I’ve had trouble putting my finger on why this bothered me. Everything she was saying was technically true. Today is the day of salvation, and anyone can die at any time. However, it seemed she was coming off as a salesperson trying to convince a reluctant prospect.

As always the question to ask in evangelism is: “What did Jesus and the apostles do?”

It seems Jesus never tried to close the deal. He would command people to repent and believe the gospel, or believe in Him, or come to Him, or eat His flesh and drink His blood. He never asked anyone to repeat a prayer after Him. When the rich young ruler walked away (Luke 18), he didn’t chase after Him. He trusted the message to do its work, along with the Holy Spirit, even if it meant he would never repent.

Maybe the clearest example is Acts 10 when Peter went to Cornelius and his family to give them the gospel: “While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit came on all who heard the message” (Acts 10:44).  He never had to close the deal or get them to make a commitment of some sort. God saved them while he was busy talking.

So what should we do when someone appears broken by the message? Exactly what Jesus and the apostles did. Deliver the message faithfully, and trust the Holy Spirit. We don’t have to push the individual for a decision or commitment of any kind. Maybe God is saving the person as we speak.

Before I knew Shawn Anderson was the author of any book, I disagreed with the YouTube video he posted and with his related comments.

One of my points of disagreement is one I’ve argued many times before. Some people seem to think that “converts” are the lowly dregs of the Christian world, getting into heaven by the skin of their teeth. “Disciples,” on the other hand, are the real go-getters for Christ. However, there is no distinction between converts and disciples in the Bible. People are either dead in sin or born again. There’s nothing in between. (That being said, there are false converts and false disciples.)

The other point of disagreement is also a common misunderstanding based on the incorrect definition of disciples and converts. When Jesus commanded us to make disciples in the Great Commission, what exactly was He asking believers to do?

The Great Commission (Matthew 28:19-20) has four parts that we should obey:

1. Go.
2. Make disciples of all nations.
3. Baptize them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
4. Teach them to obey everything He has commanded us.

What does it mean to “make disciples”? To me, it’s obvious that making a disciple (part 2) is different from discipling someone. Discipling someone is teaching that person to obey (part 4). Was Jesus being repetitive? I don’t think so. Making a disciple means guiding an individual toward salvation through Jesus Christ. How does someone get saved? By hearing the gospel (Romans 1:16). The portion of making disciples that God has entrusted to us is proclaiming the gospel (Romans 10:14–15).

(I want to note that the discussion on this aspect of the blog post ended very strangely. The author of an entire book that promotes a viewpoint that is opposite to mine said he agreed with me. I doubt that I convinced Anderson he was wrong. If I had, he would have taken Living Dangerously out of print. I don’t know why he ended up saying he agrees with me other than to shut me up. I would have preferred that he block me rather than patronize me [if that’s what he was doing]).

What makes Living Dangerously appalling is that approximately half of it was spent explaining research about what aspects of a “discipler” caused the non-Christian to come to faith. On page 36, Anderson writes, “The next several chapters are devoted to examining the character traits that influenced people to become disciples of Jesus.”

For example, the characteristics that most influenced women to come to Christ (filtered to exclude related “disciplers”) were, in order: knowledgeable, trustworthy, caring, faithful, authentic, passionate and loving.

Christians should be all of those things. However, no one should get saved because of the qualities of another Christian. We should submit to Christ because we see the truth and love of Christ in the gospel. We love Him because He first loved us. We don’t love Him because a Christian was knowledgeable.

So to summarize, I don’t recommend the book. I think it shows a basic misunderstanding of what causes someone to come to Christ—the gospel (Romans 1:16). There are many more examples in the New Testament of people coming to salvation by a seemingly chance encounter with a stranger willing and ready to give the gospel than people being saved by a long process of the non-Christian getting to know a really lovable Christian. True disciples are made by Jesus when He raises someone from spiritual death when they hear the gospel and believe. In our evangelism, we need to focus more on getting ourselves out of the process and simply telling His story.

NEW YORK — An outdoor advertising company has taken down an anti-abortion billboard that pictured a black girl along with the tagline, “The most dangerous place for an African-American is in the womb.”

Some residents had said they found the billboard offensive, and members of the black community were especially outraged by it.

Members of the black community are outraged by the billboard. They should be outraged. Not because they take offense at the billboard’s message, but because its message is true.

I hate to tell these individuals they should stop. Their proclamation of Jesus’ love is more witnessing than what 90 percent of Christians will ever do.

However, there is no shortage of people who want to tell me that I’m witnessing all wrong when I give people the law before the gospel; I should just tell people that Jesus loves them. Over the years, I’ve tried a few different approaches to try to explain to them that that’s not what the Bible teaches.

