Author: Bill

by

Climate Change in Crisis

Expert on global warming.

The shocking speed with which the climate change hoax has come unraveled has been a delight to watch. Recent revelations about the science behind it has shown it to be a joke and a scam.

  • A hacker obtained e-mails from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in England, which show collusion to distort data among environmentalist scientists from around the world, AKA Climate-gate.
  • The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) claims that 40 percent of the rain forest would be destroyed by global warming are fabricated.
  • An IPCC report states Himalayan glaciers will melt by 2035, a “fact” according to World Wildlife Fund, which is a radical environmentalist group. Common sense says otherwise.

When supposedly reputable sources such as university researchers and UN organizations are shown to be lying and scheming for political agendas, the cause loses all credibility. Will all the skeptical scientists who were accused of being on oil companies’ payrolls receive apologies?

There are a couple lessons we can take from this:

  1. Science can be controlled. Unbiased, pure, peer-reviewed science is not a given as many people would have us believe. If there is a cabal of evil scientists hyping up the evidence for global warming, why is it so far-fetched that the same thing may be happening among evolutionary scientists?
  2. The ideas of men (even if they’re supposedly backed by science) come and go, but the Bible is trustworthy.
by

Two Evangelists Murdered in Florida

This story is from the Palm Beach Post. There is little information on what the

Taken from Mapquest

beliefs of these men were.

BOYNTON BEACH — Jeriah Woody executed two men who made the mistake of preaching religion to the 18-year-old, a witness has told police.

Woody, who turned himself in to Boynton Beach police Wednesday, is charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the Saturday night deaths of Stephen Ocean, 23, and Tite Sufra, 24, near the Boynton Beach city library. Continue reading →

by

Homosexuals and Hypocrites

Jeremiah, a man who claims to be a homosexual Christian, left a comment on my blog making his case for why homosexuality is not a sin. I’ve recently learned quite a bit from reading Same Sex Controversy by James White and Jeffrey D. Niell. Without a doubt, the Bible calls homosexuality a bona fide sin.

Jeremiah had two main points:

  • The Bible is vague in regard to homosexuality. Jeremiah reviewed six passages that discuss homosexuality in the NIV. I like the NIV, but it was translated by humans, leaving room for error. There are some odd word choices in a couple verses. For example, most translations use the word “homosexual” in 1 Timothy 1:8­–10, but the NIV uses the word “perverts.” In 1 Corinthians 6:9–10, the same Greek word as in 1 Timothy 1:8–10 is used, but the NIV translates it as “homosexual offender.”Using the NIV, Jeremiah ignored 1 Timothy 1:8–10 (since it doesn’t contain the word “homosexual”), and made the argument that 1 Corinthians 6:9–10 is referring to the older men who pay young, pagan, male prostitutes for sex. His point was that the Bible isn’t clear enough on this point to call a loving monogamous homosexual relationship sin.

    However, a look at the original biblical lanaguage gives us a different interpretation. The Greek word “arsenokoites” is the word in question in both 1 Timothy 1:8–10 and 1 Corinthians 6:9–10. Paul is the first person to use this word in writing. It is possible that Paul coined this term. We can know exactly what it means and where it came from by examining the text. Paul used the Greek Old Testament (aka the LXX or Septuagint), as he was the apostle to the gentiles, and Greek was the language of the day.

    In the LXX, Leviticus 20:13 reads: hos an koimethe meta arsenos koiten gunaikos.

    In English, Leviticus 20:13 says, “If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.”

    There is no ambiguity in Leviticus 20:13. It calls homosexuality a sin regardless of whether it is in a monogamous, loving relationship or not.

    The word “arsenokoites” is simply a contraction of “arsenos” and “koiten.” “Arsenos” means man, and “koiten” means intercourse or to lie with sexually. When Paul uses the word “arsenokoites,” he is referring to men who lie together sexually, or homosexuals. He is referencing the passages in Leviticus that clearly condemn homosexuality.

    That is especially clear in 1 Timothy 1:8–10 as it is a discussion of the proper use of the law. What law could Paul be referring to other than the Old Testament law? The proper use of the law was to convict homosexuals of their sin in the hope that they would be humbled and prepared to hear the gospel.

    Jeremiah’s principal tactic is to obscure the plain teaching of these verses just enough to cause us to doubt our interpretation, and therefore, render us unable to boldly call homosexuality a sin. But these verses simply aren’t vague. They are crystal clear in calling homosexuality a sin.

