Rats, Repentance and Salvation During CCP COVID-19

Kopp Disclosure

(John 3:19-21)

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Rats, Repentance and Salvation During CCP COVID-19

I smell a rat.

Contacts in law enforcement and jurisprudence along with word on the streets is that rats, snitches, stoolies, turncoats, tattletales, busybodies and Sister-Berthas-better-than-yu’uns are having a field day.

Apparently, people with a little too much time on their hands or jealous that nobody wants to get socially close to them or pretending some kinda big brother socialist patriotism that brings Orwell, Nazi Germany, the Chinese Communist Party, old USSR that Putin’s trying to reincarnate and some recently fired FBI political partisans to mind are calling up the cops to enforce social distancing when they see too many cars in their neighbor’s driveway or church parking lot, little girls jumping rope, family gatherings, barbecues and picnics, suspicious cars in the driveways of hair stylists, house visits from hair stylists, bikers congregating at McD’s and teenagers trying to make out in the park.

Though it’s a little out of context pero not that much, I hear an echo from the Master about some signs that He’s coming back, “They will hand you over to the courts, cops and churches.  They will hand you over to be prosecuted and persecuted.  You will be shamed, slandered and worse.  Brother will betray brother and you will be hated because of My name…[Can’t leave out the good part!]…But the one who endures to the end will be saved” (see Matthew 10 and 24).

While rats, snitches, stoolies, turncoats, tattletales, busybodies and self-righteous Bertha sisterhood usually point their fingers from dirty hands and unsanitized hearts – so full of themselves yet with such empty souls – their passion for telling bad tales about others is generated by their lust to control others.  They feed their hunger to control others by limiting initiative and freedom.  It has little to do with law.  It has lots to do with fascism in sheep’s clothing.

A mentor warned, “The greatest temptation for a young man is sex.  The greatest temptation as you age is money.  The greatest temptation for an older man is power.”

I smell a rat.

When this whole CCP COVID-19 really started spreading, I was down at Bad Ash Cigars in Oregon, Illinois; listening to one state’s first press conference on the challenge.  

I’ll never forget the mayor who spoke after the governor and said “they” – whoever they really are – were hoping “to educate people into compliance.”

A judge sitting to my left and coroner sitting to my right and the lounge’s proprietor sitting across from me and investment banker standing behind him joined me with simultaneously dropped jaws as everybody caught the drift.

What happens if “educated compliance” doesn’t work?

Well, the mayor elaborated about a month later: “We will cite you; and if we need to, we will arrest you and we will take you to jail.  Period!”

That made it sound really serious; so maybe we can, you know, ignore the 1st Amendment until things get better; recognizing, of course, the risk that freedoms removed are rarely restored.

Please know I am not questioning the reality or severity of CCP COVID-19.

Please know I’d rather be safe than sorry and can go along with the social distancing, hand-washing and mask-wearing.

I’m just having problems with the contradictions and hypocrisy.

If masks are so important to save lives, why were we given two weeks before we had to wear them to save lives?

If social distancing is so important, I’m having a hard time figuring out why social distancing is more important in some gathering places than others.

While I’ve been accused of breaking the practice-what-you-preach thing, why is it O.K. for the mayor to see her hair stylist but you can’t?

I don’t need one.

How can the governor demand/dictate the ban of non-essential travel and then ship off his family for vaca at their 12 million dollar horse farm in Florida?

Do as I say but not as I do?

If it’s that serious, why aren’t they playing it safe?

What do they know that we don’t?

Do they have better immune systems?

I smell a rat.

Have you noticed the instrument of compliance by those trying to control us?

Whether it’s the snitch or governor or mayor or whoever wants/demands/dictates compliance, it’s the most awfully profane four-letter word to the ears and spirit of a believer.

Fear.

They use fear to control us.

If we don’t do what they say, we’re reckless and careless and should maybe could be charged for killing people because we’re not masked and distanced.

If we don’t do what they say, they’ll cite and fine and arrest and jail us so we don’t hurt ourselves or anybody else.

