Blessed Are The Pure of Heart!

     As a former Hollywood publicist, it was my duty to showcase my clients who were famous celebrities, sports personalities and elected officials. A good publicist (and a good journalist) hopefully never inject themselves into the story, nor publish anything about themselves. I have always believed in that edict and pretty much followed the script.
     I had many close friends who chided me because I avoided publicity and mostly gave credit to others for many community and professional achievements. I told them heaping credit on me is just not my style. I also told them that a great man once told me that the most successful people in the world are those who work hard to get the job done and worry not about who gets the credit. And, that’s worked very well with me throughout my adult and writing career.
     My actual goals with this blog and the various articles I write is to advocate for the little guys, such as the entire maligned immigrant community (whether legal or not, according to many haranguers), the homeless, infirmed, imprisoned (falsely accused and convicted) and today’s troubled youth, who are experiencing much more trauma (through technology and modernity) than we did as kids.
     However, as an Internet pundit and blogger, my name is obviously attached to the stories I write along with some biographical information that needs to be mentioned, if for no other reason than to let the readers know who is writing the columns and why they should be viewed with any credibility. It’s unfortunate that this aspect is required by most credible media. Even book publishers decide who gets published based on their accomplishments as opposed to what the writer is saying. This is changing fast due to the Internet and many heretofore people no one has ever heard of who are writing books and articles that make more sense than established authors and journalist. This is great!
     However, the problem of credibility not only looms large in the political, literary and institutions of academia, it embarrassingly thrives more so in the theological community, one where few authors are considered credible speaking or writing about the church, the Bible or anything theological unless they have attended Bible College, seminary or completed graduate school work at major theological or even famous educational institutions such as Harvard, Princeton, Yale, et al).
     Unfortunately, many over zealous authors (mostly self-proclaimed prophecy experts) dominate Christian publishing houses and on the Internet with tomes that are based mostly on speculation rather than producing highly researched and biblically documented books with verifiable evidence to back their theories.

John Hagee

Hal Lindsey

Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins

     Many such books actually have inundated and have hoodwinked the Christian literary world with the likes of Tim LaHaye’s Left Behind series, Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth, and other books written primarily by premillennial dispensationalists such as John Hagee, Jerry Jenkins, Mike Evans, Tommy Ice and many other Christian Zionism-oriented authors. Yes, some of these authors have attended seminaries and Bible colleges, but are still found lacking biblical (knowledge and) credibility; but, unfortunately they have struck a responsive chord with their audience who seek a soothing and ear-titillating Gospel that was prophesied in 2 Timothy 4 3-5:

     For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine, instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. 4They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. 5But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, and discharge all the duties of your ministry, (2 Timothy 4:3-5, NIV)

     Unbeknownst to these self-proclaimed prophets of peace, safety and Rapture rescue, God is raising up a unique group of people that will amaze and trump the ersatz biblical and political messages that emanate from the rich and famous religious community, the intellectuals and their benefactors, the powerful and the mighty. These will be a group of people with no names, no titles, no degrees, no certificates nor letters of academic authority other than God’s blessings and power. Many of these faithful may actual come from the aforementioned individuals I mentioned earlier (the maligned and slandered). These are they who in the Gospel of Matthew 5:5-8 are called “the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”
     One of my all-time favorite authors, A.W. Tozer, summed it up best in his book, The Dwelling Place of God, pages 96 and 97, when he stated:
    
     “We have but to become acquainted with, or even listen to, the big names of our times to discover how wretchedly inferior most of them are. Many appear to have arrived at their present eminence by pull, brass, nerve, gall and lucky accident. We turn away from them sick to our stomach and wonder for a discouraged moment if this is the best the human race can produce. But we gain our self-possession again by the simple expedient of recalling some of the plain men we know, who live unheralded and unsung, and who are made of stuff infinitely finer than the hoarse-voiced braggarts who occupy too many of the highest offices in the land. . . .

     . . . the church also suffers from this evil notion. Christians have fallen into the habit of accepting the noisiest and most notorious among them as the best and the greatest. They too have learned to equate popularity with excellence, and in open defiance of the Sermon on the Mount they have given their approval not to the meek but to the self-assertive; not to the mourner but to the self-assured; not to the pure in heart who see God but to the publicity hunter who seeks headlines. “

     The Bible speaks of the positional status in the Kingdom of God that will be granted to the disciples of Jesus, many of them receiving higher ones than others. The positions will be granted not on the quantity of their works (for Jesus after they chose to follow Him), but for their faithfulness in the few things that He requested of His disciples.
     I thank God for the opportunity to advocate for the rights of the lowly, the downtrodden, the infirmed, and those maligned and slandered for being humble, contrite, and grateful for grace, more so than the haughty elite and inheritance-privileged, and many of those who call themselves "Christian" who feel their publicly-renowned status has earned them extra points with God. Many of them who will enter the kingdom of God (by the skin of their chinny chin chin), will be amazed at the thousands of unknown disciples who will be seated on thrones closer to God than they.

    
     I can already hear some of the renowned, famous, so-called Christian leaders even now, evangelists and authors who had over a million followers, a throng of fans buying their prophecy books, who attended their humongous revival meetings in packed out auditoriums, as they mumble quietly to themselves, as they look upon their works with pride, believing somehow that they will be rewarded greatly and will even be seated next to Christ: "I ask you, my fellow Christians, are not my efforts worthy of laudatory note?"
     One of his fellow assistants next to him, who knows the truth about the scriptural compromises that the minister chose, as he looks at his boss' prideful grin, replies in his own mumbled thought, "Hey, dude, we should be grateful we will even make it!"

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