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True or false prophet? 4 ways to tell for sure

Throughout the Bible, we see true prophets speaking for God, because God told them what to say and to whom. But the Bible also shows us many false prophets. We see these same false prophets in the world today, using Him to claim He points the world to them and their blogs, websites, or […]

Changing “Jesus Calling”—Damage Control for a False Christ

There has been an interesting – and concerning – development these past few months about the wildly popular Jesus Calling book by Sarah Young: The new 10th Anniversary Edition just published has been stripped and edited to remove or alter those pesky New Age elements, the alarming statements made by the author’s “Jesus.” and the […]

UPDATE: Hillsong and its homosexual member issue

When one of Hillsong New York City’s worship leaders announced he is a practicing, unrepentant homosexual, and that he is marrying his fellow church singer and boyfriend, Hillsong leadership says nothing. (UPDATE: The couple’s announcement came in January, eight months ago. Today, less than 24 hours after this story published, finally, Hillsong issues a press […]

A Response To “Planned Parenthood is Not Selling Baby Parts, You *** Idiots”

When Skepchick Rebecca Watson wrote her viral post on the Planned Parenthood scandal (“Planned Parenthood is Not Selling Baby Parts, you F*** Idiots”), no one had to guess which side she was defending or what she thought of the pro-life crowd. The article is worth considering – not because she’s right, but because she is frustratingly wrong […]

Anti-Gay Conversion Therapy Laws Assure Ridiculously Uninformed Medical Decision-Making & Infringe Parental Rights

(CNSNews) Three months ago, in May 2015, the Oregon legislature enacted new legislation banning sexual orientation change therapy (SOCE). The Governor, herself reportedly bi-sexual, signed the bill into law on May 18. Oregon thus joined California, New Jersey and the District of Columbia in outlawing professional SOCE therapy. Critics objected to the new law’s interference […]

Will Christians be snookered by Shemitah?

When I saw some recent headlines over at Charisma News like, Keeping the Shemitah Produces Supernatural Results, and, Why Jonathan Cahn’s Prophetic ‘Mystery of Shemitah’ Is Flying off the Shelves, I thought, “what is Shemitah, and why is Jonathan Cahn writing a new book about it?” It wasn’t until this morning that I saw a […]

http://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/travis-weber/82-percent-americans-agree-photographers-have-right-say-no-gay-weddings

82 Percent of Americans Agree: Photographers Have Right to Say No to Gay Weddings

According to CNSNews:

A recently released poll shows significant public support for the protection of religious liberty—especially when special rights based on sexual orientation are being advanced at its expense.

The results reveal hope for the classical liberal vision of America: they indicate that most Americans still appear to want maximum freedom and individual rights protection.

According to Caddell Associates, which conducted the poll, “[t]here is an overwhelming sense on the part of American voters that they want to find common ground in order to protect both the expression of religious freedom and the rights of gays and lesbians.”

11 Events That Will Occur In September That You Should Know About

Could this be the month when the UN Security Council resolution establishing a Palestinian state is actually adopted?

“For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth.” Isaiah 21:6 (KJV)

Despite all the hoopla surrounding the month of September regarding Bible prophecy, we here at NTEB do not see it as particularly important. However, jammed into the space of roughly 15 days, there is a ton of stuff going on that we would like to bring to your attention. What it ultimately will turn out to be remains to be seen, but in our job as a watchman on the wall, we are blowing the shofar and giving you the heads-up.

The events for the month of September are as follows:

September 14th – Rosh Hashanah

September 15th – The Jade Helm military exercises are scheduled to end.

September 15th – The 70th session of the UN General Assembly begins on this date. It has been widely reported that France plans to introduce a resolution which will give formal UN Security Council recognition to a Palestinian state shortly after the new session begins. Up until now, the U.S. has always been the one blocking such a resolution, but Barack Obama has already indicated that things may be different this time around. If alarm bells are going off in your head as you read this, then you probably already understand how significant this event could potentially be.

September 17th – Congress has until this date to vote for or against adopting Obama’s Nuclear Treaty with Iran. The September vote on the Iran nuclear deal is billed as a titanic standoff between President Barack Obama and Congress. Yet even if lawmakers reject the agreement, it’s not game-over for the White House.

