Posted on by Abe Austin

Mortal Problems, Divine Solutions

The other day I came across a verse that brought up several thoughts and realizations. It’ll be years before I get to it in my regular verse-by-verse scripture study, so I thought I’d skip ahead and cover it now.

The verse is 1 Corinthians 10:13:

There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.

I was curious about that phrase “is common to man,” so I pulled out the interlinear bible and found that that phrase is translated from a single Greek word ἀνθρώπινος (anthrōpinos), which means “belonging to human beings (especially as contrasted with God), human (as contrasted with divine).”

Paul is saying that our temptations come from mortality and are of the nature of common humanity. This might have been a particularly meaningful message to the saints of Corinth. Corinth was a city-state of Ancient Greece, meaning it was steeped in the Greek Mythos, which of course had its pantheon of Gods: Zeus, Hades, Apollo, Aphrodite, etc. These gods were fickle and impetuous, at times declaring war on mortal individuals and putting all manner of madness and superhuman control upon them. Thus, the Greek belief system might have one believing that you really could be tempted by some divine power, of such force that you, as a mere mortal, would be helpless to resist it. Paul is denouncing this belief, assuring you that only powers of the earth, not of heaven, ever tempt us to do evil.

Of course, saying that our temptations are of the mortal realm is not to say that they are any joke. Our ability to resist temptation is also only of the mortal realm after all, and many the addict has discovered that their strength of self-resolve can be trumped by the power of their addiction. This is why Step One of the Twelve Steps is to recognize that we, ourselves, are powerless in the face of our addictions. But then, just as Paul taught that the salvation from temptation comes from the divine, Step Three of the program acknowledges that there is also a power greater than ourselves, greater than our mortal temptation, and it can save us if we will allow it. If temptation is of mere humanity and salvation is of mighty God, then clearly salvation will always win that battle!

“With the temptation” there is “also a way to escape.” A mortal temptation, a divine escape, our rescue from the powers of the world!

Posted on by Abe Austin

A Blessed Curse

Only those that are most dedicated to evil are destroyed by God. For all the rest of us, even when He curses us, it is a curse designed to teach and even save us. The very tribulation that we think will ruin us, ends up being the vehicle for our salvation. It feels like a death, but it holds the seed of life. Thus, by His grace, even God’s curses are blessings.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Maintaining Hope in a Doomed World

A Vision of Destruction)

The Bible’s descriptions of the final days have struck fear into the hearts of many people. Even those who are otherwise unacquainted with the stories and messages of the Bible are still familiar with its visions of fire and brimstone raining down upon the world, destroying all the wicked, administering God’s judgment before the return of Christ. The passages also describe the terrible persecution that will first afflict the faithful, and that the world will ultimately reject the gospel message before they feel the wrath of heaven.

Given all this, it can be easy to feel pessimistic about ministry efforts in the world today. We’ve skipped ahead and read the end of the story and we already know that the world as a whole does not become convinced by the missionary efforts of the righteous. So why bother protesting evil? Why speak against the ways that society is moving towards its own destruction? The world is just going there anyway, so why not just separate yourself from it and live as a faithful hermit?

The Many and the One)

If, indeed, we are in the last days, there is a sort of logic to all those cynical, nihilistic questions. If we are fast approaching Armageddon, then no matter what we do the world is still doomed to fail, and so any effort on our part to save it are also doomed to fail.

But saving the world or abandoning it aren’t our only options.

Maintaining the light of hope and optimism, even in the midst of a world falling apart, only requires us to shift our perspective from the many to the one. I have made this point previously, that anyone who is focused on saving the whole world will be disappointed, but anyone who is focused on saving the individual may yet find success.

We could see ourselves as firefighters standing before a blazing building. Perhaps the fire has spread through too much of the structure to save it. Perhaps the whole thing is coming down no matter what we do. But what about the individuals that are trapped inside? There may yet be time to rush in and get as many of some of them as possible out to safety before it all comes crashing down!

