Following Jesus

God Has A Plan For Gaza

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From Faithwire.com

‘God Has a Plan’: Former Terrorist Turned Christian Predicts Thousands in Gaza Will Come to Faith in Jesus

Joel Rosenberg on TBN/YouTube screenshot
Joel Rosenberg on TBN/YouTube screenshot
A one-time terrorist who turned to faith in Jesus in the 1990s is predicting thousands of Gazans will become Christians as the war between Hamas and Israel rages on.

The 73-year-old Taysir “Tass” Abu Saada, a former member of the Fatah terrorist group, recently told Joel Rosenberg, an American-Israeli communications strategist, he believes the war will lead many in Gaza to feel hopeless, abandoned, and lied to by Hamas, the terror group governing Gaza. As a result, he predicted they will turn from Islam and toward Christianity.

Listen to them on the latest episode of “Quick Start” 👇

“Hamas is an ideology that is spread among many people, not only in the Gaza Strip but all over the world,” Saada explained on the “Rosenberg Report” from TBN. “However, God has a plan. And I believe the Arabs’ and the Jews’ plan is also part of that — and that is where my hope is.”

He continued, “That is why I am back in the Holy Land, to move to the Gaza Strip and take part in rebuilding. I believe, with all the destruction, with all that happened, with the hardship the Palestinians have gone through, they cannot sit back, but will ask, ‘Why?’ God is going to do a lot of work [in Gaza], and I want to be a part of that.”

 

Saada, born in Gaza, was overcome with rage toward Jewish Israelis in the aftermath of the Six Day War in 1967. His family moved to Saudi Arabia and Qatar when he was young and, ultimately, ran away to join Fatah and fight to support Yasser Arafat, the former chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

“After the Six Day War, I felt as if I was having a nervous breakdown, and my hatred just grew and grew,” Saada said in his testimony, published on jewishroots.net. “I did not understand how we could lose so many wars against Israel. We were bigger than Israel in numbers and size, we had more equipment — everything we had was more than they had, but still, we lost the wars against them.”

“I was thinking that, once again, our leaders sold us to the Jews,” he added. “That was when I decided to go and fight for our land, which I believed was ours.”

A series of events landed Saada in legal trouble that ultimately sent him to the U.S. After integrating, he married an American woman and met a Christian who led him to faith in Jesus.

The Christian man told Saada, “If you want to experience the peace of mind that I have, you have to love the Jews.” He recalled, “I completely froze and asked him how he could even think of such a — to love the Jews? He knew I hated them. For me, as for most Arabs, a good Jew was a dead Jew.”

Saada and his faith mentor read Scripture together and, the following day, the former terrorist felt an urge to pray.

“The first people that came to my heart to pray for were the Jewish people,” said Saada. “I was praying, ‘Oh, God, bless your people, Israel. God, gather them to the Promised Land.’”

The ex-terrorist told Rosenberg he believes the world is now enduring the end times.

“What we are seeing today happening is really one of the signs of the end of times, because it is not normal — the destruction that is taking place,” he told the host. “The evil hand of Hamas is attacking Israelis in a radical, very evil way. Naturally, Israel had to respond and defend itself.”

But as the destruction and horror continues, he feels a glimmer of eternal hope.

Saada said that, in time, “the harvest is going to be huge,” referring to the number of Gazans he is confident will ultimately turn to the same faith in Jesus he has found.

What Will You Give Jesus This Christmas?

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From Crisis Magazine What Will You Get Jesus for His Birthday?

The thought that Christ wanted me at a time when I was so displeased with myself was sobering, relieving, and enough to inspire a few silent tears

 

 

Two years ago, about two weeks into Advent, I posed a question to my class of high school sophomores: What will you get Jesus for His birthday? We spend so much time thinking about what we will give our loved ones—we are intentional, searching for the thing that will demonstrate how well we know them and their desires. Weeks of shopping aim to deliver a gift that will give them that feeling of Christmas magic. The hunt is epic, the purchase triumphant, and the joy of giving is reward enough. The reason for doing all this is, of course, Jesus’ birth; though I fear we often give Him so little. 

