Back in the Saddle Again, sort of!

by Brad Scott

For the past 6 weeks I have been afforded, by accident, to be able to focus on two particular areas of my life. Thinking and sleeping. As many of you may know, I am in the recovery process of a horrendous car accident. This has caused much of my physical activity to come to a screeching halt. On August 27th, on my way back from Colorado, I collided head-on with another vehicle, both of us traveling approximately 60 mph. Apparantly, I was distracted trying to change a cassette tape. It was a teaching of Monte Judah, so I have decided to put some blame on Monte. The collision was violent as you would imagine. It took 45 minutes to separate the vehicles and quite a long time to extricate me from my pick-up. I was then taken to the hospital where I was soon life-flighted to Salt Lake City, which is approximately 180 miles away. I suffered a broken and dislocated ankle, 9 broken ribs, a broken sternum, collapsed lung, and a lacerated spleen. However, my head, neck, and most of my fingers have remained virtually injury free. Due to the freedom of my brain and fingers, I have also been afforded the ability to successfully operate a television remote control. Approximately one week after being unconsciously aware of every day activity, I was once again greeted by the same, if not worse, lawless activity in our culture that was being dished up before the accident.

Let me begin by saying that I am once again more than ready to play my part in challanging our secular and religious culture to theological and philosophical duals. I have been praying for new found vigor in this struggle to help restore God's ways back to the world that I live in ... this world that has gotten no better in the last 6 weeks.

I am still particularly frustrated with our ungodly political system. As I gradually awaken back to daily reality, I still see an administration that is adamant about it's so-called Roadmap to Peace in the Middle East. At the same time, I have learned that the Bush administration has recently called for several unnamed prophetic wizards to come to the White House and advise the administration as to what the Bible has to say about Israel and the Middle East. I am guessing that their advice will not change the so-called Road Map one iota. The results will still have a plan for a Palestinian state along side a carved up Israel that we all love and support. Once again our nation's religious theologians will confirm for the Bush administration that the destiny of the nation Israel is the final key to the rapture of the spotless Church.

During this past week I was delighted to read that the House of Representatives, you know those guys whose forefathers were all Christians and are proclaiming that they are following in those footsteps, have passed a bill banning partial birth abortion. Here is the way the beginning of the USA article was presented. "After a contentious debate, the House, Thursday, voted 281-142 to ban partial birth abortion. The Senate is expected to debate the issue Friday." Congress has now been dominated by the Republican party for several years, and the dominant Republican party, you know the party of the religious right, have to spend days debating over whether banning the tortuous murder of innocent babies should be banned or not. This kind of scene is repeated every year in denominational Christian conventions, where the Word of God is debated and voted on year after year. Well, there goes my invitation to next years Baptist convention. Are we beginning to see some of the results of the banning of Torah in Christian theology yet?

It should be obvious to all of us that our culture, which is by confession 90% Christian, is having a profound affect upon our nation's ethics and morals (tongue in cheek). The dominant, but Christ put an end to the law!, Christian religion has once again been ineffective in having any influence on new television shows this fall. A new series entitled Nip and Tuck is making it's debut. This series will glorify homosexuality, adultery, transexuals, bisexuality, and sadomasochism for many people this season. Without further comment on this issue I would like to present a couple of verifiable statistics. America leads the world in psychological treatment, depression and health costs. The United States is number one in the world in pornography, murder (except mass murder), illegal drugs, legal drugs, murder, suicide and disease. Our nation is number one in the world in churches, seminaries, youth groups, gospel singers and Christian rock stars. What is wrong with this picture? Our secular and religious leaders would have us believe that 90% of the people are being run over and trampled by the immoral 10%. My friends, the problem with our beloved country is that the overwhelming majority of people are Christians, or at least hold traditional Christian values. What we do not have in this country is a 90% majority of faithful, scripture believing, obedient followers of a Jewish Messiah. What we do not have is a dominant culture of sons of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Children of the one God of Israel is what is missing. We have plenty of Christians and not enough righteous children of YHVH.

If that was not enough, while reading one of the country's most read newspapers, I was astonished to see that a judge in Alabama was not allowed to keep a monument to the 10 commandments any where near an area where any kind of judgment is taking place. Goodness, we can't have that! That might, unconsciously or by osmosis, cause somebody to make judgments and laws based upon the wisdom of the Creator rather than the wisdom of man, perhaps led only by the Holy Ghost. If Christ has done away with the law then why should we put up a fight for the 10 commandments. Now, if the monument was a statue of Jesus Christ, perhaps there would have been literally millions of protestors show up at the steps of this Alabama courthouse. My advice to Christians is that they stop looking at the laws and instructions of their God as symbols, and start looking at them as laws and instructions of their God. There is a myriad of U.S. and world events that are currently preparing the world for a new one world religious, economical, govermental and political system. These events will be commented on from time to time. However, the source of the problem will always be the same. Religious systems all over the world cannot pick and choose convenient parts of the Torah of the God of Israel (some parts discovered by nature), and expect any kind of continued presence of YHVH in their culture. The Word of God is a symbiotic system in which each individual component does not work properly outside of the whole. This, not by coincidence, is exactly how the biological system in our own bodies work, as well.

I would love to continue to rant and rave about our hypocritical religious systems, but this body gets very tired lately. I would like to encourage all of us, however, to renew our efforts to bring the entire good news of the Messiah to a dark and lost world. We must understand that there are, relatively speaking, only a handfull of us who are gratefully soaking up and seeking what the God of Israel is doing throughout all lands today. It is our mission and dire responsibility to STAND UP and speak the truth in the little plot of land that God has put each of us in charge of. The very last thing I heard BC (before the crash) was a teaching from Lion & Lamb Ministries about the last generation before the coming of Messiah. It is my intention from this point forward that, although we are to continue to present the forgiving Lamb of God to a clueless religious atmosphere, it is now time to seriously make ready the soon coming Lion of Judah, and perhaps to begin thinking more like THE LION than a lamb. In the meantime, I continue to covet your prayers. This is the only reason why I have gotten this far. And I leave you with this thought. Are you ready to finally give a life changing answer to all of your friends and loved ones who would rather continue to march to Christian theology than even look at the truth? Then, it is about time that we put life to the seed of the Holy One that dwells within us. Crutches and all, I am ready to lead.

Shalom Alecheim! ◊