  • Christians are willing to ignore many verses rather than change their lifestyles. We shouldn’t be so eager to enforce the letter of the law against homosexuals, Jeremiah says, when we’re willing to compromise for our pet sins. He used divorce as an example. Jesus was very much against divorce, yet Jeremiah knows of Christians who are willing to overlook that sin.I think we can all take Jeremiah’s observation as an encouragement to examine ourselves and make sure that our words and deeds line up with even the most difficult teachings of Jesus.

    However, I think he completely misses the point. All our sins are ultimately between each of us individually and God, who is perfectly just. The homosexual cannot point to the hypocrisy of others as justification for his own sin. Neither can the thief, the liar, the heterosexual adulterer, the murderer or anyone else. True Christians are marked by humble repentance. Only a proud unbeliever could go on living in unrepentant rebellion after being confronted with sin.

    It is clear that Jeremiah is unwilling to repent of his homosexuality. He doesn’t like it when people claim to be Christians but make excuses for being disobedient to the Bible, but that is exactly what he’s doing with his sexual sin. To me, it seems as though he’s offering to wink and nod at the sin of others if they’re willing to wink and nod at his.

    I would remind him that Jesus said that if our eye causes us to sin, we should pluck it out. If our hand causes us to sin, we should cut it off. It is better to go to heaven maimed than to go to hell intact. I would advise Jeremiah to pay whatever price is necessary to leave his homosexuality behind. There is forgiveness in Jesus Christ.

You can check out Jeremiah’s comment on my blog.  (He copied and pasted it from his blog, which I wouldn’t recommend as there are some inappropriate pictures.)

by

Shocking Honesty

For once I don’t want to over-analyze this. I just want to enjoy it for what Brit Hume said. It is shockingly frank and shockingly great for someone on TV to say something like this. Tiger Woods needs to turn to the Christian faith. He needs his sins forgiven more than he needs his next breath. I thank Brit Hume for his political incorrectness and truthfulness.

Mark Cahill has witnessed to Tiger Woods, so we know that the biblical seed of the gospel has been planted, and we can pray for it to grow.

by

Newsflash: Global Warming is Caused by the Sun

After Noah’s flood receded, God promised Noah that, “As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease” (Genesis 8:22). If cold and heat remain, that rules out the possibility of runaway global warming, and I doubt that He chooses to show us this mercy due to the wisdom of environmentalists.

Here’s a great documentary on the real cause of rising or falling global temperatures–the sun. It also discusses the devastating effect of extremist environmental policies for those who have no access to electricity.

Please forgive the French subtitles and the old earth references.

by

Is Ray Comfort’s Idea Original?

Ray ComfortA lot of Christians are opposed to presenting the law before the gospel, and say Ray Comfort’s method is unbiblical. They generally say that his series of questions isn’t found in the Bible, and they would be right. However, no one has said that they were in the Bible, and there are many ways to present the law and the gospel without using Comfort’s spiel.

I really have no interest in defending Ray Comfort or Kirk Cameron. On the other hand, if someone wants to disagree with their method, they have their work cut out for them. Ray Comfort should get a lot of credit for popularizing biblical witnessing, but he didn’t make up “law to the proud, grace to the humble” by himself. Here are a few quotes about the law and its proper use:

  • Charles Spurgeon said, “The law serves a most necessary purpose. They [unbelievers] will never accept grace until they tremble before a just and holy Law.”
  • Martin Luther said, “So it is with the work-righteous and the proud unbelievers. Because they do not know the law of God, which is directed against them, it is impossible for them to know their sin.”
  • Martyn Lloyd-Jones said, “The trouble with people who are not seeking for a Savior, and for salvation, is that they do not understand the nature of sin. It is the peculiar function of the law to bring such an understanding to a man’s mind and conscience.”
  • John Bunyan said, “In my preaching of the Word, I took special notice of this one thing, namely, that the Lord did lead me to begin where His Word begins with sinners; that is, to condemn all flesh, and to open and allege that the curse of God, by the law doth belong to and lay hold on all men as they come into the world, because of sin.”
  • Paris Reidhead said, “I would declare a moratorium on public preaching of the “the plan of salvation” in America for one to two years. Then, I would call on everyone who has use of the airwaves and the pulpits to preach the holiness of God, the righteousness of God, and the law of God, until sinners would cry out, “What must we do to be saved?” Then, I would take them off in a corner and whisper the gospel to them….Such drastic action is needed because we have gospel-hardened a generation of sinners by telling them how to be saved before they have any understanding why they need to be saved.”
  • John MacArthur said, “Grace means nothing to a person who does not know he is sinful and that such sinfulness means he is separated from God and damned. It is therefore pointless to preach grace until the impossible demands of the law and the reality of guilt before God are preached.”
  • Charles Spurgeon said, “I do not believe that any man can preach the gospel who does not preach the law.”
  • John Wesley said, “Before I can preach love, mercy, and grace, I must preach sin, law and judgment.”
  • George Whitfield said, “That is the reason we have so many ‘mushroom’ converts, because their stony ground is not plowed up; they have not got a conviction of the law; they are stony-ground hearers.”
  • Martin Luther said, “Satan, the god of all dissension, stirreth up daily new sects, and last of all, which of all other I should never have foreseen or once suspected, he has raised up a sect such as teach…that men should not be terrified by the law, but gently exhorted by the preaching of the grace of Christ.”
  • Paris Reidhead said, “When 100 years ago earnest scholars decreed that the law had no relationship to the preaching of the gospel, they deprived the Holy Spirit in the area where their influence prevailed of the only instrument with which He had ever armed Himself to prepare sinners for grace.”
  • John R.W. Stott said, “We cannot come to Christ to be justified until we have first been to Moses to be condemned. But once we have gone to Moses and acknowledged our sin, guilt and condemnation, we must not stay there.”
  • Dr. J Gresham Machen said, “A new and more powerful proclamation of [the] law is perhaps the most pressing need of the hour; men would have little difficulty with the gospel if they had only learned the lesson of the law.”
  • D.L. Moody said, “I can always tell a man who is near the kingdom of God; his mouth is stopped. This, then, is why God gives us the law. To show us ourselves in our true colors.”

