Taking a Stand

Though we may lose the world's fragile "freedom," we have a safe position in Christ for all eternity.

Stand firm in it! Ephesians 6:10-18 and Psalm 32:7

February 2010

Coburn and Franken Condemn Uganda: "...conservative Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma has joined leftist comedian Al Franken, a Democratic senator from Minnesota, in sponsoring a bill denouncing Uganda's Christians for considering passage of legislation to outlaw certain unhealthy and immoral homosexual practices.....

"...the government of Uganda is considering passage of the anti-homosexuality bill because of the growing concern by officials and religious leaders that foreign homosexuals and special interest groups are trying to spread homosexuality throughout the country and undermine the country's return to traditional moral values. Campaigns and groups promoting the rights of 'sexual minorities' have emerged in Uganda and other African countries, with funding from billionaire George Soros.... Uganda emphasizes abstinence and monogamy in its fight against AIDS, in contrast to the reckless 'safe sex' approach popularized by 'progressives' in the U.S. who want to avoid finding homosexuality itself to be a dangerous 'lifestyle'." See Don't conform to the ways of the world

December 2009

Preparations for Sufferings: "Seeing that Paul's friends were attempting to dissuade him from following the path that God had set out for him, Flavel notes that it is our duty to obey God. He states emphatically that 1) '"divine precept, not providence, is to rule out our way of duty' and 2) 'no hindrances or discouragements whatsoever will justify our neglect of a known duty.' Paul's response to these entreaties was simply that 'I am ready.' ...it is a matter of his 'will and resolution,' that nothing can alter his fixed purpose." See Persecution

The Manhattan Declaration by John MacArthur: "Here are the main reasons I am not signing the Manhattan Declaration, even though a few men whom I love and respect have already affixed their names to it: ...Although I obviously agree with the document’s opposition to same-sex marriage, abortion, and other key moral problems threatening our culture, the document falls far short of identifying the one true and ultimate remedy for all of humanity’s moral ills: the gospel. [which] is nowhere presented... in the document or any of the accompanying literature. Indeed, that would be a practical impossibility because of the contradictory views held by the broad range of signatories regarding what the gospel teaches and what it means to be a Christian." See Don't conform to the ways of the world

November 2009

The Right of Conscience in the Age of Obama: "DeCarlo protested that as a practicing Catholic, she had strongly held religious beliefs against killing unborn children. Though she had repeatedly and in writing made her belief known to hospital administrators since she was hired five years earlier, DeCarlo was told on that day that if she did not participate, she would be charged with 'insubordination and patient abandonment.' That meant she might lose her job or her nursing license or both. Despite repeated tearful pleas, DeCarlo was refused....

"Randy Pate, a political appointee at HHS who helped formulate the Bush conscience regulation, told us the Obama administration may have been surprised by the pushback against its efforts against conscience rights....

"The Planned Parenthood website states that 'it is unethical for health care providers to stand in the way of a woman's access to safe, legal and professional healthcare.'... The irony is that the government created the conscience crisis by abandoning its duty to protect human lives. When the Supreme Court made murder legal, it imposed an unprecedented conscience threat on the medical community. The opposite right not to participate in abortion isn't just one competing interest among many. It is a plea from a uniquely important profession." See Opening Prayer, Kansas State Senate

"...for such a time as this." "Notice Esther's amazing patience. The request on her heart would affect countless lives across the empire, but she knew she must wait. There was no need hurry as God unveiled His perfect plan!"

October 2009

Will Safe Houses be Needed Again? "This is but another example of the growing anti-Israel and anti-Zionist sentiment (that Dr. Martin Luther King, in 1967, correctly labeled anti-Semitism), which many see as rising to pre-WWII levels, especially in Europe, but also in the U.S. ...Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu is on record as saying 'It is 1930 and Iran is Germany.' Others have noted the similarities of the anti-Semitism of the 1930’s, not only in Iran, but in Europe and even in the United States....
"Prior to WWII there were about 8,300,000 Jews in Europe. Six million perished in Nazi ovens. A little over a million were able to emigrate to various countries throughout the world, including what is now Israel. Over a million survived not only in Germany but in other European countries controlled by the Third Reich. How? Christians put their lives on the line to save fellow human beings by providing safe houses for those fleeing the Nazi death machine.... Yet, did not the Jews and Christians in Germany in the 1930’s think the coming atrocities to be inconceivable? Many waited until it was too late. Is it possible that the Holocaust was a preview of more horrific things to come?" See Things We Couldn't Say