While anybody who’s paying attention knows the challenge is unprecedented, fluid and incrementally unfolding with conflicting “experts” on its magnitude and duration – nobody really knows what the anything but heaven is going on and your guess is as good as anybody’s else with just about all of the projections and models being grossly wrong – fear is used to make us think “they” know what they’re talking about; and even if they don’t, they’ll instill enough fear in us with cooperation of the media that doesn’t get ratings from good news.

I smell a rat.

Nota bene!

Fear is mostly used by bad guys to justify, rationalize and enable their bad behaviors and get us to accommodate ‘em.

Fear manipulates people into supporting people and policies otherwise opposed.

A quote from Frank Herbert’s science fiction novel Dune comes to mind: “Fear is the mind-killer.”

Think.

Pay attention.

Connect the dots.

I smell a rat.

That’s why President Franklin D. Roosevelt said during his inaugural address in 1933, “First of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”

He was saying inappropriate fear causes panic.

Anybody connecting the dots between too many politicians, media and…knows/sees that.

I smell a rat.

Anybody connecting the dots is beginning to see a crisis has been turned into an opportunity to discourage people from turning to God when needed the most by saying God and worship are not as essential as weed, whiskey and WalMart.

Anybody connecting the dots is beginning to see people who hate Jesus and hate the republic “for which it stands” as a nation built on Biblical principles encouraging life, liberty and happiness for everybody not just the special few that have the power to make us stay at home and stay away from the barber and hair salon while they don’t - which really, really, really smells of something really, really, really wrong - are having a field day.

I smell a rat.

I smell something that knows this is the time to seize control of things, take down the nation and elevate the spirit of Antichrist over Jesus.

People are afraid.

Distracted from the Body of Christ and Jesus Himself with a constant bombardment of Pavlovian style conditioning that there are many things more essential than God to keep folks in their Skinner boxes and out of churches, now is the time for demonically inspired despots to exercise unreasonable control and threaten to cite, fine, arrest and jail people for violating rules that are increasingly unmasked as inconsistent, ineffective and capricious.

I smell a rat.

Hitler: “The best way to take control over a people and control them utterly is to take a little of their freedom at a time, to erode rights by a thousand tiny and almost imperceptible reductions.  In this way, the people will not see those rights and freedoms being removed until past the point at which these changes cannot be reversed.”

Ben Franklin warned about losing the republic established by our founding fathers: “Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

I smell a rat.

I smell the spirit behind the rat.

I smell the author of lies and deception.

I smell the one who is anti everything that God wants for us and gives us by grace through faith in Jesus.

I smell the one who wants to steal souls forever and destroy anyone and any country that wants to honor God and proclaims to a fallen world as the only way of getting back up, “In God We Must Trust!”

Connect the dots.

Believers smell a rat.

The only remedy is God through faith in Jesus.

The governor won’t save us.

The mayor won’t save us.

Only Jesus saves.

John Piper’s new book Coronavirus and Christ is right on: “No man can comfort our souls in this pandemic the way God can.  His comfort is unshakable.  It is the comfort of a great, high Rock in the stormy sea.  It comes from His word, the Bible.”

Piper asks earlier in the book, “Do we have a Rock under our feet?...This is a time when the fragile form of this world is felt.  The seemingly solid foundations are shaking…Do we have a Rock under our feet?”

When we talked last week about Jesus esteeming the Hebrew Scriptures and saying part of His role was to explain fully the Hebrew Scriptures and take us into a deeper relationship with God so that we would have an expanded understanding of His will for our lives so that we could honor Him more fully in Matthew 5:17-20, we noted how He provided “for instances” in Matthew 5:21-48.

Taking us deeper and moving us into greater intimacy with God, Jesus explained, “You’ve heard that is was said, ‘Don’t murder…Don’t commit adultery…Don’t divorce’…But if you really want to get close to God and surpass the fidelity/devotion/righteousness of the simply religious people like scribes and Pharisees and prove you are on God’s side, you’ll stop entertaining sins in your mind and stop fantasizing about them.”

