While prime time news outlets devoted at least some of their broadcasting to the record-breaking lottery jackpot that ended with several winners last night, I must say it was a bit of fun conversation between my wife and I about what we would do with so much money.  To be honest, my main thoughts seemed to keep navigating toward finding a way to preserve both my anonymity and my sanity, and the best way I could think of to do this would be to take a very long vacation out of the country - maybe for a year.  By the time I came back from vacation, it would be hoped, another world issue/problem will have found its way to center stage.

All that money is kinda fun and scary to think about at the same time.  Fun to think about what you'd do with it, and scary to think about all the problems it would inevitably bring.  I can just imagine the number of people who would suddenly become your friend asking for "just $1 million" out of "all those hundreds of millions of dollars" you'd have.  Within days you'd have every worthy cause and crackpot at your door looking for a donation, and then fingering you as a heartless miser (or worse) if you turned any one of them down.  Then there are those out there who would seek to find some creatively exploitative reason, however trivial, to sue just in the hopes that you'd settle out of court.  After all that, then there are the relatives . . .

Besides the ones you actually know and have anything to do with, you'd have relatives you never knew, and those sudden relatives who are related because you have the same last name, or maybe just the same first name would be enough.  To be sure, winning $640 million would start a parade of long-lost acquaintances and friends from all over, and makes me think that year-long vacation I was thinking about would need to stretch out a little longer, like maybe over the rest of my life.

So what would you do with $640 million?  It's just a question, but one worth asking if only to think of what could be, and as you do remind yourself of what will be.  You see, for those people who won the $640 million, they will have a lot of decisions to make, and I'd love to be one of them, but in the end, both the winners of the $640 million and I will have one thing in common with you.  Whatever we have now in this life, we must leave it all behind when we die.

Kinda depressing, but a reality check is in order here.  I love dreaming about what I'd do with $640 million if only because of the circumstances I face every day in my life right now.  To be sure, I'd be substituting one set of problems for another, but at this moment I'd like to see what handling the problems of having $640 million looks like.  However, life is, and always has been, one of the great equalizers.  Whether it is money, or problems, which you have in plenty, you will one day leave them all behind.

With the end of March and the end of a record lottery jackpot, tomorrow turns to a new month, and thoughts turn to a new day.  As we approach the Easter season, I think of the greatest prize in all of history - that of heaven.  The price of that ticket?  Paid in full.  Availability?  Free for all who choose to accept and believe.  It is safe to assume I will never know the life of a millionaire on this earth, but with all the potential problems it can bring, I like to think my life is quite a wonderful blessing as it stands right now, and all the dreams I might have of living the life of a millionaire will simply never compare to the coming eternity in heaven.  How about you?  Did you get your ticket?

Going to church and calling yourself a Christian is easy, but actually living what you believe can be difficult to endure sometimes.  Not because being a Christian is hard, but because the world we live in tends to penalize anyone, not just Christians, for doing what is right.

Take the case I ran into just this last week.  On the job, I was trying to help a company who had taken over a hotel because the hotel had gone into bankruptcy.  The previous owner of the hotel not only had defaulted on the loan, but just about everything else, and the hotel was decaying and falling apart because of neglect.  Worse yet, to save money, the previous owner lied about the room count on the hotel.  The management company under order from the bank, came in to rehabilitate the hotel and set everything right again.

Where I come in is when the General Manager of that management company called me to set the record straight on the room count, which represented a more than 100% increase on the room count total, and accordingly a more than doubling of the bill for that hotel.  When the bank found out what the General Manager, who is a Christian, had done, the bank's knee-jerk reaction was to stop writing checks, and give the General Manager an ear-full for coming clean and telling the truth about the room count.

You see, to the bank, the General Manager cost them a lot of money.  If the General Manager had just kept silent, then no one would have known, and the deception could have continued indefinitely.  The problem is, the General Manager knew, and the deception was not just wrong, it was illegal, and being a Christian the General Manager simply decided to do what was right.

Talking with her by phone, I could hear the distress in her voice as she tried to describe why the bank had stopped writing checks and why the work was going to be placed on hold for a time.  My response was this: "It is never wrong to do what is right."

I have two little girls, and I am trying to raise them in the greater wisdom of the teachings of the Bible, but one day, they are going to be launched into the world to face the reality that not everyone believes doing the right thing is the best thing, or even the right thing.  As I talked with the General Manager, she expressed appreciation for the encouragement, and I told her that I am going to take this story home to my two daughters where I teach them they should always tell the truth, even if it gets them into trouble.  This was one real-world scenario I would have never thought of, but is exactly the kind of situation many Christians can find themselves in.

While the world will have you believe there are no moral absolutes, that doing right is conditional, and that there are extenuating circumstances for everything, let me set the record straight.  There are hard decisions, sometimes it can be confusing to determine what is right, and sometimes there are some downright heartbreaking decisions that seem to blur the line between right and wrong, but here is one absolute of which I am 100% sure - It Is Never Wrong To Do What Is Right.

For the sake of time and space, the question as stated above comes from someone who would discredit the Bible based on Matthew 16:28, Mark 9:1, and Luke 9:27 simply because we have no knowledge of 2,000 year old men walking the earth today.  I certainly don't know of any.  However, the people who usually ask this question begin to make all kinds of assumptions without any basis, and then wildly false conclusions based on those assumptions that eventually lead to holding Christianity responsible for every bad thing that ever happened on the face of the earth.

