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God’s New Year Resolutions

1-1-24

I wonder what the “over / under” is with New Year resolutions that are kept; that is, let’s say, kept by most people beyond the third week of the year. Or third day? Most of mine are history by the third hour. Resolutions are stronger than intentions, and I shudder when reminded that the road to hell is paved with the latter…

Nevertheless, many of us make New Years resolutions… or we intend to. If in the process we make an inventory of our shortcomings and prioritize our goals, we have accomplished something after all.

This has prompted me to speculate on whether God makes Resolutions. Without being presumptuous or blasphemous or outright ignorant (have I headed everyone off at the pass?) I know that everything in the Bible, indeed His workings as revealed in history, from the Commandments to the Incarnation to judgments and miracles, are reflections of His resolutions… but let us wonder for a moment. 

If God would compose a list of resolutions, at least to remind us of how He works, and what He desires, what would they be?

I think God would resolve not to give up on His people. He is swift to judgment, yet long-suffering.

Salvation is free but will continue to be offered at a precious cost; God will ever grieve for those who reject Him.

God, who revealed Himself through Jesus Christ, will continue to act amongst us, and in us, through His Holy Spirit.

The eternal “I am” will resolve as always never to be the “I was.”

Among other resolutions of God, if we might put His will into our words, would be:

He always will be Without end… He will never change… He will keep every promise… He always will be – He only can be – Holy… He will be righteous, compassionate, and just… He will be faithful in His resolutions and promises.

How will He act? God resolves to communicate with His people through prayer… He will be “the God who healeth thee”… He will punish sin but ever remind us that “He chastises those whom He loves”… He will affirm His rules for a satisfied and joy-filled life through Resolutions already shared, from the 10 Commandments to the teachings of Jesus.

God resolves that His character will not change. We may be secure in knowing that He is omniscient, He is omnipresent, He is omnipotent… He does not only love; He is love… He is trustworthy… He is good all the time, and all the time He is good… He extends Grace to those who love Him – while we were yet revels and sinners He provided a way to be reconciled to Him.

You might notice that none of these resolutions are new. I did not have to “stretch” or imagine attributes of our Heavenly Father. He has revealed Himself; He is Unchanging; He is – let us say part of his job description? – “from Everlasting to Everlasting.” 

We make resolutions to correct our mistakes and try to do better.

God has made resolutions, affirming that He cannot make mistakes; when all is said and done, this year and every year, He is the best that we can imagine.

Let us hereby resolve, ourselves, that we praise His Holy Name and dedicate ourselves to serve Him. 

Happy New Year!


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Click: Great Is Thy Faithfulness 

The Christmas Truce – A TRUE Christmas Carol

12-25-23

“Wars and rumors of war.”

The Bible foretells of the End Times, and signs of its imminence. God keeps us on our toes, because wars, like the poor, we always have with us. Has there ever been a good war or a bad peace, as many have asked through the ages? I say yes; there may be just wars, and the willingness to do battle is irretrievably part of a nation’s soul.

“If I must choose between peace and righteousness,” Theodore Roosevelt famously said, “I choose righteousness.” Nevertheless, lately I am persuaded to settle for a long wait if people want to find a war to be joined…

Humankind seems not to have “advanced” much through the centuries; neither with children on playgrounds nor adults on battlefields that once were playgrounds. We congratulate each other – that is, fool ourselves – that “progress” is the hallmark of our times. Yet the bloodiest death toll from wars, in any century of the earth’s existence, was in the Twentieth Century, more than in all previous centuries combined. We brag that we – “civilizations” – have finally ended the scourge of slavery; yet there are greater numbers of slaves today than ever in human history. The numbers now are not the faces that flash in our minds: bondservants. But, instead, all manner of children, women, minorities, homeless, voiceless, migrants, the anonymous.

As long as there are power elites; as long as greed outpaces love; as long as hypocrisy can always find a nicer name, humankind will be (in the Bible’s phrase, Proverbs 26:11; II Peter 2:22) like dogs returning to their vomit. Think about what changes have occurred, really, when science develops new ways to save lives… as it also invents new ways to end lives. What a spectacle, when people march to save baby seals and whales, and march for the right to kill babies.

Well, Merry Christmas, anyway. Let the holiday sing.

