A Story of Good News
Job 29:12-13 “I rescued the poor who cried for help, and the fatherless who had none to assist him. The man who was dying blessed me, and I made the widow’s heart to sing.”

I remember at Annual Conference in 2010, that I was excited to hear about a new ministry to bring free prescription drugs to the poor. Many persons I have served in the church have been in a very tight spot regarding prescription costs. This is a need that I feel the church must find creative ways to address.

The Charitable Pharmacy, located in Columbus, Ohio, serves about 450 patients a month with personal interviews with a pharmacy worker and free prescriptions. We have a commissioned United Methodist Missionary, Mariellyn Dunlap, working there, and it is hoped by those involved with this work that this ministry can be duplicated in other parts of Ohio.

Our church has budgeted to give Mariellyn some monetary annual support, and we plan to welcome her to our Mission Fair on March 27. Consequently, I took time to visit there this week. I was given the ‘grand tour’ of the ‘actually quite modest’ facility. I was impressed by the dedication to using every resource and available space to accomplish the mission. Mariellyn is excited about helping to put together a new way of serving the needy. Pharmacist Allan Zaenger spoke to me for awhile to say that he is proud that the clients don’t just get a bottle of pills, but they get an evaluation by a pharmacist, and help with understanding the medicines they are taking. He and Mariellyn are sure that the charitable Pharmacy fills an unmet need in Columbus, where there is almost no other place to get a prescription filled if you don’t have the money to pay for it. They are continuously getting the word out to organizations that can help support this work, and rounding up volunteers, such as the 5th-year pharmacy students to help sort donations of medicines.

I know this is a change from my usual style of blog, but I thought you would like to hear about something that God is doing in our own state, through people who have been open to his call.

In Jesus,

Pastor Harley

Annual Reading List 2010

Welcome to the Pastor's Annual Reading List. Reading is a Spiritual Discipline for me, that I use each year to grow personally,to relax, to wrestle with important questions, and inform my preaching. Have fun!

comments can be sent to my email address, revharleywheeler@hotmail.com

Pastor’s Annual Reading List Pastor Harley Wheeler
February 2010-January 2011 Thompson UMC, Thompson, Ohio

Biblical Studies/Theology
Spiritual Authority – Watchman Nee
The Bondage of the Will – Martin Luther
The Death of the Messiah Volume 2 – Raymond Brown
Abraham – Bruce Feiler
Sermons of John Donne – edited by Theodore Gil
Sacred Songs from the Byzantine Pulpit – St. Romanos the Melodist
On the Life on Christ - St. Romanos the Melodist
The Works of John Wesley, Volume 1, Sermons 1-33
Outside the Gate – Roy I. Sano
The Poems of St. John of The Cross - translated by John Frederick Nims
God’s Secretaries, The Making of the King James Bible – Adam Nicolson
The Apochrypha
The Cotton Patch Version of Paul’s Epistles – Clarence Jordan
Biblical Expositions on Ephesians 1:3-6 – Stephen Manley
The Bible
God’s Word, Scripture, Tradition, Office – Joseph Ratzinger
The Temple of Jerusalem – Andre Parrot
Interpretations of Poetry and Religion – George Santayana
Wisdom in Israel – Gerhard Von Rad
John Wesley’s A Plain Account of Christian Perfection – annotated by Mark K. Olson
The Screwtape Letters – C.S. Lewis
Letters and Papers from Prison – Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The Book of Ruth, Commentary – Robert L. Hubbard
A Rumor of Angels – Peter L. Berger
The Psalms

Current Christian Thought: Apologetics, Ministry, Sermons and Devotional Literature
The Whimsical Christian – Dorothy Sayers
A Year With the Psalms – Eugene H. Peterson
The Gospel According to Tolkien – Ralph C. Wood
The Purpose- Driven Life – Rick Warren
Tell it to the Church – Buzzard Eck
Simply Christian – N.T. Wright
Inside Convoy of Hope’s Response to the Haiti Earthquake – Kirk Noonan
The Five Love Languages – Gary Chapman
Spiritual Entrepeneurs – Michael Slaughter
Respectable Sins – Jerry Bridges
Miracle in Darien – Bob Slosser
The Social Principles of the United Methodist Church
Thy Kingdom Come – Clayton Murray Westley
How to Reach Baby Boomers – William Easum
The Gifts of Christmas – Rachel Hartman
Wayfaring – Alan Jacobs
The Call to Action Steering Committee Report (& appendices)- UMC



Classics, Period and Curiosity Literature
Little Women – Louisa May Alcott
Little Men – Louisa May Alcott
Through the Looking Glass – Lewis Carroll
Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson
Aesop’s Fables
Jo’s Boys – Louisa May Alcott
Twice Told Tales – Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien
Cancer Ward – Alexander Solzhenitzen
Diaries 1910-1913 - Franz Kafka
Morgoth’s Ring – J.R.R. Tolkien
The Metamorphoses – Franz Kafka
The Revolt of Angels – Anatole France
Lenin in Zurich – Alexander Solzhenitzen
A Little Hero – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Across the Miles – L.M. Montgomery
The Castle – Franz Kafka
Eight Plays From the Spanish Golden Age – translated by Walter Starkie
The Orestian Trilogy –Aeschylus
“The Doctor’s Dilemma “– George Bernard Shaw
An Old- Fashioned Girl – Louisa May Alcott
Farmer Giles of Ham – J.R.R. Tolkien
Almayer’s Folly – Joseph Conrad
Among the Shadows – L.M. Montgomery
Men and Women of Deep Piety – Clare McLeister
Cyrano De Begerac – Edmond Rostand
The Smith of Wotten Major – J.R.R. Tolkien
The Celebrated Jumping Frog and other Stories – Mark Twain
The Posessed – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Habit of Being – Flannery O’ Conner
Letter to His Father – Franz Kafka
The Violent Bear it Away – Flannery O’ Conner
A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
The Aenied – Virgil
The House at Pooh Corner – A.A. Milne
Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
Stung with Love – Sappho
The Satires, Epigrams and Verse Letters of John Donne - edited by W. Milgate
Billy Budd – Herman Melville
God’s Minute – L.M. Carr





Contemporary Authors, Fiction, Humor, and drama
The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
“He That Should Come’ – Dorothy Sayers
“The Devil to Pay’ – Dorothy Sayers
“Hamlet, Prince of Denmark” – Shakespeare
Eaters of the Dead – Michael Crichton
The Painted Drum – Louise Erdrich
The Investigations of Quentin Nickles – John Richard Wright
Dance of the Happy Shades – Alice Munro
“The Tragedy of Macbeth” – Shakespeare
The Rug Merchant – Meg Mullins
The Flight of the Phoenix – Elleston Trevor
The Gold Bat and other School Stories – P.G. Wodehouse
Dave Berry Slept Here! – Dave Berry
Bedknobs and Broomsticks – Mary Norton
I’ll Be Mature When I’m Dead – Dave Berry
Escape to Witch Mountain, Return from Witch Mountain – Aleckzander Key
The Harry Potter Series – J. K. Rowling
The Best of Saki – Hector Hugh Munro
Do Butlers Burgle Banks? – P. G. Wodehouse
Too Much Happiness – Alice Munro
The Paranoid’s Pocket Guide – Cameron Tuttle
Friendship, Hateship Courtship, Loveship, Marriage – Alice Munro
The Pearl – John Steinbeck
The Messiah of Morris Avenue – Tony Hengra
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
The Compleate Werewolf and other stories – Livio Fanzaga
Meet Mr. Mulliner – P.G. Wodehouse
Young Men in Spats – P.G. Wodehouse
Titus Groan – Mervyn Peake
Lineage and other stories – Bo Lozoff
The Nine Tailors – Dorothy Sayers
Incarceron – Catherine Fisher

Biography, History, Sciences, Social Science, Philosophy, and Politics
Flags of Our Fathers – James Bradley
Journals and other Documents on the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus
Over the Edge of the World – Laurence Bergreen
When Hell Was in Session – Jeremiah Denton
Victorian America – 1876-1915 – Thomas J. Schlaeth
Islamic Imperialism – Efraim Karsh
To Try Men’s Souls – Newt Gingrich and William Forsteler
Forty Studies that Changed Psychology – Roger R. Hock
Hieronymus Bosch – Walter Bosing
The Murder of King Tut – James Patterson
The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat – Oliver Sacks
Ghost Soldiers – Hampton Sides
Beyond Freedom and Dignity – B. F. Skinner
Crazy Bosses – Stanley Bing
Sun Tzu Was a Sissy – Stanley Bing
Western Europe in the Middle Ages – Joseph R. Strayer
Space, Time, Infinity – James S. Trefil
Bears of the World – Terry Domino
Captured by Indians – Mary Rowlandson
Unhappy, Far-off Things – Lord Dunsany
The Greatest Generation – Tom Brokaw
Into the Wild – Jon Krakauer


