Tourists throughout the centuries have visited the famous Acropolis, the ancient hilltop religious citadel in Athens. Thousands of sightseers from all over the world have picked up marble chunks as souvenirs.
Why hasn’t the supply of pieces been exhausted long ago? The answer is very simple. Every few months a truckload of marble fragments from a quarry miles away is scattered around the whole Acropolis area. So tourists go home happy with what they think are authentic pieces of ancient history.
There are many ways we can be deceived. Right now the FDA is suing General Mills over false advertizing on a box of Cheerios. Beware of deception because its everywhere. But Jesus is the truth, and you can take it to the bank.
Tags: deception
In an article in Reader’s Digest, the following story was told:
High Troy, a well-known artist, was a smart aleck who spent most of his life perpetrating frauds for the joy of it.
“One winter in the 1920s, while a student at Cornell University in Ithaca, N. Y., Troy got hold of a hideous old wastebasket with a real rhinoceros foot as a base. He filled it with metal weights and tied 30 feet of clothesline to either side. Late one night he and a friend caried it out onto campus, suspended between them. Every few feet they would lower it into the snow, their own footprints so far away as to raise no suspicions.
The next morning someone noticed the prints and summoned learned professors. Excitedly, they followed the rhinoceros tracks. The trail led out onto the ice covering Beebe Lake, which connected to the school’s source of drinking water. There the tracks ended in a gigantic hole.
It is said that half the population of Cornell stopped drinking tap water. Those who continued to drink it swore it tasted like rhinoceros.”
Its easy to be deceived. Keep your eyes on Jesus and not on what is getting all the attention.
Tags: deception, humor, rhinoceros
We learn to read people. After working with people for awhile, we learn to expect certain things from them. When they change, it throws us off.
An old Arkansas farmer bumped into a friend who asked what was wrong with his hogs, because they looked so poorly. The farmer replied, “When I lost my voice a year ago I could not call them to their feed, so I got a big stick and hammered on the crib and they soon learned that was a call to their corn.
“They were doing well until three weeks ago when some woodpeckers came in here and went to pounding on the old dead trees. My hogs ran in the direction of the noise, thinking it was my call to their feed. When they came running and squealing the frightened woodpeckers would fly to another dead tree and the hogs would run to that part of the woods. They have just about run my hogs to death.”
I think some Christians have about run themselves to death trying to find a new move of God over here or over there. Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21).
Tags: communication, deception, hogs
If you haven’t heard yet, Carolyn Miller passed away last night following a battle with pneumonia . She was a sister to Marie Brewer, Sandy Albright, Cindy Rowe and Fred Ballentine, and dear friend of Dennis ‘Hap’ Dawson, all who also attend New Hope.
When I first met Carolyn years ago, she was a mixed up, backslidden Christian. Apparently she had received some bad teaching on Christianity and was convinced she had walked too far away from God to ever come back. Seriously, I thought at the time she might have a mental disability, but soon discovered it was spiritual deception. As she met with me in my office, over the phone, and in email communications, I became amazed at how quickly she learned and responded to my counsel. I rarely had to tell her something she needed to know twice. She needed the truth to set her free and just got it the first time.
As the months went on, I saw a change in her life. Her spiritual disillusionment became spiritual hope. The joy of the Lord returned to her again. She got more involved in her church and we began to see the change in the results of her life.
For unknown reasons, God has decided her purpose on this earth has been completed, and called her home. She is now with Jesus and I’ll miss having someone as teachable as Carolyn asking the tough questions in life.
What will you remember about Carolyn?
Tags: Add new tag, blindness, deception