“What do you mean, Ms. Karp? What can I give Jesus?” my students responded. 

We discussed different ways we can make an offering to the Lord: fasting, participating in extra service work, paying attention to areas of prayer we struggle with, being consistent in prayer, getting flowers for the Mary statue, and so on. I explained to them that Jesus’ love language is quality time, so some extra time in prayer is always a good gift. 

The more contemplative students really examined their prayer lives and opted to give Jesus the things they had been holding back in prayer. Others went with more concrete offerings. Despite the reflection being one of my own creation, I had no personal answer. I did not know what I could possibly have to give Jesus that would be good enough.  
The pinnacle of Christmas joy when I was a kid was Christmas 2002, when my sister and I received the ultimate gift. It was the thing we knew our parents would never buy us—something too big, too expensive and extravagant, too perfect…the Barbie Travel Train! I look back on this now with great fondness and treat it as an example of what Christ so often gives to us. He gives us things bigger than we allow ourselves to hope for. He gives us things that satisfy us so intimately. He gives us something perfect. 

That Christmas two years ago, I wanted to give Jesus something that would make him “Travel-Train-happy.” My search for the perfect gift was frequently interrupted. Teaching at a new Catholic high school certainly kept me busy. I was in a new relationship at the time. And I was struggling with my health. 

The fall of 2021 was the height of a long bout of what I referred to at the time as “mystery disease.” After more doctors than I care to count and a strange array of symptoms, I finally got a diagnosis, but only after my condition became severe enough to land me in the hospital. I never expected to have an autoimmune disease at twenty-five, and it certainly rocked my world. All the parts of myself that I loved were slowly slipping through my fingers. My curves melted away to reveal a skeletal frame, my long hair became half as thick, my rambunctious energy was replaced with a quivering frailty, and my spirits were at an all-time low. 

Usually, I would have gone above and beyond in the gift-giving department. I would have harnessed my creativity and strong work ethic to pull off something remarkable. But at that time, I had nothing that could possibly be good enough. I had nothing left to give. 

I remembered the gifts of the Magi, the dedication of the shepherds in their travels, and even the percussion solo of the drummer boy. I had little money left to give after medical bills, I could barely walk across the parking lot without feeling faint, and I was terrible at the drums. The prayers I had to offer were sad, angry, and confused; hardly the Gloria that Christ deserves.

Christmas Eve arrived, and I still had yet to answer for myself the question posed to my students: “What will you get Jesus for His birthday?” As tradition held, I would be singing in the choir with my family at Mass and acting as official page turner for my brother, the pianist. I looked out on the quiet church from the choir loft before Mass began. The strung lights illuminated the altar, and an empty manger sat quietly in front, awaiting the baby Jesus that our priest would process down with once Mass began. I saw that empty manger, and I felt my own emptiness. I wished for something good enough to give. 

In answer to my silent prayer, a wave of peace washed over me, and I knew that the only thing Jesus wanted, the only thing that could make Him “Travel-Train–happy,” was me. Broken spirit, broken body, the humblest of offerings. That’s what He wanted most, if I was only willing to give. 

“But it’s not good enough.” I whispered in the depths of my heart. 

“But it’s all that I want.” I heard in reply. 

The thought that Christ wanted me at a time when I was so displeased with myself was sobering, relieving, and enough to inspire a few silent tears. The ultimate gift is love, a full and free exchange of personhood. Mary lovingly submits her will when the angel Gabriel comes to her. She does not have to say fourteen novenas or fast for a month. She lays her life in God’s hands in loving trust. Christ gives Himself for us in the most intimate and radical way, so of course the thing He wants most is simply us in return. 

I looked again at the manger and accepted that the frail and vulnerable self I had to offer was a perfect fit in that nativity scene. In a moment, I understood that even in my weakness, emotional, spiritual, and physical, I could still be pleasing to the Lord—and not just “pleasing” but, in fact, His most cherished gift. 

