Joseph’s Alabaster Box

A darling boy in a manger,

Who wouldn’t admire and love?

A gory corpse on a cross

Sent from Heaven above?

A baby boy I can adore,

My life He cannot rule.

Don’t expect of me more,

I think of Him only at Yule.

I worship my gods of revenue

That trouble me not at all.

Until my bills are overdue,

Then on the baby I’ll call.

My gods of cash ne’er judge me,

Or make me strive to do right.

But they’re always absent, you see,

When I am fearful at night.

The gory man on the rugged cross,

I may consider some day

When I encounter great loss,

And my soul is flying away.

China is a nation of nearly two billion people. It is a nation I know little about . The nation does little for its people except oppress them. The nation is the greatest polluter of the atmosphere on Earth. They produce products with hardly any restrictions on what they use to make them, or how they make them. Their people are free to steal and manufacture the products of other countries which design and engineer them. Churches of any sort are scarce in China, and those that do exist must keep their heads down. Missionaries and Christian literature are not allowed into the country. Their rivers and atmosphere are so polluted that they are virtually poisonous. Toxic waste is is dumped on the ground or thrown into the rivers and lakes.

On December 12, 2009 a church leader with a wife and two small boys was arrested by the Chinese authorities, and sentenced to fifteen years in prison. The charge against him, Alumujeang Yimiti, was not that he was a church leader, but that he was “providing state secrets to overseas organizations.” “The Voice of the Martyrs: (http://www.persecution.net/cn-2009-12-09a.htm) We wonder what secrets the Chinese could have that they did not steal from some other country. To avoid possible complications, the true reason a person is persecuted for his faith is never disclosed. Some other reason for the persecution is always made up and given. Since godless China believes, as evolutionists all over the world believe, man is only an animal, the prisons and jails are places of absolute horror. Prisoners are kept in conditions much worse than the worst zoo in America. Our prisons are bad only because of the people a prisoner has to be among. Being in a Chinese prison for fifteen years would be like being in prison in a western nation for forty years. This is only one of hundreds of persecution cases, many even worse than this.

This is the “great” nation that the American people have enriched by buying from Wal Mart, and other stores. In their never-ending search for bargain and “savings,” Americans have sent their wealth overseas. Our leaders have made laws and agreements that have sent our industries to China and other countries. Labor unions have run their wages up so high that a company can move their plants overseas where they can work people for slave’s benefits. Banks have devised schemes to enslave the American people to debt. The Bible says, “The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower [is] servant to the lender.” (Proverbs 22:7). A fool atheist ought to understand that statement. Yes, America, there is a pay day, and you’re in the middle of it.

So what’s for Christmas? How about a scooter? A bicycle? Tricycle? Skates? Cowboy chaps and pistol? Heavens no! Nothing that would require the burning of fat. How about a computer? A book? Whoever heard of such a thing? Kids don’t want anything that will require them to think. A computer game? Oh, yes! But not one that requires intelligence. Only violence is allowed. How about a music DVD? Great! But no classics. Only rock and roll trash, rap racket, and bee bop – whatever that is. Whatever you want Wal Mart will have it. And, of course, they get it from the great persecutor of Christians – RED, and I emphasize RED – China.

There’s something else about this obscene international situation. It’s a question about where all this money goes. Do the people of red China share this wealth. Of course, some of them do. I think I remember reading about a Chinese woman who is one of the richest people on Earth – even richer than Oprah – who made her hoard by stealing and reproducing America music CD’s (Even her perfume draws flies.). The fact that I can’t understand why anybody would buy one of the things does not negate the fact that they do. Jesse Jackson of the famous moon walk (I’m trying to be funny when I’m not very amused.) got rich selling his ear-splitting caterwauling to millions of mind-numbed kids who had no parental guidance.

The aforementioned rich hoodlumess is not the only rich crook in China, but you can be sure that there are probably several million people for every rich person. These people had just as well live in Burundi or Sierra Leone. The general populace is neglected by their government, except when it comes time to collect taxes, and stamp out churches. The Chinese do have welfare programs, but they are not easily found out. What I see on tv, and in National Geographic is a nation existing in darkness. I love Chinese cuisine, but I have often wondered who eats Chinese cuisine in China. I’m sure the minuscule upper class dines sumptiously, but all I’ve seen the people eat is rice. Here is America the rich dine in luxury, but so do the poor.

