Last Sunday, I preached at our church from the theme, “Living the Dream.” I told the congregation how our mission to effectively reach the thousands of non- believers in our town can be possible. I told them about the early Christians in the book of Acts when the church had been growing tremendously everyday. I told them about three things that may be necessary if we are to “live the dream.” One of these is a challenge for the church to have an effective evangelistic outreach as the early believers have done.

I remember how a friend once told me a tragic story about his cousin who died without knowing Jesus Christ as his personal Lord and Savior. It was a very sad experience. I almost cried. He got shot and split into eternity hopeless and forever lost into the fiery darkness of hell.

My friend said he tried everything to share Christ’s love to his cousin before he died but his efforts were futile. He refused to believe the message of salvation and that cost him everything including his soul.

What a tragedy, we may say. But it is true. It was a story that is being repeated over and over again.

It’s been said that 232, 876 people die everyday around the world. It is hard to imagine how many of these precious souls breathe their last cubic centimeters of fresh air and then went straight to eternal punishment and condemnation in hell.

The world is home to over 6 billion people. More than 60% of these (the statistics can never fully be trusted, it’s not an exact science) do not have a personal encounter with the Savior. What are Christians doing? There is a greater tragedy that goes on whenever a person professing to be a child of God keeps mum about his faith.

Would you care to tell me where are those whom God has commissioned to do the job of reaching this dying world back to Him?

Time is running out. Christians nowadays are only one generation away from extinction. If we will not act now more and more people will die hopeless and lost in an eternity in hell.

The world is in need of our service. The world is in need of us- the people who have experienced the reality of a life-changing experience with God.

The gospel is not meant to be kept secret. It doesn’t belong to X- Files. It has to be shouted from the mountain tops so that all people of all races, religions, cultures and languages may know there is someone who can transform them into the best person they can ever become.

It is time for all true Christians to rise up and bring the gospel of truth to everyone who is in need of life that can only come from God. It is time for every professing child of the King to stand up and be counted as one who will be willing to give all and do all for the sake of touching a lost and needy world with the message of God’s love in Christ.

The world is waiting and the time is now. Let us blow the trumpet of God’s salvation in the planet. Let us be found in the ranks of those who break the deafening tragedy of silence by proclaiming God’s undying love for the spiritual bums of the world today.

Before, it was Snow White from Fairy Land who had a bite from a poisoned apple. Nobody complained because hers is a make-believe story anyway and she survived through a Prince Charming’s kiss anyhow. Today, however, the world is witnessing an alarming phenomenon. Real people are munching poisoned brownies and are slowly dying as a result.

I came across a book recently that is both hailed and booed by critics- hailed by atheists and agnostics but booed by Bible believing enthusiasts. “The Da Vinci Code, ” a novel written by Dan Brown, recently named one of the 100 most influential people in the world today by Time Magazine, combined history, archaeology and theology in what was hailed to be the unveiling of the greatest conspiracy of the past 2000 years. It sold more than 70 million copies worldwide making Brown an international best selling author almost overnight.

Brown writes in the book that what the church (and the Bible) says about Jesus is wrong. This premise created an uproar among conservative evangelicals and full gospel churches worldwide. Bible believers demanded answers from their pastors and books branding Brown’s novel as heresy were quickly published.

Why is it so sensational, one may ask and the answer (if I may offer one) is because Brown in this novel challenged what people believed about Jesus and he seems to be succeeding in his pretense. By redefining the gospel story in the New Testament, he effectively created a niche in people’s faith.

What is the gospel according to Dan Brown?

Nothing but lies. He says that everything about Christianity is a lie.  For example, Dan Brown says in the book through one of his characters, the scholarly British royal historian, Sir Leigh Teabing, that Jesus was made a divine person in the Council of Nicea and insisted that he is married to Mary Magdalene and sired children- things that directly contradict the Bible. Brown even went on to say that the Bible as we know it today is a creation of the pagan emperor Constantine and that in it, all the things that point to the humanity of Jesus were omitted.

It is sad to note that Brown’s poisoned version of the gospel is munched casually by unsuspecting millions of people in the same way that they munch their brownies in their porches at home. The result is not their dislike of the church. The poison works in such a way that the person’s faith collapses.

