They all give the glory to JESUS their Lord and Saviour. You will be inspired by these amazing stories of dedication, struggle, defeat and victory. They are all winners even in defeat.
WHERE WILL YOU SPEND ETERNITY?
JESUS TELLS US WHAT IT WILL BE LIKE ON THE NEW EARTH
In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.
John 14:2
The largest private home in the world is Istana Nurul Iman Palace, the official residence of the Sultan of Brunei, Hassanal Bolkiah. The home consists of more than 2 million square feet of space, 1,788 rooms, 257 bathrooms, 5 swimming pools, a 110-car garage, air-conditioned stables for 200 polo ponies, a banquet hall, and a mosque large enough for 1,500 worshippers. It cost around $1.4 billion to build in the mid-1980s.
Grand as it is, that mansion pales in significance to what Jesus is preparing for His followers. The home He is preparing is called the New Jerusalem in the book of Revelation 21:2—and it is large.
John sees it descending from the new heaven to the new earth. Shaped like a cube, it measures 1,500 miles in each of its three dimensions—length, width, and height (Revelation 21:16). It is built of precious stones and minerals, and its worth, in human dollars, would be incalculable. But more important than its worth in dollars is its worth in security and joy for all who dwell there for eternity.
When comparing man’s greatest with God’s greatest, there is no comparison. Make sure you have secured your reservation in the mansion Jesus is preparing.
The nearer to heaven in hopes, the farther from earth in desires. William Gurnall, from The Christian in Complete Armor
THINKING CORRECTLY ABOUT SCIENCE
Dutch philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd (1894-19770) made a major contribution towards Christian theory of reality (ontology). In his theory, Dooyeweerd proposes that we understand creation as having multiple aspects (law-spheres), where an ‘aspect’ is defined as “a basic kind of properties and laws”. Examples of such kinds are: physical, spatial, biotic, logical, sensory, linguistic, ethical, etc. He distinguishes fifteen such aspects of created reality. They are mutually irreducible both in the sense that none can be coherently eliminated in favour of another and also none can be coherently regarded as the cause of any other.
The core idea is that all aspects are created, since there is nothing that God did not create. This includes matter and life, the laws of logic, and the laws governing all the other aspects. The theory goes on to argue that all things in creation have (active or passive) properties of every one of the aspects and so are subject to the laws of all the aspects. For example, a rock has a specific weight whether we know its weight or not. It is has this property independent of an observer. But its sensory colour is not independent. Rather it appears black in relation to a perceiver. Thus the rock’s colour is a passive property because it requires being acted upon by a perceiver to be actualised. The theory takes note of the observed fact that, as far as we know, only humans have active properties in all fifteen aspects. Second the first six (lower aspects) are governed by laws that cannot be broken such as the law of gravity. By contrast higher aspects such as “ethical” can be violated. Dooyeweerd argues that the aspects lower on the list are preconditions for aspects higher on the list, but that no aspect produces an other. For example, it is necessary for there to be things with active physical properties in order for there to be things with active biotic properties, which are in turn necessary for there to be things that have active sensory perception.
The distinctness of modal aspects is anchored in our experiences with all created things: from a molecule over algae and mammals to humans, each kingdom features new active properties that do not exist in the lower kingdoms, neither can they be imagined – as transitional- properties. A philosophy that presupposes a loving God who has given us the ability to observe, know and experience the world in a meaningful way necessarily leads us to trust our observations. The distinctness and irreducibility of modal aspects and laws tells us, then, that things could not have ’emerged’ or evolved form each other, having their origin in God and without the means of some evolutionary process that cannot account for the step changes in the properties we observe.
I would suggest that the only reason special creation is rejected as the best explanation for origins is a pre-existing bias towards materialistic evolutionary explanations.
Extract from article by Martin Tampier in Journal of Creation Vol. 30 (2) 2016
EVOLUTION BASED EDUCATION SYSTEM IS DEVASTATING OUR YOUTH
Take the Creator out of His creation and you breed a generation of youth without hope and purpose. The statistics show this is the case:
A report about the Australian situation only confirms what is very obvious to many involved with children and families in our society.