"...we have this treasure [His Spirit] in earthen vessels [our bodies], that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. We are hard pressed on every side, yet not crushed... perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed... that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body." 2 Corinthians 4:7-10

September 2009

No Gardasil? No citizenship... Teen facing deportation for refusing unneeded meds for STD: "The 17-year-old was on track for citizenship, attendance at Pensacola Christian College and a career as a teacher, until she ran into Gardasil The drug was added to the list of vaccinations required for female immigrants in 2008, but the teen has declined it. For one thing, it's purpose is to protect against the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus only. Simone has taken a virginity pledge and doesn't see she why she should be forced to take it. The dangers of the vaccination are not lost on her either; it's been documented to cause serious injury and death." See Trusting God

August 2009

Judge requires statement that abortion ends life: "A judge in South Dakota has concluded Planned Parenthood must tell potential abortion customers that the procedure will 'terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being'. U.S. District Judge Karen Schreier ruled this week in the case that was launched in 2005 when state lawmakers approved the new consent law and Planned Parenthood filed a lawsuit. A temporary injunction obtained right away by the abortion business went all the way to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals before the justices concluded the state can require the delivery of accurate information and the injunction was lifted." See Perseverance

June 2009

Pastor Charles Haddon Spurgeon: "We have to bear the sneer of the world... [but] its soft words... its hypocrisy, are far worse. Our danger is lest we grow rich and become proud, lest we give ourselves up to the fashions of this present evil world, and lose our faith. Or if wealth be not the trial, worldly care is quite as mischievous. If we cannot be torn in pieces by the roaring lion, we may be hugged to death by the bear. The devil little cares which it is, so long as he destroys our love to Christ, and our confidence in him.
"I fear me that the Christian church is far more likely to lose her integrity in these soft and silken days [well, they are not quite so silken anymore] than in those rough awake now, for... we are most likely to fall asleep to our own undoing, unless our faith in Jesus be a reality, and our love to Jesus a vehement flame." See Watch

A new religion masquerading as Christianity: "Liberal 'Christians' abhor 'fundamentalist' Christianity, so they cast it aside and adopt their own set of religious beliefs and values. Times have changed, after all, so they feel it's incumbent upon them to bring Christianity out of the Dark Ages into our postmodern world. Christianity must shed its traditional, orthodox beliefs to blend in with the popular culture....
"Before I came to know Christ in a saving way I was a liberal 'Christian.' (That was before the liberals coined the term 'progressive Christian.') As all liberals do, I molded Christianity into my worldview. Problem was I kept running into a road block — the Bible. I rarely read the Bible but when I did I'd invariably stumble on a passage that contradicted what, at the time, was 'true for me.' I admit it troubled me but I chose to ignore what I'd read and remained steadfast in my mission to form Christianity into my way of thinking..." Don't conform to the ways of the world

May 2009

Be Watchful! "...the early Christians... went everywhere with their lives in their hands. We are not in this day called to pass through the same fearful persecutions: if we were, the Lord would give us grace to bear the test. But the tests of Christian life, at the present moment, though outwardly not so terrible, are yet more likely to overcome us than even those of the fiery age.

"We have to bear the sneer of the world-that is little; its blandishments, its soft words, its oily speeches, its fawning, its hypocrisy, are far worse. Our danger is lest we grow rich and become proud, lest we give ourselves up to the fashions of this present evil world, and lose our faith. ... I fear me that the Christian church is far more likely to lose her integrity in these soft and silken days than in those rougher times."

