Bud's "Easter" Sermon: God, or Jesus?

Note: I don't like to call Easter by that name, because it was named after a false god by certain Christians with anti-Semitic intents who wanted to distance themselves from the Jews and Passover. Then again, I still call Thursday "Thursday," despite its being named for Thor, and I still call Mars "Mars," and so on, yet God in His rich mercy does not hold it against me. Not withstanding, I prefer "Resurrection Sunday." Anyway...

Whether intentionally or not, we often perceive God and Jesus as not only two different Characters of history and creation, but two different Gods. We see God (the Father) as the angry One who grants wishes, and Jesus (the Son) as the nice One who did nice things and commanded us to do likewise.
The problem is not that we prefer One over the Other, but that we go to One depending on our specific needs. When we cry out for vengeance and justice, for wrath to come upon those who do wrong, we pray to the One we call "God." When we want to remember and teach kindness and love, we cite the One we call "Jesus."
But what is often missing in our perception of the Creator is the fact that the Two cannot be separated. The same God who destroyed Pharaoh's army, who rained fire and brimstone on Sodom and Gomorrah, who struck many a wicked man with blindness and leprosy, became flesh and bone, grew inside and exited a womb - a Son. God, the Son. The feet of the Almighty wore sandals, were covered in dust and sweat, and were cleansed with the tears of the same kind of sinner on whom He had executed wrath at Sodom.
This was not two different Gods, but a different covenant the one God made with His creations. But this New Covenant, sealed by His blood on a cross, was not a "plan B" - He told us from the beginning, from the fall of man in the Garden of Eden, and through His prophet Moses, that for years man would strive under Law and punishment, but a time would come when He would do away with the rigorous and fearful tastes of this Law, and open our hearts and eyes to the love and mercy with which it was written, so that the Law would taste sweet as honeycomb.
The angry invisible God cannot be set apart as a different Being than the meek and gentle Jesus. It was after all this precious Lamb of Nazareth who, on a cross, became the very object of the wrath of that distant, gloomy, stormy God, so that we would now see Him as He is and always truly was - present, close, abundant in love and the desire to know we who consider Him so baffling, so far away.

John 8:37-58

Flags of Defeat

Last month, the Dallas Cowboys lost a controversial game to the Green Bay Packers, eliminating them from the playoffs. Later in the same day, I was in the grocery store and saw several people doing their casual Sunday shopping, wearing Cowboys jerseys. Being a Buccaneers fan, I'm quite used to this feeling and frankly don't have this problem anymore because I've grown used to their chronic losing, but I felt bad for those Cowboys fans. I thought to myself that, with the rabidness that football brings out in people, being seen in public in a Romo jersey after a stunning defeat must hurt one's pride.

But it goes beyond those things. "I had a brother at Khe Sanh, fightin' off the Viet Cong - they're still there, he's all gone." When the communists stormed the US embassy in Saigon, effectively ending the twenty-year-long Vietnam War, it must have cut deep to the heart of a Vietnamese soldier, who'd fought for his own freedom, to see the flag of the Republic of South Vietnam become an obsolete novelty, some collectors item as far as the communists were concerned.

When thinking of South Africa, the aged and dying members of the former apartheid government, that "angry race of fallen kings," must feel the same when they see the flag that was flown before right prevailed, before Mandela was freed, before hope shed a color.

But today, thinking of the twenty-one Egyptian Christians slain by ISIS, I don't feel that way. I don't have the embarrassment of the sports jersey, the bitter tears of freedom crushed, or the trace of regret of the power I once had. I only feel victory, that which was given to believers through the cross on which our Christ suffered and died. I take comfort in the fact that suffering is a part of following Christ with boldness, with solidarity. "For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also abounds through Christ," (2 Corinthians 1:5), and "rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ’s sufferings, that when His glory is revealed, you may also be glad with exceeding joy" (1 Peter 4:13).

I know that with every saint's life taken because of his or her faith in Jesus Christ, the Gospel is only spoken by those who hate, and proven true by those who kill. I know that with every scathing criticism of the Christian, every cold and apathetic remark like "what about the crusades?", Christ's prophecy is illuminated, His foretelling that we who desire to follow Him will me mocked, spat upon, and worse.

