GENDERLESS GENERATION – AGE OF THE ‘GENDERLESS’

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“Generations have evolved to a world where traditional boundaries between male and female clothing have begun to wash away. A ‘genderless generation’, where sex is no longer a definitive classification, and boundaries within style and expression are no more”. This is the blurb for a new range of “genderless” clothing.

A USA study by the Innovation Group has media outlets buzzing about how Generation Z—those born between 1995 and 2012—utterly defies the gender binary. Only 48 percent of the marketing research group’s respondents said they identified as 100 percent heterosexual, compared with 65 percent of millennials. However, let us not forget to put the results of this survey in the context of youth—a time when idealism, curiosity, openness to change, and raging hormones muddle together with inexperience and underdeveloped reasoning skills. Also the LGBTQ++ assembly has always employed pressure tactics and indoctrination to achieve their goals.

A previous study by FTI Consulting found that voting-age members of Generation Z are incredibly far-left when it comes to “equal rights,” with 75 percent favouring gay marriage and 83 percent favouring “equal rights” for transgender people, with this new survey finding that 70 percent of Generation Z believe it’s “important for public spaces to provide access to gender neutral bathrooms.”

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Zara Introduces Gender-Neutral Clothing

The Spanish retail powerhouse quietly introduced Ungendered, a new section in its TRF label. The 16 items range from T-shirts and sweatshirts to denim and Bermuda shorts — unisex basics in neutral colourways, constructed from comfortable cottons and cotton blends. On the website, pieces from the inaugural collection are photographed on both a male and female model.

Consider the Innovation Group and FTI Consulting statistics, in conjunction with The Safe Schools Coalition Australia (SSCA) programme being introduced in Australian schools. Where will it take the next generation in relation to God’s values and commandments? The beginning of wisdom is to fear God. This is becoming increasingly nonsense, as far as this generation is concerned, and is another indicator we are in the “last days” predicted in God’s Word. There are more prophecies about Jesus second coming than there were about His first coming (sixty plus). The Pharisee’s and Sadducee’s did not get it right at His first coming, and I am concerned pastors are not preparing the church  for His second coming. When did you last hear a sermon on “End Times”.

SSCA offers a range of free resources to teachers, students and the general community with information on same sex attracted and transgender issues.  There is a heavy emphasis on using case studies of same sex attracted and transgender young adults and to portray their experiences in a positive manner. (See an overview of the latest resource ‘All of Us’ here.) The materials that the SSCA has produced encourages risky sexual activity and minimises the dangers associated with this.

Who is the Safe Schools Coalition Australia?

The SSCA is a national coalition of organisations and schools that promotes awareness of homosexual and transsexual issues. The SSCA has been designed by La Trobe University’s Gay and Lesbian Health Victoria and is funded by the Federal government for $8 million. The Victorian government has provided another $2 million.

The SSCA program has been framed in terms of student safety. The aim is to convince the government, media and the public that homophobic bullying is common and can only be dealt with by affirming, promoting and normalising homosexual relations and by giving it a high priority on the school agenda.

Almost all of the resources on the SSCA website have been created by Minus18 and students are directed to access the Minus18 website for more information. The Minus18 website contains sexually explicit content that is inappropriate for school aged children.

WHAT IS THE MOST COMPLEX COMPUTER OPERATING SYSTEM IN THE KNOWN UNIVERSE?

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The human genome is the most complex computer operating system anywhere in the known universe.

It controls a super-complex biochemistry that acts with single-molecule precision. It controls the interaction network of hundreds of thousands of proteins. It is a wonderful testament to the creative brilliance of God and an excellent example of the scientific bankruptcy of neo-Darwinian theory. Why? Because the more complex life is, the less tenable evolutionary theory becomes. Super-complex machines cannot be tinkered with haphazardly or they will break. And super-complex machines do not arise from random changes.

The four dimensional human genome defies naturalistic explanations.

Our computer programs are essentially one-dimensional. The human genome operates in four dimensions. This is one of the greatest testimonies to the creative brilliance of God available.