Even if the earth is going to hell in a handbasket there is still a work for us to do, a challenge for us to meet, and a success for us to achieve. We can follow Christ’s admonition to stop fixating on the ninety-and-nine, and to go in search of the one, bringing it back with great rejoicing!

The fate of the world is already known, but the fate of you, your loved ones, and your neighbors still hangs in the balance.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 10:1-2

1 And the Lord said unto Moses, Go in unto Pharaoh: for I have hardened his heart, and the heart of his servants, that I might shew these my signs before him:

2 And that thou mayest tell in the ears of thy son, and of thy son’s son, what things I have wrought in Egypt, and my signs which I have done among them; that ye may know how that I am the Lord.

Once again, I’ve made my case for why I believe the verses that suggest Pharaoh exercised his self-will to harden his own heart over the ones where God says that He is responsible for Pharaoh’s stubbornness. Obviously, these verses support the latter perspective, as they have God detailing exactly why He would be hardening Pharaoh’s heart, so that he “might shew these signs” and that Moses “mayest tell in the ears of thy son…what things I have wrought…that ye may know how that I am the Lord.”

I will say that while I still dispute that God hardened Pharaoh’s hearts, I have absolutely no qualms with the idea that God positioned the Egyptians and Pharaoh in a position of power for the express purpose of breaking their pride and sending a message to the world. And not only to the world, but most especially to the Israelite people that would forever rely upon Him.

God’s liberation of Israel in Egypt is an absolute seminal moment in the story of that people. It establishes the pattern and the surety that all future generations look back to. The covenant people may have at times fallen into disbelief, they may have entered into terrible afflictions, they may have been under the power of others for a time, but God has always come through, destroying any power of devil or world that held them bondage. This was true with the Egyptians, this was true with the Romans, and this was true with Nazi Germany. This is the legacy of Abraham’s people, that they will be tried by fire, but God will ultimately prevail and redeem them. It is a hard legacy, but an encouraging one. A trying story, but one with a hopeful ending.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Perpetrator and Victim: Part Seven

The Place of Rescue)

Yesterday I made the point that both the perpetrator and the victim of abuse find themselves cut off from the presence of God. The perpetrator by their guilt, the victim by their despair. I explained that they do not have the power to bring themselves back into the light, either. Each requires an act of divine intervention to rescue them from the darkness.

It is not in the scope of this series to fully detail this rescue process. This process is outlined in the Gospel, it is conducted through the Savior, Jesus Christ. Anyone that searches for how one is “saved” in the Christian theology will find numerous explanations. For here I will simply say that this rescue or saving comes by accepting Christ as our Savior, and him redeeming us through no special merit of our own. It begins a new life within us, one of discipleship to Jesus.

My focus in this series has been to examine the hard path that precedes this saving grace. All of us have to be lost before we can be found, that is our common pattern in life. All of us are broken by others, and all of us break others in turn. Accepting these realities brings us to the bleakest place in our lives, but it just so happens to be the very same place where Christ’s rescue is waiting for us.

A dear friend of mine understood this concept and would often repeat the phrase “there is sacredness in suffering.” He understood the courage that it took to admit how guilty and broken one was, and he also understood that it was the prerequisite to a transformation for a soul. Nearly four years ago he passed in a tragic accident, leaving behind his young family. They have had their own “sacred suffering,” to be broken, and to be rescued to a new way of life.

New in the Light)

No one is rescued from the hole as the same person they were before they went in. They can be innocent again, they can be whole again, but they won’t be the same innocent or whole that they were before. That might be difficult for some to accept. Most of us spend so much of our time remembering how we used to be and trying to get back to it, but that’s something we just have to surrender.

This shouldn’t be considered tragic, though. The new person that emerges back into the light will not be equal to the person that went in, they will be indescribably better. We rise higher than we fall, our suffering and healing purifies and strengthens us into a purer form.

