There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true. —Soren Kierkegaard. "…truth is true even if nobody believes it, and falsehood is false even if everybody believes it. That is why truth does not yield to opinion, fashion, numbers, office, or sincerity–it is simply true and that is the end of it" – Os Guinness, Time for Truth, pg.39. “He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God’s providence to lead him aright.” – Blaise Pascal. "There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily" – George Washington letter to Edmund Randolph — 1795. We live in a “post-truth” world. According to the dictionary, “post-truth” means, “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” Simply put, we now live in a culture that seems to value experience and emotion more than truth. Truth will never go away no matter how hard one might wish. Going beyond the MSM idealogical opinion/bias and their low information tabloid reality show news with a distractional superficial focus on entertainment, sensationalism, emotionalism and activist reporting – this blogs goal is to, in some small way, put a plug in the broken dam of truth and save as many as possible from the consequences—temporal and eternal. "The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those who speak it." – George Orwell “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” ― Soren Kierkegaard
Fake News and Christian Discernment
Charles Spurgeon once rightly said, “Discernment is not a matter of simply telling the difference between right and wrong; rather it is telling the difference between right and almost right.” Today, Pastor Randy White joins us to discuss discernment, fake news, and having the correct biblical perspective on our times and how to prepare for the challenging days our nation and church face.
The Most Important Nation in History
God has brought the nation of Israel back to center stage for the final years of this world before the Lord returns in judgment. Of all the policy decisions President Trump is faced with, none may be more important than how he works with and supports Israel. Joining us to discuss the critical relationship between the U.S. and Israel is Jan Markell of Olive Tree Views.
Lies, Hypocrisy and Cover-ups from the Left
There can be little doubt that the secular media in our nation on the whole is committed to the Socialist progressive movement, and the days of unbiased reporting of news is a thing of the past. Today we discuss the death of media objectivity; has the final nail been hammered in its coffin?
This morning, Mike and Dave discuss a report on how “climate change” data has been manipulated to advance radical environmentalism, and take a look at the hypocrisy of Senate Democrats in the handling of President Trump’s cabinet nominations. We will also look at the increasing pressure progressives are putting on American businesses to get in line with their agenda.
Plus, is media objectivity dead? Sadly, truth and facts are no longer priorities when political ideology reigns supreme.
A Lost Generation?
Certainly this generation faces enormous challenges as public education and media have succeeded at indoctrinating many of them into a secular humanist world view. And this generation of younger people will one day lead our nation and our churches; some already are! So how can we help them turn (back) to God instead of away from Him? Religion and Culture expert, Dr. Alex McFarland joins us today to discuss this and other concerns.
The World Will Hate You, But…
Jesus warned His disciples in John 15 that because the world hated Him, it would also hate all those who believe in and follow Him as well. The times in which we live certainly bear out the truth of Jesus’ warning. But if we are not speaking God’s truth and living out the Bible, people may not know we are Christians.
Led by atheists, LBGTQ activists, a corrupt humanist court system, and a corrupt media, our nation is seeing a steady diet of lawsuits against the free speech of Christian individuals and organizations. Religious freedoms are being redefined.
This morning we cover some recent stories involving the godless push to eradicate biblical Christian morality in America, and we analyze some of the evidence of growing hatred and discrimination against Christians. Our special guest today is Brad Dacus, president of The Pacific Justice Institute.
Technology, the Church, World Events & Prophecy
It’s vital for true believers to have a solid, biblical Christian worldview and do our best to see people and events with an eternal perspective. Though we were not given a spirit of fear, it’s easy to become anxious or overwhelmed if we focus on this world rather than the Word.
Another day, another report about the problems in the Southern Baptist Convention.
According to The Message, the official newspaper of Louisiana Baptists, a story reported on February 16, 2017 that former Southern Baptist Convention President Jack Graham, pastor of the 41,000-member Prestonwood Baptist Church, Plano, Texas, has led his congregation to suspend the church’s support of the SBC’s Cooperative Program.
“Prestonwood Baptist Church has announced its decision to escrow gifts previously forwarded to support Southern Baptist cooperative missions and ministries while the congregation discusses concerns about the direction of the Southern Baptist Convention.” (Source)
There’s as much certainty that Prestonwood’s actions will receive prompt attention within the CP-funded ivory towers of SBC elitedom as there was of Christ’s certainty of Judas’ betrayal. Prestonwood contributes nearly $1 million annually to CP coffers.
It was just back in January when former Tennessee Baptist Convention President Dean Haun led his church to do the same. (Go HERE for more) Haun, a former trustee of the SBC’s International Missions Board, and his church decided to escrow their financial support until a satisfactory response to the IMB’s 2016 participation in a religious liberty amicus brief supporting a mosque’s construction in New Jersey was forthcoming. On Wednesday, February 15, IMB President David Platt issued an “apology” of sorts for the “divisive and distracting” results of his agency’s signatory role in the legal filing.
But the IMB was not the only SBC agency serving as a signatory alongside the interfaith array of the brief’s supporters. Joining legal hands with the likes of The Interfaith Coalition on Mosques, the International Society of Krishna Awareness, and The Sikh Coalition, the SBC’s IMB was also heartily joined in the brief by its Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) under the leadership of Russell Moore.
Pastor Jack Graham
Graham’s church, according to The Message article, cites the SBC’s mosque support as instrumental in its concerns about “the direction of the Southern Baptist Convention.” The church’s primary concern, at least as has been reported, may seem primarily focused on the activity of the ERLC and Russell Moore.
Prestonwood’s Executive Pastor, Mike Buster, referred to “various significant positions taken by the leadership of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission that do not reflect the beliefs and values of many in the Southern Baptist Convention.”
Not only did the ERLC, under Russell Moore, brashly and arrogantly rebuke a pastor for questioning its participation in its mosque-building alliance, Moore has also been an outspoken critic of now-President Trump. Moore publicly denigrated Christians who would support Trump, and, as it turns out, many of those Trump-supporters just happened to be Cooperative Program-givers. Southern Baptist pew sitters supported Trump by the hordes while annually funding a nearly $4m SBC agency that was actively lobbying against them all the while, and caricaturing them as “the old-school political Religious Right.”
The article highlights Moore’s disdain for those who effectively pay his salary, citing his own words about them during the campaign season. Trump voters, he said, “may well be drunk right now, and haven’t been into a church since someone invited them to Vacation Bible School sometime back when Seinfeld was in first-run episodes.”
However, Graham noted that his church’s concerns are not focused singularly on “one personality.” Stating that he’s “not angry at the SBC,” Graham emphasized that an “uneasiness” exists in his church’s leadership about the “disconnect between some of our denominational leaders and our churches.”
“We’re just concerned about the direction of the Southern Baptist Convention, and feel the need to make some changes in the way we give.” Jack Graham
Indeed, there is much to be concerned about in the SBC. Its downgrade performance of the last decade is no doubt highlighted by the exodus of over 1 million members from its ranks. But, that’s what happens when Scripture is lauded, but not obeyed. It’s what happens when churches become more concerned with church growth techniques than Biblical obedience and trusting Christ to build His Church. And it’s what happens when churches, and their denomination, don’t exalt His name and His Word as He has done.
The shame of it is, perhaps, that money seems to matter more than that Name and than that Word. There will be more to this story, to be sure. Please, pray for the SBC, for its leaders, for its pastors and its church leadership, and for it to be convicted to preach the Word (2 Timothy 4:2), to teach what accords with sound doctrine (Titus 2:1), and to contend for the faith once for all delivered. (Jude 3)
You have exalted above all things your name and your word.” Psalm 138:2
And until more SBC churches do as the Psalmist stated, perhaps more should do as Haun and Graham’s churches have done … because it sure seems like the Word of God isn’t getting the point across …
Well, we’re back to our series on dealing with sin in the church from Paul’s instructions to the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians 2:5–11. If you haven’t read the other posts in this series, I’d encourage you to do so. We’ve been moving through the stages of faithful, successful discipline, and have seen three of them so far. First, there is the harmful sin that makes discipline necessary; second, there’s the corporate discipline itself; and third, there is, we hope, genuine repentance. The fourth stage, after there has been genuine repentance, is comforting forgiveness. Paul says, “Sufficient for such a one is this punishment which was inflicted by the majority, 7so that on the contrary you should rather forgive and comfort him, otherwise such a one might be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow.”
Here we glean a principle that needs to take root in the soil of every Christian’s heart: where there is repentance, there is forgiveness. When a sinner repents, the church forgives. And though the original events of this text lead us to apply this principle first of all to cases of corporate church discipline, we all need to hear this point in light of our own duty to forgive those who sin against us personally. When a sinner repents, Christians forgive.
Requiring Penance?
But the Corinthians weren’t not abiding by this principle. Remember, they had come to grips with how serious it was for them to take sides with the offender against the Apostle Paul. Through Paul’s severe letter (cf. 2 Cor 2:4), they had experienced that godly sorrow that leads to repentance. 2 Corinthians 7:11 speaks about the fruit of Corinthians’ godly sorrow and genuine repentance as it related to the offender: “For behold what earnestness this very thing, this godly sorrow, has produced in you: what vindication of yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal, what avenging of wrong!” Though they had been hesitant to discipline the man who had challenged Paul’s authority, they were now indignant with him. Paul speaks of their zeal, and their avenging of wrongdoing in this matter of disciplining this person.
And by the grace of God, corporate discipline had had its intended effect; it brought this sinning brother to repentance. But the Corinthians weren’t satisfied. They refused to forgive him and welcome him back into the church. And the fact that Paul says the punishment was sufficient (2 Cor 2:6), and “on the contrary you should rather forgive and comfort him” (2 Cor 2:7) implies that they were looking to impose even severer punishment. They believed that he needed to suffer further before being restored to the church. He needed to be made to wallow in the grief of his sin. In a real sense, the Corinthians were demanding that this man do penance. His repentance was not enough; they were requiring that he now further “atone” for his sins by suffering further shame, grief, and sorrow. Once he had felt bad enough about his sin, well then they would welcome him back.
It is Finished
But such self-atoning penance is no more acceptable to the true church than it is to God Himself. Think for a moment about the times when you find yourself on your face before God, confessing a familiar sin to Him and asking for forgiveness again. He has every right to be indignant with you. He has every right to rake you over the coals for sinning against Him again—especially after He has forgiven you countless times for that same sin. But when you come to your Father in repentance, seeking forgiveness for your sins and restored fellowship with Him, He doesn’t require you to perform a laundry list of duties before He welcomes you back. He doesn’t say, “Nope, you need to sit in the dog house a little while and feel worse about what you’ve done.”
And why not? Because Christ’s sacrifice is sufficient atonement for all your sins. When the Son of God received in Himself the full exercise of His Father’s wrath against the sins of His people, He did not fail to pay for a single one of your sins. He didn’t dodge the slightest stroke of His Father’s rod. He drank every last drop of that miserable cup, and cried, “It is finished!” There is nothing more that you could do to pay for your sins. And to suppose that you can pay for them—whether it be by reciting Hail Marys, or by wallowing in your grief trying to feel sorry enough so God will take you back—is nothing short of blasphemy. You could fill the oceans with sorrow, and there would never be enough sorrow to atone for even a single sin.
And if that is the case with God’s forgiveness of you, dear Christian, how could it be any different with your forgiveness of your brothers and sisters? Or how could a church demand from its members more than God Himself demands of them? When a sinner repents, church discipline has achieved the purpose for which it was instituted. For the church to withhold forgiveness at that point is to abandon the remedial and restorative blessings of discipline, and to move into cruel domineering, as Calvin said. Philip Edgcumbe Hughes writes,
“Discipline which is so inflexible as to leave no place for repentance and reconciliation has ceased to be truly Christian; for it is no less a scandal to cut off the penitent sinner from all hope of re-entry into the comfort and security of the fellowship of the redeemed community than it is to permit flagrant wickedness to continue unpunished in the Body of Christ” (66–67).
Swallowed Up in Despair
The fruit of that kind of domineering over-lordship is utter despair. Paul says, “Forgive him, otherwise such a one might be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow.” “Overwhelmed” is the Greek term for “swallowed,” “drowned,” or “devoured.” Paul is concerned that this repentant man be forgiven and comforted, lest he be swallowed up and drowned by excessive sorrow. Now, it might sound a bit melodramatic, but think for a moment about the sheer power of the despair for ever being forgiven. If you have sinned grievously, and, because of your stubborn refusal of the correction of your brothers and sisters, have been put out of the fellowship of the church, but now by the grace of God you have owned your folly as sin and have sought to abandon your error and be restored to God’s people, and you go to them expressing repentance, but they tell you that you’re not forgiven and still not welcome——how helpless and alone would you feel?
You would feel as if there is absolutely nothing that could ever be done to help your estate. It’s one thing to feel like a stranger and alien among the world; they are of their father and you are of yours. But to be made to feel like you’re a stranger and alien even among thepeople of God is an unbearable thought. It would be to make a spiritual orphan out of you. How long would it be before your flesh convinced you that there’s no point to repentance—no point to pursuing holiness at all? If repentance from sin gets you isolated and cut off from the people of God, it will only be a matter of time before you plunge headlong into sin without any hope of ever being restored to fellowship. Friends, the power to fight sin comes from the freedom of Christ’s forgiveness. For the church to withhold forgiveness from repentant sinners is to imprison those whom Christ had made free—to cripple them, to weigh them down with despair.
That kind of sorrow devours a person; it swallows him up. Just as properly-administered discipline brings godly sorrow, so poorly-administered discipline brings worldly sorrow. “Godly sorrow,” Paul says, “produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation, but the sorrow of the world produces death” (2 Cor 7:10). God doesn’t mean for believers to be totally consumed by grief over their sin; He wants them to experience the godly sorrow that leads to a repentance without regret. Excessive sorrow can be so unbearable that it even leads to death (e.g., Matt 27:3–5).
And so Paul says to “forgive and comfort him.” As surely as correction and discipline are to follow sin, forgiveness is to follow repentance. Just as it is grossly unfaithful for a church to fail to deal with sin in its midst by failing to administer discipline, it is just as grossly unfaithful for a church to fail to forgive a sinner who repents. Charles Hodge captured it nicely when he wrote, “Undue severity is as much to be avoided as undue leniency.”
Forgiven People Forgive
Undue severity just as unfaithful as undue leniency because it is so outrageously out of tune with the Gospel. I’ve always been struck by the utter wisdom of the Holy Spirit to place the parable of the unmerciful slave immediately after Christ’s teaching on church discipline.
Back in Matthew 18, immediately after Christ finishes speaking about binding and loosing, Peter pipes up. And he asks, not, “Lord, how many times should I be forgiven if I’m a bonehead and sin against my brother over and over again?” but, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times?” And Jesus said, “Not seven times, but seventy times seven. As often as there is repentance, so often is there to be forgiveness.”
And then he tells the story of a man who owed his master an incalculable debt; ten thousand talents was equivalent to 150,000 years’ wages. He couldn’t pay the debt, so he and his family were to be sold into slavery. The man threw himself to the ground and begged his master to give him time to pay. And the master had such compassion on him that he didn’t just give him time to pay, but forgave the entire debt! But then the slave came across one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii—equivalent to about 100 days’ wages—and he grabbed his friend by the throat and demanded to be paid! And just as he had done with his master, his friend fell to the ground and begged him to give him time to pay. And this man, who had just been forgiven, threw his fellow slave in prison until he was paid back a debt that was 0.000183% of the debt that he was just forgiven!
What would you say about such a man? Absurd! Wicked! No appreciation whatsoever of what it meant to be forgiven! Well, the other slaves went and told the master what this man had done. And he summoned his slave to him and said, “You wicked slave, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not also have had mercy on your fellow slave, in the same way that I had mercy on you?” (Matt 18:32–33). And then Jesus comments, “And his lord, moved with anger, handed him over to the torturers until he should repay all that was owed him. My heavenly Father will also do the same to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart” (Matt 18:34–35).
Friends, we who have been declared righteous in Christ have been forgiven an incalculable debt. Not 150,000 years, but eternity. And not in a debtor’s prison, but in hell itself. That is the just payment that our sins deserved. And because of the unspeakable grace and mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ, we don’t pay a thing! We have been forgiven! And yet what happens? We are so prideful, that when our brother or sister sins against us, we are intransigent: “It isn’t right! She sinned against me! And I demand justice!”
And people try to reason with you. “But she’s come and confessed. She’s admitted her sin and has asked for your forgiveness.”
“I don’t care! She’s not getting off that easy!”
Now, you don’t always give voice to that kind of severity, but whenever you refuse to forgive someone who has come to you in repentance and has asked for your forgiveness, that is what’s going on in your heart.
Do you understand the Gospel? Do you understand the unspeakable magnitude of your sin against a holy God? Do you understand that the perfect sacrifice of Christ has paid your debt, so that you are forgiven? Then how in the world can you, who have sinned against God and have been spared the tortures of hell, refuse to forgive such an insignificant crime committed against yourself, and insist on your pound of flesh?
It simply cannot happen. For those who have truly experienced the forgiveness that the Gospel brings, it is a delight to extend forgiveness to others. Those who’ve been forgiven by God are eager to forgive those who sin against them, because it gives them an opportunity to be an imitator of their Father. That’s why Jesus says, “If you forgive others, God will forgive you, but if you don’t forgive others God won’t forgive you” (Matt 6:14–15). He’s not saying that salvation is conditioned upon forgiveness. He’s saying that if you can profess to be forgiven of such an incalculable debt as eternity in hell, and then refuse forgiveness to those who come to you in repentance, then you give evidence that your heart is a stranger to the grace of God in Christ, and that you aren’t even a believer yourself.
Ephesians 4:32: “Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also as forgiven you.”
Colossians 3:12–13: “So, as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience; bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone; just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you.”
Do you see the way Scripture reasons? Forgiven people forgive.
Conclusion
And so Paul says, “The punishment already past is sufficient. He’s repented. Forgive this man, and comfort him, otherwise he might be swallowed up by sorrow and despair.”
“But Paul, don’t you remember how he stood up and defied you in front of the whole church—”
“Don’t worry about me. I’ve forgiven him—if even there was anything to forgive” (cf. 2 Cor 2:10).
“Anything to forgive? How can you say that?”
“Dear friends, because I am ever so conscious of the sin that I’ve been forgiven by Christ. And in light of the cross, sin against me looks a thing so miniscule and infinitesimal that I’m not sure it even registers as a crime.” That’s how forgiven people talk.
