SoulFood (15) The Lion King and the Phantom

      For years Agatha Christie’s play, The Mouse Trap, was considered the all-time successful money spinner in theater.  It holds the record for the longest initial run of any play in history, with its 25,000th performance taking place on 18 November 2012. People had to book well in advance to buy tickets and its lead was secure until a somewhat Hunchback-of-Notre-Dame musical opened in London's West End in 1986, and on Broadway in 1988.     Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical was from the French novel Le Fantôme de l'Opéra by Gaston Le Roux.  The Phantom of the Opera’s plot is about Christine Daaé, a beautiful soprano, who becomes the obsession of a mysterious, disfigured musical genius.

      Phantom became the longest running show in Broadway history by far. Its 10,000th Broadway performance was on 11 February 2012. Move aside Mousetrap! Theater goers have spent 5.6 billion dollars world-wide to come see it. Over 130 million people in 145 cities in 27 countries have lined up for a performance. On Broadway alone it has grossed $845 million.

      So a somewhat dark plot, with enticingly excellent music by a modern Mozart, cornered the world’s love of entertainment. You might expect a preacher like me to see the analogy: Satan’s work is so very similar. There is always huge sensory titillation, but always desiring to lead to ultimate captivation. 

       Le Roux’s play does however build to the desired “happy ending.”  Christine returns the Phantom's ring to him, and he tells her he loves her. (Oh, tell the Evil One you have a new and deeper love now in your life!) Christine cries, forces herself to turn away, and exits with Raoul.  (No matter how dear the association with evil – give your heart to Christ.) The Phantom, weeping, huddles on his throne and covers himself with his cape. The mob storms the lair and Meg pulls away the cape—but the Phantom has vanished; only his mask remains (Wow, what a powerful ending!)

        In the New York theater world the Phantom rules no more!  A musical show that my wife and I saw in London, is now in its 16th year on Broadway.  It’s been playing in London since 1999. We both were deeply moved by the opening song by Rafiki, the mandrill. She transported us back to the beloved sound of Zulu music. Even now I get touched by the strident, yet haunting sound of that song. Broadway's all-time highest-earner, it became the first show to pass $1 billion (£605m) early in 2014. I speak, of course, about The Lion King.

       This amazing show was based on the 1994 Disney animated film of the same name.  The music was written by Elton John and the lyrics by Tim Rice.  Hans Zimmer wrote the music score. The Lion King debuted July 8, 1997, in Minneapolis, Minnesota at the Orpheum Theatre. It was a huge success and premiered on Broadway on October 15, 1997at the New Amsterdam Theater.

       I’m tempted to discuss the plot, but won’t. There might just be a reader left who hasn’t had the pleasure of seeing this awesome story.  Here’s all I will reveal.  Scar is a mean hyena who hates Simba the Lion.  The story drives down to a huge battle at the end. Simba's friends fight the hyenas while Simba battles Scar to the top of Pride Rock. Only one victor can remain. With the battle won, Simba's friends come forward and acknowledge Simba as the rightful king. Simba ascends Pride Rock and roars out across the kingdom.

       Here’s a take away from an old preacher like me: The Lion of the Tribe of Judah ascended a skull-shaped Pride Rock and there, fought all the dark forces of evil for the rights to justly forgive sinners who broke the Creator of the Universe’s moral laws. He looked like he was losing, but cried at last: “it is finished.” Days later an empty tomb sent a roar across both the globe and the centuries. Evil cannot even play the card of human death as its final victory. Jesus is Lord even over that!

       Stepping back to theater one more time: The Lion King has routed the Phantom.  So should it be for the King of Kings has defeated the Phantom Prince of this world.  Maybe in your life the Phantom had a long reign. May it be SO over today!

