I’m back in Tucson after spending a week in Albuquerque. My time here is transitional. I’m just waiting (urgently waiting), for Tuesday’s flight back home to Mongolia. When I get home I’ll have about a month to get back into the saddle and caught up with all of the changes at Eagle TV. Then in May I begin my course work with Reformed Theological Seminary as I slowly begin pursuing my M.Div.

The last year, actually two years, has been a time filled with transitions and trials. Almost two years ago we began transitioning the leadership of Eagle TV to Mongolian management. At the same time my oldest daughter, Stefani, was leaving Mongolia for Tucson and college. Separation anxiety began to bud. At that same time my middle daughter Rochele was diagnosed with Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy and went from walking to being confined to a wheelchair to walking again. Gall bladder surgery for me was followed by the death of my father. A few months later Rochele was leaving for Washington State which was followed a few months later by her marriage to her high school sweetheart. In the midst of all of that there were elections in Mongolia and the U.S., a riot back home, machinations against Eagle TV, attacks from Buddhists, and I began the arduous journey of coming to grips with bipolar disorder and the road to recovery.

Whew. No wonder I was stressed.

So as I sit here waiting these last three days in Tucson before my flight home I’m becoming contemplative. A year ago if someone would have told me I would be taking an eight month furlough I’d have laughed. What? Not work for eight months? Are you crazy?

Now I’m beginning the process of transitioning back to work with Eagle, as well as preparing for future ministry by furthering my education. And I’m sure that after I return there will be further unplanned changes that await. Thanksfully, I think I’m better prepared for them now that I’m rested.

I was never big on rest or taking vacations. I was a true workaholic. Doing my work, whatever it happened to be, was absolutely compelling to me. If I wasn’t working then I was thinking about work, or something related to work. Even my recreation was often work-related. Being off these last eights months has served to reorient me to a more balanced way of thinking. Work is still important, but it’s no longer urgent and all-consuming. I’m no longer a slave to my work. That’s a good place to be.

I recently completed Exodus in my Bible reading. One of the passages that stood out to me was the simple command in Exodus 20:8, “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.” I used to view this Law of Moses as something that was for past generations, during the period of the Israelites in the promised land. But after being forced to rest and renew myself in the Lord I see its wisdom. It’s a simple wisdom given by Jesus when he said, “The sabbath was made for man” (Mark 2:27).

It’s interesting that the command to rest follows the three commands, “You shall have no other gods before me,” “You shall not make an idol,” and “You shall not take the Lord’s name in vain.” The scriptures are woven together often with a logic and progression that we miss. What does sabbath have to do with these three previous commands? Everything. My refusal, for many years, to take appropriates rests and dedicate myself even more to my work was to place something before the Lord (violating the 1st commandment). In doing so I set up my work as my idol (violating the 2nd commandment). So when I approached the Lord it wasn’t in the fulness of knowing him according to his ways. I limited his transformative power in my life (violating the 3rd commandment—God’s name has everything to do with his authority and power). This long rest for me has been like making up lost sabbaths. It was both a blessing, but also a kind of discipline, just as when the Lord prescribed 70 years of Israeli exile, giving the land its sabbath rest according to the covenant (compare Leviticus 25:4 with II Chronicles 36:21). On the back end of returning to the land was a renewal of the covenant (see the book of Ezra).

Our transitions and trials as a family, and in our ministry are not over. There’s surely more to come. But I believe I’m better prepared to face what may come in the future because of this long rest. And like Israel looking forward to return to the land of promise I too am looking forward to my return home and seeing how God will use me in the coming weeks and months ahead.

My thanks to everyone who keeps up with this blog and has prayed for us during these last few months. You are an important part of our experience, and a blessing.