Poetry
Selected Poems – Christina Rosetti
“A Shropshire Lad” – A. E. Houseman
Collected Poems – A. E. Houseman
The Right Madness on Skye – Richard Hugo
A Hundred Verses From Old Japan – translated by William Porter
The Dream Keeper and other Poems – Langston Hughes
Epistle to a Godson and Other Poems – W.H. Auden
A Timbered Choir – Wendell Berry
Renascence and other poems – Edna St. Vincent Millay
Four Quartets – T.S. Eliot
Of Quarks, Quasars and other Quirks – collected by S. & J. Brewton and J. B. Blackburn
31 Letters and 13 Dreams – Richard Hugo
88 Poems – Ernest Hemingway
“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” – Samuel Coleridge Taylor, illus. Gustave Dore`


Periodicals:
Each Issue of: “Good News”,”Scientific American”,” The Interpreter”,” East Ohio Joining Hands”,” “The City”(Houston Baptist University),”HSLDA Newsletter” ,“First Things”,” Lifewatch Journal” ”The Catalyst” from AFTE , The Kingdom Connection, Voice of the martyrs Newsletter, and American Heritage
Individual Issues of: Wired, May 2009, and Astronomy, July, 2010 & November 2010

Pastor's Reading List 2009

Reading for me is a spiritual discipline, and a way to keep fresh. It is also an obsession. So this is my reading from Feb. 2009 through Jan. 2010.


Pastor’s Annual Reading List Pastor Harley Wheeler
February 2009-January 2010 Thompson UMC, Thompson, Ohio

Biblical Studies/Theology
The Bible – (read straight through)
Zephaniah Commentaries(short) by David W. Baker, S.L. Edgar, and Peter C. Craigie
The Narrative Unity of Luke-Acts Vol. 1 – Robert Tannehill
Responsible Grace – Randy L. Maddox
Ancient Aramaic and Hebrew Letters 2nd ed.– James A. Lindenberger
Risen Indeed – G.D. Yarnold
The Paranoid Prophet (on Jonah)– William Backus
The Word Made Strange – John Milbank
Commentary on Zephaniah – John Calvin
The Meaning of Revelation – H. Richard Niebuhr
Commentary on Ephesians Chapters 1-3 – Markus Barth
Commentary on Ephesians Chapters 4-6 – Markus Barth
The Imitation of Christ – Thomas A Kempis
An Introduction to the New Testament – Raymond Brown
The Last Days According to Jesus – R.C. Sproul
The Spiritual Man – Watchman Nee
Honor, Patronage, Kinship and Purity, Unlocking New Testament Culture – David DeSilva
Lectures on Galatians 1-4 – Martin Luther
The Golden Bough – James George Frazer
Works of John Wesley Vol. 26 Letters II 1740-1755 – John Wesley
The Birth of the Messiah - Raymond Brown
Works of John Wesley Vol. 24 Journals and Diaries VII 1787-1791 – John Wesley
Song of Songs Commentary and Interpretation - Watchman Nee



Current Christian Thought: Apologetics, Ministry, Sermons and Devotional Literature
Dinner With a Perfect Stranger – David Gregory
Christians in Japan – Carolyn Bourn Francis and John Masaki Nakajima
The Passion Pilgrimage - Erwin Kurth
Love Yourself – Walter Trobish
Love and Respect – Emerson Eggerichs
The Cherry Log Sermons – Fred Craddock
A Portrait of Jesus – Joseph Girzone
Love in a Fearful Land – Henri Nouwen
The Miracle of Easter – sermons ed. by Floyd Thatcher
Memory and Identity – Pope John Paul II
History and Christianity – John Warwick Montgomery
A Layman Looks at the Love of God – W. Phillip Keller
The Celtic Way of Evangelism – George C. Hunter III
Steps to Christ – Ellen G. White
Is Believing in God Irrational? – Amy Orr
The Right Questions – Phillip E. Johnson
Widening the Horizons – Charles Gerkin
Telling the Truth; the Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy and Fairy Tale– Frederick Beuchner
The Pastor’s Wife – Sabina Wurmbrand
Walking With God – W. Phillip Keller
Mark My Words – Kenneth L. Pike
Solving Marriage Problems – Jay Adams
From Forgiven to Forgiving – Jay Adams
Insight and Creativity in Christian Counseling – Jay Adams
Sticky Church – Larry Osborne
Lion and Lamb – Brennan Manning
The Seven last Words of Christ – Shane Stanford
Mission to the Headhunters – Frank and Marie Brown
Compassion - Chuck Swindoll
New Age Masquerade – Eric Buehrer
Please Give a Devotion – Amy Bolding
All of Grace – Charles Spurgeon
Prison Letters – Corrie Ten Boom
365 Windows – Halford Lucock
China Cry – Nora Lam
Daily Strength For Daily Needs – Mary W. Tilson
500 Things Your Sunday School Teacher Tried to Tell You – Arlen Price
If – Amy Carmichael

Classics, Period and Curiosity Literature
The Prince – Nicolo Machievelli
The Mabinogion – Welsh Mythological Stories
Metamorphoses - Ovid
The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien
The Odyssey - Homer
The Little House Series – Laura Ingalls Wilder
An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity – Johnathan Swift
Rainbows on the Road – Esther Forbes
The Iliad – Homer
The Fall – Albert Camus
Emma - Jane Austen
The House of the Dead – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
Tales and Plays of Robin Hood – Eleanor Skinner
Exile and Kingdom – Albert Camus
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
Life of Johnson – Macaulay
The Bhagavad Gita (Hindu Scriptures)
The Koran - Mohammed
The Book of Mormon – Joseph Smith
The Death of Ivan Ilytch – Leo Tolstoy
The Screwtape Letters – C.S. Lewis
Tales of Belkin and Other Writings – Pushkin
Samuel Johnson’s Insults – ed. by Jack Lynch
The Voyage of the Argo – Apollonius of Rhodes
The Tao Te Ching – Lao Tse
Father Sergius and Other Stories – Leo Tolstoy
The Art of War – Sun Tzu
The Grand Inquisitor – Dostoyevsky (with Critical Essays)
Merry Men and Other Stories – Robert Louis Stevenson
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson
Fifty-One Tales - Lord Dunsany
Time and the Gods – Lord Dunsany
Lord Jim – Joseph Conrad
A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
The Anne of Green Gables series – L.M. Montgomery
The Man Who Was Thursday – G.K. Chesterton
Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
Moralia - Plutarch

Contemporary Authors, Fiction, Humor and Drama
Shut-Eye for the Time Broker – Paul Di Filippo
Peter and the Starcatchers – Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson
Honey, the Carpet Needs Weeding – Martha Bolton
Lost City Radio – Daniel Alarcon’
Never Let Me Go – Kashuo Ishiguro
The Dilbert Future – Scott Adams
The Final Beast – Frederick Beuchner
The Mating Season – P.G. Wodehouse
Big Trouble - Dave Barry
A Far Country – Daniel Mason
The Uncommon Reader – Alan Bennett
A Wodehouse Bestiary – P.G. Wodehouse
The Bunnicula Series and Eat Your Poison, Dear – James Howie
The Stars Like Dust – Isaac Asimov
Dave Barry is from Mars and Venus – Dave Barry
The Prophet of Zongo Street – Mohammed Naseehu Ali
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie – Alan Bradley
The Chosen – Chaim Potok
The Dilbert Principle – Scott Adams
Invitation to a Beheading – Vladimir Nabokov
Dirk Gentley’s Holistic Detective Agency – Douglas Adams
The Secret of Lost Things – Sheridan Hay
Summer Crossing – Truman Capote
In the First Circle – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Ah, But Your Land is Beautiful – Alan Paton
The Poet and the Lunatics – G.K. Chesterton
Death Comes for the Archbishop – Willa Cather
The Annotated Innocence of Father Brown – G.K. Chesterton

Biography, History, Sciences, Social Science, Philosophy, Politics
Lord, He Went, Remembering William Hinson – Stanley R. Copeland
Not for Sale – Daniel Batstone
Population Control; Real Costs, Illusory Benefits – Steve Mosher
Finding the Love of Your Life – Neil Clark Warren
Homer’s the Iliad and the Odyssey, a Biography – Alberto Manguel
Infinite in All Directions – Freeman Dyson
A World Split Apart – Alexzander Solzhenitsyn
And there Was Light – Jacques Lusseryan
The Virtues - Peter Geach
Ethics – Deitrich Boenhoffer
Islam Unveiled – Abdullah Al- Araby
The Voice of the Master – Kahlil Gibran
Thoughts and Meditations – Kahlil Gibran
Frozen Fauna of the Mammoth Steppe – R. Dale Guthrie
Overcoming Life’s Disappointments – Rabbi Harold Kushner
Founding Father – Richard Brookhiser
Night – Elie Wiesel
Tears and Laughter – Kahlil Gibran
The Victors – Stephen Ambrose
The Faber Book of Science – Ed. By John Carey
The Oak and the Calf – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The Romantic Manifesto – Ayn Rand
The World of Herodotus – Aubrey de Selincourt
The Crimes of England – G.K. Chesterton
A Perfect Mess – Eric Abrahamson and David H. Freedman
Eugenics and Other Evils – G.K. Chesterton
The Professor and the Madman – Simon Winchester
You are the One You’ve been Waiting For – Richard Schwartz
The Gulag Archipelago – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Written in Secret – The Nobel Prize Lecture – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Private Lies – Frank Pitman
Why Marriages Succeed or Fail – John Gottman
The Presence of Grace – Flannery O’Conner
As I Lay Dying – Richard John Neuhaus

