The Biblical definition of hypocrite- someone who pretends to believe something he doesn’t really believe, especially in reference to Christianity.  I.E.- a stage actor, a whitewashed tomb. 

The world’s definition of hypocrite- anyone who isn’t absolutely perfect who condemns any behavior at all.  Unless it’s me doing the condemnation, and especially when I am condemning this so-called ‘hypocrisy’ in others.

Many have had to make do with bad pastors, corrupt priests, wicked churches.  Many godly and dear believers have suffered under the sinful abuse of God’s offices.  But all of God’s children have had Christ.  No one can do without Christ.  No other man can substitute for Christ or make Him unnecessary or add to His work, however great and wise and godly that man might be.  And no man can detract or prevent or hinder His saving grace, however wicked or corrupt that man might be.  Without Christ, we have nothing, whatever riches or power we possess.  With Christ, we have everything, no matter how poor or despised we may seem.

(From Sunday’s Sermon)

Proverbs 13:22 A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children, But the wealth of the sinner is stored up for the righteous.

One of the things I’ve learned from the Proverbs is the need to take the long view.  When we evaluate things always in terms of how they will impact our lives over the next day or two, how they will make us feel right now, then we will live for self, live for pleasure, for the moment.  But when we believe God’s promises, then we work and act with an eternal timeframe in mind, using the opportunities we have right now to prepare for that eternal timeframe.  Someone who is young and is investing for a retirement that is fifty years away makes different choices than someone who is sixty-five. And if we truly believe that we are destined for eternal life, then we will make choices with that in mind.

On the other hand, someone whose choices are all geared toward immediate pleasure- the next vacation, the next promotion, the next new shiny toy, will make different choices.  That second person may even claim to believe in eternity.  But their actions show what they truly care about.

Some even seem to have the idea that Jesus’ death on the cross frees me to focus on the here and now.  The thinking goes like this- Jesus died on the cross to secure my eternal future.  Therefore I don’t need to worry about eternity at all.  I can just focus on living my best life now.  But the Scriptures tell us something else constantly- that the man of God, if he does have faith in Jesus, will work with that eternal focus in mind, and not just seek to please himself with his life.  The idea that Jesus suffered the terrible pain and shame of the cross in order to free me up to please myself and fulfill my sinful lusts ought to fill any godly man with revulsion.

So people will often ask, is this a sin?  Is it sin to go to a ball game, go on vacation, buy a new car?  And often, it is the wrong question to ask.  The right question is, where are my values?  Am I laying up for myself treasures on earth, where moth and rust corrupts and thieves break in and steal?  Or am I laying up for myself treasures in heaven, treasures that last forever?  People of God, what are we doing with our lives?  Of course it is not sinful to enjoy the things of this world.  But it is a great and terrible sin to enjoy the things of this world as if that is all there is, and to neglect the things of eternity.

And so the Proverb quoted above should be seen in this light.  It’s not ultimately about money, though our use of money will certainly reflect our commitment to Biblical truth, or lack thereof.  It’s not saying that it makes you a good man if you leave an inheritance for our grandchildren, and a bad man if you don’t.  It’s saying that when we labor with God’s truth in mind, we can have a wonderful assurance that our labor will have permanence and long-term value.  If on the other hand, we labor for the present, then the present is what we get, and it’s all we get.

Actually, we don’t even get the present.  We get the past.  The vacations we take, the things we buy, the lusts we fulfill- last only for a moment, and then all we have is the memories, which fade away.  The new car is only a new car for a moment- every moment you have it, it’s less new.  And as we grow old, food tastes less good, our bodies don’t work as well, we will enjoy the things of this world less and less, and if this world is all we have, we sink into darkness and despair.  The knowledge of the transience of this life, if learned only through experience, is a terrible, awful truth, always learned too late.

But if we learn of the transience of this life from God’s own truth, then that prepares us to labor toward what is not transient, the eternal blessings afforded by God in His Son, Jesus Christ.

