Saturday, April 30, 2011

The Roman Road - the only sure disaster preparedness

Disaster preparedness is a good thing. National and most recently international events have reinforced this idea. Change, like disaster, can come upon us at any time. The question is, are we prepared? The ultimate preparation is being ready to meet our Lord. God has constructed for us the Roman Road, that we may come into his presence:
  • "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23)
  • "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 6:23)
  • "God demonstrates his love for us in this, that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8)
  • "If you confess with your mouth, 'Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved" (Romans 10:9)
Are you ready?

(inspired by Interact Ministries prayer letter, April 2011)

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Even the Koran’s teaching about Jesus can be a bridge to truth

The envelope had a Canadian stamp and was addressed to “DH” in Indonesia. *Dimyati picked the letter out of a garbage can hoping it contained money. To his disappointment it contained only a tract and a letter. As he was about to toss the letter back into the trash, a voice inside told him, “Put the letter in your pocket. It might be for you.”

Dimyati was an everyday laborer assisting in a house renovation project. Later, while at home, he read and reread the letter and tract, which spoke of learning who Jesus was according to the Koran and the Bible. Would he like to know more? Soon tears flowed down his cheeks, but he hid from his wife lest she see his tears and think him weak.

The return letter that came to our post office box was simple: “My friend from Canada, the letter from your far country was sent to this village to this city to this address—to a place of great need. The words in that tract haunt me. My friend, my religion is Islam. But I am drawn to your [correspondence] course. The tract said it was sent to ‘you.’ Yes, that is me. It also said that it was sent to ‘you, a sinful person.’ That also applies to me. My brother, please help me. Guide me to the path of light away from the darkness. —Dimyati”

A letter along with a study guide was soon in the mail to Dimyati. Reading verses from the Koran, as well as verses from the Bible, he learned Jesus was more than a prophet. He was the only sinless prophet. He was the only virgin-born prophet. He was the only prophet who raised the dead. He was the only prophet already in heaven. He also learned that Jesus was the eternal Word who manifested God’s love by dying for sinners. Dimyati had led a young Christian girl to Islam, then married her. Now they had two small children. As he continued his studies, the sense of his sinfulness increased and his faith in Jesus grew. In one of his letters he wrote, “My faith has moved ahead of me. I already love Jesus Christ. Amen.” As Dimyati asked difficult questions, the Holy Spirit brought conviction. Yes, the obstacles were huge; he would be called an infidel. He would be mocked. Even though he was about to make a costly decision, he chose the path of light.

Soon this happy note landed in our post office box: “Brother, a big thank you to you and to the Lord Jesus who chose me and my family to become His children. Once I was in darkness but now I am in the light. Now I have a heavenly Father, Jesus Christ is my Savior and Redeemer and the Holy Spirit is my Comforter and Guide. Brother, I gladly tell you that I have sealed my commitment to Jesus Christ by confessing the Apostle’s Creed and by baptism here in a local church. My wife was beside me as she repented of turning her back on Christ to follow Islam. Our two young children were also baptized at the same time, and we renewed our wedding vows as Christians. Indeed our hearts and souls were renewed as God’s Spirit touched us, and Christ Jesus our Lord illuminated our hearts. Now I shed tears of gladness and blessedness. Do pray that our faith will continue to grow till someday we will stand in His presence. My wife and I continue to open our home to anyone who is seeking after truth. —Dimyati”

Yes, even the Koran’s teaching about Jesus can be a bridge to truth!

(from The Koran-A Bridge to Truth? by Walter Mohr, reproduced from WEC.go magazine, Spring 2011)

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Friday, April 29, 2011

Does compromise lead to repentance and faith?

So many “evangelicals” are trying to force the evolutionary ages of geology into the Genesis account of creation. Instead of defending our biblical Christian faith, they are trying to accommodate it to the unbelieving worldview of evolutionary naturalism.

Some will even refute Darwinism and do an excellent job of it. But then they still try to accommodate the evolutionary ages of the naturalists, which in turn requires rejecting the worldwide cataclysm of the Flood. They seem indifferent to the fact that this means accepting a billion years of a suffering, dying biosphere before Adam’s fall brought sin and death into the world.

It is even sadder when they feel that this compromising approach will convince the scientific establishment to accept Christ and the gospel.

The point is that no dilution of the creation/Flood record of God’s inspired Word, no matter how well-motivated and persuasively written, is going to budge the evolutionary establishment in science or education one iota. They hold their position for religious reasons, not scientific, and scientific arguments for “intelligent design” are rejected just as vigorously as arguments for recent creation or a global flood.

The American Scientific Affiliation has been advocating a compromise between evolution and creation for years. Their widely distributed book, Teaching Science in a Climate of Controversy, was a collection of well-planned essays designed to encourage such a middle-of-the-road system for classroom teaching. The result was a series of bitter attacks by the evolutionists. The Science Teacher magazine, for example, published a series of essays by leading scientists repudiating it, entitled “Scientists Decry a Slick New Packaging of Creationism.”1 One of the authors, Dr. Lynn Margulis, called it “treacherous,” a polemic designed “to coax us to believe in the ASA’s particular creation myth.”

The excellent book Of Pandas and People was written to present biology in terms of “intelligent design,” without any reference to God, the Bible, or creation, hoping that it could be adopted as a high school biology textbook. Again, nothing doing! It was merely a sneaky way of getting creationism into the schools, said its opponents, and they won.

Another very popular advocate of compromise says that teaching recent creation and worldwide Flood views will keep people from coming to Christ. “Because of the implausibility of such a position,” says Dr. Hugh Ross, “many reject the Bible out of hand without seriously investigating its message or even reading for themselves the relevant passages.”2

Dr. Ross does not document this statement, and he is wrong. Many scientists do accept the biblical record at face value, and there are now thousands of scientists who have become young-earth creationists, not to mention multitudes of non-scientists.

What the compromise approach does, however, is not to bring the lost to Christ, but causes many who are already Christians to doubt their Faith as they go down the slippery path of compromise.

(excerpted from Henry M. Morris, Defending the Faith Acts & Facts April 2011, Institute for Creation Research)

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References (selected)

1. Bennetta, W. J., ed. Scientists Decry a Slick New Packaging of Creationism. The Science Teacher. May 1987, 36-43.

2. Ross, H. 1991. The Fingerprint of God. Orange, CA: Promise Publishing Co., 144.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Operation World notes Recent Changes of Eternal Significance


Were the believing church to grasp the Bible in one hand and Operation World in the other, and truly devote itself to prayer and action, we might see great advances for the kingdom of God in our generation.
 