Some wars are years, or generations, festering; some start on a random morning, or so it seems. But one thing we seldom encounter is peace breaking out. In the midst of a raging war, interrupting a bloody battle. Yet it has happened. Not many people know about the Christmas Truce. It was a virtual miracle during the first Christmas, in 1914, of World War I – the so-called Great War, surely the most useless of history’s many useless wars.

A few months after war was declared in Europe, by almost every big and small nation on the continent, almost a million soldiers already had been slaughtered. Christmastime was come, and soldiers were mired in trenches that were to become so established that for more than two years the battle line never moved more than 30 miles one way or another. In that unlikely hellhole a miracle occurred.

Minor details differ but the dispositive facts are acknowledged: Peace broke out.

Soldiers of Germany, England (Scotland, actually), and France, at night, spontaneously sang Christmas carols… and were joined by their “enemies” who could hear across No Man’s Land… nervous soldiers climbed from trenches to greet their foes, and shake hands… gifts were exchanged, even little trinkets, but also pastries and wine sent from home. They shared pictures of wives and children… more hymn singing… fireworks, intended to illuminate battlefields so to aim the cannons, were now shot skyward in celebration. There were tentative, but successful, attempts to communicate.

Of course they communicated. The languages that night were hymns and Bibles and chocolates and cigars. Handshakes and smiles and tears.

A Merry Christmas. A Holy Christmas. Peace on earth… at least in that narrow 27-mile-long battle line, south of Ypres and east of Armentieres, site of the song about les Mademoiselles, that night.

A British soldier recalled the Christmas Truce almost two decades later: We stuck up a board with a Merry Christmas on it. The enemy had stuck up a similar one. … Two of our men then threw their equipment off and jumped on the parapet with their hands above their heads. Two of the Germans did the same and commenced to walk up the river bank, our two men going to meet them. They met and shook hands and then we all got out of the trench.

We and the Germans met in the middle of No Man’s Land. Their officers were also now out. Our officers exchanged greetings with them.… One of their men, speaking in English, mentioned that he had worked in Brighton for some years and that he was fed up to the neck with this damned war and would be glad when it was all over. We told him that he wasn’t the only one that was fed up with it. (Frank Richards, “Old Soldiers Never Die,” 1933)

Another history records: [The British] Brigadier General G.T. Forrestier-Walker issued a directive forbidding fraternization: “For it discourages initiative in commanders, and destroys offensive spirit in all ranks. … Friendly intercourse with the enemy, unofficial armistices and exchange of tobacco and other comforts, however tempting and occasionally amusing they may be, are absolutely prohibited.” (Stanley Weintraub, “Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce,” 2001)

How much different would the next day have been – how much different would the world be today – if the Truce had held?

Note that chocolates and cigars were only the presents. The GIFTS were hymns and Bible verses – they brought the soldiers out of trenches; not the prospect of snacks or smokes or a soccer game in the snow.

Christmas. God did not intend for Jesus’s Incarnation, the spirit of that Christmas Truce, to be a one-time miracle, but to be everyday life. He intended that we know-and-show that love and fellowship can be normal, not rare. We can be changed by the Holy Day, not be annoyed by yet another holiday.

“You started it!” “No, you did!!!” Wouldn’t it be great if we all exchanged those words happily, about starting love, sharing affection, and living in Heavenly Peace?

Who “started it”? God did.


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If your YouTube video opens in anything besides a man playing a bagpipe, then you need to switch to a desktop to play the video. There is a problem we have not solved yet with the videos on pads and phones.

Click for an excerpt of the motion picture: Joyeaux Noel

The Difference Between Jesus and You

12-18-23

‘Tis the season to be jolly, but there are some things about Christmas that manage to rankle us. It is not the fault of the little baby Jesus but let’s be honest, a lot of us register annoyance about a lot of things a lot of times around Christmas. I’m making a list and checking it twice.

“Christmas is just getting too commercial.” “Why do the stores start putting Christmas stuff out earlier and earlier?” “We have to fight the crowds again?” “Oh, gosh, half the lights are out!” “Where did we pack the decorations?” “Wasn’t it our turn last year?” “Oh! I forgot to get her a present!” “Those dumb songs on the radio again!”