“…we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and there is no God but one.” 1 Cor. 8:4

“To be a Christian means to live as a Christian and to live as a Christian means to live wholeheartedly by and out of divine revelation.  Such a life is a life of faith.  If a person no longer believes in God, that is in his God, and – in the midst of the church of Christ- in our God, then he cannot live by and out of divine revelation.  He may still be called a “Christian,” but he is one in name only.  Having ceased to live by and out of divine revelation, he will inevitably live by and out of an idol, which, as Paul writes, is not anything.” – S.U. Zuidema

Zuidema’s point here is that being a Christian means fundamentally living according to the revelation of Jesus.  The only alternative is to follow a different truth, that of the idol.  And the fundamental truth about idols is that they are lies.

An idol, as Paul says, is “nothing in the world”.  Paul was specifically talking there about the false gods of the pagans, with regards to the question of eating meat that had been offered to those idols.  Yes, Paul says, an idol of itself is nothing in the world.  The problem is when they are something in our minds, as they invariably will be when Christ is not everything in our minds.  Our minds must be occupied by something substantial, something real.  And if what is real in our minds does not correspond with something that is real outside our minds, then the thing that is real in our minds will correspond to something unreal outside our minds.  Zeus was a lie, a fiction.  He was no god and had no power.  But to the people that worshiped this lie, he was real in their minds.  And the disconnect between the unreal thing in the world and the real thing in their minds is what causes all the problems.  The result is a person living contrary to reality, someone living a lie.  The only way to live in accord with reality is to live by and out of the revelation of Jesus.

So an idol is nothing in the world.  Men live according to many idols.  We live according to the false gods of sex and money and politics and entertainment.  We think these things can save us, that they can give us security or significance or hope for the future.  But they cannot.  There is no God but One.  The only one who can give us all the things we desire, who is Himself all the things we desire, is the One True God who made all things, and He is revealed fully in exactly one place, in the person and work of Jesus Christ.  So if we live according to idols, we live according to things that are “nothing in the world”.  We live according to unreality.  Which is to say, we are insane.  The only way to live in reality is to live “by and out of the revelation of Jesus Christ.”

When we are ensnared in sins, then, the answer is always the same.  The great mistake we often make is to focus on the sin, to focus on not doing this thing anymore.  And we make it into a great enemy, some demon force that we have no power over.  But in doing so, we give the idol a reality it does not possess and a glory it does not deserve.  The problem is never really the idol; the problem is the failure to live out of the revelation of Jesus.  The problem is our relationship with God.

The discussion of idols in 1 Corinthians 8-10 is a great example of this.  There is the faction in Corinth which wants to simply say, “we must not contaminate ourselves with idols and therefore eat no meat.”  And there is the other faction which wants to say, “an idol is nothing in the world, therefore we can fully participate in these pagan festivals and practices with no consequences”.  Paul shows that both are false premises.  Both are wrongly focusing on the idol.  Instead, Paul says, consider your relationship with God, and whether these practices draw you closer to him or harm the relationship.  You cannot fellowship with the idol and with God.  The idol itself is nothing- true.  But in your mind, as you fellowship with those that believe these ideas, you become partakers with them, and they commune with demons.  Communing with demons and God at the same time just doesn’t work.  If the idol is truly nothing in the world, then you will gladly give it up rather than hurt the relationship with God.  But at the same time you won’t fear the idol.  When you can eat the meat and give thanks to God, then eat the meat.  The relationship with God is always primary, not the thing.

So much of our trouble in life is just this- believing that things matter that don’t really matter, believing that if we only had this or that thing, then we’d finally be happy.  God is our treasure, our fortress, our exceeding great reward.  He has revealed to us all the truth needed to live out the joy of fellowship with Him, if we would only just believe that revelation.  Jesus is the revelation of God, the Word of God, and in Him we have all we need.  And then we see that in throwing away our idols, we are really throwing away nothing at all, and gaining the greatest of all joys and treasures in return.

Today is Earth Day, as I’m sure you all know.  And on Earth Day, Christians should continue with the commitment that Christians should always have to work to be good and faithful stewards of the creation which God has made.

God made the earth good.  As He looked out over every part of it that He created, recorded in Genesis 1, He pronounced it good.  Skies and seas, plants and animals, sun and stars and all of it.  But the very best part of His creation came last, when He made man.  He made man to bear His image and continue the creative work that God had begun.  God’s creative work involved bringing things out of nothing, something no creature could ever do.  But God’s creative work also involved organizing and naming, and He in His great power and majesty, created man in His image and gave man the job of continuing that organizing and naming.  Man named the animals and man was to tend the garden.  Man’s job was to glorify God by, among other things, improving the creation which God had made.