I was watching an episode of What Will You Do?” tonight. For those who haven’t seen the show it features actors and a reporter that set up a morally compromising or wrongful situation in a public place. They secretly record the actions of those who witness what happens. What will they do? Will they run to the rescue or ignore the wrong they see before them? As you might guess, with every episode the overwhelming majority of people turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to the injustices around them. Many of the people interviewed afterward note that they don’t get involved because they think something isn’t their business, or they feel uncomfortable. It’s the minority of people who take it upon themselves to proactively do the right thing and come to someone’s rescue.

This got me thinking about some recent reading I’ve been doing about the biblical concept of God’s law written upon our hearts. The concept comes from God’s promise to Israel in Jeremiah 31:33 that a day was coming in which God’s law would not merely be written upon tablets of stone as it was in Moses’ day, but “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.”

As I was contemplating this idea I thought of the same thing that you might be thinking of now—the Ten Commandments, as one example, burned into our consciences. While I was contemplating this I ran across another passage in the book of Jeremiah that gave me a new insight. This passage also talks about something being written on our hearts, but it’s not God’s law.

“The sin of Judah is written down with an iron stylus; with a diamond point it is engraved upon the tablet of their heart” (Jeremiah 17:1).

Sin is written upon the heart of the sinner, but certainly there are no “sinner’s commandments.” In other words, we can’t go to a written revelation and find, “Thou shalt not be faithful,” as we find in the opposite command of scripture, “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” In fact, when it comes to sin, sin is always encouraged in the positive as if we say to ourselves, “I will fornicate,” or “I shall steal,” or “I am going to lie.” But we always look at something like the Ten Commandments from the negative standpoint (in which it was mostly written), “I will not fornicate,” or “I shall not steal,” or “I’m not going to lie.” That’s when the difference between something written upon the heart and something written on tablets (or paper) struck me. A law written down tells us not to do something, but a law written upon the heart encourages us to do something proactively.

Imagine for a moment that instead of saying to ourselves the written command, “You shall not commit adultery,” we instead say, “I shall be faithful.” Isn’t there a world of difference between the inscripturated command to not perform a negative and the inculcated commanded to perform a positive? In fact, I think that may be the point of God’s promise to us to write the law upon our hearts.

Look carefully at how Jesus approached his teaching on the law. He said, “You have heard it said, ‘You shall not commit murder’” (Matthew 5:21). But a few verses later he turns this on its head and encourages us to take proactive steps to “be reconciled to your brother,” and to “make friends quickly” (Matthew 5:24,25). When addressing the commandment against adultery Jesus says, “If your right eye makes you stumble, tear it out” (Matthew 5:29). Jesus’ point was not self-mutilation, rather it was about taking a proactive step toward a positive; and the examples go on.

It may be that having the law written upon our hearts is more than simply, “You shall not lie,” but rather, “You shall tell the truth. The kind of righteousness which imitates Christ is not the kind that simply avoids sins, rather it is the kind that proactively seeks to the do the right thing.

In the book, The Christ of the Covenants, O. Palmer Robertson writes,”The Christian does not live under an externalized ministration of law engraved in stone tablets. Instead, he lives with the law written in his heart. While the Christian always stands obligated to reflect the holiness and righteousness required in God’s law, he no longer relates to that law as an impersonal code standing outside of himself. Instead, the Spirit of God constantly ministers the law within the heart of the believer.”[1]

What is written on your heart? How do you deal with temptation and sin, or perhaps injustice that you may witness around you? Do you simply try to avoid sin or do you take proactive steps to perform an act of righteousness? I’m convinced that the latter is an organic, natural outflow of God’s law written upon our hearts.

1.) The Christ of the Covenants, O. Palmer Robertson, “Moses: The Covenant of Law,” pages 182-183.

I am traveling to Albuquerque on Saturday to spend a week meeting with folks, including some time encouraging a new family that will be moving to Mongolia this summer from the Duke City. After my time in Albuquerque is complete I’ll make a quick run back to Tucson to pack up for my return trip home to Mongolia.

I’ve been in the States for eight months, minus the three weeks I spent in Ulaanbaatar in January for Rochele’s wedding. Needless to say, I’m looking forward to getting back home, being with my wife and youngest daughter Whitney, and getting back to work.