Christmas looks very different this year. I am no longer Ms. Karp. I will be in Chicago with my husband, my first Christmas away from home. I am in clinical remission, and I praise God daily for my good health. I feel more like myself, but I still find myself asking, what does Christ desire most this Christmas? 

My inclination to conjure up something grand remains. My energy and ambition have returned. I know in my heart of hearts that His request has not changed, but every year it is hard to believe. Though my imperfections are of a different variety now, they still do not deter Him. I have to remind myself of the many things I have to be thankful for and offer all that I am, all that I have, humbly at His feet. 

Take, O Lord, and receive my entire liberty, my memory, my understanding and my whole will. All that I am and all that I possess You have given me: I surrender it all to You to be disposed of according to Your will. —St. Ignatius of Loyola 

  • Katie Łastowiecka

    Katie Łastowiecka is a classical education advocate, presenter, and instructor specializing in upper level literature and drama. Currently, she is a freelance writer and teaches at Kepler Education. She holds a masters in education and a bachelors in English.

Hundreds in Gaza Report Jesus Appearing to Them in Dreams

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From Charisma Online, James Lasher writes

Hundreds in Gaza Report Jesus Appearing to Them in Dreams

 

According to Christian professor Michael Licona, more than 200 Muslim men have experienced life-altering visions of Jesus in their dreams, leading them to embrace Christianity.

Licona, a New Testament Studies professor at Houston Christian University, shared this extraordinary account through a Facebook post:

Quoting a report from underground Christian ministries in the Middle East, Licona revealed, “Last night, Jesus appeared to more than 200 of them in their dreams! They have come back to us to learn more from God’s Word and are asking how to follow Jesus.”

This miraculous event parallels the biblical accounts of visions and dreams during the end times. Acts 2:17 says: “In the last days it shall be,’ God declares, ‘that I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.’”

These conversions are not isolated incidents, as similar reports surfaced before the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack. Assemblies of God missionary Dick Brogden emphasised the significance of dreams, stating, “Dreams are contributing to revelation … the process of evangelism and conversion.”

As believers, it is crucial to remain vigilant and faithful, sharing the message of salvation through Jesus. Despite the ongoing conflict, the transformative power of these dreams demonstrates that God’s grace, love and mercy can reach even the most challenging circumstances.

Licona, expressing his perspective on the Israel-Hamas conflict, urged prayers for the war’s end and the liberation of Palestinians from the oppressive influence of Hamas. This aligns with the Christian call to seek peace even with those who do not believe, as stated in Romans 12:18: “If it is possible, as much as it depends on you, live peaceably with all men.”

In times of uncertainty, these visions serve as a beacon of hope, reinforcing our faith in the redemptive power of Christ. As we navigate the complexities of the end times, we can draw inspiration from these conversions and continue to share the love and teachings of Jesus.

I abandoned Buddhism to follow Jesus Christ

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The Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, Kanishka Raffel, describes how he abandoned Buddhism to follow Jesus Christ.

My family came to Australia in 1972. My parents were Sri Lankan. My mother’s family were Buddhist and so my two sisters and I were raised as Buddhists in Australia, which was unusual then.

I think Australia’s first Buddhist temple opened in 1975 in Stanmore. It was a Thai Buddhist temple and Thai Buddhism is very similar to Sri Lankan Buddhism, so that was where the Sri Lankan community would go.

In my third year at university, I thought I should devote myself a little to the study of my religion. So, I started privately reading Buddhist literature. I visited the temple. I developed my meditation practice. But in God’s kindness, I’d had Christian friends at high school and at university. And so, at the end of my third year at university, I was going on holiday with a few friends and we picked up some of them at the end of a beach mission.

So we arrived on the last day of the beach mission. And after we’d had lunch, the team said to me, “Oh, we’re going to pray now. Maybe you could go for a walk on the beach.” And I said, “Oh, I’ll just stay here if that’s okay.”

That was the first time I saw Christian people in prayer, and it was quite surprising. I didn’t know what they were going to do when they said that they were going to pray. They just stayed right where they were and started talking to God. So that was eye-opening.