The modern environmentalist movement all too often seems to regard anything that man does in creation as being evil.  To the modern environmentalist, man is a cancer, a disease on the earth, and the environmentalist movement, the “green” movement, has the goal of limiting man’s impact on nature as much as possible.  This is not a Christian environmentalist mindset at all.  The Christian environmentalist mindset is that man’s negative impact on nature should be minimized and his positive impact on nature maximized.

Mankind, of itself, is not the problem.  The problem is that mankind’s relationship with creation has been corrupted because of sin.  God said that “thorns and thistles” would now grow in the fields and that man would eat his bread in the sweat of his brow until he died and returned to the earth.  The solution then is that as man finds redemption from sin in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, then man learns to restore a right relationship with his creator.  The modern world, with all of its technological improvements, is testimony to just a little bit of what can be accomplished when man’s relationship with creation begins to be restored.

It was Christianity that taught that the universe, because it is created by God and under the stewardship of man, is therefore understandable by man.  It is orderly and largely predictable.  It is Christianity which freed man from the fear of demons and spirits haunting the world, and instead showed us that the world was intended to be under man’s control.  Human beings can observe the creation and test predictions about it, to find out how it works, and use that knowledge to improve on the natural world.  We have eliminated many diseases, reduced the impact of bad weather, increased the productivity of our farms and even begun to unlock the mysterious power of the atom.  These are just beginnings.

Coal plants, freeways and cities are all wonderful things.  They are testimonies to the image of God within man, and man’s organizing and creative abilities.  It’s right and proper that we understand best how to minimize the negative impacts of these things on other people and on the rest of creation.  But they should not be demonized as evil.

Ultimately the proof of all of this is Jesus Christ Himself.  He came as a human being, demonstrating that humanity itself is not the problem, but the corrupted relationship that humanity has with God, and as a result the corrupted relationship that humanity has with everything else in creation.  In Jesus Christ our relationship with God is restored, and our relationship with our own nature, our fellow man and the physical creation can also begin to be restored.

Earth Day is essentially a pagan observance, worshiping nature of itself and regarding man’s encroachment on it as evil.  Earth Day views economic development as an evil to be reduced as much as possible.  This is why the concern over the Preble mouse or the spotted owl or any number of other species- it’s just a handy way to disrupt, slow down and end economic development.  Earth Day and the modern environmentalist movement should be rejected by the Christian as anti-God and anti-human.  Modern environmentalism is responsible for the deaths of millions of people, as it prevents the spread of economic development and technological advance in the third world, keeping coal plants from being built and scientific advances in farming from being used.  The banning of DDT alone is a crime of huge proportions, leading to the deaths of a million people a year.  The modern environmentalist would bring us back under the fear of the ghosts and demons from which Christianity freed us so many centuries ago, and bring us back to huddling in caves in the dark.

Instead, the Christian should always remember that the earth was not created to please man only, but to glorify God through man’s faithful stewardship.  It is an amazing creation and we should seek to enjoy it by improving upon it through science and industry for the glory of our marvelous Creator.  The creation is good, and mankind is very good.  Sin is very bad, but there is a solution to that in Jesus Christ.  So let us no longer live in fear of demons, in fear of nature or in fear of mankind.  Let us embrace Christ, turn away from our sins and embrace our God-given role as stewards of His beautiful creation.  Christ is triumphant and is bringing all things together in Him.

I think the Tea Party infiltration movement may have backfired badly.

For those not familiar with this movement, there has been attempts by leftists to infiltrate the Tea Parties and go to the rallies with racist signs, or truther signs or things like that in order to discredit the Tea Parties.  These efforts have, as far as I can see, failed.  Instapundit does a great job of cataloging these kinds of events.

What’s interesting about this, though, is that when I went to my first Tea Party a year ago or so, I saw exactly one sign that I thought might be interpreted as borderline racist.  I thought it was unfortunate but didn’t say anything.  But at the rally tomorrow, had I seen any such sign it was my intention to confront the person and try to drive them from the rally, at any rate to identify them, post their faces on the internet and make it clear that no such sentiment had any place with the rest of us.  As the link above showed, this appears to have been everyone else’s reaction as well.