April 2009

Daring to Refuse Compromise

Students fear 'anti-religious indoctrination': "Elected student leaders at American River College in Sacramento, Calif., have adopted a resolution that seeks to protect classmates from the 'anti-religious and political indoctrination' of professors and others on campus. ... [these student leaders had endorsed Proposition 8 in support of the Biblical definition of marriage]. The elected leaders since then have 'been embattled with the leftist faculty, student organizations and administration on our campus.'... When the conservative student leaders faced an unsuccessful recall because of their views, the Associated Press described them as 'politicized Christian fundamentalists.'" See this spiritual battle from the opposite side: Truth or Lies? Rick Warren's Moral Facade <

The evidence for Biblical accuracy & One Way to God: "'How can I prove to my atheist friend that Jesus was God incarnate and that all other 'prophets' (Muhammad, Joseph Smith, etc.) were just men?' asked a visitor to our website. 'How can I can I show him that Jesus is the ONLY WAY to God and His eternity? And how can I explain it without making him say, 'How narrow-minded! It's ridiculous to assume that your religion is the only way.' Those important questions deserve answers...."

March 2009

I Found God in Soviet Russia Chapter 15: Russia's Religious "Freedom": "Every time I hear Soviet propaganda about freedom of religion in Russia, I think of the thousands of political prisoners in the slave-labor camps whose chief and frequently only 'political’ offense is that they believe in God and worship Him by trying to live Christian lives in keeping with the teachings of the Bible. The Soviet state has democratically made no distinction among religious groups: it has had as its objective the extermination of them all. ...at Vorkuta, the smaller groups were by no means more ready in yielding to persecution."

February 2009

I Found God in Soviet Russia - Faithful in Life and Death: "On a bleak winter night, the furtive shivering figure of a prisoner could be seen outside the barracks building next to ours. While the eerie light of the search-lamps illuminating the barbed-wire barriers of the compound was reflected on the snow, and the wind blew in frigid gusts, this fellow would walk back and forth, back and forth, trying to keep warm despite the sub-zero wind. At any sign of a Russian guard coming toward the area, he would quickly return inside.... For meeting here this night in Vorkuta was the Church behind Barbed Wire. This is the real church in Russia, the branch of the Christian Church which no delegation of visiting foreign clergymen is going to be permitted to see."

I Found God in Soviet Russia - A Stunning Blow: "Desperately I prayed that night in Weimar Prison. My life was in God’s hands... It was 1950. My sentence would run to 1965. I was almost twenty-seven years old. Must I remain a prisoner until I was forty-two? Even then, would I ever be released?’ Was it my fate to be only a nameless, unknown prisoner of Soviet state until death should release me in some Siberian slave camp?"

"...we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. We are hard pressed on every side, yet not crushed... perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken...." 2 Corinthians 4:7-10

January 2009

I Found God in Soviet Russia - Chapter 8: More than Coincidence: "Muehlberg concentration camp, built by the Nazis in 1940 to house prisoners of war, was one of those which the Russians took over intact with scarcely any interruption to make the change of management. As time went on (and I was there for eighteen months), this place came to have a double meaning for me: I was to witness evermore cruelty and injustice—which was God’s plan for me—and I was to undergo a further test of my faith through being exposed to an ever deepening depravity."

Man refuses to drive 'No God' bus: "A Christian bus driver has refused to drive a bus with an atheist slogan proclaiming 'There's probably no God'. Ron Heather, from Southampton, Hampshire, responded with 'shock' and 'horror' at the message and walked out of his shift on Saturday in protest." See Spiritual Warfare

November 2008

A German lady remembers Nazi "Change": "...in my homeland, Adolph Hitler was elected to power by promising 'Change.'... Yes. Change came to my homeland as the new leader promised it would. The teachers in German schools began to teach the children to sing songs in praise of Hitler. This was the beginning of the Hitler Youth movement....

