Following Jesus

One Solitary Life

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nativity
He was a man who was born of Jewish parents, the child of a peasant woman.
He never wrote a book. He never held an office.
He never did one of the great things that usually accompany greatness.
He had no credentials but himself.
While still a young man, the tide of popular opinion turned against him.
He was nailed to a cross between two thieves.
When he was dead, he was taken down and laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend.
Many centuries have come and gone and he is the centerpiece of the human race.
I am far within the mark when I say that no armies or navies have affected mankind
as powerfully as that One Solitary Life

(Author Unknown)

Creationists Rebutting Flat Earthers

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Creationists are often accused of being in the same category as flat earthers. Here is an interesting article from Creation.com aiming to falsify one implication of the flat earth theory.

 

A direct test of the flat earth model: flight times

More data supporting a spherical earth

by 

Published: 6 December 2016 (GMT+10)

Flat Earth Society, with annotations by RC

flat-earth

Figure 1: “Flat earth” map obtained from the Flat Earth Society website. The locations of the cities used in this study are marked (blue dots), as are the straight-line distances from Johannesburg to each city (red lines). I also added a black flag at the approximate position of the north pole. Originally, the city locations were marked in pen on a printed copy of this map, using various geographic hints from the map itself, but the data are recreated here for the sake of the reader.

After receiving such a surprising number of negative comments on our flat-earth rebuttal, I decided to perform a numerical analysis of the flat-earth model compared to the traditional spherical-earth model.

Science is about testing hypotheses, so let us set up an experiment to test these alternative views. For this, I enlisted the help of two of my children, ages 13 and 11. It made for a fun homeschoolproject.

The basic problem is the distance between longitude lines in the flat-earth model. In a spherical earth, the longitude lines start from one pole and converge on the other pole, and the distances get wider the closer they are to the equator. But in the northern-hemisphere–biased flat-earth model, the longitude lines start from the north pole and radiate outwards to the supposed ‘encircling southern polar ring’ like spokes on a wheel.

This means that the distances become greater the further south they go. This suggests an easy test of the two models: compare distances to travel times for distant places in the southern hemisphere.

The normalized data revealed a tight correlation between the spherical earth model and flight time.

The goal of this simple study was to compare reported airline flight time data with two distance measures, the ‘great circle’ distance of spherical-earth theory and the ‘straight-line’ distance of flat-earth theory.

The driving hypothesis is that the flat-earth map is distorted and so the flight times will not match the calculated distances. This, of course, assumes there is no great conspiracy among the millions of people working for the airline industry or the tens of millions of people who fly on their airplanes annually, which seems reasonable. I am also assuming airplanes on a flat earth would use the rule we all learned in geometry that ‘the shortest distance between any two points on a [standard, Euclidean] plane is a straight line’.

This assumption was in favor of the flat earth model for, as we will see, any curved line would only exacerbate the noticeable distortion with increasing flight time and distance from the source.

 

Read the rest here

Tom Brown: Should Christians Celebrate Christmas?

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December marks the annual festival of religious people saying that Christians should not celebrate Christmas. Here’s a great article by Tom Brown that debunks that nonsense.

 

Should Christians Celebrate Christmas?
Today’s Question: Being that the season of Christmas is upon us, we as Christians have come to celebrate the reason for the season. My brother and I have been debating this issue lately. Even though he is Christian also, he is hard to convince that we should celebrate the birth of Christ, not the commercialism that the world imposes on us. He still maintains that through his research and studying on the issue of Christmas, that the pagans around Jesus’ time celebrated the giving to a “Sun God” of some kind on the same day that we celebrate Christmas. I don’t know where he got his sources on that, but of course I’ve vehemently opposed the notion, and had to remind him that we don’t know the actual time of year of Jesus’ birth, but we as Christians have come to honor it on December 25.

Is there any specific references that I can direct him to within the Bible that will alleviate his skepticism?

Jeff Eisert

Bible Answer: I cannot promise that anything I say will change your brother’s view. I really do not think this is an important matter. If he does not want to celebrate Christmas, then he should not celebrate it. As for my church, family and me we love celebrating it and will continue to do so. It has been a time where people who would not normally go to church will attend. Anything to get people to go to church is a good thing.

Concerning Christmas not being in the Bible, that is true as far as the name “Christmas” which means “Christ-Mass”. The name is not in the Scriptures but the event that the name represents is definitely in the Scriptures. The story of the birth of Christ and the circumstances surrounding it is very much emphasized in the Bible. Mathew and Luke both go into detail describing Christ birth, including the shepherds and eventually the wise men giving gifts to Christ. That is all in the Bible. Without His birth, there is no salvation.