Man and woman aging – baby, child, teenager, young, adult, old people
Professor Patrick Parkinson AM (a Professor of Law at the University of Sydney) in his report, “For Kid’s Sake – Repairing the Social Environment for Australian Children and Young People”, presented in 2011, makes this point “Rightly we are thinking about what legacy we are going to leave our children, and their children, in terms of the natural world on which we all depend”. (p6).
Professor Parkinson notes, “Little attention has been paid to the social environment in which our children are growing up, and the dangers that the deterioration of this environment presents for the future. Indeed, many of us may not even be aware of how bad things are becoming.” (p6)
This was demonstrated in the “canary in the coalmine” data found in the Parkinson report, that show from 1997 to 2009 the total number of children in out-of-home care has more than doubled, from 15,674 to 35,895 and increasing at an ever increasing rate. (p7)
More than 25% of young people aged 16-24 have a mental disorder. A further 24% of young people, who have never experienced a mental disorder, are experiencing moderate to severe psychological distress. (p7)
The psychological distress is reflected in the 66% increase in the number of 12-14-year-old children hospitalised because of intentional self-harm from 1996 to 2006. In the same period there was a 90% rise in hospitalisation of girls 15 to 17 years of age due to self-harm incidents. (p7)
Other manifestations of psychological distress include binge drinking and sexual promiscuity. The rate of hospitalisation due to alcohol intoxication in young women 15-24 years of age more than doubled between 1998 and 2006. (p8)
In the last ten years there was a four-fold increase in chlamydia infections in the 10-14-year age group. Girls reporting unwanted sex increased from 28 to 38 per cent from 2002 to 2008 (p35).
“The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of the government in the next”. Abraham Lincoln 16th President of America made this statement and it is being proved true there. The nation is turning its back on God since an evolution based humanist, materialistic, secular curriculum was introduced to classrooms.
Our education system is committed to secular humanism which can be understood as a belief system that disregards the existence of anything beyond the physical here and now and supports an ethical system based on consequences, rather than on a set of principles as part of an external belief system (Flynn, n.d.). This framework influences how relevant research is referenced.
For example, a recent report published by Theos, an English academic think tank notes that evidence ( http://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/ ) from nearly 140 academic studies conducted over the last three decades examining the relationship between religion and well-being in a wide range of countries and contexts, suggests that overall, holding a religious worldview contributes positively to a person’s well being (Spencer et al, 2016). This position is also supported from research by the World Health Organisation (WHO, 2002).
Institute for American Values: Report by Commission for Children at Risk – a panel of 33 leading children’s doctors, research scientists and youth service professionals:
To date the influence of religion on U.S. young people has been “grossly understudied”, according to Byron Johnson of the University of Pennsylvania. However, existing research is highly suggestive. For adolescents, religiosity is significantly associated with a reduced likelihood of both unintentional and intentional injury ( homicides, suicides and accidents account for 85 percent of all deaths among early to late adolescents). Religious teenagers are safer drivers and are more likely to wear seat belts than their less religious peers. They are less likely to become juvenile delinquents or adult criminals. They are less prone to substance abuse. They are less likely to endorse engaging in high-risk behaviour or the idea of enjoying danger.
On the positive side of the coin, religiously committed teenagers are more likely to volunteer in the community, to participate in sports and student government, to have high self-esteem and more positive attitudes about life. Much of this research is based on large national studies.
One religious quality that appears to be especially beneficial, in terms of mental health and lifestyle consequences, is what some scholars call personal devotion, or the young person’s sense of participating in a “direct personal relationship with the Divine”. Personal devotion among adolescents is associated with reduced risk-taking, more effectively resolving feelings of loneliness, greater regard for self and for others, and a stronger sense that life has meaning and purpose. These protective effects of personal devotion are twice as great for adolescents as they are for adults. This last finding clearly reinforces the idea; found in many cross-national studies, that adolescence is a time of particularly intense searching for, and openness to, the transcendent. Here is how Lisa Miller of Columbia University puts it: “A search for spiritual relationship with the Creator may be an inherent developmental process in adolescence.”
