Agnus Dei (Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God Almighty – Video)
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Monthly Archives: June 2014
The Wordless Gospel
The following is a presentation of the gospel in picture form, so you can present it to someone who doesn’t speak English. At the conclusion is John 3:16 in twenty-seven major languages. [1]
[1] Comfort, R. (2003). The Evidence Bible: Irrefutable Evidence for the Thinking Mind, Notes. (K. Cameron, Ed.) (pp. 1691–1693). Orlando, FL: Bridge-Logos.
SRN June 2014 Update and Newsletter – Chris Lawson
With the growing trend of many Christians, professing Christians, and even non-Christians involving themselves in Christianized New Age literature (God Calling, Jesus Calling, Have Heart, The Jesus Letters, etc.) and mystical occult-oriented practices (centering prayer, breath prayers, Christian mantras, Christian yoga, Christian séances, passive listening prayer-journaling, etc.) I thought it might be helpful to write more on how these types of things can be an open Gateway to Ghosts, Hauntings and Apparitions. It is not just undiscerning adults that are engaging in such things, undiscerning youth are too. Effectively targeted by Emerging Church and New Spirituality leaders, many people are falling prey to such things.
My June 2014 SRN Newsletter (PDF) is now online and an HTML page will be available soon, on my new SRN website.
Gateway to Ghosts, Hauntings and Apparitions (Part 2): Resistance Phenomenon and God’s Condemnation of Occultism – By Chris Lawson
Spiritualism: Satan’s Tool – By Ben Alexander
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I do recommend reading PART 1 (April 2014 SRN Newsletter) of this series first, to gain a clear understanding of God’s loving care toward us, and the serious consequences of involving oneself and one’s family in occult practices, even when they are made to look “Christian.”
Gateway to Ghosts, Hauntings and Apparitions (Part 1): Occultism and the Paranormal – By Chris Lawson
One of Satan’s Final Masquerades – By Sandy Simpson
Mantra Meditation: A Warning! – By Chris Lawson
Mantra Meditation – By Ray Yungen
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Lastly, I am happy to say that we have rounded the corner after six long months of behind the scenes footwork. A small note about this is available on page 2 of the June newsletter.
Proclaiming the Gospel and Encouraging Biblical Discernment!
Chris Lawson
Philippians 1:8-11
Podcast: Stand Up for the Truth and Dr. Randy White Discuss the SBC
Proverbs 31 destroys preconceived “Biblical Womanhood”
Deborah, leading the people of Israel
There are some who advocate a notion of “Biblical Manhood and Womanhood” with strict definitions of what roles men and women should occupy. Representative is John Piper, a leading voice in the movement named “Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.” In his essay “A Vision of Biblical Complementarity: Manhood and Womanhood Defined According to the Bible,” Piper writes about “biblical” manhood:
When my father came home he was clearly the head of the house… (32, cited below)
[W]hen there is no bread on the table, it is the man who should feel the main pressure to do something to get it there… a man will feel his personhood compromised if he… becomes dependent over the long haul… on his wife’s income. (42)
Shockingly, Piper even goes so far as to say that:
“[E]ven where a Christian wife may have to stand with Christ against the sinful will…
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New Calvinism and Orthodoxy
Quick Thoughts on Question of those who never Heard
It is a sobering question that many Christians dread to hear someone ask: How could a loving God condemn those who have had no opportunity to respond to Christ? Any Christian who has seriously pondered about his or her faith will sooner or later ask this very question. How does one reconcile the proclamation made in the Bible that God is love and square that with the reality that there are people who will not go to heaven that might not have had an opportunity to respond? I think a helpful way to navigate through this difficult issue is to think clearly of the relationship of various doctrines in the Bible pertaining to this issue.
If we are going to reconcile God’s love with people condemned by God we have to begin with why people are condemned in the first place: Sin. Sin is any violation of God’s laws. Since…
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Dissatisfaction Guaranteed [reprise]
I heartily recommend you study the book. But be prepared. Solomon, the philosopher author will huff and puff on his theological pipe and then blow smoke in our faces. This choking hazard will come at you in the form of pessimism (chpt 1), hedonism (2), fatalism, nihilism, absurdism, existentialism (3-4), agnosticism (6) and other –isms that should be –wasms.
Here are a few drops of the bitter toxins that await you…
Gettin Er Ragged: A Basic Doctrine of Scripture
Here’s the second component of what I’ve been going through on Monday night with the men’s discipleship group I’m a part of leading. We’ve been introducing them to a basic doctrine of scripture. I wrote the first component (the first 3 elements) before I became acutely ill, so the part on inerrancy and the last 6 points are elements that I wrote after I was laid out. One day when I’m better, I’ll finish working those out in more detail. Either way, I pray this is informative and enlightening for you:
A General Overview of the Doctrine of Scripture
Revelation
1. The Necessity of Revelation
1a. Certain things are hidden from all but God
– People can hide themselves from others (1 Sam. 10:21).