Someone might argue that since we are not commanded to celebrate Christmas we should ignore it. Well, we are not commanded to celebrate the resurrection as a holiday either, so does your brother want to give up that holiday simply because the name “Easter” is of pagan origin? He needs to forget the name or the source of the name. Many names and words have pagan origins (see my article on Nike Man as an example.), but we do not give up using those words or names. We would not have a language without the use of pagan words and names.

Someone may argue against Christmas that it is a non-biblical holiday and since Christmas in not celebrated in the Bible, we should not celebrate it, either. First of all, the birth of Christ is biblical, so you cannot make a case by calling Christmas non-biblical, but I suppose you can say that Christmas is extra-biblical. That is, there is nothing in the Bible against it, and there are things in the holiday that is based on the Bible, but there is no command to celebrate the birth of Christ, so it is an extra-biblical holiday.

Here is how I approach this argument: Jesus Himself celebrated an extra-biblical holiday that corresponds to Christmas. People are usually surprised to find this out. Yes, Jesus celebrated Hanukkah, and Hanukkah is not in the Old Testament.

Then came the Feast of Dedication at Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was in the temple area walking in Solomon’s Colonnade. (John 10:22-23)

There is no Old Testament Feast of Dedication. There are several feasts mentioned in the Bible, but not Dedication. What feast is Dedication? That is Hanukkah. Hanukkah is a celebration of the victory of the Maccabees and the rededication of the Jerusalem Temple. It also commemorates the miracle of oil that burned for 8 days. This event took place after the last Old Testament prophet had written the scriptures. The scriptures were closed before this event, and thus, this Feast is extra-biblical. And Jesus was in the temple area where the feast was celebrated. He participated in Hanukkah.

Today, Christmas is celebrated next to Hanukkah. So the question you can propose to your brother who refuses to celebrate Christmas is this: If Jesus celebrated a holiday that was not in the Bible, why can’t you enjoy Christmas as well and give gifts just as the Jews today give many gifts during Hanukkah?

Your brother mentioned that giving gifts was based on giving to the “Sun-God”. Whether or not that is true can be debated, but I have always felt that giving gifts was based on the wise men giving gifts to Christ. Even if it were true that Christmas came out of the pagan practices of giving to the “Sun-God”, the truth is the “Son-of-God” is worthy of greater gifts, and giving gifts is simply a loving way of showing your appreciation to others you love. Sure, many people get in the commercial spirit than the true spirit, but that is no reason to get rid of Christmas or to avoid the holiday.

Your brother did not mention it, but others have complained that Christmas is really pagan because the Christmas tree is pagan. I’ve heard people say that Jeremiah 10:3-5 is a reference to the Christmas tree:

For the customs of the peoples are worthless; they cut a tree out of the forest, and a craftsman shapes it with his chisel. They adorn it with silver and gold; they fasten it with hammer and nails so it will not totter. Like a scarecrow in a melon patch, their idols cannot speak; they must be carried because they cannot walk. Do not fear them; they can do no harm nor can they do any good.”

These people argue that the tree is adorned with silver and gold, a supposed reference to tinsel around a tree. But look carefully at the passage and it will be clear that Jeremiah referred to an idol made out of the tree. A craftsman shaped the tree out of the forest with a chisel. Who has ever seen a craftsman use a chisel to shape a tree into a Christmas tree? Of course not. This is a reference to craftsmen making idols that resembled man and animals, like a scarecrow. Yet Jeremiah says, “They cannot speak and walk.” So obviously this is not a Christmas tree, for Christmas trees do not have mouths and legs.

Oswald Chambers: “It Is Finished”

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“It is Finished!”

November 21, 2016

I have finished the work which You have given Me to do. —John 17:4

The death of Jesus Christ is the fulfillment in history of the very mind and intent of God. There is no place for seeing Jesus Christ as a martyr. His death was not something that happened to Him— something that might have been prevented. His death was the very reason He came.

Never build your case for forgiveness on the idea that God is our Father and He will forgive us because He loves us. That contradicts the revealed truth of God in Jesus Christ. It makes the Cross unnecessary, and the redemption “much ado about nothing.” God forgives sin only because of the death of Christ. God could forgive people in no other way than by the death of His Son, and Jesus is exalted as Savior because of His death. “We see Jesus…for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor…” (Hebrews 2:9). The greatest note of triumph ever sounded in the ears of a startled universe was that sounded on the Cross of Christ— “It is finished!” (John 19:30). That is the final word in the redemption of humankind.