“He allowed me to see the vitality, the beauty, the majesty of Jesus Christ.”

Then I said to one of my friends, “What’s being a Christian all about?” And he said being a Christian meant he’d “lost control of his life to Jesus Christ”. Remember, I had devoted the year to serious study of Buddhism and was trying to develop, especially through meditation, control of my emotions and my ambitions and my desires, in order to be released from them. And here was my friend, who I respected, who said he’d lost control of his life to somebody who lived 2000 years ago!

Well, he asked me, “Would you read something if I gave it to you?” I said, “Okay.” And he gave me Mark’s Gospel and John’s Gospel.

When I was back at home after our holiday, in my bedroom, I thought I ought to keep my word to my friend. So, I got John’s Gospel out and began to read it. And as I did – wonderfully – God, in his kindness, convicted me, first of all, that I wasn’t reading a fairytale but that I was reading history. And he allowed me to see the vitality, the beauty, the majesty of Jesus Christ – a person who had friends and enemies, who had compassion and a mission, who was a man of emotions, but also seemingly always in control.

The Lord drew my attention to a particular phrase that John uses. He relates a story, and then he’ll say, “At this, the people were divided.” God really drew my attention to this phrase and turned it around on me, so that I began to ask myself, “Well, you’re not on the side of Jesus. Why not?”

As I read through the gospel once again, my attention became focused on John 6:44. Jesus says, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them to me, and I will raise them up on the last day.” Although this verse raises questions about God’s sovereign election, what provoked me was the idea of “the last day”. Buddhism taught me to expect that it would take hundreds of lifetimes, through many deaths and rebirths, before I could hope to achieve enlightenment. The Buddha himself took over 500 rebirths. If that was true, then the idea of a “last day” was problematic.

But then, I began to wonder what Jesus could have meant when he said, “No one can come to me unless the Father … draws them to me.” How would the Father draw someone to Jesus? How could this happen? Then I noticed the very next verse. John  6:45 says, “It is written in the Prophets: ‘They will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard the Father and learned from him comes to me.” It occurred to me that as I had been reading the gospel, the Father had been teaching me about Jesus! If I had indeed “heard the Father” and “earned from him” then the necessary thing was to “come to Jesus”. I was being “drawn to Jesus”, and in God’s kindness, I came.

Eventually, I couldn’t think of any good reason for not being on Jesus’ side. In a way that I couldn’t have explained, I just felt somehow that Jesus was for me. And I thought, “Well, I need to be for him too.” And so, in God’s kindness, he saved me.

Proud Brahmin Hindu worshipped a thousand gods

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From God Reports:

A pious and proud Brahmin Hindu, Uma Moorthy worshiped idols at the temple every day, and the fact that she went to a Catholic school did nothing to change her convictions. But one day in the 12th grade, she heard a teaching from Isaiah 44, when God points out that part of the log gets used to make an idol and the other part gets used to cook food.

“If you have a brain, think and see,” the sister said to the group at the Scripture Union Bible camp to which Uma went for fun with friends.

The message was confrontational and rattled her.

“That night was a sleepless night because as a teenager I felt so bad in front of all my friends,” Uma says on a StrongTower27 video. She hadn’t been singled out from the crowd by the sister. But the Spirit went to work.

“Just out of curiosity and also to go and fight with that sister, I opened the Bible to the Book of Isaiah and started reading. I was reading just to fight with the sister the next day, but as I was reading, I don’t know what happened. The Holy Spirit just transformed me. For the first time in my life, I got to know that the true living God hates idol worship.”

Uma Moorthy was raised in a staunch Hindu family in Chennai, India. She was proud of her heritage and diligent with her duties. She never missed prayers at the temple. She always had the vermilion “third eye” pasted on her forehead. She washed in the Ganges River and planned to go to the Himalayas.

But the religious strivings collapsed upon reading the word of God.