Since the last edition of Operation World which came out in 2001, there have been many changes in the world. Everyone knows about the attacks of 9/11, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the global financial crisis, the huge Chinese economic juggernaut. But here are other changes of even greater eternal significance. Jason Mandryk, author of the new 2011 edition of Operation World, reflects on trends shown in the OW team's research. 
  • The speed with which several historically Christian countries have become post-Christian and secular in society and culture, including the UK, Scandinavia, and Australia. Sadly, I suspect we have an impending similar crisis in the USA, South Korea and South Africa.
  • The rise of a strident, militant atheism. That this change has coincided with increasing secularization and a declining number of evangelicals is no accident.
  • The depth of syncretism existing throughout Christianity. This syncretism not only sees Christians visiting the witch doctor, but also has become deeply compromised with the pagan culture of the West. Christianity is as much about success, consumerism and buffet-style personal spirituality as it is about becoming disciples of Jesus.
  • The rate at which missionary presence has shifted from being predominantly Western to being overwhelmingly Majority World. This move has come not just from the explosive growth of missionary sending from Latin America, Asia and Africa but also from the emergence of a massive tent-making force from developing world countries such as the Philippines.
  • An increase in religious fundamentalism and persecution has occurred not just under Muslim and Communist/atheist regimes, but among Hindus, Buddhists and, dare I say, even Christians. Dangerous forms of radical fundamentalism perpetrate oppression and violence.
  • The continued growth of the church in China. While this rise is slowing slightly, Christianity’s influence and acceptability is increasing significantly. The Chinese church now faces the challenge of retaining its youth—a generation that has grown up in the faith is being tempted away by materialism.
  • The unstoppable tide of humanity called immigration. This movement of people has already transformed the face of Europe, North America and Australia in many ways, both good and bad. What we have witnessed thus far is a mere shadow of what is to come.
In the midst of all this, it’s apparent that those things which matter most are, by and large, unchanged:
  • Although the percentage of humanity that has heard the Good News has increased, every day that passes sees the total number of unevangelized increase—now 1.75 billion and growing.
  • Although there are thriving churches in tribes that had no Christians nine years ago, there are still thousands of people groups where the gospel has made little or no impact.
  • The number who have come to faith in Jesus is greater than ever before, and as a result the challenge to teach them to obey all that He has commanded is likewise greater than ever before.
  • The Great Commission is vaster than even the statistics can communicate. The nature of evangelization is so much more than shoving a tract into someone’s hand, showing them the Jesus film or even leading them to Christ. It involves making disciples, transforming world-views and changing communities.
To purchase a copy of the the new Operation World, email Dave at djllsmith72@gmail.com or Karen at karen@wec-canada.org. Also available at Amazon.com.

(from Operation World Beyond 9/11, reproduced from WEC.go magazine, Spring 2011)

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Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Do You Believe in Satan?

Nicolas Corte, abridged by Marko Malyj

How in this nuclear age should we think of Satan? Has the tremendous progress made in recent years by scientific discoveries affected the views of people? Yes! Without a doubt belief in devils has for some time been undergoing a more or less complete eclipse in the minds of people. Marrou writes,

"In our day there are very few who BELIEVE really and effectively in the Devil; for whom this article of faith is an active element of their religious life. Many acknowledge that they do not accept the existence of 'Satan'. Others only agree to it on condition that they shall be allowed to interpret this belief symbolically, to identify the Devil with evil (with the evil powers, with sin, with the perverse twist in our fallen nature), to which they give a sort of independent existence, detached from any real personality. Most people just find the theme embarrassing."

Belief in the Devil has, therefore, suffered a "regression". For many people Satan is simply a personification of Evil, a figure of speech, a prosopopoeia. When we think of combating "evil", we imagine fighting certain abstractions like ignorance, fear, greed, corruption, and the human institutions in which they breed. But these abstractions, though they seem very real to us, are only static adversaries. We no longer focus on those other adversaries - the intelligent, cunning, spiteful enemies eager who are out to destroy us. To overcome them we must call on God for help.

Under the pretext of "realism" that enables us to refuse acceptance of what we think of as old-fashioned prejudices, we are forsaking authentic realism. We are oblivious to the divinely planned gigantic struggle between the righteous and the wicked, and take no active part in it. And so we deny ourselves a clear understanding of how sin came into the world and why it is that sin is all around us and is so pervasive within us - the concept of "original" sin. We no longer connect sin with Satan's temptation of Eve. The whole spiritual combat loses its clear outline in the gray shadows of a theoretical argument between our abstract moral principles and our unthinking instincts.

What a distance lies between modern thought and that of the Apostle Paul in the Bible! "It is not against flesh and blood that we enter the lists; we have to do with princedoms and powers, with those who have mastery of the world in these dark days, with malign influences in an order higher than ours" (Ephesians 6:12).

What way does true realism lie? Marrou writes, "When the Fathers of the Church affirmed the existence of angels and devils and put forth opinions on their nature, they were not merely setting down an act of faith but contributing to a science based on reason and experience."

Within the last century, Satanism has assumed a new shape. Documented accounts of demonic possession, even public awareness of overt worship of Satan are giving way to a new Satanism, which is man's emulation of Satan's revolt. Modern Satanism lies in the neglect of God's rights, the denial of his name, the theoretical or practical negation of his existence and authority, in man's determination to arrange his life apart from God and without God.

Satan is quite prepared for men and women to deny him, provided that they also deny God! He who, as the expression goes, "believes in neither God nor the Devil", is just the person for him. This rebellion on the part of mankind is a second version of the angels' revolt. Satan has found imitators. They are numerous at the present time. And, like him, these "limbs of Satan" take up strategic positions, as we shall see.

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The Fall of the Angels

If you ask a theologian the question which forms the subject of this book: who is Satan? he will doubtless answer: Satan is the Commander-in-chief of the fallen angels.

Why should we believe in the existence of Satan and his army of demons? There are those with doubts on the whole matter, and others who never raise the question of Satan's existence lest they be obliged to come to a decision about it. Yet we must face problems boldly and come to a reasonable and sound conclusion about them.

"God is the Creator of all things visible and invisible, spiritual and corporeal, and by his almighty power from nothing, at the beginning of time, he made both creatures, the spiritual and the corporeal, that is, the angels and the world. Then he made the human creature, composed of a spirit and a body combined."

This definition is a dogmatic one which should be acceptable to all true Christian and Messianic churches. Definitions given by the Church are always necessarily based upon divine revelation. Thus we expect to find definitive information concerning angels and devils in the Bible, which is inspired by God. And this is what we find. The Holy Scriptures are full of trustworthy evidence on this matter.