Of course, this is a transformation and journey that we never plan on. In the case of the victim it comes about entirely against their will. In the case of the perpetrator it does come about by their will, but they are ignorant of the full consequences they are calling forth. Most of us like to think that the greatest journeys of our lives will be ones that we elect for ourselves, ones that we choose deliberately and then carry out entirely by our own power. Nothing could be further from the truth. Those sorts of journeys are the most insignificant of our lives. The greatest journeys are the ones that catch us by surprise, even against our wills, and feature long periods where we are carried by various others. These journeys are far more dangerous, but the reward is far greater, too. There’s a reason why this is the sort of journey that all our literature has been obsessed with for thousands of years.

Parallel Journeys)

Here at the end I want to revisit a notion I mentioned in an earlier post. Many of us view the victim and the perpetrator as being two completely separate entities. We feel that each has entirely different needs from the other, that the only relationship that they share is those isolated moments of abuse.

But the reality is that both of these souls have a parallel journey to redemption. They both are prone to self-deception and false ideology, they both must overcome these lies to accept the hard truths, they both must come to despair so that they can then be rescued by the Savior.

And, indeed, each must deal with the other in their journey many times over. Even if they never see each other in the flesh again, each must come to terms with the specter of the other. No perpetrator will emerge whole without acknowledging the victim and doing whatever he can to make amends. No victim will emerge whole without accepting that the abuser is still their brother or sister and releasing their hate for them.

As I have suggested several times, I have been victim and perpetrator both. I have walked both journeys at various times, and I know firsthand the patterns of these paths. I know with all confidence that the way is hard, but also that it is beautiful.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Genesis 45:4-7

4 And Joseph said unto his brethren, Come near to me, I pray you. And they came near. And he said, I am Joseph your brother, whom ye sold into Egypt.

5 Now therefore be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that ye sold me hither: for God did send me before you to preserve life.

6 For these two years hath the famine been in the land: and yet there are five years, in the which there shall neither be earing nor harvest.

7 And God sent me before you to preserve you a posterity in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance.

Joseph has his brothers come nearer and speaks to them on a more intimate level. He assures them that truly he is their brother, and he proves it by recounting something that only he could now: how they betrayed him and sold him into Egypt. But he does not bring it up to shame them, he immediately follows it up by saying that he has no ill feelings on the matter. God has had a hand in it for good.

I can only imagine that when he was first sold into Egypt Joseph must have had a deluge of negative feelings. But now he sees it only as a blessed opportunity. He has been called to do a great thing, to preserve lives through “a great deliverance,” and he seems positively thrilled to have been a part of this work.

Another interesting note is that we find out how many years of famine had transpired thus far: two. In only two years Jacob and his sons had been brought to death’s door twice, and they weren’t even a third of the way through the ordeal! Truly they would have perished, and who knows how many more, if Joseph hadn’t been there to save the day!

Posted on by Abe Austin

Spiritual Analysis- Genesis 19:12-13, 15-16

12 And the men said unto Lot, Hast thou here any besides? son in law, and thy sons, and thy daughters, and whatsoever thou hast in the city, bring them out of this place:

13 For we will destroy this place, because the cry of them is waxen great before the face of the Lord; and the Lord hath sent us to destroy it.

15 And when the morning arose, then the angels hastened Lot, saying, Arise, take thy wife, and thy two daughters, which are here; lest thou be consumed in the iniquity of the city.

16 And while he lingered, the men laid hold upon his hand, and upon the hand of his wife, and upon the hand of his two daughters; the Lord being merciful unto him: and they brought him forth, and set him without the city.

The angels that came to Lot urged him to leave the place as quickly as possible. They let him linger only through the night, then grabbed his hands and dragged him out of there! This reaffirms my thought that God must do very real work to shape the course of our lives. If He was the magical genie that we often view Him as, then why not just snap His fingers and instantaneously teleport Lot and His family to safety? God and His servants must still work to accomplish His purposes.