SoulFood (14) China

        "The best time to buy umbrellas is when it's not raining." Those were the words of a young businessman when the dot.com bubble burst was bringing disaster on many like himself. He is like the best shoe salesman that an American company sent to a primitive tribe. The salesman before him failed to sell anything. His message to the company read: "hopeless. These people don't wear shoes." After weeks of successful shoe selling the second salesman cabled: "wonderful. These people don't wear shoes!"
        You have heard of Amazon.com, Priceline, E.bay and cheap tickets.com. I bet not many have heard of Alibaba Group. Just because you haven't dealt with them should NOT make you skeptical of their reach and power.
          His name is Jack Ma or Ma Yun. He is a 50 year Chinese entrepreneur who has been on the cover of Forbes. Ma was born in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China to a couple of cultural dancers. Poor?  Yes, very. Ma thought learning English would help him. A 45 minute daily bike ride took him to a hotel to converse with foreigners. He guided them around the city for free to practice English.  Plenty of brains? Not particularly. He failed the entrance exam twice for Hangzhou Teacher's Institute.
         Don't laugh. Before anyone in China understood the internet he persuaded companies to let him build their web sites. Listen to Jack tell of his first attempt to convince buyers:  "the day we got connected to the Web, I invited friends and TV people over to my house. We waited three and a half hours and got half a page. We drank, watched TV and played cards, waiting. I was so proud. I proved that the Internet existed."
       For a year he endured much frustration running an information technology company: the government's China International Electronic Commerce Center. In 1999 Jack started Alibaba.  It's a business-to-business site. We are talking 79 million members from more than 240 countries. How's that for a Great Leap Forward? This is a company that forced EBay to close down in China.
        So just how well are they doing? In November 2012, Alibaba's online transaction volume exceeded $13 billion. 320 million shares of Alibaba are about to flood the market. Some investors are selling shares of other stocks to buy Alibaba shares. Speaking of the "Alibaba Effect" a commentator wrote: "Alibaba is selling 320.1 million shares, which means it could raise as much as $21.8 billion, which would top Visa’s record-breaking IPO of $17.9 billion in March 2008."
        Stop thinking of China as a backward, communism dominated, third world country. In recent years I have understood the power of a prophecy that may well link China to the end times scenario. Revelation 16 verse 12 "Then the sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great Euphrates River, and it dried up so that the kings from the east could march their armies toward the west without hindrance. " Is that first century language for road preparations going on in China today? The great western highway has already reached Afghanistan. Roads in the "300 series" stretch from west to east (e.g., from Lhasa in Tibet through to Dandong in Liaoning province)
          The bible says a 200 million strong army will march into the Middle East. This unbelievable army, comprised of an unprecedented number of men, will possess the firepower capable of killing one-third of all the inhabitants of the Earth!  How many soldiers does China alone have under arms?  One and a half million.  They have 618 million ready for active duty to draw upon. Never before has a military of this size been possible.
         China has an awesome triad: numbers, brains and wealth. A healthy respect for her should infuse our military planners. Jack Mas are arising yearly. Even if they invented nothing, their ability to translate modern technology into mass use is staggering. To my mind China is indeed one of the "Kings of the East" in Bible prophecy. The remaining riddle is as to why it would be in the national interest to invade the Middle east with that size army. Such is reading prophecy. It makes full sense only when the time has come.

SoulFood (13) A Moral People

      500 years ago Hugo Grotius wrote advice for rulers: “He knows not how to rule a kingdom that cannot manage a Province.” So obvious, and yet neglect of track record can see people in power who lack personal discipline. The “Peter Principle” applies to government positions too. Are you in charge of a team or a family? Grotius says to you: “You cannot regulate a family if you don’t know how to govern yourself, you cannot govern yourself if your reason isn’t stronger than your appetites; nor can reason rule unless it is itself ruled by God.” The person who discovers submission to upright authority finds true freedom. Yet that’s only true within a rules-respecting society.

      Grotius mentioned rule by God. This implies far more than occasionally or even often attending a religious gathering.  Being ruled by God means knowing God and comprehending God’s wishes in life circumstances. It’s both knowing and doing what pleases the world’s Creator. Unselfishness is just another way of doing His will. What is the use of being religious without being moral as well?

      In the USA our final authority appears to be a very old, yet still ‘living’ document. One of the first realities new immigrants observe in America is that the final judgement on any action is whether or not it is in line with the Constitution.  This great document is one of earth’s finest articles of government. However it too requires a people who are ruled by God. President John Adams said: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.”

      If we are to avoid the struggle of Russian Tzar Peter the Great, who lamented that the hardest of all his conquests was self rule, we need to perceive the importance of religion plus morality in daily life. A village can only influence a child – it takes obedience to parents (parents who are themselves obedient to God) to raise that child. Too many homes teeter forwards on constantly reworked compromises between tired parents and willful kids, instead of being places of moral order. The taming of the will happens best in the first 5 years of life. Parents, that's your responsibility and you cannot do it harshly: The child’s will must learn how to submit to authority without the child’s spirit being trampled on. Compliment, praise, encourage, but never yield when expecting obedience.