… and so on. Notice that none of these familiar complaints is about God becoming incarnate to live among humankind, to offer us a means of salvation, eventually to die for our sins. No recorded complaints from Mary and Joseph, who found no place to stay, no clean or comfortable place to give birth. We know that story.

I have a version of that story, not in the Bible but plausible – that there was “no room in the inn,” or any inns in Bethlehem, not because the town was crowded during tax-season. Perhaps the innkeepers did not want a girl who was pregnant before she was married staying in their establishments. If that is the case, we can add that such indignity to Mary, the virgin miraculously bearing the Son of God Almighty, brought forth no complaints from her.

A manger is something unknown to most contemporary folk. It was not a place where animals lay, as this Baby would, which would be humble enough. It was where animals ate; so in the straw where Jesus was placed there was spittle, chunks of old food, and bugs.

Yet that familiar scene is abstract to people today; or at least it is sanitized. Our mangers are neat folding cribs in displays. The stable is an organized crèche in paintings. The animals are now depicted as Disney-like four-legged witnesses; but at the time they were smelly creatures that left their droppings on the nearby ground.

So it all seems abstract, despite the best efforts of Hallmark cards and inflated-plastic front-yard arrangements. The abstractions are seductive: 2000 years ago; a faraway land; donkeys as transportation. Not to mention the history and theology: how would most of us react if a poor couple showed up at our doors, the young unmarried girl about to give birth; perhaps even claiming to bear the Savior of humankind?

I invite you to think of this familiar-but-abstract story in another way.

Women can imagine, but scarcely identify, with Mary. We know from her prayer called the Magnificat (“My soul doth magnify the Lord”) that she could hardly comprehend the miracle. Some men might be able to identify with the surprising news that confronted Joseph, that his girlfriend was already pregnant. However, he and Mary both knew what the angel shared; and they knew Scripture (as recorded later in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, Mary and Joseph had separate bloodlines, of course, but each fulfilled ancient prophesies about the ancestry of the coming Messiah).

But I suggest that the easiest member of that young family with whom we can identify is not Mary, not Joseph, but… Jesus Himself.

The birth of Jesus was foretold. God planned for that Son to be born.

God knew each of us, too – before we were formed in our mothers’ wombs.

Jesus was the Son of God.

We, as Christians, are the Children of God.

Jesus came to earth with a Holy Mission to fulfill.

Each one of us has a calling, too; God has a will for our lives.

Despite coming from Glory, Jesus was a Man of Sorrows, destined to suffer and die.

As followers of Christ, our lot is to endure persecution for His Name’s sake.

Jesus’s Kingdom is not of this world; He prepares a place for you in Glory.

“This world is not our home”; we trust in life eternal, in Paradise with the Savior.

We might not have been born in mangers, yet during this Christmas season let us more closely identify with “our elder brother Jesus.” He came to earth, after all, to identify with us… to know temptation and pain and suffering and sorrow. Being without sin Himself, that Holy Child would eventually reach out and take our sins upon Himself.

Marys can’t do that. Josephs can’t do that. Even angels can’t do that. Jesus did. Jesus does.

Imagine the Savior of your soul in the virtual manger next to you. The only difference? He is the Son of God. But imagine at the same time something not so abstract: We have the opportunity to have Jesus live within our hearts. The Messiah came to earth, born a humble Babe, in order to reconcile you in that matter too.

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Click: Jesus At the Mall

If Jesus Were Alive Today

12-11-23

As Christmas celebrations draw closer, people tend to think more about Jesus than they do at most other times of year. … or, anyway, what He might have looked like and acted like during His earthly ministry.

Speaking personally, I am grateful to movies like Passion of the Christ and TV series like The Chosen because, if nothing else, their producers dared show a Jesus who was realistic (as we must assume) – laughing, crying, feeling pain, experiencing betrayal and suffering.

In the Year of our Lord (giving credit where credit is due) 2023, however, the impressions of our childhoods persist. People can be forgiven, to coin a phrase, if their conception of Jesus is of a fair-haired, well-groomed, moon-faced, smiley guy with children always nearby to sit on His lap. Artwork on Sunday-school pamphlets told me so.