About a month after I return to Mongolia I’ll be starting some distance education classes on Old Testament Studies through Reformed Theological Seminary (RTS). I’ve wanted to attend RTS for the last twelve years and this was the first year that my schedule and finances would permit it. Why am I taking seminary classes with RTS? To prepare for future ministry of course, and to augment my current ministry with Eagle TV.

During the last week my course materials have been arriving. Stacks of books, software, and audio lectures are sitting on the kitchen table waiting for packing day. Among the many books, almost half of them are for Hebrew studies. Needless to say, language isn’t one of my strong suits. Mongolian has been more than a little tough for this full-time working guy. I’ve no little trepidation about taking two classes in Hebrew. In 1993 I took six months of Arabic and did pretty well. I’m hoping that the magic will come back, so to speak, for the Hebrew studies. One of the things I enjoyed about Arabic was that is was a completely different animal from English, not just in sentence structure, but also the characters. There was something about that that actually helped my study. The characters can’t be confused with anything English, unlike Mongolian where an H is an N, and a P is an R, and so on. I’m hoping the same thing that happened to me with Arabic will also happen with Hebrew.

By the way, don’t ask me to translate anything from Arabic. I’ve lost almost everything I knew, which was just an elementary level anyway.

Looking forward to being in Albuquerque for a few days.

I stopped off at a local bookstore with my daughter yesterday and picked up two seasonally published magazines about the Bible. One was published by U.S. News and World Report. The other was published by the American Bible Society in partnership with Time. Reading one was maddening. Reading the other was insightful.

I’m not big on pop-culture presentations of Bible truth. But as it happens, every year as we approach the anniversary of Jesus’ resurrection publications and news events bring special focus to the veracity and claims of Scripture. As each publisher brings to the magazine stand its own prejudices about the Bible one thing becomes clear.

You can’t be neutral about the Bible.

When it comes to the Bible you can either take it or leave it. You can love it or hate it. You can see it as ancient literature or divine revelation. You can be indifferent about its content or let its content move you. But there’s not a lot of room in between. Why does the Bible inspire such reactions of devotion or derision? Why is it so seemingly rare that someone approaches the Bible neutrally to allow it to speak on its own?

These questions arose as I read Secrets of the Bible published by U.S. News and World Report. From its first pages the magazine echoes the revisionist position on Holy Writ, but going even farther (to give just one example) to claim that the Apostle Peter called the Apostle Paul’s writings, “potentially misleading.”[1] Secrets of the Bible exposes itself as an approach from a preconceived view of the Bible as literature only, not divine revelation. Thus its approach permits it to make claims about the text that the Bible simply does not make—like the aforementioned assertion of Peter that Paul’s writings were “potentially misleading.” In fact what Peter actually said was that Paul’s writings were scripture in which “some things [are] hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort.”[2]

The second magazine, Bible Prophecies: Faith, History & Hope approaches the Bible with the retentionist view that Scripture is a divinely inspired, historical record of God’s interaction with man. It’s 127 pages examine the nature, breadth, and history of Bible prophecy as one evidence for the Bible’s divine authorship. After all, you can’t know the future unless you’ve been there. Only God can “call into being that which does not exist.”[3]

Bible Prophecies profiles dozens of passages written about events still in the writers’ future, which we can now look back through history for fulfillment. From detailed descriptions of the rise and fall of kingdoms, to the birth and life of Jesus, to days still on our horizon, the magazine pulls no punches. Who else can reveal the future in such error-free detail as God?