• There are zero examples of that being anyone’s gospel message in the Bible.
• There are examples of gospel presentations to the contrary.
• Even John 3:16 says that those who don’t believe in Jesus will perish.
• Biblically, does Jesus really love everyone? Does He have the same type of love for everyone?

I’ve recently thought of a new approach—one that is actually ancient, because it is in 1 Peter 5:5: “God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.” That verse is repeated in James 4:6 and Proverbs 3:34.

So, I’ve asked those who question me: If God opposes a proud person, do you think I shouldn’t tell them that He opposes them, but that He loves them?

No one has really had a response to that yet. It’s so quick and easy that it even works on the street.

A low-budget tract table at Wal-Mart

My friend invited me to help him share the gospel at Wal-Mart. The store’s corporate policy allows people to set up a table near the entrance. Most organizations I’ve seen taking advantage of this policy sell something as a fund raiser. We simply gave away tracts and had several good conversations about the gospel.

Wal-Mart isn’t public property, and I don’t think the store is obligated to allow anyone to do this. It has rules regarding the amount of time and number of days people are permitted to do this. The possibilities are endless for those willing to abide by these rules.

My friend simply asked to speak to the manager and she specified the time, but allowed us to choose the dates. We spoke to about 15 or 20 people in the three hours we were there, so while we certainly weren’t swamped, being there was worth the time. I would recommend a weekend so that more people won’t be too busy to stop and chat.

HT: What is Chazaq?

I recently had a conversation with a couple of knowledgeable Catholics. I started by discussing the fact that the Bible blatantly contradicts some of their beliefs. Specifically, they claimed that atheists “of good will” could end up in heaven. There are dozens of verses that prove that line of thinking wrong, and I quoted a few to them. Their response was that they don’t care what I say about the Bible, because according to Catholic teaching, no one is able to interpret the Bible outside the authority of Rome.

This was the first time I’d heard that from a Catholic, and it turns out that it really is the standard teaching of Rome, and it’s based on a misinterpretation of 2 Peter 1:20. Later, they mentioned that there really is no infallible interpretation of this verse, so I’m not sure what authority they have to give any interpretation of that verse.

I showed them Acts 17:11, which describes how the Bereans were commended for scrutinizing Paul’s teaching with the Scripture. I asked them why the Bereans were able to verify Paul’s teaching with the Scripture, but today I am unable to verify Rome’s teaching with Scripture. They never directly answered my question. I gave up asking the question when the only “answer” provided was:

Why did Paul have to “check in” with the Apostles and have them lay hands on him to continue his ministry?

That has absolutely nothing to do with my question. Honest, knowledgeable answers generally don’t start with a “why” and end with a question mark.

They do think that I should verify the doctrines of Rome, but not by searching Scripture. I should determine the truth of Rome’s claims by verifying that their doctrines haven’t changed over the last 2,000 years, and I should do this by reading church fathers. (They were kind enough to give me a list of church fathers to check out.)

But this only leads to more questions. If I’m not trustworthy enough to interpret Scripture, why am I trustworthy enough to interpret the writings of church fathers? Why should I read the second generation (or later) of Christian beliefs when the Bible provides the first generation? If two church fathers disagree (there are many early “Christians” who were outright heretics), which one is trustworthy?

There is no good way to test the Catholic Church. Bottom line: I’m supposed to become a Catholic, because the pope says so.

Trust me.

At the root of this disagreement is the epistemology of Catholics and Evangelicals. Evangelicals believe the Bible is the only source for absolute truth, and Catholics have the Bible plus their tradition. The problem is that the Bible is insufficient to arrive at modern Catholic doctrines (if not contradictory to those doctrines), and there is no other infallible, inerrant source to attest to Catholic doctrines. In order to buy into the teaching of Rome, you must take a blind leap of faith.

Expert on global warming.

The shocking speed with which the climate change hoax has come unraveled has been a delight to watch. Recent revelations about the science behind it has shown it to be a joke and a scam.

• A hacker obtained e-mails from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in England, which show collusion to distort data among environmentalist scientists from around the world, AKA Climate-gate.
• The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) claims that 40 percent of the rain forest would be destroyed by global warming are fabricated.
• An IPCC report states Himalayan glaciers will melt by 2035, a “fact” according to World Wildlife Fund, which is a radical environmentalist group. Common sense says otherwise.

When supposedly reputable sources such as university researchers and UN organizations are shown to be lying and scheming for political agendas, the cause loses all credibility. Will all the skeptical scientists who were accused of being on oil companies’ payrolls receive apologies?

There are a couple lessons we can take from this:

1. Science can be controlled. Unbiased, pure, peer-reviewed science is not a given as many people would have us believe. If there is a cabal of evil scientists hyping up the evidence for global warming, why is it so far-fetched that the same thing may be happening among evolutionary scientists?
2. The ideas of men (even if they’re supposedly backed by science) come and go, but the Bible is trustworthy.