Do you talk like that? And more than talk like it: do you act like that? And even more than acting like it: does your heart pulse with that kind of forgiving spirit? Is it the reflex of your heart to forgive a sinning brother or sister? That is the kind of forgiving that we, as forgiven people, are called to. May we fix our eyes so firmly on our own forgiveness that we delight to extend something of that forgiveness to others.
Barren Island volcano erupts again in Andaman Sea
India’s only active volcano in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands is erupting once again. The Barren Island volcano, located about 140km northeast of Port Blair, started erupting in 1991 after a dormant phase of over 150 years and has shown intermittent activity since then. A team of scientists led by National Institute Of Oceanography’s Dr Abhay Mudholkar said that the volcano is active and spewing smoke and lava once again.
Netanyahu: Trump meeting ‘historic’, we see eye-to-eye Prime Minister says Trump administration ‘a new age’ in US-Israel relations, says he and the president have same views on the region. “I think it was a historical meeting,” said Netanyahu. “It was a meeting of the minds and a meeting of the hearts.”
Comment: How Trump and Netanyahu resurrected the two state solution
…While it is true that Trump said he was open to two states or one state…he said the word “deal” in the Israeli-Palestinian context a dozen times at the press conference. A “deal,” if we consider the Palestinian’s position, removes the possibility of a one state…that leave us with…A two-state solution. Add to this what both leaders said about a larger-scale regional deal – what Trump called a “terrific thing” – that would include the Gulf states, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan, and not just the Palestinians.
Nasrallah warns: Hezbollah’s missiles can hit Israel’s nuclear reactor
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah called on Israel to dismantle its nuclear reactor in Dimona on Thursday, warning that it poses a threat to Israel’s existence should it be hit by one of Hezbollah’s missiles. Nasrallah made a similar threat against Haifa’s ammonia tank last year, saying that a missile hitting the facility could have the affect of a nuclear bomb. Last week, a Haifa court ordered the tank closed, citing the security threat.
Lal Shahbaz Qalandar shrine attack prompts Pakistan security crackdown
Pakistan says dozens of militants have been killed in a security crackdown following Thursday’s attack on a shrine that left at least 80 people dead. Some 18 militants were killed in southern Sindh province, where the Sufi shrine is located, and another 13 in the north-west, officials said. A suicide bomber blew himself up among devotees at the Sufi shrine in the town of Sehwan.
Baghdad car bomb kills at least 48
At least 48 people have been killed in Baghdad in the third blast in the Iraqi capital in three days, security and medical sources say. A car packed with explosives blew up near car dealerships in the Shia area of Bayaa in the south of the city. More than 50 people were injured. The Islamic State (IS) group claimed the attack, saying it targeted “a gathering of Shias”.
Israel-Palestinian conflict: US ‘thinking outside box’
The US ambassador to the UN has said her country “absolutely” supports the idea of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. But Nikki Haley also said the Trump administration was “thinking outside the box as well”, suggesting it was open to other possible solutions. For many years, the US has advocated the establishment of a Palestinian state next to Israel.
Facebook algorithms ‘will identify terrorists’
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has outlined a plan to let artificial intelligence (AI) software review content posted on the social network. In a letter describing the plan, he said algorithms would eventually be able to spot terrorism, violence, bullying and even prevent suicide. He admitted Facebook had previously made mistakes in the content it had removed from the website.
Richland florist discriminated against gay couple by refusing service, state Supreme Court rules
A Richland florist who refused to provide flowers to a gay couple for their wedding violated anti-discrimination law, the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday. The court ruled unanimously that Barronelle Stutzman discriminated against longtime customers Rob Ingersoll and Curt Freed when she refused to do the flowers for their 2013 wedding because of her religious opposition to same-sex marriage.
Atmospheric River taking aim on beleaguered #OrovilleDam
We’ve already had two big events like this so far this year, now forecasts show a clear pattern of a heavily moisture laden “atmospheric river” taking aim directly onto the Oroville Dam watershed over the next week. Accumulated precipitation forecasts show that the Lake Orovile watershed will score a direct hit with the maximum amount of precipitation over the next 10 days…
Europe must not bow to U.S. spending demands on NATO: EU’s Juncker
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said on Thursday that Europe must not cave in to U.S demands to raise military spending, arguing that development and humanitarian aid could also count as security. U.S. President Donald Trump has raised questions about his commitment to the NATO defense alliance if European countries do not raise defense spending to 2 percent of economic output. The United States puts up 70 percent of alliance funds.
Over 9,000 People Sign Petition Urging Trump to Expel Soros From US
George Soros is a billionaire as well as the founder of the Open Society Foundations philanthropic organization, which “supports democracy and human rights in more than 100 countries.” Opponents of Soros accuse him of interfering in internal relations of foreign countries and supporting revolutions there.
Mark Zuckeberg Rejects “America First”, Calls For Global Community
Hot on the heels of retailers who have halted sales of Ivanka Trump’s clothing line in protest against Trump (and free marketing buzz), the tech “resistance” against Trump got its lead from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckeberg who on Thursday posted a lengthy note “rebuking isolationist “America First” sentiment, and touting the merits of globalization and a “global community” working for innovation and progress.”
Russia violated a ‘key cornerstone’ of arms control — and it may cause a nuclear arms race
(A Russian serviceman walks past Russian Iskander-M missile launchers before a rehearsal for the Victory Day parade in Moscow.Thomson Reuters) Prominent US senators and defense analysts are calling for the US to respond to Russia’s recent deployment of nuclear cruise missiles by deploying missiles of its own to Europe.
Islamic State suicide bombing at Pakistan shrine kills 75
An Islamic State suicide bomber struck inside a famed shrine in southern Pakistan on Thursday, killing at least 75 people in the deadliest attack in the country in more than two years.
There’s a Wire Above Manhattan That You’ve Probably Never Noticed
It’s hard to imagine that anything literally hanging from utility poles across Manhattan could be considered “hidden,” but throughout the borough, about 18 miles of translucent wire stretches around the skyline, and most people have likely never noticed. It’s called an eruv (plural eruvin), and its existence is thanks to the Jewish Sabbath.
102 ‘Lost’ Indian Jews Immigrating to Israel This Week
One-hundred and two members of India’s Bnei Menashe community are arriving in Israel this week, marking the latest group of so-called “lost” Jews to make aliyah (immigrate to Israel).
The ruthless political assassination of Michael Flynn was just one battle of a major civil war that has erupted for control of the U.S. government. Donald Trump and his new administration are now under relentless assault by “the deep state”, and at this point it is not clear who will emerge as the victor. There are many that use the term “deep state” as a synonym for the intelligence community, but the truth is that it is much broader than that. In reality, the deep state encompasses thousands upon thousands of unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats that never seem to change no matter which party wins an election. Certainly the intelligence community is at the heart of this system, but there are countless others that are embedded within key government agencies and the Pentagon that deeply resent Donald Trump and the kind of change that he is attempting to bring to Washington. (Read More…)
Did you know that 4,000 world leaders from 130 different countries gathered in Dubai this week for the World Government Summit? It was held from February 12th to February 14th, and it featured more than 100 internationally-known speakers including UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, Christine Lagarde and Elon Musk. If you would like to know more about this shadowy group, you can visit the official website right here. The first World Government Summit was held back in 2013, and that one was actually attended by Barack Obama. Unfortunately the mainstream media in the United States was almost entirely silent about this summit, so most of us in the western world didn’t even hear about it. (Read More…)
When the cost of living rises faster than paychecks do year after year, eventually that becomes a very big problem. For quite some time I have been writing about the shrinking middle class, and one of the biggest culprits is inflation. Every month, tens of millions of American families struggle to pay the bills, and most of them don’t even understand the economic forces that are putting so much pressure on them. The United States never had a persistent, ongoing problem with inflation until the debt-based Federal Reserve system was introduced in 1913. Since that time, we have had non-stop inflation and the U.S. dollar has lost more than 98 percent of its value. If our paychecks were increasing faster than inflation this wouldn’t be a problem, but in recent years this has definitely not been the case for most Americans. (Read More…)
No matter what your particular political perspective is, if there is one thing that virtually everyone in the United States can agree upon it is the fact that America’s infrastructure is crumbling. Previous generations of Americans conquered an entire continent and erected the greatest system of infrastructure that the world had ever seen, but now thousands upon thousands of those extremely impressive infrastructure projects are decades old and in desperate need of repair or upgrading. The near catastrophic failure of the Oroville Dam is a perfect example of what I am talking about. We should be constructing the next generation of infrastructure projects for our children and our grandchildren, but instead we are in such sorry shape that we can’t even keep up with the maintenance and upkeep on the great infrastructure projects that have been handed down to us. (Read More…)
House Votes to Overturn Obama Admin Rule Banning States From Defunding Planned Parenthood
Christian News reports:
The U.S. House of Representatives voted on Thursday to overturn a rule issued by the Obama administration that bans states from defunding the abortion and contraception giant Planned Parenthood.
Congress used its authority under the Congressional Review Act, which allows the legislative branch to overturn orders issued within the past 60 days. It agreed 228-188, under House Joint Resolution 43, to return power to the states to distribute Title X funding as they see fit.
“This resolution does not cut a dime from family planning funding available to states. It simply enables states to direct the funding towards non-abortion, whole-women health care providers,” explained Rep. Vicky Hartzler, R-Mo.
WALL STREET JOURNAL — U.S. intelligence officials have withheld sensitive intelligence from President Donald Trump because they are concerned it could be leaked or compromised, according to current and former officials familiar with the matter…. (more)
WASHINGTON TIMES — The Trump White House and the U.S. intelligence community moved closer to open warfare in the wake of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s spectacular downfall – – and the fallout is unnerving key American intelligence partners around the world, according to several high-level national security sources…. (more)
BYRON YORK — I spent much of Wednesday talking and corresponding with Republicans in various states of anxiety about the latest revelations concerning the Trump campaign and Russia. Some put more credence in the allegations than others. All thought the leaks of national security intercepts behind the news stories were outrageous, and that the leakers should be punished. But even for those most inclined to support President Trump, there was still a nagging fear that the stories might be true…. (more)
ANDREW C. MCCARTHY — Let’s hear the tape. The Flynn affair is a tale of intrigue, with head-spinning twists and turns, manipulative spies, narrative-weaving pols, and strategists who mostly outsmart themselves. It is easy to get lost in the weeds. There is one easy way to get to the bottom of it, though – – one way to get a real sense of whether General Michael Flynn, the now-former national-security adviser, is a lying rogue who deceived every Trump administration official in sight, or the victim of an elaborate “deep state” scam whose real objective is to destroy not merely Flynn but the Trump presidency…. (more)
CHERYL CHUMLEY — With Barack Obama gone, and the future of Obamacare on shaky ground, the Internal Revenue Service has quietly decided, in all its President Donald Trump-era wisdom, to stop turning away filers who fail to provide the once-required proof of health-insurance coverage on their tax forms…. (more)
WASHINGTON TIMES — A large number of non-citizen Hispanics, as many as 2 million, were illegally registered to vote in the U.S., according to a nationwide poll. The National Hispanic Survey provides additional evidence for use by anti-voter fraud conservatives and bolsters an analysis by professors at Old Dominion University who say non-citizens registered and voted in potentially large numbers…. (more)
WASHINGTON EXAMINER — Hispanic voters support President Trump’s new focus on deporting illegal immigrants with criminal records and punishing some 300 cities that grant “sanctuary” to undocumented criminals, according to a new poll. The survey for Secure America Now found that 56 percent of Hispanic voters approve of deporting criminal illegals. Some 31 percent don’t…. (more)
CLIFF KINCAID — President Donald Trump’s controversial complaint that the intelligence community was using police-state tactics against him has been confirmed in the forced resignation of his national security adviser Michael T. Flynn. When Trump made his complaint, he was referring to leaks of potentially damaging information about him from an unverified dossier…. (more)
FRANK MAGUIRE — Back in 2010, I became associated with RenewAmerica.com. One major reason was that I came to know the wonderful Christian woman and exquisite writer, Bonnie Alba. Bonnie and I shared thoughts and ideas for a number of years, and right up until her demise, Bonnie and my wife Helen were Facebook friends…. (more)
NEIL BRIAN GOLDBERG — Has there ever, ever been such an all-out assault by every element of the press, the media, the teachers (and thus the students and the schools), the entertainment industry, the judiciary, the betrayers in his own party, and the world press on any president in history?… (more)
WASHINGTON TIMES — President Trump forced Michael Flynn to resign as national security adviser because of broken trust, not broken laws, the White House said Tuesday, trying to clean up the mess after the first major shake-up of the administration. The explanations, however, failed to quell calls from both sides of the aisle to expand the Senate probe into Russian email hacks during the presidential campaign to Mr. Flynn’s contacts with Russian officials, including possibly calling him in to testify…. (more)
WASHINGTON TIMES — The White House’s national security adviser resigned Monday night and President Trump tapped retired Lt. Gen. Joseph Keith Kellogg Jr. to serve as acting adviser in his place, in the first major shakeup of the still-young administration…. (more)
DAVID FRENCH — If Donald Trump doesn’t understand now, he will eventually. Integrity and truth ultimately do matter, and if he wants to be a successful president, he’s going to have to appoint people to high office who won’t violate the public’s trust…. (more)
WASHINGTON TIMES — Even if President Trump can’t convince the courts to approve his extreme vetting executive order, he may have another tool at his disposal that would allow him to strip visas from some of the seven countries he’s trying to target, crackdown supporters say…. (more)
CHERYL CHUMLEY — Let the bombshells begin. Nonpartisan government watchdog outfit Judicial Watch just announced its receipt of 216 pages of documents containing the private email messages of former Homeland Security director Jeh Johnson, as well as those of three other top agency officials…. (more)
BOB UNRUH — Texas pastors – – who stopped a lesbian mayor’s social agenda in Houston by taking it to voters – – are responding to not-so-veiled threats from the National Football League that the Lone Star State must promote transgenderism through an open-bathrooms policy…. (more)
BOB UNRUH — Abortion-industry giant Planned Parenthood “treated women like cattle,” according to a former insider. The comment came on Tuesday as part of the release of more videos from the pro-life group Live Action, whose president, Lila Rose, is raising various issues about what she calls the “Abortion Corporation” just as Congress is considering transferring some $500 million in taxpayer funds from the abortionists at Planned Parenthood to other community health centers that provide a wide range of health services…. (more)
WASHINGTON TIMES — A bill that would require the fathers of unborn children to approve abortions is under consideration in Oklahoma, in a move seen by pro-life advocates as an attempt to bring men back into the parenting fold but by pro-choice activists as an unconstitutional provision that takes autonomy away from women. Oklahoma state Rep. Justin Humphrey… (more)
CAL THOMAS — My wife of 51 years passed away last Saturday after a long battle against multiple health issues. We met in the musical theater. She was in it. I wanted to be on stage. I have a passable singing voice. Her contralto voice was powerful and perfectly pitched. She could hit the back seats without amplification. She traveled with some of Broadway’s biggest stars on the summer stock circuit, but ultimately chose another life – – a life with me and our four children…. (more)
WASHINGTON TIMES — President Trump took a victory lap with Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on Tuesday, saying her confirmation after “a very unfair trial” in the Senate will benefit students nationwide by expanding school choice…. (more)
CLIFF KINCAID — She endorsed him, and he paid respects at her funeral, but it appears that President Donald Trump hasn’t read Phyllis Schlafly’s book The Supremacists: The Tyranny of Judges and How to Stop It. Rather than simply Tweet his disgust with rulings against his immigration executive order, Trump and his advisers should read the book, especially Schlafly’s Chapter 15. It offers a series of measures, including impeachment, to stop tyrannical judges…. (more)
WASHINGTON TIMES — At least 72 convicted terrorists came from the seven countries President Trump targeted in his extreme vetting executive order, according to a new report this weekend that directly undercut part of the courts’ rulings halting the program…. (more)
PAUL BEDARD — Since 9/11, 72 individuals from the seven mostly Muslim countries covered by President Trump’s “extreme vetting” executive order have been convicted of terrorism, bolstering the administration’s immigration ban…. (more)
WASHINGTON TIMES — The State Department has more than doubled the rate of refugees from Iraq, Syria and other suspect countries in the week since a federal judge’s reprieve, in what analysts said appears to be a push to admit as many people as possible before another court puts the program back on ice…. (more)
ANDREW C. MCCARTHY — Do you think Islam needs reform?” Wouldn’t it be interesting, wouldn’t it get us to the crux of the immigration debate, if our best news anchors – – I’m looking at you, Chris Wallace and Bret Baier – – would put that question to every major politician in Washington?… (more)
Top Headlines – 2/17/2017
‘In Trump We Trust’ Is Market Mantra as Turmoil Besets White House (Read More)
World stocks lose momentum after record-breaking week (Read More)
As Tax Debate Heats Up, Lawmakers Struggle to Think of a Plan B (Read More)
Mnuchin Warned as G-20 Sees New Economic Order (Read More)
Deutsche Bank examined Donald Trump’s account for Russia links (Read More)
Stop hurling insults and listen, Pope Francis tells politicians (Read More)
Carney, Wrong on Brexit, May Have Called Consumer Collapse Right (Read More)
SCOTUS to frame Trump’s immigration plans (Read More)
Trump Assails Critics as Russia Questions Mount (Read More)
French Bonds Drop on Potential Left-Wing Candidacy Merger (Read More)
The Trump administration is considering mobilizing as many as 100,000 National Guard troops to round up illegal immigrants, according to a draft memo obtained by…
(Reported By Michael Snyder) No matter what your particular political perspective is, if there is one thing that virtually everyone in the United States can…
CIA Director Mike Pompeo on Thursday denied allegations that the agency was hiding intelligence from President Trump. Pompeo called reports that the agency was keeping…
Former CIA operative and 2016 third-party presidential candidate Evan McMullin took to Twitter and CNN on Wednesday to defend rogue intelligence agents who break the…
Fifty years ago, Catholic Charismatics as a group didn’t exist. Today, there are around 120 million of them. Their emergence began when the Holy Spirit…
(By Mark Ellis) Tesla and SpaceX tech mogul Elon Musk has strong opinions about artificial intelligence (AI), suggesting that AI may “summon the demon” that…
A Washington state florist who refused to provide services for a same-sex wedding in 2013 broke the state’s antidiscrimination law, the state’s Supreme Court ruled….