Tennessee Ernie Ford, who was raised in my hometown, sang something like, I dug sixteen tons of number nine coal, and I owe my soul to the company store. Now we have to sing, we went shopping one day at wide Wal Mart, and we owe our soul to the persecutin’ Chinese. Does it make you want to weep when you think of us as a threadbare bunch of beggars seeking handouts from people who hate us? Can you think of anything we could do about it? There is one benefit to drowning in red (Chinese) ink, and it is a very good benefit. The American Church has become weary in well doing. We are bored with the Gospel. We have discarded most of our ancient landmarks. We no longer revel in the Word of God. The best preachers we can produce can’t pull the congregation back of Sunday night. We use Sunday as a holiday instead of a holyday. I have witnessed much of this falling away during my seventy years of church life.

The benefit of persecution is that it purifies the Church. Nobody is going to stick his neck out, and claim he is a Christian if he is not, because somebody will be there to whack it off. Or worse, confine you in an environment that can only be described as Hell of Earth. What joy it would be to worship God again among people who sing songs like those written by Fanny Crosby, John Newman, W.A. Ogman, Augustus Toplady, P.P. Bliss, John and Charles Wesley, and a hundred other lovers of God and music. I’d love to meet with others who love the Bible. People who recognize that it is the work of God. I’d love to meet with faithful people who can be depended on to be at church when the church meets to worship. My hearts yearns for a two week revival, and hear messages from God’s throne by a good, divinely-energized preacher. We could not have all that if we were living under persecution, but we could have it now if ——.

Jesus was not a martyr. Jesus was a sacrifice. He died alone, in agony and sorrow. A martyr dies in ecstasy. Jesus gave His life. A martyr’s life is taken from him. Jesus was condemned illegally by a politician. Martyrs are condemned legally, usually be religious people. Some of us may be honored to be martyrs. Are we ready and able?

The human race has lost something. The human race doesn’t know that it has lost something. People in the western world think that the people of the eastern world are not very intelligent. It is the western world that has sent man to the moon, and discovered how to mend sick hearts in the hospitals. We may discover how to cure cancer – or better yet, prevent it. We will probably discover how to cure colds and flue, providing the western world can escape the clutches of Islam which will set the world back to the black ages. What the western world has lost is its faith. The eastern world continues to believe that there is a God in the universe that man is responsible to. We can know that because the eastern world still worships what they think is God, while the west worships nothing.

The eastern world continues to hold religion as an important element in their life. This is seen in the faith of Islam in which people die for their faith. It is seen in other religions in India, and other countries. China and Japan have come under the influence of the western idea of Darwinism, and have lost their faith. Faith is something man can have that is based on a false assumption, like Darwinism and Allah. It is the eastern world, and the pre-Christian world of the west that has left us countless idols. These idols are the evidence that eastern people had faith that there is a God. They just took a wrong turn in trying to find Him or learn the truth about Him. Since eastern peoples could not believe that God was bigger than the creation around them that was obviously the work of a Creator, they reduced God to stone or wooden images, and imagined that He lived in those things.

Oddly enough, their gods were hideous, evil, and angry. This is not because they were unable to carve, chisel, or fashion things of beauty. The reason their gods were more like devils than gods is because man has had a sense of his sinfulness ever since Adam disobeyed God. They could not explain their guilty feeling; yet they knew that they were responsible to God. They did not know how to be prepared to stand before Him. They knew God was angry with them, but they did not know how to make Him happy. I am not discussing people with little intelligence. I am thinking of people who built the tower of Babel. the pyramids, the temples of South America, Even people who existed in jungles and frost had their gods made by their own hands.

The peoples of the western world living as they did in forests, also had their gods. That is, until the truth of the Gospel entered Europe about two thousand years ago. Then things began to change, though for more than a thousand years the Catholic church, actually the decayed Roman empire, withheld the Bible from the populace. The church lost control of the Bible, and the people when the printing press was invented. The Catholic church has left us its gods, too. All the great cathedrals they built are filled and covered with their idols.

The inventiveness of Islamic scholars was limited because Allah was a false god who could not lead man to the truth that God had created all matter, and the laws that govern it. If God could not command matter, then matter could not be controlled. If matter did not obey certain laws, then it could not be made into a thing that would print words on paper, or fall to the earth when it came loose from a tree limb. If matter were as lawless as man, then it would be impossible to make it into a hoe to chop weeds, or an airplane that could life hundreds of people. If you put an atom or molecule somewhere, you had to depend on it staying there.

The fact that matter is under the control of God, and God has given part of this control to man, was not learned by accident. It was learned from the Bible. The scientists of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries who established the disciplines of science were men who believed God, and believed that He was the Creator of all matter and physical laws. These were the greatest scientists of all time. Newton learned that matter did nothing. If matter were not under a law, it could go up as well as down when it came loose from the limb. He knew matter could do nothing because it could not move or stop moving unless something moved it or stopped it. Matter is inanimate. It does nothing of itself. Only matter with life in it can do anything. Only the Bible can explain life in a rational manner. Newton and his sort knew this. They were men of faith as well as science. They understood the basic fact of science: matter is created stuff that is governed by laws. Matter does not possess any intelligence at all.