“I cannot compress this omnipresent god to (the confines of) a statue,” Uma says. “This God of the Bible wants to have a relationship with me. When I was a Hindu, I used to worship a thousand gods. But none of those gods wanted to have a relationship with me. But the God of the Bible wanted to have a personal relationship with me. I can call this God Abba Father, my dad.”

As she read the scriptures, Uma also learned that Jesus’ sacrifice was enough for humanity to be forgiven, thereby making all religious striving pointless.

“I used to do a lot of ritualistic sacrifices,” she says. “This God sacrificed himself on the cross of Calvary while I was yet a sinner.”

Intending to stand up for her faith against the sister, she wound up bending her knee to the Savior.

“That day I accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Savior when I was in 12th grade,” she says.

Inevitably, she was persecuted by her family. They threw out her Bibles and wouldn’t let her pray. She had to lock herself in the bathroom at home to pray.

The Lord healed Uma of stammering. She is now an eloquent speaker, and she became a college lecturer.

Her parents eventually relented and allowed her to marry a Christian man, as long as he was original Hindu and still vegan, she says. They now live in California as missionaries with their two children.

When Uma left India, she left one little Bible on a shelf upstairs. She hoped her parents, who always threw out the bigger Bibles, might stumble across it one day in a special moment and open it.

“One day I was feeling down in the spirit and called my dad and shared that I was worried,” she relates.

“He quoted scripture verses from the Bible, and he said, ‘Jesus is with you. Though we are not there, he is there. He is the living God. He did so many miracles in the Bible.’”

Uma was floored.

“Dad, how do you know this?” she asked. “You were against the Bible. How do you know scripture verses?”

He confided that he had found the Bible one day when he was lonely. He had started reading and couldn’t stop.

Furthermore, it was a miracle that he was able to read the tiny print because his failing eyesight, he said, wouldn’t permit him to read the newspaper. He was 77 at the time.

Uma bought and sent him a big letter Bible.

“Every day he’s sending me verses,” Uma says.

When Mom found out that Dad had converted, she was incensed.

However, the pandemic struck fear into the heart of many Indians, including her mom.

One day, Uma shared Psalm 91 to calm her mother’s fears.

The inevitable happened. The Word and the Spirit touched her heart. Today, Mom is a Christian too, and she’s spreading the truth among all the Hindu relatives, Uma says.

“No one can convert anyone,” Uma says. “Only the word of God can convert a man. God has used the pandemic to bring a revival to India. There’s a lot of people who used to be against Christianity, and God is using the pandemic to bring people to Christ.”

If you want to know more about a personal relationship with God, go here

Creation Or Evolution

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I have been thinking this week about two stories of how we arrived in the world. The first theory is evolution, which says that we are just a product of random chemical reactions over a very long period of time. The second story is that of creation as described in the very first chapter of Genesis.

This is not the place to say whether one of these stories is factually correct, or whether we can blend the two together in some way. I do want to consider some of the ramifications of these stories and the results of believing one or the other.

As we read the familiar words of Genesis 1, we discover that God is greater than the world, the sun and moon, the stars and bigger than everything all put together. Science tells us that the universe is unimaginably huge and more complex than we can imagine, but God is bigger than all of this.

At each stage of the process, God describes the creation as good, until the last day when He makes the first people and He describes it as “very good.” It is as if everything is made for the purpose of supporting human beings.

The Bible teaches that we are created for a purpose and that we are the pinnacle of God’s creative activity.

On the other hand, evolution tells us that everything is random, from the birth of our planet (an insignificant lump of rock on the edge of an average galaxy), to the production of individual human beings (you are just a random arrangement of DNA, and it determines your life).

So we get to a place of despair because there is no reason for us to exist. There is no future because in the end the whole universe will just run out of energy.

From that depressing explanation of life, we reap a harvest of depression, purposelessness, sexual anarchy and lawlessness.

God made you for a purpose. He has a plan for your life and a destiny for you in eternity.

Praise God!

Get You A Bible

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‘Get You a Bible’: Couple Married 84 Years Delivers Powerful ‘God’ Response While Sharing Secrets to Love, Long-Lasting Nuptials

Photo by Jeremy Wong Weddings on Unsplash
A couple with the longest-running marriage in the state of Arkansas has some simple advice for a successful marriage: seek the Lord.