The Tea Parties have never been about racism.  They are about fiscal responsibility, government overreach and faithfulness to the constitution.  But of course there are always fringe elements.  There are always kooks that look at a movement like this as an opportunity to increase their tiny little megaphone.  By attempting to play up those fringe elements and make it appear as if those were the core of the Tea Party movement, the leftists will actually have the effect of guaranteeing that any racist signs at Tea Party rallies are promptly identified and disavowed.  And after the fact, we can just claim that they must have been infiltrators!

John 3:16 is such a well-known passage, that sometimes we forget to think about it much. God so loved the world, we read. There’s been a great deal of debate on the meaning of the word “world” to Jesus in this passage, which is a feature of the Calvinist / Arminian debate of course. In John, even in this very chapter, the “world” is used to indicate the whole scope of that which is in rebellion against God and alienated from Him. John 3:16 is made that much more remarkable by the fact that it is not the beautiful creation that He made to which He is referring here, but the rebellious, corrupt, disgusting and hateful world order which He says He loves.

In fact, this world is actively under condemnation from God. It is the very world which is condemned to hell for their sin which is loved by God and redeemed from their sin. In John 1:10, we read that the world “did not know Him”. And in John 3:17, we read that Jesus coming into the world has the effect of saving “the world”. Now of course it does not save every individual. Those who believe are saved, and those who do not believe are not saved, and remain in their condemnation. So the flow of the passage shows us that Christ’s presence comes into a world commonly under God’s condemnation, but some are rescued and some not, as we see in the following verse.

So what is included in “the world”? Obviously it includes people, and indeed focuses on people. It wasn’t the physical creation which sinned against God, though the creation suffers the effects of man’s sins. But verse 17 says that Jesus’ death saves “the world”, and in the next verse discusses two classes of people, those who believe (and are saved) and those who do not (and are not saved). Clearly then Jesus includes both classes of people in the larger class “the world”; indeed, that is the way John has used the term throughout the book. And if “the world” only referred to the saved elect, why discuss those who reject Jesus’ message as a subset of “the world”? Verse 19 explicitly includes those who reject the light of Jesus as part of the world- the light came into the world, but men (in the world, part of that subset) loved darkness rather than light, thus demonstrating their condemnation.

As John’s theology develops, we see clearly that there is a specific efficacious love which is directed only at the elect. Jesus dies only for His sheep, and His sheep are infallibly saved by that death (John 10). But from John 3, it is clear that all men are originally in this class of ‘the world’, which is under God’s condemnation for their sin, yet loved by God to such a degree that He sent the most precious thing He had, His own Son, to die on the cross to rescue ‘the world’ from such a state. Individually, that love is fully and efficaciously expressed only to God’s elect. But it is clearly an error to say that God has no love at all for the non-elect, or that the elect are never under God’s condemnation. All men come from that common state, the world, which is under condemnation from God, alienated from Him, yet loved by Him to such a tremendous degree!

And indeed, what tremendous love this then is. It is not some sterile abstract theological principle. It is an active, effective love, a love that is so strong that it overcomes an otherwise insurmountable force, the wrath of God! When we consider that it is God’s own wrath which is conquered by His love, then we can fully appreciate just how great God’s love toward us is. And this is precisely Jesus’ point- that’s what the “so” means. God _so_ loved the world, meaning, to this extreme, infinite degree, God loved the world, to the degree that His own beloved Son suffered the shame and horror of the cross, and for who? For us, His enemies, we who hated Him, we who were under the active condemnation of His great and consuming wrath. God _SO_ loved the world.

In Jeremiah 21, God tells the prophet Jeremiah this-

8 ” Now you shall say to this people, ‘Thus says the LORD: “Behold, I set before you the way of life and the way of death.
9 “He who remains in this city shall die by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence; but he who goes out and defects to the Chaldeans who besiege you, he shall live, and his life shall be as a prize to him.
10 “For I have set My face against this city for adversity and not for good,” says the LORD. “It shall be given into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he shall burn it with fire.” ‘

God had judged Judah and Jerusalem, and given them over to the destruction of the Babylonians. He did so because they had rejected Him. Though they still called themselves Jehovah worshipers, they had worshiped other gods as well, filling His temple with foreign idols, engaged in immorality and flouted God’s law in a thousand different ways. And so God brought the Babylonians to punish them. Those who accepted the judgment of God would surrender to the Babylonians and would, as a result, survive. Those who refused to accept that God was judging them would continue their fight against the Babylonians and be destroyed as a result.