Then a character comes along who can no more be compared to Newton than I could. In fact, he had only a M.A., whereas I have a doctorate. Newton was president of the Royal Society of London even after he had given up science for Bible study. Darwin decided that he would not believe there was a God because God judges people, and he didn’t like that. He decided that Christianity was evil because if what Christianity taught were right, most of his drinking buddies were in Hell, and he didn’t like that. His granddaddy Erasmus was a physician, and he wrote much stuff about evolution, but nobody had paid any attention to him. Darwin plagiarized much of this stuff into his book, and people paid attention to him.

Darwin did not reject God because his observations on his “hound dog” trip around the world demanded it. He twisted his observations of nature to prove what he believed before he got on the Beagle. He was not a scientist, and what he did was not very scientific, but what he did gave unbelieving men a foundation for what they believed. Men don’t believe there is no God, or that God didn’t create the universe the way He says He did, because science proves it or even suggests it. Men reject God because their very concept of God is like the frowning idols found all over the world. Their idea of God is exactly what that ancient artisan had in mind while he made that idol god. How do I know that? Listen to this from a leading evolutionist: No god can (or will) save us, we must save ourselves. Save ourselves from what? Why won’t God save us? This is the mind-set of the world today. The western world has rejected the ancient prophets who knew God, and swallowed Darwin hook, line, sinker, rod, and reel.

What the western world has lost is their natural-born belief that there is a God. The contemporary wester world is too dumb to realize how much priceless knowledge it has eschewed. The western world celebrates, not Christmas, but “Shopfrenzymas.” Mankind seems to have no longer the capacity to think, or reason. Matters of lasting importance are alien to the mortal brain. We have given up reason for the mind-opium of t.v. and sports.

We use the word “God” without thinking about what it means. Dictionaries give definitions of “god,” but they don’t capitalize the word as they do “Adolph Hitler,” and others. Their definitions are not much better than the infantile thoughts of the ordinary man on the street. Some do use words like “omnipotent,” and the like. God can be anything to anyone. According to the dictionary definitions, God can be anything you choose to worship as God. We can know about God by reading His Word, but western Christianity has just about destroyed God’s Word as an authority on anything. But since God is bigger than the universe, how can we visualize Him? How can we know Him personally. How can we meet Him? These questions stop humans in their tracks.

And that’s where Christmas fits in. God knew we could not conceptualize Him. He knew we could not understand Him. God was so gracious that He took upon Himself human flesh, like putting on a pair of coveralls, and entered the world with the shadow of a cross over Him. In Him we can see clearly all the marvelous things God has revealed in His book abbot Himself. He helps us see into the mysteries of the universe, time, matter, and space. The things that matter after all, are made clearer to us. We can give up our silly ideas for His eternal truths. I am not just 239 pounds of matter. I am that, but more than that, the matter contains the greatest mystery of all – life. I don’t profess to know what life is, but I do know where it came from, and I know it is of inestimable value. We generally call it the “soul.” If man valued his soul as God does, he would do something to save it, for he can’t save it himself.

Christmas? Glory to God in the highest, and on Earth, peace and good will to men. Christmas is a celebration of God loving man, and dying on a cross for him.

You will be disappointed in the contents of this essay if you think it will be full of  political stuff. I do hate what Mr. Obama stands for, and what he has done. This essay is not about that. I carefully avoid calling him “President,” for that puts him in the category with President Ronald Reagon, President George Washington, President Harry Truman, and others, even President Woodrow Wilson. Occupying the oval office is not the same as being a legitimate president. I think it would be more accurate to address him as “Fuhrer,” “Caesar,” or even “Antichrist.” A perceptive stone cutter might chisel “HERE LIES HIM WHO BROUGHT THE FINAL RUIN TO AMERICA” on his tombstone.

“Wow!” you might exclaim, “how you hate Mr. Obama!” Well, if you think you have to hate the whole person if you hate part of him, I guess I’d have to admit you are right. But I insist that you can hate a person’s world view, behavior, or his looks, without hating that person. That person is a living soul which is made in the image and likeness of God, and is precious. If a person loves his soul (himself) as much as Jesus Christ loves him, he would put himself in the vault of God’s grace for safe keeping. If you don’t believe man has a soul, then you must explain what makes that statue we call a “man,” a man. Not believing something, or believing something, doesn’t make it so. Truth is truth whether you believe it or not.