Poetry
Sonnets from the Portuguese – Elizabeth Barret-Browning
Fifty Poems – Emily Dickinson
Song of Myself – Walt Whitman
Not Yet the Dodo – Noel Coward
The Princess – Alfred Lord Tennyson
In Memoriam – Alfred Lord Tennyson
Collected Poems - Alfred Lord Tennyson
A Penny Saved is Impossible – Ogden Nash
The Sonnets, Venus and Adonis, the Rape of Lucrece and other poems – William Shakespeare
Eugene Onegin – Pushkin
Sigurd and Gudrun – J.R.R. Tolkien
Narrative, Lyric and Polemic Verse – Pushkin
Chesterton’s Early Poetry and Greybeards at Play – G.K. Chesterton
The Ballad of the White Horse – G.K. Chesterton
The Poet’s Corner – ed. By John Lithgrow


Periodicals:
Each Issue of: “Good News”,”Scientific American”,” The Interpreter”,” East Ohio Joining Hands”,” “The City”(Houston Baptist University),”HSLDA Newsletter”,” Lifewatch Journal” ”The Catalyst” from AFTE , The Kingdom Connection, OCC Legislative Brief

Individual Issues of: Astronomy Magazine, April and July 2009, Zone 3 Spring/fall 2004 vol. XIX No.s 1&2 The Catholic World Report –Feb 09

Remember Twenty Things

Remember Twenty Things

I recently finished reading the Bible through again and Thought I would share some of the things that I learned.

This may not come as good news to you who are seeking to know the scriptures better, but the Bible is a LOT easier to read on the sixth or seventh time through. You are familiar with the narrative line and the shifts in emphasis do not puzzle you so much when you go from book to book. You are able to grasp the sweep of the story better, you are more familiar with the vocabulary, the style of Paul and the Gospels, the cadence of the prophets and the key events.

You simply have to be humble, and admit that you need a working familiarity with certain key concepts and events in Scripture. This is not a project for the casual inquirer, this knowing God through His Word. You ought to read about and reflect on the creation, the creation of man in His image, the fall from grace, the judgment under the flood, the call of Abraham, the exodus, the establishment of tabernacle worship, the kingship in David, the temple under Solomon, the loss of the kingdom and destruction of Jerusalem, the return of the exiles, the sudden announcement of the messiah, the cross, the resurrection, the ascension, the founding of the church as the community of the faithful on earth, the lively hope of heaven that saturates the new testament, and the proclamation of final victory in revelation. These are twenty things. Can we not contemplate and hold as pivotal truths twenty ideas? Communicators would teach that messengers need to present one clear idea, or at the most, three points, but we are not trying to make a speech, we are trying to have as fruitful relationship with our Creator. You could easily think of twenty important facets to a long friendship, or to your relationship with your wife. In the same way, these pivotal, revelatory events present truth about God that guides us into a more meaningful relationship with him.

Let me urge you to read, read, and read, the scriptures. Only in this way can you uncover its rich layers of meaning. You will see for yourself the connection between the blood of the sacrifice in Leviticus and the blood shed on the cross. You will experience the despairing story of the Kingdoms in the light of the triumphant story of the Revelation. You can experience in the action of reading our fall from paradise, and our restoration in the last chapters.

Lastly, I am a child of a doubtful age, and have heard all the questions cast upon the scriptures. Reading the actual scriptures is the best way to deal with those questions.

You have the time for this. You have, in fact, all the time that there is.

See you at the throne!

Pastor Harley

Commanded to Love, in Hope of Respect

Commanded to Love, in Hope of Respect
I skipped ahead in my study in Ephesians to Paul’s words in chapter 5 on husbands and wives. I was struck by the verse 33, which in the NIV reads, “However, each one of you must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.”
This verse generates a lot of questions in ministry because of people's unending search for answers regarding marriage, and also Dr. Emerson Eggerichs’ successful book, Love and Respect. The book claims that a neglected truth about marriage is that women need love messages from their husbands, and men need to hear that their wives respect them.
Whatever the truth or helpfulness of that insight, a close look at 5:33 turns up that the word translated ‘must respect, ’ ( based on Greek phobos, or fear), is in the passive voice. This is NOT reflected in most translations, and, amusingly, overlooked entirely by Dr. Eggerichs.
If respect is a passive verb, then we ought to read this,.. ‘may she be enabled to respect her husband.’ I am hoping some of you could supply your own understanding of the verse, but it is definitely not ‘must respect.’ The husband is commanded to love, three times in this section, and we see that this love is an outgrowth of the presence of Christ filling his whole field of view. We may understand that the respect is the hoped for fruit of a Christ-saturated marriage.
Your thoughts?

Pastor Harley

Known Through You

Ephesians 3:10 “His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the ruler and authorities in the heavenly realms”
Leading up to this verse, Paul has been relating all that God has done for us in Jesus. We are made alive in Him (2:5), He has reconciled us to God through the cross, (2:16) made us one in His Peace (2:15) and made us a dwelling in which God lives by His Spirit (2:22).
Next, he announces that God will use us to make His wisdom known. The Principalities and Powers in the Heavenlies will know the manifold wisdom of God, through,(Grk. ‘dia’),the Church.
Whether the principalities and powers are supposed to be earthly powers, human systems of control, power and care, or the spiritual powers that oppose God need not be decided to get the force of this verse. We may safely guess that they are not exclusive of each other. We need however, to expose ourselves to the challenge that is presented to us. God wants to make his manifold (abundant and various) wisdom concerning all that He has been doing in Jesus , KNOWN to the Powers through the agency of us, the church. The only verb in this verse is make known. The impact of Jesus upon the Powers will be made known through us. The Greek word for known, gnorizo, is not the mere sense of realizing, as in “Yeah, I’m starting to see that”, it is an experiential certainty. It is the kind of realization that undeniably grips you, it is unmistakable, and it has the impact and suddenness of revelation.
Your church; Are the powers being slapped in the face with your witness? Has the reality of God dwelling in you by His Spirit been a stunning revelation to sinners? Is your community seeing new possibilities arising because it is not you that lives, but Christ lives within you? Are there whole areas of satanic domination that are suddenly overthrown with light and freedom because of the one life in Christ that we now share? These are clearly the expectations that Paul has for a people newly alive in Jesus, and this is what is possible for us if we go forward in His strength.
Pastor Harley

The Mermaid and the Soul

The Mermaid and the Soul

Genesis 1:27 “So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female he created them.”

In the midst of our genuine concern over the faltering economy and the peculiar ideas in government to stimulate the same, Christians should not forget that a new president means a new set of official policies on the value of human life.
President Obama is expected to soon set aside bans on using federal money to create (and destroy) human embryos for stem cell research. He has also allowed by executive order, U.S. money to flow to international groups that promote abortion. These are not surprising actions, they are exactly what he promised, during campaign that he would do as soon as he took office.
It is important to consider, in light of these events, that human beings are made in the Image of God. Classical, orthodox Christianity has understood this to mean, in part, that humans have a soul; a transcendent, non-material essence that is more than the body that we see. That persons possess an immortal soul is just one reason why I feel that destroying unborn life is a grave evil.
Bioethicist Daniel Dennett doesn’t see life this way. He supports less restrictions on stem cell research and abortion, has mocked the idea of a human soul, saying that it is a quaint holdover from mere superstitious times; like a belief in mermaids.
Interesting. Great scientists of the previous centuries never did much believe in mermaids, but nearly all of them felt that it was reasonable to believe that human beings have souls. The evidence for your soul is clear. We act and feel and at the same time observe ourselves acting and feeling. This experience of being one with and yet more than ourselves is common to everybody and is the universal proof of the soul. It cannot even be an illusion, for if so, who can we say is being fooled?
I need only here to note that if biotechnology is practiced without reference to moral limits based on respect for the image of God in human life, it will easily within the next century create the mermaid, the minotaur, the batboy and a score of other carnival sideshows. But it will never be able to create a soul.
Be informed, speak out, and be Pro-Life!

Yours in Jesus
Pastor Harley

Pastor Harley's Annual Reading list

Friends,
Reading and Study for me is a Spiritual Discipline, and the practice informs my preaching and ministry. Over the years, I have learned to read with Jesus, making a book a three way dialogue between the Lord, the author and myself.
One of the delightful things about reading as a spiritual exercise, is that you can indulge in a little bean counting and record keeping, so I have annual reading lists going back several years.
Below is my record from 2008.