Germany’s Foreign Minister, Sigmar Gabriel, on Thursday warned that building more Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria could end the prospect of a “two-state solution”…
Mark Zuckerberg appears to have accidentally revealed plans to use artificial intelligence to spy on Facebook users’ private messages in a bid to combat “terrorism”….
The police body camera industry is the latest to jump on the artificial intelligence bandwagon, bringing new powers and privacy concerns to a controversial technology…
Evangelicals are raising their brows after President Trump decided to keep Randy Berry as the State Department’s leading LGBT diplomat. President Obama appointed Berry to…
Tech billionaire Elon Musk believes artificial intelligence could be catastrophic for humanity who are set to become a cyborg race which will have to grapple…
Bay Area restaurant owners are joining the national debate about immigration policy. President Donald Trump’s hard-line stance on the issue has sparked the Sanctuary Restaurants…
Venezuela’s media watchdog has ordered CNN’s Spanish-language channel off the air across the country, accusing it of engaging in a propaganda war. Nicolas Maduro said…
Severe winter conditions in Mongolia, known as Dzud, are threatening the livelihoods of thousands of Mongolian herders in eastern and northern parts of the country….
A team of researchers from Kyoto University has found that dogs and capuchin monkeys watch how humans interact with one another and react less positively…
A prominent professing atheist organization is seeking to put an end to prayers and Bible readings that are presented by a chaplain during ceremonies at…
The health insurance giant Humana will exit the Obamacare exchanges in 2018. Humana believes the Obamacare exchanges have too few healthy patients to balance out…
U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis on Thursday rejected any kind of military collaboration with Russia, following a call by President Vladimir Putin for more intelligence…
Samantha Taylor was at Orlando’s Jewish Community Center for a morning meeting when she heard reports of a bomb threat crackle from the director’s walkie-talkie….
(Alternative News, Apologetics, Current Events, Commentary, Opinion, Theology, Discernment Blog, Devotionals, Christian Internet Evangelism & Missions Activist).
“A simple layman armed with Scripture is to be believed above a pope or a council without it…” – Martin Luther
“In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity.”
— Augustine
This blog is an aggregator of news and information that we believe will provide articles that will keep people informed about current trends, current events, discussions and movements taking place within our church and culture.
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107,material here is distributed without profit for research and educational purposes.
A headline link on this blog post doesn’t necessarily mean that there is agreement or approval with all the views and opinions expressed within the headline linked article. Caution is also warranted with regards to the advertisements and links that are embedded within the headline linked article.
*Please note that the preceding blog post content is formed by my personal conviction, values, worldview and opinion. It is not necessarily the opinion of any entity by which I am employed, any church at which I am a member, any church which I attend. Any copyrighted material displayed or referenced is done under the doctrine of fair use.
Justin Taylor: “Thanks to the generosity and permission of Carl Trueman and The Master’s Seminary, you can basically take Professor Trueman’s course online for free.”
You can find the details and the videos at the link below.
Thanks to the generosity and permission of Carl Trueman—Paul Woolley Chair of Church History and professor of church history at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, as well as the author of Luther on the Christian Life—and The Master’s Seminary, you can basically take Professor Trueman’s course online for free. (You just don’t have to take any tests, write any papers, or get any credit!)
I have posted below the heart of the course syllabus, along with all of the lectures, filmed at The Master’s Seminary in January 2017.
This course will introduce student to the major ideas, personalities, and events that shook Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It will consist of lectures and guided reading.
The focus will be on the development of Protestantism in its social, political, and cultural contexts, starting with Luther and the late medieval background and tracing the story through to the birth of modernity in the seventeenth century. En route, the student will study primary texts, art work, Reformation popular culture, and pastoral practices in early modern Protestantism.
In addition, the course is designed to help students to think critically about the past in a way which allows them to think critically about the present. Men and women make history, but they do not make the history that they choose; and only by examining the past forces that shaped the present can we understand ourselves, the world in which we live, and thus mount any response to the challenges that face us today.
Learning Goals
At the conclusion of the course, each student should be able to:
Recognize the key personalities, controversies, and theological developments which marked the Reformation.
Distinguish between the various historic Christian traditions in terms of their distinctive theological convictions as formulated during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Articulate ways in which social and cultural contexts shaped the way the church developed during the Reformation.
The numbers appended below to Janz refer to the selection, not the page.
Schaff III is the third volume of P. Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom (free pdf).
The readings from Lindberg are not synchronized with the lectures; they are merely a suggested timetable for taking you through the whole book by the end of the course.
The relationship between God’s sovereignty and human responsibility is not instantly obvious, and at first glance it seems paradoxical. But Scripture offers us considerable insight into how these twin truths harmonize within the plan of redemption.
The first step in understanding the compatibility between God’s sovereignty and human will is to recognize that they are not mutually exclusive, and Scripture makes this absolutely clear. In God’s design, human responsibility is clearly not eliminated by God’s sovereign control over His creation. That’s true even though evil was included in His grand design for the universe even before the beginning of time, and He uses His creatures’ sin for purposes that are always (and only) good. Indeed, in His infinite wisdom, He is able to use all things for good (Rom. 8:28).
Consider the Lord’s opening statement in Isaiah 10:5: “Woe to Assyria, the rod of My anger.” At first glance, this makes no sense. If Assyria is functioning as an instrument of God’s judgment, why is He pronouncing condemnation on the Assyrians? “Woe” is an onomatopoeic word (meaning the word sounds like what it means; in this case, a cry of agony) that warns of calamity or massive judgment to come. But how can a people come under divine denunciation and judgment while at the same time functioning as a rod of God’s anger? The rest of the verse says, “the staff in whose hand is My indignation.” Assyria, this pagan, godless, idolatrous nation, is the instrument of divine judgment against God’s own rebellious people.
In fact, the next verse says, “I send it against a godless nation [Judah, the southern part of the kingdom] and commission it against the people of My fury” (v. 6). The Jews are thus designated as the people of God’s fury. God holds Israel fully responsible for their disbelief; fully responsible for their idolatry; fully responsible for their rebellion and their rejection of Him, His Word, and His worship. So He commissions the Assyrians to come against them. Notice verse 6: “To capture booty, and to seize plunder, and to trample them down like mud in the streets.” That’s strong, decisive language.
Now here you have a divine decree in action. God grabs Assyria by the nape of its national neck and assigns it to be the instrument of His fury against the godless people of Judah who have rejected and rebelled against Him. And then He says in verse 7, “Yet it [Assyria] does not so intend, nor does it plan so in its heart.” Assyria is the instrument of God’s judgment—and the Assyrians themselves are clueless about it. It was never Assyria’s purpose, motive, or intention to serve God. They had no interest in the God of Scripture—they didn’t even believe in Him. Rather, Assyria planned in its own heart to cut off many nations. This was just another opportunity for the Assyrian power to knock off another neighboring nation, as they’d already done to Calno, Carchemish, Hamath, Arpad, Samaria, and Damascus (v. 9). Verses 10 and 11 depict Assyria’s confidence in its ability to conquer Judah: “As my hand has reached to the kingdom of the idols, whose graven images were greater than those of Jerusalem and Samaria, shall I not do to Jerusalem and her images just as I have done to Samaria and her idols?” All Assyria knows is that it has destroyed other nations who, in its judgment, had greater protection and greater gods than the God of the Bible. The Assyrians simply intended to do to Judah what they had done to the rest of the nations. They thought they were acting in complete independence. They had no idea that God was using them as agents to deliver His judgment.
But does being instruments of divine wrath somehow exonerate them from responsibility for the evil inherent in their military policies? If this irresistible divine decree brings them to Israel, what culpability do they have for their actions? And yet Scripture is clear that they will be held accountable. Verse 12 says that when God has finished using Assyria as an instrument of His fury, “So it will be that when the Lord has completed all His work on Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, He will say, ‘I will punish the fruit of the arrogant heart of the king of Assyria and the pomp of his haughtiness.’” The Lord has already decreed that once He is done using Assyria, He will punish it for its sins. The very act that the Assyrians carried out under divine decree was an act of evil—so evil that God will turn on them and bring destruction on them. In God’s eyes, they bear full culpability for every part of their evil slaughter and destruction, even though they are fulfilling His divine decree.
Not only did God pronounce judgment on Assyria for its wicked deeds but also for the motives behind the deeds. “I will punish the fruit of the arrogant heart of the king of Assyria and the pomp of his haughtiness. For he has said, ‘By the power of my hand and by my wisdom I did this’” (vv. 12–13). God will punish the Assyrians for their motives and for their failure to recognize His glory by taking credit for what they had done. They thought they had done it by the power of their hands and the wisdom of their own design. Isaiah records the king of Assyria’s arrogant boasts:
By the power of my hand and by my wisdom I did this,
For I have understanding;
And I removed the boundaries of the peoples
And plundered their treasures,
And like a mighty man I brought down their inhabitants,
And my hand reached to the riches of the peoples like
a nest,
And as one gathers abandoned eggs, I gathered all the earth;
And there was not one that flapped its wing or opened its beak or chirped. (vv. 13–14)
That rebellious pride is what invites divine wrath. The Assyrians’ motives and arrogance put them in the path of God’s judgment. Isaiah vividly depicts the ignorance and foolishness of their haughty attitude.
Is the axe to boast itself over the one who chops with it?
Is the saw to exalt itself over the one who wields it?
That would be like a club wielding those who lift it,
Or like a rod lifting him who is not wood. (v. 15)
God is the One who wielded Assyria like an ax to chop down Judah and Jerusalem, and yet He righteously holds the ax responsible (vv. 15–18).
Here’s the point: although God controls by divine decree and sovereign power everything that goes on in the world according to His own purposes, that does not remove one iota of culpability from those who do evil. Evildoers do evil not because they are forced to, but by their own evil intent. So God will judge them for both the act and the motive, as well as for their failure to give Him glory and to worship Him.
And Isaiah never makes an attempt to resolve or explain away what many would regard as a judicial paradox. Scripture gives no indication that God’s wrath against Assyria was anything but just, reasonable, and appropriate. The Bible is simply not concerned with reconciling divine judgment with any human assumptions about justice or fairness. Scripture simply explains what God did, and we are to understand that it was just and fair because He did it.
We see the same tension between divine sovereignty and human responsibility in bold relief in Acts 2. During Peter’s sermon on the day of Pentecost, he said, “Men of Israel, listen to these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through Him in your midst, just as you yourselves know—this Man, delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death” (vv. 22–23).
Christ died under God’s authority, in His timing, and according to His plan. And yet Israel was guilty—both for their collective hand in His death and for their failure to believe in Him as Messiah.
But the guilt of Christ’s murder was not isolated to Israel alone. In Acts 4:27, there’s another indictment: “For truly in this city there were gathered together against Your holy servant Jesus, whom You anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel.” The point is clear: Christ’s death was a corporate act of sinful humanity aligned together against God. All are guilty.
But the prayer of verse 27 continues in verse 28, saying that all these guilty souls conspired together “to do whatever Your hand and Your purpose predestined to occur.” Isaiah 53:10 agrees, identifying the Lord as the One responsible for the Son’s death: “The Lord was pleased to crush Him, putting Him to grief.” That by no means exonerates the ones who carried out Christ’s execution. The perpetrators’ intentions were entirely rebellious and murderous, and for them, it was an act of pure evil.
Bearing that in mind, Christ’s death is, therefore, the greatest fulfillment of the truth embodied in Joseph’s insightful words to his brothers in Genesis 50:20: “As for you, you meant it for evil against me, but God meant it for good.” The fulfillment of God’s redemptive plan in the death of Christ in no way mitigates the guilt of His murderers. While the Lord ordained and orchestrated every event to bring about His desired ends, the wicked human hands that accomplished the work are no less guilty for the sinful role they played.
We see those seemingly contrasting truths of divine sovereignty and human responsibility repeatedly, in every part of God’s Word. But Scripture never attempts to ease the apparent tension. There’s no inspired explanation that spells out their complex relationship. Therefore, we need to be careful in attempting to conform God’s divine decrees to our own feeble sense of fairness. We need to remember that it’s not our job to hold God to whatever standards our meager minds might suggest. He Himself is the standard of true righteousness, and He never acts in a way that would contradict His righteousness or justice.
Dear struggling Christian, if our gaze is always within, assurance will remain fleeting. No doubt, we need to examine our lives and test the fruit, but true assurance, lasting assurance, secure assurance comes from looking to Christ and our union with Him. We want to see evidence of Christ’s grace in our lives, but we realize these evidences not by seeking after them, but by gaining a greater grasp on Christ. How do we gain this greater grasp of the King of Glory? How do we look to Him more? God has granted His means of grace to the struggling Christian for this very purpose.
In a world filled with sin, the flesh, and the devil, assurance of salvation is the soft feather bed on which the Christian rests. Assurance proves to be one of the greatest benefits of the Christian faith and the rightful inheritance of the child of God. In its enjoyment are found peace, hope, and joy unsurpassed in this fallen world.
The Scriptures clearly articulate that a child of God may and should possess a true sense of peace and confidence regarding personal salvation. Faith is trusting in Christ as Savior, so the seeds of assurance inherently lie within faith itself. Though the gift of assurance regularly accompanies saving faith, many Christians find it elusive or even nonexistent in their own experience. As John Calvin said, “We cannot imagine any certainty that is not tinged with doubt, or any assurance that is not assailed by some anxiety. . . . Believers are in perpetual conflict with their own unbelief” (Institutes, 3.2.18). Every Christian knows this experience. Yet, this lack of assurance leads some Christians to assume they are counted among the lost. Such an error devastates—breeding inner turmoil and even despair.
The Westminster Confession of Faith helpfully addresses the underlying error when it states “infallible assurance doth not so belong to the essence of faith, but that a true believer may wait long, and conflict with many difficulties, before he be a partaker of it” (18:3). The Westminster divines rightly understood that one may possess saving faith yet not possess the assurance that often accompanies that faith. In fact, the Westminster Assembly chose to address saving faith and assurance in separate chapters of the confession (WCF 14 and 18, respectively), because it recognized that the doctrines are not so inextricably linked that if one possesses saving faith he must also enjoy assurance. The Scriptures and Christian experience bear witness to the stark reality that saving faith and assurance of salvation do not always coexist in the believer.
“I believe; help my unbelief!” said the father of the demon-possessed child (Mark 9:24). Few men have uttered more honest words, and few honest words have benefited more men. Here is the cry of a man with faith who also recognizes that his faith remains weak, stumbling, and frail. Faith is present, but it remains mixed with doubt. Yet, Christ clearly recognizes this father’s faith. An ounce of saving faith is a faith that saves. Our Lord boldly proclaimed: “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die” (John 11:25–26).
Dear Christian, it is not the degree, quality, or abundance of our faith that saves. Rather, it is the object of our faith that saves. Faith does not look to itself. It looks to another. And in Christ, the object of our faith, salvation lies (John 14:5). Therefore, it is also in Christ that our assurance lies. This father understood the necessary thing. As Calvin stated, “He who, struggling with his own weakness, presses toward faith in his moments of anxiety is already in large part victorious” (Institutes, 3.2.18).
In those moments when assurance escapes us, let us look to Christ in faith. Assurance is nurtured as we grow in our understanding of grace, especially in our union with Christ as it relates to our justification and adoption. How do we grow in this grace? The Westminster Confession proves helpful once again. It proclaims that one may “without extraordinary revelation, in the right use of ordinary means attain thereunto. And therefore it is the duty of everyone to give all diligence to make his calling and election sure” (WCF 18:3). The confession rightly points us to Christ by the very means He has given to His people for their growth, including growth in assurance. Those means are the Word, sacraments, and prayer (WCF 14.1).
Before we turn our attention to these means of grace, I want to note a pastoral issue that often emerges in this realm. Over the course of my pastoral ministry, I have found that many struggle with assurance because they direct their eyes within rather than without. Make no mistake, introspection serves its purpose in the Christian life. We are to examine ourselves to see whether we are in the faith (2 Cor. 13:5). This is necessary and good. Yet, I find that many Christians suffer from overzealous introspection. Like a medieval inquisitor, we lay our souls upon the rack and inflict torture with constant accusatory questions: Do I bear enough of the fruit of the Spirit? Is my faith solid enough? Have I confessed and repented sufficiently? Have I tricked myself into thinking I am a believer? And all the while, we forget to look to our Savior in faith. The Great Shepherd’s promise, “Come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28), seems too foreign to too many of His sheep.
Dear struggling Christian, if our gaze is always within, assurance will remain fleeting. No doubt, we need to examine our lives and test the fruit, but true assurance, lasting assurance, secure assurance comes from looking to Christ and our union with Him. We want to see evidence of Christ’s grace in our lives, but we realize these evidences not by seeking after them, but by gaining a greater grasp on Christ. How do we gain this greater grasp of the King of Glory? How do we look to Him more? God has granted His means of grace to the struggling Christian for this very purpose.
Into this dark world God has sent the light of His Word. This Word, which is living and active (Heb. 4:12), works in the hearts and minds of His people. We hear the true, gracious voice of our Heavenly Father. As we sit under the preached Word, read it in our prayer closets, meditate upon it on our beds (Ps. 63:6), and talk of it on the way (Deut. 6:7), the Spirit attends to the Word, and it does not return void (Isa. 55:11). The truth of Christ occupies our minds, the promises of Christ comfort our souls, the beauty of Christ stirs our affections, and the commands of Christ move our spirits. As we attend to this means of grace, He encourages and affirms assurance within us. Too often, the voice of our adversary sounds loud in our ears: “You are no child of God. Would God allow a wretched sinner like you into His family?” Our flesh joins in as a ready accomplice and the struggle can be great. However, such indictments cannot stand in the light of God’s Word. His Word pierces such darkness and resounds louder than any accusations that our adversaries can hurl at the children of God.
The Lord not only gave us His written Word, but also His visible Word. The Lord, as an act of magnanimous grace, condescends to give us something we can see, touch, and taste. He knows that we, as corporeal beings, naturally gravitate toward the visible. So, He blesses His children with outward signs—the sacraments—that confirm to our senses what the ear has heard and the eye has read. Dear struggling Christian, partake of the Lord’s Table and be reminded that not only did Christ die for sinners, but Christ died for you. Not only did Christ shed His blood for sinners, but He shed it for you. Not only can sinners be united to Christ, but He is united to you. As real as the cup you hold is Christ’s love for you. As surely as you taste the bread and wine do you taste Christ’s peace. As the bread and cup sustain your body physically, so Christ’s grace sustains you spiritually. All the promises of Christ are not only true, but they are truly yours. Baptism serves the Christian in the same way. As surely as the water flowed over your head are you washed in the blood of the Lamb. As surely as you entered the waters of baptism are you united with Christ in His life, death, and resurrection (Rom. 6). The sacraments not only signify this truth to the struggling Christian but also seal it upon their soul.
