In Memoriam: Edward L Walker May 13, 1925 - March 19, 1945

Ever stopped to think about who you will most look forward to seeing when you get to heaven?  I imagine most Christians dwell on this more as they get older.  Do you then try to make a priority list of who, when, and for how long?  Will there be time in heaven?  Someone recently used the verses in Revelation 6 when the martyrs underneath the altar cry out "How long, O Lord" and they are told to rest for a little while longer to argue that there will be time in heaven.  Personally, I think time will be measured differently and I don't think we will need watches or alarm clocks but that is a discussion for another time.

Obviously, we will first want to see our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  Will we have to wait in line?  How long will the line be? Yeah, I was in the army and spent way too much time waiting in line!  Anyway, after 10,000 years or so with Jesus getting some of our questions answered (will it really matter then?), it will be time to move on and greet the other grace recipients with whom we will spend eternity.  I tend to group these believers into three categories:  family, biblical, and other.  This is personal preference and if there really is no time, will the order really matter?  Under family, it would include all nuclear family members who bowed the knee to Christ and were alive at the same time that I was on the earth.  Some I knew better and longer than others but it would surely include parents, siblings, and offspring.

Under biblical, it would be hard to prioritize.  Maybe this list could be a start:  Paul, Peter, Adam, Eve, David, Job, Abraham, Moses, Joseph....I could go on but I won't.  Under other would be Charles Haddon Spurgeon, George Whitfield, Jonathan Edwards, John Calvin, Martin Luther, I think you see where I am headed.  And now to the real reason for this post.

March 19 will be the seventieth anniversary of the death of my brother, Edward Lee Walker.  Don't know why but his nickname was Jim.

 These are pictures before he joined the U. S. Army.  He is standing by my father in the middle picture.

He joined the army after high school and after training was sent to Europe.  He was in the infantry and part of the group that crossed into Germany in the area of the Remagen bridge.  He was killed after being struck by shrapnel in the head.  His body was buried in Belgium until after the war and was returned to the states in 1947.  I remember the flag-draped coffin at the First Baptist Church in Seminole, OK but have no actual memories of my brother other than from pictures.  I am the little "soldier" in a couple of the pictures.

Below is a picture of the telegram delivered to my folks followed by a letter that my mother had written to Ed that was returned marked "deceased."  It was postmarked on the day that he was killed.  Next are two letters from the army that are self-explanatory.

Below is Ed's purple heart which is given to those killed or injured while defending their country.  Doesn't seem like much for the life of an 19-yr-old who was killed a couple of months before the war in Europe ended.  My mother told me that Ed was a believer and I have a couple of his old letters sent from Europe and he states in one of them that there is nothing to worry about, that God will take care of him.  I long to sit down with Ed and get to know him.  After all, we are brothers............

New American Religion

My wife does a lot of research on the internet related to doctrinal issues and the validity of those issues as they line up with the teachings of scripture.  She is sort of an amateur apologist, if you will.  I do some of that but not as much and we share the info back and forth.  The latest sharing included an article from "The Christian Post" (www.christianpost.com/news/) and was entitled "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism - the New American Religion".  I would like to share the gist of the article because I agree with what the article states.

A group of researchers took a survey looking at the religious beliefs of American teenagers and the results were summarized into five beliefs that the researchers are calling the new American Religion.  They are as follows:

1. A god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.
2. God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most religions.
3. The central goal of life is to be happy and feel good about oneself.
4. God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.
5. Good people go to heaven when they die.

When the researchers tried to dig deeper into the most crucial questions of faith and beliefs, many adolescents responded with a shrug and "whatever."  One conclusion the researchers reached is this. "It is apparent that most religiously affiliated U. S. teens are not particularly interested in espousing and upholding the beliefs of their faith traditions, or that their communities of faith are failing in attempts to educate their youth, or both."   The teenagers knew much more details about the lives of their favorite musicians and television stars than about the lives of Jesus or Moses.

What really bothered me about this article is that I am not sure the researchers would not have gotten the same results if they had surveyed adult church-goers instead of teenagers.  My daily encounters with both friends and relatives, especially on social media, causes me to wonder what so-called Christians really believe as it relates to the five items listed above.  The lame-stream media always talk about so-and-so celebrity being in heaven after they die just because they were famous and well-liked.  There is rarely any mention of God or Jesus.  When there is a passing mention of religion, it is usually based on something that the person did decades ago that makes them eligible for eternal life with Jesus Christ in heaven.  You know what I mean:  "I walked an aisle", I signed a card", "I prayed a prayer", "I was baptized", etc.

Only God knows the heart but genuine repentance and regeneration will be followed by a life characterized by good works that reflect a "new creation".  We will not walk perfectly but the sanctification process will be our lifelong experience filled with peaks and valleys as we change our focus from ourselves to God.  People use the term "back-sliding" which I don't find in the Bible.  Perhaps that is an excuse for failing to turn from our sinful patterns.  When does back-sliding become apostasy?  Certainly, we will never stop sinning this side of heaven but we should sin less with each passing moment.

Let me quote the last two paragraphs from the article.  It is rather eye-opening.

"This research project demands the attention of every thinking Christian.  Those who are prone to dismiss sociological analysis as irrelevant will miss the point.  We must now look at the United States of America as missiologists once viewed nations that had never heard the gospel.  Indeed, our missiological challenge may be even greater than the confrontation with paganism, for we face a succession of generations who have transformed Christianity into something that bears no resemblance to the faith revealed in the Bible.  The faith "once delivered to the saints" is no longer even known, not only by American teenagers, but by most of their parents.  Millions of Americans believe they are Christians, simply because they have some historic tie to a Christian denomination or identity".

"We now face the challenge of evangelizing a nation that largely considers itself Christian, overwhelmingly believes in some deity, considers itself fervently religious, but has virtually no connection to historic Christianity.  Christian Smith (survey leader) and his colleagues have performed an enormous service for the church of the Lord Jesus Christ in identifying Moralistic Therapeutic Deism as the dominant religion of this American age.  Our responsibility is to prepare the church to respond to this new religion, understanding that it represents the greatest competitor to biblical Christianity.  More urgently, this study should warn us all that our failure to teach this generation of teenagers the realities and convictions of biblical Christianity will mean that their children will know even less and will be even more readily seduced by this new form of paganism. This study offers irrefutable evidence  of the challenge we now face.  As the motto reminds us, "Knowledge is power.""

What should our response be to this article or should we just ignore those around us and let them go deeper and deeper into this new religion?  Our only source of truth is the Holy Bible, God's inspired, inerrant, infallible, and totally sufficient word.  If you aren't meeting weekly with a group of believers that cherish the truth of God's word, what are you waiting for?  The time is short, the fields are white unto the harvest, and the laborers are few.  (Russ McKnight always followed this with:  "but not too few".  GOD is sovereign and he will supply the grace needed to see us through to the end.  Have a blessed day.   Acts 4:12