Thank God for the testimonies to Jesus Christ, stamped in history even by those who despised Him and His church! Tacitus, one of the most revered historians of ancient times, in recording the events after the great fire of Rome, wrote, "Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their center and become popular."
In spitting on the church of Jesus, though his aim was to smear Nero, of whom Tacitus was no admirer, this historian of old verifies and testifies what is confirmed in the Gospels. I thank the Lord for using this instrument. Likewise, second century Greek satirist Lucian of Samosata wrote, as part of an acerbic sendup of Christianity, "The Christians, you know, worship a man to this day—the distinguished personage who introduced their novel rites, and was crucified on that account. … You see, these misguided creatures start with the general conviction that they are immortal for all time, which explains their contempt of death and voluntary self-devotion which are so common among them; and then it was impressed on them by their original lawgiver that they are all brothers, from the moment that they are converted, and deny the gods of Greece, and worship the crucified sage, and live after his laws. All this they take quite on faith, with the result that they despise all worldly goods alike, regarding them merely as common property."
Thank God for these harsh words aimed at His disciples! For without them, there would be slightly less indisputable historical validity of the Christian claims. These scathing words are not to our shame or disgrace - they are for God's glory. Peter writes, "If you are reproached for the name of Christ, blessed are you, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. On their part He is blasphemed, but on your part He is glorified" (1 Peter 4:14).

And I know that though the Christian dies, the cross he or she bears does not become a symbol of defeat, because “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?" (John 11:25-26).
Jesus took the very instrument of His execution, and turned it into the symbol of His victory, the victory we share in Him. What was once an ugly and ominous symbol of capital punishment is now the symbol of salvation, of God's love for the world, and for eternal life.

The Levite's Concubine: Superstitious Barbarians of the 21st Century

Being that every "trending" news story on my Facebook feed deals with someone killing someone else, I was moved to write this a couple of weeks ago.

One of the most disturbing villains in the Bible is often overlooked, despite the heinous nature of his deed. He doesn't have the notorious reputation of Jezebel or Herod - his name isn't even recorded - but he obviously possessed a mind as sadistic. To summarize a long story, in the nineteenth chapter of the stark and often troubling book of Judges, we're told of an unnamed Levite who, while traveling with his concubine, stayed in the village of Gibeah. There, certain men echoing the depravity of the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah, surrounded the house where the Levite and his concubine were staying, and demanded to have sex with him. The Levite refused, and forced his concubine outside with the men, who "ravished her so that she died."

The woman later stumbled back to the house and collapsed dead at the doorstep. When the Levite found her, his words of anguish and lament (sarcasm) were, "Get up, let's go." So, seeing that she was dead, he placed her body on his donkey, and when he returned home, he cut her corpse into twelve pieces, and sent a piece of her to each territory of Israel. In the next chapter, he gave his reason for his hideous actions, claiming he did it to make the nation of Israel aware of the rape the men in Gibeah had committed (though it was he who had given her up to them).
All of this wickedness eventually led to a war in Israel.
The final words of the startling book of Judges perfectly sum up why so many atrocities happened in Israel during this period: "everyone did what was right in his own eyes" (Judges 21:25).

Today, cozy with Snuggies and Netflix, we look back on such things and want to throw up in disgust, and rightfully so. "Barbaric," we say with disdain. But we, as if we were anthropologists of morality, separate ourselves and our own time from wickedness such as this; we attribute it to a lack of common sense and an abundance of ancient religious superstition. We muse in our minds that today's society, safe in the embrace of the legacies of Steve Jobs and Stephen Hawking, is above such depravity.

But, a look at a few of this year's (2014) news headlines suggests otherwise:
"Body of missing 4-year-old autistic boy found in South Carolina pond."
"8 children stabbed to death in the Cairns suburb of Manoora."
"Boko Haram insurgents kidnap at least 185 women and children in Nigeria."
"Edmonton mass murder: bodies of 7 adults, 2 children found in 3 places."
"Pakistan: Taliban school attack kills 141, including 132 children."
"Dover, NH: Man shoots wife, self in hospital; sister says he did it 'out of love.'"

We gloss over the fact that it wasn't even one hundred years ago that many in the nation of Germany followed a madman named Adolf Hitler and gleefully supported the Nazis' quest to annihilate the Jews from the face of the planet. And we forget there is no shortage of groups today that mold their ideals and charters after these monsters. And we forge that just fifty years ago, these groups in our own country were lynching men for the color of their skin, as racist mayors were unleashing vicious dogs.

Yet we have the nerve to assert that faith in God is out of place in this modern, "civilized" age of reason and carbon dating.