You are invited to comment!

Pastor’s Annual Reading List Pastor Harley Wheeler
February 2008-January 2009 Thompson UMC, Thompson, Ohio


Biblical Studies:
The Bible (all of it)
Commentary on Proverbs and Ecclesiastes – R.B.Y. Scott
Endings – Morna Hooker
The Targum or Chaldee Paraphrase of the Song of Songs ed. Adam Clarke
Song of Songs Commentary – Marvin Pope
The Psalms in Israel’s Worship Vol.s I & II - Sigmund Monwinckel
How to Study the Bible – James L. Kugel
Biblical Interpretations in Preaching – Gerhard Von Rad
The Inspiration and Authority of Scripture – Rene’ Pache
The Book of Isaiah 1-39, Commentary – John N. Oswalt
The Book of Isaiah 40-66, Commentary, John N. Oswalt
On the Reliability of the Old Testament – K.A. Kitchener
The Book of the Prophet Ezekiel, Commentary – Keith W. Carley
Commentary on the Letter to the Ephesians – William Barclay
Commentary on the Letter to the Galatians – William Barclay
Jesus and the Eyewitnesses – Richard Bauckham
The Documentary Hypothesis – Umberto Cassuto
Ancient Texts for New Testament Studies – Craig Evans
Special Study in Zephaniah
Special Study in Ephesians 2



Classic Christian Authors:
The Works of John Wesley Vol. III, Sermons 71-114
The Works of John Wesley Vol.XI, The Appeals
The Divine Comedy – Dante Alighieri
The Confessions – St. Augustine
Paradise Lost – John Milton
Paradise Regained – John Milton
The Selected Prose of John Milton ed. Cleanth Brooks
The Works of John Wesley Vol.IV, Sermons 115-151
Pensees’- Blaise Pascal




Current Christian Thought, Apologetics, Ministry, Sermons:
Guide To Christian Apologetics – Doug Powell
“Journal of Theology”, 2007 (Methodist Theological School in Ohio and United Seminary)
Faith Matters – Steve Klapp, Kristen Leverton, Angela Zizak of Christian Community
The Gospel of Life – John Paul II
Unleashing the Scriptures – Stanley Hauerwas
How to Develop a Tithing Church – Charlie Shedd
Coming Home – Frank Ramirez, (Christmas sermons on Haggai)
The Spirituality of the Cross – Gene Edward Keith Jr.
Pascal and Theology – Jan Miel
Three Simple Rules – Bishop Rueben Job
What’s So great About Christianity? – Dinesh D’Souza
Don’t Waste Your Life – John Piper
A Matter of Days – Hugh Ross
God and the Astronomers – Robert Jastrow
The Wealth Conundrum – Ralph Doudera
Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White – Adam Hamilton
Environmental Stewardship in the Judeo-Christian Tradition – The Acton Institute
What Wives Wish Their Husbands Knew about Women – Dr. James Dobson
Matthew 27D, Sermons – Dr. Stephen Manley
Acts Chapter 2, Sermons – Dr. Stephen Manley
The New Consecration Sunday – Herb Miller
90 Minutes in Heaven – Don Piper
Women in Islam – P. Newton & M. Rafiqul Hazz
Faith and Reason; The Philosophy of Religion – Peter Kreeft
Suspicion and Faith – Marion Westphal
The Meaning of Jesus – Marcus Borg & N.T. Wright




Modern Christian Authors:
The Man Born to be King – Dorothy Sayer (drama)
Jesus Christ and Mythology – Rudolf Bultmann
The Tanglewood’s Secret – Patricia St. John
The Defendant – G.K. Chesterton
The Narnian – Alan Jacobs
Raids on The Unspeakable – Thomas Merton
The Shack – William Young
Full Pardon – Harry L. Greene
Christ the Lord, The Road to Cana – Anne Rice
They Found the Secret – V. Raymond Edman
How to Cope With Ten of Life’s Toughest Problems – Norman Vincent Peale
Inspiration From the Letters of Padre Pio, ed. Fr.Raniero Cantalamessa
First Light – Sue Monk Kidd
The Chronicles of Narnia – C.S. Lewis
Temptation and Triumph – Ernest S. Williams
Candles in the Dark – Amy Carmichael
Come Unto Me – James P. Gillo, M.D.
Fiction from Tegel Prison – Deitrich Boenhoffer
When You Rise Up – R.C. Sproul
The Illustrated London News 1914-1916(columns) – G.K. Chesterton
The Illustrated London News 1920-1922(columns) – G.K. Chesterton
The Heavenly Man – Brother Yun
The Light of Christmas – ed. Frances Bentano
Columns Illustrated London News, 1922, Hillaire Belloc


Classics, Period, and Curiousity Literature :
The Lord of The Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien
Uncle’s Dream – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Epic of Gilgamesh – trans. Stephen Mitchell
A Voyage to Arcturus – David Lyndsey
50 Great Essays – ed. Houston Peterson
“The Suppliant Maidens,” “Persians,” Prometheus Bound,”” Seven Against Thebes” - Aeschylus (drama)
The Gitagovinda, or The Song of Jaya Deva(Hindu texts)ed. Adam Clarke
Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass – Lewis Carrol
“Pygmalion” – Bernard Shaw (drama)
The Eternal Husband – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“A Winter’s Tale” – William Shakespeare (drama)
The Double – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“A Midsummer Night’s Dream” – William Shakespeare (drama)
The Friend of the Family – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
In the Midst of Life – Ambrose Bierce
A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
The Homecoming of Beornth – trans. And intro by J.R. R. Tolkien
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, Sir Orfeo - trans. And intro by J.R. R. Tolkien
A Murder, A Mystery, and a Marriage – Mark Twain
Short Fiction of the 17th Century – ed. Charles C. Mish
The Life of Our Lord – Charles Dickens
The Death of Arthur – Sir Thomas Mallory
The Life and Morals of Jesus – Thomas Jefferson
Lilith – George MacDonald
A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
The Pickwick Papers – Charles Dickens
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Cry, The Beloved Country – Alan Paton
Heidi – Johanna Spyri
I Dare You! – William Danforth
When You Call on the Sick – Russell Dicks
A Pocket Story of John Wesley – Charles A. Sauer




Contemporary Authors, Fiction, Humor and Drama:
The Children of Hurin – J.R.R. Tolkien
The Tolkien Reader – J.R.R. Tolkien
“Ceasar and Cleopatra” – George Bernard Shaw (drama)
Thank You, Jeeves - P.G. Wodehouse
The Dante Club – Matthew Pearl
Guerilla – Lord Dunsany
The History of the Millenium(so far) – Dave Barry
More Letters from a Nut – Ted L. Nancy
The Henry Reed Series – Keith Robertson
Anthem - Aynn Rand
Humor of the American Cowboy – Stan Heig
Lavinia – Ursula K. LeGuin
Schott’s Original Miscellany – Ben Schott
The Birdman and the Lap Dancer – Eric Hanson
The Story Girl, The Golden Road – L.M. Montgomery
It Was a Dark and Stormy Night - The Best of the Bulver-Lytton Bad Writing Contest
The Portable Curmudgeon – ed. Jon Winokus
Armmageddon Revisted – Kurt Vonnegaut
Notebooks 1935-1942 – Albert Camus
“Rhinoceros” and other Plays” – Ionesco
Emily of New Moon, Emily Climbs, Emily’s Quest – L.M. Montgomery
Siddartha – Herman Hesse
The Martha in the Mirror – Justin Richards
Giraffe – J.M. Ledgard
“The Glass Menagerie” – Tennessee Williams(drama)
“Major Barbara” – George Bernard Shaw(drama)
The Adventures of Father Brown – G.K. Chesterton
Self Portrait – Kahlil Gibran
The Broken Wings – Kahlil Gibran
The Lump of Coal – Lemony Snickett
The Tales of Beedle the Bard – J. K. Rowling
The Atlas of Middle-Earth – Karen Wyth Fonstad
Island of the Aunts – Ella Ibbotsen
Slaughterhouse Five – Kurt Vonnegaut
She – H. Rider Haggard



Biography,History, Sciences, Social Science, Philosophy, Politics
The Rebel – Albert Camus
The Bottom Billion – Paul Collier
A Contract With The Earth – Newt Gingerich
What Jane Austen Ate, What Charles Dickens Knew – Daniel Pool
In Praise of Predjudice – Theodore Dalrymple
The World of the Huns – Otto J. Maenchen
The Mountain People – Colin Turnbull
Ethics Journal, July 2004 – University of Chicago Press (Symposium on Terrorism)
Imaginative Horizons – Vincent Crapanzano
Religious Literacy – Stephen Prothero
Decline of the English Murder and other Essays – George Orwell
Brighter Than a Thousand Suns – Robert Jungk
Thrace and the Thracians – Alexander Fol & Ivan Marazov
An Appeal to Reason – Nigel Lawson
The Rise of the Global Civil Society – Don Eberly
Coincidentally – George W. Rutler
Human Dignity and Bioethics – President’s Council on Bioethics
Godless – Ann Coulter
Culture Making – Andy Crouch
The Parakeet Handbook – Annette Wolton & Immanuel Birmelin
The Four Agreements – Don Miguel Ruiz
Ethical Issues in Marriage and Sexuality – lectures, Bioethics Seminar at Franciscan University of Steubenville