Taken from Mapquest

beliefs of these men were.

BOYNTON BEACH — Jeriah Woody executed two men who made the mistake of preaching religion to the 18-year-old, a witness has told police.

Woody, who turned himself in to Boynton Beach police Wednesday, is charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the Saturday night deaths of Stephen Ocean, 23, and Tite Sufra, 24, near the Boynton Beach city library.

He was expected to be taken to the Palm Beach County Jail later today and have a bond hearing Thursday. Boynton Beach spokeswoman Stephanie Slater said this afternoon he was still being questioned and she would not immediately provide information about a motive.

A woman who identified herself as Ocean’s sister, but did not want to give her name, said the two men, best friends, were ministers who were ordained last year and had turned their lives around after run-ins with law enforcement. She did not want to identify the church with which they were aligned.

“They go around and minister to boys and say where they came from,” the sister said. “They did that all day and all night.”

Jail records show no adult arrests for Sufra. Ocean was arrested in 2003 on robbery charges and in 2004 for violating probation on previous battery and petit theft convictions. He was arrested in 2006 for carrying a concealed firearm and resisting an officer.

Jail records show no adult arrests for Woody.

According to a Boynton Beach police report, a person who was with the two slain men told police that, about 8 p.m Saturday, the three were walking through the neighborhood, preaching, and encountered Woody under a tree.

They had been preaching to him for about 15 minutes when he received a call on his cellphone.

The three heard him tell the person on the phone that he was “right down the street.”

He then told the three preachers he had to go.

As the three began walking east, they noticed Woody running toward them.

The friend said he saw Sufra walk toward Woody; he then saw a flash and saw Sufra fall.

Ocean began running and was dropped by a shot to the buttocks, the witness said.

He said Woody then walked up to Ocean and shot him in the head execution-style.

The third man was able to flee and call police, the report said.

Officers found the two lying in the 100 block of Southwest Second Avenue.

On Tuesday, a source alerted detectives to a man with the street name of “plug” who matched the description of the shooter.

The man who’d been preaching with the two other men picked Woody out of a lineup, the report said.

Jeremiah had two main points:

• The Bible is vague in regard to homosexuality. Jeremiah reviewed six passages that discuss homosexuality in the NIV. I like the NIV, but it was translated by humans, leaving room for error. There are some odd word choices in a couple verses. For example, most translations use the word “homosexual” in 1 Timothy 1:8­–10, but the NIV uses the word “perverts.” In 1 Corinthians 6:9–10, the same Greek word as in 1 Timothy 1:8–10 is used, but the NIV translates it as “homosexual offender.”Using the NIV, Jeremiah ignored 1 Timothy 1:8–10 (since it doesn’t contain the word “homosexual”), and made the argument that 1 Corinthians 6:9–10 is referring to the older men who pay young, pagan, male prostitutes for sex. His point was that the Bible isn’t clear enough on this point to call a loving monogamous homosexual relationship sin.

  However, a look at the original biblical lanaguage gives us a different interpretation. The Greek word “arsenokoites” is the word in question in both 1 Timothy 1:8–10 and 1 Corinthians 6:9–10. Paul is the first person to use this word in writing. It is possible that Paul coined this term. We can know exactly what it means and where it came from by examining the text. Paul used the Greek Old Testament (aka the LXX or Septuagint), as he was the apostle to the gentiles, and Greek was the language of the day.

  In the LXX, Leviticus 20:13 reads: hos an koimethe meta arsenos koiten gunaikos.

  In English, Leviticus 20:13 says, “If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.”

  There is no ambiguity in Leviticus 20:13. It calls homosexuality a sin regardless of whether it is in a monogamous, loving relationship or not.

  The word “arsenokoites” is simply a contraction of “arsenos” and “koiten.” “Arsenos” means man, and “koiten” means intercourse or to lie with sexually. When Paul uses the word “arsenokoites,” he is referring to men who lie together sexually, or homosexuals. He is referencing the passages in Leviticus that clearly condemn homosexuality.

  That is especially clear in 1 Timothy 1:8–10 as it is a discussion of the proper use of the law. What law could Paul be referring to other than the Old Testament law? The proper use of the law was to convict homosexuals of their sin in the hope that they would be humbled and prepared to hear the gospel.

  Jeremiah’s principal tactic is to obscure the plain teaching of these verses just enough to cause us to doubt our interpretation, and therefore, render us unable to boldly call homosexuality a sin. But these verses simply aren’t vague. They are crystal clear in calling homosexuality a sin.