How is it that all these men came to believe the same thing about the law? Because that is what the Bible teaches.

If you’ve never taken the time to listen to Hell’s Best Kept Secret, you definitely should do so.

by

How to Evangelize Drivers

carIt can be annoying when people put flyers under your windshield wiper. Usually, you get into the car before you realize there’s a flyer on the windshield. Here’s a place to put a tract where the driver will definitely see it before they get in the car. It helps to have tracts that are printed on thick paper. Nevertheless, some cars are difficult to get the tract in.

There are some situations where this is the best way to get the best gospel to people, although I think it’s preferable to hand someone a tract or get a chance to talk to them. If you’ve never passed out tracts or witnessed, this may be a good way to get started.

This is my favorite tract to put in car doors.

by

Evolutionists: Spreading Ignorance and Superstition for 150 Years

dunceAccording to evolutionary theory, a vestigial organ is an organ that evolved to serve our ancestors, but as evolution marched on, it became useless and now serves little or no purpose. Of course to a creationist, who believes animals and humans were designed by God about 6,000 years ago, that is absurd.

One of the most famous examples of a vestigial organ, given in many science textbooks, is the appendix. About 1 in 20 people have had an appendix removed in necessary surgery. Most of them go on to live long lives. But does that mean that the appendix is completely useless? No. If my left arm were removed, I could live a long, happy life, but that wouldn’t mean my arm was vestigial.

It turns out that the appendix serves a purpose in the immune system. Creationists have been telling us this for some time , but it seems the secular scientific community has recently decided to leak this information. All of those enlightened geniuses who love to cite the vestigial appendix as a favorite piece of evidence now stand side-by-side with “backward-thinking” Christians.

How many people have been deceived by atheistic science, which is not science at all?

by

Listen To Your Heart?

hrtI’ve often heard people say that they’re not worried about their sins; they just do what their hearts tell them to do. I’ve even heard burly bikers say sappy stuff about their pure hearts. Where do people get that, and why do so many believe that? Could it be that it has been pounded into our heads hundreds of times?

Here are a few select lines from various songs. On this list is music from nearly every genre, for every age group.

  • Phil Collins – Trust your heart. Let fate decide, to guide these lives we see.
  • Stevie Wonder – Why second guess what feels so right? Just trust your heart and you’ll see the light. True to your heart, you must be true to your heart.
  • Lynard Skynard – Follow your heart and nothing else.
  • Melissa Etheridge- I have come this far with a truth of the heart.
  • New Radicals – This whole d___ world can fall apart. You’ll be okay; follow your heart.
  • Smokin’ Armadillos – Let your heart lead your mind.
  • Ultravox – Follow, follow your heart.
  • Triumph – You’ve got to follow your heart.
  • Judy Collins – Trust your heart.
  • The Stylistics – Listen to your heart, hear what it’s saying.
  • Motorhead – Listen to your heart.
  • Little Feat – Listen to your heart.
  • Jennifer Love Hewitt – Listen to your heart.
  • Roxette – Listen to your heart.
  • Reba McEntire – The heart won’t lie.
  • Thumbelina cartoon – When you follow your heart, when you follow your heart.
  • Sonic Underground cartoon – When there’s people in your life trying to tell you what is right, what do you do? Listen to your heart, girl. Do you take a brand new road or the one you’ve always known? Am I getting through? Listen to your heart, girl. ‘Cause the heart’s not gonna lie to you. Listen to your heart, girl. And I know you’ll always be hearing the truth if you listen to your heart.