Throughout my life I have heard Christians and skeptics alike ask why Jesus “had” to come to earth 2000 years ago – so far back in time, so far away. Believers say their faith would intensify if they could just see Him. Non-believers and agnostics have a similar desire – that if they could just see Jesus, they would believe.

Well, we should remember that the Apostles who lived and ate and walked and talked with Jesus for three years, hearing His teaching, and witnessing miracles… if they betrayed and denied Him, and scattered when things got a little tough, would we be much different? Get real. Remember what Jesus said to Doubting Thomas, “Blessed are those who have not seen, yet believe.”

But Christmas displays have got me to thinking. Not that Jesus is a plastic Savior-figure for sale at the Dollar Store; nor a blow-up plastic baby-in-the-manger for a lawn display; nor a face on T-shirts of the worship band at the new church down the street. But I wonder what Christianity would be like if Jesus had come to earth in our lifetimes. How would Jesus present Himself?

  • We don’t have many “Lords” and “Ladies” any more, so those terms might have to be altered. What is the modern-day equivalent of Lord? It would sound strange – “President God”? Would we be told to address Jesus as “Boss”?
  • Very few guilty criminals are put to death these days, and when they are, the Cross is virtually obsolete. Would Christian gift shops sell trinkets of syringes, if that is how Jesus would be put to death, by lethal injection, today?
  • Would people wear necklaces with little electric chairs instead of crosses?
  • The Great Commission – “Go into all the world and preach the Good News” – would be the same. But today, the spread of communications (and, I’ll admit, employing some 20-20 hindsight in my scenario here) might alter the message of the Apostles and evangelists.
  • Today the Disciples would be seen as recruiters and motivational speakers. But if they could know what becoming a follower of Christ entails, even modern sales techniques would present some challenges. Consider:

– Become a Christian! When you commit to follow Jesus, your family might resent you, friends might leave you, strangers might persecute you!

– Become a Christian! Share what you believe and you might lose a job! Neighbors will regard you as nuts!

– Become a Christian! If you heed His call and perhaps go into missions work, you can be harassed, even martyred, like so many Christians in history… and still, today!

– Become a Christian! Among the perks – not certain, but very common – you will be misunderstood, criticized, ridiculed… sometimes by those you love the most!

Those are some of the “perks” of being a Christian. They are not much different than any time in the past 2000 years. But I would suggest, if you think about “Lord” versus “Boss,” and symbols of crosses versus electric chairs, that today’s evangelistic “sales pitch” might be more challenging than in times past.

In fact, everything is more challenging than in times past. As we slouch toward Gomorrah – in the words of the William Butler Yeats poem and the book by the great Robert H Bork – as our culture is ever more engulfed by moral relativism and secularism, the challenges of being a Christ-follower are increasingly stark.

Generally, we live in a post-Christian age. Thank God, literally, the DNA of the twenty-first century church seems to be healthier in the southern hemisphere. Christianity, as it always has, thrives in lands of persecution; believers, that is, one by one, refined by fire. Africa, once the destination of missionaries, now sends missionaries to apostate societies in Europe, the United Kingdom, and North America.

There is hope.

And by the way, regarding the premise I posed at the beginning – “If Jesus were alive today…” Here’s the dirty little secret, which is not so dirty; not so little; not so secret –

Jesus is alive today.

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What does it cost to be a Christian? What DID it cost 2000 years ago, when Jesus was born? Remember the “Slaughter of the Innocents” – the command to slay all baby boys under the age of two; the Establishment’s effort to deny the coming King. Hostility threatened Christianity then… today its stark enemy is indifference.

Click: Rachel’s Lament

No Christmas in Bethlehem

12-4-23

Friends have asked me for my opinions on the violence and bloodletting in the Middle East, and I know people are asking each other the same question. I have realized an anomaly in the situation – in the Christian and conservative communities in America there seems to be near unanimity on the “issues” – Israel is right on every aspect of the conflict; Palestinians are wrong. Yet many ask their friends, earnestly, what their opinions are, as if doubts are nagging them.

Of course, the repeated questions might not indicate doubts, although facts are elusive things. And we must all realize, even subliminally, the wisdom in the ancient Greek dramatist Aeschylus’s dictum that in any war, the first casualty is truth. Yet conservatives and Christians largely hew to the Israeli versions of events, not always exercising discernment, nor caring to.