The most strident of atheists looks at the roots of religion - any religion - as a blithering group of bumpkins and jumpy, guilty simpletons attributing good and bad to an object, some stone monolith perhaps, and bowing down to it with caveman-like grunts and Pentecostal-like hooting. But I see the exact same thing happening in the unbelieving world today, in reverse: those who curse the notion of faith in disgust bowing down to the accelerator mass spectrometer, with proud announcements that carbon dating and the humor of Seth MacFarlane have come to save us from religion, and if we only believe in the words of Christopher Hitchens, we can be saved from ghastly superstitions of old, and everything will be alright - and explained.

Before and after the Flood, God describes, as a whole and without exception, the natural hearts of man as continually evil. We need a Savior. We need a Power not of our own making. We are wretched by nature, and would never tell ourselves so. We exalt ourselves like the Pharisees who plotted to kill Jesus, that we are above the barbaric nature of men of old. But an hour spent watching the news proves otherwise.

We need Jesus Christ, the Son of God who was given as an atonement for our sins, so that our hearts may be open to true love, to the knowledge of the mercy and grace of God, the zealous desire He has to cleanse us of sin and give us everlasting life.
We today are no better than the marauders and rapists of ancient days. The ability to Skype has not made the hearts of man any less prone to fanaticism, racism, or barbarianism.

"Therefore hear this now, you who are given to pleasures, who dwell securely, who say in your heart, 'I am, and there is no one else besides me; I shall not sit as a widow, nor shall I know the loss of children'; But these two things shall come to you in a moment, in one day: the loss of children, and widowhood. They shall come upon you in their fullness because of the multitude of your sorceries, for the great abundance of your enchantments. For you have trusted in your wickedness; you have said, 'No one sees me'; your wisdom and your knowledge have warped you; and you have said in your heart, 'I am, and there is no one else besides me.' Therefore evil shall come upon you; you shall not know from where it arises. And trouble shall fall upon you; you will not be able to put it off. And desolation shall come upon you suddenly, which you shall not know" (Isaiah 47:8-11).

Hashtags and ribbons for awareness don't make us better than killers, thieves, and rapists of eras gone by. Only the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ can deliver us from our evil selves. Dismissing this God we call a superstition, an ignorant crutch, has not made our hands less bloody, our minds less warped, our wisdom less hollow. In denying the need to be more like the repentant thief on the cross, we remain the brute, barbaric Levite. And what's more, we are Pharisees of time: we exalt ourselves as better than the dregs of days past because we can read On the Origin of Species and watch Religulous on our tablets, with a handful of Starbucks, and a mouthful of gluten-free pretzel puffs.

"There were present at that season some who told Him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And Jesus answered and said to them, “Do you suppose that these Galileans were worse sinners than all other Galileans, because they suffered such things? I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them, do you think that they were worse sinners than all other men who dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish.”
-Luke 13:1-9

God's Job

I've been judged by many people in many hypocritical ways, but I suspect nothing compares to being judged like God is judged - by an inaccurate description we've created of Him, by the cramped box we've tried to fit Him in, rather than by His true nature, character, and by the very words He's spoken.

Among the most irksome reasons one can hear for a disbelief in God is, "Bad things happen." Which of course holds no philosophical water, as God's job has never been to keep us happy, or to keep the world healthy and clean. It's not even a Scriptural truth. In fact, before sin entered the world, and we people began turning the planet into, literally, a world of hurt, it was still not God's job to make everything comfortable - it was man to whom He gave the directive to tend the Garden and keep out lying intruders. And we all know how man did with that task.

Nor is God's job to, in a matter of will over will, change the already-made-up mind of the public shooter or the power hungry dictator. It is however among His sovereign duties to judge them for their actions and choices with divine and holy judgment. I realized long ago that if God did not allow bad things into the world - or, rather, allow people to choose to do bad things to each other - He wouldn't be able to give you and I the beautiful and glorious task of doing good things. And if He, in some trump of will, made us all do good all the time, would our good really be good? Wouldn't it be as fleeting as a blink or a breath?

It is not God's job to make people treat each other fairly, or to make sure every exchange and transaction between people is fair - don't tell God, who sent His sinless Son to die for my sins, about what's "fair."