- Reposted from www.MenRising.com

It is not ignorance on their part, for ignorance can be rectified with a rational discussion.  What they demonstrate is a "hands over ears and eyes closed" childish game of willful ignorance where they accept no answer, no matter how rational, and refuse to answer any intelligently posed question while asking multiple "gotcha" questions that have been answered time and time again.  I quite imagine that they would hold their breath in an effort to turn blue if they thought it would help, but that would mean they couldn't whine so I guess that really isn't an option for them.  Too bad.

Allow me to set up the question in rational form.  OF the three verses, Matthew 16:28 gives the most detailed and specific information:
1.  There are "some" - meaning at least two or more, maybe even three or more
2.  "standing here" - present at the time the words were spoken
3. "which shall not taste of death" - will not die
4.  "till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom." - the second coming of Christ

Lest anyone say that Jesus is talking about the Transfiguration, simply look at verse 27 which puts verse 28 into context and see if that holds true.  Verse 27 is clearly talking about the second coming as it references rewarding every man according to his works.  The Transfiguration also does not hold up to the 4th point.  Jesus has not left yet, how can He return unless He leaves?

This website has an answer that also dismisses the Transfiguration: "Contradictions" however, I still disagree with even his answer because I simply believe verse 27 makes it clear that Jesus is talking about the second coming.  So, the question remains: where are all the 2,000 year old men?

First, answer these questions:
1.  Is there a precedent of anyone in the Bible who never died?
2.  Is there a record of any of those people being present, identified, and viewed by anyone in the New Testament during the time of Jesus on earth?
3.  Is there any record of anyone else after the Ascension of Christ who should have died because of present circumstances but did not at that moment die?

To answer question 1: Genesis 5:24 "And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him."  lest you think that does not mean he did not die, the Bible again mentions Enoch in Hebrews 11:5 "By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death; and was not found, because God had translated him: for before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God."  Also we have II Kings 2:1 and 2:11 which mentions that Elijah was taken up into heaven by a whirlwind.

To answer question 2: Matthew 17:3 tells us of the actual sighting of Elijah in the New Testament alongside Moses.  So, we know that Elijah was at least present in the New Testament.

Steve Yothment wrote me through email and also noted those same Scriptures, and gave the following answer:  "I've heard that John Hagee has claimed that Elijah and Enoch are the Two Witnesses of the Book of Revelation.  (Rev 11:3)  As I recall, Tertullian, Irenaeus and Hippolytus also thought that Elijah and Enoch are the Two Witnesses.  Anyway, is it Elijah and Enoch who were standing there when Jesus spoke "There be some standing here who shall not taste of death . . ."?  - Steve Yothment"

To be honest, it is not the answer I had in mind, but I can find nothing wrong with his answer.  It is entirely possible that they could have both been present because Christ never names anyone.  We also know that they did not die and were both taken to heaven, but that Elijah at the very least made an appearance in front of the disciples.  It also answers the question, "Where are all the 2,000 year old men?" in that we know both Enoch and Elijah were taken to heaven.

As we have no record of who Christ was talking about, we also have no record of anyone else being taken to heaven.  The bigger question is question 3: "Is there any record of anyone else after the Ascension of Christ who should have died because of present circumstances but did not at that moment die?"

In the book of Acts, Paul was tasked by God with the specific duty of testifying in Rome (Acts 23:11) and in the very next verses, we see more than 40 Jews taking a death oath saying they will neither eat nor drink until Paul is dead.  Verse 14 makes it clear they were not speaking generally, but were perfectly clear to either die by not drinking or eating, or see Paul killed.  Yet, we know Paul escapes out of their murderous intent - no word on whether or not they kept to their oath.  Next, Paul is set on a voyage that seems as though it will kill everyone, but God reaffirms Paul's mission to Rome and that all will be spared in the ship (Acts 27:24).  However, just in case anyone doubts that Paul should have died in either the acts of men or the acts of nature, there is the last act of the snake which bites Paul, an obviously venomous snake such of the kind that the men who witnessed it fully expected to see Paul fall dead.  (Acts 28: 3-6)  Yet, Paul does not die.  Why?  Because his life has a mission to fulfill.

That there would be "some standing here" when Christ spoke those words meant that there were some being given a special mission, who would not taste of death, until the second coming of Christ.  I cannot say that at least two of them were not Enoch and Elijah, we simply do not know from the text.  However, we do know that Enoch and Elijah were taken to heaven, and there we have one of two possible answers.

There is nothing in the passage that says the people standing there who would not taste of death would be walking the earth for the next 2,000 years, yet on the other hand, we have evidence that if that is exactly what Christ meant, then there is nothing that would stop it from happening.  Next week, I will delve into one other person (not Enoch or Elijah) who was standing there who may have been one of the people Christ was talking to directly.  I'll give you a hint: he was also given a very specific mission just like Paul.

Now, let the petty ramblings of the willful ignorance of the atheists with an agenda come forth!!  For everyone else, if you have a sincere question, please email me at jbagwell@menrising.com and I may feature your question in a future article.