Paul's Letters

Dear Jamie

 YA YA JAMIE

EYE TROOLY FINK YOAR KNOT GUNNA BE INTERESTED IN WHAT EYE HAVE TO SAY BUT BUDEEE TOO BAD AYE ME OLE GOLFING MATE CAUSE I’M GUNNA TELL YER ANYHOW WEFFER YER LIKE IT OR KNOT.

NOW LISTEN HEAR ME OLE CHINA.

I’M GUNNA TELL YER AS STRATE AS I KAN, LIKE ONE OF TIGERS DEAD STRATE DRIVES AND VEN I’M GUNNA LEAVE IT WIFF YER AND SAY KNOW MORE ON THE ZUBJECT.

YOU HAVE TO BE BORN AGAIN. ( JOHN CHAPTER 3. VERSE 7. )

P.S.  i GOT ME A WHOLE IN ONE THE UVVER DAY. IT WAS THE PAR 3, 9TH, 145 MTRS AT WAITARIMU.MY THIRD BALL OFF THE TEE BUT BUDDEE I’M A TAKING IT CAUSE EYE DESERVE IT BRO. MIRACLE DON’T HAPPEN EVERY DAY BRO.NOBODY SAW IT BRO BUT ME AND A COUPLE OF BLACKBIRDS. ALL THE SHEEP BRO WERE TOO BUSY CHOMPING GRASS TO NOTICE. WHAT A GREAT SHOT BRO. i WAS JUST SPELL BOUND BRO, SPELL BOUND. WHAT A SHOT BRO WHAT A SHOT.THIRD TIME LUCKY BRO. EYE DON’T CARE WHAT YOU SAY BRO I’M GETTING THE BALL FRAMED BRO AND THATS THAT.

Dear Ross,

I am writing this letter while it is fresh in my mind but it might take another year before I mention that I have this blog where you can read it for the first time.

Watching your brother Don who is my friend slowly die is not an easy business for any of us but particularly for him, but because he, as Bev says, is a very brave man, he is bravely going through the motions of the last days of his life with courage that we all admire so very greatly.

I well remember the wee bit of time I spent with my brother Bernard’s best friend John. John was visiting Bernard on his death bed and actually happened to be alone with him when he died. I will never forget the grief stricken look on John’s face.

As much as I liked John I knew it was unlikely that I would see him again after the funeral.Bernard and I were very different from each other but I loved him. He was one of those loveable guys probably because he himself was a lover of people.

I often find myself thinking about John when those memories of Bernard are up front in my mind.When I think of him I am always hoping he is doing well. Also I’ve got to say that knowing that my brother had such a friend gives me comfort.

You and Bev as a devoted and caring brother and sister will make the impending loss of Don easier to bear.

Don was a champion, and with his good character and his other admirable traits he has been a good influence on me, without which I would still be the deficient person I was.

But I am still open to be influenced for good and I will seek to gain it from whomever I can, whenever I can. In your case I hope I can emulate some of your positive attitudes and that diligent onto it behaviour of yours.

Whereas with Bev it might be her love of music that I would like to catch and some of that cheerful charming disposition that she is certainly blessed with.

I would love to influence you in some ways to be like me but as I am mindful that this is unlikely to happen I take heart that as there are others apart from yourself, who might read this letter,and therefore there is a chance, however slim,that I might be able to influence them as Don, your brother, has influenced me.

Ross this what I would like to say.

I think most people would agree with the following: they prefer to be useful instead of useless,to be helpful instead of helpless,worthwhile instead if worthless,of value instead of valueless,of significance instead of insignificance,of importance instead of no importance to anyone at all.

We obviously have a natural inclination to avoid the life that offers little or no meaning referred to as the meaningless life and instead with all embracing we naturally look for and seek out the meaningful life, the worthwhile life or the significant life.

The point that I am leading to is this.

In my opinion I say that the desire to feel important or worthwhile far exceeds the desire to live the meaningless life, so much so, that this along with the desire to survive, is our prime motivator.

If we lead what we deem to be the worthwhile life, we will feel justified in conjuring up notions within ourselves of being viewed as worthwhile in the eyes of others in our peer group, and these feelings of importance or worth-while-ness will pump us up and make us feel good or OK.

These good feelings which we chase to capture and keep are being chased by the whole human race. They are our tonic because they strengthen us to not only edure our dayly toil but to, in some cases, lift us above it; Therefore we pursue them with great diligence albeit, in my opinion, it is not a pursuit that we do conciously. 

But how do we define the worthwhile life?In my case as boy busily carving his name into his school desk I incorrectly concluded that I was indeed worthwhile in the eyes of those others who would be dumb enough to admire my purile form of stupidity, and as there were enough dummies to keep me studiously carving away, I did exactly that.However because my feelings of importance were overly heightened by participating in this form of madness or childish stupidity which I thought was deserving of tremendous admiration; I was nevertheless on the wrong track and would not have been persuaded otherwise no matter how much logic might have been poured on me; Therefore I became the brunt of my discipline masters cane.

