To the Class of 2005

Dear Class of ’05,

Well, you made it. By this time you have either graduated or will graduate from high school soon. You have come a long way from your kindergarten days. Think of what you have had to do, all those bus rides, school lunches, new subjects (remember the day you started doing fractions?), new teachers, new friends, and tests. Yes, I know some of you are home schoolers and you have a different history. There was no home schooling available in my youth. The only ones who stayed at home from public school were those playing hooky (this was one of our words. It means to skip school.). If you have come up through home schooling, you have received many benefits from it. The constant caring supervision by concerned parents is a gift from God. Be thankful for it.

It’s hard for me to imagine that you were probably born in the late 1980s. Ronald Reagan was President. When I started the first grade Harry S. Truman was President. Things have really changed haven’t they? You are the first generation to grow up with the computer. And you wonder what it must have been like to have only three channels on television. But all this is not the most important thing about graduation. I, a member of the class of 1959, have some words of advice. I hope you will give them some consideration. No doubt your parents have already told you most of these things, but please allow me to reinforce their wisdom.

Know God! I hope you already know a lot about God. It has been the responsibility of your home and your church to instruct you concerning the character and ways of God. Do you know all of His attributes? That’s very important, but that is not all. Your knowledge about God is to result in a closer personal relationship with Him. The better you know God, the more passionate you will be about spreading His fame. The wonder of wonders is that we can be friends with the sovereign God of the universe (Jn. 3:16; 17:3). Those who do not know God’s salvation in Jesus Christ are starting out life alone. That’s a scary thought. Make it your life’s goal to be a carrier of the good news of the gospel.

Get wisdom! That is not original with me. Solomon said this, thousands of years ago to his son (Prov. 3:13). When I was a young Christian (in my late teens), I started asking God to help me to know how to live life. I prayed for wisdom hundreds, if not thousands, of times. You will need the skill of knowing how to make the right kind of decisions. Ask God to give you the discernment to pick the right kind of marriage partner. Don’t let mere emotions make the deciding call. You will need wisdom in choosing friends, reading the right books, what college to attend, how to rear your children, and hundreds of other matters. Don’t allow yourself to live Biblelessly. You will pay a high price for such negligence. Resolve to read the Bible through once a year for the rest of your life. When we get to heaven you can let me know how you did.

Get yourself prepared! Prepared for what? Prepare to serve God and people. What does this require? It may include college, military service, or some kind of vocational training. Don’t settle for just immediate personal comforts. Discipline yourself. Learn a foreign language, how to swim, how to fix electrical problems, how to cook, how to build a house. Take advantage of the opportunities you have. Try to be well-rounded. Read good books. Develop your gifts. All of this is part of being a good steward with what God has given you (Matt. 25:14-30). Look for people who have something to teach you and listen to them. Don’t let the thirst for entertainment turn you into a turnip.

Hate sin! You may say, doesn’t everyone hate sin? No, they don’t. There are thousands of ways we can break God’s law, and they are all gift wrapped. That’s the way sin is. It is appealing. If it weren’t, we wouldn’t be in the mess we are in. Wisdom teaches that disobeying God is not something to be treated lightly (Prov. 14:9). Pornography, cheating, adultery, lying, and greed have enslaved their millions. Don’t let drugs and alcohol take charge of your life. The road to a wasted life is not without its warning signs. The fool ignores them and goes on to personal ruin.

The class of 1959 had its dreams. Many said that they didn’t need God, and set out on life’s journey without Him. Others were smitten by the joy of knowing God. This didn’t make their lives easier, but it made the way pleasant because of God’s friendship. I pray that when the winter of your life arrives that you will have lived it always hungering for more of God.

Because of God’s grace,

Pastor Dial
Class of 1959

Dr. Howard E. Dial
Berachah Bible Church

My Little Church

Last Sunday made me feel happy. We had sung good hymns, heard God’s Word, baptized a new, young believer, placed our bids on pies and baby sitting services for the kingdom’s sake, and listened to two of our young men tell us about the needs in New Guinea and how to discipline ourselves for godliness. At the end of the day I told Beth, “I like my little church.”

Before we go any further some words need explanation. The word “my” is technically not correct. The church belongs to Jesus Christ. He is the Head of the church and does not share that position with anyone else. My church is the one where I am a member, attend, and serve as one of the elders. The word “little” is a comparative term. The church where we are active participants is not as big as a lot of churches, but it is larger than many others. In comparison to what are known as “mega-churches” (thousands in attendance), “little” is the appropriate word. Little does not imply inferior, weak, or unimportant. It is an expression of affection.

