God created man in His image with incredible intellect, creativity, rationality, objectivity, and other abilities. How sad it is to see great minds like Yuval Harari being used to deny the existence of the one who gave them their abilities. Puffed up with intellectual pride even suggesting that the next step in the evolutionary process is, with the use of AI, to become gods.
As Martyn Isles states in his new book Who Am I? Solving the identity puzzle: “”How sinful to see them try to unburden their craving to know God by serving self, demons, and idols. All these are perversions of the very faculties that were supposed to enable us to image God. Human beings were made to image God. We should not just think about it as our status, we should think about it as our calling, to be holy, righteous, and to know God.”
A great article appeared in The Washington Stand by Joshua Arnold: Lead, Provide, Protect: An Urgent Call for Godly Men. I have taken excerpts from it
Lead, provide, protect. That’s what God created men to do. Our society has other ideas, to its own disadvantage and disgrace. But the best counter to the culture is for men to step up and embrace their God-given identity and role.
Today, “boys are penalized … for being boys,” Owen Strachan, senior fellow for Family Research Council’s Center for Biblical Worldview, declared on “Washington Watch” last week. “Boys hear, ‘Don’t be strong’ and ‘Don’t want to be … a traditional man. … You’re not really good the way you are as a boy. You should be more like a girl.’ … Nothing could be worse for boys than that.”
This propaganda — blasted out by every mainstream institution from schools to Hollywood — applies half a century of radical feminist ideology. Radical feminists of the late 20th century argued for abolishing all differences between men and women. They demanded absolute equality in the academy and the workplace. They demanded utter sexual libertinism, endorsing promiscuity, childlessness, and the dissolution of the marriage bond, in imitation of their mistaken caricature of masculinity. They demanded freedom from their own reproductive biology (through birth control and abortion), again in an attempt to reproduce a false version of masculinity.
Ironically, as radical feminists tried to become like men in every way, they also insisted that men become more like women. “There are all sorts of traits associated with good things in Scripture that in today’s culture — among woke, leftist, pagan thought — are very bad things,” said Strachan. “So, if you take risks today if you’re assertive if you speak up in groups if you might dare to ever correct a woman in public … if you like competitive sports, if you like watching World War II movies, you better get out your blanket and hide in the closet because they’re coming for you.” This attitude nurtures men “against their nature,” he added, “against their wiring, because now they’re being told, ‘Don’t be what you naturally want to be.”
Because of his death on the cross, we who believe in him are redeemed from the futility of our dead works and restored to a right relationship with God. In his sacrificial example, we have a model to imitate (1 Corinthians 11:1), especially those of us who are husbands (Ephesians 5:25). “Our ability to fulfill our God-given responsibilities as men is not because of virtue within us,” said Strachan, but “because of God’s grace in us that summons us to wake up and to be not just a man for ourselves, not just an adult in terms of age, but to be a man who lays down his life for others to whatever extent is necessary.”
Lead, provide, protect. This is what God designed me to do, and it’s more necessary than ever in our fallen, messed-up world. It’s especially important for families, the building blocks of society. “If you build fathers, you build the family and you build the society,” Strachan stated. “If you break fathers, you break the family. If you break the family, you break the society.”
Lead, provide, protect. That’s the role of a godly man. The world has always sought to tear down, trip up, or otherwise neutralize godly leaders, and that’s especially true of our culture, which has embraced an anti-biblical, anti-masculine ideology. “Of course, a Christian is going to say, ‘You’re only going to be truly strong when you recognize your weakness and your need for Jesus Christ,’” Strachan granted. “Nonetheless, in Scripture, in case after case, (David to Solomon or the Lord God to Joshua), there’s a call to courage, and there’s a call to strength, and that is what boys need.”
We need men who, in the face of worldly opposition and devilish temptation, will heed this call:
“Be strong, and show yourself a man, and keep the charge of the Lord your God”1 Kings 2:2-3
Progressive Crusade to Bend Arc of History by Chris Uhlmann in The Weekend Australian 11th May, 2024
Uhlmann contends that what is at stake is whether the ascendant state morality will drive deeper into the ancient institutions of faith and force believers to submit to its temporal commandments. Nationally, the Australian Law Reform Commission’s final report on religious exemptions from anti-discrimination law is just another sortie in a long campaign over what the state will allow you to believe and how far it is prepared to go to force apostates to heel.
Queensland’s proposed anti-discrimination bill seeks to narrow the rights of the faithful. Alex Deagon, from the Queensland University of Technology, argues it will “significantly undermine the ability of religious organisations to employ persons following their faith”.
When you lose the freedom to manifest your faith, abide by your beliefs and the liberty to ensure your children are educated in your creed, what is left? The commission is erasing the right of a religious school to organise around its own ethos.