He was saying sin begins in the head, heart and gut before it is acted out; so if we want to keep from acting out sin, we’ve got to stop thinking about it and figuring out how to get away with it.

It’s basic psychology.

Actions are preceded by what’s going on in our heads (principles), hearts (feelings) and guts (instincts).

It’s common sense.

Free your mind and your butt will follow!

That’s what it means to surpass the religion of scribes and Pharisees.

I think of early morning prayer and study with Ev, Coach and Dave who said it means being “more better.”

The grammar remains awful but the message is clear.

We can never be pure and perfect in every way - Jesus came to bridge the gap between our impurities and imperfections and God’s purely perfect will for our lives by grace through faith - but we can be “more better” and try harder; or as I once heard, “We are saved by grace and saved for works.”

We want to be “more better” and surpass religion - which usually amounts to the least we can do for God - in gratitude for existential relief and eternal salvation.

So after telling us to clear our minds of filthy sins so that our performance as Christians will move closer to our professed Christianity – So we will walk the talk! - Jesus instructs us to tell the truth, whole truth and nothing but the truth all of the time.  He says believers don’t have to say, “Let me be honest…I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”  Believers just tell the truth.  They don’t need to place their hands on the Bible and take an oath about it.

Believers surpass a minimalist religion about God for a “more better” personal relationship with Him and His by going the extra mile.  Again, we’re not into the least we can do for God. We give our best to the Master.

Believers love everybody.  It’s the only Christian agape thing to do; praying and working for the highest good for everybody regardless of who, what, where, when or why without the need or expectation for response, regard or reward.  While nobody likes everybody, the difference between Christ-followers and heathens is we don’t need to like ‘em to love ‘em.  

Like is weak.  It takes strength to love.  Jesus said, “If you love those who love you, what’s so great about that?  Anybody can do that! You can do better than that!  You must if you’re related to Me!  You will if you’re related to Me.”

The remedy for rat removal is replacing a religion about God with a personal relationship with Him.

That’s how we surpass the scribes and Pharisees.

That’s how we get “more better.”

I had a long talk with my mom on Mother’s Day.

She talked about praying for America to wake up before it’s too late and ask God’s forgiveness for distancing ourselves from Him.  She believes we wouldn’t be in as much trouble as we are now if we hadn’t kicked God out of our courtrooms, classrooms, commerce, churches and all of the below.

We shared our conclusion that CCP virus is God’s wake up call to give us another chance to get right with Him before it’s too late.

Piper’s book echoes that concern: “This is not a season for sentimental views of God.  It is a bitter season…[but]…God governs it.  God will end it.”

He writes, “God is giving the world in the coronavirus outbreak…a physical picture of the moral horror and spiritual ugliness of God-belittling sin…[in our world]…God is mercifully shouting to us in these days.  Wake up!  Sin against God is like this!  It is horrible and ugly.  And far more dangerous than the coronavirus.”

And then with the unmistakable smell of a rat in our world – the smell of the Antichrist’s spirit that is anti everything that is Christian by Holy Scripture – Piper prophesies about this moment and rejoices in the remedy for overcoming the unholy trinity of satanos, Antichrist and its false prophet(s): “The coronavirus is a God-given wake-up call to be ready for the second coming of Christ…The message is clear. Stay awake.  Stay awake.  Stay awake…But, oh, how many people are not awake!  For all their frenzied activity, they are sound asleep in regard to the coming of Jesus Christ.  The peril is great.  And the coronavirus is a merciful wake-up call to be ready…The way to be ready is to come to Jesus Christ, receive forgiveness for sins, and walk in His light.”

He concludes as all of us will conclude by grace through faith in Jesus: “…[If you receive Jesus into your head/heart/gut as Lord and Savior]…Then you will be among those who…[quoting Paul in 1 Thessalonians 5:4-10]…’are not in darkness for that day to surprise you like a thief.  For you are all children of light…So then…let us keep awake…For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with Him.’”

Blessings and Love!

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