Poetry:
Collected Poems – John Donne
Bed Riddance – Ogden Nash
Gentlemen, the King – John Oxenham
Collected Short Poems – John Milton
The Classic Hundred Poems – ed. William Harmon


Periodicals:
Each Issue of: “Good News”,” Biblical Archaeology Review”,”Scientific American”,” The Interpreter”,” East Ohio Joining Hands”,”Asbury Herald”(Asbury Seminary), “The Table”(Ashland Seminary) ,”Panorama” (Pittsburgh Theological Seminary) “The City”(Houston Baptist University),”HSLDA Newsletter”,” Lifewatch Journal”,” Touchstone”,” First Things.”
Individual Issues of Astronomy Magazine, April and July 2008

Revealing Christmas

Revealing Christmas

“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is,and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.”

Revelation 1:8

“Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One; I was dead, and behold I am alive forever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hell.”

Revelation 1:18

The preaching that I prepared for December 11 and 18 was on the theme of ‘Revealing Christmas’ and was an attempt to highlight the Christmas story with certain texts in the Book of Revelation. (The end of Chapter 11 and the beginning of Chapter 12)

The good people at Thompson UMC and the angels who listen in the rafters would be the judges as to whether I acheived my goal or not. (They are both very charitable audiences)

The texts in chapter one, quoted above, also touch on the reality and ministry of Christ that the Christmas texts of Matthew one and Luke two reveal.

Jesus speaks in verse 8 and reveals himself as the Lord God. “Who was and who is, and who is to come, THE ALMIGHTY.” But verse 18 also claims the whole reality of the incarnation “ I was dead, and behold I am alive forevermore” There has to be a taking up of the life of man to achieve this death. God humbles himself indeed to become the one who died. He, in fact, has to become the one who was born, Emptying Himself of all but love and living sourced entirely by the Spirit. The manger is the beginning of the journey to the cross.

Praise be to God for His unimaginable Grace!

Pastor Harley Wheeler 12/23/2008

Read the Bible Through Again

Read the Bible Through Again

I am committed to the wisdom of careful, intense scrutiny of individual words and verses in Scripture. The Bible was carefully written and the Spirit expresses Himself in each line, and the whole of the Bible points out Christ and His Salvation. The more you study, the bigger Jesus gets in your life, and the closer you study the scriptures the more riches God reveals to you.

But………

There is advantage and meaning to be gained in reading through the whole Bible, reading large sections at once, and reading for the total effect gained as you pass from one book to another.

It is only embarrasing to be asked how many times you have read the whole Bible. Your response will sound either inadequate according to some legalistic standard, or, if the number is high enough, it cannot fail to sound like boasting.

I do know the correct answer to give if someone asks, “Pastor, I have read the Bible through (a certain number) times now, how many times should I read it all the way through?” The corect answer is;”Stop Counting.”

I finished reading the Bible through again, just days before my forty-eighth birthday (today). I have stopped counting, and I have some things to share today about what you can expect to gain by reading the whole Bible.

Some Books of the Bible are tailor-made in terms of length and focus to be read at one sitting, for totality of effect. Among these are Mark, Amos, Zechariah, Zephaniah, and of course, Ruth and Esther.

You always find that you have overlooked a book that suddenly resonates with themes that you have been studying. This year, I have resolved to go back and have a look at Zephaniah, I saw some intruiging stuff as I was on my way through.

With a reasonable note-taking system, you end up with a mini-concordance of verses that you want to save for later, and the preacher has a whole list of passages to go back to for preaching material.

You become more certain of things that you learned before. I have in these latter years maintained that the scriptures are not too hard for reading, common-sense rules work well to unpack meanings, and rarely is the truth of even the most out-of the-way passage hidden or lost. More confirmation of this truth is seen that when you read it all through again, you are more familiar with the material, you don’t stumble over passages that once slowed you down, and the revealed heart of God is more easily known to your soul.

I became more certain that the lenghty rendition of Law in the Pentatuech serves a real revelatory purpose and used the form of the scroll to good effect. (If you think Leviticus comes off as pointless and long –winded, how much text was given to you with your cell phone or your toaster, and how significant to your life was that? Will it last 4000 years?) I am also more certain that the Old Testament points to the Christ through the tutelage of the Law, and I see it in new ways.

On the other end of the Book, I am more certain that Revelation repeats in signs, the same events rather than a consecutive adventure of persecutions and judgements, but I am convinced I won’t come out with that sermon series anytime soon.

You may find these new things if you read the scriptures all the way through, they cannot be properly felt just reading small distinct bits, no matter how rewarding intense study may be.

In the middle of the Book, between the inexorable histories and the intense prophets, God’s people stop to sing 150 songs. (Psalms)

Proverbs tells a man how to live so that God will bless, and makes no bones about the solemn duty of man toward man and God, Ecclesiastes points out that this is all ending up in the grave, anyway, so its rather depressing, and then, Song of Songs laughs at both and tells you to enjoy the day with your beloved, (or your Beloved), and that love is stronger than death anyway, and it sees beyond the duties of everyday life to relationship.

The prophets crop up after our lengthy religious instructions and sacred history, like a Chorus of angelic voices to encourage and warn, and name the names of the rebellious bore God and people.

You read all of Isaiah’s first thirty-nine chapters and then come to: “Comfort, Comfort ye my people,…their hard sevice is ended…” and it feels like words addressed to your weary spirit.

In the Beginning Book you find the Tree of Life the Perfect Man, the Blood of the Sacrifice and the Bow of God. In the Last Book, you find, the Perfect Man, the Tree of Life, the Blood of the Sacrifice, and the Bow of God.

You experience the 3–fold repetiotion of Leviticus that expresses obedience: The Decree of God, How Moses Set About to Obey, and How the Same Work was Completed.

You experience the pace and passion of the prophets who point to Israel, then to Egypt, then to Judah, then to Babylon, then to the priests, then to the people, and then to Edom, and so on. The messages just keep coming, His kingdom is more insistent, and just must be proclaimed in more and more contexts and settings.

You feel in Judges the decay of the society that followed Moses from Egypt. In Judges, Samuel and Kings you begin to ask, “Who will save Israel?” and you begin to long to hear of the Messiah.

After all the Labors of God and the Passion of Christ and the Power displayed in the Resurrection, you finally find in Acts Chapter 2, something that happens in the church, that the prophet Amos is quoted as singing about it. You feel like you are present at a birth, and you are. I think it is the first time in the Bible that praise goes up for what is happening in God’s people.

You feel changes in focus. The gospels are different, they are all about Jesus, and don’t read like the rest. The Epistles are intense in their unfolding of the meaning of the Christ, and their concern to guide the new Church. Revelation wants to seize the whole world and declare that “the Kingdoms of this world have become the Kingdom of our God and of His Christ.”

Read it all again. Stop counting Be open to what God wants to show you.

Pastor Harley Wheeler

A Little Bible Study

Ephesians 2:14

“For He himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility” (NIV)

The verse says, by beginning with ‘for’ (greek;gar) , that the reason the ones who were far away have been brought near is Jesus, who is pointed out emphatically, by the use of ‘he, himself’, stressing that it is attention to Jesus that we should be paying, because He is our peace.

How is a person our peace? The verb tense for ‘is’ indicates that he is becoming our peace while the main action is occuring, which is the ‘breaking down’ of the dividing wall. The key action that is attributed to Christ in Ephesians is the Cross followed by the Resurrection Enthronement, and we have a new insight into this action as we see it as breaking what divides the Gentile and Jewish world, an action which makes Jesus to be peace for the Jew and for the Gentile.

I resist the idea sometimes put forward that all of Ephesians is about the present oneness of the Jewish and Gentile believers. This oneness is presented however, as a strong evidence of the decisive work that was done in the Cross and in the Resurection Enthronement, (2:6) which we participate in.

The central theme of Ephesians is that those previously dead in transgressions have been raised with Christ. This includes those dead because they could not fulfill the law of moses, and also those who, as gentiles were just as dead in trangressions and sins.

It was interesting to study this passage while I was reading in Acts 10 & 11, about the conversion opf Cornelious. Peter is well aware that both Jew and gentile are equally dead in the sinful nature, but the Gentile might easily be said to be in a more desperate case of morbidity, because they have also been removed far from hope. (Ephesians 2:12). They have not even a testimony to refer to of a God that saves the diusobedient.

