Make prayer the steering wheel of your life as do Alex and Stephen Kendrick but you also need to get out of the driver’s seat and let the Holy Spirit take control.
Brothers Alex and Stephen Kendrick, who have created iconic Christian films like “Facing the Giants,” “Courageous,” “Fireproof,” “War Room,” and “Overcomer,” are gearing up for a unique, new project they believe is a “divine appointment” for the times in which we’re living. “Lifemark,” which releases in select theaters nationwide on September 9 with Fathom Events, tells the true story of an adopted young man’s journey to meet his birth parents. The film comes as society boisterously debates the life issue and as the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to potentially overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 case that codified nationalized abortion. The Kendricks, who partnered with actor Kirk Cameron to create the powerful adoption story, know the timing isn’t a coincidence.
This movie is a result of prayer and letting God direct the Kendrick brother’s actions.
Watch this video and be inspired. If you live in the USA watch out for the movie, Lifemark in September.
Knowing God, as He is presented in scripture, is a non-negotiable for Christians. Theology offers an eternal well of joy and a shield of protection from the enemy. Any Christian who thinks they can continue with a “no creed but Christ” is setting themselves up for failure. Anyone with this paradigm should truly self-evaluate if they really love the Lord at all. A denial of the need for theology is a denial of the Lord Jesus.
“For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.“ Hebrews 4:12
It is impossible to know doctrine, love, or God without the scripture. This is where the oracles of God and His gospel are contained. It is this special means by which God has chosen to reveal Himself to us.
Psalm 119 is extraordinarily helpful here. I do not think it is a coincidence that the single longest chapter in scripture (176 verses) is dedicated to loving the law of God. The psalmist reminds us over and over how his true delight and protection are only found in knowing God, via His word. He writes:
“How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word. With my whole heart I seek you; let me not wander from your commandments! I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you. Blessed are you, O LORD; teach me your statutes! With my lips, I declare all the rules of your mouth. In the way of your testimonies, I delight as much as in all riches. I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways. I will delight in your statutes; I will not forget your word.” Psalms 119:9-16
A pursuit of theology is fundamental and vital to our makeup as human beings. Because we bear the Imago Dei (made in the image of God), we’re designed with a natural inclination for the spiritual and divine. We are wired to pursue theology – if not formally, then certainly informally. Even atheists, by their own self-admission, are going out of the way to classify themselves by an a-theological position. The great efforts made to publicly deny God are, in and of themselves, admissions of the great importance God plays in our world. It’s for reasons like these that statements that deny the need for theology are so absurd.
In Australia, WordLive from Scripture Union is a free, online Bible reading guide, to help you meet with God devotionally through the Bible. It is just one of the many Bible reading guides available free online for your use.
“Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” Proverbs 22:6
This Biblical truth is supported by Daniel A. Cox, senior fellow in polling and public opinion at the American Enterprise Institute, who also serves as director of the Survey Center on American Life, notes that “for as long as we have been able to measure religious commitments, childhood religious experiences have strongly predicted adult religiosity.”
Sadly, for nearly 30 years, notes Cox, research shows the share of Americans who identify as religious has consistently declined with each new generation. “This pattern continues with Generation Z demonstrating less attachment to religion than the millennial generation did,” he said.
Generation Z, born in the late 1990s and early 2000s, is now the least religious generation yet, with 34% of them identifying as religiously unaffiliated. Among millennials, 29% identify as religiously unaffiliated, while Generation X stands at 25%. Only 18% of baby boomers and 9% of the silent generation identify as religiously unaffiliated.
Cox pointed to a number of factors that have impacted a diminished view of organized religion, including a breach of trust.
“Gallup has found that trust and confidence in organized religion have plummeted over the past two decades. In 2021, only 37% of the public reported having a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in religious institutions, a massive decline since 2001 when 60 percent reported feeling confident,” he said.
He further added that while only 35% of Americans overall believe religion causes more harm than good, among the disaffiliated who were raised in religious homes, 69% say religion causes problems more than it provides solutions. Some 63% of Americans who have always been religiously unaffiliated also believe religion causes more problems in society than it solves.
Only a little more than half of Americans say raising children with religion is a benefit. Of more concern, 82% of the growing number of religiously unaffiliated disagree and only 40% of Gen Z see raising children with religion as a good thing.
We are fast approaching the time Jesus spoke of that precedes His second coming.
“Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake. And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.” Matthew 24:9-14
Like the people in Noah’s time who laughed and mocked as he built the ark, the end of this age will come when the overwhelming majority are unprepared.
