Great testimony from a pastor, Jason Hubbard. He admits the church he led was not a praying church until God stopped Jason in his tracks and challenged him about whose church it was. Did Jason truly believe the church could function as God’s church without prayer? That was the question God put to Jason. Listen to the transformation that occurred when Jason confessed his folly to the church and they obeyed God and became a praying church.
Author Archives: Ron Edwards
WAKE UP CALL FOR THE CHURCH- HOW WILL IT RESPOND?
According to recent Lifeway Research, many pastors are apparently having an “aha” moment due to the tide of our times. They are at last seeing current events today as things the Bible forecast for the end-of-days. The big question is; how will this affect what they preach and how they do church?
Let’s be optimistic. When real church resumes, the pulpits will boldly announce that we are in the last days and Jesus is coming soon. Get your houses in order!
Numerous biblical texts speak of disturbances in the creation. These disturbances have quite a range: earthquakes wars, famines and plagues or pestilence explicitly in Luke 21.
Three out of four pastors in the survey have noted that world and church events have meaning today. They include the rise in apostasy, the love of believers growing cold, the decline in traditional morals, national conflicts, natural disasters, famines, and even the rise in anti-Semitism. So is a new day in the church approaching thanks to some kind of a wake-up call?
Almost 25 years ago, the church-growth movement said teaching any kind of eschatology would not grow the church. Pastors were encouraged to keep quiet about the soon return of the Lord. Pastor Rick Warren even said in his Purpose Driven Life book that teaching Bible prophecy would distract you from your purpose and make you unfit for the Kingdom of God. Pastors listened to him!
In the information produced by Lifeway Research, Joel Rosenberg states, “For too long, many pastors have shied away from teaching on birth pangs and events leading up to the Second Coming of the Lord, but the current pandemic demonstrates the need for solid, non-sensational preaching done in a biblical manner.”
Almost 70% of those surveyed believe the modern re-birth of Israel and the re-gathering of millions of Jewish people were fulfilment’s of prophecies in the Bible. That’s great news but that was 72 years ago. Why haven’t you been preaching that, pastors? More than that, 40% of the pastors surveyed believe that the establishment of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem two years ago was a sign of the last days! This is great sermon material! It could get a church fired up! But most pulpits I hear about are still silent on the topic.
TRUTH ABOUT CORONA VIRUS AND VACCINES
This will shake your faith in governments and media. It is hard to dispute the information given by Dr Buttar. Check out his website and the videos on vaccines. When I put this information along with data I looked at recently on the USA, National Security Agency (NSA) it gives me goose bumps. NSA has a budget of 10 to 15 billion dollars a year and its main goal is population control. Anything governments can do to get total control it seems they will do. Ultimately, chips inserted into individuals will seem desirable. The Bible tells us that in the “end times” that unless people take the mark of the Antichrist, they will not be able to buy and trade. It seems we are rapidly moving towards the last days before Jesus returns.
GREATEST BIBLE PROPHECY EVER
Seems like an outrageous claim, but it is hard to discount the case made by Nelson Walters, a friend and a man I greatly admire. I am confident you will agree this is another great video from Nelson. It’s on an amazing prophecy which reveals that we are living in Biblical end times with Jesus return less than 100 years distant. Nelson mentions the early church father, Barnabus, but I would include Justin Martyr, Irenaeus and Lactantius. They all held to the sexta-septamillennial construct which is that the days of creation are prophetically one thousand years (with the Lord one day is as a thousand years). Hence, six thousand years of earths history is followed by the Millennial Reign of Jesus Christ. At the end of which will be the destruction of this earth, the second resurrection and the White Throne Judgement. The new heaven and new earth will then herald the start of the eighth thousand year of man’s history and eternity with our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.
This Scripture from 2 Peter is such an important “end times” pointer.