The word “church” also needs to be defined. A local church according to biblical standards is made up of professing Christians (1 Cor. 1:2). The basis for belonging to it is a relationship to Jesus Christ. Christians are related to one another in a family (“household,” 1 Tim. 3:15). A local church will have meetings with some regularity (Rom. 16:5). It will be somewhere, but it does not require a permanent building. Its members will meet as often as is necessary, but it does not exist to merely meet. A local church will have some form of organization (Phil. 1:2). Elders and deacons have been ordained by God as the primary functioning officers. But they do not serve alone. Christ has distributed individual spiritual gifts to function for the building up of the church. The gifted will serve in a variety of ways. A local church will observe the ordinances. New converts will be baptized as a public confession of their faith in Christ (Matt. 28:19-20). There will be fellowship around the communion table to celebrate the redemptive work of Christ. And finally, a local church will devote itself to the apostles’ teaching (Acts 2:42). Solid instruction in the Scriptures is life-giving blood for the church that exists in its meetings for the purpose of equipping the saints for the work of the ministry (Eph. 4:11-12). The local church exists in the world for the purpose of taking the gospel to the ends of the earth (Matt. 28:19-20).

I love my little church. It is not perfect. No church is. But it is filled with people who crave the exposition of God’s Word, who serve faithfully, who give generously, who pray regularly, who share the gospel with their families, friends, and neighbors, and who respond to the needs of others. Sunday school teachers labor week after week to pass on God’s eternal truth to the next generation. A Missions Team works hard at missionary care and world missions ventures. The Bosnia Team organized a Sunday dinner and a silent auction that was delightful to watch. People were drawn together in a God-honoring project of sending ambassadors of reconciliation to the Muslim people in war torn Bosnia. This is only some of the body-life spiritual energy expended week after week. My little church encourages me.

There are those who are attracted to the so-called “mega-churches.” If you have entertained such a thought, there are some questions you should ask yourself. Will you know everyone in the congregation by name? Will they all know you? Will you be accountable to anyone? Yes, that word “accountable” is often overworked and misused, but it does communicate an important biblical truth. Part of the “one-anothering” of local church body-life is accepting responsibility for growing in the faith and being meaningfully involved in the lives of others. Will the pastor of the mega-church be available for counseling and encouragement when you are struggling with a problem? Will you be leaving a ministry gap for someone else to fill? Praise bands, gigantic media screens, movie clips, drama teams, and short sermons may attract the thousands, but don’t forget the thousands of smaller congregations faithfully carrying out the Great Commission of Jesus Christ.

Does my little church need to grow in grace, change, be ready to reinvent itself, repent, and seek revival? It does, if it is going to be the kind of church that pleases Jesus Christ. The words of the Head of the church must always be bound up in our self-examination. There is the danger of leaving our first love (Rev. 2:1-7). The church must beware of any tolerance of doctrinal error (Rev. 2:12-17). It must be on guard against the sins of the culture becoming sins of the church (Rev. 2:18-29). Spiritual deadness and lukewarmness are an ever present danger (Rev. 3:1-22). I love my church so much that I pray for you daily that we will not dishonor the Lord of the church. May God grant us joyful persistence in seeking the lost, building up the saints, and planting other little churches throughout the world.

Dr. Howard E. Dial
Berachah Bible Church

The Meadowlark

I enjoy birds, all kinds of birds, especially song birds. Wouldn’t it be exhilarating to just go up into the air over the tops of the trees or fly the straightest line to your destination looking down on all that traffic? But we are not birds. God has created them and their melodies for our pleasure. Even as I write this I am hearing at least four different songsters. I even have a Songbird Symphony tape my daughter gave me. The birds sing against the background of a gurgling brook. The songs of birddom have been the background songs of my entire life. The whip-poor-wills filled the woods by the hundreds with their evening calls as I slept on the porch at my aunt and uncle’s home. I miss the whip-poor-wills. They are not heard in the Atlanta area as they once were. There was the canary at my grandmother’s house. With morning light streaming into the kitchen her pet canary sang its happy song. There were the Blue Jays. I have mixed emotions about them. They are a sassy bunch. They would aggravate me making all that “jay-jay” noise outside my window when I was a teenager trying to sleep-in on a summer’s morning. The mockingbird is special. One of them can imitate the songs of 32 different kinds of birds in 10 minutes. What a repertoire. A mockingbird offers its rich sound on warm, moonlit nights in the spring. They are very territorial creatures. I have watched one attack himself in the reflection on the hub cap of my car.