Music has a profound effect on people. Tunes get stuck in our heads. People memorize lyrics. Many listen to the radio all day long at work. Certainly the doctrines found in music will end up being adopted by a certain percentage of people.

The Bible has a few different things to say about our hearts and how we should make decisions.

Jeremiah 17:9: The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?

Proverbs 21:2: Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the LORD weighs the heart.

Proverbs 14:12: There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.

Proverbs 3:5: Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.
Proverbs 28:26: Whoever trusts in his own mind is a fool, but he who walks in wisdom will be delivered.

by

Evangelism That Works?

I’ve seen Google ads for Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University that promote the program with this line: Evangelism that works.
ramseyad2
I recently took the class, and I can definitely recommend it for its solid financial training. However, I’d say to advertise it as evangelism that works is to demonstrate a lack of understanding of evangelism.

In the course, Ramsey certainly talks about the Bible and gives applications for Scripture verses, but that isn’t evangelism. Evangelism isn’t getting people to come to your church, or pointing out to them that biblical principles about finances are relevant to their lives.

Evangelism is proclaiming the gospel, and that means explaining to people that:

  • God is holy, we are sinners, and God can’t allow sinners into heaven.
  • God made a way to not compromise His justice yet forgive people’s sins through Jesus Christ.

I think Ramsey is trying to appeal to the fear of evangelism that most of us have in abundance. If you can’t work up the nerve to actually witness to someone, maybe you can invite them to an event at your church. Once you get them there, you don’t have to actually share the gospel; you just have to play videos.

I recommend Ramsey’s books and products for their financial advice, but I can’t recommend them for evangelism purposes. If you invested the two hours a week in going out witnessing, you could almost certainly witness to many more people than you would if you held a Financial Peace University at which you actually proclaimed the gospel.

People don’t get saved by hanging around with really likable Christians or learning that the Bible is cool. They can only be saved by hearing the gospel (Romans 10:14), and there simply is no gospel message within the materials of the Financial Peace University. As desperately as we try to avoid it, the cold, hard fact is that Christians must actually open their mouths and explain the gospel.

—–Update—–8/18/09—–

I’ve been thinking about the line “Evangelism that works” and it’s been bothering me. Even if there was evangelism in Ramsey’s materials, we don’t select our evangelism based on what works. We do what the Bible says, regardless of the results. Furthermore, we don’t do it expecting results, but because God has commanded it.

by

Jesus Commands us to be Judgmental

In John 7:24, Jesus said, “Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment.” Of course, if there is righteous judgment, there is sinful judgment, which should certainly be avoided. However, it is beneficial to be judgmental in a good way.

In my experience, the verse that virtually every American non-Christian knows and loves to quote is Matthew 7:1. Jesus said, “Judge not, lest ye be judged.” I’ve even had some people tell me that it was one of the Ten Commandments. In this passage, Jesus was condemning hypocritical judging. We shouldn’t call the police on our neighbors for playing the music too loud one evening when it is our regular practice to have loud parties and keep the neighborhood awake. It’s human nature to be upset and point out the one time our neighbor does something wrong, and excuse, or be completely oblivious to, our own poor behavior. That is called hypocrisy.

However, Jesus goes on, and in verse 5, He tells us that we should remove the plank from our eye, so that we will be able to help others with their speck. We are supposed to judge ourselves strictly, so that we can lovingly judge others and help them with their speck.

The Judging Trap
Many people who think it’s a sin to judge others will loudly point out when someone is judging. Of course, at that point they have identified someone else finger2who is committing a sin, which makes them judgmental. The irony is that they’re committing the very same sin of which they’re accusing others.

This is exactly the type of sinful judging that Jesus was talking about in Matthew 7:1. It’s a sin to get on your self-righteous high horse, and say it’s wrong for someone else to get on his or her self-righteous high horse. When you’ve removed the “It’s wrong to judge” plank from your eye, maybe you can determine whether someone is judging righteously or sinfully.

It’s not judging to tell people what the Bible says
It’s not loving to hem and haw about people’s standing before God. The loving thing to do is tell them what the Bible says. The Bible makes it clear that if you believe certain things, you can’t go to heaven.

