EVIDENCE FOR A UNIVERSE THAT WAS CREATED

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When the world’s most powerful space telescope, James Webb Space Telescope was launched in 2021, its “primary aim” was to “shed light on our cosmic origins”. Its findings have been eagerly anticipated.

The images coming back contradict secular expectations … Very early in the Big Bang, we should not see highly structured galaxies at the edge of the universe. Yet, that is what the James Webb Space Telescope is showing us.

You will be glad you watched this video with Dr. Mark Harwood as he explains the consequences of what the James Webb Space Telescope reveals.

WHAT DOES THE BIBLE TEACH ON HELL?

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It is good to see more Biblical teaching on the fate of unbelievers. It is certainly not eternal conscious torment that has been the teaching of most institutional churches. Gary Black of Life, Hope, and Truth Ministries (www.lifehopeandtruth.com) explains why hell is not a place of eternal torment and how the Christian world came to that mistaken idea.

The research I did for my own book on this topic: Lake of Fire – Terminal Punishment/Second Death; Eternal Conscious Torment; Universal Redemption? (available as an ebook on Amazon) revealed that in the first five centuries, there were six known theological schools. Four of them taught that all people would eventually be rescued from Hell (Apocatastasis): these being the theological schools at Alexandria, Antioch, Caesarea, and Edessa/Nisbis. One school, Ephesus, taught Annihilationism (that sinners are totally incinerated into nothingness in the Lake of Fire). Only one theological school, Rome/Carthage taught eternal punishment. Source: The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, Universalism entry, p. 96, Baker Book House. In fact, a case can be made that when the Church rejected a high view of God’s goodness and replaced it with a view of God as an eternal torturer, the Dark Ages began, almost to the day.

WHO AM I? SOLVING THE IDENTITY PUZZLE

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I have spoken about Martyn Isles on many occasions as I have watched God use him to mightily impact Australia for Christ when he was with the organisation, Australian Christian Lobby. God has now expanded his ministry by elevating him to CEO of Answers in Genesis (AIG), a ministry based in the USA but started by an Australian, Ken Ham.

Martyn and Ken were recently in Australia where they held a series of meetings in Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane, and Melbourne entitled “Living in Babylon“. In total, more than ten thousand people were directly reached by the messages and many more are watching them online. If you have not seen them make sure you do and encourage others to do the same.

Martyn has written a book that every pastor needs to read if they are to reach Gen Z, a generation that has grown up with an evolutionary mindset.

Western Schools, Universities, Media, and Governments teach evolution and operate as if God does not exist. Hence we see an obsession with self as seen in the rise of psychology, genders and sexualities, and identity politics. As Martin rightly points out, the identity crisis has resulted in people looking at themselves and coming up with subjective answers based on how they feel and attributes supplied by political activists, ideologues, and pop culture.

Young people are encouraged with notions like loving yourself, living true to yourself, being your best self, following your heart, believing in yourself, living your truth… or phrases like “you do you,” “you are enough,” “you’re worth it,” “you’re beautiful just as you are.” This self-talk has changed the kinds of things people hold up as virtues. We need to be authentic: if your actions are true to “you” then they are good for you and are justifiable. It is the same idea that makes it possible to say, “My truth.” In other words, we define what is right and even what is “true” based on how we feel. Seeing ourselves as the ultimate authority instead of God.

The virtue of self-belief is a staple these days – no motivational speech or life advice is complete without it. The resources we need for our own achievements are found in our attitude to who we are.

The Big Mistake the world is making is that they believe that “self” is good. The Bible and Jesus specifically make it clear that “self” is not good, in fact, it is profoundly bad.

““What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.” Mark 17:20-23

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? “I the Lord search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.” Jeremiah 17:9-10

RUSSELL BRAND SPEAKS ON HIS COMING BAPTISM

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Brand says many returning to Christianity as the world crumbles.

Actor and comedian Russell Brand announced Friday that he is going to be baptized this weekend, the culmination of his months-long public wrestling with the tenets of Christianity.

“This Sunday, I’m taking the plunge,” Brand, 48, said in a video he posted to X. “I’m getting baptized.”

Listen to what he has to say. I think you will be pleasantly surprised. I was.

PROPHESIED END TIMES APOSTATE CHURCH PROUD OF OUR SIN

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The Supreme Court of Finland confirmed Friday that Finnish parliamentarian Päivi Räsänen will face trial a third time over her five-year-old Bible verse tweet that criticized the Finnish Lutheran Church for promoting LGBT “pride month.”