Yep you guessed it right…the cane won the day because it over-road my erroneous reasoning which I eventually abandoned but it took a while. It took so many years that I am embarresed to tell you how long it took for the idiotic fool in my life to leave. Suffice to say it was years and years.

However through the foolishness of my wayward youth I recognised that the more profound  or heightened our sense of importance becomes the greater our reluctance is to abandon the cause of it whether it be justfied or not.

History, apart from being a recorder of times past, is a great teacher because it teaches us knowledge of ourselves today.

Many will run from this knowledge which can be gleaned by embracing certain aspects of history because it might initially result in depleting our sense of importance and thereby lessen the amount of good feelings that we usually enjoy.

History teaches us that man’s nature is essentially changeless even though we seem to be on the pathway of becoming more and more refined.

Most of us incorrectly think that we would have believed that the world was round when Galileo said it was. The truth is we would not have abandoned our ancient point of view regardless of his logic because to do so we would have had to endure great feelings of un-importance which are always difficult to bare.

The quest to be always feeling good by not having our sense of importance under attack, sometimes will result in the sacrifice of knowledge;As it did to those ancient ones viewing Galileo’s round the world story, if it conflicts with our sense of importance and in times like this the heart is ruling the head. If we let the head rule we shall certainly suffer the experience of periodically having our feathers ruffled when we face some unpleasant information head on, that would be our preference to avoid and if we did avoid it we would be able to keep our sense of importance intact.

For us to have agreed with Galileo we would have needed to edure the experience of living without the approval of the finest in the land and that level of endurance would have been such an anathema to us that we simply would not have been able to view the information in a light of no bias or even seriously entertain his thinking.

Most people today are convinced that they would have been on Galleo’s side of yesterday, but they wouldn’t have been, and to disagree with this is to point the finger at history and say it be false.

History teaches us that the finest people in society can be wrong when they didn’t need to be, but because they needed, and who can blame them,the hearty approval of their peer group, they sub conciously let this sway their thinking at the expense of the truth that was yet to be popular.

Christ who for about 3 years enjoyed great popularity was condemned by the same crowd because their sense of importance took such a big hit. Here was this guy healing the people and being a real decent type, but when they thought he was a blasphemer they yelled crucify him.They killed him not because of logic, for he was a just man, but because he claimed to be God and it incensed them.

If we cannot admit that we too would have been yelling crucify him if we were the  everyday Jews of that day then we are kidding ourselves.Paul the great apostle to the gentiles would probably have been yelling the loudest.

I think I am right in assuming that you are like Bev and that you don’t believe in the existence of God.

There is tremendous power in the idea of athiesm because it allows our sense of importance to become so terribly boosted.

In a way the idea of the existence of God is the greatest negative for all of mankind to endure. Supposedly there is this being who has always existed and who has created everything and is all wise and so on.

This idea is an attack upon our sense of importance because if we compare ourselves to this entitiy, we don’t become a distant second or third; But because He is so superior that we don’t even begin to compare. If we compare this to an ant and the entire human race we might begin to get some idea of vastness of the difference between God the creator and us his creation.

Most people don’t go around the place conciously thinking like this but nevertheless it is constantly wearing away at them in the background dragging them down. To defy this is to defy logic itself.

If there is no God then we don’t have this problem and hence the attractiveness of that idea.

God of course understands this understandable problem and essentially says that as we can’t beat him we might as well join him.

When he commands that we must love him it is not because he is need of love.

He does so because it is the only appropriate way for us to handle ourselves in these circumstances.

You and I have children and as they will be inclined to be somewhat influenced by us we have to be especially mindful or careful that our behaviour does not unwittingly work against them.

I would certainly take a bullet for my family without blinking an eyelid and no doubt you would do the same but and here is the but Ross. How much love do we really have for them because if you have got it all wrong about God you will not only go to hell but you might take some of your children with you if they follow your example.

The evidence for God is so overwhelming but if you have tripped into atheism you will have more chance of seeing God’s truth than I did as a wayward school boy who could only be influenced by the cane.

I am not saying that hell is God’s cane because it isn’t, its much worse. The cane improved me but hell by comparison destroys, for the scriptures says that those who go there will perish.

But we can use hell as a goad, as a motivation to seriously investigate our ways to ensure that they are not in need of amendment.In my case I could not avoid the school boy hell which was the cane in the hands of my discipline master.

If God is true, and I obviously say that he is,then I say that the good and decent people who have done good things will still go there if they have spent their lives ignoring God in atrocious ungrateful rudeness by not loving him and therefore making themselves ill-suited to be with the God loving people in heaven who do love God and will enjoy everlasting life.

The shortest sermon I have ever heard lasted about 20 seconds which certainly was not entertainingly long enough for me but it was unforgetable.

As we sat back ready to listen to this acclaimed speaker from the USA he said something like the following. He said…the purpose of this life is to ensure that we accept God’s offer of everlasting life via Jesus Christ who is God who became a man. And then he sat down.

