Posts Tagged ‘zombies’

5 Dec

Surviving Zombieland! Part III: Survival 101

Posted by tyrellh in Christianity. Tagged: , , , , , .

Zombies are dangerous, though they walk slow, every now and then they pop round a corner, or crawl through a small hole, their hand digs through the earth and grabs at your ankle. The point being, though zombies are dead, they are still capable of inflicting some serious damage; if you are not ready, you may end up being monster meat. But what does that look like in the real world?

All around us there are different types of zombielike unbelievers, some of them train for hours just to know how to bite you, take the Jehovah Witnesses for example, they spend hours preparing for that one conversation they want to have with you, comparatively, how much time do you spend preparing? Or what about the Muslim? His entire religion is predicated on the falsehood of Christianity; have you considered the Scriptures and how to bring them to bear on a Muslim?

What about the mere effects of living in a post-fallalyptic (that is fall and apocalyptic put together) world? Everything is dying and decaying around you, what then is the source of your life? What sustains you? In the zombie flicks it’s all buckets on the roof collecting rain water and baked beans from the tin (something reminiscent of the cowboy days), but in this real zombie world it’s about being plugged in to God’s Word (man shall not live by bread alone).

How do you do that, well by attending to the public preaching of God’s Word with an open ear and a heart that wants to learn, by spending private times in devotion, by speaking with others who are alive in Christ about the truths of God’s Word.

Believer if you have not ‘Worded up’ you are going to find yourself in many a tight and difficult spot in a world full of the walking dead. Let this be a reminder of the importance of these things for you, or perhaps let this be a firm exhortation to do what needs be done so that the resident evil does not overwhelm you.

Rule #2: Word up!

25 Oct

Surviving Zombieland! Part II: the cure

Posted by tyrellh in Christianity, Doctrine. Tagged: , , .

Having already discussed the fact that the spiritually dead walk among us, we move on to the next important question, the question about cures? How does a zombie go about changing from walking dead to alive? If you know anything about zombies, what is clear is that they are only out to get some food, everything they do is either in search of food or to get to food, and by food I mean the flesh of the living…. not a pretty site.

Similarly, spiritually zombies don’t do anything but sin, or try to sin. In fact they cannot do anything but sin, they are slaves (Romans 6:16-19). Sometimes though zombies can be sneaky, they can do something that looks like it’s good, but in fact it really isn’t; this doesn’t mean that there are not things that zombies do well. Zombies are very good at scaring people in the dark, walking about aimlessly, eating, pretending to be asleep the popping into action and they also are open to sharing a meal in real zomunnity. In the same way, we are not saying that spiritual zombies can’t do some things well; in fact they can do very well things in technology, medicine, politics etc. But consider Gen 6:5, “And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” Or Jeremiah 13:23, “Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? Then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to evil.”

Notice the things Scripture says spiritual zombies are unable to do: see the kingdom of God (John 3:3); come unto Christ (John 6:44); believe, see or understand the truth (John 12:27-39); good, understand, fear God (Romans 3:9-19); submit to the law of God (Romans 8:7-8).

In light of what zombies can and cannot do what does that say about the cure for zombies? Well firstly it should be readily apparent, that zombies cannot cure themselves! In fact not only can’t they do that, but they have no desire to cure themselves (John 3:19). If you get a whole lot of zombies to come to a rally by dangling some meat from the ceiling, don’t think that you have done anything great, you have drawn them with the very thing that makes them fearful to us. In the same way those churches that seek to draw spiritual zombies by using things that attract spiritual zombies, are not doing anything really great. A spiritual zombie inside or outside a church is still a spiritual zombie.

The only cure for spiritual death is God’s Word and the work of the Spirit in regeneration (John 3v3-5; 1 Peter 1:23). Anything short of that won’t make the dead alive. This should inform the way we do church, the way we evangelise and they way we minister to this world.

So we get to today’s rule for surviving Zombieland…

Rule #1: What you win zombies with is what you in them to

15 Oct

Surviving Zombieland! Part I

Posted by tyrellh in Christianity, Religion. Tagged: , , , , , , , .

She walked silently into her room… sat down and opened the ruffled pages of her Bible. She could hear the drunken cries coming from outside. Would her friends understand why she didn’t join them? Why she didn’t party the way she used to?

Or consider the following rewrite: She walked silently into her room. Sat down and opened a tin of beans from her food supply. She could hear the terrifying groans coming from outside. What would happen if the zombies found her, now that she’s alive?

Popular culture is fascinated with the idea of the zombie, some call them undead, others the walking dead, whatever your term of endearment these creatures of fiction are both gross and frightening.  Most films that depict them are apocalyptic films, that is films that depict the demise of civilisation with the onset of a zombie apocalypse; where a bite turns you from human to a crazed, flesh eating, and mindless zombie.

Now you may be asking the question, who on earth is Tyrell writing about zombies. Well I hope my opening paragraph gave you a hint. God’s Word basically teaches that we live in a zombie land! Ephesians 2:1 says that people are DEAD in trespasses and sin.  1 Corinthians 2:14 tell us that a man cannot naturally understand the things of God. Romans 3:11 describes unsaved man as without understanding, a verse later he is described at utterly useless. In verse 13 the zombie talk gets even more graphic, “their throat is an open grave… the poison of asps is under their lips”…. or consider verse 15-16, “Their feet are swift to shed blood, Destruction and misery are in their paths,”

Contrary to popular though, zombies are not something to fear in some future apocalypse, they are here right now, in fact, if you are a believer in Jesus Christ you used to be a spiritual zombie, but you got the cure (they never seem to find a cure in the movies). Zombie serve as a great illustration of the doctrine of ‘Total depravity’ also called ‘Radical Depravity’ (we could call this doctrine’ Spiritual Zombiefication’). The Canons of Dort in its third head of doctrine under the first article describes this doctrine:

Man was originally created in the image of God and was furnished in his mind with a true and salutary knowledge of his Creator and things spiritual, in his will and heart with righteousness, and in all his emotions with purity; indeed, the whole man was holy. However, rebelling against God at the devil’s instigation and by his own free will, he deprived himself of these outstanding gifts. Rather, in their place he brought upon himself blindness, terrible darkness, futility, and distortion of judgment in his mind; perversity, defiance, and hardness in his heart and will; and finally impurity in all his emotions.

Zombies of science fiction if they existed could only destroy the body, but God is the one who can destroy both the body and soul in hell. Being a spiritual zombie is a far worse state to be in than a physical zombie.

One final proof from Scripture of this doctrine of Spiritual Zombiefication, John 8:34, Romans 6:6, 16-20 describe unregenerate man as a slave of sin. That is all people can do is sin, they are a slave to it, it is their master. In the same way sci-fi zombies are a slave to their desires for brains (not intellect, but food).

In the next few posts I hope to expand on this comparison, and look at the implications of this doctrine

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