It was only this week that I encountered one of my favorite song birds. I was jogging slowly in the grass cooling down after a run when I was startled by a meadowlark making its see-yeeeer whistle flapping its wings as if it were hurt. It’s wing appearing to be broken. They do this when they are trying to protect their young. I had come close to stepping on her nest of four white eggs in the grass. Mother meadowlark was doing her best to lead imminent danger away from the next generation of cheerful singers. The truths of God are scattered all over nature. God likens the protective care of His people to mother bird spreading her wings over her young (Deut. 32:11-12; Ex. 19:4; Psa. 17:8; 36:7; 57:1; 63:7). One of the best known of these sweet reminders of God’s enduring care and guiding providence is found in Psalm 91:1 and 4. Insecurity plagues the human race. It is one of sin’s children. You can see it so plainly in children. They love a familiar place and the knowledge that father and mother are near. One of the best gifts loving parents can give to their children is the security of loving attention and assurances that all is well.

The words of the psalmist are calmingly reassuring, “He will cover you with His pinions, and under His wings you may seek refuge.” They tell us that God is “our shelter when the winds begin to howl; under God’s providence we are defended, protected, perfectly safe – someone else is in charge - someone big, strong, and experienced, who never goes off duty.” These words from Cornelius Plantinga, Jr. are true to biblical realities. Insecurity is remedied by understanding the kind of protection God gives His children. When God’s providence smiles in the deliverances from danger God gives, we are to rejoice. But there are times when His providence frowns and we trip and fall and break an arm, when a burglar breaks into the house, and other injurious things happen. What are we to make of these? The promise of God’s shelter in the storms of life must not be twisted into a guarantee that nothing harmful will befall God’s people. Psalm 91 gives only part of the picture of God’s providence. Sometimes we get migraine headaches and cancer under His wings. But that does not betray our reason for faith in Him. Bad things can happen to good people, but God has not abandoned them. We have the promise that “God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those called according to His purpose.” Hold on to that. God’s wings are never folded. He never forsakes His young. Even in pain and death He is with us. He doesn’t explain everything to us, but we know that “no final evil will befall us.” Nothing can separate us from the love of Christ.

Faith doesn’t necessarily make brain tumors go away. It doesn’t keep us from automobile accidents. Faith knows that God knows what He is doing. He is trustworthy even though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death. Evil can do some awful things to us. But when the storm is over and the footfalls of danger have gone, we have come closer to our Lord who has endured the greatest of suffering for us. The cross and the empty tomb guide us to our heavenly resting place. He was broken for us that we might live. That little meadowlark was reminding us that our loving Father will never leave us or forsake us. God is a God worthy of our trust.

Dr. Howard E. Dial
Berachah Bible Church

Eve, the Mother of Us All

Even with a biblically informed mind, it is difficult to imagine what Eve’s early life was like. Think of it. She was created out of Adam’s rib. When Adam woke up, there she was, a woman of incomparable beauty, health, and intelligence. Evolutionists owe Eve an apology for their ape-like makeovers. Actually, Darwinists don’t believe in a biblical Eve in any sense. One of the latest theories is that our 10,000th great-grandmother was only one of a number of muscular food gatherers who could have torn animals apart with her hands. But God says that He fashioned (the Hebrew word is banah meaning to fashion or build) Eve from the physical body of Adam and brought her to him (Gen. 2:22). The rental DVD of this story and scene would not stay on the shelves. Whatever she looked like, the man was very impressed, to put it mildly. He broke into a poem of thirteen words which roughly translated means, “Wow!”

How long was Eve in Eden before she encountered the Tempter? We don’t know. But it was probably not long. As we all know the first mother did not do well on her first test. She took Satan’s bait, disobeyed God, and ate the forbidden fruit. Eve was voluntarily deceived (2 Cor. 11:3). As one commentator has succinctly stated, she listened to the creature rather than the Creator, followed her impressions rather than instructions, and made self-fulfillment her goal. She was a thoroughly modern woman. Eve’s sons and daughters should take warning. When God’s authority is rejected and replaced by a lesser god, there will be the devil to pay. Mothers who think they know better than their Creator and lead their children to believe that meaning and happiness can be found outside of God are sad stories in themselves.

Eve’s story is sad because she failed her children, the entire human race. Even though Adam bears the final responsibility for our imputed guilt and inherited sin (Rom. 5:12), Eve’s gullibility lives in infamy. Eve bore many children, but two sons are on the first page of her family album. Did she actually think Cain would be the deliverer promised by God (Gen. 3:15)? Eve was the first mother to bear children with a sinful nature. She was also the first mother to endure the heartbreak of a rebellious son. Cain murdered his own brother out of anger over God’s rejection of his self-styled worship. What grief it must been for the mother of all living to watch the sin she had helped to spawn cut down her beloved Abel.

