Having just completed our summer series on the church of our Lord, you might be tempted to take this article as a rehash or review of some of the same topics we studied during our Summer Wednesday night series here at Handley. While I would not for a moment discount or diminish the wonderful lessons we learned from that series of study, I wanted to use these three words in the title of this week’s article in a little bit different context. It is Monday morning, the time when I usually sit down at my desk to write an article for the weekly bulletin. The only difference at this moment is that I am sitting in Terminal D at Dallas/Fort Worth Airport awaiting my 15 hour, non-stop flight to Dubai (whew! It makes me tried just thinking about it). After a three hour layover in Dubai, I will fly to Hyderabad, India, where I will spend the night before my last leg to Kakinada. Over the years I have logged a lot of air miles traveling to Africa, Russia, India, Ethiopia, Ukraine and who knows where else; but I have also logged a lot of hours just sitting in terminals like this one, watching people, and making observations about life that can be used as teachable moments. So it is with this day, this precise moment, and this location.
About ten feet away from me stand four young men, none of which could be more than twenty years of age. They are well dressed in black suits and ties, and each one with a back pack thrown over his shoulder. They are looking at the display board showing the various flight numbers, the time of departure, and the gate for boarding. I knew immediately that they were Mormons, confirmed by a quick glance at their name tags that appeared just above the left pocket that read, “Elder.” They were evidently on their way to some far away destination to propagate a doctrine that promotes a false concept of the Eternal Kingdom of our Lord. My heart ached inside me because I know they have been taught error, embraced that error, and from a sense of devotion and zeal (though without knowledge) are going forth to propagate that error to lost souls. I wanted to take each one of these young men and try to point them in the right direction. These four men represent false religion in our own land; a religion born of the fertile imagination of one single man, and nourished in a once isolated region of our country by his predecessor. Theirs is a religion that has twisted and perverted the true concept of God, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, and the eternal kingdom we read about in the Bible.
Not far away is a television monitor providing up to date information of the unfolding events in Syria. The politicians, news reporters, government leaders and official statesmen and ambassadors have their hands full trying to decide what to do with a mad man who controls a country on the other side of the world and would use chemical weapons to keep his citizens in subjection. History simply repeats itself. Be it Bosnia, Iraq, Iran, Korea, Cuba, or any other of dozens of rogue countries that seem to have not the slightest idea of the value of life in general, and how to run a country in particular; all such powers are nothing more than worldly governments that come and go with the passing of time. Two-hundred-fifty years seems to be the limit of worldly powers. The United States is living on borrowed time. Like all these other countries of the world, time and chance run their course, and great powers eventually find themselves relegated to dust bins of ancient history with only a sad epitaph on their grave: “They forgot God to their own demise.” All of these nations represent a world that is caught up in power, prestige and political achievement. For the most part, they are completely apathetic to the eternal kingdom of Jesus Christ our Lord.
International airports also serve to remind me that this world is made up of dozens, if not hundreds of national and ethnic origins. The sheer magnitude of racial differentiation is no where more apparent than in the lobby of some international hub such as DFW, London, Frankfurt, New Delhi, and the like. The looks and the languages serve to remind us that God once cursed the earth, divided our languages, and scattered us across the world. Incredibly, many of those nations still remain in ignorance of the one true God and His Son Jesus Christ. I count myself truly blessed to live in a country where a person can search for the God of heaven, and where, in many respects, we have a head start on most of the world about us. Our history, parentage, location, education and opportunities are such that finding God is much easier than other parts of the world. In his commentary on the Gospel of John, B.W. Johnson made this observation:
Take a map and delineate those countries which are most enlightened in bright colors, then shade others more and more as you approach barbarism and ignorance. Then make another map in which the countries that most truly receive the Bible and Christ are represented in bright colors, shade those lands that have a corrupted Christianity, shading according to the degree of corruption, and put those in darkest colors where nothing is known of Christ. Then compare the two maps. It will be found that there are not two maps, but two copies of one map (Johnson, page 32).
Many of the countries where I have done mission work are still classified as third world countries. But even if a country is progressive, educated, strong militarily, and has an excellent financial footing, they remain in darkness if they know not God.
I headed for my gate, and along the way I passed a Starbucks Coffee shop. Who, in his right mind, would spend $3.75 for a small cup of coffee; yet Starbucks is standing room only in airport terminals. A leather goods store seemed to be doing big business in spite of price tags that stagger the imagination. The variety of shops in an airport terminal attest to the reality that mankind continues to be enamored with things; things that appeal to the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the vain glory of life (1 John 15-17) All such things will perish with using, but the eternal kingdom of my Lord will never perish, it will never fail, it will never decay.
The plane is boarding now; the next 24 hours will test the stamina of any world traveler. But unlike so many of my fellow travelers, I have a final destination in mind that cannot be reached in a Boeing 777, nor can it be located on a map or a travel brochure. It is of far greater value than any physical place, and will endure throughout eternity. It is God’s Eternal Kingdom. And it is to that place that I hope someday to arrive after the various stops I may have to make along the way.