Mark this date on your calendars and come out to pray on May 7th!
Events will be held all over Connecticut – find one near you by searching here.
There will be a prayer rally at the State Capitol from 11:00am – 12:30pm on the north steps of the State Capitol Building. Come and join friends from the Connecticut House of Prayer.
On the Internet, people can say anything about anybody. Sadly, and to our shame, this is often true even in Christian circles.
From time to time we receive comments about professing Christians which, were I to publish them, would subject me to a lawsuit for slander. I do not doubt that many such writers and commentators are sincere in their desire to see the Lord’s Bride be a pure Church “without spot or wrinkle.” However, this will never justify us publicizing things about others which may not be true and of which even the commenter has no personal knowledge – especially where it concerns a person’s character. I ask my commenting friends to examine themselves and ask: who called them to remove the spots and wrinkles?
I agree that the Lord’s command not to judge lest we be judged has been perverted at times and even used as a cloak for sin. Nevertheless, this does not invalidate His command or other Biblical counsel about judging righteous judgment, and not judging others before we hear what they have to say.
For these reasons, I do not wish to publish comments which slander other Christians, hold them up to contempt or allege ungodly deeds on their part, particularly on hearsay evidence. It is not right. If you wish to make such assertions you are free to do so on your own blog. But considering the words of Christ, do it at your own risk.
Walt Mueller, the President of The Center for Parent/Youth Understanding, will be speaking on “Understanding and Engaging Today’s Youth Culture” at Black Rock Congregational Church in Fairfield on March 6 at 12pm. A free lunch will be provided.
RSVP to jtaylor @ brcc.org or call Jeremy at (203) 255-3401, ext. 127.
Sobering words from intercessory leader and author Dutch Sheets in his latest video blog. Sheets points out how the percentage of Americans who are committed Christians has dropped in each generation – from 65% in his grandparents’ day to 4% among today’s youth.
Question: “What are we going to do about where we are?”
I was disturbed to read an interview recently conducted by pundit Michael Medved. His interviewee? Jimmy Carter. Mr. Medved’s concern was the former President’s naïveté concerning Hamas and that group’s less than charitable intentions vis-à-vis Israel.
But that wasn’t what caught my eye. Buried in the conversation was the revelation that Mr. Carter has fallen for the canard that Evangelicals are awaiting (perhaps with some relish) the wholesale slaughter of the Jews in connection with the prophesied Second Coming of Christ. Notice this exchange, in which MM stands for Michael Medved:
Carter: —I’m not going to try to defend the Hamas Charter any more than I would try to defend the PLO charter, because it calls for the destruction of Israel—
MM: —It calls for the murder of individual Jews. It calls for the murder of all Jews so that judgment day can come. It says, “The Islamic Resistance Movement aspires to the realization of Allah’s promise, no matter how long that should take. The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said, “The day of judgment will not come about until Muslims kill the Jews (and the passage adds: “When the Jews will hide behind stones and trees, the sones and trees will say, O Muslim, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.”)
Carter:–If you want to talk about ancient history, Christians believe that in the second coming, Christ can’t come back to the Holy Land until all Jews are either dead or become Christian.
There’s plenty here which is interesting, but Carter’s take on what Christians believe is simply untrue. Far be it from me to argue with a Sunday School teacher, but as someone who’s taught a bit of Sunday School himself, I feel compelled to point out a few things.
First, in the interest of fairness, it should be said that many Christians’ presentation of prophesied “end times” events is, well, graceless. Perhaps we can be excused for not always knowing how to talk about the end of the world – a serious topic, to be sure – but a little tact is in order. Christians who read their Bible literally believe that Jesus Christ will physically return to the earth after a period of terrible wars and cataclysms. Believers argue about a lot of the details, and how it all fits together exactly, but one point of agreement is that it will be horrific.
So, in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 24, Jesus says, “For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved…” So Christ is speaking of a time so terrible that, unless God intervened personally, no one would survive it. It will be that bad.
Second, Christians point to prophecies in the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible) indicating that a great many Jews will be killed through anti-Semitic persecution during this time. Most notable here would probably be Zechariah 13:8, which says, “And it shall come to pass, that in all the land, saith the LORD, two parts therein shall be cut off and die; but the third shall be left therein.” However, while many Christians believe this will literally happen, they are not in any sense “rooting” for it to happen, nor should it ever be compared to the Islamic belief that Jews must be killed by Muslims in order for their own apocalypse to come to pass. In the Christian end times scenario, the Jews are indeed victims of war and victims of persecution at the hands of the figure known as the Antichrist. Mr. Carter should know better than to insinuate an equivalence between the two.
Finally, Christian teaching is clear that Christians then living will also suffer persecution from the Antichrist. Indeed, abundant Christian martyrdom is an expected part of the last days scenario. Jews and Christians are thus suffering together from the Antichrist’s pogrom or Holocaust.