• Christians are willing to ignore many verses rather than change their lifestyles. We shouldn’t be so eager to enforce the letter of the law against homosexuals, Jeremiah says, when we’re willing to compromise for our pet sins. He used divorce as an example. Jesus was very much against divorce, yet Jeremiah knows of Christians who are willing to overlook that sin.I think we can all take Jeremiah’s observation as an encouragement to examine ourselves and make sure that our words and deeds line up with even the most difficult teachings of Jesus.

  However, I think he completely misses the point. All our sins are ultimately between each of us individually and God, who is perfectly just. The homosexual cannot point to the hypocrisy of others as justification for his own sin. Neither can the thief, the liar, the heterosexual adulterer, the murderer or anyone else. True Christians are marked by humble repentance. Only a proud unbeliever could go on living in unrepentant rebellion after being confronted with sin.

  It is clear that Jeremiah is unwilling to repent of his homosexuality. He doesn’t like it when people claim to be Christians but make excuses for being disobedient to the Bible, but that is exactly what he’s doing with his sexual sin. To me, it seems as though he’s offering to wink and nod at the sin of others if they’re willing to wink and nod at his.

  I would remind him that Jesus said that if our eye causes us to sin, we should pluck it out. If our hand causes us to sin, we should cut it off. It is better to go to heaven maimed than to go to hell intact. I would advise Jeremiah to pay whatever price is necessary to leave his homosexuality behind. There is forgiveness in Jesus Christ.

You can check out Jeremiah’s comment on my blog.  (He copied and pasted it from his blog, which I wouldn’t recommend as there are some inappropriate pictures.)

Mark Cahill has witnessed to Tiger Woods, so we know that the biblical seed of the gospel has been planted, and we can pray for it to grow.

Here’s a great documentary on the real cause of rising or falling global temperatures–the sun. It also discusses the devastating effect of extremist environmental policies for those who have no access to electricity.

Please forgive the French subtitles and the old earth references.

I really have no interest in defending Ray Comfort or Kirk Cameron. On the other hand, if someone wants to disagree with their method, they have their work cut out for them. Ray Comfort should get a lot of credit for popularizing biblical witnessing, but he didn’t make up “law to the proud, grace to the humble” by himself. Here are a few quotes about the law and its proper use:

• Charles Spurgeon said, “The law serves a most necessary purpose. They [unbelievers] will never accept grace until they tremble before a just and holy Law.”
• Martin Luther said, “So it is with the work-righteous and the proud unbelievers. Because they do not know the law of God, which is directed against them, it is impossible for them to know their sin.”
• Martyn Lloyd-Jones said, “The trouble with people who are not seeking for a Savior, and for salvation, is that they do not understand the nature of sin. It is the peculiar function of the law to bring such an understanding to a man’s mind and conscience.”
• John Bunyan said, “In my preaching of the Word, I took special notice of this one thing, namely, that the Lord did lead me to begin where His Word begins with sinners; that is, to condemn all flesh, and to open and allege that the curse of God, by the law doth belong to and lay hold on all men as they come into the world, because of sin.”
• Paris Reidhead said, “I would declare a moratorium on public preaching of the “the plan of salvation” in America for one to two years. Then, I would call on everyone who has use of the airwaves and the pulpits to preach the holiness of God, the righteousness of God, and the law of God, until sinners would cry out, “What must we do to be saved?” Then, I would take them off in a corner and whisper the gospel to them….Such drastic action is needed because we have gospel-hardened a generation of sinners by telling them how to be saved before they have any understanding why they need to be saved.”
• John MacArthur said, “Grace means nothing to a person who does not know he is sinful and that such sinfulness means he is separated from God and damned. It is therefore pointless to preach grace until the impossible demands of the law and the reality of guilt before God are preached.”
• Charles Spurgeon said, “I do not believe that any man can preach the gospel who does not preach the law.”
• John Wesley said, “Before I can preach love, mercy, and grace, I must preach sin, law and judgment.”
• George Whitfield said, “That is the reason we have so many ‘mushroom’ converts, because their stony ground is not plowed up; they have not got a conviction of the law; they are stony-ground hearers.”
• Martin Luther said, “Satan, the god of all dissension, stirreth up daily new sects, and last of all, which of all other I should never have foreseen or once suspected, he has raised up a sect such as teach…that men should not be terrified by the law, but gently exhorted by the preaching of the grace of Christ.”
• Paris Reidhead said, “When 100 years ago earnest scholars decreed that the law had no relationship to the preaching of the gospel, they deprived the Holy Spirit in the area where their influence prevailed of the only instrument with which He had ever armed Himself to prepare sinners for grace.”
• John R.W. Stott said, “We cannot come to Christ to be justified until we have first been to Moses to be condemned. But once we have gone to Moses and acknowledged our sin, guilt and condemnation, we must not stay there.”
• Dr. J Gresham Machen said, “A new and more powerful proclamation of [the] law is perhaps the most pressing need of the hour; men would have little difficulty with the gospel if they had only learned the lesson of the law.”
• D.L. Moody said, “I can always tell a man who is near the kingdom of God; his mouth is stopped. This, then, is why God gives us the law. To show us ourselves in our true colors.”