Many Christians might say something like, “I don’t know what’s in someone’s heart. Who am I to judge?” I would agree that we generally don’t know what’s in someone’s heart—until he or she tells us. After that person has told us, it’s a good, loving thing to take the opportunity to warn someone if he or she believes something that will bring that individual harm.

The last virtue of a decaying society is tolerance hippy2
Tolerance is a good thing. However, tolerance does not mean that we shouldn’t take a stand against evil. It seems that tolerance has come to mean that the majority must make whatever accommodations a loud minority demands. It often seems the more perverse the demand, the more effective the “tolerance” and “not-judging” card is in silencing the critics. We can let Western society wither and die for the sake of tolerance, or we can take a stand.

Every one of us makes judgments every day. We judge whether something is good for lunch or bad. We judge what shirt is best to wear. We make judgments from the smallest of decisions to decisions that affect our eternity. It’s a sin to judge hypocritically, but it’s prudent to judge properly, as Jesus has commanded us.

by

It’s a Free Country

I can’t believe some of the things Americans are saying to me. They sound like they’re from downtown Stalingrad, doing their best to toe the party line.

  • “You can’t say things that might offend people.”
  • “You can’t tell people they’re going to hell.”
  • “You can’t call people sinners.”
  • “The right to free speech doesn’t mean the right to hate speech.”
  • “You’ve been standing here talking to people for 25 minutes. That means you’re loitering, and you have to leave.”

As a Christian, I feel a duty to lovingly and rationally attempt to convince everyone that they are sinners deserving only of hell. This makes the gospel all the more beautiful to tell. However, as Americans, whose rights come from God, we have the right to say what we think—especially if someone else takes offense, or thinks it’s hateful. In fact, even “loud” and “boisterous…religious harangue” is constitutionally protected speech (see Edwards v. South Carolina, 372 U.S. 229, 233 [1963]).

cnstnOur freedoms come from God. Thousands of American soldiers have died defending our rights. These rights are precious. I love it when Americans of whatever belief peacefully exercise and defend their rights. I would never insist that someone exercising their free speech rights be hauled off to jail.

The people who want others not to have the right to free speech are really being very selfish. They insist on certain rights for themselves, but when someone else does something they don’t like, they want that individual’s rights stripped away immediately. If enough people are only concerned about themselves, soon enough none of us will have any freedoms.

I find it hard to understand why some Americans who are so eager to give up their rights or take away others’ rights. The people of Iran, for example, don’t have free speech or freedom of the press. Their recent protest of the outcome of their election caused the Iranian government to kick out the press, and who knows how many protesters were injured by the state police. It’s sad to me to see Iranians yearning for freedom while Americans squander their freedom. I pray that the Iranians will someday have the freedom of the press and the free speech that we have.

Last weekend we celebrated Independence Day and the physical and political liberties we enjoy. I hope that every Christian will boldly exercise his or her God-given right to free speech, and take the time to proclaim the message of spiritual freedom—the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Jesus said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-19).

by

The Watchtower’s Struggle with Being Born Again

April 1, 2009 Watchtower

April 1, 2009 Watchtower

I’ve read some past Watchtower magazine articles in an attempt to verify the Jehovah’s Witness teaching about what it means to be born again. I’ve found their teaching on this is truly inadequate. In discussions with Jehovah’s Witnesses, I’ve tried to explain the biblical meaning of born again in many ways. During our conversations, none of my questions regarding the shortcomings of their teaching have been answered.

I was excited when I discovered the April 1 Watchtower cover story was about being born again. I hoped that maybe the writers would attempt to fill in some of the gaps in the teaching. Unfortunately, this article is nothing more than a rehash of articles I’ve already read.

These are some of the questions that remain unanswered concerning the teaching:

  1. The non-144,000 JWs are not born again. 1 John 5:1 says that everyone who believes Jesus is the Messiah is born again. How can JWs not be born again, yet profess to believe that Jesus is the Messiah?
  2. The non-144,000 JWs are not considered children of God. I agree that unless you are born again, you are not a child of God. I don’t think the average JW knows that the Watchtower teaches that he or she isn’t a child of God. If they’re not children of God, whose children are they? I believe they remain children of the devil.
  3. If being born again means having been raised from spiritual death to spiritual life (Ephesians 2:1), and most JWs aren’t spiritually alive, they must still be spiritually dead. Does that not concern them?
  4. Jesus said that one will not see the kingdom of God unless he or she is born again (John 3:3). Wouldn’t the paradise earth that most JWs aspire to be considered part of the kingdom of God? They won’t even see paradise earth without being born again.