So what should Peter say to the Gentile? The Gentiles would be vexed, like our own non-believing neighbors, with many problems, many ethical dilemmas, and many theologiocal conundrums, none of which amounted ton the Jew’s problem of “How to fulfill ther Law of Moses”.

Peter realizes that he is to say to the Gentile, Jesus. Jesus is peace, and in his crucifixtion and resurection and enthronement, He makes us all heirs to life in Him.

In Jesus,

Pastor Harley

United Methodists and Downs Syndrome Abortion

United Methodists and Down’s Syndrome Abortions

The practice of terminating a pregnancy after diagnosis of a genetic abnormality has decisively changed the nature of the abortion debate in the United Methodist Church.

It has become commonplace for parents, who after genetic screening are told that their child will be born with Down’s Syndrome, to terminate the pregnancy by abortion. While these are sometimes the most conflicted of abortions, with parents protesting that they wanted this child, the high rate of abortion for these children raises serious ethical questions.

No one knows how many children are aborted because of a Trisomy 21 (Down’s Syndrome) diagnosis through genetic screening because no records are kept on this data by abortion clinics. An Obstetrics and Gynecology article in 2000 on the “Cost-benefit Analysis of Prenatal Diagnosis for Downs Syndrome” used as an estimate that 90% of parents who receive this diagnosis in the first or second trimester of pregnancy will choose termination. The study also estimated that more prevalent genetic testing would result in annual savings to society of $95 million per year because of the reduced cost burden of caring for citizens born with Down’s Syndrome.

Mass terminations of Down’s Syndrome children raise new questions in the abortion debate because these children are not individuals doomed to a short, pain-filled life. They are subject to disabilities, but a person with Down’s Syndrome can be a functioning member of society and often a very happy person. As United Methodists, we have a long history of ministry with persons with such disabilities.

I am pro-life, and believe that abortions should be legal only in the case of a clear threat to the life of the mother. Now the compassionate pro-choice argument often voiced in the church states that government intrusion (by protecting the life of the unborn) would do vast amounts of harm by interfering with the woman and her doctor’s decision about what constitutes a tragic conflict of Life vs. Life. Most united Methodists would agree that we shouild deplore abortions of mere convenience, and our Discipline rejects abortions for sex selection and birth control, but wish to preserve the privacy of an individual’s choice in tragic circumstances. If preserving that privacy requires allowing complete freedom of decision about the child’s life for the mother, the trade-off, for them, seems appropriate. Underlying this moral calculus is the assumption that a mother can be trusted to act reasonably and morally when weighing her health risks versus the life of the child.

I submit that once a diagnosis of an abnormality such as Down’s Syndrome is made, that it is no longer reasonable to assume that the decision to terminate the pregnancy is based on concerns for the mother’s health. Moreover, it is reasonable to believe that the decision is being made to be dispose of the child because of the future burden that it presents to the parents and society. Once the evidence exists that the child is to be born with a disability of this nature, the burden of proof that the abortion is anything but an abortion of convenience shifts to the parent.

We have not had a debate in the United Methodist Church about whether persons with disabilities are too much trouble to bear and raise, but we should. The legal, mass destruction of human life for eugenic purposes has already begun. My pro-life convictions already disposed me to believe that anything less than robust legal protections for unborn life provides people a license to kill without fear of punishment. Societies pass laws against murder because we don’t believe that human beings will always count another’s life as having a value equal to their own convenience, prospects for the future, or emotional equilibrium. I challenge those who hold pro-choice positions to enter the debate and justify publicly the continued selective killing of Down’s Syndrome children. Not only might we finally find our common voice regarding abortion, but the arguments put forth on either side would be revealing indeed.

Pastor Harley Wheeler

The possibilities of Dead

Ephesians 2:1

“As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins”

The phrase, “You were dead” is one that is unique to the Gospel. I am not saying no one else has ever used it, but under what circumstances or to whom would YOU say it? To the boss? To your friend? If their death is an accomplished fact, how it is that you speak with an expectation of being heard?

Apparently, death is something that is alive with possibility to God. We do not see with Kingdom eyes. We call things and people dead, and never hope to see them respond to us. But with God….”The time is coming, and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live”, John 5:25

We call others alive, but do not recognize death in sin. We do not suppose that ‘missing the mark’ and “crossing a boundary” could put us in a situation where we are moving, “walking according to the power of the world”, but are actually cut off from the sourcing of God.

This verse comes up when you teach the Revelation text, 20:14 ,”…this is the second death”, you have to make a decision in your understanding of the revealed Christ in revelation about whether this death in trespasses is the First, and how the scene in revelation works out to be the Second. I am not weighing in on THAT one today, because those are deep waters indeed.
Love in Jesus,

Pastor Harley Wheeler

Allegory

How do you like my Allegory?

Allegory was often used by the Early church, but it has since fallen on hard times. My impression in seminary was that the teachers regarded it as sort of the “Professional Wrestling” of homeletic devices. But consider that even Jesus used allegory in his interpretation of Jonah, (Matthew 12:40-41), and St Paul said that the well-known institution of marriage is a picture of Christ and the Church, (Ephesians 5:30-32).

Consider Proverbs 27:23-27; “Be sure you know the condition of your flocks, give careful attention to your herds; for riches do not endure forever, and a crown is not secure for all generations. When the hay is removed and the new growth appears and the grass from the hills is gathered in, the lambs will provide you with clothing, and the goats with the price of a field. You will have plenty of goats milk to feed you and your family and to nourish your servant girls” (NIV)

Now as a pastor, I am particularly involved in the task of spiritual shepherding. I have been strongly impressed that I can best employ my time in the actual task of caring for the flock, and knowing their condition. It seems to be the most direct route to making the church a place of life for the people to follow-up on those who visit and express ciouriousity about the faith, to find out what happened to someone who hasn’t been coming, to call, to befriend my regulars, to stop by, and to really know the people to whom I am Pastor.

There are many things that intrude upon this task. One can stew about politics, one can try to plot the reformation of the denomination, one can worry over the building, the typeface on the bulletin, the endowment fund, or the mood the District Superintendent is in. One is tantalized by new schemes to grow the church. “It worked for us, it will work for you!” (If you follow their plan exactly in your ministry context, an impossibility), we ponder new ways of doing our personal devotions, weekly corporate worship and growth strategies. We seek for new blood, old money, and personal and corporate name recognition.

These are the riches and the world’s strength that will always pass away. The work of the Pastor is to know the flock, and if the Pastor does that, the furture will certainly hold promise. We may be fated for smaller contexts, for modest church situations, if we don’t seek to wow the crowds, and attract the (preferably well-to-do) seeker, but I feel in my heart that this sort of ministry is more wholesome and to the point.

This is not a Ministry Strategy that sounds impressive if you explain it to the Bishop, nor can it comfortably be forced into a Mission Statement, but so what? It feels right.

Lastly, notice that this allegory has a way of rescuing a text that seems sooo hopelessly 500 B.C. I have no use for goats milk, only a few of my families take in hay, wool is worth almost nothing, and the Superintendent would probably frown on my having servant girls. But the allegory lets me reside in the text, and respond to it on a deeper level. In fact there mayhave always been more to this pasassage than just sage farming advice, because, didn’t you wonder? Why would any farmer need to be warned that crowns are not secure?

Did the Iron Axe - Head Float?

Did The Iron Axe Head Float?

By Harley Wheeler

Sixteen years ago, a story was going around about a test for professors in Christian (Southern Baptist)colleges. Professors were suddenly taken into an office and asked one and only one question: “Did the Iron Axe head float?” If they answered “No”, they were fired, and if they answered “Yes”, they kept their jobs. These stories were passed in whispered tones, as describing a great scandal.

The wonderfully bizarre question refers to events described in 2 Kings 6:1-7, when the prophet Elisha was camped by a river with a company of disciples. One of them had an axe-head fly off the handle and land in the river. He cried out to Elisha that it was a borrowed axe-head. Elisha threw a stick into the water and the axe-head floated to the top.

This bail-out of the disciple certainly shows that Elisha was a kindly, helpful miracle-worker. However, the suspicion that we have here a miracle done over a trifle, or worse, a story concocted to enhance Elisha’s reputation, apparently makes professors of religion really squirm.

But should it?

I don’t really believe for a minute this bit of folklore about the professors, but as a practical, not an academic theologian, I sincerely believe that when scripture describes certain people, at certain times, doing and saying certain things, then those things were done and said by the people so described. Interestingly, if you ask the lay people in my church about the “axe-head” test for seminary professors, they fail to see anything wrong about it. Most of my Christian lay friends consider requiring direct answers to questions of this kind an obvious step.

So should professors blanch at the story of Elisha, his clumsy disciple and floating Home Depot products? I would say no. But, as G.K. Chesterton said, “The disbelievers in miracles deny them (rightly or wrongly) because they have a doctrine against them..” (G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy p.228 Waterbrook Press, 1994) This being true, we must lift the fog of that doctrine and uncover the truth.

