John Fischer The Catch

Walking into heaven

Posted on November 19, 2019 by jwfisch

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We had a thoughtful comment about death from one of our readers after yesterday’s Catch about Enoch, one of the two people we know of who have been ushered into heaven without dying. Our reader made a distinction between death and dying — how when serving in Desert Storm, he had no fear of death though it was all around him, but the thought of dying frightened him. I think he meant the threat of death was not as scary as living with the process of knowing you are going to die soon. I think I know what he means. It made him think longingly about how he’d like to go the way Enoch went — to walk into heaven without dying. Or like he wrote, “What a blessing it would be to suddenly be ‘not.’” Well maybe that’s actually not far from what it could be like.

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Posted in Facing death | Tagged death, heaven | 3 Comments

Walking with God

Posted on November 18, 2019 by jwfisch

And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him. Genesis 5:24 KJV

Sometimes I just love the King James version of the Bible. Enoch was and then suddenly he was not. How boring to say he disappeared. He simply was not. Enoch and Elijah are the only two people we know of who have gone to heaven without dying. Enoch and God were so close that God just decided one day that He would just walk him right into heaven. So at 365 years old, Enoch was not.

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Posted in Worldview, worship | Tagged Christian worldview, relationship with God, worship | 4 Comments

The new covenant prevails

Posted on November 15, 2019 by jwfisch

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But Joshua spared Rahab the prostitute, with her family and all who belonged to her, because she hid the men Joshua had sent as spies to Jericho—and she lives among the Israelites to this day. (Joshua 6:25)

King David’s great-great grandmother was Rahab, the prostitute from Jericho. She was a Canaanite, of the people-group that the children of Israel were forbidden to marry. Yet she is of the lineage of David and an ancestor of Jesus. Now that doesn’t sit too well with the laws of the Old Covenant, which goes to show you that the law of the Old Covenant was and is not the last word. There is another covenant — the new covenant — that Christ ushered in, that was evident even then. That covenant is evidenced by the grace of God, and entered into by faith. And Rahab acted on that faith when she found out that the two men in town were from the new nation of Israel and they had come to spy out the city. Rahab, and indeed the whole town, had heard how the children of Israel had crossed the Red Sea and the Jordan River and were successful in all their conflicts so far. She was terrified. And so she, being a smart one, hid the spies when the authorities came looking, because she knew that God was with them and she was hoping to make a deal.

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Posted in Old/New Covenants | Tagged mercy, new covenant | 6 Comments

Let it be free

Posted on November 14, 2019 by jwfisch

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“The days are coming,” declares the Lord,

“when I will make a new covenant

with the people of Israel

and with the people of Judah.

It will not be like the covenant

I made with their ancestors

when I took them by the hand

to lead them out of Egypt,

because they broke my covenant,

though I was a husband to them,”

declares the Lord.

“This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel

after that time,” declares the Lord.

“I will put my law in their minds

and write it on their hearts.

I will be their God,

and they will be my people.

No longer will they teach their neighbor,

or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’

because they will all know me,

from the least of them to the greatest,”

declares the Lord.

“For I will forgive their wickedness

and will remember their sins no more.”

– Exodus 31:31-34

Here is what I think is the most important part of this prophecy and what it says about the new covenant in the Old Testament: God does everything. He removes the barrier between us and Him by forgiving our sins; He puts the law in our minds and writes it on our hearts; we don’t even have to teach each other to know the Lord because we all already know Him.

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Posted in Old/New Covenants | Tagged new covenant | 4 Comments

Tender mercies

Posted on November 13, 2019 by jwfisch

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This week we are looking for the new covenant in the Old Testament of the Bible.

Most Christians have a tendency to think about the Old Testament as being all about the old covenant, and the New Testament all about the new. That is generally true, but it doesn’t mean there is no new covenant in the Old Testament and no old covenant in the New. The old covenant in the New Testament is represented primarily by the Pharisees who based their righteousness on the law and their supposed following of the law by twisting of the truth around their own arrogance.

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Posted in grace | Tagged forgiveness, mercy | 3 Comments

How do you say ‘Thank you’ for this?

Posted on November 11, 2019 by jwfisch

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Today we honor those men and women who have served their country on behalf of us all. They answered the call. They gave the best years of their lives to protect our freedoms. They put themselves in harm’s way. They put themselves between danger and us. They stood in the gap. Whatever you personally feel about the wars that have been fought in our lifetime and whether they were necessary, it doesn’t change one bit the story for those who went. They were all doing what one should do for one’s country.

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Posted in Veteran's Day | Tagged Veteran's Day | 2 Comments

The other side of the generation gap

Posted on November 8, 2019 by jwfisch

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Those were the days my friend

We thought they’d never end

We’d sing and dance forever and a day

We’d live the life we choose

We’d fight and never lose

Those were the days, oh yes those were the days

– words by Gene Raskin

One of our readers pointed out in a comment about yesterday’s Catch that the new “OK boomer” saying is just a timeless reaction of young people to the nostalgia and condescension of the older generation. It happens with every generation. Grandparents pine for the old days when they were young and they decry the way things are, blaming everything on the current younger generation. While the young people try to grapple with current realities and consider their grandparents too old and out of touch to bother with.

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Posted in Millennials, new frontier, Transformation Generation | Tagged generation gap, Transformation Generation | 8 Comments

Where boomers and millennials “R” both OK

Posted on November 7, 2019 by jwfisch

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As if we needed one more reason to be divided. On top of huge chasms in politics, conservative and liberal philosophies, racial divides, and the ever widening gulf between the haves and the have-nots, we now have a generational divide fueled by a movement started on social media and legitimized on the floor of the New Zealand Parliament as “OK boomer.”

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Posted in Millennials, new frontier | Tagged boomers, Millennials | 3 Comments

‘Is your name in this book?’

Posted on November 6, 2019 by jwfisch

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It’s been on my mind ever since. Ever since Ron Ritchie handed me his old New American Standard version of the New Testament — the one like we all had in 1970 that was all marked up with lines and colored pencils and highlighters — and asked me if my name was in it. It threw me at first because I wasn’t sure what he meant. Did he mean was my name physically in that Bible? Had he written my name in there? Had I? Since he is in that last few weeks of his life, and this particular Bible with the handmade leather cover was a sort of trophy from the Jesus Movement, had he gotten it out for nostalgia’s sake to remember those years? I was surprised he still had it. Or maybe he’s still using it. I’m pretty sure mine is in the attic somewhere.

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Posted in Jesus Movement, word of God | 3 Comments