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Figure 1: A comparison of the control of transcription in E. Coli (left) with the Linux call graph (right). The bacterial cell is able to control many protein-coding genes (green lines at bottom) with relatively few controls (yellow and purple lines). Linux, while obviously a result of intelligent design, falls far short in that it requires many more high-level instructions to control relatively few outputs. From Yan et al. 2010.1

I am serious when I compare the genome to a computer operating system. The only problem with this analogy is that we have no computers that can compare to the genome in terms of complexity or efficiency. It is only on the most base level that the analogy works, but that is what makes the comparison so powerful. After millions of hours of writing and debugging we have only managed to create operating systems that can run a laptop or a server, and they crash, a lot. The genome, though, runs a hyper-complex machine called the human body. The organisation of the two are radically different as well. A team made up of computer scientists, biophysicists, and experts in bioinformatics (in other words, really smart people) compared the genome of the lowly E. coli bacterium to the Linux operating system (figure 1) and have discovered that our man-made operating systems are much less efficient because they are much more “top heavy”.1 It turns out that the bacterial genome has a few high-level instructions that control a few middle-level processes, that in turn control a massive number of protein-coding genes. Linux is the opposite. It is much more top heavy and thus much less efficient at getting things done. The bacterium can do a lot more with fewer controls. I predict that the study of genomics will influence the future development of computers.

This is very brief summary of the information contained in the DVD by Dr Robert Carter  The High Tech Cell. You need to get this valuable resource and I suggest you purchase a copy from the Creation Ministries webstore.

IS THE BIBLE TOO HARD TO DEFEND? SADLY, EVANGELICAL PASTOR ANDY STANLEY THINKS SO

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Evangelical pastor preaches that the Bible isn’t the foundation for the Christian faith.

Pastor Andy Stanley has a church network of over 30,000 people in the Atlanta area, and his church was rated the fastest-growing in America in 2014 and 2015.

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The Bible’s historical reliability is one of the most important considerations when it comes to whether people  will accept the Bible’s claims about Jesus—and they’re right! If the Bible is demonstrably wrong regarding its history, it is not a reliable record, and the claims the Bible makes about Jesus are so extraordinary that it requires the Bible to be a supernatural, inspired, inerrant book. This is of course what it claims to be. Creation Ministries found it necessary to counter this serious challenge to the authority of God’s Word with this excellent article by Lita Cosner and Scott Gillis.

Pastor Andy Stanley says, “If the Bible is the foundation of our faith, it’s all or nothing. Christianity becomes a ‘fragile house of cards’ religion. Christianity becomes a fragile house of cards that comes tumbling down when we discover that perhaps the walls of Jericho didn’t.”2

Stanley’s message is clear as to the ‘unnecessary reason’ youth have left the faith:

So, if you stepped away from Christianity because of something in the Bible, if you stepped away from the Christian faith because of Old Testament miracles, if you stepped away from the Christian faith because you couldn’t reconcile 6,000 years with a 4.5 billion year old earth and something you learned in biology, I want to invite you to reconsider, because the issue has never been, ‘is the Bible true?’.2 (Emphasis added)

While he hopes to persuade people to come back to church, the route he took is actually more likely to deconstruct the faith of the young people he wants so much to keep in the church. In our experience (which to be honest, is much more wide than his own—speaking in over 1000 churches of varying denominations each year), people think the Bible’s historical reliability is one of the most important considerations when it comes to whether they will accept the Bible’s claims about Jesus—and they’re right!

What most people have commented on is the third part of his sermon series. Stanley begins that message by saying:

“In Sunday School we learned the song, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”

He goes on to say,

“You grew up, but your faith didn’t grow up with you. You grew up, but you outgrew your faith. Your childhood god could not stand the rigors of adulthood, the questions of adulthood.”2

The reason he thinks this is a problem is:

“If the Bible is the foundation of our faith, it’s all or nothing. Christianity becomes a ‘fragile house of cards’ religion. Christianity becomes a fragile house of cards that comes tumbling down when we discover that perhaps the walls of Jericho didn’t.”2

To call Scripture a ‘house of cards’ (and elsewhere in the same sermon he calls it a ‘fragile thread’) reveals a troubling attitude for a pastor to have towards Scripture, which Jesus and the Apostles presented as the absolute foundation for our faith. After all, if he cannot be sure about Scripture, how can he be sure about the One that Scripture is ultimately all about, and moreover, the Bible’s history that necessitated Jesus becoming our Saviour.