America is being judged by God. Is it any wonder? We’ve glorified fornication and sodomy for decades now. We’ve murdered innocents by the millions. Our sins are long. Worst of all is the enervation and distortion of the gospel of Christ from our pulpits since before our grandfathers were born. While I wouldn’t claim to know the perfect will of God, it seems clear to me that He has been fattening us for the judgment for some time now. We will see what happens. But this we know- God will not ignore sin and wickedness, and America, being home to a faithful Christian witness for centuries and receiving the rich blessings of God, has a particular responsibility which it has utterly neglected and abandoned.

Many conservatives are now promoting a focus on fiscal responsibility in order to save our nation. But I believe our fiscal woes are only the symptom of a deeper rot, a people who have rebelled against God and teach lies as the word of God. If that is true, then focusing on our fiscal problems while ignoring the more fundamental problem is akin to fighting the Babylonians even after God has declared the judgment.

It’s like the mainline denominations who are ordaining homosexuals or flirting with it. The “conservatives” in those denominations decry this move as an abandonment of the Christian faith. But where were those conservatives when their denomination ordained women against the word of God? Where were they when their denominations denied Biblical inerrancy, denied the necessity of the virgin birth, denied the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ? Where were they when real conservatives like Machen were being run out of their denominations?

We have complacently sat back while our churches gave up the faithful witness of the truth. And now we are bearing the brunt of it, and we don’t like the results. But if God is judging our nation, and I believe He is, then we will have to accept it as being from His hand. We must repent of our sins, repent of the lie that we can gain God’s good blessings at the same time as we flout and ignore His word. Fiscal responsibility, material prosperity, good and honest leadership, safety from our enemies, the rule of law- these things are God’s blessings to us and not things we achieve for ourselves.

If we as a nation turn back to God, repent of our sins and seek to promote and please Him in every aspect of our lives, public and private, then our blessings will return. But if we continue to glorify and promote everything He hates, we can expect nothing but curses from Him.

So despite so-called conservatives like David Frum, Kathleen Parker and David Brooks, and many others, who claim that the social conservatives are destroying the Republican party, I would respond with a higher truth. Following God is all that matters. God tells King Zedekiah, through the prophet Jeremiah in Jeremiah 37:10 that even if they defeated the whole army of the Chaldeans and there were only wounded men left, yet would they take the city and burn it down. When God is against you, it doesn’t matter how strong your army is. God told the Israelites that if they rebelled against Him then one enemy would chase a hundred of them and three would chase a thousand.

So until we repent, we will lose. We will lose our freedoms. We will lose our prosperity. We will lose our right to worship, our right to speak freely, our right to assemble or to bear arms. Our military will not save us, our wealth will not save us, our science will not save us. Nothing will. If God is against us, everything is against us.

And though this might sound very depressing, it actually is very encouraging. Because the contrary is likewise true. When we as individuals, as families, as churches and neighborhoods and towns and states and perhaps even as a nation, turn back to God and confess the truth of His word, then nothing can stop us. It doesn’t matter what forces are arrayed against us. It doesn’t matter what criminals are running our country, or selling us out to foreign interests. It doesn’t matter what special interests are united to despoil the nation and corrupt its morality. It doesn’t matter how many of our fellow citizens just want to satisfy their wicked lusts and have everyone else pick up the bill. Just follow God. Just trust Him. And then one of us will chase a thousand and three will put ten thousand to flight.

Christians might have a pretty hard time coming in this country. Perhaps we thought the fires of persecution would never come to these shores. To that I’d answer, they’ve been here for a long time. Christians have been ridiculed and pressured into compromising the integrity of their witness for a long time. Far too many have given in and that’s the big reason why we’re in the fix we’re in. But what has been subtle and under the radar is becoming more and more overt. There are those at the very highest levels of our government, even now, who would prohibit the preaching of God’s word if they could.

But we are the light of the world. And all things will work together for the good of His kingdom. We might have to go into exile into Babylon for a while. That’s up to God. But if we submit to His will, repent of our sins and seek His glory in our lives, in all we do, we can be confident that He will never let us down. Though the nation fall, God’s kingdom goes on as it always have, and His people will be preserved. His salvation will come not by political parties, elections or courts. It will come by the glorious triumph of Jesus Christ.