Every time I’ve tried to discuss this with a Jehovah’s Witness, he or she attempts to change the subject to why he or she is satisfied with paradise earth, and why only the 144,000 are born again. Those are interesting topics to discuss, but I’ve tried to keep the conversation on the topic at hand: If you’re not born again, what are you?

In the Bible, some Jews claimed to be children of God, because they were children of Abraham (John 8:41). Jesus corrected their thinking, telling them that they were in fact children of the devil (John 8:44).

The reality is that for Jehovah’s Witnesses (and everyone else who is not born again), there are only two choices: Either you are reborn as a child of God, or you remain a child of the devil.

by

Jesus Was a Young Earth Creationist

NASA Image

NASA Image

Some Christians believe that Genesis 1–11—the story of the creation, flood and tower of Babel— are symbolic, and the events didn’t really happen the way the Bible plainly describes them. No doubt many of these individuals are sincere and searching for the truth, while others have just gone along with what they’ve learned in school without putting much thought into the matter.

A couple theories try to fit billions of years into the Genesis account.

  • The Day-Age Theory suggests that the days described in Genesis 1 were long periods of time. Many who adhere to this theory, including Hugh Ross, believe that the flood wasn’t global.
  • The Gap Theory proposes that there was a long period of time between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2. During this time, Satan fell, and the dinosaurs were created, lived and went extinct.

Some Christians try to combine evolution with those theories; some don’t. Some believe this first section of the Bible is merely a nice story and chose to believe in evolution. What they may not realize is that evolution is filled with blatant flaws, and that the theory and the Bible are mutually exclusive. Genesis 1 tells us that God created birds on day five and reptiles on day six—the exact opposite of evolution.

I think that the vast majority of those who believe any of the old Earth theories have more faith in science than the Bible. Because of that, they try to make the Bible fit with their beliefs, not recognizing the importance of conforming one’s beliefs to God’s Word.

We have an inerrant book that tells us how old the Earth is. We need to figure out what it tells us and believe it. There are plenty of hints elsewhere in the Bible, including Jesus’ words. I trust Jesus for my eternity, and I trust what He says about the age of the earth. He wasn’t just present when it was all created, He is the Creator (Colossians 1:16).

In Mark 10:6, Jesus said, “But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female.” This means that at the beginning of creation, God created a human male and a human female. With this one sentence, Jesus rules out all old Earth theories—and evolution.

Elsewhere in the Bible, the events in Genesis 1–11 are referred to as historical fact. Jesus referred to Noah’s flood in Matthew 24:37–39, as does Hebrews 11:7, 1 Peter 3:20, 2 Peter 2:5, and several other places in the Old Testament. If you believe Zechariah was a real person, you must believe Adam and Eve had a son named Abel, since Jesus refers to Zechariah and Abel in the same breath in Luke 11:50–51. In the midst of giving Moses the Ten Commandments, the Lord repeats that everything was created in six days (see Exodus 20:11).

The old Earth theories simply make no sense. Anyone who simply reads Genesis with no bias would reach the conclusion that the creation is very young. When you take the clear teaching of the rest of the Bible, there is simply no basis for anything but a young earth. The Bible simply knows nothing of the old Earth theories, and forges on with the unpopular notion that the earth was created in six literal days about 6,000 years ago.

by

Should All Christians Witness?

Preaching the gospel

Preaching the gospel

I have been challenged by a commenter on this post to explain why I say every Christian has been commanded to proclaim the gospel. I appreciate his challenge, because it has motivated me to further my understanding of what the Bible teaches about evangelism.

The Great Commission
I had been faced with the objection that the Great Commission was only to the 11 disciples in the past. If you think it through, and take what Jesus said in context, you’ll see that this commission was given to every Christian.

Jesus commanded the 11 disciples to go and make disciples. Then, He told the disciples to teach the new disciples to obey everything He commanded them to do.

Here are some of the things Jesus commanded the disciples to do:

  1. Believe in Him (John 6:29).
  2. Take up your cross (Matt 10:38).
  3. Seek first the kingdom of God (Matt 6:33).
  4. Go and make disciples (Matt. 28:19).
  5. Teach the new disciples to do everything on this list (Matt 28:20).

Clearly, the new disciples should be taught to make disciples, unless someone can explain why the command to go and make disciples isn’t included in everything Jesus commanded them to do.

The Office of Evangelist
The commenter made another point that evangelists are the only ones who should preach the gospel among the unsaved. One problem is that there are only three verses in the New Testament that use the word evangelist: Ephesians 4:11, 2 Timothy 4:5, and Acts 21:8. There is very little explanation offered as to what an evangelist specifically does, and to be dogmatic about one’s favored explanation seems presumptuous.