Cleovis Whiteside, 102, and his wife Arwilda Whiteside, 98, got married in 1939, and with 84 years of matrimonial ups and downs under their belt, the couple recently delivered pointed advice to others.

“Pray,” Arwilda told USA Today, speaking to anyone considering walking down the aisle anytime soon. “Know how to get on your knees, and get you a Bible, because that Bible is going to have to take you through all kinds of storms.”

The couple openly credited God for their long-lasting nuptials, with Arwilda saying the Lord placed them together to “love one another.”

“We can hardly believe this is happening to us because we feel like we were the least, but God said, ‘No. You’ll glorify my name and love one another,’” she said, according to KATV-TV.

The Whitesides were honoured by the Arkansas Family Council, a Christian organisation that celebrates traditional families and marriage. The organisation honours the longest-married couples in the state, with the Whitesides reportedly currently holding the record in Arkansas.

The couple told USA Today about how their love story began, with the two meeting when Cleovis was 13 and Arwilda was 9; they married just a few years later.

The loving husband and wife had 12 children of their own and also housed others in need of families, with the duo being described as “pillars in the community.” Generosity, it seems, is ingrained in the fabric of the family, with Arwilda praising her husband’s kindness.

“He is always trying to help people,” she said.

Read more about the family’s story here.

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‘Get You a Bible’: Couple Married 84 Years Delivers Powerful ‘God’ Response While Sharing Secrets to Love, Long-Lasting Nuptials

Photo by Jeremy Wong Weddings on Unsplash
A couple with the longest-running marriage in the state of Arkansas has some simple advice for a successful marriage: seek the Lord.

Cleovis Whiteside, 102, and his wife Arwilda Whiteside, 98, got married in 1939, and with 84 years of matrimonial ups and downs under their belt, the couple recently delivered pointed advice to others.

“Pray,” Arwilda told USA Today, speaking to anyone considering walking down the aisle anytime soon. “Know how to get on your knees, and get you a Bible, because that Bible is going to have to take you through all kinds of storms.”

The couple openly credited God for their long-lasting nuptials, with Arwilda saying the Lord placed them together to “love one another.”

“We can hardly believe this is happening to us because we feel like we were the least, but God said, ‘No. You’ll glorify my name and love one another,’” she said, according to KATV-TV.

The Whitesides were honoured by the Arkansas Family Council, a Christian organisation that celebrates traditional families and marriage. The organisation honours the longest-married couples in the state, with the Whitesides reportedly currently holding the record in Arkansas.

The couple told USA Today about how their love story began, with the two meeting when Cleovis was 13 and Arwilda was 9; they married just a few years later.

The loving husband and wife had 12 children of their own and also housed others in need of families, with the duo being described as “pillars in the community.” Generosity, it seems, is ingrained in the fabric of the family, with Arwilda praising her husband’s kindness.

“He is always trying to help people,” she said.

Read more about the family’s story here.

Swooping Birds And Harassing Spirits

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Each year, spring time is quite hazardous in many parts of Australia. Some birds become very protective of their territories during the nesting season.

Normally placid and tame birds start to swoop pedestrians and cyclists whom they consider to be a threat. The worst among these are the Australian magpie and the plover. While they are mostly harmless, seeking to intimidate rather than injure, some individuals do make contact with people’s heads and faces.

Over recent weeks, I have been praying for the covering of the blood of Jesus when I enter a known hot spot. If a bird swoops, I command it to leave in the name of Jesus. Amazingly most of them do.

Recently I was swooped by a pair of crows, which I have never experienced before. Indignantly I told them to go and they immediately left me alone.

These are not all natural events. Some of them, if not all, are actually evil spirits that are sent specifically to harass, intimidate and distract us, even to reduce us to fear.

We might even consider them to be a sign of other events that satan is using to pull us down. If we are being attacked in a physical way, it is probably a sign that we are under spiritual attack in other areas. Sure enough there are many people in our church who are being intimidated and harassed by the enemy in various parts of their lives.