Finally, the Lord blesses His people with the gift of prayer. What a relief this means of grace provides for the limping Christian. He grants to us the privilege and solace of crying out to Him, a cry granted only to His children. And our pleadings do not fall on deaf ears (Ps. 18:6). They ascend into the very throne room of God. We speak into His ear and may do so with boldness (Heb.4:16). James says, “You do not have because you do not ask” (James 4:2). Let the Christian struggling with assurance cry out with the psalmist, “How long O Lord?” (Ps. 13:1). The desperate cries of God’s sons and daughters to their heavenly Father never fall on deaf ears. He loves to give good gifts to His children (Matt. 7:11). Let us cry out with the father of the tormented child, “I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24).
Dear sinner, the Jesus who recognized the faith of the father is the same Jesus who sits enthroned above, hears our prayers, and says to His Father: “These are mine, the price has been paid, the law has been fulfilled, the blood has been shed. My righteousness belongs to them. Mercy has been purchased. Forgiveness is theirs.” If you have even the least bit of saving faith in Christ, all the blessings of salvation belong to you—including assurance. You may, as the Westminster Confession says, wait “long” for it, and it may only come through many struggles, but it is yours. Seek after it. And if we would hope to enjoy this grace more and more, let us seek Christ more and more by the means He has given. As God’s children, assurance is our rightful inheritance.
What is Romanticism? In a nutshell, Romanticism was born in the late 1700’s and is described as an artistic and intellectual movement characterized by a heightenedinterest in the beauty of nature, imagination, and intense emotional expression. According to Bruce W. Davidson, professor at Hokusei Gakuen University, Romanticism has made a comeback and is having a huge influence on our postmodern culture. Not surprisingly, Romanticism has also reared its ugly head in the visible Church. “Religious Romanticism can take people very far from sensible living, even into dangerous territory,” warns Davidson. The dangerous territory he speaks of is emotionalism. “Among Christians, that trend has taken the form of a rebellion against a focus on theology and an emphasis on religious experience.”
Sound familiar?
You can read Bruce Davidson’s piece over at American Thinker:
On January 2, about fifty thousand young adults gathered in Atlanta to participate in the Passion 2017 conference. People outside evangelicalism might imagine something named “Passion” to be an event for romantic novelists or their fans, but it was actually a kind of religious pep rally. The title typifies a significant religious shift of recent years, one turning away from doctrine and toward emotion – a kind of religious Romanticism. Nowadays, numerous Christian books, conferences, and even churches bear the word “passion” in their titles. In past eras, church people congregated to debate doctrinal and moral issues; now they hold events to celebrate their emotions.
The original Romantic movement of the early nineteenth century was basically a reaction against Enlightenment rationalism, with its elevation of science and cold rationality above everything else. In opposition, the Romantics celebrated sensation, feeling, and aesthetics. Adopting a therapeutic view of human existence, the Romantics often also held society to blame for mankind’s problems, not inborn sinful inclinations – the latter according with the historic view of Christianity. Their optimistic view of human nature has undergirded much of the political agitation and clamor of subsequent times for radical change.
John MacArthur of Grace to You presents his view of the essential doctrines of the faith:
To begin with, the strongest words of condemnation in all the New Testament are aimed at false teachers who corrupt the Gospel. Therefore the Gospel message itself must be acknowledged as a primary point of fundamental doctrine.
But what message will determine the content of our gospel testimony? The biblical message of instantaneous justification through faith alone-or a system of rituals and sacraments that are supposed to convey grace to the participants with no guarantee of ultimate salvation? What authority will we point people to? The Scriptures alone-or a papal hierarchy and church tradition? Those two gospels are flatly contradictory and mutually exclusive.
All these considerations determine what message we proclaim and whether that message is the authentic Gospel of true Christianity. Therefore we are dealing with matters that go to the very heart of the doctrines Scripture identifies as fundamental.
Can we get more specific? Let’s turn to Scripture itself and attempt to lay out some biblical principles for determining which articles of faith are truly essential to authentic Christianity.
In my various roles, I’ve been privileged to travel the world, talk to global brothers and sisters in Christ, and learn from them. I may be the professor, but they always teach me. Here are some things we North American Christians can learn from them:
The Bible is precious. We who have multiple copies of the scriptures miss this point. It would do all of us good to spend time with a believer who stays up all night to hear and read the Word of God because he doesn’t have his own copy.
Holiness matters. I’ve been with some believers around the world who lean toward legalism, but seldom have I been with any who are as lax about sin as North Americans tend to be. Global believers often struggle with our brand of non-life changing Christianity.
Worship is more than head-centered. Every culture is different, but I love worshiping with believers who give themselves fully to worship. From the African who jumps when he worships to the Ukrainian who sings with all his might, believers around the world challenge my often- too stoic approach to worship.
Prayer makes a difference. I once stood for two hours praying non-stop with believers in a war-torn part of the world, and they were just getting started. When Christ is genuinely your hope and peace, you understand better the necessity and the value of prayer.
Persecution is real. For many believers, persecution is not just somebody else’s story on a sheet of paper. It’s their story. No article or website can speak the volumes that a believer who’s been faithful under persecution can.
Church membership means something. I’ve talked with local church leaders around the globe who shepherd large networks, and they can tell you much of the spiritual state of each believer. They take seriously the need for accountability and growth among believers.
North American Christianity is not the center of the Christian world. We tend to think we are, simply because our world revolves around us. Many believing groups around the world, though, have longer histories, more followers, and much more to teach us.
Heaven will be really sweet. I already knew that, but thinking about the peoples of the world gathering around the throne is that much more powerful after meeting many of those folks.
I would have left by the time I reached high school if I’d had that option, but in my house, attendance at my cool, hip, contemporary-worshiping, youth-group-glorifying, theology-eschewing McCongregation was a non-negotiable. So I went. Through every small group fad. Every True Love Waits commitment ceremony. Every rapture-ready dispensationalist Bible study. Every sermon series on how to have a happier marriage, how to control my anger, and why 2 Chronicles 7:14 was obviously about America.
It seems everyone is leaving the church these days.
And quite honestly, I don’t really blame them. I almost left the church myself.
I would have left by the time I reached high school if I’d had that option, but in my house, attendance at my cool, hip, contemporary-worshiping, youth-group-glorifying, theology-eschewing McCongregation was a non-negotiable. So I went. Through every small group fad. Every True Love Waits commitment ceremony. Every rapture-ready dispensationalist Bible study. Every sermon series on how to have a happier marriage, how to control my anger, and why 2 Chronicles 7:14 was obviously about America.
In my mind, no church would have been better than that church.
I still believe that, all these years later.
I almost left in college, too. If it hadn’t been for a wonderfully warm fellowship offering me a generous scholarship for singing in their choir, I’m sure I would have. It had become all too easy to stay in bed. And I didn’t feel like I was missing much, anyway. I didn’t need another youth group experience like you often find in college towns.
It wasn’t that I didn’t know Jesus. In fact, the more I learned about Jesus, the less he seemed to fit in the evangelical culture I grew up in.
If you want to know why Millennials are leaving, there are plenty of Generation X’ers who will answer the question for you in their books, articles, and polls. Honestly, I’ve never found them to be particularly helpful. Statistics never tell the whole story. In fact, the only story they convincingly tell is that, after years of catering to young people, those young people still have no use for the church.
I never really left the church, but I came very, very close. Here’s why.
I almost left because of the silos.A siloed church is not really a church at all. It’s a Christian-themed para-church ministry. And the atmosphere in those silos becomes stagnant and toxic. We all need each other.
I almost left because I didn’t believe a growing church was always a healthy church.
I almost left because the church wasn’t as good at entertaining as it thought it was. If all we’re about is a good performance, we might as well all stay home and watch the Joel Osteen live stream.
I almost left because the life of the mind simply wasn’t taken seriously. Deep thinking doesn’t attract big numbers. Evangelicals have for so long refused to engage deeply in their faith, most of their pastors are unable to do so anymore.
Lighthouse Trails has a piece that deals with some of the garbage that is being promoted by “Christian” leaders such as Tony Campolo, Ann Voskamp and Dr. Daniel Amen. Ever heard of Tantric sex? Well you’re about to — no details are given. This is one of those blog posts we dislike publishing; however, in order for the Body of Christ to become informed as to what’s trending in the Christian community, we believe it’s necessary. So – read it and weep:
Bridal spirituality was a common theme of medieval nun Teresa of Avila’s books where she records a vision she allegedly had in which the Lord Jesus appeared and declared they were married.
LTRP Note: This short article might be disturbing to read, but what is being described here is happening now in the church. Please take heed and pray for discernment as you listen to Christian speakers and read their books. The links below this article are to articles that substantiate what Lynn Lusby Pratt is saying.
By Lynn Lusby Pratt
About a decade ago, I became aware of the new wave of false teaching entering the church. One aspect of that teaching hinted that our experience with Jesus was (should be?) sexual. (Christians who use a mantra, as in contemplative prayer, and go into an altered state of consciousness sometimes have erotic experiences, which they mistakenly believe to be “union” with God/Jesus.) There was new interest in/promotion of the “bridal mysticism” of medieval nuns like Teresa of Avila: “Body and spirit are in the throes of a sweet, happy pain . . . and a spell of strangulation . . . swoon-like weakness . . .” There were quotes in Christian books, like Tony Campolo saying, “There is nothing wrong . . . with eroticism in worship.” And Ann Voskamp: “Mystical union. . . . God as Husband in sacred wedlock, bound together, body and soul. . . . To know him the way Adam knew Eve. Spirit skin to spirit skin . . .” [One Thousand Gifts, p. 217]. Ken Wilson: “I was having feelings of connection with the divine . . . [that] reminded me very much of the amorous feelings I have for my wife” [Mystically Wired, p. 27].
And they, after worshiping Him, returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple praising God. (24:52–53)
Now that the disciples understood fully the person and work of Christ, there was no other way they could have reacted, other than by worshiping Him. With all their doubts and fears gone, all their questions answered, fully convinced that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of God, the Savior and Redeemer, the disciples were ready to preach the gospel—even if it cost them their lives.
After Jesus was gone, they returned to Jerusalem as He had commanded them (v. 49; Acts 1:4) with great joy, which caused them to be continually in the temple praising God. Their training was complete, and they were full of praise, ready to preach, and some of them even prepared to write portions of the New Testament.
The Implications
The amazing implications of the ascension of the Son of God to heaven can be broken down into the following truths.
First, the ascension marked the completion of the work of salvation. After the cross and the resurrection, there was nothing further to be done to provide any aspect of salvation. Jesus’ words from the cross, “It is finished!” (John 19:30), signified that He had accomplished the work the Father had given Him to do.
Second, the ascension marked the end of Jesus’ limitations. During His incarnation, He had “emptied Himself, taking the form of a bondservant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Phil. 2:7–8). At the ascension, He returned to the glory He had had with the Father before the world was created (John 17:5). Jesus had left heaven as spirit, but returned as the God-Man, whom He will remain forever.
Third, as noted earlier, the ascension marked Christ’s exaltation and coronation.
Fourth, the ascension signaled the sending of the Holy Spirit, who until then “was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified” (John 7:39). “It is to your advantage that I go away,” Jesus had told the disciples, “for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you” (John 16:7).
Fifth, the ascension marked the start of Jesus’ preparing believers’ heavenly home (John 14:1–3).
Sixth, the ascension marked the passing of the work of evangelism to His followers. Christ’s work is both finished and unfinished (Acts 1:1). His work of providing redemption is completed, and nothing can be added to it (John 17:4; 19:30; Heb. 9:12). But His work of proclamation is not finished. The rest of the New Testament describes the continuation of that work by the early church, and it will not be completed until He returns.
Seventh, the ascension signaled the Lord’s sovereign headship over the church (Eph. 1:20–23; Col. 1:18).
Eighth, the ascension marked Christ’s triumph over Satan. As the apostle John wrote, “The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8; cf. Gen. 3:15; Heb. 2:14).
Ninth, the ascension signaled the Lord’s giving the work of the ministry to gifted men. When He ascended, Jesus sent the Spirit, who not only gave spiritual gifts to individual believers (1 Cor. 12:4–11), but also gifted men to the church (Eph. 4:11–13).
Tenth, the ascension marked the beginning of the merciful and faithful (Heb. 2:17) and sympathetic (Heb. 4:15) high priest’s work of intercession for His people (Heb. 7:25).
Finally, the ascension guarantees and secures Christ’s second coming (Acts 1:11).
All Christians should celebrate all that Jesus accomplished for them, which culminated in the ascension. “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,” wrote Paul, “that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich” (2 Cor. 8:9).
[Abraham] did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God.
Romans 4:20
Professing to believe what God has said is much easier than really trusting Him. For instance, many people who affirm that “God shall supply all your need according to His riches” (Phil. 4:19) become filled with anxiety when financial troubles come their way.
The Bible also says that if we give sacrificially with the proper motives, God will reward us (Matt. 6:3–4). Many say they believe that principle as well, but they find it difficult to put into practice. Many Christians also fear death, even though God has said He will provide us with the grace we need to face it and will take us to heaven afterward.
Believing God means we acknowledge His glory, which is the sum of all His attributes and the fullness of all His majesty. If He is who He says He is, then He is to be believed. You will grow spiritually when you say to God, “If Your Word says it, I will believe it; if Your Word promises it, I will claim it; and if Your Word commands it, I will obey it.”[1]
February 17
God’s Unfailing Love
“The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.”
1 John 4:8
✧✧✧
God’s love is unconditional and righteous.
We hear a lot today about love from books, magazines, TV, and movies. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think that our society is the most loving on earth. Much of the “love,” though, is nothing more than lust masquerading as love, or selfishness disguised as kindness. But today’s verse tells us that “God is love”; the character of God defines love. To clear up any confusion about love, we need only to look at who God is. And then, of course, we need to seek to love others as God loves us.
First, God’s love is unconditional and unrequited. “God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8). God loved us when we were sinners, when we had no righteousness and we didn’t—and couldn’t—love Him back. God doesn’t love us because we deserve it or because we love Him, but because it’s His nature to love.
God’s love doesn’t mean He winks at sin, though. Just as earthly fathers discipline sinning children, “those whom the Lord loves He disciplines, and He scourges every son whom He receives” (Heb. 12:6). True love doesn’t indulge unrighteousness, it confronts it. This kind of tough love isn’t always fun, but it’s for the best: “All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness” (v. 11).
We’ll study God’s love more in the next lesson, but now it’s only natural to examine how we ourselves are doing in demonstrating love. Is our love unconditional, or do we withhold love from those who hurt us? Do we love only those who love us back? Jesus says, “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them” (Luke 6:32). Loving those who love us is easy. Christ loved those at enmity with Him, and He expects us to love our enemies too.
✧✧✧
Suggestions for Prayer: Thank God for His great love toward us and for its greatest manifestation in the Person of Christ.
For Further Study: First John has much to say about God’s love for us and our love for Him and others. Read the entire book, noting each instance of the word love.[2]
FEBRUARY 17
MORE THAN BY HEARSAY
And when he had sent the multitudes away, he went up into a mountain apart to pray: and when the evening was come, he was there alone.
—Matthew 14:23
There are many in the churches of our day who talk some of the Christian language but who know God only by hearsay. Most of them have read some book about God. They have seen some reflection of the light of God. They may have heard some faint echo of the voice of God, but their own personal knowledge of God is very slight….
When Jesus was here upon the earth, the record shows that He had work to do and He also knew the necessity for activity as He preached and healed, taught and answered questions and blessed the people. He also knew the fellowship of His brethren, those who followed Him and loved Him. But these were the incidental things in Jesus’ life compared to His fellowship with and personal knowledge of the Father. When Jesus went into the mountain to pray and wait on God all night, He was not alone, for He knew the conscious presence of the Father with Him.
In our modern Christian service we are constantly pressed to do this and to do that, and to go here and go there. How often we miss completely the conscious presence of God with the result that we know God only by hearsay! ITB023-024
Lord, draw me away today to spend time alone with You, that I might have a conscious sense of Your presence, knowing you by experience and not by words alone. Amen.[3]
February 17
True Happiness vs. Worldly Happiness
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.—Matt. 5:4
The world still operates according to the old popular song lyrics that say, “Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag, and smile, smile, smile.” This philosophy basically tells us to hide all our problems and pretend to be happy; and of course people apply this outlook to sin all the time.
Nevertheless Jesus says, “Blessed are those who mourn.” Godly mourning and confession of sins bring the only kind of happiness worth having—godly happiness that no amount of human effort, optimistic pretense, or positive thinking can produce.
There is a real need in today’s church to cry instead of laugh. The foolishness, frivolity, and embracing of the world’s view of happiness in the name of Christianity should make us mourn, because we know the difference between empty happiness and true happiness. God’s rebuke to the self-satisfied and indulgent happy is strong: “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be miserable and mourn and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you” (James 4:8–10).
True happiness does not ignore sin or make light of it; instead it sorrows over sin, turns from it, and flees to God for genuine forgiveness. And in so doing, it finds lasting joy.
ASK YOURSELF
Does this message sound depressing and cheerless to you? Have you bought the world’s line that happiness can be found only by ignoring sin, not by dealing with it? Aren’t you tired, though, of constantly coming up empty, never quite satisfied? Run weeping into the welcoming arms of God’s forgiveness.[4]
FEBRUARY 17
MAN’S WASTED POTENTIAL
Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.
Matthew 25:41
God has made it plain that hell is a real place—a final abode for people who do not want to love God and serve Him!
The sadness and the tragedy of this fact are that these are human beings, all dear to God because He created them in His own image. Of nothing else in the Creation is it said that it was created in the likeness of God!
Because fallen and perishing man is still nearer to God’s likeness than any other creature on earth, God offers him conversion, regeneration and forgiveness. It was surely because of this great potential in the human personality that the eternal Word could become flesh and dwell among us.