We will not be able to tell God that we did not realise that he existed and therefore we should be excused from such a severe punishment.

The real truth is that those who say there is no God, feel more greatly admired because there is no God greater than them that would diminish their greatness. But also they are essentially saying that they will not bend the knee to God and they are telling God to get the hell out of their life and actually are mad haters of God, although they are kidding themselves that this isn’t true.When that great day of judgment comes they recognise what they are and hate themselves for it and regret their stubborness that resulted in making a decision that shuts them out of heaven and everlasting life.

Knowing that they are to perish and miss out on everlasting will give a new meaning to the word anguish. 

Just as Hitler kidded himself on a dayly basis saying to himself Oh what a good boy am I. I have just killed another 25,000 Jews. Do you think that if he says to God  on that great day of judgement when he has to face the truth, that he is sorry that God will say thats OK Adolf come into heaven with all your mad hate?

This life is your big chance to make the right decision.

I don’t think I’ll ever cease to be to be impressed with the way so many, who do not love God or appreciate Him with any gratitiude, have the attitude that God wouldn’t cast the likes of them into hell just because they were small thinkers that refused to look at the big picture painted by Jesus Christ who laid down His life for them. This life became their everything so much so that it was at the expense of everlasting life itself.

Heaven is awaiting for you Babe but you have to clean your act up to get in.In other words to get in you need to qualify and your qualifications are as follows.

You have to love God and people, keep His commandments,accept the deity of Jesus Christ,be grateful for His sacrifice for you on the cross and don’t hide your light under a bushell.

All this is easy peasey except its hard to tell your peer group that you’ve changed sides. That is tough…..but everlasting life compared to everlasting damnation will give you the motivation.

I don’t want to offer you all the reasons why you too should be a follower of Jesus Christ because I think you are too caught up with the pervading view of athiesm to be influenced by me…..But Ross you can read the gospels yourself and therefore I have done the next best thing…I have warned you which is probably at the expense of the common friendship we share with your brother.

But if I was to offer one reason and one reason alone I’d say this. I’d say hey babe the resurection did happen and it ain’t no biggie if you are God which is exactly who Jesus Christ was in the flesh.

Turn to Christ and don’t be ashamed of what those that are perishing think of you: After all they are heading for hell where they and you will perish, unless they and you chuck a U turn and repent.Nevertheless if for one moment you thought I was not for you, you would be greatly mistaken.

I am for you very much……God bless you.

Paul

Dear Cliffe 5

Dear Cliffe,

              As a boy in school, all those years ago, I was so suspicious that when they said the world was a round globe, I, in my childlike way decided that they were probably right but I wanted to prove it for myself.

Whilst this type of suspicion usually only flourishes in the minds of the ignorant, which I certainly was,it has nevertheless been a buddy to me because like a good detective, my friend of suspicion has the ability to ignore all the previous assumptions and thereby allow me to come to my own conclusions without the assistance of smarter detectives than me.

As I, for many long years, lacked reasonable intelligence, I became impervious to the sometimes erroneous but very persuasive reasonings of others simply because I couldn’t concentrate on what they were saying and therefore I could not follow how they arrived at their reasons. 

I am going somewhere with all this and it is with the fervant hope that I might be able to motivate you to abandon everything you know about Ellen G White who I say is a true prophet of God that makes Nostradamous by comparison seem like a tea cup reader thats got it all wrong.

I have looked under more rocks than anyone else, at least I think I have.

If you and I have a mission in life it is to get others to check out the evidence but boy, that, as you know is not an easy thing to do.

How do we inspire, motivate ,cajole others to truly investigate.

Will we forever be looking for that dreamy golden bullet that can shoot dead all previous conclusions? Maybe such ammo doesn’t really exist but like the mad alchemist looking for the way to make gold in the lab we persist and persist until we finally arrive at the lake of perplexion without letting go of the dream.

I suppose the main reasons why I love your Campus Show called GIVE ME AN ANSWER on Shine TV in NZ, so much is because my own faith gets fortified as I more fully appreciate the valid reasons for our faith.

Although you might not always, on day one, be successful in persuading your audience with your persuasive reasonings, you do however persuade me and others like me to stand stronger in our faith in Jesus Christ,which results in increased liberty that does not impede the joy that can result from the sound knowledge of the rightness of our right and perfect decision.  

It is OK to say for the sake of being real that we must be careful to never forget what a bunch of hard heads we once were when we sat in opposition to God and Jesus Christ and ignored those who preached the gospel of good news.

As others so patiently toiled to prevent us from perishing and in so doing saved us, by the power of God, from eventually getting snuffed out in hell and instead to become inheritiors of everlasting life in heaven: We therefore have a debt to God to, with all persuasion, rescue others who like us did not want to be rescued.

Cliffe, as you haver persuaded me I too wish to persuade you.

I was impressed how Ellen G White, a God fearing wee woman, now dead almost 100 years, had many dreams and visions that were bang on.