For this reason, the Commission is recommending that our society as a whole, and youth advocates and youth service professionals in particular, should pay greater attention to this aspect of youth development. This task will not be easy, the Commission’s warns in its report. Because we are a philosophically diverse and religiously plural society, many of our youth-serving programs and social environments for young people will need to find ways respectfully to reflect that diversity and pluralism. But that is a challenge to be embraced, not avoided. One of the many problems with the avoidance strategy is that denying or ignoring the spiritual needs of adolescents may end up creating a void in their lives that either devolves into depression or is filled by other forms of questing and challenge, such as drinking, unbridled consumerism, petty crime, sexual precocity, or flirtations with violence.
The research would indicate that the well being of our children depends in large part on them developing a healthy, others’ focused spirituality, a spirituality that has been traditionally found in communities of faith. A faith that offers them hope, not only now, but for eternity.
For Australia, many of these have been Christian communities of faith. Maybe it’s time to take note of what the broader research is saying and consider the important place that Christianity has played and might continue to play in shaping the social environment in which our children are growing up.
I suggest you view some of the resources that outline the contribution that Christianity has played and continues to play in the lives of everyday Australians. Go to www.diduno.info to view these free resources.
IN THE LAST DAYS; FALSE TEACHERS WILL ABOUND
The details of who God is, what He has done in the past, what He will do in the future, His plan of salvation, His character etc. is only revealed in the Bible. So without a trustworthy source of revelation, we can’t know whether we are trusting in the true God, or a figment of our imagination.
Peter Enns’ latest book “The Sin of Certainty” reads like the average atheist attempting to discredit the Bible, all the while assuring you that he’s a Christian trying to illuminate you on how to build your faith. It’s basically a re-hash of similar concepts we’ve seen before in his previous writings and reiterates that while the Bible doesn’t contain the truth, you can still believe and trust in God (whoever that might be) which of course is nonsense.
The subtitle of Enns’ book is ‘Why God desires our trust more than our ‘correct’ beliefs’. He opines throughout on what he believes is the church’s (and the majority of Christians’) unhealthy emphasis on having correct beliefs and champions ‘deep trust’ in God instead.
Unfortunately almost the entire book highlights all of the contradictions, errors and wrong thinking that Enns says the Bible contains which caused him and many others to doubt its validity as real history!
- The theory of evolution (which proved the creation account was wrong).3
- Archaeology (showing the Bible’s creation story was co-opted from other ancient writings).4
- Textual criticism (showing Moses didn’t write the Pentateuch [the JEPD hypothesis]).5
- Bible contradictions (such as the Bible’s support/criticism of slavery).6
All of his arguments are rather simplistic and have been answered numerous times by various Christian apologists. A search on Creation.com for example reveals plenty of articles soundly dealing with each of them and it is surprising to find someone who declares himself a believer buying into such weak arguments against his professed faith.
For example in the chapter ‘Slavery: Whose side is God on?’ he accuses the Bible of teaching contrary doctrines (an all too common attack by naive atheists) where he says;
“On the one hand, slavery in the Bible was a given, and slaves were the property of the owner, just as in every other ancient society.”7
“On the other hand, some saw the exodus story as proof that God is in the business of liberating slaves.”8
Unfortunately almost the entire book highlights all of the contradictions, errors and wrong thinking that Enns says the Bible contains which caused him and many others to doubt its validity as real history!
But of course the story of the exodus isn’t the reason we know the Bible doesn’t condone slavery, it is because God’s word strictly forbids it!
“Whoever steals a man and sells him, and anyone found in possession of him, shall be put to death.” (Exodus 21:16)
Man-stealing, man-selling and man-holding is slavery. These are all acts done to people against their will. But there is a big difference between this and indentured servitude (which is what Enns describes as slavery) defined in the Bible.
