Let’s say you know this guy who has something of a history: A couple of people who were on record of having made fun of him or talked bad about him all came to an early end. One of them was gunned by an assassin who fired six shots. Sounds scary, doesn’t it? What kind of a person could that be, a ruthless gang boss, maybe? You might fear that kind of person, but would you love him? Probably not.
Yet that seems to be how some Christians view God.
Through my work against online scams and spam I come into contact with a wide variety of people of many different backgrounds and viewpoints. Some of them add me to their circle of contacts to whom they occasionally forward all kinds of mail, from jokes to chain letters.
Here is one such email I received today:
DID YOU KNOW THESE FACTS?
I SURE DIDNT TILL NOWDeath is certain but the Bible speaks about untimely death!
Make a personal reflection about this…..
Very interesting, read until the end…..
It is written in the Bible (Galatians 6:7):“Be not deceived; God is not mocked:
for whatsoever a man soweth,
that shall he also reap.Here are some men and women
who mocked God :John Lennon (Singer):
Some years before, during his interview with an American Magazine, he said:
“Christianity will end, it will disappear.
I do not have to argue about
that. I am certain.Jesus was ok, but his subjects were too simple, Today we are more famous than Him” (1966).
Lennon, after saying that the Beatles were more famous than Jesus Christ, was shot six times.
Tancredo Neves (President of Brazil ):
During the Presidential campaign, he said if he got 500,000 votes from his party, not even God would remove him from Presidency.Sure he got the votes, but he got sick a day before being made President, then he died .
Cazuza (Bi-sexual Brazilian composer, singer and poet):
During A show in Canecio ( Rio de Janeiro ),
while smoking his cigarette, he puffed out some smoke into the air and said: “God, that’s for you.”
He died at the age of 32 of AIDS in a horrible manner.
The man who built the Titanic
After the construction of Titanic, a reporter asked him how safe the Titanic would be.
With an ironic tone he said:
“Not even God can sink it”The result: I think you all know what happened to the Titanic .
Marilyn Monroe (Actress)
She was visited by Billy Graham during a presentation of a show.
He said the Spirit of God had sent him to preach to her.
After hearing what the Preacher had to say, she said:
“I don’t need your Jesus”.A week later, she was found dead in her apartment .
Bon Scott (Singer)
The ex-vocalist of the AC/DC. On one of his 1979 songs he sang:
“Don’t stop me, I’m going down all the way, down the highway to hell”.On the 19th of February 1980, Bon Scott was found dead, he had been choked by his own vomit .
Campinas (IN 2005)
In Campinas, Brazil a group of friends, drunk, went to pick up a friend…..
The mother accompanied her to the car and was so worried about the drunkenness of her friends and she said to the daughter holding her hand, who was already seated in the car:“My Daughter, Go With God And May He Protect You..”
She responded: “Only If He (God) Travels In The Trunk, Cause Inside Here…..It’ s Already Full ”Hours later, news came by that they had been involved in a fatal accident, everyone had died,
the car could not be recognized what type of car it had been, but surprisingly, the trunk was intact.The police said there was no way the trunk could have remained intact. To their surprise, inside the trunk was a crate of eggs, none was broken .
Christine Hewitt (Jamaican Journalist and entertainer) said the Bible (Word of God) was the worst book ever written.
In June 2006 she was found burnt beyond recognition in her motor vehicle .
Many more important people have forgotten that there is no other name that was given so much authority as the name of Jesus.
Many have died, but only Jesus died and rose again, and he is still alive .
“Jesus”
P.S: If it was a joke, you would have sent it to everyone. So are you going to have courage to send this?.
I have done my part, Jesus said
“If you are embarrassed about me,
I will also be embarrassed about you before my father.”
You are my 8 in 8 seconds. I am not breaking this. No way!
I’M TOLD THIS WORKS!!!!! Bishop T.D. Jakes “8 Second Prayer.” Just repeat this prayer and see how God moves!!
“Lord, I love you and I need you, come into my heart, and bless me, my family, my home, and my friends, in Jesus’ name. Amen.”
Pass this message to 8 people {EXCEPT YOU AND ME}. You will receive a miracle tomorrow. I Hope that you don’t ignore and let God bless you .
The John Lennon quote in the chain letter is not accurate. If you search Google for that wording, all you find are copies of that chain letter. According to the Wikipedia article on Lennon, he had said the following to a friend who interviewed him for an English newspaper in 1966:
“Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink…. I don’t know what will go first, rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity. We’re more popular than Jesus now. Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.”
He later explained that with this comment he was talking about how young people in England were taking a greater interest in the Beatles than in Christianity and that he did not try to compare the Beatles to Jesus or God:
Well, originally I pointed out that fact in reference to England. That we meant more to kids than Jesus did, or religion at that time. I wasn’t knocking it or putting it down. I was just saying it as a fact, and it’s true more for England than here. I’m not saying that we’re better or greater, or comparing us with Jesus Christ as a person or God as a thing, or whatever it is.