Police began investigating the grandmother of 11 shortly after her 2019 tweet in which she posted a photo from the book of Romans and questioned how the Finnish Lutheran Church could agree with “shame and sin” being presented as “a matter of pride.”

Räsänen, who led Finland’s Christian Democratic Party from 2004 to 2015 and served as the country’s interior minister from 2011 to 2015, is being dragged into court again despite having been acquitted twice by lower courts on hate crime charges, according to a statement from lawyers at Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) International.

“In a democratic Western nation in 2024, nobody should be on trial for their faith — yet in Finland throughout the prosecution of Päivi Räsänen and Bishop Pohjola, we have seen something akin to a ‘heresy’ trial, where Christians are dragged through court for holding beliefs that differ from the approved orthodoxy of the day,” Paul Coleman, executive director of ADF International said.

The state’s persistence in going after Räsänen and Pohjola for nearly half a decade despite multiple acquittals is “alarming,” Coleman said, fearing “the process is the punishment in such instances, resulting in a chill on free speech for all citizens observing.”

“Their right to speak freely is everyone’s right to speak freely,” he added.

European governments have increasingly clamped down on speech critical of homosexuality in recent years.

Earlier this month, France’s gender equality minister Aurore Bergé called for the prosecution of Father Matthieu Raffray, a Roman Catholic priest who drew the ire of the state for describing homosexual inclinations as “a weakness” that must be fought like any other sin.

In Malta, Matthew Grech faced criminal charges under the country’s conversion therapy ban last year for giving his Christian testimony about leaving a homosexual lifestyle on a radio show. The radio hosts who gave him a platform were also charged.

Speaking about proposed anti-hate speech legislation in Ireland that would apply to sexual orientation, ADF CEO Kristen Waggoner told The Christian Post in December that her organization perceives “a global trend toward censorship.”

“And it’s not just a disregard for free speech; it’s an active targeting to silence speech by the government,” she said, adding that the United States is not immune to such trends despite the U.S. Constitution.

We should not be surprised at these actions as Jesus told us that great tribulation would precede His return.

“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.” Matthew 24:9-12

Jon Brown is a reporter for The Christian Post.

IN AN INCREASINGLY GODLESS SOCIETY PEOPLE ARE BLINDED TO THE TRUTH

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The Bible tells us, that Satan has “blinded the minds of unbelievers so that they cannot see the light of the Gospel” (2 Corinthians 4:4), and the extent of this mind control is truly remarkable. The insistence that it is a fact that ‘primitive’ life emerged out of the oceans, by purely natural processes, is breathtaking, given that scientists have absolutely no idea how it could have happened. Evolutionists are hard-pressed to identify more than one or two mutations that appear to have added information to genomes,1 yet they insist that this happened billions and billions of times throughout history, to create all the interconnectedness and complexity of the living world. The dogma of an exceedingly ancient Earth, when current rates of erosion indicate that the continents would have been flattened many times over, were they really millions of years old, is nothing less than self-inflicted blindness.

In an interview on the Andrew Marr Show,3 shortly before becoming the UK Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove stated, “Well, to my mind, you cannot have a school which teaches creationism. And one thing that we will make absolutely clear is that you cannot have schools which are set up which teach people things which are clearly at variance with what we know to be scientific fact.”

Telling children that all their faculties, and all humanity’s achievements, can be attributed to a process of ‘survival of the fittest’ and ‘natural selection’ is surely fraught with danger, and the idea that such a belief system will not lead to the most selfish and violent of societies is folly of the highest order. Moreover, teaching that the different ‘human races’ arose through evolutionary processes will inevitably cause people to ask, “Have some evolved more than others?”—and denying that such a view of humanity will not give rise to a return to state-sponsored racism, is naive in the extreme. God has given people the necessary intellectual ability to think these things through, yet most scientists, educational institutions, and politicians have swallowed these deceptions, lock, stock, and barrel.

The insistence that belief in evolution is necessary for scientific advancement and medical progress is astonishing, given the difficulty scientists have in pointing to technological breakthroughs that arose from evolutionary thinking. As pointed out by Dr. Marc Kirschner, founding chair of the Department of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School,

“In fact, over the last 100 years, almost all of biology has proceeded independent of evolution, except evolutionary biology itself. Molecular biology, biochemistry, physiology, have not taken evolution into account at all” (Peter Dizikes, Missing Links, Boston Globe, 23 October 2005. Accessed, November 4th 2010 at www.boston.com).