Our mother Eve speaks from the grave. A woman can have a lavish table of the grace of God spread out for her, and yet lose it all by believing what is not true. Mothers who listen to their own hearts rather than an infinitely wise God sow the seeds of their own sorrow for generations to come. A mother can be sweet, thoughtful, compassionate, and self-sacrificing, but if she does not know God’s salvation in Christ, she cannot give her children what they need most, God’s love in Christ wrapped in a motherly heart. If Eve could give her testimony, she would tell of God’s merciful provision of clothes for her nakedness (Gen. 3:21). Her original attire had been made of fig leaves (an attempt to solve their problem of shame and guilt). But man-made religion will never solve the sin problem (Gen. 3:7). The story of redemption is bound up in the words, “The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them” (Gen. 3:21). The mother of a sinful human race witnessed the shedding of blood to clothe her. The animal skins were more than a fashion statement. There was more to her covering than met the eye. The clothing was symbolic of her redemption on the merits of Christ’s future sacrifice upon the cross (Rom. 3:25). Is it not possible that Adam and Eve received instructions concerning the necessity of animal sacrifices as a part of worship?

What is Eve, the first mother, saying to all mothers? The best dressed woman is clothed in the righteousness of Christ. The legacy of the mother of us all is the hope brought through motherhood. The first gospel proclamation was attached to Eve’s child bearing when God announced condemnation upon the serpent, “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel” (Gen. 3:15). The seed of the woman, Eve, would deliver a final and fatal blow to Satan at the cross. Eve’s motherhood brought more than a sinful race. It eventually gave us the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. It was He who purchased Eve’s redemption and destroyed the works of the devil (Heb. 2:14; 1 Jn. 3:8). The mother of us all is a story still being told.

Dr. Howard E. Dial
Berachah Bible Church

It IS Over ‘Til It’s Over

It was on this day two years ago that President George W. Bush heralded this message from the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln just off the coast of San Diego, CA. “My fellow Americans: Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed . . . the tyrant has fallen, and Iraq is free.” The images of statues falling, newly freed Iraqi’s celebrating in the streets, and US military forces setting up bases in Saddam Hussein’s former palaces were clear indicators that confirmed the demise of the oppressive regime which held millions of Iraqis in submission and fear for so long.

Since that day, the coalition forces have been engaged in the long process of securing and reconstructing the fragile nation of Iraq. It has proven to be a difficult and dangerous work, costing the lives of many soldiers and civilians. But the present attempts by the toppled regime and the rogue insurgents to reinstate tyranny cannot reverse the freedom that has already been won. They might be able inflict casualties and strike fear in the hearts of some, but they have lost the war.

There has been another victory cry in history that is unmatched in depth of meaning and significance. As Jesus was hanging on a rough-hewn wooden cross—beaten, bruised, and bloodied—he made this incomprehensibly profound, yet simple exclamation, “It is finished!” (John 19:30). There has never been nor will there ever be any lengthy speech by any eloquent orator that could express the triumph and hope which that one word in the Greek, tetelestai, communicated. Jesus’ expression was not the whimper or moan of a dying victim; it was the resolved proclamation of the victor.

“It is finished!” The work of redemption is complete. “When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high” (Heb. 1:3b). Christ did everything required by the law and perfectly accomplished all that the Father had given Him to do. The atonement for sin had been fully made—everything was done; no loose ends to tie up. The ransom was paid. The debt of sin had been retired. The serpent’s head had been crushed. The Lamb of God had taken away the sins of the world. There were no more lessons to be taught, miracles to be worked, prayers to be offered. There was nothing more on earth for Him to do except die so that He might rise again. When Jesus uttered, “Tetelestai!” He was saying in effect, “The major combat operation against sin has ended. The Lord has prevailed . . . the tyrant has fallen, and those who are in Me are free.”

Since that finishing work on the cross was completed, there continue to be pockets of resistance in this world. Though freedom has been won, the dismantled old regime of the flesh continues to make futile attempts at destroying the liberty which Christ fought for and won. The defeated demonic insurgents persist in their guerilla warfare against those who have been liberated in Christ by infiltrating the church walls disguised as truth-tellers—wolves in sheep’s clothing. Even though the salvation work is finished, our remaining days in this world will not be pain-free. So let us take comfort from Peter’s words, that, while we are being attacked by the enemy, we are being perfected by the Lord. For, “after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you” (1 Pet. 5:10).

Continue to be freedom-fighters who in love relentlessly destroy “speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God,” and take “every thought captive to the obedience of Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5).

Justin Culbertson
Berachah Bible Church