We are assured in many ways in the Scriptures that God the Creator does not waste human personality, but it is surely one of the stark tragedies of life that human personality can waste itself!
A man by his own sin may waste himself, which is to waste and lose that which on earth is most like God. The man who dies out of Christ is said to be lost, and hardly a word in our language expresses his condition with greater accuracy!
Lord, make me sensitive today to opportunities to share Your love with someone who does not have a personal relationship with You.[5]
February 17
How to Lose Your Joy
“I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am” (Phil. 4:11).
✧✧✧
Discontent and ingratitude will steal your joy.
True joy is God’s gift to every believer, and yet many Christians seem to lack it. How can that be? Did God fail them? No. As with peace, assurance, and other benefits of salvation, joy can be forfeited for many reasons. Willful sin, prayerlessness, fear, self-centeredness, focusing on circumstances, and lack of forgiveness are the main culprits.
Two of the most common joy-thieves are dissatisfaction and ingratitude. Both are by-products of the health, wealth, and prosperity mentality of our day. That teaching has produced a generation of Christians who are more dissatisfied than ever because their demands and expectations are higher than ever. They’ve lost their perspective on God’s sovereignty and have therefore lost the ability to give thanks in all things.
In marked contrast, when Jesus taught about contentment and anxiety (Matt. 6:25–34), He spoke of food and clothing—the basic necessities of life. But preferences, not necessities, are the issue with us. We’re into style, personal appearance, job satisfaction, earning power, bigger homes, and newer cars. In the name of greater faith we even demand that God supply more miracles, more wealth, and more power.
Amid all that, Paul’s words sound a refreshing note of assurance and rebuke: “I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am” (Phil. 4:11). He made no demands on God but simply trusted in His gracious provision. Whether he received little or much made no difference to him. In either case he was satisfied and thankful.
Don’t be victimized by the spirit of our age. See God’s blessings for what they are, and continually praise Him for His goodness. In doing so you will guard your heart from dissatisfaction and ingratitude. More important, you will bring joy to the One who is worthy of all praise.
✧✧✧
Suggestions for Prayer: Pray that the Holy Spirit will produce in you a joy and contentment that transcends your circumstances. ✧ Make it a daily practice to thank God for specific blessings and trials, knowing that He uses both to perfect His will in you.
For Further Study: Read 1 Kings 18:1–19:8. ✧ How did Elijah deal with the false prophets of Baal? ✧ How did he deal with Jezebel’s threat? ✧ What caused Elijah’s shift from a spiritual high to a spiritual low?[6]
FEBRUARY 17
LIVE FOR CHRIST? THEN DIE WITH HIM FIRST
Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him.
ROMANS 6:8
Do you realize that many, many persons now take it for granted that it is possible to live for Christ without first having died with Christ?
This is a serious error and we dare not leave it unchallenged!
The victorious Christian has known two lives. The first was his life in Adam which was motivated by the carnal mind and can never please God in any way. It can never be converted; it can only die (Rom. 8:5–8).
The second life of the Christian is his new life in Christ (Rom. 6:1–14). To live a Christian life with the life of Adam is wholly impossible. Yet multitudes take for granted that it can be done and go on year after year in defeat. Worst of all, they accept this half-dead condition as normal!
Another aspect of this attitude is the effort of many to do spiritual work without spiritual power. David Brainerd once compared a man without the power of the Spirit of God trying to do spiritual work to a workman without fingers attempting to do manual labor. The figure is striking but it does not overstate the facts.
The Holy Spirit is not a luxury meant to make deluxe Christians, as an illuminated frontispiece and a leather binding makes a deluxe book. The Spirit is an imperative necessity. Only the Eternal Spirit can do eternal deeds![7]
[1] MacArthur, J. (2001). Truth for today : a daily touch of God’s grace (p. 60). Nashville, Tenn.: J. Countryman.
[2] MacArthur, J. (1997). Strength for today. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.
[3] Tozer, A. W., & Eggert, R. (2015). Tozer on the almighty god: a 365-day devotional. Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers.
[4] MacArthur, J. (2008). Daily readings from the life of Christ (p. 56). Chicago: Moody Publishers.
[5] Tozer, A. W. (2015). Mornings with tozer: daily devotional readings. Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers.
[6] MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (1993). Drawing Near—Daily Readings for a Deeper Faith (p. 60). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.
[7] Tozer, A. W., & Smith, G. B. (2015). Evenings with tozer: daily devotional readings. Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers.
The Apostle talks about the difference between regret (worldly sorrow) and repentance (godly sorrow) in 2 Corinthians 7:9-10. He doesn’t give a lot of detail there, but thinking of Paul’s words, other Scripture, and life’s experiences, more can be said about regret versus repentance. Alfred Poirier does a nice job explaining the difference:
Regret and repentance differ with respect to God and self. Regret is a result of fearing man, whereas repentance is the fruit of fearing God. Fear of man is a snare, says Solomon (see Prov. 29:25), and one of the ways it snares us is by fostering in us a sense of regret. We regret that others have found out about us and that we have been exposed. In response, we run from God and attempt to cover and protect ourselves from the penetrating gaze of others, just as Adam ran from God and hid himself…
Grace (v. 6a) is the antecedent of which. It is God’s grace (undeserved love and goodness) that He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved, and because we are in Him we have redemption. Jesus Christ is our Redeemer from sin, the Beloved (the word indicates the One who is in the state of being loved by God) who Himself paid the price for our release from sin and death. Because we now belong to Christ, by faith made one with Him and placed in His Body, we are now acceptable to God.
From the beginning of Jesus’ ministry the Father declared Him to be “My beloved Son” (Matt. 3:17). And because we have believed in Him, “He delivered us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son” (Col. 1:13). Because we are now in the Beloved, we, too, are “beloved of God” (Rom. 1:7).
Only Jesus Christ has the inherent right to all the goodness of God. But because we are identified with Him by faith, that goodness is now also our goodness. Because our Savior and Lord is the Beloved of the Father and possesses all the goodness of the Father, we are also the beloved of the Father and possess all His goodness. Jesus said, “He who has My commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves Me; and he who loves Me shall be loved by My Father” (John 14:21).
The Father now loves us as He loves Christ and wants us to have everything that Christ has. That is why Paul could say He “has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ” (Eph. 1:3). Every Christian is God’s beloved child because the Lord Jesus Christ has become our Redeemer.
The Old Testament concept of a kinsman–redeemer set forth three qualifications: he had to be related to the one needing redemption, able to pay the price, and willing to do so. The Lord Jesus perfectly met these requirements.
A poet has expressed the magnificent reality of redemption in the words,
Near, so very near to God,
Nearer I could not be;
For in the person of His Son,
I’m just as near as He.
Dear, so very dear to God,
Dearer I could not be;
For in the person of His Son,
I’m just as dear as He.
Charitoō (freely bestowed) is from charis (grace, v. 6a), and therefore Paul is saying that God has graced us with His grace. Christians are those who have been graced by God.
The Redeemed
On us, “the saints … who are faithful in Christ Jesus” (v. 1), the Redeemer has freely bestowed His grace. We have the ones who have redemption through His blood
In chapter 2 Paul reminds us of what we were like when God so graciously redeemed us. We “were dead in [our] trespasses and sins”; we “walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air”; we “lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath”; and we were without “hope and without God in the world” (vv. 1–3, 12). In chapter 4 he reminds us that we formerly walked in futility of mind, “darkened in [our] understanding, excluded from the life of God,” because of ignorance and hardness of heart (vv. 17–18). Those are the kinds of people (the only kind who exist) that God chose to redeem.
It is of course because men are like that that they need redemption. Good men would not need a Redeemer. That is why Christ “gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds” (Titus 2:14).
Until a person realizes his need for redemption, however, he sees no need for a Redeemer. Until he recognizes that he is hopelessly enslaved to sin, he will not seek release from it. But when he does, he will be freed from the curse of sin, placed in Christ’s Body, and blessed with His every spiritual blessing.
If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear.
Psalm 66:18
According to today’s verse, you cannot even commune with God, let alone grow spiritually, if you are harboring sin. That’s why confession is so vital.
You must first be willing to accept God’s chastening for your sin. If you think He is being too rough, you should examine your life to see if you deserve it. For the same reason parents must provide consequences for a child’s misbehavior, God chastens you so that you don’t repeat your mistakes.
God also has placed a system of guilt in you for your own good. Spiritual life without guilt would be like physical life without pain. Guilt is a defense mechanism; it’s like an alarm that goes off to lead you to confession when you sin. That’s when you need to confront your sin and acknowledge to God that it is an affront to Him. That admission must be a part of your life before you can ever grow spiritually, because it eliminates the sin that holds you back.[1]
February 16
The Comfort of God’s Omniscience
“And [Peter] said to Him, ‘Lord, You know all things; You know that I love You.’ ”
John 21:17
✧✧✧
Since God knows all things, He knows our struggles and will help us through them.
It’s comforting to know that in the vastness of the universe, I’m not lost in insignificance; God knows me personally. Have you ever wondered if He knows you’re there? Some godly people in Malachi’s time wondered that. Malachi spoke words of judgment against the wicked, but the faithful believers feared that God might forget them and that they too would be consumed by God’s wrath. “Then those who feared the Lord spoke to one another, and the Lord gave attention and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before Him for those who fear the Lord and who esteem His name. ‘And they will be Mine,’ says the Lord of hosts, ‘on the day that I prepare My own possession, and I will spare them as a man spares his own son who serves him’ ” (Mal. 3:16–17). God has a book, and He doesn’t forget who belongs in it. I know that God knows me and that I belong to Him.
David, too, found comfort in God’s omniscience. He said, “Thou hast taken account of my wanderings; put my tears in Thy bottle; are they not in Thy book?” (Ps. 56:8). It was customary for hired mourners at funerals in David’s time to catch their tears in a bottle, perhaps to prove they earned their money. David knew that none of his trials went unnoticed by God. Not only does He know about them, He cares about them too.
You might be frustrated sometimes in your Christian walk as you see sin in your life. But happily for us, God knows that we still love Him in spite of our failings. In John 21, Peter kept trying to convince Christ that he loved Him, although his words and actions didn’t always prove it. Finally Peter said, “Lord, You know all things; You know that I love You” (v. 17). Peter appealed to the Lord’s omniscience. We can do the same thing when we stumble.
✧✧✧
Suggestions for Prayer: Thank God for knowing and caring about your struggles.
For Further Study: Read Job 42:1–6. What did Job acknowledge about God? ✧ What did that lead him to do?[2]
FEBRUARY 16
MORE THAN TO KNOW ABOUT
All things are delivered unto me of my Father: and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him.
—Matthew 11:27
The inability of the human mind to know God in a true and final sense is taken for granted throughout the Bible…. God’s nature is of another kind from anything with which the mind is acquainted; hence when the mind attempts to find out God it is confronted by obscurity. It is surrounded with mystery and blinded by the light no man can approach unto….
The Spirit of God is able to make the spirit of man know and experience the awful mystery of God’s essential being. It should be noted that the Spirit reveals God to the spirit of man, not to his intellect merely. The intellect can know God’s attributes because these constitute that body of truth that can be known about God. The knowledge of God is for the spirit alone. Such knowledge comes not by intellection but by intuition.
To know God in the scriptural meaning of the term is to enter into experience of Him. It never means to know about. It is not a knowledge mediated by the intellect, but an unmediated awareness experienced by the soul on a plane too high for the mind to reach. SOS047-048
Thank You, Father, for the ministry of the Spirit in revealing You to Your children. May I no longer simply know about You, but come to know You personally. Amen.[3]
February 16
What Did Jesus Mean by Mourning?
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.—Matt. 5:4
If you have spiritual poverty and true humility, they will lead you to godly sorrow. That’s what Jesus meant by “mourn” here in this second beatitude. Paul told the Corinthians about this kind of sorrow: “For the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation, but the sorrow of the world produces death. For behold what earnestness this very thing, this godly sorrow, has produced in you” (2 Cor. 7:10–11).
Of the nine different New Testament words that indicate the commonness of human sorrow, the one Matthew used here is the most severe. Usually it was used only to denote the grieving over the death of a loved one (cf. Mark 16:10; Rev. 18:11, 15). It conveys the notion of deep, inner agony that is not necessarily expressed by outward weeping or wailing.
Yet genuine, biblical mourning produces results that are surprisingly wonderful because God does something tangible in response to it—the forgiveness of your sins—a holy infusion of real happiness that breathes into you a sigh of relief.
Therefore, this is not simply a psychological or an emotional experience that makes you feel better. No, this mourning is met by blessedness. Genuine spiritual mourning invites communion with the true God, to which He responds with an objective reality—the reality of forgiveness that David knew: “How blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered! How blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit!” (Ps. 32:1–2).
ASK YOURSELF
When was the last time the gravity of your sins fell around you, burying you under its full weight? If it’s been awhile, you’re missing out on the sweet awareness of God’s forgiveness.[4]
FEBRUARY 16
WE SEE GOD’S PURPOSE
That…he might gather together in one all things in Christ…in heaven, and…on earth.
Ephesians 1:10
We trust the Word of God—and the inspired revelation makes it plain to the believing Christian that all things in the universe have derived their form from Christ, the eternal Son!
We are assured that even as an architect builder gathers the necessary materials needed to fashion the structure he has designed, so God will ultimately gather all things together under one head, even Christ (see Ephesians 1:9–10).
Everything in the universe has received its meaning by the power of His Word; each has maintained its place and order through Him.
Jesus Christ is God creating!
Jesus Christ is God redeeming!
Jesus Christ is God completing and harmonizing!
Jesus Christ is God bringing together all things after the counsel of His own will!
I can only hope that as we grow and mature and delight in our faith, we are beginning to gain a new appreciation of God’s great eternal purpose!
Your master design of the universe is perfect even though mankind has neglected Your creation and Your desire for fellowship. I pray that by Your Spirit our churches will become “like a mighty army” and help lead many people in the world to faith in Christ.[5]
February 16
The Joy of Pleasing God
“The blameless in their walk are [God’s] delight” (Prov. 11:20).
✧✧✧
Your love for God brings Him joy.
Our focus so far this month has been on the joy we experience in knowing and serving Christ. Before we turn our attention to the theme of godliness, I want you to consider two additional aspects of joy: the joy of pleasing God, and how to lose your joy. Pleasing God is our topic for today.
Perhaps you haven’t given much thought to how you can bring joy to God, but Scripture mentions several ways. Luke 15:7, for example, says, “There will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents, than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.” Verse 10 adds, “There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” Repentance brings joy to God.
Faith is another source of joy for God. Hebrews 11:6 says, “Without faith it is impossible to please Him.” That’s the negative side of a positive principle: when you trust God, He is pleased.
In addition to repentance and faith, prayer also brings God joy. Proverbs 15:8 says, “The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord, but the prayer of the upright is His delight.”
Righteous living is another source of joy to God, as David acknowledges in 1 Chronicles 29:17: “I know, O my God, that Thou triest the heart and delightest in uprightness.” Solomon added that those who walk blamelessly are God’s delight (Prov. 11:20).
Repentance, faith, prayer, and righteous living all please God because they are expressions of love. That’s the overarching principle. Whenever you express your love to Him—whether by words of praise or by acts of obedience—you bring Him joy.
Doesn’t it thrill you to know that the God of the universe delights in you? It should! Let that realization motivate you to find as many ways as possible to bring Him joy today.
✧✧✧
Suggestions for Prayer: Thank God for the privilege of bringing Him joy. ✧ Thank Him for His grace, which enables you to love Him and to express your love in repentance, faith, prayer, and righteous living (cf. 1 John 4:19).
For Further Study: Read 1 Kings 3:3–15. ✧ What did Solomon request of God? ✧ What was God’s response?[6]
FEBRUARY 16
SECULAR MEN CONFUSE TRUTHS WITH “TRUTH”
The LORD by wisdom hath founded the earth; by understanding hath he established the heavens.
PROVERBS 3:19
The celebrated prayer of the great German astronomer, Kepler, has been a benediction to many: “O God, I thank Thee that Thou has permitted me to think Thy thoughts after Thee!”
This prayer is theologically sound because it acknowledges the priority of God in the universe. Whatever new thing anyone discovers is already old, for it is but the present expression of a previous thought of God. The idea of the thing precedes the thing itself; and when things raise thoughts in the thinker’s mind these are the ancient thoughts of God, however imperfectly understood.
Should an atheist, for instance, state that two times two equals four, he would be stating a truth and thinking God’s thoughts after Him, even though he might deny that God exists.
In their search for facts, men have confused truths with truth. The words of Christ, “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free,” have been wrenched from their context and used to stir people to the expectation of being made “free” by knowledge. Certainly this is not what Christ had in mind when He uttered the words.
It is the Son who is the Truth that makes men free. Not facts, not scientific knowledge, but eternal Truth delivers men, and that eternal Truth became flesh to dwell among us![7]
[1] MacArthur, J. (2001). Truth for today : a daily touch of God’s grace (p. 59). Nashville, Tenn.: J. Countryman.
[2] MacArthur, J. (1997). Strength for today. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.
[3] Tozer, A. W., & Eggert, R. (2015). Tozer on the almighty god: a 365-day devotional. Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers.
[4] MacArthur, J. (2008). Daily readings from the life of Christ (p. 55). Chicago: Moody Publishers.
[5] Tozer, A. W. (2015). Mornings with tozer: daily devotional readings. Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers.
[6] MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (1993). Drawing Near—Daily Readings for a Deeper Faith (p. 59). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.
[7] Tozer, A. W., & Smith, G. B. (2015). Evenings with tozer: daily devotional readings. Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers.
Chris Rosebrough “These spiritual warfare sessions are common in New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) churches and are gaining popularity in mainstream Evangelical churches.”
Our good friend and fellow polemicist Amy Spreeman, contributor to Pirate Christian Radio, presents the 10th article in her series about those who found themselves in this dreadful bondage, and what happened when their eyes were opened.
“The deliverance ministry counselor told my wife to close her eyes and allow the demons to speak through her. He explained that each demon has a name, and if bound “by the blood” must be truthful and submissive.”
Jared and his wife had been experiencing what they called demonic thoughts, and sought help through a spiritual deliverance ministry. These spiritual warfare sessions are common in New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) churches and are gaining popularity in mainstream Evangelical churches. Spiritual warfare is one of the hallmarks of the NAR movement. A helpful…
CHAOS ON STREETS OF PARIS: Tensions boil over in capital as leaders blasted as ‘COWARDS’ Leader of the Front National (FN), Marine Le Pen, said: “Faced with this situation, which makes France a national disgrace and the misfortune of the inhabitants of the districts affected, the government is locked into a silence which reflects both its cowardice and its powerlessness.”
