Losing the Gospel and Biblical Literacy in our Culture

Last week two young ladies knocked on my door with bibles and tracts in their hands. I thought to myself that they were very oddly dressed for Jehova's Witnesses! It turned out they were from a local church and were going door to door in my neighborhood. I was intrigued because I had done this very thing when I was younger, so I was sort of waiting to see what they said and how they handled my responses. One of the girls seemed to be the main spokeswoman and she started right off. "If you died tonight, why would God let you into His heaven?" I told her that I had hope in the righteousness of Christ being imputed to my account, that my own righteousness was like filthy rags before God and could never measure up to Christ's life. I said I was trusting that God would look at me and see the righteousness of Christ and that would be why He lets me into heaven.
This girl looked at me with a confused look on her face and said, "Yes, that's good... but you need to accept Christ!" Such is the lingo of Christendom today. I used it all the time several years ago. But even though I was caught up in it, I can still today wonder how an expression that isn't even in the Bible came to be superior (in soul winning) to the fundamental doctrines of how we can become just in the eyes of God.
These girls were sincere, but misguided I think. Suppose I had not been a real christian but instead was a seeker. And further more, suppose I had been contemplating my own wickedness and realizing, through reading of the perfection demanded by God, that I had no chance of meriting His approval. Now just as all this was happening, if these girls had knocked on my door and I had told them what I had been thinking, they would have told me not to worry about all that other stuff....just accept Jesus! Such a line of thinking is very dangerous because it interupts God's natural way of working new life in someone and gives them a false assurance of salvation.

Not this one....

God said no concerning our possible car in California. I feel like the apostle Paul a little bit (in an unspiritual sort of way). He and companions tried twice to go towards Asia to preach the gospel but were prevented both times by God. Later on, Asia did receive the gospel. Not in Paul's timing though.

Another Car Update

Several weeks ago I found a car for sale on autotrader. It is a 1993 Mazda 626 sedan with a power sunroof, power locks and windows, manual, and 177,000 miles. The lady who is selling was the original owner (fairly rare these days) and evidently she has taken care of it and has all maintenance records. The 626 we tested in KC really impressed us, but it didn't work out as you may recall. Since that time, I have done some more research on the 626 and found some interesting facts. The time period between 1993 and 1997 was when a very good transmission for the manual version was used. But the automatic version of the same car was awful. When I checked out the comsumer reports on the 626, it returned an average score, not that impressive really. But when I went deeper and looked at the consumer ratings I saw that the people who owned the manals gave the car a very high rating, usually 9.0 and above, while the automatics were given terrible ratings between 4.0 and 7.0 it seemed. Evidentally the main ratings don't distinguish between the two versions. Anyway, it seems this car is a very good car, just what we are looking for.

However there are two problems. The car is in San Diego and the asking price is $1000 higher than blue book. I don't doubt that the price is higher because the lady has it in such great shape, but I don't think it should be that much higher. About the location though, it really seems to be a problem. But Katie has relatives that live close to the seller. I believe they are going to check the car out for us. After that, we have several options; if they think the car is great we could fly out to San Diego to pick the car up. But that would addabout $800 to the already high price. We actually couldn't afford that. Or we could (on the recomendations of her relatives) buy the car without seeing it and have them drive it to the reunion in Colorado and pick it up there. Just from a human perspective this second option seems risky and unlikely to turn out well.

Again, I am not sure how this prospect will turn out, but I really like the car, more than any I've seen in the past 14 months. If God wants this car for us, He'll get it. We're just waiting on Him to move.

Exploring the Origins of Government

I was recently reading a portion of a book wrote by Charles Colson, and in it he stated that human government was instituted by God in order to restrain human sin and preserve order. I have heard this type of belief stated many times before, but in the past few years I have wondered whether it is really true. I have also begun to question where in scripture people like Colson get this line of reasoning.
Colson used the example of God placing an angel at the entrance to the Garden of Eden to show that government was divinely instituted. But this example doesn't illustrate his point at all! It does show that God is the ultimate governing power. It shows that He intervenes in human affairs when He pleases. But it has nothing to do with human government.
Several months ago, I had a discussion with a local pastor who argued passionately from Genesis 9:6 that human government was set up by God. This is what that verse says, "Whoever sheds man's blood, by man his blood will be shed; For in the image of God He made man."
This verse seems to have slightly more relevance than Colson's analogy, but still says little regarding our topic. Jesus said a very similar thing to this in the gospel of Matthew, "All who draw the sword, shall die by the sword." It seems that the Genesis text is laying out this principle for the first time. Those who tend toward a violent lifestyle, tend to die in violent ways. Jesus' later reference to this passage has no immediate reference to human government.
The various passages that some people bring up to support this assertion that God ordained and set up human government seem very weak and shaky to me. Do any of you know of better scripture supporting this? What do you think of this idea? You may ask me what or who did set up government if God did not.... well, we'll get to that later, lol. Let's look at this first question thoroughly first.