Indentured servitude in the Old Testament was a wilful arrangement (by both parties) where someone could enter into a binding work contract with someone else to survive in a situation where they probably wouldn’t have in a far less civilised era before government welfare programs existed.
However, Enns quotes Exodus 21:20-21 and equates it to slavery such as the African American slave trade (where Africans rounded up Africans and sold them to American slave owners) when he says;
“I wonder whether African slaves ever felt like God had painted a number on their backs.”
But this is completely out of context. How could a seminary educated individual and Bible teacher like Enns not know this?
Creation
In his chapter on evolution Enns admits what Genesis plainly says.
“The problem for biblically centred Christians is that the Bible, right in the very beginning, tells us clearly that God created all life forms with a simple “Let there be … ” No common descent, natural selection, or billions of years required. So if Darwin was right, the Bible was wrong.”2
Now Enns is a committed theistic evolutionist and hence this isn’t a ‘problem’ for him. Which reveals he isn’t a ‘biblically centred Christian’. And he believes Darwin was right, which means he believes the Bible is wrong!
This would mean that God knowingly put contradictions in His word (or else the Bible isn’t actually inspired although Enns doesn’t comment on this directly). But proclaiming known contradictions amounts to lying (which is likely why Enns has a chapter blasphemously titled ‘God is a liar’9).
Perhaps Enns forgot Numbers 23:19 where Scripture makes something clear- “God is not a man, that He should lie, or a son of man, that He should change His mind.”
(But of course that could just be one of those parts of the Bible you don’t have to take as plainly written in Enns’ way of thinking.)
For Enns the truth of the Bible isn’t what’s important, it’s ‘trust’ in God. Of course the word ‘trust’ is defined as; ‘firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something’. So Enns shoots himself in the foot in his basic premise. How are Christians supposed to trust in God if His revelation to His people is un-trustworthy?
Fuzzy logic
Enns’ approach is much like the ‘fuzzy’ emergent church musings of Rob Bell and Brian McLaren (both of whom also believe in evolution as fact). Because of their ‘non-absolutist’ writing style careful analysis is required to prevent being drawn into their nonsensical way of thinking. For example Enns says;
“This book is about thinking differently about faith, a faith that is not so much defined as by what we believe but in whom we trust. In fact, in this book I argue that we have misunderstood faith as a what word rather than a who word—as primarily beliefs about rather than primarily as trust in.” (Page 22)
“Trust works regardless of where our thinking happens to be at the moment. But when correct thinking is central to faith, we transmit onto God our own distorted mental image of God, with all its baggage, hang-ups and deep fears.” (Page 23)
This may sound rather deep and enlightening until you break it down. According to Enns, faith is a ‘who’ word. OK, so who am I to trust? Well, God. But who God is can only be determined by special revelation.
General revelation is sufficient for anyone to know that God exists (because of the creation as per Romans 1:20), but the details of who God is, what He has done in the past, what He will do in the future, His plan of salvation, His character etc. is only revealed in the Bible. So without a trustworthy source of revelation I could not know whether I was trusting in the true God or a figment of my imagination (see below).
Incredibly, Enns spends an inordinate amount of time quoting Scripture authoritatively and telling you what he thinks it means to convince you that you can’t take it as plainly written (authoritatively) which is self-defeating.
So Enns is wrong in saying focusing on ‘correct thinking’ leads to creating God into our own ‘distorted mental image’, it is rather focusing on wrong thinking (by definition) that does so!
What kind of God does Enns believe in?
Enns says he used to be orthodox in his thinking. What caused him to view God differently? A Disney movie on a plane trip!
Enns says he used to be orthodox in his thinking. What caused him to view God differently? A Disney movie on a plane trip!