US Vetoes UN Appointment of PA Bigwig Because PA Is Not a Country The United States government on Friday eighty-sixed the nomination of Salam Fayyad, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister from 2007 to 2013, to be the next United Nations special representative to Libya. According to the NY Times, the Trump Administration’s objection had to the with the fact that there is no such thing as a Palestinian state.
We Must Start Building Third Temple Today, Says Temple Experts The man in charge of organizing the Third Temple construction thinks he knows what it will take to jump-start the process. Like any other commandment, it is incumbent upon the Jews to perform it themselves, and not to wait for God to perform it for them.
Angola: Deadly Disease Combination Claims Thousands in Angola RAGING yellow fever and malaria outbreaks claimed more than 15 000 lives in Angola over the past year. Speaking in the capital Luanda, the health minister, Luís Gomes Sambo, disclosed there were with 4,2 million cases of malaria, leading to the death of 15 000 people.
Concerns persist with US military cyber security A lack of available Red Teams and the inability to adequately defend against sophisticated threats are among the shortcomings identified in the Office of the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation’s (DOT&E’s) 2016 report on aspects of the US Department of Defense’s (DoD’s) cyber-security capabilities.
Putin checks combat readiness of Russia’s air defences The Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS) conducted a snap air defence exercise from February 7-9 in the western Russian Federation. The drill was the fifteenth ordered by President Vladimir Putin since 2013.
Trump national security adviser Flynn resigns in controversy over Russian contacts Michael Flynn, resigned late on Monday after coming under fire over whether he discussed the possibility of lifting U.S. sanctions on Russia before Trump took office. Retired General Keith Kellogg, who has been chief of staff of the White House National Security Council, was named the acting national security adviser while Trump determines who should fill the position.
No high-altitude ash from latest Bogoslof eruption, scientists say The Alaska Volcano Observatory has reduced warning levels for Bogoslof volcano in the Aleutian Islands, after an eruption early Monday failed to produce an anticipated high-level ash cloud. The volcano, about 60 miles west of Unalaska, erupted at 7:24 a.m., according to seismic data tracked by the observatory. It was raised first to an aviation color code of orange and a warning level of watch, then to red and warning – AVO’s highest levels of eruptive status – shortly before 8 a.m.
Kim Jong-un’s brother DEAD: Kim Jong-nam ‘ASSASSINATED’ in Malaysian airport Kim Jong-nam, 45, was the oldest son of Kim Jong-ill, the current leader’s father and predeccesor. Initial reports by South Korean media say he was poisoned at Kuala Lumpar airport by two women said to be North Korean operatives. His death, which is yet to be officially confirmed, would be the most high profile assasination of Kim Hong-un’s regime since Jang Sung-taek, the leader’s uncle, was executed in 2013.
UN warns Lebanese president not to arm Hezbollah
The United Nations has warned Lebanon’s President Michel Aoun not to arm Hezbollah following comments the Hezbollah-friendly president made on Egyptian TV on Sunday. In a tweet posted on Monday, UN Coordinator Sigird Kaag warned that UN Resolution 1701 prohibits Lebanon from arming Hezbollah. “UN resolution 1701 is vital for Lebanon’s stability and security. The resolution calls for disarmament of all armed groups. No arms outside control of state.”
Netanyahu lands in Washington amid annexation calls
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu landed in Washington for his first meeting with US President Donald Trump amid calls by right-wing members of his government to annex part, if not all, of Area C of the West Bank, otherwise known as Judea and Samaria. Netanyahu did not address the complicated issues surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict when he landed…
Dubai announces passenger drone plans
A drone that can carry people will begin “regular operations” in Dubai from July, the head of the city’s Roads and Transportation Agency has announced at the World Government Summit. The Chinese model eHang 184 has already had test flights, said Matt al-Tayer. The drone can carry one passenger weighing up to 100 kg (220 pounds) and has a 30 minute flight time.
Michael Flynn: Trump’s national security adviser resigns
US National Security Adviser Michael Flynn has resigned over allegations he discussed US sanctions with Russia before Donald Trump took office. Mr Flynn is said to have misled officials about his call with Russia’s ambassador before his own appointment. It is illegal for private citizens to conduct US diplomacy.
No return home in sight for thousands of Californians sheltering from dam
Tens of thousands of Californians faced an indefinite stay in shelters as engineers worked for a second day on Tuesday to fix the United States’ tallest dam before more storms sweep the region. After what looks set to be the wettest winter in Northern California following years of drought, more rain was forecast for as early as Wednesday and through Sunday, according to the National Weather Service.
Athens set for first mosque since Ottoman times
Athens’s half a million Muslims are set to get their first official mosque in more than a century. The city has not had a formal mosque since it drove out occupying Ottomans in 1833, and Deputy Foreign Minister Ioannis Amanantidis told parliament last year that it was the only European capital “to be deprived of such a religious space”.
Germany ‘freaked out’ as Greece ‘could ditch EU currency for US DOLLAR’
GREECE could be poised to humiliate Brussels by ditching the euro and instead choosing to be tied to the US dollar, Donald Trump’s reported pick as EU ambassador has sensationally claimed. Professor Ted Malloch revealed that senior Greek economists have enquired about the possibility of adopting the greenback if the country crashes out of the single currency.
Elon Musk: Humans must merge with machines or become irrelevant in AI age
Billionaire Elon Musk is known for his futuristic ideas and his latest suggestion might just save us from being irrelevant as artificial intelligence (AI) grows more prominent. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO said on Monday that humans need to merge with machines to become a sort of cyborg. “Over time I think we will probably see a closer merger of biological intelligence and digital intelligence,” Musk told an audience at the World Government Summit in Dubai…
SATANIC ‘MURDER’ Three teens arrested after ‘half-naked girl, 15, is killed in suspected satanic ritual
A 15-YEAR-OLD killed after having a wooden stake plunged into her eye could have been attacked in a bizarre satanic ritual, police sources claim. Jessica Valeria was found half-naked and brutally beaten with a wooden broomstick embedded in her right eye in Torreon in the northern state of Coahuila, Mexico. Sources close to the investigation told Vanguardia there were indications it could have been a satanic rite…
Germany cancels annual meeting with Israeli government
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has decided to cancel the annual government-to-government meeting with Israel, scheduled for May 9. A German spokesman said the governments had agreed to “postpone” the annual meeting of leaders and ministers until next year, blaming the delay on the busy schedule of meetings surrounding Germany’s presidency of the G20.
Syria’s al-Bab largely under control of Turkey-backed rebels, Turkish PM says
Turkey-backed rebels have largely taken control of Syria’s al-Bab from Islamic State militants, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on Tuesday, but a war monitoring group said the jihadists still controlled most of the town. Syrian rebels, backed by Turkish special forces, tanks and warplanes, swept into northern Syria in August in an operation, dubbed “Euphrates Shield” by Ankara, to push Islamic State from Turkey’s border and stop the advance of Kurdish fighters.
Playboy Is Bringing Back Nudity a Year After Pledging to Stop Publishing Naked Pictorials
The magazine announced that nudity will, again, be featured on its pages on Monday – starting with the March/April 2017 issue, titled Naked Is Normal. Chief Creative Officer Connor Hefner – the 25-year-old son of Hugh Hefner – simultaneously tweeted, “I’ll be the first to admit that the way in which the magazine portrayed nudity was dated, but removing it entirely was a mistake. Nudity was never the problem because nudity isn’t a problem. Today, we’re taking our identity back and reclaiming who we are.”
Grandmother of Chicago girl shot in head says she’s ‘fighting for her life at 11 years old’
“My grandbaby did not deserve this,” Patsy Holmes, grandmother of critically wounded, 11-year-old Takiya Holmes, told ABC Chicago station WLS-TV. Both girls are in critical condition today, the Chicago Police Department told ABC News. Holmes told WLS of her granddaughter, “They are treating her as best as they can, with all kind of aggressive measures that the hospital can do for her.
Maduro Kicks CNN out of Venezuela for Report on School Food Shortages
President Nicolás Maduro has expelled CNN after accusing the international news outlet of “manipulating” information about Venezuela. Maduro said Sunday he wants CNN “outside” Venezuela after he claimed the news channel manipulated information about a student’s complaint regarding the lack of food at schools
Senate confirms Goldman Sachs executive Mnuchin as Trump’s treasury secretary
The Senate confirmed Steven Mnuchin as Treasury secretary in a vote Monday evening, adding the former Goldman Sachs executive to President Donald Trump’s Cabinet. The 53-47 vote, which fell largely along party lines, makes Mnuchin the 10th of Trump’s Cabinet nominees to be confirmed in three weeks. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) was the only Democrat to support the nomination. No Republican voted against Mnuchin.
David Stockman: Trump Administration Is ‘Complete Insanity,’ Markets in Fantasy Land
Former Reagan economic adviser David Stockman warns savvy investors not to be swept away by the jubilation of a stock market seemingly hitting new record highs every day. The former Reagan Budget Director told CNBC that traders are living in a “fantasy land” that can’t last — and Trump’s policies will derail the market for years to come.
The Briefing 02-15-17
When businesses get political, how should Christian consumers respond?
Well-funded Organizing for Action promises to crack conservative skulls to halt the Trump agenda.
What is Organizing for Action? It is a less violent version of Mussolini’s black shirts and Hitler’s brown shirts, or of the government-supported goon squads that Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Cuba’s Castro brothers used to harass and intimidate their domestic opponents.
Human-animal mutant creatures make for great material for science fiction writers, but we aren’t supposed to be creating them in the real world. In so many ways, the technological advancements that we have made as a society are outpacing our ability to handle those advancements, and this field is certainly a glaring example of that reality. Just because we can create human-animal hybrid chimeras does not mean that we should. Genetic modification is a particularly dangerous science, because we are literally tinkering with the future of our planet. And when it comes to humans and animals, those are two things that definitely should not mix. Unfortunately, they are being mixed, and this could have enormous implications as our society plunges into a very uncertain future. (Read More…)
Their agenda may be on the rocks in the United States at the moment, but that doesn’t mean that the globalists are giving up. In fact, a major push toward a cashless society is being made in the European Union right now. Last May we learned that the 500 euro note is being completely eliminated, and just a few weeks ago the European Commission released a new “Action Plan” which instructs member states to explore “potential upper limits to cash payments”. In the name of “fighting terrorism”, this “Action Plan” discusses the benefits of “prohibitions for cash payments above a specific threshold” and it says that those prohibitions should include “virtual currencies (such as BitCoin) and prepaid instruments (such as pre-paid credit cards) when they are used anonymously.” (Read More…)
The time will come when you won’t be able to buy a cup of coffee without being traced, warns investment guru Jim Rogers. To control people, governments will increasingly seek to hunt down cash spending, he adds.
“Governments are always looking out for themselves first, and it’s the same old thing that has been going on for hundreds of years. The Indians recently did the same thing. They withdrew 86 percent of the currency in circulation, and they have now made it illegal to spend more than, I think it’s about $4,000 in any cash transaction. In France you cannot use more than, I think it’s a €1,000,”said Rogers in an interview with MacroVoices Podcast.
“Many countries are already doing this. Some states in the US you cannot make cash transactions above a certain amount. Governments love it. Then they can control you. If you want to go and buy a cup of coffee, they know how many you drink, where you buy them, etc., if they can all put it into electronic formats and they will. The world is all going electronic,” the investor said.
According to Rogers, governments will claim they are doing it for the public good, not for themselves.
“When it’s done, the governments are going to be very, very happy they are going to say they’re doing it for our own good, this is not them, this is for our good. That they’re doing this, but it’s coming, and it’s going to be a whole different world in which we live. Probably we are not going to have as many freedoms as we have now even though we are already losing our freedoms at a significant pace,” Rodgers told the radio.
Top Headlines – 2/15/2017
World stocks at 21-month highs on Yellen, U.S. outlook (Read More); Dollar notches longest run of gains in five years before CPI data (Read More)
Nervous About the ACA, GOP Divisions Emerge Over Repeal Effort (Read More)
Flynn Probed by FBI Over Calls With Russian Official (Read More)
Russia Questions Mount for Trump White House Reeling From Flynn Fallout (Read More)
Trump knew for weeks aide was misleading over Russia (Read More)
U.S. Drops Insistence on Two-State Solution in Mideast (Read More)
Trump to welcome Netanyahu as Palestinians fear U.S. shift (Read More)
Yellen Sets High Hurdle for Reducing Fed’s Massive Bond Holdings (Read More)
Why the Trump Organization Was Cited in a Brazil Corruption Probe (Read More)
Bank of America Misses a Big Options Payday, Goldman Cashes In (Read More)
Eurozone trade surplus jumps in December (Read More)
Why Data Nerds Struggle to Gain Power at Hedge Funds (Read More)
Malaysia detains woman, seeking others in connection with North Korean murder (Read More)
Why America’s Tallest Dam Is Suddenly in Danger (Read More)
U.S. Defense Secretary in Brussels Amid Turmoil Over Flynn (Read More)
Retail CEOs to meet Trump in bid to kill U.S. border tax (Read More)
Central bankers take up arms against protectionism (Read More)
GM, PSA bosses try to sell Europe deal amid German, UK worries (Read More)
French government spokesman says aware of German concerns over Peugeot-Opel deal (Read More)
PepsiCo profit beats on demand for healthy snacks, drinks (Read More)
As AP Tests Gain Popularity, Some Colleges Push Back (Read More)
Will strong persecution come to North America in our lifetime? Seasoned preacher and Christian author David Ravenhill believes it will. He states that in his…
(Reported By Michael Snyder) Human-animal mutant creatures make for great material for science fiction writers, but we aren’t supposed to be creating them in the…
Russia won’t give Crimea back to Ukraine, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in response to White House comments that Donald Trump expects Moscow…
Three NFL players have pulled out of a scheduled trip to Israel following an open letter published by pro-Palestinian activists urging them to distance themselves…
Buoyed by several sports leagues punishing the State of North Carolina over its bathroom bill, the National Football League now warns that it will boycott…
Los Angeles Lakers legend Magic Johnson told TMZ Sports on Monday he will no longer frequent hotels owned by President Donald Trump. Voicing his criticism…
A reservoir of melting carbon covering an area almost the size of Mexico has been discovered beneath the western US, casting doubt over previous estimates…
Scientists say they could be close to finding another planet able to support life. The news comes after researchers report discovering 60 new planets near…
Baylor University joined the mushrooming list of American college campuses eager to declare sanctuary campus status. A handful of graduate students from the religion department…
Thousands of American gizzard shad are floating belly up in Little River, but the grave looking pool of dead fish doesn’t surprise environmentalists in Windsor-Essex….
The increasing tension between the United States and China has been no secret in recent years, but now satellite evidence appears to indicate that China…
NASA has lately warned about a potentially dangerous, peanut-shaped asteroid which may slam Earth one day. Dubbed as 2015 BN509, the asteroid is 200 meters…
US President Donald Trump has been tough on Russia and expects Moscow to “return” the Crimea peninsula to Ukraine, the White House spokesman told reporters….
Russia has secretly deployed a new cruise missile despite complaints from American officials that it violates a landmark arms control treaty that helped seal the…
US wholesale inflation continued its upward trend in January, recording its largest monthly gain in more than four years, according to data released Tuesday by…
God made everything out of nothing, including you and me. His main purpose in creation was to bring him pleasure.
The chief way in which we as humanity do this is through loving, obeying, and enjoying him perfectly.
Instead of this, we have sinned against our loving Creator and acted in high-handed rebellion.
God has vowed that he will righteously and lovingly judge sinners with eternal death.
But God, being merciful, loving, gracious, and just, sent his own son, Jesus Christ, in the likeness of man to live as a man; fulfilling his perfect requirements in the place of sinners; loving, obeying, and enjoying him perfectly.
And further, his son bore the eternal judgment of God upon the cross of Calvary, as he satisfied the eternal anger of God, standing in the place of sinners. God treated Jesus as a sinner, though he was perfectly sinless, that he might declare sinners as perfect.
This glorious transaction occurs as the sinner puts their faith (dependence, trust) in the Lord Jesus Christ as their substitute. God then charges Christ’s perfection to the sinner, and no longer views him as an enemy but instead an adopted son covered in the perfect righteousness of his son.
God furnished proof that this sacrifice was accepted by raising Jesus from the dead.
God will judge the world in righteousness and all of those who are not covered in the righteousness of Christ, depending on him for forgiveness, will be forced to stand on their own to bear the eternal anger of God.
Therefore, all must turn from sin and receive Christ Jesus as Lord.
There is no greater message to be heard than that which we call the gospel. But as important as that is, it is often given to massive distortions or over simplifications. People think they’re preaching the gospel to you when they tell you, ‘you can have a purpose to your life’, or that ‘you can have meaning to your life’, or that ‘you can have a personal relationship with Jesus.’ All of those things are true, and they’re all important, but they don’t get to the heart of the gospel.
The gospel is called the ‘good news’ because it addresses the most serious problem that you and I have as human beings, and that problem is simply this: God is holy and He is just, and I’m not. And at the end of my life, I’m going to stand before a just and holy God, and I’ll be judged. And I’ll be judged either on the basis of my own righteousness–or lack of it –or the righteousness of another. The good news of the gospel is that Jesus lived a life of perfect righteousness, of perfect obedience to God, not for His own well being but for His people. He has done for me what I couldn’t possibly do for myself. But not only has He lived that life of perfect obedience, He offered Himself as a perfect sacrifice to satisfy the justice and the righteousness of God.
The great misconception in our day is this: that God isn’t concerned to protect His own integrity. He’s a kind of wishy-washy deity, who just waves a wand of forgiveness over everybody. No. For God to forgive you is a very costly matter. It cost the sacrifice of His own Son. So valuable was that sacrifice that God pronounced it valuable by raising Him from the dead – so that Christ died for us, He was raised for our justification. So the gospel is something objective. It is the message of who Jesus is and what He did. And it also has a subjective dimension. How are the benefits of Jesus subjectively appropriated to us? How do I get it? The Bible makes it clear that we are justified not by our works, not by our efforts, not by our deeds, but by faith–and by faith alone. The only way you can receive the benefit of Christ’s life and death is by putting your trust in Him–and in Him alone. You do that, you’re declared just by God, you’re adopted into His family, you’re forgiven of all of your sins, and you have begun your pilgrimage for eternity.