How is it that all these men came to believe the same thing about the law? Because that is what the Bible teaches.

If you’ve never taken the time to listen to Hell’s Best Kept Secret, you definitely should do so.

There are some situations where this is the best way to get the best gospel to people, although I think it’s preferable to hand someone a tract or get a chance to talk to them. If you’ve never passed out tracts or witnessed, this may be a good way to get started.

This is my favorite tract to put in car doors.

One of the most famous examples of a vestigial organ, given in many science textbooks, is the appendix. About 1 in 20 people have had an appendix removed in necessary surgery. Most of them go on to live long lives. But does that mean that the appendix is completely useless? No. If my left arm were removed, I could live a long, happy life, but that wouldn’t mean my arm was vestigial.

It turns out that the appendix serves a purpose in the immune system. Creationists have been telling us this for some time , but it seems the secular scientific community has recently decided to leak this information. All of those enlightened geniuses who love to cite the vestigial appendix as a favorite piece of evidence now stand side-by-side with “backward-thinking” Christians.

How many people have been deceived by atheistic science, which is not science at all?

Here is a list of good reasons why the real date should be 586/587 B.C.  Thanks to CD for the links.

Here are a few select lines from various songs. On this list is music from nearly every genre, for every age group.

• Phil Collins – Trust your heart. Let fate decide, to guide these lives we see.
• Stevie Wonder – Why second guess what feels so right? Just trust your heart and you’ll see the light. True to your heart, you must be true to your heart.
• Lynard Skynard – Follow your heart and nothing else.
• Melissa Etheridge- I have come this far with a truth of the heart.
• New Radicals – This whole d___ world can fall apart. You’ll be okay; follow your heart.
• Smokin’ Armadillos – Let your heart lead your mind.
• Ultravox – Follow, follow your heart.
• Triumph – You’ve got to follow your heart.
• Judy Collins – Trust your heart.
• The Stylistics – Listen to your heart, hear what it’s saying.
• Motorhead – Listen to your heart.
• Little Feat – Listen to your heart.
• Jennifer Love Hewitt – Listen to your heart.
• Roxette – Listen to your heart.
• Reba McEntire – The heart won’t lie.
• Thumbelina cartoon – When you follow your heart, when you follow your heart.
• Sonic Underground cartoon – When there’s people in your life trying to tell you what is right, what do you do? Listen to your heart, girl. Do you take a brand new road or the one you’ve always known? Am I getting through? Listen to your heart, girl. ‘Cause the heart’s not gonna lie to you. Listen to your heart, girl. And I know you’ll always be hearing the truth if you listen to your heart.

Music has a profound effect on people. Tunes get stuck in our heads. People memorize lyrics. Many listen to the radio all day long at work. Certainly the doctrines found in music will end up being adopted by a certain percentage of people.

The Bible has a few different things to say about our hearts and how we should make decisions.

Jeremiah 17:9: The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?

Proverbs 21:2: Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the LORD weighs the heart.

Proverbs 14:12: There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.

Proverbs 3:5: Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.
Proverbs 28:26: Whoever trusts in his own mind is a fool, but he who walks in wisdom will be delivered.

In the course, Ramsey certainly talks about the Bible and gives applications for Scripture verses, but that isn’t evangelism. Evangelism isn’t getting people to come to your church, or pointing out to them that biblical principles about finances are relevant to their lives.

Evangelism is proclaiming the gospel, and that means explaining to people that:

• God is holy, we are sinners, and God can’t allow sinners into heaven.
• God made a way to not compromise His justice yet forgive people’s sins through Jesus Christ.

I think Ramsey is trying to appeal to the fear of evangelism that most of us have in abundance. If you can’t work up the nerve to actually witness to someone, maybe you can invite them to an event at your church. Once you get them there, you don’t have to actually share the gospel; you just have to play videos.

I recommend Ramsey’s books and products for their financial advice, but I can’t recommend them for evangelism purposes. If you invested the two hours a week in going out witnessing, you could almost certainly witness to many more people than you would if you held a Financial Peace University at which you actually proclaimed the gospel.

People don’t get saved by hanging around with really likable Christians or learning that the Bible is cool. They can only be saved by hearing the gospel (Romans 10:14), and there simply is no gospel message within the materials of the Financial Peace University. As desperately as we try to avoid it, the cold, hard fact is that Christians must actually open their mouths and explain the gospel.