One thing we do know is that the job of the evangelist is to prepare God’s people for works of service (Eph. 4:11–12). This would indicate to me that one of the principal jobs of an evangelist is to lead God’s people in their evangelism efforts and train them in evangelism.

One Body, Many Parts
It’s true that not every Christian holds the office of evangelist. Does that mean that only those who are evangelists should evangelize? Think about it this way: We’re all commanded to pray. No one can say that he or she shouldn’t pray because that individual doesn’t have the gift of prayer. Likewise, we’re all commanded to evangelize. There is no such thing as the gift of prayer, and there is no such thing as the gift of evangelism. We have the privilege of both prayer and evangelism.

Did All Christians in the Bible Witness?
There are a limited number of stories of lay Christians preaching in the New Testament. Most of the accounts of evangelism involve Paul, Peter, Philip, and other early church leaders. However, this doesn’t mean that they were the only ones who spread the gospel.

In Philippians 1:14, Paul says, “And that most of the brethren, trusting in the Lord because of my imprisonment, have far more courage to speak the word of God without fear.”

After Stephen was stoned, persecution was on the rise, and all except the apostles (Acts 8:1) were scattered from Jerusalem. “Therefore, those who had been scattered went about preaching the word” (Acts 8:4).

How Can You Keep the Gospel to Yourself?
Those of us who have had our sins forgiven by God’s grace and mercy and will spend eternity in heaven have understood the greatest news in the history of mankind, and we have been made eternal beneficiaries of it. If we have truly received such a glorious gift, how can we keep it to ourselves? The joy it inspires must be evident in our lives—and spread to others. In Luke 8:16, Jesus said, “Now no one after lighting a lamp covers it over with a container, or puts it under a bed; but he puts it on a lampstand, so that those who come in may see the light.”

We will spend eternity with the One we pray to, the One we worship, and the One whose Word we read. This short life is our only opportunity to tell the unsaved about the glorious gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

by

Young Girl With More Guts Than Most Christian Men

There is little doubt that it takes guts to step out of our comfort zone to proclaim the gospel. Several men in my church have admitted to me that they’re just too scared to go out witnessing. It’s all right to be scared. It’s not all right to let your fear cause you to be disobedient.

If a little 13 year-old British girl can witness to college kids, surely the rest of us can. Here’s a documentary on a big British family. Deborah is able to get the gospel out on British national television several times.

It’s about 45 minutes to an hour long, but it’s worth watching. You can watch the remaining portions by clicking on “Continue Reading »”

Continue reading →

by

Ray Comfort is Dead On In His Newsletter

Living Waters sends out a weekly e-mail newsletter, and in today’s newsletter Ray Comfort gets to the root of a few issues I’ve been thinking about lately.

  • If two people who both live by the philosophy of “looking out for number one” happen to cross paths, won’t there be an inevitable conflict between them?
  • Evolution teaches that we’re animals that happen to be more highly evolved than others. Animals don’t care about right and wrong. If someone lived their life as if evolution is true, is there really any moral restraints on them?

People who believe those things are commonplace, and we’re seeing the consequences more and more. Ray cuts to the chase with this:

There have been about a dozen mass-shootings in the United States in recent months, and secular experts are still trying to piece together the profiles and common denominators of these murderers. However, every one of them had one thing in common. They all lacked a fear of God. If someone fears God they won’t lie to you, steal from you, or commit adultery with your spouse. They won’t even lust after them. They won’t hate you, harbor anger or be bitter towards you, and they certainly won’t kill you. “By mercy and truth iniquity is purged: and by the fear of the Lord men depart from evil.” (Proverbs 16:6, itallics added)

One of the major reasons this nation lacks the fear of God is that it’s rarely preached from the modern pulpit. Think of what Nathan did with David. He put the fear of God in him by saying “You are the man! Why have you despised the Commandment of the Lord?” (see 2 Samuel 12:7-9). Without such a reproof David would have simply remained an unrepentant man who made an unfortunate choice in life. But the reproof revealed that he was a criminal who had despised the moral Law, and that God’s wrath hovered over him for his terrible transgression.

We need to be Nathans to this nation and faithfully preach the Word, in season and out of season. We must “reprove, rebuke, exhort, with all patience and doctrine,” and the well-spring of our words must be love for sinners. We cannot let fear stop us from showing them that they have despised the Law, and that they have personally sinned against God, as Paul did in Romans 2:20-24.