"Little girls and boys joined hands and sang these songs as they walked home from school. My brother came home and told Papa what was happening at school.... I will never forget my father's face. Grief and fear. He knew that the best propaganda of the Nazis was song on the lips of little children." See Cultural & Political Corruption

An unchanging God in our changing times: "For the past several months we have been praying that God would have mercy on our country and give us what we need and not what we deserve. We now know that we have been given what we deserve. But let us not lose hope.... Remember that 'God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change (Psalm 46:1-2)." See Don't conform to the ways of the world

September 2008

Things We Couldn't Say: "When I first arrived at the Scheveningen prison, I had to stand with my face to the wall.... I was ordered to undress, and they searched me.... Thank God, I had got rid of everything. Then I was sent to cell 306 in the A-corridor, where I was the fifth prisoner in a one-person cell, three meters long and two meters wide. ...there was only one bunk, a hard bed in the back with a thin mattress.... One of the prisoners, Lies Karel, was a nurse who had done a lot of good Resistance work before she was arrested, I eventually grew to trust her, though at the very beginning I trusted no one. I had heard that there would be informers.

     "...some of us scratched marks into the wall to count the days we were there, The others would keep an eye on the door, stand against it to cover the peephole.... I had managed to save a bobby pin in my hair when I was arrested, and I used it to scratch a Bible verse into the wall, It was a verse that always brought me comfort, even though I had no idea what would happen to us: '“Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end.'”

     [Another prisoner, Beatrix Terwindt, wrote a long poem describing the torturous last months of her life. Here's a small portion:

“Do you think about God?” she asked,

“No, Sigrid, no. God has gone away, God is dead,

Just smell the stench of the burned people,

look at the smoke rising day and night from the ovens."...

"God, 0 God, heal my wounds before I die,

They hurt so much I can hardly walk,

Give me my last wish, that I can walk erect and die a brave death...

They say that you are dead, God, what should I believe?

What can I hope for?"

     Those who truly belong to Him, know the answer: We have a glorious hope that shines far beyond the struggles and suffering of this world. See also Endurance

August 2008

Discernment: Spiritual Survival for a Church in Crisis: (By John MacArthur) "Today's church is like the religious leaders of Jesus' day, who could tell the difference between superficial things like pleasant and stormy weather, but not between truth and error (Matt. 16:1-3). So many churches have relinquished biblical ethics and doctrine, a deep reverence and worship of God, repentance over sin, humility toward God and fellow believers, and a profound understanding of God's character and work. All that has resulted in a low-level commitment to holy living....

"Spiritual discernment is the skill of separating divine truth from error. First Thessalonians 5:21 says we are to 'examine everything carefully.'" See Biblical Discernment

May 2008

Christ is all in Life or Death: "Whitefield used to say, 'I am often weary, in the work, but never weary of it,' and such was, doubtless, the attitude of our apostle. He loved to serve, yet longed too for the hour of release, with no selfish motive in it, for his one object was Christ, whether in life or in death." See Trusting God

March 2008

Termination of two tenured Bible professors at Cedarville University: "Those holding the 'assurance-but-not-certainty' view argue that since God alone is omniscient, He only can know anything with certainty. Mortals may not claim certainty in knowing anything. ... the inspiration and authority of the Scriptures can not be known with certainty, only with assurance or confidence....

      "Several lines of thought lead me to reject the 'assurance-but-not-certainty' view (hereafter referred to as ABNOC)... (1) such a view directly denies the Scriptures, and (2) demeans and, indeed, blasphemes the person of God. As to the first: note the use of "clearly" and "without excuse" in Romans 1:20. "For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse.' 'Clearly' and 'without excuse' ... are all-inclusive. If one can arrive on Judgement Day and demonstrate that God's communication with humans was uncertain, then such a person would have an excuse. But the verse unequivocally asserts that such is not the case....

      "A second reason to reject the ABNOC view is that it blasphemes the person of God. If God does not make certain the terms of entrance or avoidance of Hell, He is unfair, unjust, and unholy. You do not threaten individuals with the most weighty consequences of life in less-than-certain terms, and then consign them to endless suffering. ...

      "It is the hope of many of us that Cedarville not become a casualty in the truth war by slowing sliding into a form of Postmodern belief which guts the certainty of the Gospel. ... Leviticus 5:1 may be paraphrased thus: 'If a wrong has been committed and it comes to issue, those witnesses who have seen or known of it must come forward to testify. If they do not come forward, they are guilty of the offense committed by others.'" See Wearing God's Armor and taking our stand

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