“That you may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of us, the apostles of the Lord and Savior, knowing this first: that scoffers will come in the last days, walking according to their own lusts, and saying, “Where is the promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation.” For this they wilfully forget: that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of water and in the water, by which the world that then existed perished, being flooded with water. But the heavens and the earth which are now preserved by the same word, are reserved for fire until the day of judgement and perdition of ungodly men.
But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” 2 Peter 3:2-8
ORIGIN OF FIRST SELF-REPRODUCING CELL?
A huge problem for naturalistic evolution is how life with its complex coded information could have arisen spontaneously in evolution’s very first living cell. I would suggest it is adequate proof for an Intelligent Designer and a good reason to take a look at the Bible’s account of Creation in Genesis. We learn God created a perfect world and humans made in the image of their Creator. Man’s SIN is the reason for death and suffering in this world. The Good News is that our loving Creator has provided the solution to restore our relationship with Him and overcome death. Jesus is His name.
Extract from editorial in Creation Magazine Vol 30 No.4 2017.
We have previously written about how scientists have attempted to determine the simplest self-reproducing cell (see creation.com/simple). This hypothetical cell was said to require a minimum of 256 genes. The problem for
evolutionists is that they cannot appeal to natural selection to explain the first cell. That’s because natural selection requires a living, reproducing cell to pass on any trait selected for! Further research in 2006 increased this figure to 387 protein-coding and 43 RNA-coding genes.
In 2016, the minimalist genome was once again increased with the creation of a synthetic self-reproducing bacterium: this time, to 473 genes (531,560 ‘letters’), including 65 whose function are unknown but which were essential for the survival of the cell. This is not much less than Mycoplasma genitalium (482 genes, 582,970 letters)—which itself is a parasite of even more complex organisms.
How then can evolutionists explain the origin of the very first self-reproducing cell? It is a mathematical impossibility for just one gene to have arisen by chance—much less 473.
The Bible says in John 1:1, “In the beginning was the WORD” and of course we now know that every living thing has at its nucleus, DNA, a word of thousands of letters controlling all the functions of each cell. What follows in John 1:1 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
Research highlights, Nature 439(7074):246–247, January 2006 | doi:10.1038/439246a.
Glass, J.I. et al., Essential genes of a minimal bacterium, Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 103(2):425– 430, January 2006 | doi:10.1073/pnas.0510013103.
Hesman, T., Scientists build minimum genome bacterium, sciencenews.org, March 2016.
AGE OF THE EARTH IS SUCH A CRITICAL ISSUE
Many Christians try to reconcile the biblical age with the secular ages because there is such a massive disparity between the two – six thousand years and billions of years. Because it is has become such a controversial issue most Bible Colleges have retreated from dealing with the subject and yet it is such a critical issue to belief in God’s Word. This CMI video does an excellent job of showing how simply it can be shown that the evidence in the rock layers supports a massive catastrophic event in the past that totally changed the earth’s topography and buried millions of things quickly (many are relevantly intact) in rock layers all over the earth. Suddenly, the billions of years have vanished and so has evolution. The Bible describes such an event and most civilisations around the world have such an event (Flood story) recorded in their history.
OTHER HELPFUL RESOURCES: 1. Refuting Compromise https://creation.com/s/10-2-575, 2. The Age of the Earth DVD https://creation.com/s/30-9-534 3. What the Bible and Science Say About the Age of the Earth https://creation.com/s/30-9-55
MILLIONS AT RISK AS FAMINE GRIPS THREE AFRICAN NATIONS
Revelation 6:5 -6
“When He opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, “Come and see.” So I looked, and behold, a black horse, and he who sat on it had a pair of scales in his hand. And I heard a voice in the midst of the four living creatures saying, “A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius; and do not harm the oil and the wine.”
It almost appears that we can hear the galloping of the black horse of the book of Revelation as we learn of new reports that over 16 million people are at risk of dying of famine in three African Nations. “We are living a horrible drought and a difficult time,” said Shukurow, a Somali mother of a malnourished child. “We hardly have enough to get by, let alone to think of our future.”
