I Got My Roadmap! Do You?

Have you ever gone on vacation without the roadmap? Drives you nuts in short order, doesn’t it? You stop at the first gas station and pick one up and whoever is sitting in the navigator’s seat gets to studiously mark out the route. Or if you are lucky enough to have one of the newer vehicles equipped with navigation tools would you consider leaving home without having it hooked up ready to go? Probably not!

I recall a weekend road trip that a friend and I took during college. On Thursday after noon, we left when class dismissed in Lexington, KY with the intention of driving shifts through the night until we arrived early morning at our destination in Letts, IA. We planned to take Interstate 74 through central IL all the way into IA. Too easy.

Because I had made the trip several times before (my girlfriend lived there at the time), I didn't think that I needed to take a roadmap. Yet sure enough, around two or three in the morning we began seeing signs for Chicago. "Chicago: 50 Miles"

I don't remember which of us was driving, but it didn't matter. We had taken a wrong turn somewhere and were now about a hundred miles off course. Although I am from Northern Illinois, I was not familiar with the road we were on and had no idea where to go to 'course correct.'

After realizing our mistake, we exited the interstate at the next available off-ramp and stopped at a gas station. We had need of only one thing: a roadmap! Amazingly we had no other navigation issues for the rest of our trip.

I learned an important lesson that night. Beyond the obvious 'always keep a map under my car seat' which is now my common practice whenever I go on long trips, I learned that without a roadmap it is nearly impossible to arrive at your intended destination when traveling in unfamiliar territory.

You guessed it. I'm not talking about road trips anymore. I'm talking about life in general. If ever there was a better analogy for life, I've yet to find it. Life is a journey through the most unfamiliar roads and terrain that you can imagine. You will experience wrong turns, get lost, and find yourself wishing that you had brought along a roadmap.

Simply put, our roadmap is the Word of God. God's Powerful Scriptures, or GPS, is a tool far older and more accurate than any technological marvel of today. It is the Word of God that can accurately direct us toward the perfect center of God's Will. It is the Word of God that can teach us to serve Him in ways that are pleasing to Him. It is the Word of God that will teach us in every area of our life.

It is the Word of God that can bring revival to America. It was the Word of God that presidents once looked to as the roadmap of National Policy. It was the Word of God that was once used as textbooks in public schools. It was the Word of God!


In Christ,

Nick

The Indestructible Word Of God

In A.D. 303, the Roman Emperor, Diocletian, decreed that every Bible should be destroyed. His fury was fueled by Satan himself as he set out to extinguish the very seeds of Christianity. He believed, and perhaps rightly so, that if the Bible could be destroyed so could the entirety of Christianity. "Christians are a people of the Book," was his belief. The only fault in his theory, and a big fault is was, was that the Bible cannot be destroyed.

After some time, Diocletian believed that he had accomplished his feat and began to celebrate. He raised a column with a Latin inscription "Extincto nomene Christianorum" (the name of Christian is extinct).

Just a few short years later in A.D. 312, Constantine came onto the scene as he succeeded the kingdom from Diocletian. When he did, he replaced all of the pagan symbols with the symbol of the cross. This remarkable war against the Bible was begun, fought, and lost in less than ten years.

Fourteen hundred years later, Voltaire, a French atheist and philosopher, predicted that the Bible would be eliminated shortly after his death.

"One hundred years from my day there will not be a Bible in the earth except one that is looked upon by an antiquarian curiosity seeker." ~ Voltaire

Twenty years after Voltaire died, the Geneva Bible Society purchased Voltaire's house and used it as a base of operations to print and distribute Bibles. Later it became the headquarters for the British and Foreign Bible Society.

"The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever." ~ Isaiah 40:8

China Imprisons Man For Distributing Bibles

Most people are not aware of the severe Christian prosecution that takes place throughout the world. I have been reading recently on Google News about Christians around the world who are being arrested and persecuted simply for their faith.

You will not find these articles on the main Google News web page, but if you search for some Keywords like "Christian in China" or "Christian Persecuted," it is outrageous what kind of news you will find. Why doesn't more of this make it to the major headlines.

People ought to be outraged at the human rights violations that are taking place to Christians around the world. Here is an excerpt from one news article.

"Pastor Wang Zaiqing, a well known house church pastor from Anhui province, has been sentenced to two years imprisonment and fined 100,000 yuan (£6,700) for producing Bibles and Christian materials. In a now familiar tactic, Pastor Wang was charged with conducting ‘illegal business practices’ even though he gave the literature away and made no profit." ~ Christian Today

The article goes on to say that there have been several incidents just like this one that have taken place over the course of the past year. People need to make their voices heard. There is no reason that a government or any other institution should be able to physically enforce what people believe about God! Something has to be done!

"It is sadly ironic that at the time Chinese officials are seeking to show progress in religious matters they are simultaneously sentencing a pastor for producing Christian literature." ~ Tina Lambert