One particular rock that I looked under was this one. In a vision she described the battle of Bull Run to a tee. This was the battle where Andrew Jackson got his name Stonewall.But Cliffe and here is the but. This was before the battle happened.

I am not saying that I am a know it all but I do know wheat from chaff no matter how much the crowd is yelling crucify him.

As I say Cliffe, I turned over a lot of rocks and like Pilate I can say with my hand on my heart all the way to the grave that I find no fault with her.

Check her out babe. Check her out. It’ll take longer than a New York minute.

Your friend and fellow companion,

Paul

Dear David,

Come back and see me again and we can talk some more philosphy.I am surprised that you have turned out to be as well adjusted as you are, considering your difficult childhood.

As your traumatic youthful years have been responsible for turning you into a thinker I thought you might like to read some of my thoughts relating to fathers, including the difficult ones.

I do believe you when you say that your own father was such a difficult man to live with that you became a dreamer at school to get away from the nightmare of your life.

I am sure that my son would confess that I too have been, from time to time,a difficult father. But if I would like to blame anyone I would like to blame him, because if he had been wiser, I could have been a much better father.

Both he and I didn’t really know that I needed the healing balm of his respect, but instead of blaming myself I prefer to blame him,But I do blame myself for not respecting my own father sufficiently enough.

If it is the fault of the child and not the father then how can we really blame a son or daughter if they were never taught to honour their parents.

Where does blame begin and finish and who really is the guilty party?

My father who suffered from not recieving sufficient son to father respect, seemed to be, often times, agin me instead of, for me. This to me as a young man was perplexing and frustrating.

But his own father was a shocker and treated my Dad in a very bad way.He was the oldest son in a family of 10 and he really copped it. My Dad wasn’t smart enough, although he was quite a smart person,to calm down his Dad with plenty of calming down respect.

I agree with you that your father does not deserve your respect particularly after the way he treated your mother in such a terrifying way.I am not sure that I really deserve my own son’s respect but I do need it.

My first clumsy attempt to respect my father happened a long time ago when I was a young married man of about 33 years of age.I hung a head shot photo of him and another one of my mother on the wall. But this wasn’t photos of the usual size. I got them blown up to about 2 feet by 1 foot each. Also I gave them a wall to hang on with no other photos on it.

Although he never told me I knew he loved it.I spotted him one time taking a quick sneaky peek to see if they were still there hanging in the room that I had set aside as an office.

Dad did calm down a bit but I could have done so much more, but I wasn’t plum doggone smart enough.

I can say that, if I could have, as a child,given my father respect that showered him with honour,he would have been a different man and I would have been a better man for it. If I would have honoured him like I should have he would have had a better life.

We could get into the phychology of what is happening in the mind of the father and why, which is in itself quite interesting but perhaps at this stage we should leave this for another time.

Your father is an old man in his eighties and although he makes my father seem like a saint compared to him, you still need to respect him for the following reasons. You need to respect him to win otherwise the winning that you think you have won through not keeping this important but very wise commandment is not really a win at all although you might think it is.

Even though you don’t really believe in God I will communicate this to you on the basis that you do.This is not really the time and place to get into this discussion about God but having said that let me mention why the great thinker Plato disagrees with you.

This is my understanding of his conclusions.He eventually concluded that either matter was eternal or that God was eternal. He chose God because matter is finite. Atheism is a popular trend that will eventually get batted out of the park but it takes a while for all the Plato’s out there, to get around to thinking it through.

It always takes longer than 5 minutes for the penny to drop. Sometimes it takes a very long while. I have digressed. Now back to you and your Dad.

Firstly God tells us to honour our father and mother and that is clearly stipulated in the 10 commandments.

This commandment to honour your parent also offers you a long life.

You need to show your own children how to behave in this area with your own excellent commandment keeping example which will give them and their children a better life as they follow your wise behaviour.

I know you think you are fortifying yourself by not lavishing him with the respect he doesn’t deserve, but in actuality you are weakening yourself and your character. 

If you honour your father you will become a more secure person with an improved relationship with all men whereby you will feel much more accepted. You will enjoy increased strength in your manhood and you will be a wiser person for it.

As I elevated my father with his large photo into a position of honour I gradually began to do something I hadn’t done before. I began to admire him for those traits that all of our parents have that are worthy of admiration. To my admiration of him was eventually added love.

Remember when we talked I explained that his photo gradually seemed to change in expression as it went from a look of dissaproval and dissatisfaction to approval.

Eventually He seemed to be saying saying “I am for you Paul” but until I elevated him I could not see this insight.

There are many ways to honour or respect our parents besides hanging their photo on our wall. You could periodically replace Dad with Sir.

You can give him thoughtful gifts which don’t need to be expensive.Be careful to stay in touch and don’t hide from him.

Write to him and express gratitiude for all the years he fed and clothed you.Do all this and more and he will release a blessing that you have waited for all your life.

Even though my parents have been gone now for a good number of years I will soon be getting those old photos out of storage to hang on the wall again.