God first created the spiritual (the angels) and the corporeal (the world), then he made man of spirit and body combined. We deduce from the Biblical record that the angels, whom God created before man, were capable of love or hatred. They may well have been witnesses to the creation of the physical. They would have seen that in the Son of God all things took their being (Colossians 1:15-16).

The angels then played the significant roles in the cosmic struggle between Good & Evil. Since we are also participants in this struggle, we ought to reflect on how it began.

The triumph of God's creation was the creation of free things. Initially there existed a moral order which was a source of dignity, beauty, and eternal beatitude to those embracing it, before the fall of any of the creatures. Angels were also created with free will. They were not forced to love God under compulsion. However, they were capable of falling. God set them a trial of love, similar to his later testing of Adam and Eve, before he granted celestial beatitude to the good angels. Having passed the test, the good angels were raised to a supernatural state of beatific vision of God, and entered into eternal happiness grounded in freedom and choice.

But then a fearsome battle ensued between the good angels, led by the archangel Michael, and those angels who opposed God. This is alluded to in Revelation 12:7-12. Satan and his followers rebelled, incited by pride in their own self-perfection. Their ultimate ambition was to become gods themselves.

This sin of the angels was unforgivable. God could not arrange for its atonement. Their sin was judged to be all the more culpable because their nature was sublime compared to ours. Angelic intelligence is evidently intuitive, operating immediately by inspirations, with no need to reconsider things. That means an angel is incapable of repentance. To put it another way, the angelic spirit can see in a flash both for and against before making a choice. Consequently the angelic will is not capable metaphysically to retract that choice.

Among mankind, the unbeliever after death is also in such a state of final impenitence. He is a human soul fixed in its state, incapable of retracting hatred, and so he becomes subject to the laws applying to pure spirits.

The Tempter and the Accuser

God created interdependence between the different parts of creation. As vegetables, animals and minerals are involved with our physical bodies, so angels and demons are involved with our souls. But the difference is categorical. The involvement of angels and devils at the very beginning of human affairs directly impacted the physical unity of the cosmos and the moral unity of the spirit universe.

Though God banished Satan from heaven, he did not banish him from creation. An old Christian proverb says "the devil carries stone". This means that the Devil himself can serve God's purposes! According to Augustine, God uses him to take good from evil.

After the fall of Satan, God allowed him to play his chosen role of Tempter, permitting him to seduce the greatest number of angels into rebellion. The new humanity, Adam and Eve, also required a trial befitting its strength, and so God used Satan once again. The garden of Eden was necessarily to become a battlefield in the continuing struggle between Good and Evil. However, Satan was unaware of the magnificence of God's divine plan, which involved his ultimate defeat at the hands of the Messiah, and the redemption of believing humanity by the blood of this Messiah.

How did the Devil participate in the test that God set before Adam and Eve? Satan's approach is summarized in his words to Eve: "You will be like God, knowing good and evil!" To possess all the light, you must also possess all the darkness! To "know life", you must have abused it! To attain truth, you must have experienced error!

How shall Eve reply? The most alluring temptation could not in and of itself deprive her of her freedom. Jesus was to show later how we must answer Satan. But "the woman saw that the fruit was good to eat and pleasant to look at, and took from the tree and ate it, and gave some to her husband, and he ate with her" (Genesis 3:1-6).

The temptation of Eve by Satan in the earthly paradise is one of the most significant factors in the whole of our spiritual history. The whole Biblical religion proclaims that Satan was anything but a fable, a myth or a tissue of allegories. Jesus was to say to his enemies, those Jews who did not believe in him: "You belong to your father, the devil. He from the first, was a murderer. When he utters falsehood, he is only uttering what is natural to him; he is all false, and it was he who gave falsehood its birth!" (John 8:44).

A murderer from the first and the Father of lies! Such is the answer given by the facts to the question asked in this book: Who is Satan? It is he, literally, who put us to death, who introduced death into the history of mankind. Satan is the great protagonist in the human adventure. If Adam and Eve had their responsibility in this drama, Satan's was far heavier. He is the accomplice if not the direct inspirer of all human crimes, and the instigator of all that is evil in our cultures and civilization.

Yet he was also an opportunity for moral victories on the part of believers. This is evident in the Book of Job. There we see clearly portrayed the problem of trial, the problem of suffering, the origin of evil, the greatness of God, and the sovereign justice that is in him. We see a foreshadowing of the Gospel - the drama of the Suffering of the Righteous one and the agony of the Cross.

In the book of Job, Satan appears as one of the authors of suffering. But notice that God allows it. Satan inflicts it with God's permission. He inflicts it to drive man to despair and to blasphemy, while God permits it to test the degree of our faith, our confidence, our fidelity and our love.

Remember that the Devil is no more than a creature of God, and by no means an independent and rival principle to God. As Gregory the Great reminds us, even though Satan lost the beatitude of heaven, he nevertheless kept his nature which was like that of the angels.

Satan means "adversary", or "accuser". He invited himself to bring afflictions on Job by first accusing him before God. Satan cynically describes Job's dealings with God by saying that Job doesn't really love God, he merely fears him, so that he can be protected by him. Thus Job has nothing to lose! So Satan challenges not only Job, but the entire human relationship of faith with God.

The book of Job raises the problem of the suffering of the just. We can solve this problem in our New Testament age by the contemplation of the Messiah's suffering on the cross, and by our association with his redemption, which is the pledge of future glory.

But Job belongs to the Old Testament. He cannot know this answer which is the only complete one. He has, it seems, the greater merit for not abandoning his pure monotheism, his deep filial piety towards the Creator and the power of his hope in him.

The Book of Job is but a stage in the revelation of the ways of God. The magnificence of the world in which God has established us should suffice to reveal to us his sovereign wisdom. It leads us to a perfect submission and to a total surrender into his hands. Job's victory is an example of the triumphs man can win over Satan's malice.

Satan is far from always emerging victorious. He was beaten back the first time by Michael and his angels. He was defeated irreversibly by Jesus Christ. And he will be finally conquered, according to the book of Revelation, at the end of time.

Whether his role is Tempter or Accuser, in Satan we have a being who does not love us, who is jealous of us, who would like to drag us to destruction with him, who does not hesitate to lie or to inflict the most dreadful calamities upon us in order to achieve his purposes. In short, Satan is someone who revels in doing harm to us. He is a murderer from the first. He is the Father of lies whom Jesus Christ denounced.

That such a figure is constantly at work among men is what helps to explain why the history of mankind should be so full of troubles, disturbance, unrest and bloodshed, and so inhuman most of the time. No wild animal has shown itself to be more ferocious than man! This is all largely due to Satan's activity among us.