Anything that lessens or completely obliterates the holiness of God, through a false view of His love, contradicts the truth of God as revealed by Jesus Christ. Never allow yourself to believe that Jesus Christ stands with us, and against God, out of pity and compassion, or that He became a curse for us out of sympathy for us. Jesus Christ became a curse for us by divine decree. Our part in realizing the tremendous meaning of His curse is the conviction of sin. Conviction is given to us as a gift of shame and repentance; it is the great mercy of God. Jesus Christ hates the sin in people, and Calvary is the measure of His hatred.

Read the full article here

A Different Social Narrative

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hqdefault

Reflecting on rum and beer ads, Stephen McAlpine writes:

Our role is to build such thick communities in the power of God’s Spirit that people steeped in the secular social imaginary look on wistfully and say “Those Christians  know how to have a good time.”

Our role is to build such attractive narratives of meaning that Christians not only know that God’s community is where they should be, but they want to be there too.

And in the midst of what appears to be rapid and dislocating decline in the Western narrative (and for those who pooh-pooh the idea of narratives of decline, my response is “show me the money!”), we have the option of creating counter narratives that locate people in places they’d rather be. Places of safety and refuge.

Places of forgiveness and possibility.  Places where the God who upholds the cause of the weak is honoured, in the face of the cultural gods who oppress the weak and silence the marginalised.

Read the rest here

Apostolic- Belonging and Sending

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apostolic

One of the results of being in a truly apostolic church is that the New Testament experience of community is being restored. One of the main anointings of an apostle is that of fathering; an establishment of authority based in relationships rather than legalism, position or denominationalism.

As denominations slowly (or in some cases, rapidly) crumble, the growth of true apostolic networks is becoming more real and more important. In the “good old days” when someone moved away, whether to go into some kind of ministry or just for employment or family reasons, they could be released knowing that the denominational covering would look after them.

Because of the deep relationships being developed within congregations that have discovered apostolic grace, it is vital that people enter into the community of faith correctly and that they leave correctly. If this is ignored there will be a tearing of relationships, a breaking of hearts, and a rupture of community.

There are four words that help describe the dynamic of apostolic community, none of them popular in our self-centred individualistic culture.

Surrender

In order to enter into the Kingdom of God, and hence into community, we have to surrender everything to Christ. In some ways this is a life-long process; as we grow closer to the Lord we discover more and more parts of our lives that have to be handed over or surrendered to Christ. The Bible calls this process sanctification.

Sins have to be repented of and stopped. Relationships have to be healed. And the thousand and one idols we carry in our hearts that we secretly depend on to give us strength have to be handed over to Him.

People who have an attitude that they are OK with God on their terms rather than His terms will never fit into the community of faith. That’s not because you have to be perfect to be acceptable. No, not at all! It’s quite the opposite really; the people who fit most into the rag-tag army that is the church are those who recognise that they will never in this life be perfect or good enough, except by the grace of God.

Surrender to God is a process of constantly letting go until the only thing we cling to is Christ.

 

Submit

In Ephesians 5:21 Paul exhorts us to “submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.”

The soul infected with the virus of rebellion or self-empowerment will shrink from these words. But those whose hearts are alive with the concept of community will embrace it.

The apostolic revelation is that everyone needs to be a spiritual son (or daughter) to a spiritual father (not a gender-specific term).  I’ve written at length about this, as have many others, so I won’t labour the point here.

Community happens when we submit our own personal preferences and desires to the direction of the community. We willingly allow others to speak into our hearts for encouragement and correction with the desire that together we grow closer to Christ.

To submit means that we allow our hearts to be knitted with others. It means we give up our own rights to self-determination, but we gain the love, support and grace of a true body of Christ.

Again this is a gradual process as we take baby steps of trust.

 

Belong

Somewhere along the path of surrender and submission we discover that we belong. This is my community, these are my people.

Belonging is a two way street. In a sense the congregation “owns” me, but equally I “own” the congregation.

Our hearts have become united in the love of Christ.

Our focus no longer is on what I get out of church, but on the mission and ministry of us, the people of God.

One of the ways you know that you belong is that other places, conferences and events no longer hold the same appeal as they might have once. Margaret and I rarely go to other churches when we are away because we know that no matter how good the church, no matter how great their community is, it’s not where we belong. That’s not a judgement that other places are inferior; we just do not belong there so our experience is not what we expect.