If I had my way I would have a bust of both of them in bronz proudly displayed in the best room of my home.

Do I think you will take my advice? Probably not because you have been hurt pretty bad by your Dad. There are hard things to do in life and if you did this, it would be one of the hardest things you have ever done. But it is eventually followed by joy resulting from a new and well deserved and necessary contentment and confidence.

Come by and we’ll talk some more. You talk, I’ll listen.

Paul

Dear Cliffe 4

Dear Cliffe,

I have some logic to share with you which I suggest, if promulgated on campus by yourself, will bear fruit.

This is the logic.

Because we are the inheritiors of everlasting life we are therefore superior to those things that have a finite life.

We are greater than the sun because we will still be living when it expires.

Obviously this must also apply to the mountains, the sea, the earth, the stars and the entire universe.

But I don’t care two figs whether I am greater than the sun or not….it simply doesn’t do anything for me, because the desire to feel important or seriously worthwhile has become so greatly diminished since becoming a regenerated person through the redeeming power of Jesus Christ that it doesn’t effect me one jot, one way or the other.

However this is not so for the unregenerated who still appreciate significant feelings of worthwhile-ness.

In a previous letter I mentioned that without the feeling of importance or worthwhile-ness it would be very difficult for people to buy what ever it is that you are selling.

Your audience on campus feels important embracing the erroneous view that there is no God.

They have increased their own greatness by removing or getting rid of the competition of God, that they could not compete with.

Therefore, in order for these people to seriously consider the idea that God is indeed a reality, they need to feel at least as important as they are now currently feeling.

Whilst they cannot claim to have the greatness of those who are to inherit eternal life and thereby be greater than the sun, the moon and the stars,they nevertheless can be told, that, we the redeemed, have this level of greatness.

Therefore it allows them to view the idea of God being the creator in a positive way because it is accompanied by the necessary feeling of importance.

Our greatness, which we have no desire to relish in,happens to be vastly superior to their greatness.

They would if they could, love to be greater than the sun, moon and stars, but they cannot be, unless somehow they could have everlasting life.

Prior to hearing this truth relating to these much greater levels of greatness, the idea would have previously been considered a madness but nevertheless it is not so anymore as it is obviously another truth that has been unearthed as an antidote to this black plague of atheism. 

I think that the atheists do deserve the luxury of at least being able to feel as important believing in God as they are now currently feeling for not believing in God. But being greater than the sun moon and stars is much greater than their current greatness and thereby superceeding it.

This new greatness allows them to lift sufficiently enough to consider and contemplate what you and I know to be true, which is, that God doth indeed exist along with the offer from Jesus Christ of everlasting life.

I believe that the nonsence of atheism is fundementally cherished by atheists with their absurd views all because the drug of their sense of importance or worthwhile-ness is so heightened or lifted that it allows their minds to preseve these invalid views that don’t make any horse sense.

The truth of our greatness will not work as a drug for the true believer but it will help the unbeliever and therefore I think its expedient that we unfold this revelation for them, in this way, so that they can enter into their own homes of contemplation and stick their feet up on the desk while staring out the window, chawing on this tobacca.

I am suggesting that if you just throw this out there, they will latch onto it all by themselves, and it will grow and grow and grow.

You and I know that true repentance brings humility without which we cannot be saved from damnation.

It is well and good if the initial serious consideration to the existence of God happens because of some percieved personal greatness and even though this greatness is true to the extent that we are greater than all things, we will never be greater than God just as an ant will never be greater than us.

OK so we are greater than the sun moon and stars but we are infinitely inferior to God as far as the east is from the west.

Best wishes for you and your church and their future,

You are greatly beloved by all the saints,

God Bless You all.

Your brother in Christ,

Paul

Dear Cliffe 3

I watched you on TV last night and no word of a lie your show GIVE ME AN ANSWER was a masterpiece.

I think this sort of thing happens every once and a while and happen it did last night on Shine TV at 5,30PM in New Zealand on the 8th of September 2012.

I am looking forward to watching it again and that will be a first for me.

But, and here is the but; It somewhat concerns me that you do not seem to believe that the word of God found in the Bible, is actually the infallible word of God.

There is a very interesting book written by a guy called Dr Jeffrey Satinover called the The Truth Behind The Bible Codes.

He is a Jewish guy but he wrote the book because he became a aware of a healthy number of atheist Jewish mathematicians who became believers in God because of the codes they discovered in the scriptures, which to them proved irrefutably that God must indeed exist.

There is another interesting book, actually its much more interesting than Dr Jeff’s one, which is called New Age Bible Versions written by Gail Riplinger who happens to be a person who definetely does give a rip.

Why this book is such a beauty is that it shows how satan has made clever in-roads to dilute the word of God.

Obviously when it became too difficult to biff more folks on the BBQ for owning a bible he had a problem which he sloved with a couple of un-Godly guys called Wescott and Hort.