“But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come. For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God, having a form of godliness, but denying its power.” 2 Timothy 3:1-5
“But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and did not know until the flood came and took them all away, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be.” Matthew 24:37-39
Full sized replica of Noah’s Ark built by Answers in Genesis, Williamstown Kentucky. Johan Huiber also built one in Holland.
Knowing this first of all, scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. They will say, “Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.” For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished.” 2 Peter 3:3-6
“But watch yourselves lest your hearts be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and cares of this life, and that day come upon you suddenly like a trap. For it will come upon all who dwell on the face of the whole earth. But stay awake at all times, praying that you may have strength to escape all these things that are going to take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.” Luke 21:34-36
The main reason for my trip to Africa was to meet up with the leaders of the Kenya House Church Movement that is serving the rural areas of Kenya and now North Tanzania.
However, as I am also involved with the International Christian Chamber of Commerce (www.iccc.net) and the former President of ICCC Australia is now in Rwanda (a short flight from Kenya) I decided to visit him in Kigali and meet some of the ICCC members there. This is a short report on my visit there.
Kigali is a beautiful city, lush green and clean, I did not see litter on the ground anywhere. What a transformation from the time of the Hutus and Tutsis genocide in 1994. At the time of the genocide, the Tutsi victims were specifically targeted by Hutu perpetrators because of their “race.” The most widely accepted scholarly estimates are around 500,000 to 662,000 Tutsi deaths. These two groups of people truly believed they were completely different from each other and physically they are. The Tutsi are tall and the Hutu are short and stocky. What a transformation today, in modern-day Rwanda, referring to Hutu or Tutsi anywhere but in a historical context is not approved of, and done in a political context, it is actually illegal.
The current President Paul Kagame does care about reconciliation, and the fact that leading Hutu figures have been recruited to the party and the military (in effect an extension of the party) shows that they are not Tutsi supremacists. Poverty alleviation schemes target all Rwandans, and ordinary (former) Hutus benefit a lot when the country became more stable and prosperous.
Christianity is the largest religion in Rwanda. The most recent national census from 2012 indicates that: 43.7% of Rwanda’s population are Roman Catholic, 37.7% are Protestant, 11.8% are Seventh-day Adventist, 2.0% are Muslim (mainly Sunni), and 2.5% claim no religious affiliation, and 0.7% are Jehovah’s Witness.
I could live in Rwanda, the people are friendly and the English language is an important language spoken in Rwanda. It comes second after the Kinyarwanda language in its strategic importance. It is the official language in Kigali and the language of instruction in Rwandan schools.
I had an ICCC (International Christian Chamber of Commerce) meeting with several of the leaders in Rwanda and South Africa. It is obvious from these men’s stories that where Christianity is dominant there has been tremendous growth and therefore opportunities for businessmen that want to help these countries to prosper.
My schedule was tough with much travel but my body now in its 86th year on this planet held up amazingly well: thank you, Lord. I am living proof that God will equip you and sustain you if you are obedient and do what He has called you to do. For me, it is to alert the church to Jesus’ second coming and to rule and reign with Him in His Millennial Kingdom.
picture of Kigali, the capital of Rwanda from the apartment where I was staying
I also spent two days in Arusha, Tanzania to visit David Owens the pastor of a Vineyard Church there. I attended the Vineyard Church, David pastored in Ramsgate, and then Hurstville in Sydney, Australia many years ago now. David had me give my testimony and preach on the Holy Spirit at the Sunday morning service. We differ in our theology of end times so I did not speak on Jesus’ soon coming return and the need to be prepared for the prophesied tribulation, even great tribulation that Christians will experience in the years ahead. I hope I planted a seed for him to reconsider his preterist view.
The Preterist view of the end times is based on a symbolic view of the Book of Revelation that holds most of its prophecies have already been fulfilled. Preterism denies the future, literal fulfillment of most of its predictions, focusing instead on allegory and symbolism.
inside picture of the Vineyard Church in Arusha, Tanzania
It’s not about faith to get out of the situation, it’s about having faith to see God in and through the situation! In this video, Ps Shane Willard encourages us with Paul’s story of deliverance. Let’s declare over our situations; that this will turn out for my deliverance — no matter how this turns out I will keep my heart pure, hands clean, and taste sweet.
NON NEGOTIABLES
We are to defend and protect our belief in the name of God’s Son Jesus Christ and do it in a way that defends and protects our love for one another.We can do this because Jesus made it possible for our Heavenly Father to send the Holy Spirit to indwell our Spirit.