—–Update—–8/18/09—–

I’ve been thinking about the line “Evangelism that works” and it’s been bothering me. Even if there was evangelism in Ramsey’s materials, we don’t select our evangelism based on what works. We do what the Bible says, regardless of the results. Furthermore, we don’t do it expecting results, but because God has commanded it.

In my experience, the verse that virtually every American non-Christian knows and loves to quote is Matthew 7:1. Jesus said, “Judge not, lest ye be judged.” I’ve even had some people tell me that it was one of the Ten Commandments. In this passage, Jesus was condemning hypocritical judging. We shouldn’t call the police on our neighbors for playing the music too loud one evening when it is our regular practice to have loud parties and keep the neighborhood awake. It’s human nature to be upset and point out the one time our neighbor does something wrong, and excuse, or be completely oblivious to, our own poor behavior. That is called hypocrisy.

However, Jesus goes on, and in verse 5, He tells us that we should remove the plank from our eye, so that we will be able to help others with their speck. We are supposed to judge ourselves strictly, so that we can lovingly judge others and help them with their speck.

The Judging Trap
Many people who think it’s a sin to judge others will loudly point out when someone is judging. Of course, at that point they have identified someone else who is committing a sin, which makes them judgmental. The irony is that they’re committing the very same sin of which they’re accusing others.

This is exactly the type of sinful judging that Jesus was talking about in Matthew 7:1. It’s a sin to get on your self-righteous high horse, and say it’s wrong for someone else to get on his or her self-righteous high horse. When you’ve removed the “It’s wrong to judge” plank from your eye, maybe you can determine whether someone is judging righteously or sinfully.

It’s not judging to tell people what the Bible says
It’s not loving to hem and haw about people’s standing before God. The loving thing to do is tell them what the Bible says. The Bible makes it clear that if you believe certain things, you can’t go to heaven.

Many Christians might say something like, “I don’t know what’s in someone’s heart. Who am I to judge?” I would agree that we generally don’t know what’s in someone’s heart—until he or she tells us. After that person has told us, it’s a good, loving thing to take the opportunity to warn someone if he or she believes something that will bring that individual harm.

The last virtue of a decaying society is tolerance
Tolerance is a good thing. However, tolerance does not mean that we shouldn’t take a stand against evil. It seems that tolerance has come to mean that the majority must make whatever accommodations a loud minority demands. It often seems the more perverse the demand, the more effective the “tolerance” and “not-judging” card is in silencing the critics. We can let Western society wither and die for the sake of tolerance, or we can take a stand.

Every one of us makes judgments every day. We judge whether something is good for lunch or bad. We judge what shirt is best to wear. We make judgments from the smallest of decisions to decisions that affect our eternity. It’s a sin to judge hypocritically, but it’s prudent to judge properly, as Jesus has commanded us.

• “You can’t say things that might offend people.”
• “You can’t tell people they’re going to hell.”
• “You can’t call people sinners.”
• “The right to free speech doesn’t mean the right to hate speech.”
• “You’ve been standing here talking to people for 25 minutes. That means you’re loitering, and you have to leave.”

As a Christian, I feel a duty to lovingly and rationally attempt to convince everyone that they are sinners deserving only of hell. This makes the gospel all the more beautiful to tell. However, as Americans, whose rights come from God, we have the right to say what we think—especially if someone else takes offense, or thinks it’s hateful. In fact, even “loud” and “boisterous…religious harangue” is constitutionally protected speech (see Edwards v. South Carolina, 372 U.S. 229, 233 [1963]).

Our freedoms come from God. Thousands of American soldiers have died defending our rights. These rights are precious. I love it when Americans of whatever belief peacefully exercise and defend their rights. I would never insist that someone exercising their free speech rights be hauled off to jail.

The people who want others not to have the right to free speech are really being very selfish. They insist on certain rights for themselves, but when someone else does something they don’t like, they want that individual’s rights stripped away immediately. If enough people are only concerned about themselves, soon enough none of us will have any freedoms.

I find it hard to understand why some Americans who are so eager to give up their rights or take away others’ rights. The people of Iran, for example, don’t have free speech or freedom of the press. Their recent protest of the outcome of their election caused the Iranian government to kick out the press, and who knows how many protesters were injured by the state police. It’s sad to me to see Iranians yearning for freedom while Americans squander their freedom. I pray that the Iranians will someday have the freedom of the press and the free speech that we have.

Last weekend we celebrated Independence Day and the physical and political liberties we enjoy. I hope that every Christian will boldly exercise his or her God-given right to free speech, and take the time to proclaim the message of spiritual freedom—the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Jesus said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-19).