While Brown claims that he wrote what is historically true in his book, his is a distorted version of the truth. His is a poisoned browny flavored with chocolate, milk and sugar- the perfect bait for the famished and the seeker for truth. It is a subtle deception we must not yield to.

Jesus was never proclaimed as divine only in the Council of Nicea as Brown likes to point out. The Bible clearly pictured him as divine. He is called God and Lord in the New Testament numerous times. These New Testament texts pre-date the Council of Nicea.

Jesus was never married according to the Bible. Even the Gnostic gospels which Brown used to build his argument never contained a hint of such an absurd idea. He read it wrong (or shall I say, his scholarly historian character read it wrong). His premise may well be regarded as borrowed from Nikos Kazantzakis’ novel, “The Last Temptation of Christ” in 1951 which was adapted to film by Martin Scorsese in 1988.

The idea that the pagan emperor Constantine is the creator of the Bible as we know it today is completely untrue. The canon of the Scriptures was completed probably between 393-397 AD. This date is approximately 56- 60 years after his death. We simply don’t know how Brown came up with his idea and he won’t discuss the matter anyway.

Simply put, the burden of proof lies with Brown’s fantastic claims because it is in fact his camp where we see the evidences are lacking.

To deprive people of their faith is a serious crime. It is faith that makes people want to live on, hold on and dream on. It is the only thread that makes them alive.

Take away faith and you also take away the ability to love and to hope, the ability to dream and to make things happen. It is not enlightenment as Brown would have us believe. Munching his poisoned browny equates to nothing but suicide.

The greatest mistake of the human race is to leave life in the hands of destiny as if destiny is God. Destiny is seen as an end point in itself- the place where everything stops in its course. Destiny is seen as the end of one’s history. That is, if the life of man is a book, destiny is the final page in the final chapter.

Wikipedia, in all its truthiness (not necessarily truthfulness), says that the word destiny is taken from the Middle English word destine whose old French equivalent is destinee. This last entry on the word’s etymology is the feminine past participle form of the French word destiner. This word means to destine and comes from the Latin word destinare which means to determine.

Modern dictionaries assign three meanings to destiny:

1. the inevitable or necessary fate to which a particular person or thing is destined;
2. a predetermined course of events considered as something beyond human power or control;
3. and the power or agency thought to predetermine events.

One’s concept of destiny is important in the preaching of the gospel. If destiny is inevitable and is beyond human power or control then what is the sense of giving an unbeliever (an atheist, an agnostic, a skeptic or anything along this line) a choice and a chance to believe the gospel and accept Jesus as his personal Lord and Savior?

The church of the 21st century should consider this point.

I hope that I am not being too cynical but I don’t believe in destiny the way this world thinks what destiny is like. However, I won’t mind being cynical if my cynicism is the only way to have a grasp of the truth.

The search for truth has always been my greatest motivation, it has always been my greatest challenge. Finding the truth has always been my dream.

The world thinks I’m crazy for being a dreamer and I can’t be anything more or less than that. If being a dreamer is craziness then the pleasure is mine. Call me the craziest person in the planet.

Here’s what a crazy dreamer like me believes about destiny:

Destiny is not a destination. It is not the end of anyone’s life. It is the culmination of a beyond this life journey one is making the moment he stood on the foot of Calvary’s cross, the moment he stretches his hands and feet and fasten it on the beams of sacrifice. Destiny is that and many more.

Destiny is an intricate thread being woven moment by moment by constant surrender and unshakable faith in God. It is a powerful iron slowly being transformed by an eternal and powerful force which I call love that of course emanates from God Himself.

In short, destiny is a tool of God to bring us to a climactic moment of completion, a rapturous moment of total bliss. What an avalon that would be!

Maybe the world is right about destiny. But that is just maybe. Maybes are unsure, uncertain- their truthfulness can only be accepted by faith. Because of that, I’d rather have God define destiny for me. And God tells me that destiny is Him saying from the center of the universe: “I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you; plans to give you a hope and a future.”

Photo above by mandj98