April 1st is a time for a lot of very funny jokes about fools, but there is another kind of fool that is no laughing matter. The Bible describes the danger of being a fool.

Proverbs 1:22-33
How long will you simple ones love your simple ways?
How long will mockers delight in mockery
and fools hate knowledge?
If you had responded to my rebuke,
I would have poured out my heart to you
and made my thoughts known to you.
But since you rejected me when I called
and no one gave heed when I stretched out my hand,
since you ignored all my advice
and would not accept my rebuke,
I in turn will laugh at your disaster;
I will mock when calamity overtakes you—
when calamity overtakes you like a storm,
when disaster sweeps over you like a whirlwind,
when distress and trouble overwhelm you.
Then they will call to me but I will not answer;
they will look for me but will not find me.
Since they hated knowledge
and did not choose to fear the Lord,
since they would not accept my advice
and spurned my rebuke,
they will eat the fruit of their ways
and be filled with the fruit of their schemes.
For the waywardness of the simple will kill them,
and the complacency of fools will destroy them;
but whoever listens to me will live in safety
and be at ease, without fear of harm.

This is in stark contrast to blessings of wisdom.

Psalm 1:1-3
How blessed is the man
who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked,
Nor stand in the path of sinners,
Nor sit in the seat of scoffers!
But his delight is in the law of the Lord,
and on his law he meditates day and night.
He is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither.
Whatever he does prospers.

Where does this find you: frolicking with naive simple-minded fools, or having fellowship with stable God-fearing people? Whatever you do, don’t follow the ultimate foolishness of denying God…

Psalms 14
The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God.”
They are corrupt, they have committed abominable deeds;
There is no one who does good.
The LORD has looked down from heaven upon the sons of men
To see if there are any who understand,
Who seek after God.
They have all turned aside, together they have become corrupt;
There is no one who does good, not even one.
Do all the workers of wickedness not know,
Who eat up my people as they eat bread,
And do not call upon the Lord?
There they are in great dread,
For God is with the righteous generation.
You would put to shame the counsel of the afflicted,
But the LORD is his refuge.
Oh, that the salvation of Israel would come out of Zion!
When the LORD restores His captive people,
Jacob will rejoice, Israel will be glad.

Do you think that’s an odd question? I’m not asking if you are drunk at church. I’m asking if you suffer from a condition known as alcohol (an intoxicating beverage) myopia (short-sightedness) while you are at church?

In Wired — An Emptied Flask Makes for Empty Promises, they report on a study in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology. Researchers created a situation where half the people drank alcoholic vodka tonics and the other half drank non-alcoholic vodka tonics. After several drinks, they asked them how committed they were to important personal goals. Here’s the interesting part…

• People who had actually consumed alcohol, were fully willing to commit no matter how unrealistic the goal—but several weeks later—these people had not taken any steps toward achieving their unrealistic personal goals
• People who had not consumed alcohol, but thought they had, were only willing to commit depending on how realistic the goals—and several weeks later—these people had followed through based on how committed they said they were

Which one of these groups describes your experience at church?

• Do you get affected by the emotional, rah-rah, high, of “feel good” sermons and make short-sighted personal commitments at church—but then fail to follow through—over and over?
• Do you receive the word with all readiness, and search the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things are so (Acts 17:11) and make real personal commitments between you and God—and follow through with your commitments?

If you are in the first group, and are tired of playing church, and would like to meet christians who are in the second group, please contact us.

Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,
As to be hated, needs but to be seen;
But seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.
— “Essay on Man” by Alexander Pope

If we see what the Bible teaches but do not do it, we soon lose the power to see it.

• Truth obeyed leads to more truth.
• Truth disobeyed destroys the capacity to discover truth.

There must be not only a surrender of the will but specific practical obedience to each new discovery in God’s word:

• Obeying the truth we already see will solve enigmas in the verses we do not yet understand.
• Disobeying the truth we see darkens the whole world of truth. Truth not stood and lived for flees.

Hear ye, and give ear;
be not proud:
for the LORD hath spoken.
Give glory to the LORD your God,
before he cause darkness,
and before your feet stumble
upon the dark mountains,
and, while ye look for light,
he turn it into the shadow of death,
and make it gross darkness.
(Jeremiah 13:15-16)

“What the Word doth make it, that I believe and take it.

— found in the Bible of Ed Stevens

This circle represents the 2 different kind of people that say, “they have fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ”: those that are walking in darkness and those that are walking in the light as He is in the light. 1 John 1:6-7 describes the actual spiritual condition of these people:

• Those that walk in darkness, lie and do not practice the truth
  • Don’t have fellowship with Him
  • Don’t have fellowship with one another
• Those that walk in the light as He is in the light
  • Do have fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ
  • Do have fellowship with one another

If any two christians do not have fellowship with one another, the obvious conclusion is one, or both, of them are not walking in the light as He is in the light.