These guys did a re-selection from all the 6000 odd peices of ancient Bible manuscripts. Obviously not all of these 6000 bits of the Bible are the real McKoy.

For instance when we go to select what to translate from we would not select some old manuscript that denys the deity of Jesus Christ .

The people who produced the King James Bible called their selection The Recieved Text.

Wescott and Hort called their selection The Nestles Text.

The Bibles using the The Nestle Text, to translate from, have got quite a bit of chaff in them.

Satan’s plan is probably to come up with a Bible that is somewhere in between the King James Bible and The Message Bible.

We must try hard to preserve the original word of God such as the King James otherwise at a later date they will use it to establish erroneous doctrines.

Its an interesting subject but hey Cliffe if you haven’t yet Read Gail Riplingers book then you’ll love it.

God bless you,

The servant of all thats me thats Paul.

Dear Peter& Bev

 I admire and like you both so tremendously that it makes me realise that it should be impossible for you two, to ever be the recipients of any criticism for the good work you have done for your Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Along with thousands of others I too am cheering you on.

You have achieved so much for God’s people mainly because you have chosen to allow yourselves to be used by The Lord, and with your sincerity and genuine meekness He has used you well.

You have allowed Him, because of your obedience,to be blessed with beautiful humility that contributes so significantly to the harmony and growth of the Church you love.

You have made room for the people by taking on the mantle of servants and surely this means that there is still plenty of room for many more.

You have done a great work for New Zealand for which all true blue Christians are proud of you.

Good people produce a good country and you have provided a sheltered enviroment for this goodness to grow.

There are, because of your wise work, many tall trees who were once upon a time just young seedlings that needed much shelter and a lot of love. 

Also, if I may, I would like to thank each and everyone of your church members for their faith in Jesus Christ that displays the fruits of the spirit which is an encouragement to an old timer like me.

God Bless You All,

The servant of all, thats me , thats Paul.

Dear Cliffe 2.

As you will see I have addressed this letter to you as number 2, which might convey the suggestion that perhaps there will be more to follow.

You and I and others like us, are in the business of trying to persuade or reason with atheists and unbelievers, for the purpose of showing them the sense in the idea, that not only does God exist but He actually came to visit us 2000 years ago, in the form of Jesus Christ.

In my previous letter I suggested or at least I hope I suggested ( I could read that  letter to find out but I find that doing such a thing is rather unpleasant) to you that unless a person is experiencing a reasonable sence of importance they won’t buy what you are selling, whether it be eggs or Jesus Christ.

To take this point to an extreme you can say that if ye insult people enough ye won’t be able to sell them $20 dollar bills for $10.

It is very difficult, as you well know, to tear away from their minds the impediments that are preventing them from being able to evaluate the idea of God without bias.   

But bias, can be just as much the condition of the believer as the  unbeliever. The early Baptists, who were stigmatised for pushing the baptism theme, were met with so much opposition by the church of the day, that it was a long time before they would consent to full emersion baptism.

As we know for sure that Baptism is good and not bad, we can say that we are right when we assume that satan, the enemy of Christ, was certainly behind that resistance that caused good and decent and yes Godly men and women to go to their graves without being baptised properly. He achieved this work by employing the agency of bias. By tempting the leaders to ridicule the Baptists he achieved a victory in the short term by turning the people away from this truth.

Now he is doing it with those who are intelligent with higher levels of education, who think we are fools for believing in God because in their opinion believing in God is foolishness. And as they themselves feel foolish for entertaining the idea of Gods’s existence, they cannot view the idea with complete clarity because their minds become muddled with the clutter of feelings of foolishness. These negative feelings make them feel so unimportant that they are essentially incapable of fairly evaluating the idea of God because it makes them feel so terrible.

If we take the mind set of a lynch mob who unfairly hangs an innocent man, as an extreme example, it will undoubtedly lead us to the conclusion that their thinking became distorted because they could not correctly evaluate all the evidence as it was too stronly mixed with bias or strong feelings of unimportance.

I think its always wise to be mindful that our feelings can lead us astray which is so perfectly illustrated in the mind of the unbeliever who goes happily on his journey to hell with a feeling that everything is ok. We know that this is true because how can we ever forget that there was a time when we too, were true blue unbelievers, who had the same ok feelings relating to hell which was the direction in which we were heading. 

On our journey with Christ as our leader we know that we must pay attention to what the word of God says and act upon it with or without the good feelings.

If we should say that we would have been baptised like the Baptists when all of the church of the day refused to do so, ( and you can be sure that they had doctrine to back up their stance for not being baptised), we are kidding ourselves because we probably would have been like the majoriety who because of bias went to the grave without full emersion baptism.

We indeed must pray to God for his help but as you know we don’t need to get on our knees and ask if its necessary to keep the 10 commandments. God has already made it plain. Neither has God reduced the number from 10 to 9 or altered any by as much as one jot or one tittle.Therefore why do people biff their thinking and reasoning ability into the midnight sky and ask God to tell them what to do when He has already written it in stone?