Unlike Secrets of the Bible, which at times seems to set out a deliberate fiction, Bible Prophecies encourages the reader. “Prophecy can inspire and inform us to live each day with confident anticipation as God’s revelations unfold. Lives can change when people trust that God’s plan is in place and that they have been empowered to be enjoined to God’s mission in carrying out that plan. In the end, that is the central redeeming message behind the prophecies of the Bible.”[4]

So why is it that so many people often approach the Bible with a set of prejudices against its testimony? That’s a hard one to answer. We could say that such things are the result of the sin nature which clouds the mind. But that’s a Bible view often prejudiced. We might say that we can’t simply assume the Bible to be true. I might have said the same thing 25 years ago, but that’s not the usual approach today. Today’s approach is more often than not that the Bible can’t be true. Some attitudes are even affected to the point that the Bible must not be true, as in, mustn’t let it be true.

The Scriptures are not out of understanding’s reach. Some say the scripture is “veiled” from the unbeliever so they can’t understand anything it says. But I think such a view of the veiled Gospel is a misapplication of II Corinthians 3:12-4:3. Certainly anyone can read the Bible and understand what it plainly says. What is so confusing about, “Christ died for the ungodly?”[5] Just this: Our preconceived worldview is the veil over our understanding. I can understand Paul’s words, “Christ died for the ungodly.” But my worldview may not allow me to internally recognize that “I” am the ungodly he is referring to. My worldview redefines ungodly so that it doesn’t have to include me. What about you?

You can’t be neutral about the Bible. I suspect it’s because the Bible is not neutral about us. We want to deflect its clearly stated admonitions and pejoratives and refashion them into duller forms that cannot hold us accountable. But when we hold onto such prejudices against the Bible we lose the very thing we claim to have: objectivity. Thus the insight the Bible can provide becomes lost and irrelevant to us.

Perhaps the answer for the one who wants to claim neutrality is to simply entertain the idea of what is possible. Look at the text and instead of saying it can’t be true, ask the question, “Is it possible?”

That’s about as neutral as anyone can be.

1. “The First Missionary,” Garry Wills, page 59, Secrets of the Bible.
2. II Peter 3:16
3. Romans 4:17
4. “The Bible and Prophecy,” page 15, Bible Prophecies.
5. Romans 5:6

My youngest, Whitney, turns 16 today. She’s under the weather, which really stinks for a 16th birthday, but she at least has hit that all-important milestone. Of course the hard part for her mother and I is knowing that it won’t be long before she leaves our nest like her sisters did.

Happy birthday Whitney. Now that you’re 16 you can borrow the keys to the yak.

Love ya ta tears.

Congratulations for me. I was accepted this week into the virtual campus for Reformed Theological Seminary (RTS). I’ve been wanting to take courses with RTS for nearly 12 years and finally the door was opened to me—so I stepped through.

My course work will focus on Biblical Studies for this go around. The work I’ll be doing will be applied toward an Master of Divinity degree later.

My work at Eagle TV has changed significantly over the last year, so I finally have the time to devote to study. Yeah, it’s “one more thing” for me, but it’s a good thing.

My studies will start in May.

I recently read an interesting quote about Buddhism’s impact on real world problems. Check this out. ”Christmas Humpreys, an influential Western Buddhist, admits…’It may be asked, what contribution Buddhism is making to world problems, national problems, social problems, appearing among every group of men. The answer is clear as it is perhaps unique. Comparatively speaking, none.”[1]

I’ve long wondered why Christianity seems to be able to so successfully generate an enormous number of mercy-oriented ministries, organizations, and movements that serve both man and beast. Why did Christianity produce so many educational institutions, hospitals, prison ministries, anti-poverty movements, and more while competing worldviews like Buddhism seem unable or unwilling to do so? It’s not that they don’t make the attempt, it’s that they are just so darn infrequent and invisible. If Buddhism was truly a mercy-oriented system, why hasn’t it generated such things at a level competitive with Christianity?

It turns out that the answer is also provided by Humpreys, “The reason is clear. One man at peace within lives happily.”[2] In other words, when your system of philosophy is “self” centered the motivation for such mercy-oriented movements is, to echo Humpreys’ words, comparatively, none.