Too hard to defend it

One reason Stanley argues we need this change in perspective is that Scripture is too hard to defend:

“What your students have discovered, and if you read broadly you’ve discovered, it is next to impossible to defend the entire Bible. But if your Christianity hangs by the thread of proving that everything in the Bible is true, you may be able to hang onto it, but your kids and your grandkids and the next generation will not. Because this puts the Bible at the center of the debate. This puts the spotlight right on the Bible. Everything rises and falls on whether not part, but all the Bible is true. And that’s unfortunate, and as we’re going to discover today, it is absolutely unnecessary.”2

Among the things he specifically states are indefensible and not supported by evidence:

  • Israel’s Exodus from Egypt
  • The walls in Jericho fell down
  • The earth is 6,000 years old
  • The chronological information in 1, 2 Kings, 1, 2 Chronicles, and 1, 2, Samuel
  • The global flood in Noah’s day

But as apologist James White pointed out in his rebuttal to Stanley, if the Bible is wrong, Christianity is untrue.4 Jesus’ own view was that the Scriptures could not be broken (John 10:35), and the New Testament authors referred to the Old Testament’s history as the foundation for New Testament theology. If the Bible is wrong about historical events, the basis for New Testament teaching vanishes. Worse still for Stanley, if Jesus is wrong about the very Scripture Stanley says is not defensible, then how can he still encourage faith in Jesus and His (historical) resurrection?

Did the early church have the Bible?

Stanley bases his argument that Christianity does not stand or fall with the Bible by his absurd claim that, for the first several hundred years of Christianity, they didn’t have the Bible: “For the first 300 years of the existence of Christianity, the debate centered on an event, not a book.” While they may not have had all the New Testament books bound together under one cover and called it ‘the Bible’, the entire Old Testament and many of the New Testament books functioned authoritatively from the beginning of the Church and were the central source of their theology, used to settle the doctrinal controversies of that time. In fact, there are over 100 references in the New Testament to the book of Genesis, let alone many other Old Testament events. So much of our Christian doctrine, and even Jesus’ own teaching, are centered on those biblical historical events.

Astonishingly, however, Stanley suggests that Peter might have responded to historical questions about the Old Testament as follows:

“Peter would have looked at you like, ‘I’m not really sure what you’re talking about, but I followed a man for three years who spoke like no other man spoke. He was arrested and crucified and we thought, Game over, because he said too much to be a good teacher, he claimed too much about himself to be a good teacher. Game over. We’re all in hiding; a bunch of women come babbling that “The tomb is empty, the tomb is empty”. I looked into an empty tomb, and do you know what I concluded? Somebody stole the body. And a few days later I had breakfast with my risen friend on the beach. So I’m not sure about 6,000-year-old earth, I’m not sure about archaeological evidence, I’m not sure about all that. The reason I’m following Jesus is because I saw him die, and I saw him alive, and I went into the streets of Jerusalem to say, God has done something among us.”2

But this does not match up with what Peter actually said in Acts 2 (by the way, it should be noted that Stanley purposely references no actual Scripture in his first several sermons). In Peter’s sermon as recorded by Luke, he included a lengthy quote from the prophet Joel and two Psalms, because he wasn’t arguing from his personal testimony and experience, but that the history they witnessed was a fulfillment of the Scriptures. And, even when he did appeal to his own eyewitness testimony, he tied this to a confirmation of the Scriptures (2 Peter 1:16–21)—the very Scriptures Stanley argues Christianity didn’t emphasize until 300 years later.

In Part 5 of the sermon series, Stanley dedicates an entire session to the reasons people leave the faith due to injustice in the world. Although Stanley does make some pertinent points, at no time does he state the foundational, historical event of Adam’s Fall as the cause of death and suffering in the world. In a self-labeled ‘footnote’, Pastor Stanley implies that a belief in evolution does not challenge the Gospel’s big picture when he states “Francis Collins actually embraces what we would consider macro-evolution and yet he is still a conservative Christian. If you didn’t think a person could believe in evolution and be an evangelical Christian, you should read this book. If science is the reason you have walked away from faith, I highly recommend his book, The Language of God [see our review].” Francis Collins would agree with Stanley when he stated in this sermon series, “And when religion and science conflict, at the end of the day if you are an honest person, science must win.” When people compromise on the historical account of creation they are unable to effectively explain the existence of death and suffering if God created a very good world. And Francis Collins along with his former organization BioLogos actually believes that Jesus could be wrong about His statements about biblical history and the historical Adam and Eve. See It’s not Christianity!.

Just another ‘New Testament Christianity’

It is interesting to note how Stanley defends the historical reliability of the New Testament and the historical trustworthiness and early composition of the New Testament documents. But as is shown by the list of Old Testament events that he claims are indefensible, he is all too ready to give up on the historical reliability of the Old Testament, which Jesus and the New Testament authors quoted constantly in all sorts of contexts, always taking it as completely authoritative and true.

We have pointed out that you can’t have a New Testament-only Christianity, because the Christians during the time of the New Testament used the Scriptures—the Old Testament.

Will this approach bring people back to the faith?