      The Jewish prophet Samuel was instructed by his mentor to reply thus to God’s call: “Speak Lord, for your servant is listening.” Poet James Burns captured it in the verse: O give me Samuel’s heart, a lowly heart that waits where in Your house You are, or watches at Your gates by day and night, a heart that still moves at the breathing of Your will.

      In the 1796 farewell address George Washington advised the nation: “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.”  Political prosperity doesn’t begin and end in Washington. The reason many in Hunterdon don’t have to lock their doors at night is because their neighbors are moral enough to refrain from stealing. The true greatness of a country is measured by citizens who act uprightly even when assured that they could escape punishment for doing wrong. Your personal righteousness exalts this nation.

      The last word goes to Noah Webster – yes founder of the Webster Dictionary – who opined: “The moral principles and precepts contained in the scriptures ought to form the basis of all our civil constitutions and laws. All the miseries and evils which men suffer: vice, crime, greed, injustice, oppression, slavery and war; proceed from their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible”  

SoulFood (12) How the sea got here

      In a first for space history; a spacecraft called Rosetta, was recently maneuvered alongside a speeding comet to begin mapping its surface in detail. The spacecraft fired its thrusters for six and a half minutes to finally catch up with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. "We're at the comet!" said Sylvain Lodiot of the European Space Agency (Esa) operations center in Germany.
       "After 10 years, five months and four days travelling towards our destination, looping around the Sun five times and clocking up 6.4 billion km, we are delighted to announce finally 'we are here'," said Jean-Jacques Dordain, director general of Esa.
       Launched on board an Ariane rocket in March 2004, Rosetta has taken a long route around our Solar System to catch up with comet 67P. In a series of fly-pasts, the probe used the gravity of the Earth and Mars to increase its speed during the 6 billion km chase. Many hope this visit to the comet will verify the current theory about comets and our sea. That is just one of its many tasks.

       Wait, there’s a connection between comets and the blue waves of earth? Some say there is.
       How much water is in the ocean? - National Ocean Service - About 96 percent of Earth's water is in the ocean. That's enough water to fill about 343,670,000,000,000,000,000 gallon-sized milk cartons... 343 billion BILLION gallons.
       How did that much water get here? The Bible says God made the sea. Some scientists accept that as one possible answer to a great mystery.  Others however are banking on another explanation. Perhaps the most popular theory says that, shortly after the Earth formed and cooled, millions of asteroids and comets, saturated in water, slammed into the planet, releasing their payloads to form Earth's oceans. This idea was first put forward at the University of Hawaii.
      There are some mathematical problems with this explanation. For example: if we took Haley's Comet as one of average size and bearing the amount of water that it does, we would need 150 million of such sized comets to bring us our sea. Now we don't just mean fly past us like most comets do. We are talking about 150 million collisions.
      How many years would that take at the present rate of comets colliding with earth?  First we ask when was the last one? 13 thousand years ago has been suggested as the reason for the sudden destruction of the dinosaurs. Let's say then that we are due for our next one soon. 150 million times 13 thousand years means the first impact should have been 195 000,000,000 years ago. That is 195 billion years ago.  Oh oh. That is 13 times older than science estimates the age of our earth.  In other words if the sea came riding here on comets the ocean would be very much smaller than it is. That is where a few desperate scientists resort to faith! They just believe – because it fits their theory – that the rate of collisions and the amounts of water were much higher in the early years.
      Now if we have to add faith into the discussion, we may as well include a category labeled: “Intelligent Design.”  So could God have made the sea? That's no worse an explanation than the best that believers in chance plus time have to offer. The origin of the sea remains a mystery and it calls for faith one way or another.

       “And God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.” So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. God called the vault “sky.” And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good.”

       Too simple an explanation? It would be simple for an all-powerful, all-knowing Being, Who can best be thought of, in scientific terms, as the “first cause.”  

SoulFood (11) Anatomy of a Temptation

      My Rotary friend, Mark, brought something to my attention that solved a long-standing mental quandary. Mark told me that archeologists have now uncovered King David’s palace in Jerusalem. A visit there wasn’t on the itinerary for the tour I led in October 2013. While everyone else slept at the hotel, before sun up, I jogged to what’s known as the City of David. It’s outside the walls around Jerusalem that Muslim ruler Saladin ordered built. It sits on a narrow ridge running south from the Temple Mount in the predominantly Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan in East Jerusalem.