The UN humanitarian chief, Stephen O’Brien, says the world is facing “the largest humanitarian crisis since the creation of the United Nations” and says the organisation needs urgent resources to avert the famine crisis.
Across the Horn of Africa, people are starving. A catastrophic combination of conflict, high food prices and drought has left more than 11 million people in desperate need. The United Nations has been sounding the alert for months. We have resisted using the “f-word” — famine — but on Wednesday we officially recognised the fast-evolving reality. There is famine in parts of Somalia. And it is spreading.
This is a wake-up call we cannot ignore. Everyday, I hear the most harrowing reports from our UN teams on the ground. Somali refugees, their cattle and goats dead from thirst, walking for weeks to find help in Kenya and Ethiopia. Orphans who arrive alone, their parents dead, terrified and malnourished, in a foreign land.
We must also recognise that Kenya and Ethiopia, which have generously kept their borders open, face enormous challenges of their own. The largest refugee camp in the world, Dadaab, is already dangerously over-crowded with some 380,000 refugees. Many thousands more are waiting to be registered. In neighbouring Ethiopia, 2,000 people a day are arriving at the Dolo refugee camp – also struggling to keep pace. This compounds a food crisis faced by almost 7 million Kenyans and Ethiopians at home. In Djibouti and Eritrea, tens of thousands of people are also in need — and potentially many more.
Imagine the catastrophe ahead for theses nations. Many, already with deficient immune systems, without access to adequate health services (ventilators – unlikely) will die due to the Corona virus.
GOD DOES RESPOND TO OUR PRAYERS: PRESIDENT TRUMP PRAYS
On Good Friday, President Donald Trump held a service in the Oval Office. I call it a “service” because the things he said were pointing people back to God in this tumultuous time. Once he was done speaking, he turned it over to Bishop Harry R. Jackson. Bishop Jackson took that time to pray a blessing over the president and over the nation.
It was refreshing to see such a spiritual moment in the Oval Office.
“We as Christians believe that prayer changes things,” Bishop Jackson says. “We believe that, although God’s in control of everything, and He has given an opportunity for us to, in a sense, influence the future destiny of a nation, the destiny of our families.
Bishop Jackson believes prayer is especially vital right now with the coronavirus pandemic raging. A few weeks ago, he received a revelation that prayer was going to impact the nation’s destiny. He was reading in Numbers 16 about the time God sent a plague to the people of Israel because a group was rebelling against Moses and Aaron.
Moses knew the plague was because of the people’s rebellion, so he told Aaron to run and grab his censer—which Bishop Jackson says represents the prayers of the saints—and stand “between the dead and the living” (Numbers 16:48a).
When Aaron obeyed, God stopped the plague and showed mercy to Israel.
“Many national prophetic figures got that same Scripture,” Bishop Jackson says. “Many of us have believed that God is going to mitigate the impact of the plague if the church prays. Ironically, from Friday at noon to Monday and Tuesday at noon, all of a sudden, we found the governor talking about the fact that everything had peaked in New York. And it seemed as though our Passover prayer—asking God to pass over, asking God to use our prayers to be like Aaron’s incense, forming a line between the living and the dead—it actually worked.”
Bishop Jackson reiterates that it wasn’t his prayer, or anyone’s prayer specifically, that changed the tide of the coronavirus deaths. But rather, it was God’s mercy in response to His people’s cries.
And more of God’s mercy is certainly on its way. Bishop Jackson believes God is even stirring up awakening in this season.
“I believe that we’re going to see evangelism at its best manifest in this season,” he says. “I’m excited about it. And awakening is at the door, following the shaking, so that our confidence might not be in the arm of the flesh, but in the Word of the living God.”
Let’s hope that Bishop Jackson is right with his evangelism belief but he is certainly right that God answers prayer so let’s make sure we keep that channel open and intensify our prayer efforts.