I can understand that this decision to not reason things out can be an option for people who lack analytical thinking ability but are we really any better than the unbeliever that obeys his bias at the expense of the truth itself if we ourselves are doing the same.

The church has been told, in so many words, that those poor fools, those legalists, those who don’t know that Christ nailed the law to the cross,who say we should be keeping the sabbath day and particularly the 7th day, are nice people but they have missed the point about grace.  

I have often noticed a look common to many Christans when I talk to them on this subject and its not too uncommon to see that same look on the faces of those who try to take you on, at a  university campus. The look that they often seem to have is one that has a combination of pity and smugness. I wouldn’t go as far as saying that the look is one of you poor dumb schmuck but its part of the same family if you know where I’m coming from.

The general truth regarding the unbeliever on the subject of God is that he or she is terribly un-informed and not only that, they don’t really want to be informed because if they are they might have to feel bad about loosing a belief that they don’t want to loose and they don’t want to loose it because it makes them feel important.

They think that even though you might be able to defeat their arguments it doesn’t necessarily make you right or correct, simply because you might be a person who has more persuasive ability than them and that is how some will see it.They don’t want you to be able to talk them into a nonsence like some seem to able to do when they they can almost persuade some that black is white and white is black. 

Now the same is true for the Christians when I or others like me talk to them about the importance of keeping all of God’s 10 commandments and in particular the one that relates to the sabbath day.

Like the unbeliever they don’t want it to be true and therefore they fight sound reasoning from scriptures and will not be persuaded after layer and layer of truth found in the bible itself.

I find it interesting that most of the people who ultimately do agree with me regarding the 7th day sabbath are people who still keep on as they have always done by not keeping the 7th day sabbath all because they have this ok feeling that everything is okay. Its quite clear that they are operating from the guidence that arises from their feelings instead of what the word of God clearly says to do.

In order for Satan to succeed in his opposition to Christ, he must promote bias. During the time of the early church when they were quite busy throwing Christians to the hungry lions, church growth was slowed down not by the death of Christians but by the spreading of the evil rumour that Christians drank the blood of babies. 

Today there are some Christians who dare to say atrocious things that those like me are part of a cult, And therefore some Christians in their anxiousness to avoid a cult become like those Romans of old who avoided those early Christians who were accused of baby sacrifices.

In Isaiah 58 we are instructed, as to how, we are to conduct ourselves on the sabbath day. 

The Catholic Church changed the day and that happens to be a historical fact.

When Paul the apostle is talking about days he is not talking about the 7th day sabbath.

Did you know that there are 7 ceremonial sabbaths mentioned in levicitus? These are not the weekly sabbath but yearly sabbaths.

They no doubt said that all the fuss that the Baptists were making about full emersion baptism was really too much ado about nothing.

But when we say ye should keep all the commandments including the sabbath command, they say we are legalists. And all the Christians that we talk to, who are breaking this commandment, will often get that smuggish pityful look on their faces and say a couple of trite things, not too differently to the way the unbelievers react to our statements of God’s existence.

When the atheist does his research he spends his time trying to prove us wrong and there is his weakness. If, like a careful and fair judge, he carefully looked at all the evidence without bias he would arrive at truth.

But we, as lovers of the truth, have the duty to investigate our faith fully so that we might be proficient intruments in the hands of God.

Evidence of our love of God is our desire to keep all His commandments.

John 14:15 If you love me keep my commandments

Rev 12:17 And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.

Rev 14:12 Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.

I love to see you doing your thing on campus and its my favourite all time show on Christian TV. But if you don’t get to know the truth in this matter relating to the sabbath command I sadly have to say,that although I admire you tremendously, you will not be able to avoid going down in my estimation.

There is plenty of stuff on the internet for you to be able to review this situation.

You are doing a great work and I am very proud of you. I only wish I could do the same.

God bless you,

Paul

Dear Cliffe

For the first 30 odd years of my life I didn’t really think at all but now that I do, which has been a slow process, I know a lot of stuff that others don’t know who are what I call partial thinkers because they are not really serious deep thinkers, although they might be inclined to think that they are.

People are usually quite insulted if they should ever be accused of being out to lunch in the thinking department and no doubt I too might have been somewhat miffed if I was told that I was a first class non thinker all those years ago.

But it need not be an insult if we are simply told to think more deeply and isn’t this what you and I are all about.

We are constantly trying to shake em up to switch into deeper levels of contemplation that cover all aspects that relate to the great issues of life.

I have come to the conclusion that we will tend to abandon the serious contemplation of a line of thinking unless we are constantly feeling important or worthwhile or significant or whatever handle you want to put it.

Or to put it another way. Generally speaking if we become dogged with feelings of foolishness resulting from contemplating some notion or idea, we can strongly regect the idea even if such a rejection seems like a crazy reaction to the logic before us.

You and I and people like us are always trying to do our best to get people to realise that God doth indeed exist but its not always easy because they are trying to think with a mind that will only think about those things that first passes their qualification test.

