sci-fi, shape shifters, etc. The list goes on. You get the picture. 
For starters, let me emphasize that the Bible has always had its own list of strange beings with unexplained powers and a parallel universe. Try your hand at explaining this.  

• The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown (Genesis 6:4). 

• Then the angel of the LORD stood in a narrow path between two vineyards, with walls on both sides. ²⁵ When the donkey saw the angel of the LORD, she pressed close to the wall, crushing Balaam's foot against it. So he beat her again (Numbers 22). 

• He (Jacob) had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. ¹³ There above it stood the LORD, and he said: "I am the LORD, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying (Genesis 28). 

Who can stop asking where heaven is? What does it mean to ascend and descend to and from that place? Is heaven a parallel universe of some sort? Is there more than one? 

Since angels are creatures of God, as are the rebel angels, what are they made of? Of what does their matter consist? And what energy do they employ to do what they do, e.g. destroy entire cities? How do they move about? Why are they able to inhabit human bodies? 

That ought to be enough to get you going with your own TV series. Or is it already being done? Oh well, there's always room for creative twists.  

Impressions of New York By A Midwesterner

One of my favorite correspondents sent me a paragraph from Mary Hollingsworth's delightful book of stories by children, Little Wonders. She writes that at the end of each year, she and other Sunday School teachers give the children pencils and paper and ask them to chronicle what they have learned in Bible study. This assignment never fails to elicit some intriguing responses.

In case you're a little foggy on your biblical history, here's a sample of what her junior church students compiled from their essays.

"Another important Bible guy is Moses, whose real name was Charlton Heston. Moses led the Israel Lights out of Egypt and away from the evil Pharaoh after God sent ten plagues on Pharaoh's people.   These plagues included frogs, mice, lice, bowels, and no cable.   God fed the Israel Lights every day with manicotti.   Then He gave them His top ten Commandments.  These include don't lie, cheat, smoke, dance, or covet your neighbor's bottom (the Bible uses a bad word for bottom that I'm not supposed to say.  But my Dad uses it sometimes when he talks about the President. Oh, yeah, I just thought of one more:  Humor they father and thy mother."

Though I'm not your father, humor me a bit further, because I have a serious concern. Sylvia and I just returned from a weekend in New York City to visit our son. While there we wandered around in Manhattan and visited the site of the former World Trade Center. By the way, there's a lot of building activity going on there, but the builders are a long, long way from finishing the proposed memorials and other buildings. There is a new Trade Center building however.



What struck me--again--about NYC and especially Manhattan is the lack of certain types of buildings. Millions of people are crowded into row after row of apartments and condos. The streets are lined with every possible kind of restaurants and shops. Huge sky scrapers are filled with offices. Businesses of every kind are booming. Listen to the people passing by and you will hear many strange languages. Watch the people sitting across from you on the subway and you will observe people of all races.

But where are the churches? We saw a few pushed in among the multitudes, a synagogue urging Sabbath observation, a Seventh Day Adventist church advertising 11 AM Saturday morning worship and an Episcopal chapel directly across from the WTC site. But if I were to venture a totally non-scientific observation, I would have to say that, based upon their lack of religious buildings, these New Yorkers are not a religious people. And yet Americans as a nation are. It's just that this vast city does not reflect it in their buildings.

Geitner Simmons, the editorial page editor of the Omaha World-Herald is a Midwesterner, a Southerner, a husband, a father, and a son. In his Blog he posts maps, developed by the Cincinnati-based Glenmary Research Center, showing religious adherence to be greatest in the middle of the country — from Texas and Louisiana up through the Dakotas. Religious adherence in the Southeast, long dubbed the "Bible Belt," is more spotty that one might expect.

He also posts maps of the influence of religious bodies upon various parts of the country. As I knew, we Lutherans are located largely in the upper midwest. Baptists dominate the South. There is a general Catholic presence around the country. Mormons are strong in the West, particularly Utah. Methodist have strong holdings in various parts of central and eastern United States. And so it goes. Over 80% of the religious people in this country are Christian.

And yet I have a hard time shaking off my impressions of New York City. Perhaps that has to do with my being born in Minnesota and spending all of my professional life in the midwest. Nevertheless I have a question that must be addressed regardless of where one lives. Who is your God and what do you worship? Answer that question and you will answer many questions about morality, life styles and dreams.