As I am asked for my opinions, I do have some. I am persuaded that so-called Replacement Theology might be valid – that Jews were the Chosen People because they were chosen to be the bloodline of the Savior. I believe the prophetic words that Jews who have rejected the Savior will, in the End Times, be reconciled with their Messiah. (More systematized than Replacement Theology, without getting too much into weeds, is Dispensationalism, whose Supersessionist origins are not recent theories but can be traced back to St Augustine.) I find nothing in Scripture that persuades me that in these in-between times those who reject Jesus and even persecute Christians “get a pass” in this life or the next. “All who believe and are baptized shall be saved… oh, also, Jews who deny Christ and denigrate Christians…” Not saith the Lord.

Christians who think that Jews do not need to know Christ tacitly approve of consigning them to hell – which is, in its way, the most bigoted act of hatred we can imagine. When this attitude extends to other “free passes,” on national platforms, greater misery follows.

Naturally I will say what I should not have to say – except to knee-jerk folks who are myopic. The nightmarish atrocities described in the October Seventh attacks are repellent and to be rejected and condemned. Period. American TV news anchors occasionally have shown videos of devastation and mangled bodies in Gaza after Israeli raids – “unless these are faked videos.” Never are Israeli videos similarly questioned.

As a student of history I remember the Irgun and Stern Gang terror movements that bombed the King David Hotel and school buses; who carried out the “Night of the Beatings” where British soldiers were kidnaped, beaten in public. Or other incidents where people were hanged and their bodies booby-trapped; or the Deir Yassin massacre of a Palestinian refugee camp where children and the elderly were mutilated and women violated. But (?) those Israeli gangs were on a crusade to drive the British from Palestine so Israel could be established. Closer to our time, 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon and (with the assistance of Lebanese Christian gangs, the Phalange) massacred as many as 3,300 refugees who had been driven from their homes in Israel. I remember videos of children strapped to the fronts of IDF jeeps – “human shields,” like we hear about today.

Many of these terrorists in these gangs, by the way, became “statesmen” and prime ministers – Yitzhak Shamir; Menachim Begin; Ariel Sharon – some even received Nobel Peace Prizes years later. In Egypt, a terrorist named Anwar Sadat who was twice jailed (and escaped) as a terrorist opposing the king, also won a Nobel Prize years later, as President.

Yet among common citizens – those “fortunate” to survive these endless acts – the tears of mothers are the same, no matter who cries, from either “side” of the conflict. But mourners do more than cry. I recall that Jewish leaders like Albert Einstein compared the Irgun terrorists to Nazis; I recall that Osama bin Laden wrote that Sharon’s atrocities in the Shatila refugee camps “inspired” him.

I am aware that some Jewish sects, some Orthodox scholars, do not believe that the present “state” of Israel is the Zion promised in Scripture. I am aware that, at the other side of that discussion, there are contemporary Zionists who believe that Israel should extend from the Nile to the Euphrates or beyond. I am aware that multitudes of people would be happy if the nation of Israel would be “pushed into the sea,” and all the murderous implications thereof. God forbid; God forbid; God forbid. Such matters manage to make the current crisis fade in significance: they have historic, apocalyptic implications.

My opinions? I wonder about “equivalency,” a word we often hear. Responding to the brutality of 1400 murders on October Seventh, and those kidnaped – by killing 13,000 civilian citizens of Gaza, so far? I wonder whether years of Israel letting only 11 per cent of Gazans to leave the Strip; rationing clean water; and limiting electric power to several hours a day can be considered not an excuse but an explanation for violence.

I don’t wonder, however, that any of this can be filed under WWJD – What would Jesus do?

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This year, any observance of Christmas has been canceled in Bethlehem. Despite, at this writing, the indiscriminate bombings occurring mainly to the north and south of Bethlehem – which is not in Israel but in that “no man’s land” of the Occupied West Bank, just as Gaza is not a country or a part of another country – leaders fear that bombs might explode in Manger Square or other areas.

There also is a desire among Christian leaders in Bethlehem to make a statement about the situation in Gaza. “Madness,” Pastor Munther Isaac, of Bethlehem’s Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church, called it. “This has become a genocide with 1.7 million people displaced.” Speaking for leaders of other Christian denominations in Bethlehem including Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Armenian, he challenged American politicians: “God has placed political leaders in a position of power so that they can bring justice, support those who suffer, and be instruments of God’s peace.”