One of God's chores is, I suppose, to keep things running; the weather, biology, time, all of those vast things we humans can't control, try as we might.
But even more vast than those things too lofty for me to comprehend is something even more puzzling to me and my bitterness - love. And God did His job, kept every promise in every prophecy He ever gave the prophets to utter, when He came to this earth in the flesh. He did His job to the fullest when He gave a Savior to be the perfect Atonement, the punishment for the sins of all who would be willing to accept that this Messiah took on Himself the very literal wrath of God, so that we who bemoan the injustices in this world without doing a thing to cure them, would be free from that wrath and given to a life under His grace - even the shooter and the dictator could have the gift of grace and cleansing of evil.

That's God's job. To love us, though we have turned His creation into a smoking, fuming globe of waste. But this job was certainly not something owed to us, definitely not something we deserved. It is a job He gave Himself, because no one else could. And He exemplified His job when He, in human flesh, let His hands be stretched out and nailed to an ugly stake of capital punishment. A part of love is keeping promises - He's promised to return someday, and that you and I who believe will spend eternity with Him, where this love is never approached by the darkness of doubt, of prejudice, of bitterness. 

A Message of Love to Fast Food Workers

I recently saw a post borne of the minimum wage debate that deeply offended me. I'm not sure I'm qualified, either intellectually or as it pertains to common sense, to take a stance on the issue of raising the minimum wage, as my math skills are abysmal. But I know about common decency (even if I often fail to practice it), and that's why the post I saw infuriated me.

The post read, "If you've chosen flipping burgers as a career, you have failed."

Snobbish, elitist statements like this have offended me since I was a child. The reason the bitterness stems from my childhood is because my mother, Ann Gowdey, fed and provided for four obnoxious, homely sons - and me - with a career in fast food that lasted from 1969 to 2005, give or take a hiatus or two.

Glory days.

Though I don't know that my mom stepped into a Dairy Queen in high school and said, "This is what I want to do for the rest of my life," I do know that she often looked back at her life and said she wouldn't have wanted any other job, despite the physical toll it took on her over thirty-plus years (in those days, burgers were not yet synthesized holograms as they are now). She eventually became the longtime manager of both Dairy Queens in Seminole, Texas. When she went into a temporary retirement when my father died in 1996, the local DQs so declined in quality that one was shut down.
I'm immensely proud of my mother and her "mcjob" she loved so much, the same mcjob that paid for by mcbrother's contact mclenses, our mcschool supplies, the mcjob that paid for my mcpsychiatric care as a teenager, and the mcjob that taught me a person doesn't have to wear a suit or have college training to make a difference. (I probably shouldn't use the "mcjob" term, since she worked at Dairy Queen and not McDonald's, and that could be a huge conflict of interests.)

I'm a preacher, so I know nothing about work. I don't even work the two hours a week since I'm not allowed to preach out of an actual church building. But I do have enough good instilled in me by Christ that tells me if you go to your place of work every day and do your job with commitment, without indifference or bitterness, and with care for your customers, you have done something nothing short of amazing.
The Holy Spirit tells us through the apostle Paul: "And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance; for you serve the Lord Christ" (Colossians 3:23-24).

And, even if you despise your job, and drag your hungover carcass in there every day anyway, to feed your kids or just to get your transmission fixed, you've still done something awesome.

Fast food employees of America and elsewhere, don't let anyone belittle you or look down on you. You don't deserve such snobbish treatment - you're in food service, not congress. You are not an embarrassment, should not be embarrassed, you are not the shame of the work force, and should never be ashamed of your hard work.

Let's be honest. If every fast food worker in America accepted and believed the shame and scorn that's thrown their way, and walked out of their job today, this country would spiral into chaos and anarchy. Endless lines of cars would line up at McDonald's, Burger Kings, Taco Bells all across the land, full of angry Hyundai-jockeys who demand you fix them up a quick lunch, so they can get back to the job that requires two college degrees so they can sit in their cubicle and deride you on the internet some more for working in fast food. Soccer moms who smile with self-assured glee that they don't have to work in grease would be dismayed that no one is at Wendy's to take their order for their children's dinner. Entire high school football teams across the country, students given scholarships to college because they can execute an Earl Campbell-like tackle, would sit in their buses outside Sonic, perplexed at how they'll celebrate their 21-10 victory over the Permian Panthers without a chili cheese coney...until someone has the bright idea to celebrate with booze, and now look - we've got underage drinking.

You fast food employees are the glue that holds America together. Never be ashamed of your work.

"...the worker is worthy of his wages." -our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Luke 10:7

There's Nothing Wrong With Your Mind, Kid

Of my thirteen stays in various psychiatric hospitals between 2001 and 2008, six of them took place during my adolescent years. I was usually given the doctors that the other teens didn't see, due to the fact that my mental problems were more complex, at least for a teenager. Many of the other kids were either experiencing a more intense form of the already-daunting emotional storm that comes with being that age, or they were R.P. McMurphy types - accepting a stay in a mental hospital to avoid jail.