In contrast to the “self” centeredness of buddhist movitations, apologists John Ankerberg and John Weldon note that, ”We never ask, ‘Why is there so much good in the world?’ It is always, ‘Why is there so much evil in the world?’ We know that evil is an abberation in a universe whose Ruler is good and righteous.”[3]

Ankerberg and Weldon are correct. We instinctively know that something is wrong with the world (sin, and the suffering caused by sin), but it should be good because we have a good Creator. Creation is supposed to reflect the goodness of the Creator. In many ways it does. But in the case of man our behavior often reflects that which is not good, and thus not from a good Creator. As Christians we recognize that something must be done about this inequity since we are motivated by God’s goodness, just as the scripture says, “Be holy for I am holy.”[4] We want to bring order, and justice, and good to the world because God’s character reflects these good things. The Apostle Peter notes our motivation. After quoting the “be holy” passage from Leviticus he says, “You have in obedience to the truth purified your souls for a sincere love of the brethren, fervently love one another from the heart”[5] (emphasis mine).

I’ll never forget the story my daughter’s told me about an experience they had in Mongolia. They were walking home with friends one evening in the freezing sub-zero temperatures of Ulaanbaatar when they came across a teenager who had been beaten to a pulp. He was on the sidewalk bleeding profusely, unable to stand, with hundreds of people strolling by him. The kids tried to get the attention of a police officer to help the young man, but he simply laughed at them. Everyone walking by steered clear. Not a single person would stop to help. It was a scene reminiscent of the Good Samaritan. Then a buddhist monk happened by, but he too walked right passed them, electing not to stop. There was no mercy. In true Good Samaritan form these Christian teenagers did all they could to try to help the young man, with one of the girls even removing her coat and putting it on the bleeding, freezing teen. She walked home, freezing.

Every religious system inculcates in its followers a model that is to be emulated. For Buddhism the model is Siddhartha Gautama. But for Christians the model is supremely different—Jesus Christ. He wrapped himself inside humanity and suffered as one of us while at the same time rising above us in ethics and glory. Just as those teenagers tried to save the life of a stranger and gave sacrificially to try to revive him, so too Christ did what was necessary to save us by giving of himself through the ultimate sacrifice and suffering.

Where are the Buddhist mercy-oriented movements? I’m sure there are a small number out there. But the model necessary to motivate such things isn’t found in Buddhism’s core. So as Humpreys’ notes it is comparatively, none. Thank God we have a model in the Savior, Jesus Christ who motivates those who love him truly, differently.

1. In F.L. Woodward, Trans., Some Sayings of the Buddha (New York: Oxford University Press 1973), p. X.X.I.I.
2. Ibid
3. Encyclopedia of Cults and New Religions, John Ankerberg and John Weldon, “Buddhism and Nichiren Shoshu Buddhism,” page 62.
4. Leviticus 11:44
5. I Peter 1:22

I had a great time at the Casas Missions Fair this year. Today was the first day of the week long activities focused on foreign missions and missionaries that are part of Casas Church in Tucson, Arizona. I was amazed by the number of people who frequented the Eagle TV booth to tell me they are praying for our family and for Eagle TV. A great deal of people, in fact, remembered my presentation with Roger Barrier during last year’s missions fair.

Stefani was there to help man the booth for me and she, frankly, was the hit with visitors. She broke out her ankle bones and started showing everyone how to play. It’s amazing what amazes the kiddies.

The Supermom video was also a hit. People were continually amazed that we could produce such a good quality product for television with so few resources. In case you didn’t know, Supermom is the most popular children’s television program in Mongolia.

There are events and activities scheduled for the whole week for the Casas missionaries. I’m looking forward to spending the time with everyone.

On the 21st I drive to Albuquerque for a weeklong visit then it’s back to Tucson to prepare for my return trip to Mongolia.

Today I am the guest for the PreachItTeachIt.org podcast. Our discussion revolved around missions, Mongolia, and the unique challenges Mongolian culture poses for missionaries.

Enjoy.