The saddest thing about this attempt to justify Christianity apart from the Scriptures is that it won’t work. We’ve come into contact with many young people with questions, and most aren’t interested in a ‘squishy’ Christianity that takes all the ‘hard’ passages of the Bible metaphorically while only holding on to some sort of a belief in Jesus.

The answer is not to so easily abandon the authority and the inerrancy of Scripture, but rather to learn how we can know that the Bible is reliable.

Andy Stanley is obviously passionate, and we would agree that a simple “the Bible tells me so” faith will likely not sustain people when they encounter objections to the faith. But the answer is not to so easily dismiss the authority and inerrancy of Scripture, but rather learn how the evidence supports the historical account of the Bible.

Many Sundays, after hearing a creation presentation, people will come up to one of our speakers and be so excited that they realize they can trust the entire Bible! By hearing that the Bible’s history is reliable, and that there are answers to all the objections that they’ve heard, believers are more confident to share their faith.

It takes effort, but it is not too hard to defend the entire Bible; we’ve been defending Scripture from the first verse for over 30 years. That is the key to keeping young people in the church. And the effort has eternal consequences. Given the wealth of scientific and archaeological support and information that is available today to support the Bible’s history, it is a shame that Stanley did not take the time to research it, before so readily abandoning the Bible as the inerrant source for the Christian faith.

WOW: THE BIBLE’S ‘CYRUS THE GREAT’ AND ‘DONALD TRUMP’—IS THIS GOD?

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Lance Wallnau believes God is raising up Donald Trump like he did King Cyrus in Isaiah 45. When the charismatic speaker/business consultant first said this long before the billionaire businessman received the Republican nomination, nearly everyone thought he was nuts.

Now, Wallnau’s analysis is ringing true with many Christians who are looking to make sense spiritually of this very strange election season.

Wallnau also believes God gives leaders “common grace” to be instruments of His purposes—ones like Lincoln or Churchill or Thatcher. In a recent podcast, Wallnau told me (Steve Strang) all this and more. You can listen to it here as well as a follow up podcast with Wallnau here.

I felt this message was so important that I asked Wallnau to write it and we published it in Charisma magazine in our October issue which has Donald Trump and Gov. Mike Pence on the cover. An early form of this article was published online in three installments and you can read them here and here and here.

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Wallnau told me he had an impression when he first met Donald Trump early this year that there was an anointing on him. He didn’t understand the impression since he preferred Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Carly Fiorina. Then he saw a meme on Facebook showing Trump as the nation’s 45th president. About the same time, he felt the Lord tell him to read Isaiah 45, which says King Cyrus who is called the Lord’s “anointed” and later in the chapter says, “I have even called you by your name … though you have not known Me.”

Wallnau then told me he felt he heard the Lord tell him “common grace,” and he found the term in a Charles Colson book. It was a term the Reformers used to contrast “saving grace,” when there was a basic understanding of God that influenced governments and societies even though the people who had this common grace might not have experienced “saving grace.”

I urge you to not only listen to the podcast (and share it with friends on social media) but to read the article in Charisma. The full issue is available digitally behind a paywall and you can access it here and learn how to subscribe.

Meanwhile Steve Shultz, founder of The Elijah List sent out an email about my podcast with Wallnau with this incredible subject line: “Wow: The Bible’s ‘Cyrus the Great’ and ‘Donald Trump’—Is This God?” Here, he encouraged his readers, as I am, to listen to the podcast, then he gave a detailed report on what Wallnau said. I found it interesting in how Shultz wrote it, and I end my report by quoting him:

Lance Wallnau shares in this podcast:

  • God anoints secular rulers in history for specific purposes in order to protect His interests.
  • This will amaze you! The three issues that Cyrus took the most satisfaction in:
  1. Dealing with terror
  2. Restoring the habitations or economic stability of their cities
  3. Honoring their sanctuaries or their houses of faith

The Cyrus cylinder (that was uncovered in an archaeological dig) talks about terrorism, economics and faith.

  • This election is so critical … Lance says, “I don’t know yet if the church is going to be as awakened as they need to be—to show up in the force they need to show up in to support what this man’s (Donald Trump) capable of doing in restoration. Because ‘if history tells us anything (it’s this)—when God shows up He’s ‘disguised’ and His people don’t (always) recognize Him.”
  • “Trump is like a wrecking ball.”
  • Trump challenged this group of ministers (who met with him at Trump Tower)and said, “If you don’t mind me saying so, I think you guys have gotten soft.”

Lance went on to explain that Trump was looking at how fear and embarrassment are so often in ministry … with the church backing up from issues.