Satan and the Messiah

So far we have recounted several events in the gigantic struggle between Good and Evil: the battle between Lucifer (one of Satan's names) and Michael, the battle between the good angels and the devils, the casting off of the rebels, and the temptation of Eve and Adam in the garden of Eden.

Satan played a decisive role both in the fall of Adam and Eve and in the life and death of Jesus Christ. He who had been a murderer from the first reached the very peak of his triumphs with deicide. But that became the signal for his defeat and the decline of his dominion.

John, of all the evangelists, clearly identifies sin with the work of the Devil. "If the Son of God was revealed to us, it was so that he might undo what the devil has done" (1 John 3:8). The whole Christian problem consists in escaping the grasp of the Evil One, and to belong only to God. God's solution to this problem was to send his Son Jesus Christ to our world to directly confront Satan.

At the outset of his ministry, Jesus encountered Satan in a great struggle we call the Temptation of Jesus. This temptation was followed by persecutions at the hands of Christ's enemies, who did not hesitate to term him "a votary of Beelzebub" (another of Satan's names). In itself that accusation is indicative of the diabolical psychology, for it is worthy of the "Father of lies". By recounting these events to his apostles afterwards, Jesus surely wished to stress the fact that the whole of his life was to be a struggle with, and victory over, Satan.

Three times in the gospel of John, Jesus calls Satan "the prince of this world". But it is a "principality" that Jesus does not accept. He rejects it and he has come to fight and destroy it.

It is not from the lips of Jesus that we shall find words expressing doubt concerning Satan's power, as we hear so often nowadays, or concerning his very existence. How can people possibly doubt that Satan exists and still exists, or that his power in the world is enormous, or that everything that the genius of man has invented for the purpose of killing, from Cain's cudgel to the hydrogen bomb, is a product of hell? He is also behind all the vice of this world, which kills even more people that war!

The devil has, up to a certain point, rights over men. Willful sin has made them slaves of Satan. But over Jesus he has no rights! Having no rights over Christ, Satan could put him to death only by iniquitous judges and by relentless executioners, who served as his instruments.

It is ironic to notice that, by so relentlessly targeting Christ and bringing him to his death, Satan involuntarily contributes the most magnificent homage to God that any creature can possibly pay to the Creator! Whether the Devil likes it or not, his crime is a source of ineffable glory for God.

Christ's confrontation with the Evil one resulted in the redemption of believing humanity. Let us look more closely into the concept of redemption. Literally speaking, this word means "buying back". Adam and Eve had sold themselves and all their posterity to the Devil. Satan had so become "the Prince of this world". God had allowed Satan to take possession of his prey, but within certain narrow limits.

Lagrange writes,

"How can we deny the influence of evil spirits, especially in leading man to idolatry? What could make the Carthaginians burn their own children to death? How could the Greeks of the great period of Pericles worship such depraved gods?"

Jesus was the only one who could say, "He has no hold over me!" God the Father charged him to dispossess humanity from Satan. Christ gave his blood as the price for our souls, as a ransom to compensate Satan for his rights. He paid for our redemption.

Remember also Satan's influence in the cases of possession which are so frequent in the Gospels. Almost all the peoples of the world have believed in possession. The pagans believed that there were men and women amongst them in whose bodies the "gods" lived in, or at least, spoke through them and prophesied. We are right to consider all these soothsayers and pythonesses as possessed of the devil. That is just how the Fathers of the Church considered them.

Jesus also dealt with many cases of possession. Not for an instant did he doubt the reality of possession! Jesus made a clear distinction between possession and disease. Catherinet states, "The attitude of Jesus in the presence of the possessed does not allow us to think that in acting and speaking as he did he was merely accommodating himself to the ignorance and prejudices of his contemporaries."

It is very possible that these cases of possession happened with unusual frequency around the person of Jesus. The personal combination of divine and human nature in Jesus had as its counterpart, with divine permission, increased manifestations of diabolical power. The incarnation of the Word was thus answered by Satan with diabolical incarnations that were grotesque caricatures.

The Church, after Jesus, also did not doubt in the reality of possession. In the early Church there existed a special order of clergy known as exorcists. Their ministry over the centuries is well documented. Today we can say that if its true that there are no longer any cases of possession, it is thanks to the goodness of God and the blood of Jesus Christ.

Up until the coming of Jesus, Satan had dominated the world almost as supreme master. But an overthrow has taken place, which Jesus described when he told his disciples: "I have given you power over all the power of the enemy!" There can now be no doubt over these three points:

1) It is Jesus himself who claims unlimited power over the devils and their chief, Satan.

2) His Messianic work consists in the fall of Satan, who falls as lightning from heaven at the voice of his disciples, just as he had fallen from heaven at the voice of Michael and his angels.

3) He bequeaths to his disciples, that is, his Church, a power over devils which forms part of her mission on earth.

The Kingdom of Satan

The Apostle Paul's powerful genius, inspired by God, strongly contrasts the realm of sin with the realm of grace. When Augustine sees the whole history of the world concentrated in the struggle between two Cities, what he is doing is following Paul's interpretation. But for Paul, sin is not - as it is for many of us - an abstraction. The realm of sin is the very real realm of Satan. In our daily struggle against sin we are struggling against Satan. Throughout the centuries the essential war has always been between the kingdom of Satan and the kingdom of God. It is the only war whose stake is eternal.

How can we conceive of the kingdom of Satan? In space the realm of Satan is our world; in time, it is the time in which we live. When Jesus called Satan "the Prince of this world", that is just what he meant. The maxims of the world, the customs of the world, the way of living of the world - all present to the eyes of Christ something Satanic. Paul captures this understanding by calling Satan not only the "Prince of this world", but also "the god of this world"!

Many may be astonished that we have not begun by saying "the kingdom of Satan is hell". Yes, the kingdom of Satan is indeed hell, but Satan received God's permission to recruit his subjects from our world, which he claims as an extension of his kingdom.

The Apostle John writes to "the angel of Smyrna", that is, the bishop of that city, that he has to fight "the synagogue of Satan". He sees in Philadelphia another "synagogue of Satan". These synagogues, in both cases, were formed of those non-Messianic Jews who did not follow Christ, but instead were opposed to the gospel.

How could such beauty, such purity, such gentleness in Christ's Gospel have failed to stir men deeply and win their hearts? An important factor is that Satan is always there. He has powerful strings to pull in the depths of the human soul, to prevent people from following the only doctrine of salvation which would ever shine for them. He wants to win the struggle between life and death.