The real issue for me is not the accuracy of the supposed Lennon quote though. It’s the qualities ascribed to God that bother me. If someone insulted me in a newspaper interview, I would not go out to make sure they met an “untimely death”. That is not how civilized people deal with people who offend others. Is God more primitive than us?
When I was reading the Bible I never came across anywhere in the New Testament where Jesus threatened he would have anyone bumped off for showing disrespect towards him. The Old Testament is quite different: Under its laws, death was mandatory for many offences, ranging from adultery to showing disrespect towards one’s own parents or working on Saturdays. Those laws are no longer binding to Christians, but that doesn’t seems to have changed how some Christians see their God as someone who likes to take violent revenge.
Thinking about this attitude, I can’t help but feel some sympathy for Lennon when he said about some of Jesus’ followers who distorted his message: “It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.”
(Rom 9:21) Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honor, and another unto dishonor?
(Rom 9:22) What if God, willing to show his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction:
(Rom 9:23) And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory
God loved us (dirty sinners who sin against him every day) so much that He crucified His own Son to declare us righteous in the blood of Christ. How dare the creation judge the almighty decisions of the creator.
Show me the man who will create a machine and not destroy it if it became rogue and no longer listened to the commands of the creator, or even worse cursed and made fun of its creator in front of many other people. Yet God shows us mercy and forgive our sins.
God is a God of love, but He also has to maintain His righteousness. You cannot separate the two from each other.
Dan 9:11 Yea, all Israel have transgressed thy law, even by departing, that they might no obey thy voice; therefore the curse is poured upon us, and the oath that is written in the law of Moses the servant of God, because we have sinned against him.
Dan 9:12 And he hath confirmed his words, which he spoke against us, and against our judges that judged us, by bringing upon us a great evil: for under the whole heaven hath not been done as hath been done upon Jerusalem.
Dan 9:13 As it is written in the law1 of Moses all this evil is come upon us: yet made we not our prayer, before the LORD our God, that we might turn from our iniquities, and understand thy truth.
Dan 9:14 Therefore hath the LORD watched upon the evil, and brought it upon us: for the LORD our God is righteous in all his works which he doeth: for we obeyed not his voice.
Thank you for clarifying the Lennon quote! I hope this inconsistency casts enough doubt to the rest of the message as well.
I too find this spam piece very distasteful, and I was all the more shocked to see it reproduced by some of my Christian ‘friends’ on Facebook.
This view of God is shocking, and I cannot see how can it be true. Even though I believe God’s law is still binding for Christians, and it was more than God’s whim when He declared that adultery is a sin and it will require bloodshed to be done away with.
Far be it from Him to punish those who live outside the Law with painful physical deaths. This is plainly unjust. This view also (falsely) implies that a painful physical death is the worst that can happen.
I am forcefully reminded that Jesus’ woes were directed at the Pharisees – the religious establishment, those who think they are pleasing God, well, to transpose it to today’s world – those who call themselves Christians, me including.
You know what, I feel a lot of sympathy for Lennon! And I am sorry for my part in Christ-twisting.
Funny how people try to judge God.Unjust?God?
Yes, God IS unjust. If he was just, he would have finished off with all of us since the begin.We are all sinners and don´t deserve anything good but God in His righteousness gave us His Son so we could be saved.God is merciful , not just. But sometimes He just has to punish some folks ´cause it´s His job. But I agree that not all examples mentioned were 100% accurate. In the old testament there is a story when the priests where carrying the arc of the covenant, they tripped, or something, and a man from the crowd tried to hold the arc so it would´t fall.God smote him right there.´Cause God had already forbidden everyone to touch it (minus the “holy-bearers”).
I hate that stupid, ignorant email. I’ve received it at least 3 times, the most recent this morning. It is very offensive. John Lennon never hurt anyone and he definitely did not deserve to die like that. He had a lot of tragedy in his life and had reason to be jaded.
Whoever created that email in the first place is very self-righteous and arrogant. I hope they realize that and change their ways.
I think everybody is missing the point, here.
Luke 13:1-5 AMP
“Just at that time there [arrived] some people who informed Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. And He replied by saying to them, Do you think that these Galileans were greater sinners than all the other Galileans because they have suffered in this way? I tell you, No; but unless you repent (change your mind for the better and heartily amend your ways, with abhorrence of your past sins), you will all likewise perish and be lost eternally. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them–do you think that they were more guilty offenders (debtors) than all the others who dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, No; but unless you repent (change your mind for the better and heartily amend your ways, with abhorrence of your past sins), you will all likewise perish and be lost eternally.”
There’s no doubt that people die–some more brutally than others. Believers die brutally (Stephen, Acts 7:59), as do unbelievers (Herod, Acts 12:23). There is danger in thinking the way the author of that email was (Luke 9:54-56)–for it seems, to me, that he was more interested in the deaths of those persons than glorifying God. “Christians” are to blame for their loose tongues and lack of understanding.
Romans 2:24
“For, as it is written, The name of God is maligned and blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you!”