  • Lance continued saying that Trump is like a wrecking ball going toward many controversial issues. And Trump’s observation was, “I really think that America’s turned against Christianity in the last decade in a way that’s not healthy, and I think you guys have gotten soft in terms of taking your ground and holding it.”

Only someone like Donald Trump, himself a brand-new Christian, could actually get away with saying that to the church leadership in America.

Steve Strang is the founder of Charisma and CEO of Charisma Media. click here to sign up for the Strang Report newsletter.

WHAT IS GOD DOING IN YOU & YOUR CHURCH?

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Us Christians, we should be continually astounded by what God has done and is doing for us and those in the world around us. Consider just a few of his mind-boggling blessings:

  1. You have been forgiven. If you’re a Christian, you carry absolutely no guilt for your past sins. Like a criminal who was released from death row, you have been declared not guilty, and you no longer face punishment. When you wake up every morning, you should pinch yourself as you realise how merciful God was to pardon you!
  2. The Father has adopted you. Adoption is a foreign concept in many cultures. There is not even a word for adoption in some languages. Yet God loved you so much that He brought you into His family, called you His child and shared His eternal inheritance with you. Have you taken time to ponder what that means?
  3. You can read and treasure God’s Word. There are still many people today who do not have the Bible in their language. There are others who live in countries where Bibles are restricted. Do you realize how high a price was paid by previous generations so you could have the Bible now? Do you read it with a sense of grateful humility? Do you realise it prepares us for coming events? There are more prophecies about Jesus second coming, than there were of His first coming, and there were over sixty of those. The Pharisees and Sadducee’s did not get His first coming, what about the church and His second coming. Is the church asleep, as were the ten virgins in that parable, five had oil in their lamps but all were asleep at the time of their Lord’s coming? I believe we are in the “last days” and as we watch events unfold, particularly in the middle east, we can line them up with the O.T. and N.T prophecies. As the world descends into increasing darkness, just as the Bible prophesied, is your church preparing you for these events?
  4. You have continual access to God’s presence. In the days of the Old Covenant, people who worshipped the true God could only do it from a distance. They stood outside the door of the temple while priests made sacrifices for them. You should pinch yourself now! Because we live in the New Covenant era, every born-again Christian can approach the throne of God with confidence. We worship the Lord in “spirit and truth” as Jesus prophesied to the Samaritan woman at the well.
  5. The Holy Spirit lives in your Spirit. Before Jesus came, the Holy Spirit only “came upon” certain people—prophets, kings or special messengers and sometimes only for a specific purpose or season. But today, because of Jesus’ atonement, the Father sent the Holy Spirit to rebirth your Spirit (died at The Fall). The Holy Spirit now lives in you 24/7. He is your counsellor, your comforter and your teacher. He prays for you, refines you, refreshes you, empowers you and leads you deeper and deeper into God’s truth. He is the one that produces the nine fruits of the Spirit in your life: love, joy, peace, patience, faithfulness, goodness, gentleness, kindness and self-control. He is also the one that enables your use of the nine spiritual gifts: Wisdom, Knowledge, Faith, Healing, Miracles, Prophecy, Discerning of Spirits, Speaking in Tongues and Interpretation of Tongues. Shouldn’t you be in awe of a God who does that?
  6. You can enjoy God’s house and His people. Jesus said when we gather together, His presence is there. He dwells in His congregation. Yet many Christians have given up on the church because they got hurt, or because pastors weren’t perfect. But do you realise that the church is a miracle? It is the living body of Christ, and until He returns it will be the place where God accomplishes His purposes but find a church that stands on the authority of God’s Word. Don’t miss this profound blessing!
  7. You get to experience the Holy Spirit moving all around you. Ministries such as that of the Danish evangelist Sorben Sondergaard are experiencing Church as in the time of the “Book of Acts” where Holy Spirit healings and miracles are commonplace. The Holy Spirit is moving in profound ways today. Churches are growing rapidly in parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America, and many new churches are now being planted in the United States which stand on the authority of God’s Word. Instead of focusing on the negative trends you see in the media, you should stand in awe that we live in a day that ancient prophets longed to see.
  8. You are going to heaven. No matter what pain, sickness, disappointment or trial you face during your short time on Earth, you are going to step into an eternity where there is no darkness, no death and no tears. As Paul said, “For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” Phil. 1:21. When this life is over, you are going to live forever. It will take an eternity to comprehend a God who would treat us so mercifully.

Please take time to ponder God’s marvellous, mind-blowing love. Pinch yourself and be reminded that the truths we read in the Bible are not just words on a page or dry doctrinal concepts. They are living realities that should shake you to the core and produce the purest form of wide-eyed, awestruck worship.

