Jesus Eliminated

What Did Jesus Do?

No One Comes to the Father except through me.
John 14.6

On “To Tell The Truth,” a game show back in the 1960s, three people would come on stage and say, “I'm _____________,”all claiming to be the same person, who usually had accomplished some amusing or remarkable feat, like climbing Mt. Everest on a pogo stick. A panel of celebrity judges would ask questions to try and eliminate the two imposters and guess who was the real McCoy, as they say. Doesn't sound like much of a premise for a program, but it was on television for years. Often the imposters succeeded in convincing the judges that one of them was the genuine article. I am pretty sure the producers of the program had no deep moral purpose in mind for the show, but at an early age I began to realize that convincing fakes could mislead many people.

Long ago God revealed his name to Moses, making it clear that, in a world full of countless counterfeit deities, he alone was the one true God—Yahweh, the great “I am”; The One who is, as opposed to all the lifeless idols and images of gods who were, and are, well, not. The first commandment which Yahweh gave to Moses made it quite clear: there are to be no other gods but God; all others are imposters, pretenders, fakes.

The ancient world was not impressed by Israel and its God, and continued to put faith in idols and images. Actually, Israel itself did a pretty poor job of loving Yahweh with all its heart and soul and might (See the instruction of Deuteronomy 6.5), so the ongoing proliferation of false gods was not surprising.

But a time came when the Father sent the Son “to tell the truth,” if you will. In fact, bearing witness to the truth was the reason the Son was born of flesh (See John 18.37); to put it plainly, He is the Truth (John 14.6). Jesus came to eliminate all the pretenders, to remove all confusion about who is the only true God, and who is his Messiah, the Christ. Ever since the time of Jesus everyone who is “of the truth,” who hears His voice, believes. Everyone else, well, they are still being misled by one or more of the many idols still in the world pretending to be gods.

It is tragically true that the religious pluralists of today, who populate many pews and, worse, who speak from many pulpits, refuse to accept the elimination of any faith from the modern pantheon of gods, even believing it is their responsibility as Christians to celebrate and honor all the make-believe deities of the so-called “great religions” of the world. This summer I witnessed some of what happens when “Christians” don't accept that Jesus eliminated the competition.

At the Scout camp where I worked there were some sincere, but unfortunately sincerely wrong, Presbyterian lay preachers who came and spoke to the campers each week. They began by pointing with great pride to the front of the stone pulpit where the name “Allah” was inscribed in Arabic, and informed us that today there are more Islamic Scouts in the world than of any other faith. If they had been intending to point out how false gods continue to lead many astray it would have been one thing, but they wanted to encourage us to affirm and embrace what they consider one of the so-called kindred “Abrahamic” faiths. The Christians at camp were instead disturbed and offended.

After all the celebration of Allah, which consequently meant the denial and diminution of Christ, a “campfire story,” taken from Matthew 25.31-46 was read each week. Sadly, the story amounted to such a watered down Gospel, in the words of a Scouter, that its truth was diluted to the point of being indiscernible. The effect of the nice sounding, but empty, story, was to eliminate Jesus, the Truth, from the picture.

The gateways to destruction are many and easy, any liar can show you the way, and many take the false, but easy, path. The one gate to salvation is narrow and hard, the few who take it do so because they are of the Truth and hear the voice of Jesus. The power of the Gospel is the power of the Word of God Incarnate to eliminate all pretenders, all liars, all false gods. That's what Jesus did.

S.D.G.

Jim
www.jimwilkenministries.org
Marion, NC
PS 37.4