The Gospel In A Nutshell
Now, with regard to this rule of faith—that we may from this point acknowledge what it is which we defend—it is, you must know, that which prescribes the belief that there is one only God, and that He is none other than the Creator of the world, who produced all things out of nothing through His own Word, first of all sent forth; that this Word is called His Son, and, under the name of God, was seen “in diverse manners” by the patriarchs, heard at all times in the prophets, at last brought down by the Spirit and Power of the Father into the Virgin Mary, was made flesh in her womb, and, being born of her, went forth as Jesus Christ; thenceforth He preached the new law and the new promise of the kingdom of heaven, worked miracles; having been crucified, He rose again the third day; (then) having ascended into the heavens, He sat at the right hand of the Father; sent instead of Himself the Power of the Holy Ghost to lead such as believe; will come with glory to take the saints to the enjoyment of everlasting life and of the heavenly promises, and to condemn the wicked to everlasting fire, after the resurrection of both these classes shall have happened, together with the restoration of their flesh. This rule, as it will be proved, was taught by Christ, and raises amongst ourselves no other questions than those which heresies introduce, and which make men heretics.
Tertullian, “On Prescription Against Heretics,” Chapter XIIl
What exactly do Christians mean when they talk about the “gospel of Jesus Christ”? Since the word “gospel” means “good news,” when Christians talk about the gospel, they’re simply telling the good news about Jesus! It’s a message from God saying, “Good news! Here is how you can be saved from my judgment!” That’s an announcement you can’t afford to ignore.
Why Is the Gospel Good News?
So, what is the good news about Jesus Christ?
Since the earliest Christians announced the good news about Jesus, it has been organized around these questions:
Who made us, and to whom are we accountable?
What is our problem?
What is God’s solution to our problem?
How can I be included in his solution?
Christians through the centuries since Christ have answered those questions with the same truth from the Bible.
We are accountable to God.
Our problem is our sin against him.
God’s solution is salvation through Jesus Christ.
We come to be included in that salvation by faith and repentance.
Let’s summarize those points like this: God, Mankind, Jesus Christ, and Our Response.
God
The first thing to know about the good news of Jesus is that “in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). Everything starts from that point, so if you get that point wrong then everything else that follows will be wrong. Because God created everything—including us—he has the right to tell us how to live. You have to understand that in order to understand the good news about Jesus. To understand just how glorious and life-giving the gospel of Jesus Christ is, we have to understand that God is also holy and righteous. He is determined never to ignore or tolerate sin. Including ours!
Mankind
When God created the first human beings, Adam and Eve, he intended for them to live under his righteous rule in perfect joy—obeying him and living in fellowship with him. When Adam disobeyed God, though, and ate the one fruit that God had told him not to eat, that fellowship with God was broken. Moreover, Adam and Eve had declared rebellion against God. They were denying his authority over their lives.
It’s not just Adam and Eve who are guilty of sin. The Bible says, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). Sin is the rejection of God himself and his authority over those to whom he gives life.
Once you understand sin in that light, you begin to understand why “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). That’s not just physical death, but spiritual death, a forceful separating of our sinful, rebellious selves from the presence of God forever. The Bible teaches that the final destiny for unbelieving sinners is eternal, active judgment in a place called “hell.”
But . . .
Jesus Christ
The word “Christ” means “anointed one,” referring to anointing a king with oil when he is crowned. So, when we say “Jesus Christ,” we’re saying that Jesus is a King!
When Jesus began his public ministry, he told the people, “The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the good news!” As Jesus died on a cross, the awful weight of all our sins fell on his shoulders. The sentence of death God had pronounced against rebellious sinners struck. And Jesus died. For you and me!
But the story doesn’t end there. Jesus the Crucified is no longer dead. The Bible tells us that he rose from the grave. Jesus’s rising from the grave was God’s way of saying, “What Jesus claimed about who he is and what he came to do is true!”
Our Response
What does God expect us to do with the information that Jesus died in our place so we can be saved from God’s righteous wrath against our sins? He expects us to respond with repentance and faith.
To repent of our sins means to turn away from our rebellion against God. Repentance doesn’t mean we’ll bring an immediate end to our sinning. It does mean, though, that we’ll never again live at peace with our sins.
Not only that, but we also turn to God in faith. Faith is reliance. It’s a promise-founded trust in the risen Jesus to save you from your sins. If God is ever to count us righteous, he’ll have to do it on the basis of someone else’s record, someone who’s qualified to stand in as our substitute. And that’s what happens when a person is saved by Jesus: All our sins are credited to Jesus who took the punishment for them, and the perfect righteousness of Jesus is then credited to us when we place our trust in what he has done for us! That’s what faith means—to rely on Jesus, to trust in him alone to stand in our place and win a righteous verdict from God!
Ravi Zacharias explains the gospel in two minutes:
The five main components of the gospel can be remembered on 5 fingers of one hand. Here they are:
1) Jesus’ birth 2) Jesus’ life 3) Jesus’ death 4) Jesus’ resurrection 5) Jesus’ ascension
Obviously each point can be elaborated on depending on how much time you have. Here’s the short version:
1) Jesus’ birth – Jesus, God himself, the creator of the universe, the Messiah, became a human being – took on flesh, and was born of a virgin.
2) Jesus’ life – Jesus lived a life of perfect obedience to his Father. Though he was tempted in every way as we are, he never once sinned.
3) Jesus’ death – on the cross, Jesus himself took all our sins and paid for them. God the father counted all our sins to Jesus as if he himself had personally committed them. Then Jesus bore God’s wrath towards sin – the punishment we deserved – as a substitute for us.
4) Jesus’ resurrection – within 3 days, Jesus rose physically from the dead, proving that his sacrifice for sins have been accepted by God, since the punishment for sin was death. Jesus was seen by numerous people after he rose including 500 at one time (1 Corinthians 15).
5) Jesus’ ascension – Jesus ascended physically into heaven where he reigns as King of kings and Lord of lords. And someday he will return to the earth.
That’s the gospel, the good news, and if we believe in Jesus Christ and this good news and call upon him he will save us from our sins and give us eternal life.
That’s a simple way to remember the gospel – five fingers. Even a child can do it. So ask God to give you opportunities to share his good news today.
Please take the time to watch this clip, so that you might understand the authentic Gospel
This is the Gospel:
Friend, God is holy. There is a God in heaven who has created you and me, and He is the authority over both of us. He is perfectly holy. “In Him is Light, and there is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). And the problem with that is that if we want to have fellowship with God, we have to be light and no darkness at all. And yet here’s the problem: we are darkness. We are sinful. We’ve all broken His law. We’ve all lied, stolen, we’ve all looked with lust, we’ve all been angry with our brothers in our hearts. We’ve all fallen short of the glorious standard of perfection that God requires (Rom 3:23). And there’s nothing we can do about it. No amount of works, no amount of contrition, no amount of bad feelings, no amount of church attendance, no amount of Bible reading, no amount of evangelism can earn forgiveness of our sins and the righteousness which God requires (Titus 3:5; cf. Isa 64:6).
And yet God is gracious, and He loves us, and as His creatures He wants to display His glory in us by rescuing us from that. And so He sent His Son—God in the flesh, the Lord Jesus Christ—to be born as a helpless little baby (John 1:14; 3:16; Col 2:9). God of the universe, Sustainer of the universe, Himself being sustained in the womb of a teenage Hebrew girl, and upholding the world by the word of His power (Heb 1:3) while He is upheld by the nutrients from her own body! Unspeakable! And in great humility, He grows up with the growing pains of life in a fallen world, though He Himself never being with any sin—without sin entirely (2 Cor 5:21; Heb 4:15; 7:26). And He lives a perfectly righteous life. The way that you and I have failed to live before God—the way that we have failed in thought, word, and deed, and fallen short of God’s glory—Christ never did. Not even a thought. He loved God, His Father, perfectly. He always walked in perfect righteousness. He lived the life that you were commanded to live, that I was commanded to live, that we failed to live. He lived that perfect life that God is worthy of.
And not only did He live for us, He died for us. He went to the cross. Our sin demanded death. Our sin demanded eternal punishment. Our sin demanded wrath—just wrath exercised on us for eternity (Rom 6:23). But because of the infinite worth of Christ’s person, He was on that cross. And on that cross, God exercised upon Him the full fury of His own anger (Rom 3:24–26; 2 Cor 5:21; Gal 3:10–14), that was rightly due to me and rightly due to you, and that you will experience if you don’t turn from your sin and trust in this Messiah. Christ was born, lived, died, and was raised (1 Cor 15:3–4). And He rose from the grave after being dead, demonstrating His victory over sin and death.
And now God promises that if you turn from your sin, if you repudiate all that you are and all that you were and all that you love, and you turn away from a life of pursuing sin—and if you repudiate not only your bad works but your good works, if you turn from trying to earn your salvation by all the good deeds that you might want to do as a moral person—if you turn away from all of that (Acts 17:30–31), and you trust in Christ alone for righteousness (Phil 3:7–8; cf. Rom 3:28; 10:4), God promises that He will forgive you. He will have treated Christ on the cross as if Christ lived your life. And He will then treat you, justly and legally and righteously, as if you lived Christ’s perfect life of righteousness (2 Cor 5:21). And you can be saved to know the God you were created to love and enjoy. You can have the fullness of joy, the eternal pleasures that are at the Father’s right hand in heaven (Ps 16:11), and begin even now, because eternal life is to know God (John 17:3).
Friend, would you repent? Would you turn from your sin and trust in this perfect Savior to avail for you before God, to pay for your sin and to provide your righteousness?
A Gospel Presentation
God is Holy
The Bible teaches that the entire universe was created by God. And that God who has created everything has spoken to humanity in the Bible. And the Bible tells us that a fundamental characteristic of God is that He is holy. 1 John 1:5 says, “God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all.” That’s a way of saying that He’s entirely pure. God’s character is one of perfect moral uprightness. He is the essence of all that is good—so much so that, as the verse says, He can have absolutely no fellowship with “darkness”—no fellowship with that which is not perfectly holy, righteous, and pure.
God’s righteous character was expressed in the law He gave to Moses and the Israelites. You’ve heard of the Ten Commandments. They summarized the perfection of God’s character. These laws were directives for how people who were in a proper relationship with God must act.
We are Sinful
The problem is: all of us are sinful. We have all broken God’s law. All humanity has “gone astray like sheep, and each one of us has turned to his own way” (Isaiah 53:6). We’ve tried to live our lives without God, according to our own standards, in our own ways. Whether we’re drug addicts and murderers, or white collar, well-to-do, upstanding citizens, we do what we do because we want to do it, with no consideration for God and what He would have us to do. The Bible calls that sin. It is the missing of the mark, the falling short of God’s standard of righteousness.
And in your heart of hearts you know you’re a sinner. I don’t know anyone who would say that they are perfect, even by their own standards. Ecclesiastes 7:20 says, “There is not a righteous man on earth who continually does good and who never sins.” And if God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all, then in order to have fellowship with Him, we’d need to be perfectly holy like Him. But we’re not. Romans 3:23 says, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” We are stained by the “darkness” of our sin. And this is a problem, because if darkness can’t dwell with light, and we’re darkness and God is light, we’re cut off from a relationship with Him. We become absolutely incapable of doing the very thing we were created and designed to do: to enjoy a relationship with our Creator.
There is a Penalty for Sin
But it’s not just that we and God can’t be friends. There’s a penalty to be paid for sin. The Bible tells us that that penalty is death, Romans 6:23: “The wages of sin is death.” But the death that Paul talks about there isn’t just physical death. It’s not like we pay for our sins by going out of existence. The death talked about in that verse is a spiritual death. This is hell: eternal conscious torment. Jesus Himself calls it “a furnace of fire,” where there will be “weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 13:50).
The idea of hell grates against the sensibilities of modern people, because nobody thinks they’re really bad enough to deserve something like eternal torment. They might admit that they’re not the greatest of people, but surely they don’t deserve that. But their reasoning is skewed. The punishment for sin isn’t merely measured by the sin itself. In other words, while there are qualitative differences in the experience of divine punishment, murder, lust, and lying all receive the sentence of an eternity in hell. That’s because punishment for sin is measured by the One sinned against. All sin is fundamentally a sin against God, and He is infinitely holy. Therefore, sin against an infinitely holy God demands an infinite punishment. That’s why the punishment is so serious: because God is actually that righteous.
And so the bad news is that we’re sinful, separated from God, and doomed to spend eternity in hell. There’s nothing we can do about it. We can’t simply tell God we’re sorry and we won’t do it again. What would you say about a judge who let a guilty, convicted criminal go free because he was sorry and said he wouldn’t do it again? You’d call him an unjust judge. But God is a perfectly just, perfectly righteous Judge. God’s justice demands that sin be punished, and the only payment is eternal spiritual death.
God Became Man
But the Good News is: God saw the miserable condition of humanity, and took pity on us. He knew that there was no way we could ever earn our way back to Him. We could never pay for our sins. But just when man was absolutely hopeless, when we were all doomed to spend eternity in hell with no way to pay our penalty, God the Father sent His Son to the earth on a mission. He was miraculously born to a virgin. The Bible says that the Holy Spirit miraculously conceived Jesus in Mary’s womb. And so being conceived by the Holy Spirit, Jesus was God. And being born to a human being, He was human. This is the greatest mystery in the universe. As finite human beings, we can’t entirely wrap our minds around this, but it’s true: Jesus was fully God and fully man.
He lived for 33 years on the earth. He grew up just like every other child. He became a carpenter like Joseph, His earthly father. The great difference, though, between Jesus and every other human being, was that He never sinned. Never once did He ever break God’s law. He always loved God with all His heart, soul, mind, and strength in everything He did. He never sought satisfaction outside of the Father Himself. He never disobeyed His parents, He was never selfish, He never spoke sinful words. In a word, He lived the life that you and I should have lived, but failed to live. He lived a life totally worthy of God, a life that was purely “Light,” like we said before, with no darkness at all.
Jesus Paid the Penalty
And because He was perfectly righteous, He was fit to be the substitute for sinners. The Bible records for us that the Jews plotted to kill Jesus because He preached a message that was very different to the religious establishment of His day. It was against the Jewish law to put people to death, so they sought help from the Romans, who were the governing body in Israel. Because the governor, Pontius Pilate, feared that the people would riot if he didn’t give them what they wanted, he agreed to crucify Jesus.
At the same time, Scripture also tells us that God sent His Son to die this way. It was all part of God’s plan. God used the sinful desires of the Jews and the Romans to accomplish something for His own good purpose. On the cross, Jesus suffered for sins. But He didn’t suffer for His own sins. He had no sins. He lived an entirely perfect life. No, on the cross, God “caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him.”
The verse right before that, Isaiah 53:5, says, “He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, and by His scourging we are healed.” What was happening on the cross was: God was carrying out the punishment against my sins—i.e., the pouring out of His wrath—on His innocent Son. Jesus voluntarily laid down His life in order to pay the penalty for sins. On the cross, God treated Jesus if He lived my life. And because I believe in Him, He treats me as if I lived Jesus’ life. See, because God is perfectly righteous, the only way to get to heaven is to be perfectly righteous. But because Jesus was perfectly righteous, and traded places with me on the cross, the perfect righteousness I need to go to heaven is His righteousness applied to my account.
After Jesus died, God miraculously raised Him from the dead three days later in order to show that He was satisfied with His sacrifice. Jesus was dead, but then He came back to life! It was a miracle. The Bible says God did this to “furnish proof to all men” that this message is true (Acts 17:30-31).
Law or Gospel — Which comes first?
Sometimes in life, the question is posed to us, “Which do you want first — the bad news or the good news?”
In response to this question, some choose to hear the good news first. It appears they desire to be thoroughly overwhelmed with the positive before getting their dose of the negative.
Others choose differently. They would rather hear the bad news first, get it out of the way, and put behind them their wonder and worry. Then, after processing the ramifications of the bad news, they hope to soothe the pain an end the conversation on a good note with positive vibes.
Well, Scripture does not offer us options. The Bible makes the choice for us, and it chooses to present the negative before the positive. The Bible declares bad news before declaring good news. It first presents the holy, wise, beneficial and condemning Law, then it publishes the “good tidings of great joy” or the Gospel. (Is. 60:1-2)
Understanding God’s Law
God’s Law was first presented in the opening chapters of Genesis. Some of it was stated; all of it was written upon man’s heart. Adam and Eve were to be entirely holy and obedient. They were to worship God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength, all the time. Whether they ate, or drank, or whatsoever they did, they were do to it all for the glory of God. As image-bearers, they were to keep up God’s image. As men and women created in his likeness, they were to be like God. Vocationally, they were to enjoy and steward the garden and all God’s creatures. Relationally, they were to love one another and populate the planet. Ceremonially, they were to enjoy and glorify the Lord by walking with him in the cool of the day and never eating from the forbidden tree. These were some of their obligations, and as long as they performed perfectly they were guaranteed life in the family and kingdom of God.
However, things soon went from glorious to ghastly. Outside of them, they experienced the testing of God and the temptation of Satan. Within them they chose to question God’s truth, wisdom, and affection. Then, drawn away by their own lusts and enticed, they followed their internal sinful inclinations and externally ate of the forbidden fruit. Therefore, the holy, wise, and beneficial Law became a harsh taskmaster. It showed them the standard, showed them their guilt, and plagued their consciences. It encouraged them to hide, fear, and religiously self-medicate. It declared them wicked, separated from God, at enmity with God, and deserving of death, and it promised this for both them and their children. Yes, the Law of God promised to give them that which they deserved. It promised to pay them based upon performance, and this proved to be very, very bad news.
Understanding God’s Gospel
God, through the Law declared to Adam and Eve who they were, what they had done, and what they had justly earned — condemnation. Then God mercifully, graciously, and lovingly went to work. He performed on their behalf and promised them an eternity of undeserved blessings:
He predetermined to love his enemies.
He sought out his enemies while they hid from him in fear.
He called to the man and woman who vainly had self-medicated themselves.
He promised to rescue them and their children; they would be removed from Satan’s family.
He promised to do so by means of a special Son – one to come who would be fiercely bitten yet ultimately victorious.
He promised to damn the Evil One.
