FOOTBALL AND FELLOWSHIP IN MODERN-DAY CORINTH

Las Vegas is a modern-day Corinth. How many other cities in the world earn the moniker, “Sin City?” This is why I’m so thrilled there’s an ecclesia here. “The ecclesia of Las Vegas” sounds as strange to some modern ears as “the ecclesia of Corinth” sounded 2,000 years ago. “What? How can there be an ecclesia there?” But for that matter, how can there be an ecclesia anywhere on a planet that is, relatively speaking, run by Satan? Belief if a miracle. (But then again, so is unbelief.) Besides, it’s not the so-called sinners we have to worry about “down here,” but the religious powers distorting the grace of Christ.

That message is definitely not being distorted in the ecclesia of Las Vegas. The Word of the cross is going forth with power here at the Joe Newman home.

We held another meeting yesterday, this time talking about Jesus Christ’s place in universal history. I opened with the question, “Why are we here?” We are here, ultimately, to give God company. I know that sounds trite. It’s certainly not the full answer, but God created every creature for His own pleasure, and theirs. It’s about fellowship. This future pleasure for the creatures, we know, is dependent upon an experience of evil. I am more richly appreciating the value of fellowship, at the same time realizing I’ve undervalued the importance of it to God.

His object is to love and be loved. The “eonian chart” I looked at for years has God, in the beginning, “All in Himself.” That always seemed sad to me. But then, at the consummation of the eons, He is “All in all.” When I see that second, “all,” I am happy for the creatures, but pleased even more for their Creator.  

A new guy came to the meeting yesterday: Terry. He had heard Rich’s radio show, and the two had spoken on the phone, I think, but had never met. Rich asked if he wanted to come to the meeting, and apparently Terry lives dangerously. I didn’t get a photo of him, I think, because I was too busy arguing with him.

This man did not harden his own heart.

Terry is a good man, and was very patient with all of us (it was reciprocal), but his blind spot concerned a consequential point: free will and the sovereignty of God. Terry loves the idea of free will, and could not hear his own contradictions of salvation being “of grace” and “no merit of our own,” while at the same time explaining what sort of merits God’s “unmerited” favor required. Besides, God didn’t harden Pharaoh’s heart, because Pharaoh hardened his own heart. What about the verse saying God hardened Pharaoh’s heart? It’s just one of those nagging Scriptural inconveniences requiring an extremely convoluted theology to explain. As Nathan Pilkington says way back there in good old Pennsylvania: “The miracle is not belief, but that God locks up so many in unbelief.”

I did finally get Terry to admit, out loud, that he believed faith came from “within a person,” and “not from God.” You’d have squirmed in your chair—as did some here—at the amount of cornering it took to extract that confession from Terry. The man was shocked to hear himself say it, I think, but I made him repeat it and listen to himself. I told him to think about what he’d said on his way home. Who knows? Maybe he did that instead of listening to the radio.  

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I am happy to have introduced Rich Kovatch to this group. He has lived only a few miles from the Newmans, unaware of their existence. He did the radio show here, but the show broadcast on a Christian station, which of course the Newmans avoided like the swine flu, so they never heard him. Rich is thrilled have found this fellowship, and the Newmans are, too. I’m pretty tickled, myself, about playing matchmaker.

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Sophia is from Georgia, a former Soviet country bordering Turkey and the Black Sea. She came to America two days prior to 9/11, 2001, and settled in New Jersey, where the weather shocked her. “Cold, snowy, gloomy,” she said. “Yes,” I said, “that’s New Jersey.”  She wanted sunshine and palm trees (neither one in New Jersey), so she came out here to Las Vegas about ten years ago and met the Newmans four years later; talk about symbiosis. Sophia learned from the Newmans about a God of power, majesty, grace (her background is Eastern Orthodox), and the Newmans enjoy the company and fellowship of a beautiful, vibrant soul.

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I built my radio studio yesterday morning in Hannah’s room, broadcasting my first show from there before the 10 o’clock meeting. For four days, then, I will broadcast from atop Hannah’s make-up table, surrounded by blow driers, curling irons, and walls the color of ripe limes. I will photograph my Vegas studio for you today, and show it to you tomorrow. I am very proud of it, and I think Hannah is, too.

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For a person of any age, Hannah has an insatiable curiosity about God (she is 14). For instance, she was on the Internet yesterday checking up on what I’d taught concerning the name, “Elohim,” used in the Concordant Version in Genesis 1:1, of Who created the heavens and the earth. Hannah sought to verify that this was a plural appellation, rather than singular. I kid you not, Hannah had three sites open. It was all about, “Elohim.” Elohim this, Elohim that. Then, last night, giving Elohim a rest, she produced a two-page list of questions on various other topics.

Last night, Rich and Eddie and I had just returned from Randy’s house, where we’d watched the Forty-Niner/Patriot game on Randy’s thirteen-foot (yes, thirteen foot) home theater screen. As soon as we got in the door, Melinda looked at me and said, “Okay, Hannah has only one question for you.” Everyone was laughing, so I figured the “one question” was a doozie. Hannah said, “I need one verse from every book of the Old Testament, stating explicitly that the Hebrew Scriptures were written only to Israelites.” I feigned anxiety. (Not really; the anxiety was real.). Not knowing of any such verse in any of the books, let alone all, I answered her question and dodged it at the same time, quoting Romans 3:2—“They were entrusted with the oracles of God.” Did it satisfy her? She did crack a grin. But I’ve a feeling she’s going to recast her query and hit me with it again today.  

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Yesterday evening, Eddie took Rich and me to the mountains, specifically, to the Red Rocks. The peak lighting was already past, but the mountains still rose from the desert spectacular, jagged, depth-rich, and snow-capped. In a way, they are more spectacular than the Rockies of Colorado Springs (with the exception of Pike’s Peak), in that the peaks layered, jutted, jumbled, then shot to heaven unexpectedly. (The disruption of the world had its way with them.)

                                                           

Eddie and  Rich

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After the mountain adventure, Eddie took Rich and me over to Randy’s to watch the football game. Randy had picked up a juicy Hawaiian pork dish for us, with wild rice. Randy has good taste in food, as well as living quarters. As far as Randy’s home theater system goes, one expects to have to buy tickets to it. I’d never seen anything like it except at a Cineplex. A thirteen foot screen with surround-sound is definitely the way to watch the NFL. (It was raining in New England, and some of it hit our shoes.)

Eddie, Randy, Rich. That's the screen reflected in the back glass.

The Niners beat the Patriots.

Party central.

I so enjoyed watching the game with these brothers. I felt like we’d known each other for a long time. It was one of those magical times, again, when you sense beyond a shadow of a doubt you’re with the right people, in the right place, at the right time.

That’s been happening a lot lately.

© 2012 by Martin Zender