This is an extreme form of laicism, driven by a fierce “progressive” crusade against Christianity. In a multifaith society that means all believers are on this battlefield, as the institutions of government are mobilised against them. Like many things dubbed progressive, it is the latest incarnation of the despotic tendencies of the Bureautoracy (n): the ubiquitous, unelected technocratic blob bent on imposing its notion of utopia on the mob. Its relentlessly mutating dogma has spread like Paterson’s curse through all the institutions.
In a profound irony, we are witnessing the final metamorphosis of Christianity as zealots torch the last idol: belief in a power that transcends the state.
The child has turned on a parent it does not recognise because the source code of this secular faith is the notion of universal human rights. That idea was born with the belief that each individual is valued by God, an avowedly Christian concept and part of a set of revolutionary beliefs that the early faithful simply called “The Way”.
Another epoch-changing idea rings from the first sentences of John’s Gospel: “In the beginning was the word (logos). And the word was with God. And the word was God.”
The New Testament was written in Greek and logos means both word and reason. So, in the Christian tradition, God is reason itself. Christianity is the singular encounter between Greek philosophy and Jewish mysticism, the marriage of reason and faith. The theology that evolved was a thoroughly different way of thinking. Let’s call it wisdom.
This wisdom elevated the poor, the meek, the righteous, the merciful, and peacemakers. Faith in God demands you “treat others as you would like them to treat you”, and not to act with reason is contrary to the nature of God.
Christianity was born in the East, informed by the West, and takes on its historically decisive character in Europe. Europe is defined by its faith and its faith is defined by reason. Faith and reason set Europe on the road to liberal democracy.
Through all its failures, and its many crimes, reason pushes the West forward and demands that it learn and evolve. And the excesses of both church and state always had to contend with its Christian conscience.
The savage colonisation of the Americas was fiercely denounced by Dominican friar Bartolome de Las Casas, and the evil of slavery collapsed when it confronted the faith of William Wilberforce. Despite often spectacularly failing to abide by its ideals, Christianity demanded the West slowly bend towards realising the radical demand of the central tenet of its faith. The new commandment to “love one another” excludes no one.
As historian Tom Holland demonstrates in his epic work Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind, “To live in a Western country is to live in a society that is utterly saturated by Christian concepts and assumptions.”
It is, of course, a heritage that the zealots of the New Way deny. To them, their belief system is self-evident because it just is. It is neutral. It is agnostic. That is a delusion. The New Way exhibits some of the best and all the worst features of a proselytising religion. It looks to uplift, to guide, to build a better, more just world. It is also deeply intolerant of dissent and has established the institutions of inquisition to police heresy, in state and federal human rights commissions.
It’s hard to criticise anti-discrimination laws but the growth of objective penalties for subjective crimes should trouble those who care about liberal democracy. Such penalties are how American journalist Robert Wargas defines totalitarianism.
What standards will be applied? The notion of transgender identity, for example, is a rapidly moving target. Even the Australian Human Rights Commission’s website admits the “terminology is strongly contested”.
So, this latest assault by the state on the faithful is a battle of competing theologies, as the disciples of Caesar seek to mount his image in every temple. And the insurgents know nothing of faith because, as anyone who has any dealings with religious schools knows, most have no desire to discriminate and are far more tolerant of difference than “progressives”.
What religious institutions don’t want is to be forced to submit to state diktats that deliberately undermine the ethos of their institution. Here let’s recall that the Labor Party pledge demands its members not be a part of any other organisation that is inimical to its ideals. Why shouldn’t religious schools enjoy the same rights?
The arc of history has bent out of shape. Those who claim the heritage of reason have discounted the role of faith in their enlightenment. They discriminate and call it equality. They unreasonably seek to force the faithful to heel. This is foolishness. Fortunately, Biblical prophecy reveals that this godless persecution of Christians precedes Jesus’ return to Earth first to rapture the Saints and then to pour out His wrath upon an unrepentant rebellious world. Christians need to heed Jesus warning that it will even get much worse.
“Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake. And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.” Matthew 24:9-14
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan officially inaugurated a former Byzantine-era church previously known as the Church of the Holy Saviour in Chora, a United Nations World Heritage Site, as a mosque this week, drawing condemnation from the Greek government.
The change is part of a series of conversions in recent years, including the iconic Hagia Sophia in 2020, which garnered international criticism but no action.
The Chora Church Museum dates back to the Byzantine era when it was originally built as a monastery; during the Ottoman era, it was converted into a mosque before being changed to a museum in 1948. The interior is decorated with some of the oldest surviving Byzantine mosaics and frescoes.
Located in the Fatih district of Istanbul, near the ancient city walls, the building known locally as Kariye is celebrated for its intricate mosaics and frescoes dating back to the 11th and 12th centuries.