The first usual objection to the story is that it describes an improbable event that cannot be proven scientifically. One can answer this by remembering that the text does not say;”in the event you lose your axe-head in the river, this is an unfailing remedy.” The ancients knew they were describing a unique event, like your choice of donuts at the staff meeting. No contention is made that stick tossing is experimentally repeatable. Does this mean that it is a false story? No, because many events, the Crimean War, the writing of Das Kapital and Woodstock are not experimentally repeatable, but remain true nonetheless.

Scientistic minds usually object that we have no natural cause for the miracle, but in this they are wrong. The cause of the miracle is the will of a rational being.

Allow a brief apologetic for the admission of rational choice as one of the known causes of events in the material universe. Imagine a speaker asking a lecture hall full of people to decide on the count of three, to raise or not to raise their arm. The speaker makes clear that he or she does not care which they do, it is their choice. On the count of three, some number of arms will be raised. What caused this event? The proper answer is rational choice. Rational choice may be described in terms of probabilities, but cannot be explained in naturalistic terms except by appealing to random causes, and this is patently false, because the audience experienced making a rational choice, not a random impulse. Rational choice is a very real factor in the events of the portion of universe in which we live, seeing as it is somewhat cluttered with choice-making, rational beings.

So our answer to the first objection is that the scripture consciously describes not a recipe or incantation, but a discrete, one-time event, caused by the choice of One Who Has Miracle Power. God does something in response to Elisha. So we have a cause that is known to the universe of conscious minds, and an agent, God, whom even modern educated Baptist and Methodist minds agree is real.

The other usual objection is that this miracle describes a trifle. It seems to be beneath God’s standards and therefore smacks of paganism or reputation-building hype on Elisha’s behalf. It carries for some the scent of superstition and credulity that I am told the west has struggled against for many years.

Before we answer this, we may reflect that I have so far asked no one to be more credulous than one must be to admit that there is a God, who does, on occasion, do things.

We might also reflect that the professors are in a polite way calling the story a fabulous lie, and the miracle-working Elisha of 2 Kings an old fraud. Is it any wonder that the pew-sitters are in sympathy with me?

Does the story really provoke the darkness of superstition or paganism? It does not if you know anything about superstition or pagan myth. A fine old superstition might caution us that axe-heads will always fly off after you see a barn owl. Pagan mythology would alter the story by having the woodcutter lured to his doom by a river nymph who offered to show him where to find the axe-head. He might, as an alternative, be punished for his clumsiness by the having the axe attached permanently to his arm. The Bible event, like most personal miracles in the Bible, is remarkably low-key. Furthermore, it is not a capricious act, since Elisha merely responds to help a friend in need.

So I believe that the story of the axe-head that floated is, after a fashion, a beachhead in the battle between faith and modernist thought. What is our confession of faith before the modern world? Does the God we worship answer prayers and act to help individual humans? Do we believe that God gave Elisha a ministry of miracles for the encouragement of his people? Affirmative answers to these questions bring the pastor and the professor in line with the centuries-old, sensible orthodoxy of the ordinary Christian.

I further believe that this involvement in the affairs of humanity that we recognize as answered prayer was always a sign that God would involve Himself decisively in the person of Christ. St. Romanos, an orthodox liturgical poet of the fourth century, set forth this truth when he wrote these lines:

“Elisha of old painted its image in prophecy

when he drew the axe–head from the river.

With a light object the prophet dragged a heavy,

Warning you (Satan) and teaching you

That, by a tree, Adam is to be brought up

From wretchedness again to paradise.”

(St.Romanos the Melodist, On The Life of Christ translated by Ephrem Lash Harper Collins, 1998 p.156)

So in your prayers today, will you be praying to the One who made the iron axe-head float?

Pastor Harley Wheeler

The Bottom Billion

I read The Bottom Billion by Paul Collier, Oxford University Press, 2007, and I highly recommend it. Paul makes the case that there is an emerging crisis with the few countries, comprising about 1 billion people, who still live in abject poverty and are essentially trapped there. He points out that while many countries that have been the targets of our aid have advanced to where their economies are growing and there is a reasonable standard of living, some are trapped by combinations of bad governance, landlocked geography, persistent armed conflict, or a limiting staus as a source of natural resources for the rest of the world. These traps act to limit the ability of reformers in these nations to act in the best interests of their people.

It is a good read for a critique of what has been done so far that illuminates the limits of aid and trade initiatives, and the cynical evil of some of the rulers in the Bottom Billion. The Chinese also, are revealed as toxic participants in the affairs of some resource rich nations. Like many caring actors in the arena of world affairs, Collier hopes for a less political evaluation of the steps that need to be taken by the United States and Europe, and a selfless determination to help the trapped countries. He realistically points out that even humanitarien NGO’s can have agendas, a limiting corporate culture, and vested interests. His conclusion is that any steps taken must take into account the traps that these countries are in, and creatively push for change.

Of interest to the church is that we do not lack allies in the international arena who want to relieve the world’s really poor. We should listen to many sides of the discussion and not cling to one approach of, for instance, international aid, or economic growth advocates. Each approach has its limits, and can be implemented to help or to derail the other. Also, our typical rhetoric about the Iraq war, which has been a mostly pacifistic, negative evaluation, is not a squeaky-clean moral position, because there will be cases in the future where military intervention is the best relief for desperate populations. But how will we summon the political will when our leaders know they will immediately be savaged with, “Quagmire!”, “No exit strategy!”, “Imperialism!”, and “You-didn’t-plan–to-win-the-peace!”

On another front, I am aware that mainline protestant leaders are sometimes uneasy about evangelical efforts among the desperately poor. How can we build a church or distribute Bibles when those dollars might build a clinic or purchase rice? But in response to that, you might say that in some situations you have met a situation of diminishing returns with humanitatarian aid, and may as well build the church and distribute the bibles. Not only that, there is no reason to deny vigorous theology, prayer and preaching to a population simply because it has a 16^th century standard of living. They live in desperate conditions, and need the answers that Christ can give to the desperate.

A debate on how we will reach the Bottom Billion in the next presidential administration would be a Godsend, but how to get presidential candidates and congressmen to really care about, say Chad?

Pastor Harley Wheeler

Gandalf and the Rebel

Gandalf and the Rebel

I used part of a recent vacation to read Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings again. It is the perfect novel, whether you like adventure, landscapes, towering characters, an exaltation of common virtues, or ‘a pleasant mixture of them all’, they are to be found there. I have lost count of how many times I have read the book.

In between reading LOTR, and as an exercise in contrary thought, I finished reading Albert Camus’, The Rebel, a book length essay that I began some time ago. I am a Christian , and Camus, the dead french philosopher, critic, novelist and playwright, was an atheist, but he can, shed a clear, uncompromising light on the human condition. (His book, The Fall, is the best description of the complete sinfulness, of even good men, that I have ever read.)

Anyway, The Rebel, is his attempt to lay out how a society which has rejected Christian hope and God’s Grace can grapple with the demands of justice, the reality of death, the whole human problem, and not descend into mass murder and repression. He freely admits, writing in 1950, that nihilistic, God-rejecting societies such as Stalin’s Russia and Hitler’s Germany had done just that. (His answers are not encouraging.)

Camus rejects Grace, Christianity, and God because for him, any aknowledgement of God’s role in human life makes God guilty of injustice. But, to be consistent, he also recogniuzes no chance of salvation from death. His vision of the Rebel is one who insists on justice and rejects death, all the time knowing he will lose in the end:

“In every rebellion is to be found the metaphysical demand for unity, the impossibility of capturing it, and the construction of a substitute universe.”

“The novel is born at the same time as the spirit of rebellion and expresses on the aesthetic plane the same ambition.”

“The art of the novel can reconstruct creation itself….choosing the creature in prefernce to his creator…it is allied to the beauty of the world or of its inhabitanrts against the powers of death and oblivion.”

In essence, Camus could never write a work like The Lord of the Rings.

Tolkien described his fantasy tales as being stories where characters receive help by Grace through mythological means. His characters encounter implacable, inescapable evil that does real harm, but the they can, if they chose to, rely on the presence of such help. In fact, they are judged in the story according to their reliance on or conversely, mistrust of the overarching plan behind their created world. Tolkien’s story also climaxes with a eucatastrophe, a change in plot direction which moves from disaster to rescue, death to life, defeat to victory. Tolkien elsewhere took pains to point out that the Christion story climaxes in the eucatastrophe of the resurrection. Tolkien would readily agree with Camus that the writer of tales acts as a subcreator, but he saw this as a proper and orthodox expression of what God made us to be.

Camus would say that we best write by telling stories that highlight a hopeless yet brave struggle against injustice and our own death, emphasizing the creative power in rejecting these facts in our hearts. We remain subject to both tradgedies, but emphatically refuse to agree with them. In fact, his ideal hero would make certain that he dies himself if it became necessary to kill another in the name of Justice.