– The dreams of a man’s mind that he doesn’t wish to share (Dan. 2:8-11).
– The meaning of the past or the future (Is. 41:22-23…
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Three Moving Cultural Currents – Church & Culture Blog
Sociologist Peter Berger, among many others, has long suggested that the modern world is being shaped by three deep and fast-moving cultural currents: secularization, pluralization and privatization. Big words. Even bigger ideas. But it’s within these words and ideas that we find the wider cultural key to the rise of the “nones” – the fastest growing and now second largest religious constituency in the U.S.
The Process of Secularization
The English word secular derives from the Latin saeculum which means “this present age.” The contemporary term secular is descriptive, referring to that which is divorced from religious or spiritual sensibility. Secularization is the process by which something becomes secular. It is the cultural current making things secular.
And it is raging through our world like a flash flood.
Berger defines secularization as the process by which “sectors of society and culture are removed from the domination of religious institutions and symbols.” The effect of this process is that the church is losing its influence as a shaper of life and thought in the wider social order, and Christianity is losing its place as the dominant worldview. Richard John Neuhaus writes that we live in a “naked public square,” meaning that religious ideas and mores no longer inform public discourse.
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Hollywood finally comes to Jesus
HBO series is latest end-times drama
HBO on Sunday premieres its latest series, “The Leftovers,” based on the book of the same name by Tom Perrotta, which chronicles the aftermath of millions of people vanishing.
Later this year, Nicolas Cage stars in “Left Behind,” based on the best-selling postapocalyptic novel series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins.
Emergency alert from the prophet Cindy Jacobs
The respected NAR prophet Cindy Jacobs sent an emergency prayer alert to her followers, on Thursday, warning that a major terrorist attack–on the scale of 9/11–is being planned against the United States.
There are many problems with her pronouncement.
The Real Reason Liberal Churches Are Losing Members
Almost every day conservative Christians are told that if we don’t become more enlightened and progressive, we will become irrelevant to society as our numbers continue to decline. In reality, the opposite is true: We will only be relevant to the extent we honor God and hold fast to biblical truth, which is why the more “progressive” and “enlightened churches” are the ones losing members the most rapidly.
Biblical Theology and the Sexuality Crisis –
By R. Albert Mohler
Western society is currently experiencing what can only be described as a moral revolution. Our society’s moral code and collective ethical evaluation on a particular issue has undergone not small adjustments but a complete reversal. That which was once condemned is now celebrated, and the refusal to celebrate is now condemned.
End Times Prophecy Headlines: June 30, 2014
Bible prophecy in Today’s headlines.
End Times Prophecy Report
HEADLINES
June 30, 2014
And OPINION
Does it seem like time is racing? June 2014 has already come and gone. Don’t put off until tomorrow what can be done today–especially a commitment to Jesus Christ. Who knows? Tomorrow may never come?!?
===INTERNATIONAL
IRAQ: First batch of Russian jets arrive in Iraq
IRAQ: ISIS is dysfunctional – Seriously: aren’t all rebel insurgency/manufactured terror groups just a little bit dysfunctional?
IRAQ:ISIS Risks Everything to Declare a Caliphate
NORTH KOREA: North Korea launches two missiles
World War 3 Watch: June 30, 2014
===NATIONAL
PENTAGON: Two-thirds of American youth wouldn’t qualify for service
Obama struggles to explain why Americans don’t support his foreign policy anymore
Obama ignores Boehner’s lawsuit threat: ‘I’ll keep taking actions on my own’
FROM THE EMAIL:
THE ONLY THING DUMBER THAN SPEAKER BOEHNER SUING PRESIDENT OBAMA IS A REPUBLICAN WHO THINKS IT…
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Mystery Shoppers Rate Church Size
Over six years, more than 4,000 unchurched mystery guests visited churches of all sizes across the U.S. Here’s what they thought.
Chinese Christians Tearfully Sing Hymn as Church Cross Removed: Video
Wenzhou City, China – Christians are vowing to stand firm for Christ amid much persecution by officials in a Chinese province where church buildings continue to be demolished, and where believers in a recent video can be seen bursting into tearful song about the cross and how their sins were washed away by the blood of Jesus while the cross atop their building is forcibly removed.
VOM Persecution Alert
Voice of the Martyrs – June 27, 2014
“Happy is he who has the God of Jacob for his help,
Whose hope is in the Lord his God,
Who made heaven and earth,
The sea, and all that is in them;
Who keeps truth forever,
Who executes justice for the oppressed,
Who gives food to the hungry.