Which makes the statement in verse 16 “the Lord being merciful unto him” ring all the more true. These angels are exerting themselves to get Lot out of the city when he is foolish enough to linger in harm’s way. They are saving him through effort, and all because God is gracious and is willing to redeem men from their own follies.

As I look back at my own life I can’t help but wonder how much work I have heaped on God’s plate to rescue me from sin and guide me towards purpose. And yet He did all that labor, even when I wasn’t asking Him to.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Genesis 6:8-9, 17-18

8 But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.

9 These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.

17 And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die.

18 But with thee will I establish my covenant; and thou shalt come into the ark, thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons’ wives with thee.

There was mass evil in the world, so universal and so extreme that God was set on washing the slate clean. But in all this crowd of corruption, God did not lose sight of one who was innocent.

The story of Noah is a very encouraging example of how God is perfectly aware of the individual, and the great lengths to which He will go to save that one. As humans we often struggle to be so individually conscious. We have limits of time and space, which is why our laws are usually applied universally, targeted towards the average, but ill-fitting to all manner of individual edge cases. God, though, can raise a flood over the entire world and still hold a single boat safe in the palm of His hand.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Optimism in a Falling World- Luke 15:3-7, Doctrine and Covenants 18:15

And he spake this parable unto them, saying,
What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it?
And when he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulders, rejoicing.
And when he cometh home, he calleth together his friends and neighbours, saying unto them, Rejoice with me; for I have found my sheep which was lost.
I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance.

And if it so be that you should labor all your days in crying repentance unto this people, and bring, save it be one soul unto me, how great shall be your joy with him in the kingdom of my Father!

COMMENTARY

What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine, and go after that which is lost
At the start of this study I considered Abraham pleading for Sodom and Gomorrah to be spared if even a few righteous people could be found therein. That same mentality is present in this parable from Jesus, where a shepherd will venture out to find even one lost sheep, leaving the masses to focus on the individual.
And I believe that this same mentality greatly helps when trying to maintain hope in a conflicted world. It is easier to despair over a vaguely defined group than over an individual with a face and a name. It is easy to label an entire faction as purely evil, but when we look into the eyes of a child of God we can’t help but see that even among their flaws they still have their divine potential. I might struggle at times to see the good in all people, but I can always find it in a person. Thus if you are finding it hard to have faith in the world perhaps you could start focusing on “the one” instead.


I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth
If you bring one soul unto me, how great shall be your joy with him in the kingdom of my Father!
For even if our worst fears were confirmed and the whole world spiraled down to hell, it would still behoove us to save what souls we could along the way. Our mentality should be like that of firefighters, who do not only enter the burning building when they can save a full 100% of the occupants. They will charge to the rescue even when they can only save a few, or even when they can save only one…and so should we.
Thus if you haven’t figured out how to save the entire world, that’s perfectly alright, none of us have. Only God can worry about salvation on that scale! For you and I, we just save the ones we can.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Optimism in a Falling World- Jonah 3:4-5, 10

And Jonah began to enter into the city a day’s journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.
So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them.
And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not.

COMMENTARY

So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them.
And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not
The exact sins of Nineveh are not detailed in the account of Jonah, but evidently they were of such significance that God was prepared to destroy the entire city! When we consider the example of other cities that received such a divine retribution, such as Sodom and Gomorrah, then it seems safe to say that the wickedness in Nineveh must have been extremely pronounced!
Yet for as fallen as the people might have been, it turns out that they were not beyond reclamation. After all, why send a prophet to them, even with a message of doom, unless there yet remained some hope that that doom might be averted?
From this story I learn to look at the sort of people I might consider to be a lost cause, and I realize that they are actually far from it! Truly there are places of deep evil today, and I am sure there are individuals who are ripe for destruction, but these are most definitely the minority. By and large, people are still basically good, still within the reach of hope. There are many who are waylaid, but that are the same sort that Jesus vouched for with the words “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). And instead of trying to push these confused souls towards their destruction, we should be inviting them back to the fold.