One of the dangers of “belonging” is that we can become a closed community that implicitly excludes the outsider. The true community of faith is constantly reaching out and inviting others to join in and journey to belonging.

 

Sent

The word apostle comes from the Greek word apostello which means to send. Apostles are people who have been sent on a mission and have the grace to send others on their behalf. This flows from their fathering anointing.

When a person has been in an apostolic faith community, the time may come when it is right for them to leave. It is important that the community then exercises its apostolic grace to send them.

We have seen that people often decide to go somewhere without reference to what the community, pastors or group leaders think. They determine “This is what I am doing,” and off they go.

Two things happen when this occurs.

  1. The person or family leaving struggle either in their work or ministry, or else in finding  a church where they belong. The problem is that they have left without being sent and have gone without a blessing that might have helped them to flourish. Rather than being under authority, they leave on their own authority.
  2. The faith community is hurt, and continues to experience hurt,  because a part of the fabric of the community has been ripped away. It goes through a grief process because it has not had the chance to let go properly. Because an apostolic community is a “sending” community its identity is violated when members leave without being sent.

What is the difference between leaving and being sent? The heart of community is submission one to another, that is of open hearts. If someone is a part of a community, the issues need to be discussed openly in the community, before the decision is made. Pastors and cell leaders should be aware of and invited into the decision. This could be as simple as asking a cell group to pray with a family as they consider a job offer that would take them away; but it must have the option of the group saying “We think this is a bad direction.”

Being sent means that we give the community a chance to pray and to bless us as we go. That simple step means that we go with blessing and favour and have God’s grace with us rather than having to go in our own strength.

 

Surrender, submit, belong, sent. These four words are the cornerstones on which apostolic community is built.

 

 

Muslim Woman Rises from the Dead After 2 Days in Morgue

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From Christian Today

Muslim Woman Rises from the Dead After 2 Days in Morgue, Tells Family Jesus Brought Her Back to Life

Pixabay

 

This Muslim woman was pronounced dead and lying cold in a morgue in Moscow, Russia for two days already.

Suddenly, she returned to life and stepped out of the hospital gurney!

Based on her testimony, the woman, named Sabina, says while she was lying at the morgue surrounded by corpses, she had a vision of a tree growing at the top of the well, according to Assist News.

From its trunk, a branch moved toward her. The branch then changed into flesh as Sabina heard the words, “If you grab onto my hand, I will bring you back to life.”

Sabina did as instructed. She then woke up and heard the voices of doctors searching for a missing cadaver—hers.

“I’m alive. Don’t worry,” she shouted at the frightened doctors.

The medical staff offered her water, food and clothes, and arranged for her transport to a university research hospital in Moscow, where she had traveled from Central Asia to visit her imprisoned son.

Mystified hospital personnel could not explain how Sabina returned to life after spending two days in a coma and then two more days in the morgue.

When she returned to her home somewhere in Central Asia, Sabina had another big surprise for her family. “There’s somewhere I have to go,” she told her daughters.

She headed for a Pentecostal church and promptly professed her faith in Jesus Christ, leaving behind her Muslim faith.

The hand that lifted her from the gurney at the morgue, returning her to life, unmistakeably belongs to Jesus. That’s why she readily embraced Him upon returning home in gratitude for His saving grace.

After she told her six daughters and a son about how she came back to life, they all converted to Christianity.

Last year, Sabina, who is now 63 years old, saw her 92-year-old mother and a niece also embracing Jesus.

More recently, Sabina’s oldest daughter—who just this summer was highly critical of Christianity—also turned to Jesus.

A Torah Scholar Helps Explain the Age Of Foolishness

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An interesting insight into the foolish age in which we life from crisismagazone.com

A Torah Scholar Helps Explain the Age Of Foolishness

JONATHAN B. COE

Maybe it takes a Torah scholar and religious Jew to help us understand the roots of the inverted values that animate Western civilization. For over ten years, author and radio talk show host Dennis Prager taught the first five books of the Bible verse-by-verse at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles. According to Prager there is no greater concept in the Torah than that of “distinction,” or, put another way, the clear separation God makes between certain things: God and man, animal and human, life and death, sacred and profane, good and evil, male and female. He even goes so far as to call these distinctions “God’s Signature” on the created order. Like six pillars holding up a great house, when the structural integrity of those columns becomes significantly compromised, the whole house comes crashing down.