But, in this mix of genuinely troubled children, and juveniles savvy enough to exploit the system, there was always a third kind: kids locked in the mental hospital for the sole reason that their situation at home was no longer safe. They had been neglected, mistreated, or abused. Many of them were placed in the hospital to await placement in a foster home; others were there while their parents showed up daily for "family therapy" sessions; but more disturbing, others were there to begin a "residential treatment" program.

Even then, with my own troubles to deal with, I wondered, "What are they doing here?"

It's not as if I had some bitter notion that they were taking away from the hospitals' resources. It's not that I didn't understand that they needed somewhere to stay that wasn't ruled by an abusive relative. But there were deeper things that puzzled me, and still do, about these kids.

For one thing, why were they being given psychiatric medication? Don't misunderstand me - I understood it if the child had been driven into depression, anxiety, or some other post-traumatic or pre-existing symptom. But that was very seldom the case, at least in the experiences I'm describing. There were many others who were not mentally ill, but rightfully uncertain and afraid about the future. I felt back then, and I feel even more strongly now, "you've been abused! You've been wronged! You're not the sick one!"
What troubled me even more was that, as confused and as fearful as many of these children were, the sheer act of being given a pill for their minds was basically drilling into their souls a notion that there was something wrong with them mentally because they had been abused. Without a word, but with a pill, they were told: you have been mistreated; therefore you're sick.
I was never abused or mistreated by my parents, but if someone told me there was something wrong with my mind because I'd been abused, when it wasn't me who was the crazy one, I would develop the notion that the abuse I suffered had somehow been my fault.

And indeed, many of my fellow patients with whom I kept contact into adulthood (as well as others I met during my later stays in adult wards) harbor some guilt or self-loathing behavior due not only to what they experienced at home, but because someone told them there was a flaw in their minds when they were taken from that danger.

Growing up with so many stays in mental hospitals where these things were commonplace, I made many friends who wouldn't have been in those wards had it not been for a deliverance from an abusive home. But what were they delivered to? A hospital where someone tells them "you were neglected and abused by someone you trusted, someone who should have cared for you, so you're mentally unstable and need pills"? It made no sense to me.

And what's more, I watched many of them grow up from being abused children, to children convinced they were mentally ill because of that abuse, to adults who, because of what they were told, can't handle life and make a mess of it because they've been deceived into thinking "it's supposed to be this way - my mind is messed up, and I'm messed up." I've had many friends who don't have the strength to handle being an adult because no one told them they were strong as a child. No one told them, "hey kid, you've got more guts than me - I could never go through that and not lose my mind. But you held it together. You're a brave, strong person, and you've got a bright future ahead of you, if you believe it."

If anyone out there is reading this, and you've found yourself in a mental hospital as a result of having a bad home life, when you get out, keep in mind that you're not the crazy one. You're not the sick dirtbag who beat you, who preferred some poison or powder over your needs, who didn't care about the precious life they'd been entrusted to keep safe. If you developed some post-traumatic mental illness, address it by all means. There's nothing wrong with being ill. But don't let anyone tell you that you were the one who needed pills based on the fact that some maniac hurt you. Don't let someone tell you that you weren't strong.

Don't let some pill forced down your throat when you're a kid shape the kind of person you become when you're an adult. Let your bravery and strength shape you instead.

"What do you think you are, crazy? Well you're not! You're not! You're no crazier than the average ***hole out walkin' around on the street!"
-Jack Nicholson as R.P. McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)

Why Christians Don't Have To Care What Joel Osteen Says

One of the great things about true Christian faith is that the doctrine we follow is governed by Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, and not...well, "some dude." The Bible, and everything in it, was written by divine inspiration. As for what is not in the Bible, God is not only the divine Author of the Scripture, but its divine Editor as well. And God being eternally good, and never contradictory or changing (James 1:17), those who believe in the sovereignty of Jesus and not the authority of people have no fear of following an immoral facet of this faith.