Modified article by J Lee Grady former editor of Charisma Magazine.

 

HOW A WELL KNOWN SECULAR JEW CAME TO FAITH IN JESUS CHRIST

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Edgar Award-winner and New York Times bestselling novelist tells of his improbable conversion from agnostic Jewish-intellectual to baptised Christian and of the books that led him there.
No one was more surprised than Andrew Klavan when, at the age of fifty, he found himself about to be baptised. Best known for his hard-boiled, white-knuckle thrillers and for the movies made from them—among them True Crime (directed by Clint Eastwood) and Don’t Say a Word (starring Michael Douglas)—Klavan was born in a suburban Jewish enclave outside New York City. He left the faith of his childhood behind to live most of his life as an agnostic in the secular, sophisticated atmosphere of New York, London, and Los Angeles. But his lifelong quest for truth—in his life and in his work—was leading him to a place he never expected.
Klavan’s coming to faith took place over a process of many years where he wrestled with many philosophical quandaries and the author is quick to point out that reason can only get you so far.

CP asked Klavan how important he thinks experiencing God is in light of how contemporary culture values thinking over feeling, particularly the reasoning that what we think is objectively true and the things we experience are subjective and therefore invalid.

Among other things, Klavan noted, the subjective experience of falling in love with his wife over the course of many decades was an epiphany of sorts; love showed him that just because something might be subjective it does not mean it is not real.

“That led me to start to think ‘Now, wait a minute, maybe if you can be deceived in your subjective perceptions, then maybe you can be right in your subjective perceptions,” Klavan said.

Along the way, Klavan’s rejection of atheism was in part because he found important truths in places many devout Christians rarely look. Klavan told The Christian Post that one of the most important engagements he had with a work of art was with French author and philosopher Marquis de Sade.

“De Sade wrote some of the most sadistic pornography — some of the most disgusting stuff I ever read — and his books are laced with atheistic philosophy. And when I read that atheist philosophy and I saw that pornography that accompanied it, I said to myself, ‘That is honest atheism. That is only true, truly reasoned atheism I ever saw, that if you wanted to be an atheist, this was the logic of it and it turned me away.’ I turned my back and walked away from it.”

“So here’s this ugly guy but writing brilliant art, brilliant psychopathic art, that contained a truth that I needed to find,” he continued.

“The one thing I would love to see Christians do, is to stop leaping to condemn art that doesn’t immediately echo their deeply held beliefs. Because I truly believe that all great art is speaking truth. God is god of the real world, he’s not God of fantasy land. When you shut people off from the ugliness of life, from the physicality of life and the passion and the lust that are in the Bible and in the arts, you shut people off from the real God,” he said.

“I think that the arts are one of the ways that human beings relate their inner experience to one another. And I think in that inner experience is where we are going to find our faith and find our God. So learn how to read the arts, learn how to read something that repels you, it actually may have a truth inside that people need to know.”

When asked what he would most like readers to take away from his memoir, Klavan reiterated the importance to examining the evidence for faith for oneself, against the fierce cultural tide of unbelief.

“You have to step out of that current, as hard as it is, and see the world fresh and start to find the truth from there,” Klavan said. “Because as the X-files always told us, the truth is out there. And it really is staring you in the face, and it really is speaking to you, singing to you, virtually, from every corner of the world.”

“The Jews are the chosen people of God and they brought the notion of God back into humanity after we lost track of it after The Fall, they were the doorway for God to re-enter the world and people hate them for it. To take it even one step further, people hate the Jews because they hate God, and you hate God because you hate yourself. I really do think that that is the failure to accept original sin.”

“And I feel like if you will experience my story with me, it might resonate. You might turn to your own life and say, ‘You know, once I start to listen I hear that song and it might help to draw you out of this tide that is washing you in something that is utterly untrue,” he concluded.

Andrew Klavan’s story demonstrates that God can use whatever, whenever to bring us to a knowledge of the truth – His truth about His world. A world which He judged on one occasion (Noah’s worldwide flood that laid down all the fossils), and He tells us in His Word that He will pour out His wrath upon all the earth again in the not to distant future, if my reading of the signs are correct.

 

 

 

THE MAN BEHIND MR. ETERNITY!

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The Australian evangelist John G. Ridley was a purpose-driven communicator and a painter of word-pictures whose pen was mighty, because of the sword of the spirit. He was not one to shy away from confronting his hearers with the truth of their eternal life and challenging their hearts to trust his everlasting Lord. He sowed faithfulness to the message of salvation here on earth and reaped fruitfulness in the ministry and service for time and eternity.