The doctrine of eternal justification, which I’ve explored in the last couple of days, is at its heart a denial of one of the core doctrines of the Reformation, the doctrine of justification by faith alone, or “Sola Fide”. This is quite easy to understand- since the elect can be justified, in fact _must_ be justified before he believes, it is possible for a man without faith to be justified before God. The doctrine’s whole point is that the elect are always justified, never under the wrath of God. And therefore, at a point before the man has come to faith, he must be justified since there is no other state he could be in. He never is under God’s wrath.

The Reformed Puritan points out one clear problem with Scripture and this doctrine
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This brings us to the third point — that of denying that the elect of God were never at any stage under the wrath of God. We have previously looked at Eph. 2:1-3 so we do not have to repeat the same exegesis of the text. Instead, let us look at one of the narrative accounts in Scripture: the story of the wicked king of Judah, King Manasseh the son of King Hezekiah (2 Ki. 21:1-18; 2 Chron. 33:1-20). We know from Scripture that King Manasseh was under the wrath of God for his gross wickedness (2 Ki. 21:6). Yet at the end of his wicked life, Manasseh repented of his sins (2 Chron. 33:13,19).

The question for those like Kraft therefore is this: Is the Bible lying when they state that Manasseh repented of his sins? If he did in fact repent, he must be saved and one of the elect, or isn’t he? If he indeed is one of the elect, then the Scripture do in fact teach that he was at one time under the wrath of God, thus falsifying their ridiculous teaching that the elect of God were never under the wrath of God even before conversion.

Manasseh was in rebellion against God, and was therefore under God’s wrath. Later he repented, and received God’s grace. He was not justified until he repented, and then he was.

In fact, if this doctrine of eternal justification is true, the most obvious conclusion would be universalism. God justifies everybody. Why not? Even the fact that some people never express faith in this life is not necessarily an impediment- after all, perhaps God can simply work faith in the elect after they die, an idea the Predestinarian Network explores here.

And yet Paul says clearly, “By faith is a man justified.” Faith is the instrument by which a man lays hold on the forgiveness of sins accomplished in the death of Christ. John the baptist (Mark 1:15) calls on people to “repent, and believe the gospel”, and in Matthew 3:2 tells the people to repent in order to “flee the wrath to come”. They will be under wrath unless they repent. In Luke 13, Jesus tells the people that they will all perish unless they repent. Peter tells the Jews in Acts 2:38 to repent and they will be saved, receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit. And when the Philippian jailer asks Paul, “what must I do to be saved?” Paul says, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved.” (Acts 16:30-31).

The Predestinarians like Brandan Kraft would accuse all of them of being “evangellyfish” or “Crypto-Arminians.” The proper answer to them would be, “You don’t have to do anything, just recognize that you are already saved.” But in every one of these places, the people are called on to make a choice, to express faith, to respond to the offer of the gospel. If they do, they live. If they don’t, they die.

One more passage- Romans 5. This passage shows that by Adam death came into the world, and condemnation, on all men, all who are under his headship (Romans 5:16). All men are under Adam’s headship, and all are condemned, under God’s wrath. All men were “made sinners” by his sin (v. 19). But all men are made righteous by Christ. All are justified by that free gift, when they accept that gift by faith.

The doctrine of predestination should never be interpreted to mean that we don’t need to make a choice. We must make a choice, to believe in Christ, and therefore pass from wrath to mercy, from darkness to light, from death to life. Predestination informs us of the way this happens- that by God’s eternal election, He grants His Holy Spirit to those that He has chosen, to transform the heart of a man so that the man is able to make that choice, able to believe, able to repent and turn from sinfulness and rebellion to righteousness and life. But until we make that God-enabled choice, we are under the curse of the law.

Now that choice happens in a lot of ways. It’s not always a “warming of the heart” moment- it’s not always a moment in time at all. Sometimes it’s a choice that takes place gradually, over years. Some are regenerate from birth, and always believe in Jesus. Some people are regenerated and come to faith gradually, over years. Some people have that lightning bolt moment.

But nobody is justified unless and until they believe.