Godlessness leads to the suppression of the truth (Romans 1:18) and those who love evil deliberately avoid it (John 3:19,20)

The Bible, when read in a plain and straightforward manner, provides a clear framework for our faith, without which we will flounder. Only by refusing to compromise in our interpretation of Genesis can we provide a coherent message. If we believe the Bible from the very first verse, then when people ask us why there is so much suffering in the world, we have an answer: It was not part of the original creation and came into the world only as a result of man’s sin (disobeying God, his Creator). Evolution explains this death and suffering as a good thing for mankind because it supposedly led to our evolution—not a reminder to us that the Creation is cursed (Romans 8). The evolutionary view thus immunises people from realising their fallen state.

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?
“I the Lord search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.” Jeremiah 17:9-19

“What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.” Mark 7:20-23

When people question us about whether God cares about us in our fallen state, we can tell them that, no sooner had man sinned, God announced His plan of salvation (Genesis 3:15). When they ask us why the sedimentary rocks contain billions of fossils, and billions of tons of coal and other fossil fuels, we can point them to the Noahic Flood (Genesis 6-8). When they ask us where the different ‘human races’ came from, we can point them to the dispersal at Babel (Genesis 11:1-9) and explain that there is only one human race, the one descended from Adam. When they ask us how Christ could die for their sins, we can explain that just as all sinned in Adam, so all may be redeemed in Christ (1 Corinthians 15:21-22). According to Jesus, the greatest commandment is that we should love the Lord our God with all our hearts and with all our souls and with all our minds (Matthew 22:37). How can we do this if we have lingering doubts that we do not get answered? If our commitment is to be total, we must have a reference point, a clear set of beliefs and a certain path to follow. Only the Bible can provide this, through its perfect revelation of God and His ways, and His great and precious promises, which enable us to participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption of the world (2 Peter 1:4). And making the Bible central and preeminent in our thinking will make God central and preeminent.

Taken from the article In an increasingly godless society … truth matters! by Dominic Statham on http://www.creation.com

Sorry! My WIFI was down for three days hence no posts were put up until this one on Tuesday 10/04/2024.

CHURCHES IN THE SUTHERLAND SHIRE WORKING TOGETHER

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Need Help? Hope Shire: Your Guide to Local Community Services

I live in the Sutherland Shire of Sydney, Australia and have done so since I married over 60 years ago. I had a short stint in Melbourne, Victoria when I worked for the pharmaceutical company E.R. Squibb & Sons but came back to the Shire when I joined Abbott Laboratories.

It has always been known to be a “Bible belt” with many vibrant churches. So it was encouraging for me to find out that many of the churches are now working together to serve their community.

On the website http://www.hopeshire.org you will find a list of all the church-run community services available across the Sutherland Shire. You can get in touch with any of these services by utilising the contact details.

Sean Nolan tells the story of how this came about. It started with just two then three churches and now it is a wonderful story of many churches working together to serve the Sutherlans Shire

WHAT IS THE CAUSE OF THE DECLINE IN AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY?

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Reports of American Christianity’s death are wildly exaggerated, according to a new Gallup poll. The problem however is that most American Christians (94%) no longer hold to a Biblical Worldview.

Despite years of coverage that Americans have lost their faith, three out of four Americans not only believe in God but belong to a specific religion, according to a Gallup poll released on Good Friday.

“By far the largest proportion, 68%, identify with a Christian religion, including 33% who are Protestant, 22% Catholic and 13% who identify with another Christian religion or simply as a ‘Christian,’” Gallup reported on March 29. Another seven percent “identify with a non-Christian religion, including 2% who are Jewish, 1% Muslim and 1% Buddhist, among others.” 22% said they did not identify with any religion.

Faith exercises a pivotal role in most Americans’ lives, with 71% saying that religion is “very important” (45%) or “fairly important” (26%) to them. The share of Americans who placed a high premium on their faith fell below a majority for the first time in U.S. history in 2019.

That does not mean that church membership has rebounded completely: 45% of Americans formally belong to a church, synagogue, or religious congregation. That number fell below a majority during 2020. “Slightly more than one-third of U.S. young adults have no religious affiliation. Further, many young adults who do identify with a religion do not belong to a church,” noted Gallup. “But even older adults who have a religious preference are less likely to belong to a church today than in the past.”