And speaking of eternity, God used his preaching to influence Arthur Stace (Mr. Eternity) to go out and write the word Eternity on the streets of Sydney and beyond.

Image result for picture of Eternity on Sydney Harbour bridge
Here is a little of what happened. It was a Sunday night November 14th at the Burton Street Baptist Tabernacle, Darlinghurst, Sydney, where John was preaching his now famous message  “The Echoes of Eternity”. 

The veteran evangelist stood with the power of scripture in his hand and the love of Christ in his heart and stressed the word Eternity. He pointed out how the Echoes of Eternity are heard not only in Creation and the Christian but also in The Cross .
Then suddenly, laying his prepared notes aside and seemingly in an impromptu fashion, the highly disciplined soldier-like preacher, raised his loud voice and cried: “Eternity, Eternity, I wish that I could sound or shout that word to everyone in the streets of Sydney. You’ve got to meet it, where will you spend Eternity.” 

Arthur Stace converted  to Christ at the  St Barnabas Church, Broadway in Sydney a few years before, was one of many in the large congregation that God-ordained night. “Eternity went ringing through my brain” was Stace’s statement” and suddenly I began crying and felt a powerful call from the Lord to write Eternity. I had a piece of chalk in my pocket and outside the church, I bent down right there and wrote it…. The funny thing is that before I wrote it, I could hardly write my own name. I had no schooling, and I couldn’t have spelt  for a hundred quid. But it came out smoothly, in a beautiful copperplate script. I couldn’t understand it, and I still can’t.”

Arthur knew this was God’s task for him and rain or shine he faithfully went out six nights a week to write Eternity on the streets of Sydney until  the very night God took Arthur home. God powerfully used Arthur’s faithfulness to impact the lives of many for Jesus Christ.

 

END TIMES – “AS IN THE DAYS OF NOAH”

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“Genius” is a new and chilling movie based on the life and tragic murder of John Lennon. The Producer of the Los Angeles-based film company, Ray Comfort, said, “It’s chilling because it reveals what people will do for money. There are ordinary people out there who would kill you. All they need is the right amount of money and the belief that they won’t get caught.”

Just before he was murdered, John Lennon told Playboy magazine that he didn’t want to die at 40. Ironically the famous singer was gunned down at the age of 40 by a man who killed him just because he wanted to become famous.

This movie needs to be distributed widely, not only to the lost, but churches teaching a false gospel.

MOVIE “THE ATHEIST DELUSION” – DESTROYS ATHEISM WITH ONE SCIENTIFIC QUESTION

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Evangelist Ray Comfort’s “The Atheist Delusion” movie, claims that it’s able to “destroy atheism with one scientific question.” It is set to premiere at the Ark Encounter, a life-sized Noah’s Ark theme park in Kentucky.

“From the start, we were concerned that people wouldn’t take seriously a movie that ‘destroys atheism with one scientific question.’ But it does exactly that by scientifically confirming the existence of God. Having a respected, scientifically based organisation like Answers in Genesis being willing to premiere it is such an honour,” Comfort said.

Thousands have already viewed the movie within the first two days of its pre-release as a paid download, but on October 22, its official release date, it will be streamed live from the Ark.

Comfort said, “This film isn’t likely to convince the average proud and closed-minded atheist.” But hopefully, countless others who are open-minded, will be convinced by seeing the irrefutable proof for the existence of God.

The best-selling author and filmmaker, whose movies have been viewed by millions, added, “We would love for millions more to watch ‘The Atheist Delusion,’ and invite Christians to host the live-streaming event from their church or home. The world premiere will be highly evangelistic, as well as thoroughly encouraging, equipping, and inspiring to seasoned believers.”

LAST DAYS PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS

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Instead of worrying about Islamist terrorism, there are racists in Europe who want to crush Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East. The scriptures tell us that this little nation would be the focus of world attention and the subject of increased persecution in these last days.

They all falsely claim to be “peaceful”, using “economic means” to correct “wrongs” in the Palestinian territories. However, they never seem to try to correct any of the wrongs of the corrupt, repressive governments of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas in Gaza, or even to advocate there for a free press, for the rule of law or for building a stable economy. Their true, racist motives are unmasked.