       A sleepy guard, near the end of his shift, let me in. That morning I finally came to see what really happened the night that King David slept with the beautiful wife of one of his top generals and set in motion a cruel line of events that tore his own household apart. You can read the story in 2 Samuel 11. The chapter ends with: “the thing David had done displeased the Lord.”

      I was in my early teens when I first heard the story. A king who wasn’t where he should have been gets some air by a walk up on the roof of his palace. He sees a beautiful woman bathing. The Bible says he asked who she was. The reply was that she was the wife of one of his closest military men, Bathsheba of Uriah the Hittite. Huh? How could he NOT know? He’d seen her many times. There would have been court functions where Uriah and Bathsheba would have been present.

      Back and forth the debate went in my head for 40 years. He was up on the balcony. He glances down to one of the houses and on that roof top is this lovely nude lady. Did she do it on purpose, knowing that he wasn’t away with the army like he should have been? Did he just pretend that he didn’t know her?  Who could blame a red-blooded man with great power under those circumstances? The curves of her body and the lateness of the hour; I mean…

      Many a sermon reduced it all to just two people in the wrong place at the wrong time lost their moral compass and did a reckless thing, a bit like two tired business colleagues at the end of a long trip away find themselves in the hotel bar and…

       The morning walk at the palace dispelled all that. Uriah’s house would have been down in the valley. I mentioned the king’s palace was up on a ridge. Bathsheba would have been but a tiny figure down there on the roof top. I think David believed it was her and only asked to be doubly sure. This was no unexpected enticement of the flesh. It dawned on me that David had been giving Bathsheba the furtive glance for quite some time by then.

       All these years of pastoring has taught me much about how temptation breeds sinful deeds. Almost always it starts inside the imagination. Men look at women, maybe one gal in particular, with a lustful glace. The glance breeds a day dream after a few hours. The daydream very subtly becomes an ambition over a week or two. Next comes the desire to be in her company more than the normal course of events allow. Lingering at the water cooler. A “chance” meeting in town. It’s all about wanting her to notice him on her radar. Smiles. Compliments. Little favors. Excuses for a phone call. This is all part of the game.

        But this kind of temptation is two way. She starts to like it that this man, married or not, powerful or not, rich or not, though the former of each of these sure helps, is reaching out to her. She repays him with a happy glance. She lets her hand linger on his arm just a bit longer than needed in an innocent conversation. She omits to mention that a flirtatious remark of his, is inappropriate, should she already be married. At last she agrees to “have coffee.” The train has now left the station!  One or both may still be in denial, but whenever either party has someone else with whom this new “friendship” would be awkward to disclose all the details – the ride towards sin is under way.

         They laugh. They play. Fingers touch then entwine. A wink. A special shared joke or song. It’s all so happy until the hammer falls and the sin happens. The Bible says sin brings forth death. It never goes any other way. The next weeks are a heart struggle against truth. In the end lives are ruined. Regrets pile up. Tears flow. The next weeks are a heart struggle against truth. In the end lives are ruined. Regrets pile up. Tears flow. Confession and repentance are now the only hope. There will be consequences but at least the guilt can be faced and erased.

          King David – run from the balcony! Get back to where you should be. Temptation is the glistening skin of the brightly colored serpent gliding towards the hand of the enthralled child. Its “run” or “ruin.” There are NO other choices!

SoulFood (10) Too old to be trustworthy

      As the bus stopped at Israel’s Parliament building I was eager to cross the street to a nearby museum. I came to see a document that had intrigued me for many years. I hardly noticed the throngs of tourists headed to The Knesset, because I was there to see the Dead Sea Scrolls. This museum’s roof looks like the circular clay pots in which the scrolls were found. The roof, in a fountain pool, is painted white. Nearby stands a stark dark-colored wall. A sign explained the symbolism. The Essenes, a small ultra conservative Jewish sect at the time of Jesus, considered themselves “sons of the Light.”  They saw the world as a great battle between the light of God’s holiness and the darkness of sin and human wickedness.

      I had visited the remains of an Essene settlement. It was in Southern Israel at Qumran. The day was hot and the desert rocks shimmered. They had a very austere life. As I wandered among the ruins I pondered the gift these long gone devotees had given to the 20^th Century. My mind went to AD 70. The news then was bad – very bad. Roman General Titus, who later became emperor, was devastating the land in reprisals for the Jewish Rebellion that broke out a few years before. Everything Jewish was slaughtered or burned.