Yet even these numbers may overstate the number of unbelievers, as 69% of Nones (people who do not identify with any particular faith) believe in God, according to a Pew Research Center poll. Still, a separate poll from the left-leaning Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) released on March 27, found, “While the percentage of Americans who describe themselves as ‘nothing in particular’ is similar to a decade ago (16% in 2013 to 17% in 2023), the numbers of both atheists and agnostics have doubled since 2013 (from 2% to 4% and from 2% to 5%, respectively).”

The most liberal churches have experienced the steepest losses in membership, numerous reports found. Ryan Burge, research director at Faith Counts, tracked the membership of the major U.S. denominations between 1987 and 2021. “The mainline is just a bloodbath,” wrote Burge last June. “Five traditions are down by at least 30%. The ELCA is down 41%. The United Church of Christ is less than half the size it was in the late 1980s. The United Methodists are already down 31%, but with over 15% of their churches disaffiliating just this year, I wouldn’t be surprised if membership is down 40% or more by this time next year.”

Overall, the data paints a complicated picture. “The trends are clear that we are secularizing in some sense, particularly Gen Z. There is a decline in participation in organized religion and in belief in God, but those are not necessarily the same thing,” Joseph Backholm, senior fellow for Biblical Worldview and Strategic Engagement at Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand. “The one clear thing is that some belief in a higher power is persistent. People can’t shake the idea that the universe didn’t create itself.”

David Closson, director of the Center for Biblical Worldview at FRC, made these assertions. “What we’ve learned from FRC’s own research, as well as George Barna’s research with the Cultural Research Center, is that the percentage of those who hold a consistent biblical worldview is around 6%,” “Thus, it is probably more accurate to say that Gallup is helpfully illustrating the loss of cultural Christianity. But this is an important observation in itself; the percentage of Americans who identify as Christian is decreasing rapidly, which means that basic Christian beliefs will increasingly be seen not only as outdated or old-school but dangerous and subversive. We are still living on the fumes of a post-Christian culture, and this is reflected in the large percentages of Americans who still identify as Christian even though many of them don’t go to church or profess any specific theological viewpoints.”

All parties conceded that America’s religious atrophy and eroding biblical worldview will likely impact the policies enacted at a national and local level. “Compared with all Americans, the unaffiliated are notably more likely to identify as Democrats (35% vs. 29%) and independents (38% vs. 30%), and substantially less likely to identify as Republican (12% vs. 29%),” PRRI noted.

The declining share of Americans who hold a Biblical worldview “shouldn’t matter” when it comes to public policy, but it “ultimately will,” said Backholm. “The First Amendment requires that we treat small groups of religious individuals the same as big groups, but in reality cultural dominance, or the lack thereof, matters. That’s why we see pro-life activists being punished for public speech and business owners repeatedly sued for behavior that was uncontroversial 20 years ago.”

“Being a minority religion has always come with challenges, even in America,” Backholm told TWS. “The politically dominant religion in America is becoming a hybrid of secularism and progressive Christianity defined by the belief that people should be free to do whatever makes them happy.”

“Those who don’t embrace those creeds will have problems,” he warned.

The seven churches in Revelation reveal the church as it is in the last seven years before Jesus returns to Earth first to rapture the Saints to Heaven and then pour out His wrath upon an unrepentant world with the Trumpet (Revelation 8) and Bowl (Revelation 16) judgements.

The seventh church, the Church of Laodicea represents the church left behind to face God’s judgement. (Laodicea is a combination of two Greek words (LAO, meaning “God’s people”; and DIKE, meaning “justice or judgment”) Judgement of God’s people).

“‘I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see. Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.” Revelation 3:15-20

It is obvious from this Scripture that those churches preaching the prosperity gospel are in for a great shock when they realise that they will face God’s judgement, but notice that they still have the opportunity to repent.

The church of Philadelphia represents the church that is raptured at the trumpet blast at the opening of the seventh seal. At the sixth seal, we see the celestial signs that precede Jesus’ return. We read “the great day of their (God’s) wrath has come“: “Then the kings of the earth and the great ones and the generals and the rich and the powerful, and everyone, slave and free, hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, calling to the mountains and rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?” Revelation 6:15-17 The trumpet and bowl judgements follow once the final, seventh seal is removed and the scroll is opened.