April 1, 2009 Watchtower

I’ve read some past Watchtower magazine articles in an attempt to verify the Jehovah’s Witness teaching about what it means to be born again. I’ve found their teaching on this is truly inadequate. In discussions with Jehovah’s Witnesses, I’ve tried to explain the biblical meaning of born again in many ways. During our conversations, none of my questions regarding the shortcomings of their teaching have been answered.

I was excited when I discovered the April 1 Watchtower cover story was about being born again. I hoped that maybe the writers would attempt to fill in some of the gaps in the teaching. Unfortunately, this article is nothing more than a rehash of articles I’ve already read.

These are some of the questions that remain unanswered concerning the teaching:

1. The non-144,000 JWs are not born again. 1 John 5:1 says that everyone who believes Jesus is the Messiah is born again. How can JWs not be born again, yet profess to believe that Jesus is the Messiah?
2. The non-144,000 JWs are not considered children of God. I agree that unless you are born again, you are not a child of God. I don’t think the average JW knows that the Watchtower teaches that he or she isn’t a child of God. If they’re not children of God, whose children are they? I believe they remain children of the devil.
3. If being born again means having been raised from spiritual death to spiritual life (Ephesians 2:1), and most JWs aren’t spiritually alive, they must still be spiritually dead. Does that not concern them?
4. Jesus said that one will not see the kingdom of God unless he or she is born again (John 3:3). Wouldn’t the paradise earth that most JWs aspire to be considered part of the kingdom of God? They won’t even see paradise earth without being born again.

Every time I’ve tried to discuss this with a Jehovah’s Witness, he or she attempts to change the subject to why he or she is satisfied with paradise earth, and why only the 144,000 are born again. Those are interesting topics to discuss, but I’ve tried to keep the conversation on the topic at hand: If you’re not born again, what are you?

In the Bible, some Jews claimed to be children of God, because they were children of Abraham (John 8:41). Jesus corrected their thinking, telling them that they were in fact children of the devil (John 8:44).

The reality is that for Jehovah’s Witnesses (and everyone else who is not born again), there are only two choices: Either you are reborn as a child of God, or you remain a child of the devil.

NASA Image

Some Christians believe that Genesis 1–11—the story of the creation, flood and tower of Babel— are symbolic, and the events didn’t really happen the way the Bible plainly describes them. No doubt many of these individuals are sincere and searching for the truth, while others have just gone along with what they’ve learned in school without putting much thought into the matter.

A couple theories try to fit billions of years into the Genesis account.

• The Day-Age Theory suggests that the days described in Genesis 1 were long periods of time. Many who adhere to this theory, including Hugh Ross, believe that the flood wasn’t global.
• The Gap Theory proposes that there was a long period of time between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2. During this time, Satan fell, and the dinosaurs were created, lived and went extinct.

Some Christians try to combine evolution with those theories; some don’t. Some believe this first section of the Bible is merely a nice story and chose to believe in evolution. What they may not realize is that evolution is filled with blatant flaws, and that the theory and the Bible are mutually exclusive. Genesis 1 tells us that God created birds on day five and reptiles on day six—the exact opposite of evolution.

I think that the vast majority of those who believe any of the old Earth theories have more faith in science than the Bible. Because of that, they try to make the Bible fit with their beliefs, not recognizing the importance of conforming one’s beliefs to God’s Word.

We have an inerrant book that tells us how old the Earth is. We need to figure out what it tells us and believe it. There are plenty of hints elsewhere in the Bible, including Jesus’ words. I trust Jesus for my eternity, and I trust what He says about the age of the earth. He wasn’t just present when it was all created, He is the Creator (Colossians 1:16).

In Mark 10:6, Jesus said, “But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female.” This means that at the beginning of creation, God created a human male and a human female. With this one sentence, Jesus rules out all old Earth theories—and evolution.

Elsewhere in the Bible, the events in Genesis 1–11 are referred to as historical fact. Jesus referred to Noah’s flood in Matthew 24:37–39, as does Hebrews 11:7, 1 Peter 3:20, 2 Peter 2:5, and several other places in the Old Testament. If you believe Zechariah was a real person, you must believe Adam and Eve had a son named Abel, since Jesus refers to Zechariah and Abel in the same breath in Luke 11:50–51. In the midst of giving Moses the Ten Commandments, the Lord repeats that everything was created in six days (see Exodus 20:11).

The old Earth theories simply make no sense. Anyone who simply reads Genesis with no bias would reach the conclusion that the creation is very young. When you take the clear teaching of the rest of the Bible, there is simply no basis for anything but a young earth. The Bible simply knows nothing of the old Earth theories, and forges on with the unpopular notion that the earth was created in six literal days about 6,000 years ago.

