Recently in Faith Category
Monday Morning Prayer: Dr. Stan Zygmunt - YouTube
A friend from Campus Crusade at MIT, now a long-time physics professor at Valparaiso University, speaks at a college chapel service on why we don't ask for help and why we should anyway.
This end-times movie was a staple of 1970s Baptist youth group New Year's Eve parties. First of a trilogy continued by A Distant Thunder and Image of the Beast. There's no time to change your mind. The Son has come, and you've been left behind.
Back in the early 2000s, Jeff Friend and Chris Huber wrote a comic strip called "Which Circle?" a thinly-veiled spoof of Campus Crusade for Christ as they encountered it in their college years. Sixteen episodes, which were published in The [Wittenburg] Door, are available on Facebook. The archived whichcircle.com website appears to have a complete collection of 21 episodes and features commentaries from Friend and Huber, elaborating on the aspects of Cru culture that inspired each episode. Jon Bitterhouse, the Wildwood summer project director in Episode 10, is based on a real staffer who was my summer project city director in Quezon City, the Phillipines, in 1983. I found a lot in the strip that echoed my experiences, particularly the condescending attitudes displayed toward rival campus ministries.
Church leaders: If you think you're neutral, you're drifting left | Clear Truth Media
Joel Berry writes: "The particulars of the political parties aren't just a set of neutral tools, they are a series of conclusions that follow logically from very different starting points. The politics of the right grow from the worldview of the Right. The politics of the Left grow from the worldview of the Left. There are sinners on both sides, there are imperfect solutions on both sides. But they are far from neutral.
"And right now, the culture, all our institutions, our politics, and our pop-culture, are all moving Left. Christians aren't leading the way in this drift. At this point, they're just along for the ride. At the highest levels of Leftism both culturally and politically, you see people who are unapologetic about their hostility towards God and everything good, true, and beautiful. The Leftist movement starts with the assumption of a godless universe populated by an animal species that through evolution can build heaven here on earth. All their politics follow from that beginning. Every power center on earth, almost without exception, is following their lead."
Kate Forbes has still won a significant victory - for religion in public life -- Daily Telegraph
Fraser Nelson on the deputy leader of the Scottish National Party:
"It's not just that she was born into the Free Church of Scotland: she converted into it, leaving the more liberal Presbyterian church. She disagrees with gay marriage, sex outside of marriage and even women ministers. She'd uphold everyone's rights, she says - but her faith is real. And far more important to her than politics....
"A Cambridge graduate, appointed Nicola Sturgeon's finance minister at the age of 29, Forbes has long stood out. Brought up in India to missionary parents, she first followed the normal pattern of dodging questions about her faith.
"Three years ago, she changed tack. 'To be straight, I believe in the person of Jesus Christ,' she told an astonished Nick Robinson. 'I believe that he died for me, he saved me. And that my calling is to serve and to love him and to serve and love my neighbours with all my heart and soul and mind and strength.'"
The Christian Canary Dying in the Coal Mine That Is India - The Stream
"Secret No. 2: a significant portion of North-East India is predominantly Christian. The mostly mountainous region of eight states and over 200 tribes experienced an unprecedented explosion of Christianity in the early part of the 20th century.
"Missiologists and anthropologists agree that the Gospel has been the "single most important catalyst" revolutionizing the North-East tribals in every area, from literacy to the emancipation of women.
"Most remarkably, even though it was Western missionaries who brought Christianity to the tribes, the churches of North-East India are fiercely independent and proudly indigenous, blending their own treasured heritage with the import of Western music and culture.
"Throw a stone in Nagaland, Mizoram or Meghalaya and it will hit a quartet of Christians singing hymns in four-part harmony."
The Queering of the SBC - Center for Baptist Leadership
Jared Moore writes: "In a 2019 interview with Apologia Radio, Butterfield said that if she were still living a lesbian lifestyle today and were trying to repent, theologians and pastors who teach that same-sex attraction is not sin would have prevented her from doing so: 'I don't know how it would have gone for me today, because ... in working out what it means to have the indwelling sin of homosexuality, I would be told that it wasn't a sin at all; or I would be told it's only a sin if you act on it.'...
Moore discusses a long list of SBC leaders and influencers who have departed from Biblical truth on this question: Preston Sprinkle, Nate Collins, Karen Swallow Prior, David Prince, Patrick Schreiner, Sam Allberry. He points to analysis by New Testament Professor Robert A. Gagnon, showing that "a child's social environment greatly increases or decreases his or her chances of developing same-sex desires."
"The queering of the SBC--and all of conservative American Christianity--is a major problem. It appears that in a misguided effort to be winsome to the world, we have allowed leaders and ministries to advance unbiblical teaching that undermines God's good plan for human sexuality and even celebrates the embrace of sexual immorality in the lives of professing Christians and the church. In our sexually confused and sinful day and age, what the lost need most is courage and clarity, not compromise."
Song Review Index | The Berean Test
Vince Wright analyzes popular songs used in Christian worship to see whether they reflect the teaching of Scripture and properly focus attention on God and His glory. Some of his guiding principles are idiosyncratic -- he rates doctrinally sound hymns like "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing" as "PERHAPS" for use in corporate worship because their poetic language might be off-putting to visitors -- but he invites respectful debate about the conclusions he reaches. In his review of "10,000 Reasons (Bless the Lord, O My Soul)," Wright overlooks the most annoying thing about the song, which you can find discussed here by Christopher Malapati: The constant shifting of referents for 2nd and 3rd persons, sometimes within a single line. (Is "your" referring to God or my soul?) Malapati proposes a fix, which is close to what I sing.
O. Palmer Robertson in 1988, regarding the importance of lay leadership in maintaining the orthodox direction of a denomination:
"The ruling elder gave birth to the Presbyterian Church in America. Not the preachers but the ruling elders. When the ministers were too cautious to take decisive action, the ruling elders took the lead. They formed the organizations and called the meetings that eventually led to the formation of the PCA.
"Now the ruling elder must devote himself to diligence in maintaining this great church. If the PCA is to realize fully its unique opportunities in the needy world today, ruling elders must show their commitment and concern by consistent involvement at every level of the church's life. Particularly at the General Assembly, the ruling elder must be present, and he must be heard. He who rules must do so with diligence. The only thing necessary for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing."
Articles - Sufficient Sleep - Din - Ask the Rabbi
"It is related that the Chozeh of Lublin would instruct his students not to sleep too little. R' Yitzchak Isaac of Kamarna would say that it is better to add an hour of sleep and the rest of the day be a mentch than to limit your sleep by an hour and the rest of the day be a chaya ra'ah."