      The Essenes hid their library of hand-copied scriptures in clay pots. The pots were placed in caves in the hills. The hope was that after the trouble ended they’d all return and the settlement would be repopulated. Rome’s swords flashed, the buildings were destroyed, the old were butchered, the leaders were crucified and the young were dragged away in chains. No one returned. The pots were layered in dust for 1900 years.

      I wasn’t raised in a Christian home. My early days as a believer were filled with questions. One of my struggles was to believe that the Bible was authentic. Even if the original documents were written by God’s own hand - the Bible claims that inspired human penmanship was the mechanism- I couldn’t believe that copy after copy could be made during hundreds of years without errors creeping in.

      My pastor mentioned that 2 decades before, a goat herder had flung some pebbles into a desert cave in Israel, heard some pottery breaking and upon investigating made a discovery that shocked the world. The manuscripts were nearly lost by bits being sold cheaply to tourists, but another long story illustrates the zeal by which they were regathered.

      Even in training for the Christian Ministry I audited lectures that presupposed that the book we now hold as The Bible, can, at best contain only fragments of the original documents. A Doctor of Divinity went to great lengths to “prove” to us that its text was untrustworthy. One of his lectures contained the case of the 3 Isaiahs. The book in our Bible by that name was supposed by some scholars to have been three small books and these were lumped together.

      All of this is background to why I was so keen to see a particular scroll on display at the museum. One of the pots contained the entire book of Isaiah. The staff regards the find as sacred and when a Jewish woman to my right tried to sneak a photograph she was escorted out by a very stern security guard. I didn’t need a camera for I was misty-eyed as I recorded every inch of that glass-covered scroll in my mind.

      I was looking at a miracle. Mind you perhaps the miracle was in the modern Bible back in my hotel room. Not a word was different. The Bible verse came to mind: “The grass withers and the flowers fall but the word of our God shall stand forever” Isaiah 40:8

        

SoulFood (9) The Present Persecution of Christians

      How serious is a video made by the leader of Nigeria’s Boko Haram? The man himself is no joke. U.S. government called him a global terrorist. They put a price of $7-million on his head. In the last six months Boko Haram has killed 2 053 people. So who are these thugs? Their name implies: “People who are committed to the prophet’s (Mohammed’s) teachings.” But even more bluntly it can be translated: “western education is fake.”

      So when this leader, Abu Shekau says, on video, to Christians: “we don’t care about that religion of yours,” he means a lot more than apathy. Nigeria is Africa’s most populous state. The northern half is Muslim-influenced and the north of the North is fanatically anti-Christian. When they hear him chant, at the end of the recording: “Christians, you are in trouble, Christians you are in trouble,” Nigerians take Shekau seriously.

      Go with me now to Mosul. The cowardly Iraqi army threw down their weapons and fled. In roared what we now call “Islamic State.” In just one weekend all Christians got this ultimatum: 1) Stay and convert to Islam; 2) Pay Islamic tax (which is too much for most families to pay); 3) Leave Mosul taking nothing but their clothes. Christians who stayed would be executed. And they were!

         Consider these mournful words: "Too many of us thought that forced conversions and expulsions of entire religious communities were part of a distant, medieval past. There was little that we could do to stop this horrible episode.” Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein, head of Interfaith Affairs at the Wiesenthal Center.

        Yes Rabbi, you and I could do little, but while our President fiddled with executive orders over birth control pills, the US military sat on its hands as Syria burned. Bombing a few trucks threatening a mountain isn’t going to cut it, any more than Bill Clinton’s cruise missiles did in preventing 9/11. If you are going to strike – hit training camps and supply routes. Hit very hard. Do it yesterday already!

        But I must also add that the USA isn’t the world’s policeman. In 50 countries where persecution happens, at least one event every 3 months, 27 of them are lands where its weekly or even daily in the last 14 days. More Christians have died for their faith in the 21^st Century than in all the others put together. Can the US take on 50 countries? The Jewish holocaust is becoming small pickings by comparison.

       North Korea, armed with its police state forces and neighborhood spies, kills its Christians quietly and efficiently. It rivals the Muslim threat in numbers jailed and tortured.

       So the Western mind cries out for a solution. There isn’t one! Not in this present evil world. Jesus knew that from the beginning. He startled his hearers saying: “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”  Jesus predicted: “A servant is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also.” At least the situation is not yet at: “Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me.” He was right about the other. It’s only a matter of time!

     Love generously. Live boldly. Witness clearly. Die bravely. There will be enough grace for each of those.