Make no mistake, in the realm of death it is Satan who is master! He drives people to their death. Sin and death are his domain. One leads to the other. Nor is it only the death of the body that interests him. It is much more. He aspires to the death of our souls, which is the second death. He triumphs when he leads men's spirits to the denial of the spirit. So he gathers all the doubters, the unbelievers, the mistrustful, those engulfed in matter, and he draws them away from the influences and from the light of the Gospel. He rules over his captives absolutely. He becomes their "god" in their lives, and he is a god of darkness and lies.

Our textbooks of moral theology give abstract rules, logical definitions, reasoned-out theories, and aphorisms of commonplace wisdom. Their premise is that of Socrates, that it is enough to know to be able to do. All evil comes from ignorance. "He who opens a school, closes a prison."

But these text-books are very far removed from the reality of our actual conflict. Much more profound is Paul's perception! He knows that we are "sold into the slavery of sin". He explains:

"My own actions bewilder me; what I do is not what I wish to do, but something which I hate.... My action does not come from me, but from the sinful principle that dwells in me.... So I am handed over as a captive to that disposition towards sin which my lower self contains. Pitiable creature that I am, who is to set me free from a nature that is doomed to death? Nothing else than the grace of God, through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Romans 7:14-25).

Anyone familiar with Paul's ideas knows that behind the sin, there is someone who drives us to it, who rejoices in our fall, and who participates in our degradation. "It is not against flesh and blood, we have to do with princedoms and powers, with those who have mastery of the world in these dark days, with malign influences in an order higher than ours (Ephesians 6:11-12).

When we speak of Satan, it really does mean a person. But Satan is not alone. He has a whole hierarchy behind him. Lucifer carried with him in his revolt angels belonging, doubtless, to all the rungs of the angelic ladder. All these fallen angels are "spirits of malice". There are some among them who were princedoms and powers among the angels. But by their fall, the princedoms and powers in question have not lost all their natural power.

Our moral conflicts, therefore, are not fought in the abstract, but against tough and very personal adversaries. The struggle is a desperate one, against one who "goes about roaring like a lion, to find his prey", and his followers.

"But you, grounded in the faith, must face him boldly!" We should not fear them if we rely on Christ instead of on our own strength. We can and must challenge them boldly in the name of our faith.

In the New Testament, we see Satan and his angels spread out across the earth and sky, but never in hell. And yet we find it almost impossible not to visualize them amidst the flames of hell. We have in our minds words of Christ like these regarding the last judgment: "Go far from me, you who are accursed, into that eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels!"

Have the demons, therefore, the gift of ubiquity? Can they be in hell and on earth at the same time?

The answer is complex. It begins with the answer that the demon named Legion gave to Christ: "Hast thou come here to torment us before the appointed time?" It is only at the end of time, after the universal judgment, that Satan will lose the title of Prince of this world, and become merely the Prince of hell. But until "the end of time" the demons prowl over the earth. The Gospel shows them wandering through desert places, but all the time they are among us and all around us.

Paul places them in the world, in the darkness, or even in the lower parts of the celestial regions. This entire army of beings are hostile to mankind and are led by Satan as their chief. The apostle speaks of this "prince whose domain is in the lower air, that spirit whose influence is still at work among the unbelievers" (Ephesians 2:2).

Why is Satan called here "the prince whose domain is in the lower air"? Paul, doubtless, wishes to give us to understand that the demons are lying in wait all around us, ready to devour us, and against whom we can defend ourselves only by faith, and by watching and praying.

The present time is for Satan and the bad angels a period of provisional remission as far as punishment in hell is concerned. This time of remission does not prevent them from suffering now the pain of losing their sight of God. But this auxiliary penalty, called "the pain of sense", is a sort of partial spiritual captivity until the end of the world.

In Revelation, John speaks of a certain reduction in Satan's power, after the coming of Christ, followed by a temporary renewal of his power of seduction, and finally the utter overthrowing of his dominion:

"Then, when the thousand years are over, Satan will let loose from his prison, and will go out to seduce the nations.... But God sent fire from heaven to consume them, and the devil, their seducer, was thrown into the lake of fire and brimstone (Revelation 20).

What madness indeed to consider oneself on a level with God, to prefer oneself to God! Yet that was Satan's sin. When men glorify the delights of total liberty and the absolute right of human instinct to develop without restraint, it is nothing less than Satanism. It is the present-day attitude which revels in knowledge and technical skill, claiming to be sufficient to itself and to humanity and despising all the lofty aspirations which Christ brought into the world.

Satanism today consists in expecting everything of science and technical skill and nothing of God, in selling one's share of Paradise for the mess of pottage of material comfort. The militant atheism of many modern day writers, the hatred of God in present-day communism, the laicization which banishes God from schools and law courts, are a revolt against God, in imitation of Satan.

People sometimes quote this saying of the somber Jacob Boehme, theosophist of the seventeenth century (1575-1624): "The devil is nature's cook, without him life would be a bowl of tasteless gruel." It seems that most modern artists and writers share this opinion. Their marked taste for filth, their determination to strip man of any lofty ideal, their contempt in dismissing all morality, prove that they are in their element when painting abject vice, and that they can count on their viewers and readers to accept the foulest and most pornographic descriptions. So-called experts are careful to sing the praises of only the vilest productions. There can be no doubt that this is all done "under the sign of Satan".

And Satan has no need to make a personal appearance in our days. He is only too well served by those who profess to believe no longer in his existence or his activity. As Baudelaire said, "The devil's first trick is his incognito." He is the Father of lies, and there is no more deadly lie than the refusal to recognize his presence here in the very heart of human affairs.

In contrast, John, the peerless prophet of Revelation, described a true vision of the last days of the world:

"Then I saw a new heaven, and a new earth. The old heaven, the old earth had vanished, and there was no more sea. And I, John, saw in my vision that holy city which is the new Jerusalem, being sent down by God from heaven.... God will dwell with men, and they will be his own people, and he will be among them, their own God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death, no mourning, or cries of distress, no more sorrow; those old things have passed away."

John saw the essential features of our age that precedes this total renewal of all things, when he wrote:

"Meanwhile, the wrong-doer must persist in his deeds of wrong, the corruption in his corruption... but the just man must persist in winning his justification, the holy in his life of holiness."

For now there will be the two Cities that Augustine saw. But God is not dead or dying! He has nothing to fear from the paltry "Satans" that hover above our heads, here in the midst of mankind. He will have the last word. John gives us these words of Christ:

"Patience, I am coming soon.... I am Alpha, I am Omega, I am before all, I am at the end of all, the beginning of all things and their end. Blessed are those who wash their garments in the blood of the Lamb; so they will have access to the tree which gives life.... No room there for prowling dogs, for sorcerers and wantons and murderers and idolaters, for anyone who loves falsehood and lives in it."