September 20th to September 26th – The “World Week For Peace in Palestine Israel” sponsored by the World Council of Churches.

September 21st – The UN International Day Of Peace. Could this be the day when the UN Security Council resolution establishing a Palestinian state is actually adopted?

September 23rd – Yom Kippur

September 23rd – Pope Francis arrives at the White House to meet with Barack Obama. Some have suggested that the timing of this event is highly unusual. Francis is the 266th pope, who will be meeting with President Obama on the 266th day of the year, leading one Internet preacher to wonder if “something is being birthed” on that day, since 266 days is the typical human gestation period from conception to birth.

Rabbi Jonathan Cahn has long held that September 2015 will be a month to fulfill bible prophecy:

Many end times people, like Jonathan Cahn, see September 2015 as a huge time for fulfilling bible prophecy. It will be interesting to see how it actually turns out.

September 24th – The Pope addresses a joint session of the U.S. Congress. Given the Pope’s new venture as a politician selling climate change, this will be very important to watch.

September 25th to September 27th – The United Nations is going to launch a brand new sustainable development agenda called “The 2030 Agenda“. The following is an excerpt from an article that I just wrote about this insidious new plan.

If you didn’t like “Agenda 21″, then you really are not going to like “The 2030 Agenda”. Next month, the United Nations is going to launch “The 2030 Agenda” at a major conference that will be held from September 25th to September 27th in New York City. The Pope is actually traveling to New York to deliver an address which will kick off this conference. Unlike Agenda 21, which primarily focused on the environment, the 2030 Agenda is truly a template for governing the entire planet. In addition to addressing climate change, it also sets ambitious goals for areas such as economics, health, energy, education, agriculture, gender equality and a whole host of other issues. As you will see below, this global initiative is being billed as a “new universal Agenda” for humanity. If you are anything like me, alarm bells are going off in your head right about now.

September 28th – This is the date when the Feast of Tabernacles begins. It is also the date for the last of the four blood moons that fall on Biblical festival dates during 2014 and 2015. This blood moon falls on the very first day of the Feast of Tabernacles, it will be a “supermoon”, and it will be clearly visible from the city of Jerusalem.

The PCA’s South Florida Presbytery Deposes Tullian Tchividjian from Ministry

“While Pastor Tullian Tchividjian was deposed of his pastoral credentials, the South Florida Presbytery is committed to continuing to offer him pastoral care. Our goal in doing this is to both protect the integrity of the Church from which his credentials were given while, at the same time, wrapping Tullian in the grace offered by Jesus Christ to all those who confess sin, pursue repentance and desire restoration.”

Prophets Unheeded and Rejected – But Needed More Than Ever

True prophets of God are always very lonely and melancholic people. They deliver a word from the Lord, knowing it will mostly be rejected. Their hearts break as they carry the burden of the Lord, and realise that their words will be rejected and scorned by the very ones who most need them.

I am reading the prophets again, being back in Jeremiah at the moment. What an incredible book. Every chapter is absolutely filled with spiritual riches which are fully appropriate to where we are at today. And of course there is plenty of divine judgment spoken of in this book.

While there is judgment pronounced upon pagan nations, most of it is directed to sinful and hard-hearted Israel. Just today I read about why this judgment must come. As we find in Jeremiah 23:8-11:

My heart is broken within me;
all my bones tremble.
I am like a drunken man,
like a strong man overcome by wine,
because of the Lord
and his holy words.
The land is full of adulterers;
because of the curse the land lies parched
and the pastures in the wilderness are withered.
The prophets follow an evil course
and use their power unjustly.
“Both prophet and priest are godless;
even in my temple I find their wickedness,”
declares the Lord.

False prophets offering words of peace, comfort and ease are a big part of the problem. They are telling the people lies, and they love it so. As we read in 5:31: “The prophets prophesy lies, the priests rule by their own authority, and my people love it this way. But what will you do in the end?”

