2nd Peter 3:16-17, “As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction. Ye therefore, beloved, seeing ye know these things before, beware lest ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own stedfastness.”
I have always loved fireworks! Unfortunately, you cannot but them on Guam. In the United States you can still shop at big fireworks warehouses, which I wish I could do. I have seen them throughout Tennessee, while driving between Knoxville, Nashville and Chattanooga; and also while driving between Pensacola, Florida and Mobile, Alabama. Fireworks make the world a better place! Well, sort of, depending on who is lighting them. Sadly, people are often careless, even reckless, not paying attention to safety rules while igniting their favorite explosives up in smoke!
When I was a teenager I worked all year long to earn money to but Atari video games and tons of fireworks. That and a million Big Gulps from 711 store! It was great being a teenager in the late 1970's and early 1980's! I was blessed to be there in history right when console video games were popular (Space Invaders, Pacman, Mrs. Pacman, Galaxian, Asteroids, et cetera). Teenagers today are losing out. They have no idea how fun it was back then. I also grew up during the time of pinball machines in the 1970's. I remember that the song Pinball Wizard was a really big thing by the band, 'The Who.' I loved the 1970's and early 1980's. I grew up on cheeseburgers, pizza, french fries, beef sandwiches and pizza-puffs in Chicago! Hallelujah!
The fourth of July was my favorite day of the year, and going door-to-door in different costumes for candy 5 times to the same houses on Halloween. I had a fairly normal childhood and loved it! One year I'll never forget. We were watching all the fireworks going off at our local park in Chicago. You wouldn't believe all the literally, tons, of fireworks that the community hauled out on the evening of the fourth of July. Everybody had a box of fireworks. I had to make a dozen trips back-and-forth to the house, because I had such a big arsenal. I used to carry strips of 50,000 firecrackers over my shoulder, looking like Rambo. It looked like the Battle of Gettysburg, and I loved it!
But one fourth of July a little girl got seriously hurt. As you know, Americans love their booze! I thank God. I thank God. I thank God, that my lips have never tasted a drop of booze! I hate beer, which Billy Sunday rightly called: “Liquid Devil.” When I was a kid, you could get M-80's, M-100's and Silver Salutes (a quarter stick of dynamite) fairly easy, by simply asking around. I bought a half gross (72 of them) of M-80's for $36 one year. It was Heaven for me! But across the park on the baseball bleachers some men had been drinking booze, throwing M-80's onto the ballfield. An M-80 will literally take your hand off! I put an M-80 under a 55 gallon garbage drum (we didn't have the big black plastic garbage containers in the 1970's and 1980's). Everyone still had 55 gallon steel cans. I lit one M-80 under a can and watched it blow 15 feet in the air!
Some stupid drunk threw a lit M-80 and it flipped the wrong way, going off in a little girls face. I saw her faced drenched in blood, as she screamed and cried in shock, horror and pain. I'm sure she lost an eye, but I don't know what happened to her. The ambulance came and took her to the hospital. Oh how alcohol destroys lives! My friend lit an M-100 in the front street of his home, 50 feet away, and it blew out his windows! I can't even imagine what that little girl felt. Her eardrums were definitely blown out. She may have gone deaf, or partially deaf. Explosives and booze are not good bedfellows! I clearly understood after that why such 'B class' fireworks are outlawed in all 50 states. Smoke bombs, snakes and firecrackers are 'C class' fireworks, which are legal in some states, usually outside of major cities. I think most fireworks are illegal in all major American cities. The reason why is because too many people are irresponsible!
Likewise, the Gospel is deadly if it is mishandled. If you are reckless with an M-80 you may blow a little girl's face off, but if you are reckless with the Gospel you may send someone to burn in Hell for all eternity. I am so sick of this “turn from your sins” to be saved garbage being preached in Bible colleges, churches, rescue missions and on the mission field today. No Sir, you don't have to “turn from your sins” to receive God's free gift, Jesus came to pay for your sins on the cross! Jesus came to save YOU from your sins, not that you turn from your sins to please Him to be saved. Matthew 1:21, “And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins.”
Do you know what these false teachers (e.g., Steve Pettit, Marty Herron, Sam Horn, John MacArthur, Unshackled, Bob Jones University, Maranatha Baptist University, Jack Chick, Ray Comfort, Harvest Baptist Church on Guam) are really doing? They are leaving off the new birth! By teaching lost sinners that they must “repent of your sin” to be saved, they are effectively telling them to live the Christian life to be saved. That is not the new birth! That is the junk theology taught by Seventh-Day Adventist prophetess' Ellen G White. To receive God's free gift of eternal life, you simply come as a needy sinner and BELIEVE the Gospel (the Good News) of Jesus' death on the cross, burial and bodily resurrection three days later).
I watched a man's lifeless body get pulled from Lake Michigan at Olive Park. It was about the year 1990. He had been drinking with his friends, and jumped off the perch overhang at Olive Park. Since he was drunk he couldn't swim, and drowned. I watch police Scuba divers pull his dead body from the water. Young people standing around were laughing. I couldn't believe how insensitive and selfish some people were. That man's life was over, and people were cutting up with jokes and holding cups of beer, laughing as they beheld a dead man! That is the world dear friend. That is the world then and now! The world is no worse today than it was 5,000 years ago, there's just a bunch more people, and massive advancements in technology (that allow men to travel further down the road they were already on). The world has always been a wicked place (1st John 5:19).
That man was careless with his alcohol consumption, and died as a result. I don't see any way for a person to be “responsible” drinking booze. That's like saying someone should be responsible while playing a deadly game of Russian Roulette. I couldn't believe reading in the news that some insane police officers in St. Louis were playing Russian Roulette with their side arms. The woman was killed by her partner! How stupid can you get? Cops? Unreal. An idle mind is the Devil;'s workshop. I am 100% against married males and females working together in any job. Married woman belong at home (1st Timothy 5:14-15). These career women are damning themselves to a life of misery. They get what they deserve, nothing!
Fireworks are pretty and joyful to watch, but put into the wrong hands they can cause uncontrollable fires, serious injury and death. Likewise, the Gospel is beautiful and able to save the worst sinner, but put into the wrong hands (who distort it) it can cause multitudes of people to go to Hell forever! Bob Jones University mishandles the Gospel, perverting grace, by teaching that you must turn from your sins to be saved. I wouldn't trust them to light off fireworks, let along handle the delicate Gospel of free grace.
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