"The Spirit and my bride (the Church) bid me come; let everyone who hears this read out and say, Come. Be it so, then; come, Lord Jesus."

(Abridged from Who is the Devil? by Nicolas Corte, Hawthorne Books, New York, 1958)

Monday, April 25, 2011

An Old Earth God is not the God of Scripture


The writer of Hebrews tells us that belief in the creation is the first test of faith a human must face: "By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible" (Hebrews 11:3) "And without faith it is impossible to please God" (Hebrews 11:6)

The secular, non-theistic worldview is in direct opposition to a Creator. It knows and acknowledges nothing of the need for eternal redemption. It speaks only of self-centered appeasement. Naturalism at its core is atheistic, and the thrust of evolutionary theory is to tell the “story” of our origins without God.

Those who hold try to compromise with evolutionary theory through "theistic evolution" believe in a “god” who would use the random, cruel, inefficient, and death-dependent processes of the naturalistic evolution. This contrasts so radically with the God described in the pages of the Bible. How could the two ever be thought to be the same being, as some evangelical leaders are claiming today?

God’s holiness demands that the creation not distort anything about God—or about the creation itself. God could not create a lie; He could not make anything that would inexorably lead us to a wrong conclusion, nor could He create processes that would counter His own nature or that would lead us to conclude something untrue about Him.

Everything that we see revealed about God, both in the universe and in the Scriptures, shouts the message that God is a God of order, purpose, and will. There is no hint of randomness in God. God does not react to circumstances; He’s never caught off guard. He never has to correct Himself and change His mind about His reason for doing something. He does not alter His plan for eternity, nor does He get confused about His design, His pleasure, or His purpose.

The very character of God confirms the creation of an earth and cosmos without sin and death, which is the plain meaning of Scripture, God's Word.

(for more, see Henry M. Morris III, Being Biblical, Acts & Facts April 2011, Institute for Creation Research)

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Sunday, April 24, 2011

Life in Christ


"Because I live,

you also will live."

(John 14:19b)

A wonderfully mysterious phrase! Jesus said it at the Last Supper, BEFORE going to the cross. What do you think he meant?

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Saturday, April 23, 2011

Vietnam's Most Wanted


Pastor Hong
Quang
Nguyen.
On Dec. 14, 2010, the bulldozer moved in to destroy the Mennonite Bible School in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam. The Communist government mobilized 100 policemen to for a half-kilometer-wide ring around the area, adding a few hundred more inside the area. Two policemen used an electric cattle prod on the back of the school's director, Pastor Hong Quang Nguyen, after tying his hands behind him.

A few weeks before the school's destruction, 28 students had graduated, becoming the first graduating class of the three-year curriculum. Two-thirds of these students are from the Jorai, Bahnar, Hre, Kor, Steing, and Homng trible groups.

The police have arrested the Bible students many times as well for sharing about Jesus and passing out tracts. Pastor Quang goes to the police station to secure their release. In one series of arrests, police held 50 adults and 40 Bible students for 24 hours at the police station.

The state permits only a few Bible schools in Vietnam, equal to one per 30 million Vietnamese. Other groups, meeting in apartments or houses, either bribe local police to leave them alone or remain very small, with 10 or 15 students totally "underground."

Pastor Quang's churches and Bible school are different. They are out in the open, and they are growing. They will not be muzzled like many churches that, tired of the harassment, compromise by seeking registration and stopping or slowing their evangelism outside their church walls.

(from Voice of the Martyrs, April 2011)

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Thursday, April 21, 2011

Happy Birthday, Kings James

The most influential translation of God’s Word has been none other than the King James Version, first brought to life in 1611. the KJV has been carefully reworked over the last four centuries to ensure that English-speaking people everywhere could read and understand the Bible. Even with numerous up-to-date English translations available today for Christians to read, the KJV is by far the most popular translation of the Bible in history.

There is no doubt that God providentially used King James to initiate what is likely the greatest translation project in history—one that brought the Word of God to multiplied millions of English-speaking people around the world.


Thomas Nelson, the premiere Bible publisher in the world, has recently launched a website to honor the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible: www.kjv400celebration.com. On it are interesting facts about the Bible, videos describing the making of the KJV, and other resources to help Christians appreciate the rich blessing this English translation has been for four centuries.

(for more, see Lawrence E. Ford, Celebrating 400 Years of Influence, Acts & Facts April 2011, Institute for Creation Research)

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Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Turkish Muslims touched by radio stories of persecuted Christians


In Turkey, Voice of the Martyrs worked with a local radio station to produce stories about Christians from history. Turkey is an overwhelmingly Muslim country. 52 half-hour programs were broadcast in 2009-10 throughout the capital city of Ankara and surrounding areas. Each episode tells the story of a persecuted believer who overcomes through the strength God provides.

The radio station had more responses to these programs than any others they have produced. The tiny number of believers in the area were encouraged by the programs.

But most surprising was the reaction of Muslims who were listening! They called and wrote to tell the radio station how touched they were by the stories of bold believers.

Please pray that many Muslims in Turkey would open their hearts and minds and turn to Christ.

Also pray that these stories of suffering Christians from history would bring Muslims in Turkey to repent - and to stop persecuting Christians that are sprinkled in their midst.

(from Voice of the Martyrs, April 2011)

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Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Bibles for Rural China

The Chinese brother was arrested for the sake of the gospel in the 1990's. During his time in prison, his family continued to keep their home open as a meeting place for believers. When he was released, he came back to a hungry and growing house church. But the Bible that he had was in tatters and barely held together, it was not really even usable any longer. He often prayed for a new one. God answered his prayer - he received a new Bible through Voice of the Martyr's Bibles Unbound project, and was overjoyed!

Many Bible school students in China also receive Bibles through Bibles Unbound. These young people in their are in their 20s, and have no Bibles of their own, a common situation in China.

One young woman from a Chinese minority group was very excited to get a Bible, because in her church, only leaders have the chance to have a Bible.

Another person from a house church thanked the Lord. "God prepared us to receive you gift. His timing is always perfect. The last time we came together we discussed how we could possibly get Bibles. We had been praying a now we can see that God answered our prayer. We can see God's amazing Power."

(from Voice of the Martyrs, April 2011)

Please consider donating to Voice of the Martyrs, to help persecuted believers around the world with Bibles Unbound and other project.

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Monday, April 18, 2011

Fasting - from bondage to things ... to better love for God

The goal of fasting is simple. We fast so that we may better love, know, reveal, and enjoy God. It is crucial that even in fasting our focus be on the perfect good at which we aim, and not on the evils and partial goods that we deny.