Of the six distinctions listed, the one between God and man is antecedent to all the others: once it is compromised, the others will fall too like so many dominoes. When Adam and Eve succumbed to the serpent’s temptation, they switched places with God and made themselves the arbiters of truth and morality. The seeds of their godship that were sown in Eden are coming to full flower in our age. In his magisterial work, The Study of History, the eminent historian Arnold Toynbee divides world history into twenty-one ages and makes the case that our present age is the first one whose prevailing ethos does not appeal to a divine text or a holy tradition for guidance in the major areas of life. To say that we are living in a post-Christian age is as obvious as saying that the sun rises in the east.

What’s sometimes overlooked is that this godship is not exclusively driven by agnostics and atheists, but receives major contributions by those calling themselves Christians. I can’t help but think of the recent effort by Catholics for Choice to overturn the Hyde Amendment thereby allowing taxpayer-funded abortions. Their position on this issue rejects two thousand years of Church teaching.

Then there are large sectors of the mainline Protestant denominations who have become so accommodating to the Zeitgeist that they are actually just the cultural ethos dressed up in religious vestments (e.g., the United Church of Christ). Chesterton was right that only dead fish swim with the current. Without guilt I admit that I am encouraged each time I read about their precipitous decline in membership and finances and look forward to their eventual placement on the slag pile of history. As the late, great Richard John Neuhaus used to say, “The mainline has become the sideline.”

When man becomes God, the other distinctions that Prager identified become blurred and introduce toxins into the cultural bloodstream. If people are not created in the image of God, then it follows that they are no different than animals. Prager cites the example of animal rights groups like the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), who call the slaughter of chickens a “Holocaust on a Plate,” thereby equating such an act with the slaughter of Jews during the Holocaust.

For over thirty years Prager has asked high school seniors the question, “If a stranger and your pet were both drowning and you could only save one, who would it be?” In this informal poll, about two-thirds of the students chose their pet. An Associated Press pollrevealed that half of American pet owners consider their pet just as much a member of the family as anyone else. Prager is right to say that we live in the Age of Foolishness with our folly being rooted in a lack of reverence for God: the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.

No reverence for God = no wisdom. No wonder our secular universities have become institutions where great knowledge (e.g., the hard sciences) is juxtaposed with great foolishness. In recent years, at Swarthmore College, a course was offered called “Interrogating Gender: Centuries of Dramatic Cross-Dressing.” Examples like this are plentiful. And practicing Catholics will be embarrassed to learn that the University of Notre Dame has twice hosted the Queer Film Festival.

Read the rest of the article here

PROCLAIM HIS NAME Into the Atmosphere! by Jacqueline McKool

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PROCLAIM HIS NAME Into the Atmosphere! by Jacqueline McKool

Recently, as I thought about the Islamic influence that has quickly and resolutely infiltrated our nation, I asked the Lord how to specifically pray about it.

The Lord spoke and said that five times a day the Islamic prayers and declarations released into the atmosphere are in agreement with the enemy, giving him legal ground to advance his evil plan on this nation. The consistent, unified Islamic prayers and the declarations of special interest groups, whose agenda is contrary to God’s Word, currently outweigh the voices of the people of the Kingdom of God.

The Lord also said that if His Remnant would declare aloud that He is the one true God even just once a day, then an acknowledgment of His sovereignty would be released into the airways EVERY MINUTE OF THE DAY! 

An example of a declaration:

Yahweh God, the great I Am, He alone is God, there is none beside Him. Jesus, His only begotten Son is our Savior, the Lord of lords, and King of kings, the One who was, who is and is to come. All glory, praise, honor, majesty, splendor and dominion is His forever and ever.

It is time that we, the Remnant, the called out ones of the Body of Jesus Christ, release our voice, the breath of our Creator, by the power of the Holy Spirit, and declare who the one true God is over this nation. Our collective voice has more power than any other and will supersede the voices aligned with the enemy.

Father God has spoken;  we can take back the airways over this nation that belong to us by the victory of the cross of Christ Jesus. Airways that are permeated with ungodly chants, statements, decrees, invocations and threats. We must mobilize and use our most powerful weapon, the Word of God, and by our spoken word, nullify the decrees of darkness and take back our nation in the name of our redeemer Jesus, the King and Lord of America!

I call you, brothers and sisters, to take the Lord God at His word; declare Him as the one true God and fill the atmosphere with His praise at least once a day. Ask the Holy Spirit to remind you or set a reminder on your smart phone. 

Together, the gates of hell will not prevail against us! (Matthew 16:18)

Sing out the honour of His name; make His praise glorious! Say to God, how awesome are Your works! Through the greatness of Your power Your enemies will submit themselves to You! (Psalm 66:2-3)