CHURCH AND LIFE CHANGED RADICALLY
In evangelist Nick Hall’s 10-hour Livestream session called “Leader Check In” this week, Francis Chan, former megachurch pastor, who recently left America to become a missionary in Asia, urged those watching to “repent” and self reflect because there’s a possibility we won’t go back to “church as usual, life as usual.”
“What if God is taking us to a different place?” Chan shared from the balcony of his new home in Hong Kong. “Many of us are anxious to get back to normal. I hope your anxiety is not just so you can go back and get busy with so many things.”
“What a powerful time to repent,” he said as he reflected on the fact that no one knows what will happen during and following the global pandemic.
“This could be the beginning of the end,” he stressed. He said he believes this occurrence is ushering in a new period for the church as a whole.
“God is doing something now that I’ve never seen in my lifetime … It feels like we’re headed into a new season.”
The preacher hopes for this to be a time of “growth” for those watching. This is a time to remember that Scripture says “to live is Christ and to die is gain.”
“Please get right with the Lord,” Chan implored, as he referenced James 4:10, which says, ”Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.” “I’m begging you to think about humbling yourselves.
“This virus is showing us how unprepared we are,” he noted and then challenged people to be reliant on God alone. He said in a world where technology is also capable of failing us, God alone is omnipresent.
When speaking of the lockdown, Chan wondered, “Could [this] be a blessing in disguise for some of you?”
He admitted that the quarantine has helped him spend more time with God and his family as he is usually travelling every month.
“If you were truly isolated all by yourself, even without the Bible, would you be OK? We have the internet right now so we are not truly isolated, but if we were,” Chan asked those watching if they would be able to lead themselves in their walk with the Lord, or even lead others to Christ. “Perhaps we are not prepared for such a situation.”
He also told his pastor peers: “We no longer have the luxury of giving nice, lighthearted sermons that are softened with jokes on either side. My little self-help tips are not enough anymore,” he said.
Now is the time to rely solely on Scripture and the spirit of God, he emphasised.
HUGE PROPHESIED END TIMES SIGN
Is this how capitalism dies? Through decrees from what once were the ivory towers of capitalism, no less?
The Fed is now up to $6 trillion of liquidity, or free money in the sense that it is taking over the role of large banks at 0% interest.
Go global and we’re approaching $20 trillion of central bank pledges and action.
None of the questions that tempered the start of QE are being raised. There is virtually no one talking about moral hazard. What does it mean for our society that government is pushing so far into what was — and may never be again — the private sector? No one will bother answering.
There is no one standing in the way of the largest transfer of wealth in history. The firewalls built into the system are being torn down, and the free markets are dying with barely a whimper.
Even Deutsche Bank, undoubtedly a major beneficiary, seems concerned about where this is going. George Saravelos, global head of Deutsche Bank’s foreign exchange research, just wrote in a report entitled “The end of the free market: impact on currencies and beyond” that:
“In a matter of weeks, policymakers have become a backstop for private-sector credit markets. At the extreme, central banks could become permanent command economy agents administering equity and credit prices, aggressively subduing financial shocks. It would be a bi-polar world of financial repression with high real economy volatility but very low financial volatility. A ‘zombie’ market‘.”
The Fed’s most recent announcement — $2.3 trillion in greatly expanded funding — goes as far as dipping into the junk bond market through buying up ETF shares.
A free market this is not. There is no version of capitalism that can divorce risk from profits. There is no version of this that forces society to shoulder the burden while a select few capture the profits.
Never before have we seen such centralised control. For the first time ever, can we see the world being set up for the prophesied Man of Sin (Antichrist) who speaks PEACE and PROSPERITY as long as you take his mark and give him control. Church do you realise where we are in Biblical history. When Jesus told us in the the Olivet Discourse, how it will end before His second coming, He specifically ended with, “SEE, I HAVE TOLD YOU BEFOREHAND” (Matthew 24:25). He told us beforehand so we would not be caught out and be taken in by this man of PEACE.
LIVING ETERNAL NOW 