Fasting is primarily affirmative, but it does have a negative aspect. The purpose of its denials is to free us from our bondage to finite things, which detract from our love of God:

(1) Compulsive desire for finite, created things.
(2) Compulsive fear of finite, created things.
(3) Definition of oneself primarily by relations to finite, created things, or one’s place in the world.
(4) Delusion concerning one’s power over finite, created things, and delight in this delusional power.

(taken from Richard McCombs, Fasting and Feasting: Balanced Diets, Balanced Souls, Ukrainian Orthodox Word, March-April 2011)

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Sunday, April 17, 2011

A human soul - of countless worth

"If there existed only one man or woman who did not love the Savior, and if that person lived among the wilds of Siberia, and if it were necessary that all the millions of believers on the face of the earth should journey there, and every one of them plead with him to come to Jesus before he could be converted, it would be well worth all the zeal, labor, and expense... for a soul is of countless price."

Charles Spurgeon

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Saturday, April 16, 2011

International Day of Prayer for Turkey on April 18

Please forward this letter from the Alliance of Protestant Churches (Turkey) to other Christians & churches you know as we seek the prayers of multitudes.



From the body of Christ in Turkey, to our holy and faithful brothers and sisters in Christ around the world, grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. We are writing to you from Turkey - from the land of Noah, of Abraham, of Paul, of Mt. Ararat and Harran, of Antioch, Ephesus, Galatia and the Seven Churches of Revelation...... Yet today in our land of 72 million, which is 99.8% Muslim, the size of Christ's flock is only a handful. We are writing to ask, indeed to plead for your prayers.

As Turkish Christians we love our country very much. Pray for God's will to be done, and for His Kingdom to come! Pray that the Lord's hand will be with us and a great number of people will believe and turn to the Lord.

We, the church in Turkey, have invited the worldwide church to pray for the land and the church of Turkey this day, April 18. We ask you at your church to pray for us, joining the prayers of millions around the globe. April 18 is when back in 2007 three of brothers were murdered brutally for their faith, the first martyrs of the modern Turkish church.

We are praying for you, and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of His will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding and we beg you brothers .

Pray for us! The God of peace be with you all. Amen.

2 Corinthians 1: 11 "You also must help us by prayer, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many.

On behalf of the body of Christ in Turkey
Alliance of Protestant Churches (Turkey)

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Welcome to Noah's family, Neandertal!

Biblical creationists have long taught that Neandertals were fully human descendants of Noah who lived alongside other men during the post-Flood Ice Age.

Recent evidence confirms this view. Fossilized Neandertal teeth from Belgium and Iraq have been found with grain starch on them.“Stone Age” grinding tools have also been discovered along with hundreds of starch grains in various stages of processing, from a variety of plants.3 It has also been determined that Neandertals made colorful jewelry out of seashells.4

What do these recent findings prove? First, Neandertal was fully human. Second, he is related to people living in Eurasia today. Third, "Neandertals" interbred with modern humans.”5 Therefore they cannot be distinguished as some kind of non-humans. They were not "Nendertals", they were fully human beings recently created in the image of God!

(excerpted from Brian Thomas, Identifying Neandertal Man, Acts & Facts March 2011, Institute for Creation Research)

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References (selected)

1. Morris, J. 1997. Is Neanderthal in Our Family Tree? Acts & Facts. 26 (9).

2. Said, S. Study: Neanderthals cooked, ate vegetables. CNN. Posted on cnn.com December 29, 2010, accessed January 11, 2011.

3. Revedin, A. et al. 2010. Thirty thousand-year-old evidence of plant food processing. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 107 (44): 18815-18819.

4. Viegas, J. Prehistoric Jewelry Reveals Neanderthal Fashion Sense. Discovery News. Posted on news.discovery.com January 8, 2010, accessed January 13, 2010.
 
5. Sarfati, J. 2011. Corals, Genes, and Creation. Creation. 33 (1): 54

Albanian Church Service in Philadelphia

From ministry reports of the Albanian immigrant gospel team in Philadelphia USA:

February 15th: "This Sunday, February 20th, will be a pretty exciting day for us. After a few years of praying, planning, lots of relationships and lots of activity we will be launching weekly worship services in Albanian. Frankly it is hard to believe. Three years ago we would have laughed at the thought. Often it was just my ministry partner and I and a handful of Albanians. At times it was just the two of us forced to pray as no one showed up."

March 7th: "Our last two services have gone well. We are getting around 30 coming each week and we are encouraged. They are inviting friends and beginning to develop a commitment to coming each week, an idea totally foreign to them before. Thank you for your prayers and support. We are thankful to God for the opportunity to herald the good news to this community. We are even more thankful that He will build His church."

(Horizons International newsletter, April 2011)

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Friday, April 15, 2011

The Christians' Work Ethic


To do one's job not just

routinely or even competently

but supremely well is what

lends grace and
a meaning

to everyday tasks.


(Anonymous)

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Wednesday, April 13, 2011

How could Adam sin if he was perfect?

Adam was in the first stage of mankind' relation to sin. He was able to sin, and able not to sin, as Saint Augustine of Hippo taught in Latin "posse peccare, posse non peccare". This is the stage of man in innocency.

When Adam fell, and all mankind fell with him, we all are not able not to sin, "non posse non peccare". This is the state of the natural man after the Fall. Every one of us are born into this state. All of us sin, and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23).

When God saves the believer through faith in Christ, by his power we are able not to sin, "posse non peccare". This is the state of the regenerated man. But our sinful nature keeps us far from perfect...

When the believer dies and goes to live with Christ for life everlasting, we will be unable to sin, or "non posse peccare" as Saint Augustine taught. We will reach perfection fulfilled, which Adam could not do, only Christ could. O what a wonderful place the new heaven and new earth will be!


(for more, see The Four States of Libertas Naturae, at ReformationTheology.com)

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Tuesday, April 12, 2011

86% of Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists do not even know a Christian

My fear is that many of the things we call “missions” are simply inter-church aid. We talk about “serving the national believers” or sending our money to them to “do it.”

But what do you do when there are no believers there? Send money? We all know that the unreached people groups have nobody in them to send your money to.

As a first step, we need to get there! How many of your church’s global workers are serving with Muslims? Hindus? Buddhists? I don’t mean working, say, in the Middle East with Arab Christians, or working in India with tribal people groups or Dalits. Those can be good things. There is lots of other work that needs to be done everywhere.

But the fact that 86% of the Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists of the world do not even know a Christian, simply must change. What are you doing to help that change?