W don’t have to allow this to continue. We have been given authority over the devil and all evil spirits. Whatever realm in your live is under attack right now, surrender it to the Lord. Ask Him to cover it with the blood of Jesus and command those intimidating spirits to go in Jesus’ name.

5 Lies Our Culture Is Telling Us: Rosaria Butterfield

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5 Lies Our Culture Is Telling Us

September 11, 2023by: Rosaria Butterfield

 

Lie #1: Homosexuality is normal.

Included in this lie is the belief that homosexual orientation is true and immutable—fixed and never-changing. Homosexual orientation, a nineteenth-century Freudian invention, is an unbiblical category of personhood and an antagonist to the creation ordinance because it redefines sinful desire as something that defines who you are rather than how you feel. Lie #1 claims that the word of God doesn’t apply to homosexual orientation because homosexual orientation represents a person’s core truth. Some professing Christians believe that homosexual orientation is fixed, immutable (unchangeable), and part of God’s creational and eternal plan. Some people believe that homosexuality is embedded in a person’s identity.

We must ponder why God’s attribute of immutability has been embraced by the LGBTQ+ movement as an attribute of homosexual orientation. God is immutable—God never changes. One theologian defines God’s immutability as “that perfection in God whereby He is exalted above all.” But if you exchange the Creator for the creature, you impose God’s attributes on man. When we hear “homosexual orientation is fixed and immutable—it never changes,” this is only imaginable in a world that has already exchanged the worship of the Creator for the worship of the creature—of God for an idol. “Gay Christians” (an oxymoron if there ever was one) teach that you can’t repent of who you are, how you feel, or even what you desire. They believe that homosexual orientation is morally neutral, separate from one’s sin nature, cannot be repented of, and rarely changes over a person’s lifetime. This is a lie.

Five Lies of Our Anti-Christian Age

Five Lies of Our Anti-Christian Age

Rosaria Butterfield

Bestselling author Rosaria Butterfield addresses 5 lies modern culture has embraced about sexuality and spirituality, using the word of God to help illuminate each topic. 

Lie #2: Being a spiritual person is kinder than being a biblical Christian.

Unbiblical spirituality welcomes people exactly as they are or, at least, makes this promise. This is a religion that elevates being a “good” person over giving your life to Christ. To the unbiblically spiritual person, everything is one. Distinctions and hierarchies are called abusive, and true spirituality is supposedly found inside ourselves. This sort of spirituality, unbiblical spirituality, believes that everything in the universe supposedly shares in this divine power and unifying balance. Rules, divisions, and distinctions are violent, or so says the unbiblically spiritual person.

In contrast, for the biblical Christian, there are two kinds of reality: God and creation. God is eternal, triune, personal, holy, loving, and separate from his creation. According to biblical spirituality, there are two kinds of people: those who love God and those who defy God. Even though we create our own problems by refusing to live by his laws, God provides the only solution through the Lord Jesus Christ. Pastor and theologian Peter Jones, founder of TruthXchange, offers the most helpful paradigm for comparing unbiblical spirituality to biblical spirituality. While unbiblical spirituality self-promotes as kind and inclusive, it is in reality narcissistic and damning.

Lie #3: Feminism is good for the world and the church.

Feminism began in 1792 with Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. As its title suggests, it sought to “vindicate,” which means “to assert one’s right to possession.” And what rights needed possessing? Women needed to possess the rights to citizenship. Wollstonecraft sought rights for education and voting for women. Feminism has gone through four “waves” or phases since 1792, with the most recent wave so tied to the LGBTQ+ movement that now, in 2023, we cannot even define what a woman is or defend her right to exist—least of all to be noted as a citizen. Feminism in the world is passè—it has been displaced by transgenderism. Feminism in the evangelical church, however, is alive and well. When the church sets itself up to follow the world and not to lead it, it necessarily lingers long with discarded trends and affections.

We don’t need to be all-knowing, because God is. Christ alone can solve the problems we face today.