“A fifty-two second exchange in a movie … And the next thing I know, my view of God flies away as if sucked out the window due to a loss of cabin pressure.”10
Recounting watching Disney’s Bridge to Terabithia he describes an exchange between two young girls discussing the Bible. Leslie (a non-Christian) announces “I seriously do not think God goes around damning people to hell. He’s too busy running all this … ”
Enns describes how this dialogue caused him to be “ … nostril deep in a faith crisis … ”
“How was I to know that the company that gave us Mickey Mouse, Goofy, and Son of Flubber would venture deep into a religious debate? I was just minding my own business at thirty thousand feet over the Midwest and was caught off guard. Me—a professional Christian, a seminary professor paid to think right thoughts about God and to tell others about them. But after a long trip, my orthodoxy shield was resting at my side. I was unarmed, and Leslie’s words hit their mark. In a flash and without words, I thought quietly to myself, I think Leslie’s right.
The idea that the Creator of heaven and Earth, with all their beauty, wonder, and mystery, was at the same time a supersized Bible thumping preacher, obsessed with whether our thoughts were all in place and ready to condemn us to eternity to hell if they weren’t, made no sense—even though that was my operating (though unexamined) assumption as long as I could remember.”
Now the idea that a seminary trained Christian Professor’s belief in God was devastated by a fictional children’s character making such a simplistic ‘objection’ is bad enough. But the fact that the view he had of God was of a ‘supersized Bible thumping preacher’ should set alarm bells ringing for believers as to whether Enns has ever known who God is.
In fact Enns reveals that he believes in a god that he wants to believe in (rather than the God revealed in Scripture):
“ … Leslie’s God was the one I, deep down, wanted to believe in.”11
And ultimately he admits he’s thought this way for a long time;
“ … judging by an old journal I stumbled on from my early twenties, these themes have been my home base for over thirty years.”12
Certain that certainty is sin
“All this to say that a faith in a living God that is preoccupied with certainty is sin, for it compromises the gospel—personally, locally, and globally.”13
But how does Enns know this (he seems preoccupied with repeating it throughout his book and sounds quite certain about it)? He cannot point to a specific Scripture to back it up, and even if he tried to use words from the Bible to verify his claim he has already stated that the words in the Bible are not ultimately trustworthy. So Enns is just relying on his own mind to determine truth. He has become the god he follows.
Enns is excellent at posing questions that supposedly ‘expose’ contradictions in the text in order to dismiss the plain reading of Scripture as valid. But like most modern theological de-constructionists, he never then gives you a replacement interpretive methodology that should be applied except for his opinion.
Half way through the book one feels like Mowgli from the Jungle book, all wrapped up in the ever tightening coils of the serpent Kaa mesmerised by the hypnotising drone of “Trust in me, just in meeeee!”
This is likely to leave any reader that adopts his ideas to logically conclude that there is no universal way to understand Scripture and that whatever you decide to think or feel about the text is OK.
A wolf in sheep’s clothing
2 Peter 2:1 says “ … there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction.”
It’s hard not to think of Enns in this way. If I were (still) an atheist and I wanted a resource to try and steer someone away from the Christian faith in a ‘friendly’ way I don’t think I could find a better means to do so than give them a copy of his book.
Remember Peter Enn’s is the Professor of Biblical Studies at Eastern University Philadelphia which is ranked in the top tier of USA North Regional Universities in 2015. Sadly many of them are facing an eternity in hell from this man’s false teaching.
Book review by Calvin Smith of Creation Ministries
EVIL IS A SPIRITUAL BATTLE
Evil is a spiritual battle, well before it is a physical one.
An unidentified gunman barrelled the truck two kilometres through a crowd that had been enjoying a fireworks display for France’s national day before being shot dead by police.
The physical cannot even test, let alone defeat the spiritual. The natural is toothless when faced by the supernatural. This earth, this visible universe is not all there is. Reality is not measured by the five senses. Reality lives eternally beyond any mere man’s perceptions. Human imagination can not account for all it is unable to see, try as it might. History is heading somewhere. God is in control and He has revealed in His Word, the end-time scenario.