Jeremiah clearly warns about why all this disaster is happening. Yahweh’s covenant people have become faithless, idolatrous and rebellious, so they are paying the price. As we read in these two passages:

-“When you tell these people all this and they ask you, ‘Why has the Lord decreed such a great disaster against us? What wrong have we done? What sin have we committed against the Lord our God?’ then say to them, ‘It is because your fathers forsook me,’ declares the LORD, ‘and followed other gods and served and worshiped them. They forsook me and did not keep my law.” (Jeremiah 16:10-11)

-“All this happened because you people sinned against the LORD and did not obey him.” (Jeremiah 40:3)

Modern day prophets have said exactly the same thing, and they too have been rejected and despised. The Russian dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who spent over a decade in the Soviet Gulag, was one such prophetic voice who was rejected by the West.

Consider his speech, “Godlessness: the First Step to the Gulag”. It was his Templeton Prize Lecture, delivered in London on May 10, 1983. It opens this way:

More than half a century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.
Since then I have spent well-nigh fifty years working on the history of our Revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous Revolution that swallowed up some sixty million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.

That last line comes straight out of Jeremiah of course. He concludes his important address as follows:

To the ill-considered hopes of the last two centuries, which have reduced us to insignificance and brought us to the brink of nuclear and non-nuclear death, we can propose only a determined quest for the warm hand of God, which we have so rashly and self-confidently spurned. Only in this way can our eyes be opened to the errors of this unfortunate twentieth century and our bands be directed to setting them right. There is nothing else to cling to in the landslide: the combined vision of all the thinkers of the Enlightenment amounts to nothing.
Our five continents are caught in a whirlwind. But it is during trials such as these that the highest gifts of the human spirit are manifested. If we perish and lose this world, the fault will be ours alone.

See his full address here: http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/47643.htm

This was not the first time he denounced the godless West and warned them that their fate would be the same as Russia’s. He had been giving such prophetic words for years already. One of the most significant of these prophetic talks was the commencement address he gave at Harvard University on June 8, 1978.

Some 20,000 people heard him deliver this speech in Russian, with English translation, on the occasion of the 327th commencement at Harvard. Hopes were high when he began, but the audience soon turned on the speaker. The prophet gave a word they did not want to hear.

He told them their secularism and hedonism would destroy America and the West just as godless communism had destroyed Russia. He warned in the strongest of words that they could avoid this fate only if God was brought back into the picture. For this he was roundly booed by the Harvard intelligentsia.

The speech was printed as A World Split Apart (Harper & Row, 1978). It is a slim paperback of 60 pages (half in Russian and half in English). I pulled this off my shelves today and here offer a few select quotes. He spoke, for example, about the difference between “freedom for good” and “freedom for evil”:

Destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Society has turned out to have scarce defense against the abyss of human decadence, for example against the misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people, such as motion pictures full of pornography, crime, and horror. This is all considered to be part of freedom.

He also spoke of the loss of will in the West:

No weapons, no matter how powerful, can help the West until it overcomes its loss of willpower. In a state of psychological weakness, weapons become a burden for the capitulating side. To defend oneself, one must also be ready to die; there is little such readiness in a society raised in the cult of material well-being. Nothing is left, then, but concessions, attempts to gain time and betrayal.

He tells us how and why the West has declined so rapidly and so profoundly:

In early democracies, as in American democracy at the time of its birth, all individual human rights were granted because man is God’s creature. That is, freedom was given to the individual conditionally, in the assumption of his constant religious responsibility. Such was the heritage of the preceding thousand years. Two hundred or even fifty years ago, it would have seemed quite impossible, in America, that an individual could be granted boundless freedom simply for the satisfaction of his instincts or whims. Subsequently, however, all such limitations were discarded everywhere in the West; a total liberation occurred from the moral heritage of Christian centuries with their great reserves of mercy and sacrifice. State systems were becoming increasingly and totally materialistic. The West ended up by truly enforcing human rights, sometimes even excessively, but man’s sense of responsibility to God and society grew dimmer and dimmer. In the past decades, the legalistically selfish aspect of Western approach and thinking has reached its final dimension and the world wound up in a harsh spiritual crisis and a political impasse. All the glorified technological achievements of Progress, including the conquest of outer space, do not redeem the Twentieth century’s moral poverty which no one could imagine even as late as in the Nineteenth Century.

