| November 12, 2000 |
Vol. III, No. 28
|
Just before the holidays last December, I got into “a reading mode.” I was about to do some flying, and I don’t "just sit" very well on an airplane. So, I read. I finished one book on the trip and started another By then I was back home, but nothing on television interested me, so I kept buying books and reading them. Even sports did not attract my attention. (I guess I have tired of seeing the latest episode where a famous, wealthy athlete decides he can commit a crime and everyone will accept it because of who he is.) So, I have continued to read in my spare time.
I have frequently been amused by the comments and commentary of a CBS 60 Minutes contributor named Andy Rooney. Much of what he says has been enjoyable. Therefore, I was anxious to read his new book, Sincerely, Andy Rooney, which Joyce recently purchased for me. The book is a collection of letters he has written to friends and to people who have written to him, about newspaper and television pieces he has authored through the years. I enjoyed the book until I came to the next to last letter he wrote; a letter he had written in 1989 to his four children on the subject of God and religion.
Now, I want to be careful what I say here, so I shall not quote his copyrighted statements in the slim possibility he might accidentally see what I am about to write. Several of his letters in the book concerned things like this article written in response to his writings, in which he threatened lawsuits. I certainly don’t want to get sued!
Let me just list some of the things Rooney thinks about God and religion:
• He wonders who created God.
• He believes religion is so popular because people are afraid of things they don’t know.
• He attributes war and its violence to religion, more than to anything else.
• He thinks God is a cousin of Santa Claus.
• He thinks religion is a hoax, resting on myths aimed at proving something which is not true. (Unfortunately, he failed to tell his readers how he knew it was not true, but being as smart as he is, he just has to be right!)
• He ridicules the idea that the Ten Commandments were given to Moses at a location unknown to Rooney called Sinai. After this profound announcement, he proclaims himself as Romania’s Queen!
• He wrote of things that existed before religion came along.
• He is of the view that religion is a trick people play on themselves, which they should realize to be nothing but a trick.
• Rooney does not believe that rational people could possibly believe in religion. Needless to say, Rooney regards himself as rational, but you couldn’t prove it by me!
• He believes man evolved by adapting himself to the earth. Not surprisingly, he forgot to tell us how that happened.
• Rooney thinks the Bible account of Adam and Eve is a myth which died with the arrival of Charles Darwin’s book, The Origin of Species. This sounded like rather wishful thinking to me, as in the fellow who whistles his way through the graveyard at night.
• He thinks he sees a retreat by theologians in the face of scientific proof that the earth is round instead of flat. I wonder where this fellow has been. I haven’t seen a need for retreat on this question, have you?
• Rooney told his children he thought the Bible, while a myth, has much good in it, though there are unexplained events and contradictions in it. Oh, thank you Mr. Rooney for telling us some of it is good! (By the way, who decreed that Rooney has to understand everything anyway?)
• He thinks Christ was a good man but that he had no relation to God. I suppose Rooney thinks he is the first to believe this. There were multitudes of unbelievers like him in the days of Jesus, just as there are today, who also will be in hell (John 8:24).
• He thinks people who believe the Bible to be God’s Word are not thinking. Of course, Rooney is a thinker. If you don’t believe so, just ask him.
• He thinks worship must be offered to God in the belief that God lacks security and responds to such flattery.
• Rooney believes God and the Loch Ness monster have a lot in common.
Then, if all this were not bad enough, Rooney had the audacity to sign his letter to his children with “love.” There is no evidence of love for his children that I can see in what he wrote. He has done all he can with his ridicule of the Bible to prevent their obedience to the Lord’s commands. Only by obedience will his beloved children be saved (Heb. 5:9). Please, Lord, deliver this man’s children from his perverted “love!”
Rooney doesn’t understand religion, so he doesn’t believe in it. Interestingly, in his last letter in the book, he writes about a voyage he took to celebrate the 50th anniversary of D-Day. He crossed the Atlantic on the Queen Elizabeth II. He could not understand how something so big as that ship could float! Since Rooney does not believe in things he does not understand, I have to conclude he does not believe in ships!
If you think you might want to read this infidel’s diatribe, please don’t buy the book! Just rent it from me. I’m trying to recoup the loss of Joyce’s money!
--Lewis Willis Truth Magazine, September 21, 2000
Speaking of the “little ones” or humble ones who believe in Him, Jesus said, “Take heed that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that in heaven their angels always see the face of My Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 18:10).
This is one of a few passages of Scripture that is sometimes thought to teach that each of us has his own personal guardian angel. We suggest that explanation is open to much question. The passage does indeed suggest that there are angels who have the responsibility to minister in behalf of Christ’s followers in some way, but not necessarily on a one-to-one basis. Another passage speaking of the angels of God says, “Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to minister for those who will inherit salvation?” (Heb. 1:14). And so it seems that each Christian has not one, but many angels ministering in his behalf in some way -- but quite likely, those same angels also minister in behalf of all other Christians as well.
Quite a bit of speculation has taken place over the centuries about how the angels minister, and what, if anything, they do in our behalf today. Such speculation has led to movies, books, and TV programs. Preachers and theologians have written numerous books and treatises on the subject. But it would be well to remind ourselves that all we really know about angels is what we can read in our Bibles. All else is idle speculation. It is one thing to realize that God’s angels are interested in our salvation and in some way minister in our behalf. It is quite another matter to speculate just exactly what they do and how they do it. Let us not forget Moses’ words in Deut. 29:29, “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children forever...”
Before we close this study, it is proper that we mention one more passage that is sometimes thought to suggest that each person has his own personal angel -- and this passage perhaps has more to commend it to this explanation. Simon Peter was in prison. Unless there was Divine intervention he would soon be executed. As far as his brethren knew, he might already have been put to death. Unknown to the other Christians, God sent an angel to Peter’s prison cell to lead him safely out. Then came a knock on the door where the disciples were gathered together in prayer. A servant girl went to the door, recognized Peter’s voice, and reported that he was at the door. The others “said to her, ‘You are beside yourself!’ Yet she kept insisting that it was so. So they said, ‘It is his angel’” (Acts 12:15). It is possible that they believed in guardian angels. But there is another more likely explanation. They probably used the term “angel” in the sense of “spirit.” We would probably say “ghost” or “apparition.” In either case, they were mistaken, for it was not Peter’s angel at the door, but Peter himself, in the flesh, alive and well. God was not finished with Peter as a revealer of Divine truth. The angel that led Peter out of prison not only aided Peter, but, in doing so, ministered for us as well.
–CRJ