Speaking of opinions, the president of Bethlehem Bible College, Jack Sara, noted the opinions of many American Christians who conflate Israeli politics with Biblical eschatology. He quoted an American church leader who called for Israel to “reduce Gaza to a parking lot.” Among the damaged buildings in Gaza, by the way, were some of the oldest Christian churches in the world, dating back to the days after the Resurrection.

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Concerning Manger Square in Bethlehem, there is a powerful song about a heart-wrenching story that was in the news a few years ago. Britain’s Independent newspaper reported then: “For 30 years, Samir Ibrahim Salman had made his way dutifully to his task as bell ringer and caretaker at the fortress-like stone and wooden church revered by millions as the birthplace of Jesus Christ.”

Samir “crossed Manger Square to get to the church to climb the steps to the fourth-century bell tower” as he did every day of the year. One day, “Samir was struck by a bullet in the chest. It was an hour before an ambulance could reach him but by then, he was already dead. The Palestinians claim he was killed by an Israeli – the Israeli army says they did not fire a shot near the church. Samir, who was mentally disabled, may have been unaware of the danger.” Medical crews feared an ambush.

Another death. Should our opinion be altered? Whether 1400 die, or 13,000 – or one – are mothers’ tears any different? Was there anyone who even wept over Samir? He was a Palestinian, but not Islamic; he was a Christian. Does it matter, Christians? He had been beloved of the town, and special to the church, because he rang those bells as a volunteer every day of the year for decades, different bells for different occasions, serving Christ and his neighbors.

Who pulled the trigger of the gun that killed the simple Christian Bell Ringer of Bethlehem? To those of us who are ignorant of the issues, who blindly perpetuate stereotypes, who support missions we don’t understand – and don’t support missions we ought to – those of us who have opinions not based on knowledge or facts – we can shudder at the thought that we might have been closer, in commitment of spirit, to the triggerman than to the Bell Ringer that awful day in Manger Square.

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A note. A friend who sometimes reviews my essays made a “hit me like a ton bricks” comment. She pointed out something we all know but need to know better: Neither “side,” for the most part, in this eternal conflict, knows Jesus. Yes, Christians have been involved in wars, many wars we may judge as unrighteous. Yes, we remember Jesus’s words: How can you say to your brother, “Let me take the speck out of your eye,” when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite! But where is Jesus these days? As neglected as His bell-ringer? Reminders need to be… re-minded.

Please listen to the song about that Bethlehem Bell Ringer:

An ancient church in Bethlehem, A target in a battle of men, Stands on the ground where Christ was born Trapped inside the eye of a storm…

Soldiers move from door to door; Mortar fire, it’s all-out war. Army tanks patrol the street, They treat civilians with conceit.

Samir Ibrahim Salman fulfills his task the best he can. Each day at dawn he tolls the bells, While all around the army shells.

He walks across the Manger Square; For thirty years he’s lived near there, A simple man who spends his time In quiet prayer at Jesus’ shrine

Upon the roof a sniper aims His bitter heart with hate inflames Samir walks slow, his back bent low And is struck down by the bullet’s blow….

An ancient church in Bethlehem, The bells of peace won’t chime again. The people now all live in fear, Grieving wails are all you hear.

Oh Jesus, please, help Palestine. Turn all that blood back into wine. Oh Turning Wheel, Divine Design, Please bring peace to Palestine.

Click: The Bethlehem Bell-Ringer

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... Rick Marschall is the author of 74 books and hundreds of magazine articles in many fields, from popular culture (Bostonia magazine called him "perhaps America's foremost authority on popular culture") to history and criticism; country music; television history; biography; and children's books. He is a former political cartoonist, editor of Marvel Comics, and writer for Disney comics. For 20 years he has been active in the Christian field, writing devotionals and magazine articles; he was co-author of "The Secret Revealed" with Dr Jim Garlow. His biography of Johann Sebastian Bach for the “Christian Encounters” series was published by Thomas Nelson. He currently is writing a biography of the Rev Jimmy Swaggart and his cousin Jerry Lee Lewis. Read More