The pre- or post-1967 lines are only an alibi for these new Nazis. Many consider Israel in its entirety illegal, immoral, or both — even though Jews have lived on that land for 3,000 years — part of it is even called Judea. Their appetite for accusing Jews of having the audacity to “occupy” their own historical, Biblical land only reveals their collusion with the darkest lies of Islamic extremists, who are trying to destroy the indigenous Christian Copts in their native land of Egypt, and the indigenous Assyrian Christians whom we see being slaughtered throughout the Middle East. Should the French be accused of “occupying” Gaul? Just look at any map of “Palestine,” which blankets the entire state of Israel: to many Palestinians, all of Israel is a single giant settlement that has to be dismantled.

“In Nazi Germany,” noted Brendan O’Neill in the Wall Street Journal, “it was all the rage to make one’s town Judenfrei.”

boycott-israel

“Now a new fashion is sweeping Europe: to make one’s town or city what we might call ‘Zionistfrei’ — free of the products and culture of the Jewish state. Across the Continent, cities and towns are declaring themselves ‘Israel-free zones,’ insulating their citizens from Israeli produce and culture. It has ugly echoes of what happened 70 years ago.”

The Nazis said “kauft nicht bei Juden“: do not buy from Jews. The slogan of these new racists is “kauft nicht beim Judenstaat“: do not buy from the Jewish State. The Nazis repeated “Geh nach Palästina, du Jud“: Go to Palestine, you Jew. Racists in Europe shout “Jews out of Palestine!”

Let us take a look at who they are. The city council of Leicester, for one, recently approved banning products “made in Israel.” Think of that: a city without Israeli products. This is not Nazi Germany in 1933; this is a British city under Labour leadership in 2016. Two Welsh councils, Swansea and Gwynedd, blocked commercial partnerships with Israeli companies. In Dublin, a well-known restaurant, Exchequer, decided not to use the Israeli products. The Irish town of Kinvara became “Israel-free”. In Spain, the town of Villanueva de Duero no longer distributes Israeli water in its public buildings. The French city of Lille froze an agreement with the Israeli town of Safed.

An early case of trying to destroy Israel through economic means occurred in 1980, when L’Oreal had bought the Helena Rubinstein cosmetics company. Arab regimes had threatened to truncate the lucrative relationships with the multinational companies if they did not cut ties with Israel. Instead of rejecting the blackmail, L’Oreal bowed to the blackmail. Today, this antisemitism is not led by either Arab states or Western states. France, for example, recently outlawed calls to single out Israel for boycotts. Today’s hate campaign and these Nazi policies are now largely led by universities, trade unions, businesses, and hypocritical so-called “human rights” groups, as well as other NGOs.

And, shamefully, churches. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), on August 11, 2016 called on the U.S. government to end all aid to Israel and embrace tactics to destroy the country by economic means. Last winter, the US Methodist Church also unchristianly divested from five Israeli banks.

They all falsely claim to be “peaceful”, using “economic means” to correct “wrongs” in the Palestinian territories. However, they never seem to try to correct any of the wrongs of the corrupt, repressive governments of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas in Gaza, or even to advocate there for a free press, for the rule of law, or for building a stable economy. Their true, racist motives are unmasked. They are simply coordinating with the violent strategy of Palestinians and Muslim fundamentalists in the West — those who have repeatedly refused to make peace with Israel for seven decades and have chosen terrorism instead.

Others in the world of academia who have approved these neo-Nazi measures include the British historian Catherine Hall and, disgracefully, the severely disabled Stephen Hawking, who is able to speak thanks only to an Israeli voice device.

This academic boycott campaign began when Oren Yiftachel, a scholar at the Ben Gurion University, had an academic paper rejected by the journal Political Geography. The rejection came with a note informing him that the magazine could not accept a submission from “Israel,” and his paper was returned unopened. The publishing house St. Jerome Manchester, specialising in translations, refused to send academic volumes to the Bar Ilan University in Israel. The British magazine, Dance Europe, refused to publish an article about the Israeli choreographer Sally Anne Friedland; Richard Seaford declined to review a book for the Israeli magazine, Antiquity Scripta Classica Israelica. A professor of pathology at Oxford University,Andrew Wilkie, rejected an application by Amit Duvshani, a doctoral student at Tel Aviv University. Wilkie wrote in his rejection: “no way would I take on somebody who had served in the Israeli army.”

These new Nazis serve up, instead of an argument, untrue and deceptive slogans such as “apartheid state”, “occupation”, “repressive”, “violator of international law” (which Israel meticulously is not). Their goal, like that of the original Nazis, is to manipulate people, and instil in them bias and hate against Israel, and just behind this subterfuge, against the Jews.

extracts from article by Giulio Meotti, Cultural Editor for Il Foglio, is an Italian journalist and author.