Blessed Are The Pure In Heart

     

As a former Hollywood publicist, it was my duty to showcase my clients who normally were famous celebrities, sports personalities and elected officials in the most professional manner possible. A good publicist (and a good journalists) hopefully never inject themselves into the story, nor publish anything about them, unless it's absolutely required (and there are circumstances of such). I have always believed in that edict and pretty much followed the script.

I had many close friends who chided me because I always avoided publicity and mostly gave credit to others for many of my 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 harangued); 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 (academic, experience, positional status) as opposed to what the writer is conveying. This is changing fast due to the Internet and many heretofore people no one has ever heard, are writing books and articles that make more sense than established authors and journalist. This is great!

The problem of credibility not only looms largely in the political, literary and institutions of academia, it embarrassingly thrives more so in the theological community, one where few authors are considered credible, whether speaking or writing about the church, the Bible or anything theological unless they have attended Bible College, seminary or completed graduate school work at a major theological seminary or even famous educational institutions such as Harvard, Princeton, Yale, et al.

Unfortunately, many overzealous 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 biblical documented books with verifiable evidence to back their theories.

Hal Lindsey


John Hagee


Tim LaHaye & Jerry Jenkins

Many such books actually have inundated and skewed southward the faith of many believers and have actually hoodwinked the Christian community and its 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 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 3-4:

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. 4 They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. 5 But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, and discharge all the duties of your ministry.

Unbeknown 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, the learned and the intellectuals, 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. "



Joe interviews Dolores Huerta, co-founder with
Cesar Chavez of the United Farm workers Union

I thank God for the opportunity and the skill to fight and advocate for the rights of the lowly, the downtrodden, the infirm, and those maligned and slandered for being different than the haughty elite and inheritance-privileged. And when the time comes for God to provide the Holy Spirit-powered voices of these nameless few to speak forth His true will to humanity, I pray He will honor me with the privilege to be among their humble ranks!


Joe Ortiz is the author of The End Times Passover and Why Christians Will Suffer Great Tribulation (Author House), two books that etymologically challenge the premillennial dispensation, Pre-Tribulation Rapture and the Left Behind doctrines. The End Times Passover