Time to ‘Go Tell it on the Mountain’

I’ve never seen a spring more compromised than this one. Winter has blustered its way back in, the snow has returned almost as back-drop scenery to low-light the mayhem and slaughter the newscasters now have taken to be almost routine daily fare. Each day new widows howl over new carnage reported. “The dead-man’s knell is scarce asked for who, and good men’s lives expire before the flowers in their caps.”

That’s a rough paraphrasing of Ross’s speech in Macbeth as he describes the horror of living in a Scotland reeling under the tyranny of Macbeth, about the bloody business of slaughtering all of his imagined enemies. That very curse is happening all over Ukraine under Putin, and far too often right here in once-blessed USA where people have taken to killing one another at a rate indicating dire times..

So against that somber news, I thought it mete to report some news of a somewhat brighter hue. The Bible says, that “where sin abounds, Grace much more abounds.” (Rom. Ch 5) And that is especially true of the amazing programming now being offered over Trinity Broadcasting Network. We picked up that network really by accident when we had to upgrade our cable package so we could keep TCM, “Turner Classic Movies.”

Now we watch “Trinity” more than Turner. And now, during the Easter season holy days, Trinity is broadcasting amazing gospel music and inspired preaching from many denominations and many pulpits, all celebrating the key message: “He is Risen!” and “Where sin abounds, Amazing Grace much more abounds.”

Yesterday we happened onto a concert we found impossible to turn off. It was a broadcast of Nashville’s Lee University’s gospel singers, accompanied by a number of big name gospel stars. Let me just say that it was awesome. And it will be rebroadcast daily throughout the Easter season. One singer who really stood out was Nichole C. Mullen, who happens to have a NDSCS connection. She is the wife of the 1960’s basketball star, Stacy Conn who has gone on to become a minister.

Nichole, who authored the gospel hit “The God Who Sees”, has become a regular on the popular 12:30 talk program, “Better Together. The program features the wives of a number of well-known pastors: Joel Osteen, Matt Crouch, James Robison and several others including Joyce Meyer as they discuss the many spiritual battles preacher’s wives wage each day.

My true purpose in promoting TBN is to offer many of the seniors, shut-ins and just plain depressed Christians who have become increasingly overwhelmed by “the cares of the world” which can really become such a heavy burden that they blot out the happy, care-free life style so many of us knew and once believed to be the norm.

There is an answer, and it is found in The Word,(both the book and the man) “in whose Presence is fullness of joy.”

We used to find a relief valve against all that care just by attending church every Sunday, but now we find that the hour or two which used to give us “peace for today and bright hope for tomorrow” just isn’t enough time “in His Presence., to get us through the week.

So now, thanks to TBN, I get to put fresh oil in my lamp every day. Here are just a few of the great ministries I tune in on almost daily: Dr. David Jeremiah, Andrew Wommack, Creflo Dollar, Joyce Meyer, Pastor Robert Morris, James Robeson, Father Cedric Pesenga, Joseph Prince, Jessie Duplantis, T.D. Jakes, Rabbi Jason Sobel, and many others.

We don’t go by denomination. One never knows who might be preaching just the Word one needs to get him through whatever road block the enemy has set up for that day. What we are talking about here is sustenance, both for our bodies and our souls.

The Bible’s favorite sustenance symbol is the word as bread, as in The “Bread of Life,” depicting the pummeling and pounding and thumping Jesus endured on the way to the Calvary. That picture reaches its full expression in the last supper where he takes the loaf and breaks it saying, “this is my body, broken for you. Take and eat remembering me.”

And like the bread, the wine also must endure crushing and pressing and seemingly brutal treatment on its way to becoming the spirit whose fruit brings love, joy, peace, gentleness, goodness, kindness, patience –all “the fruit of the spirit Jesus’ blood bought for us on the cross. The prophet Isaiah describes it all hundreds of years before it happened. “He was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace was laid on him, and by his stripes, we are healed”.

Truly the mystery of Easter is worth our taking time to ponder, for “If Christ be not risen, we are all still in our sins, and all our preaching is in vain.”

Gene Pinkney - - For The Daily News 4/14/22 - -