How different is the message to the church (Church of Philadelphia) that is raptured and protected from the wrath of God

Philadelphus the “love for a brother” What remains of the faithful Church will be bound in brotherly love by the persecution of earth-shaking proportions.

“He who is holy, who is true, who has the key of David, who opens, and no one will shut, and who shuts, and no one opens, says this.”  Revelation 3:7

Jesus who is about to rapture His church reminds them that He is God, He is true, and they can trust Him to save them at the appointed time.

Jesus has nothing but compliments for these survivors of the Great Tribulation, his faithful remnant

“Jesus says, I have set before you an open door, no one can shut it; for you have a little strength, have kept My word, and have not denied My name. Because you have kept My command to persevere, I will also keep you from the hour of trial (Rapture) which shall come upon the whole earth (wrath of God).” (Revelation 3:7-13)

“hold fast what you have, so that no one will take your crown” (Rev. 3:11 NASB). There is yet time to fall away and lose their rewards.

The concepts of the Key of David, the pillars in the Temple, and being kept from the hour of trial found in the letter to the Church of Philadelphia are references to the Rapture, happening at the end of the Sixth Year of the 70th Week.

A WORLD GONE MAD

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Have you heard of Yuval Harari? This Psychopath already has enormous influence at the World Economic Forum.  “Having raised humanity above the beastly level of survival struggles,” Harari predicts, “we will now aim to upgrade humans into gods, and turn Homo sapiens into Homo deus.”

Harari’s crudely reductionistic account of modern science—banishes even the suggestion that a transcendent God could exist, or that man could have an eternal future with that God. He writes off the freedom of the will as an outdated illusion—is captured by his repeated mantra, “organisms are algorithms.” Modern science has confirmed with Nietzsche that God is dead. The universe is devoid of meaning or purpose for Harari. We are all merely the superficial expressions of complex mathematical equations being performed by our biochemistries. 

Listen to this video and you will be amazed at how quickly we are moving towards the Biblical prophesied one-world government and the Mark of the Beast. Next is Mystery Babylon followed by the Antichrist and re-engineered human life.

Make sure you are in a Christian community that understands the times we are in, and is in step with what God is doing in their area of influence.

SPIRITUAL WARFARE HOTTING UP AS SATAN KNOWS HIS TIME IS SHORT

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A dust storm of political madness is brewing in Phoenix, Arizona as Grand Canyon University faces the continued threats of Department of Education Secretary Miguel Cardona. Christians have watched as the Biden administration attacks biblical views left and right, with a particularly vehement disregard for the sanctity of life and marriage. As such, it can’t be too surprising that Cardona, a part of this leftist administration, has “vowed” to shut down America’s largest Christian university.

In late October, GCU was hit with “a $37.7 million fine brought by the federal government over allegations that it lied to students about the cost of its programs,” AP News reported — an accusation GCU President Brian Mueller described as “ridiculous.

Supporters of GCU agree the fine seems unprecedented and motivated by ideological bias, including American Principles Project Policy Director Jon Schweppe, who said, “The federal government’s education agenda is punishing schools that do not conform to their progressive ideology. It’s time we stand against this egregious abuse of power.” Another conservative think tank, the Goldwater Institute (GI), sued the Department of Education for “refusing to turn over” public “documents that explain why” they’re fining GCU. The goal of their lawsuit is to unmask the reason behind the fine.

Around the same time, Liberty University, America’s second-largest Christian university, was fined $37 million “over alleged underreporting of crimes.” GCU appealed its fine in November even though a hearing is not expected until January 2025. But the question Mueller has is one of integrity. Is this genuine consideration for the well-being of students, or is this a targeted attack against religious institutions?

“It’s interesting, isn’t it, that the two largest Christian universities in the country, this one, and Liberty University, are both being fined almost the identical amount at almost the identical time?” the college president speculated in a speech. “Now is there a cause and effect there? I don’t know. But it’s a fact.”

Mueller emphasized that GCU has faced various issues over the years. But despite the government’s action, he wanted people to know that “interestingly enough, “it has had zero impact on anything that we’re doing.”

He continued, “The enrollments are just continuing to grow … [and] the morale is very high in terms of our faculty and staff. The campus is extremely vibrant. I mean, the students absolutely love this place. They’re extremely loyal to it, and so we just keep marching through it.” And while the fine they’re being dealt by the Department of Education is “a problem,” Mueller is just thankful that GCU remains optimistic. The Christian “mission, not politics, is our motivation and it is our hope,” he told TWS.