But, there are sects of those who claim Christ in a twisted way, but are led by mere men - dudes prone to bias, agendas, and corruption. For example, the presidents, "prophets," and leaders of the Mormon church held for about one hundred fifty years the gross doctrine that black people were all cursed, descendants of Cain. In Mormon Doctrine, Bruce R. McConkie wrote, "Those who were less valiant in pre-existence and who thereby had certain spiritual restrictions imposed on them during mortality are known to us as the negroes. Such spirits are sent to earth through the lineage of Cain, the mark put upon him for his rebellion against God, and his murder of Abel being a black skin."
Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, wrote, "Had I anything to do with the negro, I would confine them by strict law to their own species, and put them on a national equalization." 
One of Smith's predecessors, Brigham Young, echoed these racist sentiments: "Cain slew his brother. Cain might have been killed, and that would put a termination to that line of human beings. This was not to be, and the Lord put a mark upon him, which was the flat nose and black skin...the Abolitionists cannot help it, nor in the least alter that decree...If the white man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be."
However in 1978, as the tide was thankfully strongly turning concerning America's racism, then-president of the Latter-Day Saints, Spencer W. Kimball, announced that God had apparently changed His mind concerning black people, and that they were no longer cursed.

The point of this is not to bring up the history of racist doctrine in the Mormon church, but rather to make the point that this faith's doctrines were concocted and changed throughout the years by mere men. And these mere men, whatever they stated, true or false, was "gospel" for the Mormons.

Faith in Christ's authority and sovereignty - and His alone - does not carry this conundrum.

For example, when Fred Phelps, former leader of the Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas, would say hideous things like "God hates f*gs," this did not reflect the belief of all, or even most, Christians, and certainly did not reflect or affect God's words in Scripture. Fred Phelps was just some dude, whose ravings reflected only himself and the wanderers who followed his warped view. Jesus remained Lord, while Phelps remained only a bitter, raving man who led others astray.
Likewise, if another controversial figure in Christianity, such as a Joel Osteen or others of his ilk (certainly not to compare Joel Osteen to Fred Phelps), whose teachings on the so-called "prosperity gospel" have been rejected by many Christians who find no basis for it in - again - God's word, say something questionable, it does not reflect the truth of God, nor are Osteen's sayings precedents for all believers to follow.

A few years ago when Haiti was plagued with natural disasters, Pat Robertson, of 700 Club fame, attributed the tragedies to some "pact with Satan" that Haiti had made long ago. There have also been many who blame tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, and the like, on moral decline in America and the rest of the world. But we know this notion to be refuted by the Bible, as God said after the Great Flood, "I will never again curse the ground for man's sake, although the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth" (Genesis 8:21).
Again, Christians were not obliged to heed Robertson's ill-informed statement because God's truth trumps the words of men, even if those men profess to be God's spokespeople.

One of the only "televangelists" (though he's served in many more capacities for the church of God than just televangelism) I enjoy listening to is Dr. Charles Stanley...out of the, like, four televangelists I've ever listened to. Lately however, I discovered that he and I have differing views on the timeline of the Great Tribulation and the Second Coming of Jesus Christ (keep in mind however that I still require much more study and prayer on this matter, as we all do - I could be butt-over-tea-kettle wrong in my view; Spirit and prayer will tell). So, because I find Dr. Stanley to be a well-spoken, gentle, and passionate man of God, does that mean I should abandon my views, or even ignore what the Holy Spirit lays on my heart concerning those issues? Absolutely not.
I don't have the nerve to say "Charles Stanley is wrong, and I'm right," as I'm not even a cup-bearer in God's Kingdom, but merely a jester (but given entrance to the Kingdom by the grace of God nonetheless).
But, I do know that if the Holy Spirit convicts me in my future studies and prayer on the End Times, and affirms that what I've learned from Scripture concerning those things is true, even if they don't line up with Dr. Stanley's views, then I must abide by the Spirit, and not Dr. Stanley.

Therefore, seek not the wisdom of Charles Stanley, Billy Graham, Ravi Zacharias, or Beth Moore. If these servants of God said something wonderful, and in accord with His gorgeous Gospel, then praise the Holy Spirit who gave it to them. We must seek answers in prayer and the holy Scripture; if God's servants preach a sermon, write a discourse, or make a remark that jibes with the Word, praise the Lord and not the servant. We should encourage the man or woman of God in their proclaiming of the Gospel, but we must always acknowledge first and foremost Christ - for, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made...And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth" (John 1:1-3, 14).

Those rooted in Jesus Christ may be condemned and criticized by an unfeeling, unbelieving world, but they have a much easier yoke to carry than those who follow the ever-changing, ever-dreadful words of men.

"Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever." -Hebrews 13:8