I see Mr. Obama as a good husband and daddy, gauged by the standards of the physical world. Evidently, he does not abuse his wife or children, and that is quite commendable in our current society. He is endowed with manly good looks, and an ability to speak well. He was self-disciplined enough to go through school, and intelligent enough to go to through a major university. He has a compassion for poor and needy people.

I am the sort of man Mr. Obama does not know or understand. An old southern gentleman is the last person on Earth he would associate with. I would tell him that we live in a world where truth is available, but rather hard to find in the morass of other stuff riding the air waves. Truth can be found all over America, but especially here in the South where there are good sound churches all over the place. Most of the people who belong to those churches could tell him the truth. Among those things on the pinnacle of error is to be a Muslim in America. How sad to be in bondage to religion in a land of freedom. Religion is the very worst of all masters. It’s worse than murder, dope, rape. Religion makes people solid, fourteen carat gold on the outside, and putrid rot on the inside.

“Mr. Obama, you may be shocked that this old southern gentleman who hates everything you stand for as a politician, loves your soul. I love your soul because God loves it. God has made that plain to all of us.’For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’ God gave us those words in His Word.

“I could help you be a success in life! I don’t think anybody has tried to help you succeed. The preacher you sat under for many years didn’t tell you how to be a success if what I heard on the news is any indication of what he told you. You can only succeed in life if you succeed in doing what the goal of life is. And it is emphatically not being the president of the United States – even a legitimate president. I, along with millions of other real Americans, could tell you how to govern this nation better than you are doing it.

“Mr. Obama, man is not a failure because he is poor or rich. Man is a failure because he does no recognize the value of his soul. Even a poverty-stricken 82 -year- old American man like me can be rich in things that matter. I specify ‘American’ because anywhere else, I would be rich. What value is wealth? After you’ve bought the best and most of everything, what will you do with the rest of your money? Can a glutton enjoy a sumptuous meal as well as a half starved man could? Can a woman enjoy being warm in priceless furs any more than an Eskimo wrapped in rabbit skins? Does a billion dollars satisfy a man? Then why does he get frantic to rake in another billion? Man’s soul is made valuable by what God his Creator was willing to pay for it. Just like anything else, value is determined by the price it will bring.

“I can offer ample proof to any reasonable person that the Bible is the very Word of the living God. I can offer proof from ancient historians that Jesus walked upon this Earth. You may decide that the proof is not sufficient. I can point you to multitudes of people who have given their lives for their faith in Jesus Christ. You would probably point me to thousands of Muslims who have given their lives for their faith. I can only respond that fanaticism is as great a motivation as faith. I can tell you that what I believe is what the Apostle Paul believed, along with all the Apostles, but you’d probably tell me how great Mohammed was. If I pointed you to all the churches over the Earth that declare the Gospel, you’d just show me all the mosques. If I pointed out that churches are sources of love, while mosques are sources of hate, you’d just call me a bigot.

“It is a fact that Caesar (and Muhammad) shed the blood of their enemies, but Jesus Christ gave His own blood for His enemies. Muhammad demands that infidels be slain. Christ demands that infidels be loved.

“A child of God bows to no man – neither the king of Arabia, the emperor of Japan, or the queen of England. You have humiliated us by your actions. You would do well to learn that Jesus Christ is King of kings.

“America has done evil, and we are steeped in sin, but telling other countries we are bad will not redeem us. What are you? Just an ordinary immigrant who moved to America, bringing your old religion and culture to live in America as a foreigner? Are you an American citizen? Are you a patriot? I can’t answer those questions, but I do know where you are going if you do not yield yoour precious soul to God, your Creator and Redeemer.

“I would like to tell you that as a little boy, seventy-five years ago, that Jesus Christ entered my life at my invitation, and at that time my life was changed for the better. Instead of a budding sadist, I became a normal person wishing only good for others. When He came into my life to stay, He showed me that the Bible is the very Word of God. I know these things historically, but more importantly, I know them by faith. I know my life was changed by them. Things have happened in my life that only Jesus Christ’s presence can explain.

“Jesus was born into the world with a mission. He was God among us, and His mission was a rescue mission. He came to rescue me – think of it – God was aware of my need. That need was so great that He had to die to provide it. He loved my soul that much. My soul was worth more to Him than the entire world. And you, Barack Obama, are just as precious to God as I am. Your soul may not be of any value to you, you may consider your religion more important, but your soul is immensely precious to God.

“Jesus died on a cross for you as well as me. Your sins are enormous, as mine were, but God’s grace and mercy are greater. You, just as me or any person stained with sin, can believe in you heart and confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and He will save you. Your life, like mine, will be changed if you would yield your life to Jesus Christ (Romans 10:9).

“I, and many others, would love to hear of your conversion to Jesus Christ. Then we would have a president and a brother in the White House. Life doesn’t have to be a failure.”