Erdogan’s bold move in 2020 to convert the Hagia Sophia brought little reaction so this recent move could be expected. Erdogan’s intention to take every step he can to re-establish the former Ottoman Empire is emerging and being made clear first of all to Muslim nations. Sunni Turkey will soon attack Shia Iran as prophesied in Daniel 8 to exert its dominance. Turkey is not impressed with Iran trying to exert its dominance with its proxies in Lebanon, Gaza, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.
Daniel’s Vision of the Ram and the Goat
“A male goat (Turkey) came from the west across the face of the whole earth, without touching the ground. And the goat had a conspicuous horn between his eyes. He came to the ram (Iran) with the two horns, which I had seen standing on the bank of the canal, and he ran at him in his powerful wrath. I saw him come close to the ram, and he was enraged against him and struck the ram and broke his two horns. And the ram had no power to stand before him, but he cast him down to the ground and trampled on him. And there was no one who could rescue the ram from his power.” Daniel 8:5-7
“Understand, O son of man, that the vision is for the time of the end.”As for the ram that you saw with the two horns, these are the kings of Media and Persia (Iran). And the goat is Javan (revived Ottoman Empire).” Daniel 8:19, 22
Javan conveniently describes an area that includes parts of Greece and Turkey, closely linking the historical nature of Alexander’s empire to what is to come. Indeed, the iron beast has bronze claws. Perhaps the revived Ottoman empire will include parts of modern-day Greece, the Balkans and Macedonia, reinforcing the significance of the contrast between “iron and the clay”.
With anti-Israel and anti-Semitic demonstrations sweeping college campuses of America, Jonathan Cahn exposes the dark secrets the media will never tell you – from Wokism to Hamas to the mysterious Mufti of Jerusalem! This is a crucial video for understanding Biblical prophecy unfolding in our time.
Does this have anything to do with the end times? Events confirm that we are part of end times Biblical prophecy. The Bible said that before Jesus returns the tiny nation of Israel will be at the centre of world news and all nations will come against it. Israel’s rebirth in 1948 was miraculous. It had to happen for end-times Biblical prophecies to be fulfilled and is the most significant and miraculous of the end-times prophecies. Fulfilled Biblical prophecies are proof the Bible is the inspired word of God.
The slide below is taken from a FREE PowerPoint presentation available from http://www.answersingenesis.org which addresses the issue of the decline in Christianity in the Western World due to the teaching of evolution and billions of years in our schools and universities.
Ken Ham calls it the Seven C’s of History: Creation – Perfect at the beginning. Corruption: Sin and death entered the world because Adam and Eve disobeyed God due to deception by an evil spirit being, Satan. Catastrophe: God judges an evil world with the worldwide flood of Noah’s day. Confusion: God confuses the language of the post-flood population resulting in the nations of the world speaking different languages. Christ: God’s Son steps into history as the Saviour of mankind. Cross: Jesus was prepared to pay the price for our rebellion against God. He rose from the dead and promised to raise to eternal life all of those who believe and submit to Him as Lord. Consummation: Jesus will return to earth to fulfill the covenants He made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob for God’s nation, Israel to rule and reign over the nations of the world for 1000 years: Jesus Millennial Kingdom (www.millennialkingdom.net).
God has allowed Satan to rule this world for 6,000 years. When Jesus returns to Earth, Satan is bound in the Abyss for most of the 1000 years that Jesus rules the nations with the resurrected Saints. At the end of the 1000 years, Satan is released and he raises an enormous army to come against Jesus and the Saints. “And fire came down from God out of heaven and devoured them.” Revelation 20:9. God then destroys this world with fire. Next is the second resurrection and Jesus’ White Throne judgement. Then, John sees a new Jerusalem descending out of a new heaven onto a new Earth where only the righteous dwell.
When Darwin came up with the Theory of Evolution by natural selection, he did not know the incredible evidence for design in the Cosmos. As Dr. Dean Kenyon (former Professor of Biochemistry at Stanford University and author of two Evolutionary Biochemistry textbooks) states the discovery of DNA and the electron microscope rang the death knell of evolution. Imagine how difficult it was for Dr. Kenyon to come out and say that what he had been teaching for many years was nonsense.
DNA is the complex information in every living cell that controls all the functions of the organism. Information is only derived from an Intelligent Designer who is separate from His creation.
The electron microscope reveals that inside each cell are manufacturing units making all the complex chemicals required for life and transport devices to take them to where they are needed.
The DNA, and the factories and functions that the DNA controls must be perfect on day one; they could not have evolved. They were created by an omnipotent designer just as the Bible, God’s Word states. The opening words of the Bible state “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.“
In other branches of science such as geology the paradigm of slow gradual change over billions of years is also being challenged as the evidence in the rocks is of catastrophe not slow gradual change. Billions of dead things all over the world including fossil fuels are evidence of a catastrophic global flood.