This is so close, but at the brink, so divergent friom the Christian story. Injustice and death are real for the Christian, and both must certainly be rejected. But the Christian rejects them because Truth has come, and died in our place, satisfying the claims of and defeating the power of death and Justice. Grace has appeared and can be trusted to prevail, and God can be glorified in all His ways, as the eucatastrophe of the Resurrection and the Final Judgement will confirm. Gandalf, Frodo and all the rest in Tolkien’s story will heroically lay down life and continually risk all to resist both death and evil, but do so with confidence in Grace, and become an agents of that Grace.

Camus scoffed at such literature, which was for him, the literature of aquiesence, submitting to the grace and power of an unjust God.

But which is true to the universe we know? Camus’ universe is finally an unlivable one, with a bare chance that the heroic acts of the Rebel could mitigate for a brief time the ravages of death and injustice. The universe of Tolkien, and the Christian revelation, sees hope that abounds, and beyond all earthly darkness, the stars God made.

Pastor Harley Wheeler

What Paul Prayed For

I have been studying in Ephesians 1:18-23. This is part of what Paul says he prays for the Ephesian church to receive from God.

When I first was presented as a candidate for the ministry the District Superintendent, (whose name I do NOT remember), told me I would find so much Joy in the ministry that I would count it as one of the best things that ever happened in my life. He was correct. He also preached to the congregation, that was gathered for its annual charge conference that the most important thing the pastor (then Rev. Mike Baldwin) could do was to pray daily for his people. I believe he was correct in that statement too.

But what do we pray for?

The pastor who reads this is going to be challenged because if we ask the question: what does Paul pray for when he prays for his church? And how does that compare with the prayers that we send up on behalf of our people? (that is, assuming that we remember daily to DO this important task.) We come off feeling that we have missed key things that Paul was inspired to call upon God to do in and for His church.

Truly, we need the Spirit to assist us when we pray, because our flesh would focus on many less needful things before coming to the notion of asking God to fill our people with the inward knowledge of all the power and wonders of Jesus!

In the text:

Vs. 18 The formulation, “eyes of your heart” (or eyes of your understanding) is unique in the New Testament. The eyes of men have been places of darkness, avenues for lust and wrong desire, and blindness before God. Paul is truly asking for a revolution in the inner lives of the people. The eyes are to be enlightened , (it sounds more dramatic in greek, (photizo’), so that we may “eido” or see, which is often used in the sense that we say in English, “I see” to mean understanding. My word study resource says that this is a more intuitive sense of understanding, thus Paul is announcing a dramatic inward knowing.

Vs. 19 The language used for God’s power “for us who believe” is heavy on the suprlatives, so that even a english speaker recognizes “huperballo (lit. beyond-throw), megathos, dunamis”. This power is ‘like’ (grk. ‘kata’) which is often translated ‘according’ and has a sense of directedness; (down-from). These power words express potential or available power, and after this ‘kata’, this strength is directed and active, mighty (energia) and mighty strength, (kratos-(hold-fast) and ischus (active strength)).

And all this power is evidenced in the resurrection and exaltation of Christ. Note that His power’s expression is not centered in us, but in Christ, and that is the basis of our hope and the foundation of the faith.

The lines from vs.20-23 read like a congregational confession of the resurrection and enthronement of Jesus. If you say them aloud it sounds like what we as a church together would say to remind us of the decisive change in all things that has been brought about by God in Jesus. There is an orderedness, the powers that were in disarray and opposition to God are not ‘out there’, (perhaps noted by the eye of the Lord and reacted in in a haphazard way), they are ‘under his feet.’ And what is the effect in us? We are not so much a part of the ‘all things’ under his feet, but we are his Body, the fullness of him that “filleth all in all”. Wrap your mind around that!

Pastor Harley Wheeler

Pastor Harley's 2007 Reading List

Reading List

Pastor Harley Wheeler

February 2007-January 2008

This is a list of what I have read in the past year. To me, study is a Spiritual Discipline.

Your comments are welcome!

Periodicals:

Good News Magazine, Biblical Archaeology Review, Scientific American, The Interpreter, East Ohio Joining Hands, Lifewatch Newsletter, Home School Legal Defense Newsletter, Plain Truth magazine, Voice of the Martyrs Newsletter, First Things, sermons sent out by Stephen Manley, 2007, and (individual) Astronomy 11/07. Fantasy and Science Fiction(12/07)

Bible Study:

Comprehensive Word Study, Ephesians 1:1-9

Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties – Gleason Archer

I Chronicles (Commentary) - Martin J. Selman

Studies in The Gospel of Mark – Martin Hengel

Misqouting Truth – Timothy Paul Jones

Beyond Acts (Study in Acts and New Testament)

Job 1-20(commentary) – David Cline

Ezra – Nehemiah - Anchor Bible Commentary

II Chronicles – commentary

Christian Thought/Ministry/ Sermons:

Let Us Pray – Watchman Nee

Daughter Zion - Pope Benedict

Returning to Your First Love – Tony Evans

Ten FAQS of New Christians – George Malkunas

Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Dead – Oscar Cullman

On Conscience – Pope Benedict

Trouble at the Table – Carol Dean & Thomas Troneger

The Gift of Forgiveness – Charles Stanley

In The Grip of Grace – Max Lucado

And The Angels Were Silent – Max Lucado

The New Consecration Sunday – Herb Miller

Notable Confessions – Theodore Walz

Contemporary Christian Authors:

Christ The Lord, Out of Egypt – Anne Rice

The Habit of Being – Flannery O’ Connor

The Return of Don Quixote – G.K. Chesterton

Tales of the Long Bow – G.K. Chesterton

A New Beginning – Philip….

The Millionaire and the Scrublady – William Barton

God and the Philosophers – ed. Thomas Morris

Providence and Evil – P.T. Geach

The Problem of Evil – Peter Van Inwagen

God, Knowledge and Mystery – Peter Van Inwagen

Suspicion and Faith – Merold Westphal

The Lamb and the Furher – Ravi Zacharias

C.S. Lewis on Stories – C.S. Lewis

From Narnia to Space Odyssey –ed. Ryden Miller

Classics:

The Book of Songs – (ancient Chinese Odes)

The Trial and Death of Socrates – Plato

Early Irish Myths and Sagas

The Aenied – Virgil

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyan

Lives of Illustious Men – Plutarch

Bacchae – Euripedes

Canterbury Tales – Chaucer

The Song of Igor’s Campaign (old Russin epic)

Notes from Underground – Dostoyevsky

The Idiot – Dostoyevsky

White Nights – Dostoyevsky

Medea, Heracles, Electra – Euripedes

Homeric Stitchings – Euodecea (ed. Mark David Usher)

Pinnocchio – Collodi

Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte

The Clouds – Aristophanes

Shorter Poems – Robert Browning

Modern Authors/fiction/ humor/drama/commentary:

Cowboy Poetry - ed. Hal Conner

Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves – P.G. Wodehouse

Good Poems – ed. Garrison Keillor

Leke Woebegone Stories – Garrison Kiellor

A Tolkien Compass, (essays)

Wise Blood – Flannery O’Connor

The End – Lemony Snickett

The Lime Twig – John Hawkes

A Man for All Seasons – Robert Bolt

The Vile Village – Lemony Snickett

The Beatrice Letters – Lemony Snickett

A Good Man is Hard to Find – Flannery O’Connor

Mrs. Warren’s Profession – Geoarge Bernard Shaw

Man and Superman – George Bernard Shaw

Arms and the Man – George Bernard Shaw

Candide – George Bernard Shaw

The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver

The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul – Douglas Adams

Godless – Ann Coulter

Scandal – Ann Coulter

If Democrats Had any Brains, They’d be Republicans – Ann Coulter

The Pleasures of a Futuroscope – Lord Dunsany

The Man in the Black Suit – Stephen King

How Right You ae Jeeves – P.G. Wodehouse

The 1993 Annual World’s Best Science Fiction

1987 Annual World’s Best Science Fiction

The Code of the Woosters – P.G. Wodehouse

Dave Barry’s Gift Guide – Dave Barry

Harry Potter Series – J. K. Rowling

Grandmas Attic Series – Arleta Richardson

Biography, History & Science& Philosophy:

The Complete Prophecies of Nostradamus

Getting to Yes – Roger Fisher & William Ury

The Edge of the Unknown – James Trefil

Mussolini and the Second Coming – Gerald Winrod

A Stranger to Myself – Willy Reese

What Christmas Means to Me – Mary Baker Eddy

A Briefer History of Time – Stephen Hawking

The Gettysburg Gospel – Gabor Berritt

The Colony – John Tayman

Hitler’s Scientists – John Cornell

Horseradish – Lemony Snickett

The Peopling of British North America – Bernard Bailyn

What they Fought For – James Macpherson

Surrender is Not an Option – John Bolton