Someone might ask, which is more important: fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ or fellowship with one another? Neither is more important! You can’t have one without the other—there is no middle ground—they are inseparable!

Please listen to this timely message and consider carefully whether you are living in darkness or submitting to the light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

1 Thessalonians 5:1-10
But concerning the times and the seasons, brethren, you have no need that I should write to you. For you yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so comes as a thief in the night. For when they say, “Peace and safety!” then sudden destruction comes upon them, as labor pains upon a pregnant woman. And they shall not escape. But you, brethren, are not in darkness, so that this Day should overtake you as a thief. You are all sons of light and sons of the day. We are not of the night nor of darkness. Therefore let us not sleep, as others do, but let us watch and be sober. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk are drunk at night. But let us who are of the day be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet the hope of salvation. For God did not appoint us to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, that whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with Him.

2009-02-22 Drex Baker – Foreshocks of the Tribulation.mp32009-02-22 Drex Baker – Foreshocks of the Tribulation.pdf

Do you want to be wise? (Prov. 23:15-16)

Then you need to learn to recognize fools because…

• Fools break your focus — they distract you
• Fools waste valuable time & energy
• Fools slow your life down
• Fools rob you of precious moments

1. Prov. 1:7 A fool is anyone who despises wisdom, instruction, and correction from a proven mentor.
2. Prov. 10:18 A fool is anyone who attempts to destroy the reputation of a proven warrior through lying and misrepresentation.
3. Prov. 14:9 A fool is anyone who does not take the dangerousness of sin seriously.
4. Prov. 13:19 A fool is anyone who refuses to abandon evil even when corrected.
5. Prov. 17:10 A fool is anyone who’s conduct does not change even after experiencing the painful consequences of their foolish actions
6. Prov. 17:16 A fool is anyone who considers any pursuit of understanding to be wasted effort.
7. Prov. 18:6-7 A fool is always at the center of strive and contention.
8. Prov. 29:11 A fool tells everyone everything he knows.
9. Psa. 14:1 Any atheist is a fool
10. Prov. 14:16 A fool refuses to admit his mistakes even when his pain is the obvious result of his actions.

***** BONUS POINT *****

1. Prov. 19:20 A fool refuses to seek counsel from successful and accessible mentors.

***** FIVE MORE POINTS *****

1. Prov. 20:3 A fool is anyone who refuses to embrace peace.
2. Prov. 21:20 A fool is anyone who spends more money than he is willing to earn.
3. Prov. 28:26 A fool is anyone who creates his own belief system contrary to the word of God.
4. Prov. 23:9 A fool cannot be changed through counsel
5. Prov. 17:21 & 25 The parents of a fool will live in sorrow for their entire lifetime

For the second time in one month, science must admit it was wrong again. But, once again, the Biblical record of creation written about 3,500 years ago, has not changed. If you were ever taught about the evolutionary “tree of life” as proposed by Darwin, you were taught a lie, or at best, misinformation. It was wrong. There is no tree of life!

Why Darwin was wrong about the tree of life

IN JULY 1837, Charles Darwin had a flash of inspiration. In his study at his house in London, he turned to a new page in his red leather notebook and wrote, “I think”. Then he drew a spindly sketch of a tree.
…
Even so, it is clear that the Darwinian tree is no longer an adequate description of how evolution in general works. “If you don’t have a tree of life, what does it mean for evolutionary biology?” asks Bapteste. “At first it’s very scary… but in the past couple of years people have begun to free their minds.” Both he and Doolittle are at pains to stress that downgrading the tree of life doesn’t mean that the theory of evolution is wrong – just that evolution is not as tidy as we would like to believe. Some evolutionary relationships are tree-like; many others are not. “We should relax a bit on this,” says Doolittle. “We understand evolution pretty well – it’s just that it is more complex than Darwin imagined. The tree isn’t the only pattern.”
…
“We’ve just annihilated the tree of life. It’s not a tree any more, it’s a different topology entirely,” says Syvanen. “What would Darwin have made of that?” — http://www.newscientist.com/

I think it’s a lot easier to believe the Bible.

Genesis 1:1
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

I think it’s just wonderful when modern science catches up with the Bible. First there was the Big Bang, which agrees with the first verse in the Bible, and now this…

“DRY land may be something of a novelty. Until around 2.5 billion years ago our planet was almost completely covered by water, a model of the early Earth suggests.” — http://www.newscientist.com/

This agrees quite closely with the second two verses in the Bible, which were written by Moses about 3,500 years ago…

Genesis 1:2-3
The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

Every day seems to bring more news of financial crisis that seems to spell gloom and doom for the world economy. Has the last 30 years of economic prosperity really been a fleeting Consumer Bubble that is popping now? Consider stories like this…

Great Crash of 2008 (Continued)

Is there any peace and comfort now? Yes! It is still available in the same place that it always was, but many people ignored it because they didn’t think they needed it. Please read God’s Formula for Rest