As mentioned, the elites at Harvard were not interested in such talk. His speech caused a huge controversy, and it became clear that this was another prophet being rejected by the people. But of course he has been found to be proven right.

The West is on its last legs, and this is because we have vainly thought we could progress, be free, and be strong, while telling God to get lost. That cannot work. Now we are paying the price big time. As Jeremiah and Solzhenitsyn both said:

Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.

http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles/SolzhenitsynHarvard.php

12 Keys to a More Powerful Prayer Life

These principles will help you grow mighty in prayer.

Skyping with spirit: Chaplains use computers to support the seriously ill

Chaplains of diverse affiliations across the country respond to requests for support within 24 hours. &We face our own frailty, and people want an answer and to be able to talk it out,& said one chaplaincy service executive.

International (MNN) -- Open Doors USA calls for Obama to promote religious freed...

International (MNN) — Open Doors USA calls for Obama to promote religious freed…

Open Doors USA calls for President Obama to appoint a Special Envoy to promote religious freedom in the Near East and South Central Asia.

The Ugly Truth about Pornography

We need to begin to understand the way that porn affects all of us beneath the surface if we want to truly treat the trauma left in its wake.

9 Ways to Choose Contentment

Why am I not content? We blame media, commercialism, and consumerism, but there is a deeper problem. Sin.

180-Year-Old Baptist Church to Perform Same-Sex ‘Weddings,’ Ordain Homosexuals

GREENVILLE, S.C. – A historic Baptist church in South Carolina that gave rise to the first president of the Southern Baptist Convention has adopted a new non-discrimination policy that will allow its leadership to perform same-sex “marriage” ceremonies and also ordain open homosexuals. First Baptist Church of Greenville, South Carolina, was founded in 1831. Though…

10 ways the Church needs to rethink its social media usage

While critics of social media see unashamed exhibitionism or a nascent loneliness, Krish Kandiah sees an opportunity to increase our engagement with culture.

Another Extreme Winter on the Horizon?

Americans across the country should brace for another extremely cold and snowy winter.

College students need apologetics in face-off against atheist professors

Dad, I don’t believe in God anymore. An apologetics training in response to an increasing number of grieving parents who have heard these words from their college students looks at ways students can speak respectfully, but firmly to their professors, many of whom are atheists.

7 questions to ask before you post on social media

There is no doubt about the impact of social media on our society. It’s huge. It seemed strange the first time I heard a news story refer to a Twitter feed as a…

T.D. Jakes leaves blacks, ‘gays’ groping in the dark

“[W]e, the church, bought into the myth that this is a Christian nation.” – Bishop T.D. Jakes in interview on HuffPost Live on Aug. 3, 2015

Bishop T.D. Jakes is chief pastor and founder of megachurch The Potter’s House, in Dallas, Texas. He is a blind, cowardly man misleading many thousands of lost people.

Trump’s Tower of Babel: A President for the Selfie Age?

Donald Trump might be the apt president for the selfie age. This is not a good thing.

In this series we have been asking: To whom shall we liken Trump? The primary character is Nimrod, revealed in the Bible as the founder of Babylon, and the father of tower-building. We have explored comparisons of Trump with presidents embracing populist-progressivism and judgment-impairing presumptuousness.

BILLY GRAHAM: What Does God Have in Store for the Grand Finale?

Will man exterminate himself? He almost will, as Jesus stated. But just before man does so, Christ will come back! The demonized leaders “of the whole world” will have mobilized both as antagonists and protagonists of that coming world anti-God system—probably headed by the Antichrist. They’ll be “gathered,” we’re told, “together to the place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon” (Revelation 16:16).

Christians: We’re Losing Our Religion

Slowly but surely, America is turning against (not just away from) the same God it relied on to establish the freest, most prosperous nation in history.