He then covered or clothed Adam and Eve by means of his ceremonial sacrifice.
He perfectly performed for and made promises to them who had performed so wickedly for him.
Friends, are we seeing the difference? The Law presents our duty to perfectly perform, and it only results in bad news. For there is none who keep all the Law, all the time, both internally and externally. However, the Gospel is not like the Law. The Gospel presents not our duty to perform for God, but it presents God’s performance and promise for us. Through the Law we lose our credentials to be a part of God’s family and enjoy his kingdom. Through the Gospel we gain credentials that cannot be earned or lost.
A Great Illustration
Perhaps nowhere is the distinction better seen between Law and Gospel than on Calvary’s cross. On that day, the Law had placed a criminal beside Jesus. There he was guilty, vile, dying, hopeless, and still hurling insults at the Son of God. He was getting that which he earned and deserved. He was being treated justly and fairly. His payment was based upon his performance, and he had hell to pay. The Law had nothing good to say to the thief on the cross. But then God went to work; Jesus granted the Law-breaking criminal complete pardon, intimate communion, and never-ending paradise. These blessings were not based upon any labors of his own, but only based upon the performance and promise of God. These blessings were not earned; they were a gift. A divine swap occurred. Jesus (The Law Keeping Man) received that which he did not deserve so that the thief (The Law Breaking Man) might also receive that which he did not deserve. And this is a fantastic picture of the Gospel. Communion with God that was lost by man seeking to keep the Law, was granted to man as a gift of God.
Responding to the Gospel
Therefore, how should we respond to the Gospel? While believing in divine sovereignty, what is our human responsibility?
Let us make the Gospel our Gospel. Along with the Apostle Paul let us call it “mine.” The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit offer this gift to you. They command you to receive it and enjoy it. If you find yourself with faith, willing to repent and receive, call out to Jesus in prayer right now. Call Jesus, “My Jesus.” Call Jesus’ righteousness, “My Righteousness.” Call Jesus’ Gospel, “My Gospel.” (Rom. 2:16; 2 Tim. 2:8) Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. As a matter of fact, if you draw near to God, it is only because he has already been drawing nearer to you.
Let us not water down the Gospel. This is always our tendency, to add human works to the sufficient work of Jesus Christ. Friends, re-read the letter to the Galatians. If we must perform, it is not Gospel. If we must labor, it is not Gospel. If it involves our works, it is not Gospel. If it is conditioned upon us in anyway, it is not Gospel. If it is a contract, it is not Gospel. If it can be lost, it is not Gospel. The Gospel represents the unilateral work of God on behalf of men. The Law ought never be divorced from the Gospel, but it must never be confused either.
Let us celebrate the Gospel. William Tyndall wrote of the Gospel, “It makes a man’s heart glad, and makes him sing, dance, and leap for joy.” It is the best of news. It means we can sabbath. It means we can boldly approach the throne of grace with confidence. It means we are seen as Christlike image-bearers. Give God the celebratory praise he deserves. He has labored perfectly on your behalf, give him reverent and radical praise and worship.
Let us not be ashamed of the Gospel. (Rom.1:16) Paul wrote, “Woe if I do not preach the Gospel. (1 Cor. 9:16) He wrote, “How beautiful are the feet of those who spread the Good News.” Friends, just as Adam and Eve were to physically reproduce, we are to spiritually reproduce around the world. This is our mission. This is our great mission. This is our Great Commission. Let us be humble, for we cannot make someone believe. Let us be zealous, for God has a tendency to honor those who labor hard. And let us become flexibly relevant in order to better spread the Gospel. (1 Cor. 9:22-23) As Gospel-lovers and Gospel-beneficiants, let us do that which is Lawful and bring in the Gospel-harvest.
Then, let us live Lawfully in accordance with the Gospel. Now that we have been saved from having to perform, let us perform. Yes, with Gospel-eyes, let us look at the Law and enjoy practicing that which is holy, wise, beneficial, and worshipful. Living in the power of the Gospel, let us enjoy becoming more and more like Jesus — the Author and Finisher of our Faith. And when we look at the Law, let us not get frustrated and despondent. Instead, let us glory in the Law, for there is the description of who we are in Christ today, and it also shows us all we will be in glory tomorrow when our old flesh is finally exterminated.
Bottom line, the Law shows us how to perform for God, but the Gospel shows us how God performs for us. This is radical. This is crazy. This is beautiful. This is truth.
Our Response
And now, God promises that…
if you acknowledge that you are a sinner—that you have broken His law,
and if you admit that there is no way that you could earn His favor and His forgiveness,
and if you purpose to turn away from your life of sin and commit your life to Him,
and if you trust in Jesus’ righteousness alone for your acceptance before this holy God,
…then He will have treated Jesus as if He lived your life, and will treat you as if you lived Jesus’ life. You will be saved from the penalty of your sin, and will be able to enjoy fellowship with God forever in heaven, and even fellowship with Him starting now.
In other words, if you believe that you’re a sinner and deserve God’s punishment because of your sin, but you also believe that God sent Jesus to endure that punishment in your place, and that His sacrifice is the only way you can be forgiven, then God promises that He will forgive you and you will be saved. You’ll know the God who created you.
Don’t Waste Your Life
God designed your soul. And He designed you so that, just as a car engine is designed to run on gasoline, you’re designed to run on Him. He is what life is about. All of the disappointments, discouragements, and uncertainties of your life find their resolution in Him. And all of the satisfactions, fun experiences, and joys of life find their consummation in Him. Everything good in our lives is like a trail of breadcrumbs that leads us to the feast of God Himself. And everything bad in our lives is a reminder that life lived apart from knowing God in Christ is not the way it was meant to be.
And I also don’t want to see you waste your life. God created us for the purpose of rightly knowing and worshiping Him. That’s the meaning of life. That’s where true happiness and satisfaction are found. When you don’t live your life for that purpose, you waste it. So many people go through life seeking that happiness, but never find it because they don’t know what life is really about. I don’t want that for you. I don’t want you to suffer God’s wrath eternally for your sin. I want to spend eternity in heaven worshiping God with you, praising Him for how gracious He was to forgive our sins because of Christ’s sacrifice.
Receive Forgiveness
So would you receive Christ? Would you acknowledge your sinfulness before God and admit you can’t do a thing about it? Would you turn from your sin, and seek to live your life in submission to Jesus Christ? Would you trust in Jesus alone for your righteousness before God? Would you join me in worshiping the God we were created to know?
With that brief question Jesus Christ confronted His followers with the most important issue they would ever face. He had spent much time with them and made some bold claims about His identity and authority. Now the time had come for them either to believe or deny His teachings.
Who do you say Jesus is? Your response to Him will determine not only your values and lifestyle, but your eternal destiny as well.
CanIKnowGod.com is a website inspired by LifesGreatestQuestion.com, with new content, images, audio and video that will help you understand more about who God is and how to know Him. The site is mobile responsive and has an infinite scroll which makes for a very user-friendly experience. After you indicate a decision on CanIKnowGod.com, you are directed to a page that details what it means to have a new and transformed life through Jesus Christ. There’s even a Facebook page for daily updates, encouragement and scripture sharing.
Look to Jesus
Have you ever felt a little lost and wished there was a quick-start guide to your relationship with God? This is it!
30 Day Next Steps
John Beckett, a leading Christian businessman, has written a series to read over 30 days for new believers.
New Believers Guide
The New Believer’s Guide is a series of articles designed to show you how to walk in the new life Christ has given you— a life of faith and freedom.
Jesus Booklet
Jesus is the Savior of the world. Discover who Jesus is today in this series.
It is not just a handful of texts that teach the perseverance of the saints: the entire gospel sustains and confirms it. The Father has chosen them before the foundation of the world (Eph. 1:4), ordained them to eternal life (Acts 13:48), to be conformed to the image of his Son (Rom. 8:29). This election stands (Rom. 9:11; Heb. 6:17) and in due time carries with it the calling and justification and glorification (Rom. 8:30). Christ, in whom all the promises of God are Yes and Amen (2 Cor. 1:20), died for those who were given him by the Father (John 17:6, 12) in order that he might give them eternal life and not lose a single one of them (6:40; 17:2); he therefore gives them eternal life and they will never be lost in all eternity; no one will snatch them out of his hand (6:39; 10:28).
The Holy Spirit who regenerates them remains eternally with them (14:16) and seals them for the day of redemption (Eph. 1:13; 4:30). The covenant of grace is firm and confirmed with an oath (Heb. 6:16–18; 13:20), unbreakable like a marriage (Eph. 5:31–32), like a testament (Heb. 9:17), and by virtue of that covenant, God calls his elect. He inscribes the law upon their inmost being, puts his fear in their heart (Heb. 8:10; 10:14ff.), will not let them be tempted beyond their strength (1 Cor. 10:13), confirms and completes the good work he has begun in them (1 Cor. 1:9; Phil. 1:6), and keeps them for the return of Christ to receive the heavenly inheritance (1 Thess. 5:23; 2 Thess. 3:3; 1 Pet. 1:4–5).
In his intercession before the Father, Christ acts in such a way that their faith may not fail (Luke 22:32), that in the world they may be kept from the evil one (John 17:11, 20), that they may be saved for all times (Heb. 7:20), that their sins will be forgiven them (1 John 2:1), and that they may all be where he is to behold his glory (John 17:24). The benefits of Christ, which the Holy Spirit imparts to them, are all irrevocable (Rom. 11:29). Those who are called are also glorified (8:30). Those who are adopted as children are heirs of eternal life (8:17; Gal. 4:7). Those who believe have eternal life already here and now (John 3:16). That life itself, being eternal, cannot be lost. It cannot die since it cannot sin (1 John 3:9). Faith is a firm ground (Heb. 11:1), hope is an anchor (6:19) and does not disappoint us (Rom. 5:5), and love never ends (1 Cor. 13:8).
(Alternative News, Apologetics, Current Events, Commentary, Opinion, Theology, Discernment Blog, Devotionals, Christian Internet Evangelism & Missions Activist).
“A simple layman armed with Scripture is to be believed above a pope or a council without it…” – Martin Luther
“In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity.”
— Augustine
This blog is an aggregator of news and information that we believe will provide articles that will keep people informed about current trends, current events, discussions and movements taking place within our church and culture.
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107,material here is distributed without profit for research and educational purposes.
A headline link on this blog post doesn’t necessarily mean that there is agreement or approval with all the views and opinions expressed within the headline linked article. Caution is also warranted with regards to the advertisements and links that are embedded within the headline linked article.
*Please note that the preceding blog post content is formed by my personal conviction, values, worldview and opinion. It is not necessarily the opinion of any entity by which I am employed, any church at which I am a member, any church which I attend. Any copyrighted material displayed or referenced is done under the doctrine of fair use.
Well, we’re back to our series on 
And why not? Because Christ’s sacrifice is sufficient atonement for all your sins. When the Son of God received in Himself the full exercise of His Father’s wrath against the sins of His people, He did not fail to pay for a single one of your sins. He didn’t dodge the slightest stroke of His Father’s rod. He drank every last drop of that miserable cup, and cried, “It is finished!” There is nothing more that you could do to pay for your sins. And to suppose that you can pay for them—whether it be by reciting Hail Marys, or by wallowing in your grief trying to feel sorry enough so God will take you back—is nothing short of blasphemy. You could fill the oceans with sorrow, and there would never be enough sorrow to atone for even a single sin.
That kind of sorrow devours a person; it swallows him up. Just as properly-administered discipline brings godly sorrow, so poorly-administered discipline brings worldly sorrow. “Godly sorrow,” Paul says, “produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation, but the sorrow of the world produces death” (2 Cor 7:10). God doesn’t mean for believers to be totally consumed by grief over their sin; He wants them to experience the godly sorrow that leads to a repentance without regret. Excessive sorrow can be so unbearable that it even leads to death (e.g., Matt 27:3–5).
The ruthless political assassination of Michael Flynn was just one battle of a major civil war that has erupted for control of the U.S. government. Donald Trump and his new administration are now under relentless assault by “the deep state”, and at this point it is not clear who will emerge as the victor. There are many that use the term “deep state” as a synonym for the intelligence community, but the truth is that it is much broader than that. In reality, the deep state encompasses thousands upon thousands of unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats that never seem to change no matter which party wins an election. Certainly the intelligence community is at the heart of this system, but there are countless others that are embedded within key government agencies and the Pentagon that deeply resent Donald Trump and the kind of change that he is attempting to bring to Washington. 
Did you know that 4,000 world leaders from 130 different countries gathered in Dubai this week for the World Government Summit? It was held from February 12th to February 14th, and it featured more than 100 internationally-known speakers including UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, Christine Lagarde and Elon Musk. If you would like to know more about this shadowy group, you can visit the official website 
When the cost of living rises faster than paychecks do year after year, eventually that becomes a very big problem. For quite some time I have been writing about the shrinking middle class, and one of the biggest culprits is inflation. Every month, tens of millions of American families struggle to pay the bills, and most of them don’t even understand the economic forces that are putting so much pressure on them. The United States never had a persistent, ongoing problem with inflation until the debt-based Federal Reserve system was introduced in 1913. Since that time, we have had non-stop inflation and the U.S. dollar 
No matter what your particular political perspective is, if there is one thing that virtually everyone in the United States can agree upon it is the fact that America’s infrastructure is crumbling. Previous generations of Americans conquered an entire continent and erected the greatest system of infrastructure that the world had ever seen, but now thousands upon thousands of those extremely impressive infrastructure projects are decades old and in desperate need of repair or upgrading. The near catastrophic failure 
The Trump administration is considering mobilizing as many as 100,000 National Guard troops to round up illegal immigrants, according to a draft memo obtained by…
(Reported By Michael Snyder) No matter what your particular political perspective is, if there is one thing that virtually everyone in the United States can…
CIA Director Mike Pompeo on Thursday denied allegations that the agency was hiding intelligence from President Trump. Pompeo called reports that the agency was keeping…
French police have been filmed fleeing from armed mobs as riots continue in Paris for the second week and the unrest has now spread to…
Former CIA operative and 2016 third-party presidential candidate Evan McMullin took to Twitter and CNN on Wednesday to defend rogue intelligence agents who break the…
Fifty years ago, Catholic Charismatics as a group didn’t exist. Today, there are around 120 million of them. Their emergence began when the Holy Spirit…
(By Mark Ellis) Tesla and SpaceX tech mogul Elon Musk has strong opinions about artificial intelligence (AI), suggesting that AI may “summon the demon” that…
Actress Alexa PenaVega says she’s witnessed a miracle brought forth with the power of prayer. “I would like to take a moment to talk about…
(By Bret Farias) The nature of the kingdom of God is that it grows from within, from the inside out and not from the outside…
The alert level of Lanin volcano was raised to yellow by the Chilean National Geology and Mining Service (Sernageomin) after a swarm of 59 quakes…
A Washington state florist who refused to provide services for a same-sex wedding in 2013 broke the state’s antidiscrimination law, the state’s Supreme Court ruled….
Germany’s Foreign Minister, Sigmar Gabriel, on Thursday warned that building more Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria could end the prospect of a “two-state solution”…
Mark Zuckerberg appears to have accidentally revealed plans to use artificial intelligence to spy on Facebook users’ private messages in a bid to combat “terrorism”….
The police body camera industry is the latest to jump on the artificial intelligence bandwagon, bringing new powers and privacy concerns to a controversial technology…
Oklahoma is one step closer to approving a bill that would allow for the Ten Commandments to be displayed on public property alongside other historic…
Evangelicals are raising their brows after President Trump decided to keep Randy Berry as the State Department’s leading LGBT diplomat. President Obama appointed Berry to…
Tech billionaire Elon Musk believes artificial intelligence could be catastrophic for humanity who are set to become a cyborg race which will have to grapple…
Bay Area restaurant owners are joining the national debate about immigration policy. President Donald Trump’s hard-line stance on the issue has sparked the Sanctuary Restaurants…
Venezuela’s media watchdog has ordered CNN’s Spanish-language channel off the air across the country, accusing it of engaging in a propaganda war. Nicolas Maduro said…
Days after one toy maker announced its doll modeled after a transgender teen, another toy maker announced a new doll, enraging one pastor. “The devil…
Severe winter conditions in Mongolia, known as Dzud, are threatening the livelihoods of thousands of Mongolian herders in eastern and northern parts of the country….
A team of researchers from Kyoto University has found that dogs and capuchin monkeys watch how humans interact with one another and react less positively…
Bees pollinate more than $15 billion worth of crops in the US each year, but with the population dwindling, experts are searching for new ways…
A prominent professing atheist organization is seeking to put an end to prayers and Bible readings that are presented by a chaplain during ceremonies at…
(By Shane Idleman) The unavoidable truth is that many are becoming desensitized. When the Holy Spirit no longer fills hearts and minds with a passion…
The health insurance giant Humana will exit the Obamacare exchanges in 2018. Humana believes the Obamacare exchanges have too few healthy patients to balance out…
A Spanish mayor has been urged to hire an exorcist after town councilors said they were being haunted by the ghost of a girl. An…
Two small Earthquakes were recorded near Lake Oroville in the last 24 hrs, which appear to be a result of the fast level lake level…
U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis on Thursday rejected any kind of military collaboration with Russia, following a call by President Vladimir Putin for more intelligence…
Geologists claim to have discovered a new continent to the east of Australia: Zealandia. At 4.9 million square kilometres of land mass, 94 per cent…
When the cost of living rises faster than paychecks do year after year, eventually that becomes a very big problem. For quite some time I…
Samantha Taylor was at Orlando’s Jewish Community Center for a morning meeting when she heard reports of a bomb threat crackle from the director’s walkie-talkie….
![The Peacemaking Pastor: A Biblical Guide to Resolving Church Conflict by [Poirier, Alfred J.]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41-rLwc5aSL._SY346_.jpg)
Human-animal mutant creatures make for great material for science fiction writers, but we aren’t supposed to be creating them in the real world. In so many ways, the technological advancements that we have made as a society are outpacing our ability to handle those advancements, and this field is certainly a glaring example of that reality. Just because we can create human-animal hybrid chimeras does not mean that we should. Genetic modification is a particularly dangerous science, because we are literally tinkering with the future of our planet. And when it comes to humans and animals, those are two things that definitely should not mix. Unfortunately, they are being mixed, and this could have enormous implications as our society plunges into a very uncertain future. 
Their agenda may be on the rocks in the United States 
Truth2Freedom's Blog 