(excerpted from Greg H. Parsons, How is Missions Working out for you? Mission Frontiers, March-April 2011)

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Sunday, April 10, 2011

The Courage to Be a Christian

He washed his hands of the whole affair. He could have listened to his conscience that told him that this Jesus was an innocent man. He could have listened to his wife who told him that she had a dream about this Jesus. But Pilate did not have the necessary courage it takes to ... be a Christian. He washed his hands of the whole affair and will forever be remembered as the coward who let the Lord of Life be crucified.

The courage to be a Christian. Judas didn't have it either. There was great financial gain for him to give up Christ. There was a position of esteem among the Jewish leaders there for his taking. To stay with Christ would mean to join him in suffering. He didn't have the courage to ... be a Christian.

Joseph of Arimethea was a wealthy man and a member of the ruling Jewish body, the Sanhedrin. He was willing to give up his status in the community, he gave up his secrecy in following Christ, he gave up his burial place for the Lord, he refused to ... give up Christ.

Peter denied Christ three times. But he didn’t give up. He picked himself up from his failure and accepted all that the following of our Lord demanded. His life story has it that when Peter himself was about to be crucified he protested that he wasn’t worthy to die the same way as the Lord and was then crucified upside down. It took a lifetime for this Apostle to muster up the courage he needed, but he was able to ... follow Christ. 

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We live in a world where many of our leaders to not have the courage to be truthful. We live in a world where a higher value is placed on economic gain than on the courage to vote according to convictions. We live in a world where many have lost the courage that is necessary to follow our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

It takes tremendous courage to ... be the only people in the neighborhood who treasure a moral lifestyle. It takes tremendous courage to ... be the only parents who are determined to protect their children from that which could destroy them even though other parents let their kids go to that movie, play that game, and close their eyes to their experiments that are unhealthy. It takes tremendous courage to ... be the only one at work who isn’t a flirt, who doesn’t degrade his or her spouse with the other guys or gals, who doesn’t stab co-workers in the back in order to advance, who is willing to take only what an honest days work provides. It takes a tremendous amount of courage to ... refuse to get involved in a relationship that is immoral, even though friends and neighbors say it is OK. It takes courage to ... challenge yourself, your spouse and your children to make the effort necessary to worship God regular with your brothers and sisters in Christ.

We are not being called today to accept physical death for the Lord, as numerous martyrs and the saints through have done. But we are being called to give witness to our Savior. Remember, the word “martyr” means witness. It takes a tremendous amount of courage to ... follow Christ.

(from Ukrainian Orthodox Word, March-April 2011)

Saturday, April 09, 2011

When did dinosaurs live and what happened to them?

My friend Rachel asked me this question recently. Great topic for another blog post. Here goes:

The Bible tells us that God created dinosaurs and all other creatures on Day 6 of creation week (which really was a "day" per the 4th commandment, my condolences to Old Earth apologists!)

We know that when Adam and Eve fell, all creation fell under the curse (Romans 8:19,21). Now that death entered the universe, many animals apparently became carnivores, including some dinosaurs, see Did Animals Eat Meat Before the Flood. The first "Climate Change" took place, putting dinosaurs at a great disadvantage because of their huge size. Most probably men and dinosaurs migrated in different directions, because of the climate and the fear induced by dinosaurs.

The massive changes brought by the global flood of Noah's day ultimately took out the Dinosaurs (a minority opinion is held by Klenk, who says they died out before the Flood because of the dinosaur's affinity with evil, see Genesis and the Demise of the Dinosaurs) If any remained afterward, they were extremely few and far between. The Behemoth of the Job 40:15-24 may have been one of those leftovers, see Dinosaurs and Humans Coexisted.

All this would explain the mysterious but contemporary-sounding quality of all the ancient "dragon" stories that have been passed down to us.

One thing about dinosaurs/dragons. The fear and fascination they universally induce should point everyone to their need for a savior. And the only one who can truly save is Jesus, that's for certain. He says "Fear not, I have redeemed you, I have called you by name, you are mine." (Isaiah 43:1b)

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Friday, April 08, 2011

Azra followed Jesus because she saw how Christians cared for her sister

Our acts on God's behalf ought to be so out of the ordinary that people take notice. Such was certainly case with a young Muslim woman in South East Asia who we'll call "Azra". Several years ago Azra's sister underwent surgery and was cared for over a period of six months by Karen, one of our workers in that country. The woman later died of unrelated causes, and Karen and her family eventually moved away to another part of the country, unaware of any spiritual fruit from their time there.

But last year on a visit to the area where Karen had lived, one of her co-workers encountered Azra, the sister of the deceased woman, and discovered that she had come to faith in Jesus. When asked what had led to her conversion, Azra explained that her decision to follow Jesus was largely a result of what she had seen in Karen and her daughters when they had cared for her sister.

Oh the power of an act of God's kindness, displayed through one of His servants. This was certainly what Jesus had in mind when He said: "Let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven." In a world where people are increasingly lonely, isolated, selfish, and in search of meaning, a simple smile and a word or act of kindness can stand out like an exquisite red rose on a colorless day.

(from a letter by Dale Losch, CrossWorld, March 2011)

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Thursday, April 07, 2011

The children of Mount Ararat show that darker skin is not due to evolution

Evolutionists like to trumpet the power of natural selection. Often they speak of it accomplishing a major evolutionary advancement, but natural selection doesn’t think or plan or provide. Does this imaginary mechanism actually “do” anything?

Mount Ararat, rising to 17,000 feet in elevation, is home to hardy Kurdish shepherd families. Inhabitants of mountain clans typically are darker than their city cousins. Living a pastoral life, they usually send their young boys out to herd sheep at an elevation of 11,000 feet or more all summer long.

A darker skin shade  provides a natural barrier to radiation and thus enhances survival chances for the mountain folk. Undoubtedly, many of these boys passed away due to skin cancer before reaching reproductive age. Thus the darker-skinned individuals bore more children. Over the generations, darker skin would become a tribal characteristic in the mountain clans.

But this isn’t evolution. It might appear to be a textbook case of natural “selection,” but is it? Did any selection process even operate at all? All key functions, reproduction, and variability are innate to people. Either the individual possessed a darker skin shade that protected him, or he did not. This was a function of genetic variability, built in from creation and not imposed through selection. The skin shade either resulted in the death or the survival of an individual and the preponderance of a particular trait within the group. Natural selection didn’t “do” anything.

The Kurdish people descended from the Medes of the Bible. They have always been rather brown-skinned, and certainly have always been people.

(excerpted from John D. Morris, Selected by Nature or Designed to Fill? Acts & Facts March 2011, Institute for Creation Research)

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