“And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God, and God in him. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us.” 1 John 3:23-24
God is over mankind and all of us are under God’s authority. Man is the pinnacle of God’s creation and human beings were given authority over all other aspects of that creation. These two facts of reality are unassailable– in virtue of this we, as free agents, are burdened with hierarchy. And, being burdened with it, we are burdened with “moral responsibility” and “inescapable accountability”.
The structures of the biological family and of God’s spiritual family, the Church, are also hierarchical. To advance this truth today will obviously put one in the crosshairs of many who resent hierarchy in both arenas. However, the Church’s purpose is not to be the culture, it is to subvert the culture and call it to repentance.
The Triune God Is the Source of Hierarchy
Jesus subordination to the Father discloses something transcendent to us: the eternal subordination of the second Person of the Trinity to the First:
““Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.” John 5:19
“Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me.” John 6:57
“No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again.This command I received from my Father.” John 10:18
These and several other passages, especially in John’s Gospel, reveal that there is subordination within the Trinity itself. This is why hierarchy can never cease to exist. Because there is a hierarchical relationship within the very Godhead, in the Son’s eternal subordination to the Father, and because the creation proclaims the glory of God, there can therefore never be a creation without hierarchy.
The problem, therefore, is not with hierarchy. The problem is what we as sinful creatures do with the authoritative roles that exist within hierarchies. That is the problem that requires our attention. All other attempts to eliminate hierarchy, authority, or subordination are but fool’s errands. They are quixotic undertakings that can never be realized and that only lead to our own misery as we continue to tilt at windmills.
Servant Leadership
“For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.“
Mark 10:45
“Do you understand what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.” John 13:12-14
And so while bad hierarchies or bad people who fill authoritative roles within a hierarchy may corrupt our understanding of it, it is not “hierarchy£ itself that is the problem. In fact, it is part of the solution to our modern malaise, our current malady of “tyranny of the masses.”
Unfortunately, for a culture saturated with Critical Theory in its various manifestations, just the mention of hierarchy, often construed as “subordination,” will engender a kind of primal rage– one that goes so far as to abandon the neutrality of law itself. Mari Matsuda, one of the founding mothers of Critical Legal Theory, explains the need to dismantle hierarchy and the means by which it might be done:
“Through our sometimes painful work in coalition we are beginning to form a theory of subordination; a theory that describes it, explains it; and gives us the tools to end it. As lawyers working in coalition, we are developing a theory of law taking sides, rather than law as value-neutral.” Matsuda, Beside My Sister, Facing the Enemy: Legal Theory out of Coalition
For Matsuda, any structure of authority in the culture is a threat to autonomy. It is “subordination” to an authority other than the self, and subordination of any form to an external authority is treated as an intrinsic evil. The means to end “subordination” for Matsuda is to turn the law itself into a tool of political activism; to make the law “take sides.”
In this vision of the law, lady justice (or “person justice”) has the blindfold removed. Now the all-seeing eye of justice can impose justice where justice has been neglected. But this imposed justice cannot tolerate inequality of any kind, and so hierarchy in all its forms and manifestations must go–to include hierarchy in the family. As is with any Marxist-inspired mode of thought, however, the injustice that might have to occur in the process of righting previous injustices is given little to no consideration.
Jesus, unlike modern, Ivy league-trained lawyers, has a very different view of hierarchy and authority. On the one hand, he commends those who recognize their place in hierarchical structures, praising them in fact for their faith:
“When Jesus had entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, asking for help. “Lord,” he said, “my servant lies at home paralyzed, suffering terribly.”Jesus said to him, “Shall I come and heal him?” The centurion replied, “Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. But just say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and that one, ‘Come,’ and he comes. I say to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”When Jesus heard this, he was amazed and said to those following him, “Truly I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith. I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.But the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Then Jesus said to the centurion, “Go! Let it be done just as you believed it would.” And his servant was healed at that moment.” Matthew 8:5-13
The centurion’s grasp of his place, both as a man under authority and one in authority, is held up by Christ as a model for others. Of course what stands out in this account is that the man in authority, the centurion, comes to Jesus on behalf of his servant–out of genuine concern, out of love, for the one under his authority.
This is servant leadership. It is the same kind of servant leadership that Jesus Himself exemplifies in paradigmatic form as the Creator of the universe who comes into His own creation to serve it:
“For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many”.Mark 10:45
“Blessed and holy is the one who shares in the first resurrection! Over such the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ, and they will reign with him for a thousand years.” Revelation 20:6
Those who demand a naturalistic explanation (no miracles allowed!) for distant starlight from Christians don’t seem to realize that the standard ‘big bang’ secular view of origins entails miracles—but without a miracle worker! The problem is that the distribution of the background radiation in the universe is fairly uniform, but there has not been enough time for radiation (at the speed of light) to disperse over such a large universe. This is called the ‘horizon problem’. It is really the big bang’s very own ‘light time-travel’ problem. To ‘explain’ this, cosmologists invoked a period of super-fast expansion of the universe—much faster than the speed of light—for a brief time just after the ‘bang’. This was dubbed ‘inflation’. What started it, how it could proceed, and what stopped it are all mysteries. These are in effect naturalistic miracles, with no sufficient cause or explanation.2 They are used to prop up a theory that would not work without them.
