VAMPIRES AND ZOMBIES OF THE FLESH

Hello Fellow B-Movie Fans....

Forget about all of those Oscar nominated movies... give me a good old Saturday afternoon B Movie...the B stands for Bad. If I can see the strings on the special effects...all the more better.

Many moons ago (back in the 70's)...I taught a message to a group called Follwers Fellowship (a Chi Alpha Assembly of God College Ministry) At Middle Tennessee State University...entitled CHRISTIAN VAMPIRES AND ZOMBIES. Many years later when I started e-mailing out the Ruminator Ramblings...I sent it out and revised it. Well...with the advent of the blog...look out...here it comes again...like a vampire or a zombie...this time with pictures...LOOK OUT FOR THE WALKING DEAD.

DEFINITIONS:

CORPSE: (1) a dead body, esp. of a person (2) something once vigorous, but now lifeless and of no use.

VAMPIRE: (1) in folkore and popular superstition, a CORPSE that becomes reanimated and leaves its grave at night to suck the blood of sleeping persons (2) an unscrupulous person who preys ruthlessly on others, as a blackmailer or useuer

ANIMATE: (1) to make alive, fill with breath (2) to make energetic or spirited (3) to stimulate to action or creative effort; inspire (4) to give motion to; put into action

REANIMATE: To give new life, power, vigor, courage, etc.

ZOMBIE: (1) in West African voodoo cults, they python diety (2) any voodoo snake deity, as in Haiti and parts of the U.S. (3) in West Indian superstition, a supernatural power through which a CORPSE suposedly is brought to a state of trance-like animation (or reanimation) and made to obey the commands of the person exercising the power

THE NUT FACTOR

Books and movies have used these concepts to thrill, chill, scare...and make money for years. Of course from the Christian perspective...once you are dead...you are dead in the physical. "And inasmuch as it is appointed for men to DIE ONCE...and after this comes judgement." (Hebrews 9:27) Remember that this old body is just a shell..and the spirit...who is the real you is gone once you are dead. It is like a peanut shell and the actual peanut. When you or your loved one dies...what you see is the peanut shell...the NUT is gone. For some of us...that NUT comment is more true than we realize. Sometimes you feel like a nut...sometimes you don't. As Barney Fife say about Ernest T. Bass...HE'S A NUT!!

MOVIE MADNESS

Years ago...in 1964 there was movie starring Vincent Price (who I met at MTSU lecturing on art and gourmet cooking) called THE LAST MAN ON EARTH. It was later remade with Moses...I mean Charlton Heston, in 1971 as THE OMEGA MAN. In both movies there was a cataclysmic disaster that left the world in turmoil. They thought that they were the last (omega) man surviving...everone else was voted of the planet...the tribe had spoken (for all of you Survivor fans). To their surprise...there were a few humans left...and a lot of mutant...zombie like creatures running around. These REANIMATED creatures were intent on one thing...GETTING VINCENT and CHARLTON. They would come out at NIGHT..and beat on the doors...break through their windows...to try and bring our heroes down to their level. The movie revolved around all of the various ways that they tried to avoid becoming ONE OF THEM...and killing them off...one by one.

OUT WITH THE OLD...IN WITH THE ALPHA
It hit me one day...that I was a NEW CREATION in Christ...an ALPHA MAN...not an OMEGA MAN. "Therefore if any man IN CHRIST..he is a NEW CREATION...the OLD things passed away, behold NEW THINGS have come." (II Corinthians 5:17). I was no longer an unrighteous sinner...that had fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:10, Romans 3:23)...and I was not righteous in my FLESH...but I was...and am...the RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD IN CHRIST. (II Corinthians 5:21) Outside of Christ I was the same old, same old...but IN CHRIST I was and am DIFFERENT. I looked in the mirror...and saw that I had pimples before I became a Christian...and I still had pimples after I was a Christian. Some INNER process had changed...but I still had some of the old things in my life that I had experienced for 18 years (shaped by my experiences...good, bad and ugly)

HERE THEY COME

I would find that I would be walking around on CLOUD 9 (...happy to be a changed man...when out of the blud...THE OLD MAN would become REANIMATED...and drag me down (by my permission) to my former self. I would do things (and still find myself doing some of them) that were consistent with my old nature. I felt like the Apostle Paul (a former murderer and zealot against organized Christianity)

THE PROBLEM DEFINED

"For I know that nothing good dwells IN ME, that is MY FLESH for the wishing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I wish, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not wish. But if I am doing the very thing I do not wish, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wishes to do good. For I joyfully concure with the law of God in THE INNER MAN, but I see a different law in the members of my body WAGING WAR against the law of my mind, and making me a PRISONER of the law of sin which is in my members. WRETCHED MAN THAT I AM! Who will SET ME FREE, from the body (corpse) of death??? (Romans 7:18-24)

THE PROBLEM SOLVED

"Thanks be to God through JESUS CHRIST OUR LORD!!! So then, on the one hand I MYSELF am serving the law of God, but on the other with MY FLESH the law of sin." (Romans 7:25)

THE EXPECTED OUTCOME

"What then shall we say to these thing? IF GOD IS FOR US...WHO IS AGAINST US? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how will he not also with Him freely give us all tings? Who will BRING A CHARGE against God's elect? GOD IS THE ONE WHO JUSTIFIES: who is the one who CONDEMNS? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was RAISED, who is at the right hand of God who also INTERCEDES for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Chrsit? Shall tribulation, or distres, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril or sword? Just as it is written, "For thy sake we are being put to death all day long; we were considered as sheep to the slaughter...BUT...in all these things we OVERWHELMINGLY CONQUER, through HIM who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, no powers, nor height, nor depth, nor ANY OTHER CREATED THING, shall be able to separate us from the LOVE OF GOD...which is in CHRIST JESUS OUR LORD." (Romans 8:21-39)

THE REANIMATED OLD SELF

Well...like the ZOMBIES that rose up against Charlton and Vincent...I found that my OLD ROD...my OLD SELF would raise up his ugly head when I least expected it. I would feel condemned and felt like a failure and hypocrite. At times I would succumb to those feeling and think...well maybe I am not changed...maybe I am the same old Rod. I would come into agreement with my emotions...what other people would say...and reason logically...that I might as well go back to my old lifestyle and live my life honestly instead of trying to delude myself...because I sure ain't living the new lifestyle. I smoked more dope...drank more booze...did more stupid things after I was a Christian than before I was a Christian. I was SAVED in 1970...been to a Bible College...married in 1972...and backslid (actually I slid face forward..actually a triple sumersault with a twist)...and returned to the Lord in a couple of years and have been standing since 1974 (It is currently 2006...at the first falling I was 21 years old...and now I am 55 years old..double nickles). I AM STILL faced with the zombies of my flesh rising up...sometimes I fall..but I am learning THE SECRETS OF COMBAT AGAINST THE FLESH...and the LAST MAN ON EARTH/OMEGA MAN movie is a prime example for how we as believers can COMBAT the old ways from capturing us...and making us like them...and how we can become conformed to His image...that is changing from day to day moment by moment.

Thanks to the true ALPHA and OMEGA...FIRST and LAST.. BEGINNING and the END man...Jesus Christ.

NEXT TIME

OUR WEAPONRY OF OFFENSE AND DEFENSE AGAINST THE ZOMBIES OF OUR FLESH.

Keep Mooin' and Chewin
Rodney (The Alpha Man) Boyd