Mankind’s skills are as impotent to prevent evil as legislation is incompetent.
The Fight against Evil (Ephesians 6:10 CEV)
Finally, let the mighty strength of the Lord make you strong. 11 Put on all the armour that God gives, so you can defend yourself against the devil’s tricks. 12 We are not fighting against humans. We are fighting against forces and authorities and against rulers of darkness and powers in the spiritual world. 13 So put on all the armour that God gives. Then when that evil day[a] comes, you will be able to defend yourself. And when the battle is over, you will still be standing firm.
Be ready! Let the truth be like a belt around your waist, and let God’s justice protect you like armour. 15 Your desire to tell the good news about peace should be like shoes on your feet. 16 Let your faith be like a shield, and you will be able to stop all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 17 Let God’s saving power be like a helmet, and for a sword use God’s message that comes from the Spirit.
Never stop praying, especially for others. Always pray by the power of the Spirit. Stay alert and keep praying for God’s people.
Article from Soul Snacks
GOD HAS A DESTINY FOR ISRAEL AND IT IS CLOSE
If you want to know what God is doing NOW in history, you must view this video from Joel Richardson and Reggie Kelly. Reggie also gives, what to me was a new revelation, a view of what our role (raptured church) will be in the Millennium.
WHAT SIN IS AT THE ROOT OF ALL SINS?
The Master Sin is no individual action, or anything that comes from mood or passion: It is the non-recognition by man of the highest of all relations, that relation which is at the root and the first essential condition of every other true relation of or in the human soul. It is the absence in man of harmony with His Creator, who thought him into existence, whose word is the man’s power of thought.
It is true that, as we are His offspring, God cannot be far from any one of us; were we not in closest contact with our Creator, we could not exist: as we have in us no power to be, so we have none to continue being; but there is a closer contact still, which is absolutely necessary to our well-being and highest existence. As the highest creation of God in man is His will, until the highest in man meets the highest in God, their true relation is not yet a spiritual fact. The relation exists, but while one of the parties neither knows, loves, nor acts upon it, the relation is, as it where, yet unborn. Mans intellect, his imagination and his reason are all inferior to his will, and indeed, in a grand way, depend upon it; his will must meet God’s – a will distinct from God’s, else no harmony is possible between them. By the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit, God provides in man the power to will, His will. When he is brought to that point, and declares for the truth, that is for the will of God, he becomes one with God, and the end of God in man’s creation, the end for which Jesus was born and died, is achieved. The man is saved from his sins, and the universe flowers yet again in His redemption.
Powerful Testimonies – JESUS MOMENTS
These testimonies by forty indigenous Australians are having a powerful witness to all Australians. Only a restored relationship with our Heavenly Father, that Jesus alone can provide, will bring life – eternal life.
Love Great Testimonies: U2, Bono’s is no exception
“I pray to get to know the will of God, because then the prayers have more chance of coming true — I mean, that’s the thing about prayer,” Bono told interviewer Gay Byrne, RTE ONE Television. “We don’t do it in a very lofty way in our family. It’s just a bunch of us on the bed, usually, we’ve a very big bed in our house. We pray with all our kids, we read the Scriptures, we pray.”
Byrne presses Bono on his perception of Jesus — Was he divine? Did he truly rise from the dead? Bono answers in the affirmative.
“[Jesus] went around saying he was the Messiah. That’s why he was crucified. He was crucified because he said he was the Son of God. So, he either, in my view, was the Son of God or he was nuts. Forget rock-and-roll messianic complexes, I mean Charlie Manson-type delirium. And I find it hard to accept that whole millions and millions of lives, half the Earth, for 2,000 years have been touched, have felt their lives touched and inspired by some nutter. I just, I don’t believe it.”
When asked if he believed Jesus made promises that would come true, Bono replied, “Yes, I do.”
Married to Ali for thirty two years. They have four children with whom they share their strong faith in Jesus. A family that prays together stays together.