Office Hours: The Great Disappointment, Graham Crackers, And American Religion

Nineteenth-Century American religion was wild and wooly. It began with an outbreak of Pentecostalism and concluded with the death of Dwight L. Moody and the beginning of the end of Old Princeton. In between saw the rise of Mormonism, the Second Great Awakening, the Millerite Movement, and Seventh-Day Adventism. Dr Marcus McArthur is a graduate […]

The cult of personality: The darkness under the evangelical limelight

Pamela Couvrette of Guarding the Deposit lays out the marks of a cult from a theological standpoint. She even “names names” (gasp!) of several celebrity wolves and wolverines. Pam has provided videos so that we can watch them spew egregious heresy. You won’t want to miss Steven Furtick performing “Hey Haters.” I sell the things you need […]

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/sexual-orientation-uk-half-young-people-say-they-are-not-100-heterosexual-1515690

Reprise: Christian “watchbloggers” under fire

This subject is even more pertinent today than it was 4 years ago when Marsha West addressed it.

Marsha West

A few years ago “the world’s most famous Christian blogger,” Tim Challies, took Christian “watchbloggers” to task in his piece Evil as Entertainment. Thereafter, says Tim, “Much discussion, much gratitude, much criticism ensued.” Boy I’ll say!

Only recently did I stumble onto Evil as Entertainment and the follow-up he wrote for clarification. (Links below)

Tim views Christian watchbloggers (CWs) thusly:

Day after day they offer examples of all that is wrong in the church. They may vary what they offer a little bit, but what is true of them is that they offer a steady diet of negative content related to the church in general or perhaps related to just one person or one ministry. You know of some of these sites, I am sure.

Oh yes, I know of many of these sites. And I thank God for them.

What I found disappointing in Challies’ blogpost was that he painted CWs with such a broad brush. He complained that some of them offer negative content related to the church or one person or one ministry while others are:

really just a spiritualized form of YouTube or any other site that entertains by sharing what is gross and base and negative and that does so for the sake of entertainment. There is really no value in watching boys do stupid things on skateboards and laughing when they crack their ankle bones in half; there is really no value in watching the worst pastors in America preach to the worst churches in America. Such sites offer evil as entertainment.

Tim may have a point but it would have been helpful if he had honed in on what a trustworthy CW looks like. What do I look for? Firstly, must hold to all the essentials of the Christian faith; secondly, must fall within the pale of orthodoxy; thirdly, must teach sound doctrine; fourthly, must confront false teaching head on.

Reprise: Christian “watchbloggers” under fire

Sexual orientation in the UK: Half of young people say they are not 100% heterosexual

According to International Business Times:

Only 28% of heterosexuals believe that “there is no middle ground – you are either heterosexual or you are not”.

Kinsey estimated that around 10% of the population was gay, although this percentage was criticised by the American Statistical Association. However, a 2011 Gallup poll asked over 1,000 people in the US “what percentage of Americans today would you say are gay or lesbian?” On average, respondents guessed that 1-in-4 Americans were.

A Mortal Wound To Free Exercise?

The If nothing else, it’s comforting to know that Colorado can force an orthodox Islamic butcher to make sausages for a polyamorous bisexual bachelor/bachelorette party, so long as no one asks the butcher to outwardly promote swine and free love. Not only does the court now apparently hold the power to bore into the souls […]

Should I Give to My Local Church First … Or to Other Ministries?

Of the many questions that people perennially ask pastors, some of the most uncomfortable ones are about financial giving. Most of the questions I get about money go back to the idea of the tithe, the Old Testament principle of giving the first 10% of our income back to God. (For those who are curious, you can read my thoughts on tithing here.) But another huge question I get is about the destination of our giving. In other words, should I be giving to my local church, or is it okay to redirect my “tithe” to other ministries?

To cut to the punchline, I don’t believe Christians should give only to the local church, but I do believe that Christians should give first to their local church. In the Old Testament system, the tithe went to the work of God’s institution, the temple. Other important things, like funding itinerant rabbis, or providing for the poor, came from giving beyond the tithe. The principle there, I think, is that the firstfruits of our giving should go to God’s new institution, the church.

But maybe, you say, the Old Testament is not supposed to set the pattern for our giving. In the New Testament, however, we see the believers (in Acts 2 and Acts 4) giving their money, not to specific projects they were passionate about, but at the feet of the officers they had appointed in the church. And it was through the local church that the believers accomplished everything God had called them to.

As we say around here, the local church is God’s “Plan A.” It’s the vehicle through which we care for the poor, feed the hungry, equip people to minister in the community, and send people out to the nations. When we give to the local church, we give to the central institution for the mission of God.