Christians should not be faulted for believing that Christ will come again and that, when he does, Jews will take him as their Messiah. They are entitled to believe that, just as Jews believe the Christians are wrong about that. But Christians should not be smeared as though they believed something other than what they do believe. Such irresponsible distortions have the effect of dissolving the unity that can exist between Christians of goodwill and Jews of goodwill as they work together against their common enemies, of which there are many.
John Paul Jackson released a word recently about a “perfect storm” of crises coming against our nation. Although not all our readers believe in the present-day ministry of prophecy, I have always had respect for Jackson’s ministry and wanted to pass along this new video in which explains what he believes God has shown him is about to happen. Even those who are committed cessationists sometimes acknowledge that there is a prophesied time of Holy Spirit activity at the end of the age. Fans of Paul Washer’s preaching ministry may recognize the same tone of urgency. There are interesting discussions on natural disasters, the economy, abortion, Islam, etc. So I ask you to view this with prayerful consideration.
A written synopsis of the teaching can be found here.
Our friend Aaron Sauer has updated the 2009 Bible Reading Plan calendars. Try these addresses if the others aren’t working for you:
For Google Calendar:http://tinyurl.com/8aqrxp
For iCal: http://tinyurl.com/8dq9og
Recommended to kick off your new year: some arguments for heterosexual marriage which are not religiously based. After all, some like to say that all truth is God’s truth; therefore, there must be some non-religious way to explain why marriage has always been heterosexual. Enter the Witherspoon Institute’s Patrick Lee:
In a well-ordered society, the state should give legal recognition to real marriage, promote it, protect it, and privilege it over other sexual arrangements—as a good for the spouses and the children their union may form. The state has an essential interest in the health of marriage. Generally speaking, children will receive the best and most loving care if they are raised by their biological parents, who have formed a community aimed at providing the most suitable environment for any children they may help bring into being. Almost always, children can count on their mothers to care for them when they are young; the institution of marriage is dedicated to ensuring, as much as possible, that fathers also will fulfill their responsibilities to the children they help procreate, and to the mothers of their children. Furthermore, where the institution of marriage is strong, people’s sexual passions and energies—frequently difficult to control, often leading to self-centeredness and exploitation—are channeled toward intelligible goods, namely, marriage and family.
Unfortunately, that’s seen as a little too quaint in many quarters – particularly the quarter we live in. Read the rest here at Public Discourse.
British author and former member of Parliament Matthew Parris has penned a simply remarkable piece in which, despite his atheism, he recognizes that Africa needs God. His own youth on that continent and his adult experience there have led him to see that there is a difference between Christian mission and what other “non-governmental organizations,” or NGO’s, can do.
Now a confirmed atheist, I’ve become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and international aid efforts. These alone will not do. Education and training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes people’s hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good.
This goes to the heart of the matter: that Christianity – or, more accurately, Christ – changes people.
In addition to this frank recognition of the reality of the Gospel’s effect, Mr. Parris punctures the balloons of multiculturalism which have been allowed to float through Western naïveté and historical illiteracy:
There’s long been a fashion among Western academic sociologists for placing tribal value systems within a ring fence, beyond critiques founded in our own culture: “theirs” and therefore best for “them”; authentic and of intrinsically equal worth to ours.
I don’t follow this. I observe that tribal belief is no more peaceable than ours; and that it suppresses individuality. People think collectively; first in terms of the community, extended family and tribe. This rural-traditional mindset feeds into the “big man” and gangster politics of the African city: the exaggerated respect for a swaggering leader, and the (literal) inability to understand the whole idea of loyal opposition.
Bingo. All cultures are not created equal. Cultures are fed and informed by their underlying worldview. The West finds itself under siege, internally and externally, because of an appalling and unwarranted self-doubt. So, in the case of Africa, the dismissal of Western culture blinds Europeans and Americans to the reality that African tribal belief, Islamic jihad, shari’a law, etc., are the wellspring of so many of the problems infesting the region.
Be sure to read the entire article.
OK, this is the year. The year you’re going to do it! You will actually read through the Bible.
I will? I can? Well, if Matthew Henry could spend 11 hours a day in the Word and in prayer, you can definitely rise to the occasion and read through the Bible in a whole year. It wouldn’t take you nearly that long. Honest.
In fact, it’s been made a lot easier for anyone who’s online a lot, or travels, or has an iPhone, etc. Many thanks to Aaron Sauer, who has published a Bible Reading Plan for 2009 on Google Calendar and in iCal format.
So there! No excuses…
UPDATE from Aaron Sauer:
Hey Nick, thanks for the post. Just wanted to let you know that I updated the links http://twitter.com/aaronsauer/status/1087649542 …I used Logos Bible Software to create the reading plan which uses pericope boundaries (a set of verses that forms one coherent thought).