In another portion of the newsletter, Living Waters reveals Hollywood’s humanist bias. The producers of Alfie left out inconvenient portions in their remake of the 1966 movie. If we’re just animals looking out for our own best interest, what’s to stop someone from murdering an unborn child? If the law is the only thing protecting human life, no one should sleep too easily. Laws can be changed.

by

Book review: Evangelism in the New Testament: A Plea for Biblically Relevant Evangelism by Jon Speed

evang-book2This book, short and sweet at only about 40 pages, makes an irrefutable case that the vast majority of evangelism that took place in the New Testament was among strangers. This goes directly against the idea that friendship evangelism is the ideal way to evangelize.

Personally, I’ve come to the belief that if you want to do friendship evangelism, or make balloon animals and pass them out and tell people Jesus loves them, you should go for it. However, be sure that you’re not discouraging those who are practicing confrontational (intentional witnessing to strangers) evangelism, because there’s a much better biblical case for this type of evangelism than for friendship evangelism.

On page 39, the author provides guidelines for what your church can do to become an evangelistic church.

  • Provide biblical, effective evangelism training.
  • Provide a wide variety of confrontational evangelism opportunities.
  • Encourage and work with those promoting Biblical evangelism in the congregation.
  • Have an evangelism budget.
  • Provide creative evangelistic outreaches for church members to invite unsaved friends to (ladies teas, sportsman dinners, career focused dinners, etc.).
  • Mention personal evangelistic opportunities in lessons and sermons.
  • Mention evangelistic prayer requests in appropriate settings.
  • Announce confrontational and invitational evangelistic opportunities and encourage and model involvement.
  • Invite guest speakers who specialize in evangelism.
  • Challenge one another to be intentionally evangelistic.
  • Pray the Lord of the harvest to raise up workers for the harvest (Matthew 9:38).

I think my wife is giving a lot of benefit of the doubt when she says our church does five of the eleven items. If we go to the most evangelistic church in our small town, and still don’t get a passing grade, what does that tell you about how good the church in America is at evangelism?

I encourage everyone who’s interested in the topic to to purchase the book, which is available here.

by

The Miraculous Evolution of the Giraffe

It’s that time of year again—time to make preparations for the big day. It’s a day when foolishness is celebrated, and pranksters run amok. It’s National Atheist’s Day, better known as April Fools’ Day. Today we’ll look at one of Charles Darwin’s most far-fetched theories—a theory even a child can laugh at. This is one that’s only suited for a holiday as foolish as National Atheists Day: the evolution of the giraffe.

Darwin speculated on the evolution of the giraffe:

“So under nature with the nascent giraffe, the individuals which were the highest browsers, and were able during dearths [drought] to reach even an inch or two above the others, will often have been preserved…for they will have roamed over the whole country in search of food….Those individuals which had some one part or several parts of their bodies rather more elongated than usual, would generally have survived. These will have intercrossed [bred] and left offspring, either inheriting the same bodily peculiarities, or with a tendency to vary again in the same manner; whilst the individuals, less favoured in the same respects will have been the most liable to perish…By this process long continued…it seems to me almost certain that any ordinary hoofed quadruped might be converted into a giraffe.”

According to Darwin, during a period of drought, the tallest gazelles (for example) would have had food to eat, while the shorter gazelles would have starved. The taller gazelles would have had taller offspring, and eventually, after millions of generations, gazelles became the giraffes we have today. Let’s play along with Darwin and see where his idea takes us.

While all of Africa’s other grazing animals seem to have done quite well, the shorter gazelles that weren’t quite as tall as their cousins starved. What caused them, specifically, to starve to death? Maybe, in seeing their fellow creatures eat leaves from tall trees, they were too proud to lower their heads to eat grass. This may seem plausible until we recognize that all grazing animals (including modern giraffes) bend down to drink water. Darwin, however, maintains they died of starvation—not thirst.

Since only the tallest giraffes survived, all the females also must have died, as females are on average two feet shorter than the males. How exactly, then, do giraffe’s reproduce today?

Another Huge Problem

The giraffe’s heart generates enormous pressure in order to pump blood all the way up its long neck to its brain. Were it not for its complex blood pressure regulating system, when a giraffe bent over, it would suffer serious brain damage. If it managed to bend over without dying, it wouldn’t be able raise its head again. Its brain would suffer from a sudden lack of oxygen, and it would pass out. Here’s a four minute video with more info on that:

Furthermore, after a century of intense fossil exploration, no intermediate forms are on display in any museum in the world. The billions of giraffazelles have kept their remains well hidden. There is no intermediate form linking the giraffe to any other creature.

If you still believe that giraffes evolved, you may want to check yourself into a mental institution, or the biology Ph.D. program at a university. There are few other places where such fairy tales are believed. But keep your chin up. National Atheist’s Day is right around the corner.