So, it is not that miracles are not allowed in explaining origins. Ironically, they are only disallowed when it comes to biblical creation, which the Bible says is miraculous!
Bible-believing Christians are ‘streets ahead’ of secularists here because we have an all-powerful God who is able to do things beyond our ken.
Great is our Lord, and abundant in power; his understanding is beyond measure. The Lord lifts up the humble; he casts the wicked to the ground. (Psalm 147:5–6)
God calls us to humbly submit to Him and His Word.
Dr Catchpoole has a B.Ag.Sc. (Hons) from the University of Adelaide, and was awarded his Ph.D. by the University of New England (NSW).
“When did I realise that the earth could be no older than about 6,000 years.? The exact moment that turned my thinking around was when a simple image was put up, of Eden with layers of fossil bones in the earth beneath Adam and Eve. This showed the stark implications for Christianity if e.g. dinosaur fossils were millions of years old. That would mean there was not only death before the Fall; many fossils also show evidence of suffering, bloodshed and violence, and diseases like bone cancer. Yet after Adam and Eve were created, God called everything He had made “very good” (Genesis 1:31). I realised that it made no sense for God to have looked at tumorous dinosaur bones on Day 6, then call this very good, knowing that cancer would cause such enormous future human misery.
The Eden-on-bones scenario also raised a fundamental doctrinal issue. If we put the shedding of blood before sin, then why did God in Jesus shed blood because of sin? (Genesis 3:21, Hebrews 9:22, 10:4–10) I could see that my compromising of God’s Word by believing the secular millions of years completely destroyed the whole basis for the Atonement (1 Corinthians 15:21–22)1.
Evolutionary geneticists have themselves realised that mutations accumulate so quickly (about 60–100 per person per generation), that the human species should have become extinct at least ten times over. Evolutionary geneticist Alexey Kondrashov asks, “Why have we not died 100 times over?*
That presumes we’ve been here for the 100,000+ years of the evolutionary timeline. It’s not a problem in the Bible’s 6,000-year timeline, with only about 200 generations since Adam. We’re still going downhill fast (Romans 8:19–22), but it’s understandable we haven’t gone extinct—there simply hasn’t been enough time.
The importance of the age of the earth in presenting the gospel message is demonstrated by the following testimony of an aboriginal man.
“I’ve been locked up in every jail in Queensland, so I’ve had the Gospel preached to me more times than I can count. But I ain’t never heard the Gospel like this. Just think … we [Aboriginal people] haven’t been here 60,000 years like they tell us; we come from Noah just 4,500 years ago, and Adam 6,000 years ago—along with everyone else alive today— that’s powerful! So Christ died for everyone—whitefella and blackfella!“
*Kondrashov, A., Contamination of the genome by very slightly deleterious mutations: why have we not died 100 times over? J. Theoretical Biology 175:583–594, 1995.
Extract from article in the latest Creation magazine from CMI (www.creation.com) Creation magazine interviews former CMI speaker/scientist Dr David Catchpoole
As the previous post revealed the events unfolding in our time identify Mystery Babylon and its role in the end times? Initially, Mystery Babylon is seated on the Beast and is in control of it. Mystery Babylon is a great city and is first mentioned in Genesis 10:8, back then when it was part of Nimrod’s Kingdom it was a combination of cities. Mystery Babylon is an empire but it must have a capital. Will its capital be in New York which is the headquarters of the United Nations or perhaps the globalists might decide a new location is more appropriate like the new smart city in construction now, NEOM might be its capital.
500 billion dollar megacity in Saudi Arabia
Even prior to the Antichrist we learn that Mystery Babylon persecutes and kills Christians
“And on her forehead was written a name of mystery: “Babylon the great, mother of prostitutes and of earth’s abominations.” And I saw the woman, drunk with the blood of the saints, the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.” Revelation 17:5-6
The harlot, Mystery Babylon rides the Beast but the Beast (Antichrist) turns against Mystery Babylon.
“Alas! Alas! You great city, you mighty city, Babylon! For in a single hour your judgment has come.” Revelation 18:10
LIVING ETERNAL NOW 