The Lord gives freedom to the prisoners.”
~ Psalm 146:5-7 NKJV
RECENT PRISONER UPDATES
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Influential Economist Warns, Civil Unrest Is Rising Everywhere: “This Won’t End Pretty”
Truly it will not end well if people keep buying into the simple minded notion that the government is somehow their friend. That the state will mete out justice on behalf of the “people.” That somehow by expanding the power of the politicians life will be made better.
The government is to be tolerated. There are things it must do. But it is not your friend unless you are in the political class. Most of us are not.
Dare Not Go Near the Border of Sin
“Christ did sometimes go among the wicked; not that he approve of their sins, but as a physician goes among the diseased to heal them, so Christ intended to work a cure upon them (Mark 2:17). It was their conversion he aimed at.
“Though Jesus Christ did sometimes converse with sinners, yet he could receive no infection by them; his divine nature was a sufficient antidote against the contagion of sin. As the sun cannot be defiled with the thick vapours which are exhaled from the earth, and fly into the middle region, so the black vapours of sin could not defile the Sun of righteousness. Christ was of such spotless purity that he had no receptibility of evil. But the case is otherwise with us; we have a stock of corruption within. Therefore it is dangerous to incorporate with the wicked, lest we be defiled.
“Such as revere the divine majesty dare not go near the borders of sin. Those who went near the fiery furnace, though he did not go into it, were burned (Dan. 3:22)” (Thomas Watson, The Great Gain of Godliness, p.40).
Lord God my Redeemer: blessed be the Creator of heaven and earth–the One who causes the sun, the earth, and the moon to align to form an eclipse, allowing me to look to the heavens with the ability to observe and wonder (abilities you have given me), so that I can declare Your glory. The heavens declare Your glory, Lord, and the sky above proclaims Your handiwork.
Oh Father, thank You for sending Your Son to earth in the person of Jesus Christ. Lord Jesus, thank You for humbling Yourself and taking on human flesh. Thank You for bringing upon Yourself such great humility, allowing Yourself to be nailed to a tree. Thank You for dying, for shedding Your blood to wash away my sins. While in Your humanness there was nothing about Your physical form to cause mankind to look upon You with awe, You now sit at the right hand of power. You are now robed in majesty–divine majesty. It is with reverence for Your divine majesty that I come to You and seek Your help.
Keep me from the borders of sin!
It’s too easy, Lord. It’s too easy to move across the border from holiness to sinfulness. It’s too easy to cross from godliness into sinfulness. Lord, please help me to loathe even the borders of sin.
Tomorrow, Lord, like almost every other day of my life, I will be surrounded by those who hate You. I will be in the uncomfortable company of young men and women who drink iniquity like water, who love the world and the things of the world, whose lives are governed by the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and the pride of possessions. Some will taunt and bait. Others will blaspheme and mock. Still others will insist they are my brothers or sisters while joining the throng of unbelievers, whose garments are polluted by the flesh, trying to stop the preaching of Your gospel.
Holy Spirit, please help me, even if completely surrounded, not to even go near the borders of in. Help me not to revile when revile. Help me not to respond in kind. Help me to answer their lack of control with godly meekness. Help me to respond to hate with love. I cannot succeed with out You. I cannot grow in my sanctification without You. I cannot stay outside the borders of sin without You.
Lord God Almighty, as hard as it is to stay away from the borders of sin when sinfulness dances about me, when wickedness hides not in the shadows but flaunts itself in the open, it is just as hard when the sound of a dropping pin can be heard. When I fail to take every thought captive for Your glory, when I fail to dwell on things above, even far quieter times can be fraught with the danger of crossing the borders of sin. Oh Lord, renew my mind. Cleanse my heart and mind of every wicked thought, every evil plan, every vengeful scheme, every “I’ll show you” response when wronged.
Father, I want to converse with sinners, just as my Lord did. But protect me from any and every spiritual infection they may carry. Holy Spirit, please inoculate me from the pestilence of depravity and unrepentance. I know how dangerous it is to incorporate with the wicked–how easily the defilement of their hearts and minds can spread to my own, with the open wounds of pride and arrogance in my spirit allowing blood from their sin-stained hearts to mingle with the new spiritual platelets of the new man. No! Please help me to be holy as You are holy. Help me to be in the world, but not of the world.
Lord Jesus, allow me to be further conformed to Your image. Like You, Lord, I want to walk among and converse with the spiritually dead so that I can offer them their only hope, the only cure, the gospel. Like You, Lord Jesus, may my only aim be the conversion of their souls. Oh, may my heart break for them as I plead with them to repent and believe the gospel.
I love You, Lord Jesus. And may I show my love for You by not so much as even daring to go near the borders of sin. In Your name, I pray, Lord Jesus. Amen.
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