Nations that are talking about Israel giving up land to re-establish a nation of Palestine do so at enormous peril. Biblical prophecy shows us that God has judged nations down through history: e.g. Egypt, Canaan, Ammon, Moab, Bashan, Heshbon, Midian, Babylon, Persia, Rome, and the 20th century, Germany, UK, and now America in the 21st century.
“If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, and if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I intended to do to it. And if at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it, and if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will relent of the good that I had intended to do to it.” Jeremiah 18:7-8
Even God’s chosen people were not exempt from His judgment if they rebelled against Him. God instructed Moses to warn the people of the nation of Israel that He would rain down judgment on them if they were disobedient(Deuteronomy 29:24-26). He has used the Babylonians, Persians, Romans, and even Germans for that purpose.
This recent video by Nelson Walters shows us how in control God is of the events that are taking place in our world.
In this video, Dr. Marco Fasoli who holds a doctorate in biochemistry from the University of Cambridge uses science to expose the many flaws in Darwin’s theory of evolution. He does it at a level that most people without a background in science will understand.
From my standpoint, I believe that evolution has been Satan’s most successful strategy. It has taken two generations away from God. At schools and universities, Gen Z and Gen Alpha, have been taught that evolution from “goo to you” not creation by an omnipotent designer is how the Cosmos came to exist.
If necessary your best prayer is to ask God to strip you of everything so that you are totally dependent upon Him, even for your next meal. Can I suggest you listen to this Jamie Winship video; God stripped Jamie and his family of everything so they had to depend upon Him for all their needs for two years. Once you have lived this way you’ll never want to go back to living the world’s way of total reliance on your own ability. Jamie reveals how God showed him how to witness to Muslims. It will “blow your mind”.
Jamie also learned more about God and His ways by how He answered their prayers, which helped the family know how to pray. Jamie began to fully understand the meaning of being made in the image of God to be in communion with Him. To understand that God is perfection, unblemished by sin. He only does what is right. Jamie wants to please God, so he only wants to do what is right, like Jesus when He was on Earth.
“So Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise.‘” John 5:19
Jesus made it possible for our Heavenly Father to send the Holy Spirit (the third person of the Trinity) to be our counsellor, teacher, comforter, and helper to enable us to live the Christian life.
Fifty-three years back, in 1971, 87 percent of Australians identified as religious, and overwhelmingly as Christian. Now it’s just 54 percent. It is a similar decline as in the U.S.A.
And here’s the really striking feature: only five years ago, 52 percent of us identified as Christian. Now it’s just 44 percent. That’s an almost 20 percent decline in Christian belief in just five years. Some of that will be people who don’t worship regularly anymore and feel fraudulent in ticking the religion box even though their faith is still with them. For others, it represents a clear rejection of organised religion. Five years back, only 30 percent of Australians identified as having no religion. Now it’s 39 percent. That’s a 30 percent leap in just five years, making no religion the fastest-growing “creed” in the country. Why does that matter? It may not be fashionable to say so but in reality, our culture is built on a Christian foundation. Our democracy, for instance, rests on the notion that everyone is equal in rights and dignity, something that’s come down to us through the Christian gospels. Elsewhere in our culture, our justice system rests on the notion that we should treat others as we’d be treated; again that comes from Christian teaching. Our sense of community too rests on the notion that we should “love our neighbours as we love ourselves”. It’s a commandment at the heart of our volunteerism and philanthropy. Then there’s the significant matter of what religious organisations contribute to social uplift. Beyond a values-based education, they run many health and community services. To reference the largest Christian denomination, the Catholic Church, as an example, there are 80 Catholic hospitals across the country and 25,000-plus aged-care beds in Catholic nursing homes, as well as social welfare bodies and charities with a broader Christian inspiration – from the Salvation Army to the St Vincent de Paul Society, to Anglicare, to Lifeline, and Alcoholics Anonymous – all organisations that are generally thought to be serving Australians well, however, discredited the zeitgeist might find the faith which inspires their good works.
When people believe there is no God then of course they make up their own rules. It is survival of the fittest and truth is what you make it. Your truth may not be my truth. Gay marriage, homosexuality, and transgenderism are just the start. The only true reality is built on the first sentence of the Bible: “In the beginning God created”. Our Creator has given us the truth about the origins of our Cosmos and humankind. If you want answers to the big questions: Who Am I? then there is only one place to go God’s Word. Can I also suggest Martyn Isles book Who Am I?
Evolution and billions of years is the God of this World, Satan’s, greatest strategy. He has convinced even our learned scholars, our educators that the Cosmos did not need a Creator. It is absurd as nothing comes from nothing. This highly complex universe with its laws and interconnectedness had to have an omnipotent designer but, our learned scholars cannot countenance the supernatural yet, it is the obvious, in fact, the only possible solution.
LIVING ETERNAL NOW 