Adherents of feminism believe the Bible has no bearing on gender roles, responsibilities, or requirements because the idea of men and women being made by God’s design for God’s purposes on earth is old-fashioned, silly, dangerous, abusive, and culturally driven. Some professing Christian feminists believe that Adam’s headship is a consequence of the fall—and thus a sin. They claim that there is no biblical warrant for a married woman’s submission to her husband and elders or for elders and pastors to be qualified men. Bible verses that call for a wife to obey her husband in the Lord, such as Titus 2:4–5, 1 Peter 3:1, 5–6, and Colossians 3:18, are “contextualized” and then dismissed. Such feminists believe that feminism offers a corrective to Christianity because, without it, misogyny (the hatred of women) will run rampant with biblical support. Without feminism to the rescue, they argue, the church will unwittingly promote sexual abuse by giving perpetrators extreme and unchecked power and spiritual abuse by prohibiting a woman from using her gifts of teaching from the pulpit and assuming the roles of pastor and elder. This is a lie.

Lie #4: Transgenderism is normal.

People who believe in what is called “gender fluidity” also believe that sexual difference has no biological or ontological (original and eternal) integrity. Transgenderism is supposedly as normal for some people as freckles and a blue sky on a North Carolina summer day. Transgenderism maintains that there are more than two biological sexes and even more genders. The year 2022 boasts seventy-two genders and seventy-eight gender pronouns. In time there may be ten thousand. What does this all mean? How did we get to a place in the United States where someone can walk into Planned Parenthood and, forty-five minutes later, leave with a prescription for powerful hormones that will leave her sterilized for life if taken over time? We got here by believing the lie that transgenderism is normal—at least for some people.

Lie #5: Modesty is an outdated burden that serves male dominance and holds women back.

People who believe this lie dismiss the virtue of modesty for Christian women. Having denied that men and women are different, with different responsibilities, callings, and boundaries, those who reject modesty believe that calling women to a different standard of dress, speech, and conduct is oppressive. They deny that women owe their brothers the kindness of modesty. At the bottom of this is a feminist belief that it is not fair that women are different from men and that asking women to dress and behave with biblical modesty serves male dominance and holds women back. In the contemporary church climate, modesty has been replaced by exhibitionism.

Cling to Christ with Courage

When it seems like we are living at ground zero of the Tower of Babel, when the whole world seems to have gone mad, we need to cling to Christ with courage, read and memorize our Bible with fervency, be active members of a faithful Bible-believing church with passion, sing psalms with joy, and pray for our enemies with humility. We need to be humble people, remembering that we were not created to be all-knowing. We don’t need to be all-knowing, because God is. Christ alone can solve the problems we face today.

God calls us to live our Christian lives with courage, tell the truth, and fear God and not man. Can we with Jesus sing Psalm 118:6: “The Lord is on my side; I will not fear. What can man do to me?” I know. You can think of a long list of things the world can do to you. Your son, who calls himself Julie, won’t talk to you. You will be fired from your job if you don’t put a rainbow sticker on your door. Your neighbors will hate you when they learn that you believe in the God of the Bible. All of this may be true, and still this verse calls us to put things in perspective, specifically the Lord’s perspective as seen in Hebrews 11, where we see firsthand that God uses our faith whether we live or die.

This is the faith story we like:

And what more shall I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets—who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. (Heb. 11:32–34)

This is the faith story that terrifies:

Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated—of whom the world was not worthy. (Heb. 11:36–38)

God records that both life and death, if done in faith, advance the gospel and give glory to God. Christians ought never despise suffering for Christ. And as we are seeing today and have seen throughout church history, all true Christians will suffer for the truth of Christ.

This article is adapted from Five Lies of Our Anti-Christian Age by Rosaria Butterfield.

Rosaria Butterfield

Rosaria Butterfield (PhD, Ohio State University) is an author, pastor’s wife, homeschool mom, and former professor of English and women’s studies at Syracuse University. She is the author of The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert; Openness Unhindered; and The Gospel Comes with a House Key.