If it makes them feel a bit silly or foolish or not too bright then its not really going to end up with them on the couch where they stare out to sea chewing on a bit of straw and contemplate.

In my opinion, and it is only my opinion, the idea of God attacks our sense of importance like no other.

If we are going to get truthfully real we would have to acknowlege the logic that God ( if He does indeed exist and I say He does and so do you) then we are big time inferior to Him because he has done so much and we by comparison have done zip. Thats a truth or a logical truth if God doth indeed exist.

God always knew that we would have this problem of not feeling too good about our obvious inferiority and he solves our problem by commanding us to love Him which is probably somewhere in the territiory of the good sense that says if you can’t beat em join em.

Thats the smart move isn’t it because by doing so we no longer suffer from that dreadful inferiority complex ( that is so upsetting we cannot bear to look at it and therefore it has to lurk about in the sub concious regions of our mind) and it is so painful that we have to go to the extremes of trying to eradicate it by actually spouting forth atrocious nonsence that says there ain’t no God.

Maybe this is the original cause of sin and could this be why Lucifer got biffed out heaven. Maybe he foolishly bit by bit stopped loving God and eventually didn’t like to acknowledge to himself that he was just one of God’s creatures.

I am just one of God’s creatures but so are you and we always will be and as its a truth that will never ever change we are better to come to terms with it and we have.

This is how highly educated people can be manipulated by catering to their sense of importance to do things that otherwise they would never do. Germany gassed the Jews which they would never have done if they continued to love God.

But lets not forget that what happened to Germany can happen to any country if you can get them to stop loving God and have severe enough economic conditions to warp their minds. The Bible believing lovers of The Lord Jesus Christ are less needy in the area of needing to feel important because the God pleasing life that they are trying to live with a focus on the eternal instead of the temporal, tempers their behaviour to qualify for God’s approval.    

And that behaviour is taught to us by Jesus Christ which we use as a template to guide ourselves which effectively prevents satanic manipulation which is sadly what happened to Germany all those years ago.

I think that if you tell people the truth some of them will get it and thats exactly what you are doing. Keep it up you are doing a good job and we all are proud of you.

However I think we need to address this sense of importance thing that is such a blockage to them.Tell em straight. Tell em lets be real and say hey if there is a God then hey we are nuttin compared to him and if you don’t think that is a problem then you are for sure kidding yourself because that certainly is a problem because thats logic.

Tell em that hey lets be real. Logic says its more likely that there is a designer but the reason why you are buying into the ain’t no God theory is because its making you feel good.Its making you feel good because its taking away the bad feelings you have for being nuttin compared to God which you wouldn’t feel bad about if you loved God.

My take on it is this. If you tell em straight some people will get it but not in a flash. They’ll go away sad because you have busted their balloon but it will make them feel important as they wrestle with this truth and realise that yes if there was a God they are nothing by comparison and such a discovery will enlighten some of them and this realisation will allow them to see that God loves them and he has provided a way for them to continue on their glorious journey throughout all of eternity and that way is by loving Him.

I think some of them will break down and cry when they eventually realise that God loves them.

This is the challenge for all of us. This is a test we must pass because without loving our creator our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by joining forces with Him we will surely perish.

Hey nice talking to you Cliffe. You might be in New York but buddy your mininstry is doing great stuff all around the world even in New Zealand. We’re proud of you Bud.

God bless you big time and all of the time.

Paul

Dear Rob

 
Joe sounds like a nice guy trying to have a happier life.
 
He has what I call, a religion of convenience.
 
Satan is on the scene with all the bells and whistles and so are his demons.
 
If Joe did his homework he’d know that this is true but because he doesn’t want it to be true, it therefore isn’t true for him even though it is true.
 
It occurs to me that if someone wants to be a true follower of Christ they have to have a lot of guts to be able to stomach the good and the bad.
 
Its like these people out there who keep sinning and say its impossible to stop and that we aren’t meant to stop and say its ok because they are covered by grace.
 
This is why Christ says that we are to deny ourselves.
 
Many ,so called, Christians won’t make it all the way to the finish line because they are not really prepared to pay the price of self denial.
 
Instead of accepting all the truth, they instead, select only the truth that suits them and then kid themselves, just like the atheists do, because it makes them feel good.
 
If they really believed all the gospel and all of the Bible they would fear God and keep the commandments as we are clearly told to do, And in so doing they would save their souls.
 
But no, they choose not to fear God,and in so doing throw their lives away because they found the attractiveness of everlasting life being not a sufficient enough reward for having to pay the cost of complete obedience to God, And also hell is not enough of a deterrent simply because they choose not think about it.
 
They prefer to not think too much about hell because it makes them feel uncomfortable and un-easy, mainly because they know thats where they are going to end up, unless they repent to the extent that they become completely obedient to God and His commands.
 
In the words of wise Solomon:
Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God,and keep His commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.
Ecclesiastes 12:13
 
God bless you.
Much peace to you
Paul the friend of Robert.