Preaching the gospel

I have been challenged by a commenter on this post to explain why I say every Christian has been commanded to proclaim the gospel. I appreciate his challenge, because it has motivated me to further my understanding of what the Bible teaches about evangelism.

The Great Commission
I had been faced with the objection that the Great Commission was only to the 11 disciples in the past. If you think it through, and take what Jesus said in context, you’ll see that this commission was given to every Christian.

Jesus commanded the 11 disciples to go and make disciples. Then, He told the disciples to teach the new disciples to obey everything He commanded them to do.

Here are some of the things Jesus commanded the disciples to do:

1. Believe in Him (John 6:29).
2. Take up your cross (Matt 10:38).
3. Seek first the kingdom of God (Matt 6:33).
4. Go and make disciples (Matt. 28:19).
5. Teach the new disciples to do everything on this list (Matt 28:20).

Clearly, the new disciples should be taught to make disciples, unless someone can explain why the command to go and make disciples isn’t included in everything Jesus commanded them to do.

The Office of Evangelist
The commenter made another point that evangelists are the only ones who should preach the gospel among the unsaved. One problem is that there are only three verses in the New Testament that use the word evangelist: Ephesians 4:11, 2 Timothy 4:5, and Acts 21:8. There is very little explanation offered as to what an evangelist specifically does, and to be dogmatic about one’s favored explanation seems presumptuous.

One thing we do know is that the job of the evangelist is to prepare God’s people for works of service (Eph. 4:11–12). This would indicate to me that one of the principal jobs of an evangelist is to lead God’s people in their evangelism efforts and train them in evangelism.

One Body, Many Parts
It’s true that not every Christian holds the office of evangelist. Does that mean that only those who are evangelists should evangelize? Think about it this way: We’re all commanded to pray. No one can say that he or she shouldn’t pray because that individual doesn’t have the gift of prayer. Likewise, we’re all commanded to evangelize. There is no such thing as the gift of prayer, and there is no such thing as the gift of evangelism. We have the privilege of both prayer and evangelism.

Did All Christians in the Bible Witness?
There are a limited number of stories of lay Christians preaching in the New Testament. Most of the accounts of evangelism involve Paul, Peter, Philip, and other early church leaders. However, this doesn’t mean that they were the only ones who spread the gospel.

In Philippians 1:14, Paul says, “And that most of the brethren, trusting in the Lord because of my imprisonment, have far more courage to speak the word of God without fear.”

After Stephen was stoned, persecution was on the rise, and all except the apostles (Acts 8:1) were scattered from Jerusalem. “Therefore, those who had been scattered went about preaching the word” (Acts 8:4).

How Can You Keep the Gospel to Yourself?
Those of us who have had our sins forgiven by God’s grace and mercy and will spend eternity in heaven have understood the greatest news in the history of mankind, and we have been made eternal beneficiaries of it. If we have truly received such a glorious gift, how can we keep it to ourselves? The joy it inspires must be evident in our lives—and spread to others. In Luke 8:16, Jesus said, “Now no one after lighting a lamp covers it over with a container, or puts it under a bed; but he puts it on a lampstand, so that those who come in may see the light.”

We will spend eternity with the One we pray to, the One we worship, and the One whose Word we read. This short life is our only opportunity to tell the unsaved about the glorious gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

If a little 13 year-old British girl can witness to college kids, surely the rest of us can. Here’s a documentary on a big British family. Deborah is able to get the gospel out on British national television several times.

It’s about 45 minutes to an hour long, but it’s worth watching. You can watch the remaining portions by clicking on “Continue Reading »“

• If two people who both live by the philosophy of “looking out for number one” happen to cross paths, won’t there be an inevitable conflict between them?
• Evolution teaches that we’re animals that happen to be more highly evolved than others. Animals don’t care about right and wrong. If someone lived their life as if evolution is true, is there really any moral restraints on them?

People who believe those things are commonplace, and we’re seeing the consequences more and more. Ray cuts to the chase with this:

There have been about a dozen mass-shootings in the United States in recent months, and secular experts are still trying to piece together the profiles and common denominators of these murderers. However, every one of them had one thing in common. They all lacked a fear of God. If someone fears God they won’t lie to you, steal from you, or commit adultery with your spouse. They won’t even lust after them. They won’t hate you, harbor anger or be bitter towards you, and they certainly won’t kill you. “By mercy and truth iniquity is purged: and by the fear of the Lord men depart from evil.” (Proverbs 16:6, itallics added)

One of the major reasons this nation lacks the fear of God is that it’s rarely preached from the modern pulpit. Think of what Nathan did with David. He put the fear of God in him by saying “You are the man! Why have you despised the Commandment of the Lord?” (see 2 Samuel 12:7-9). Without such a reproof David would have simply remained an unrepentant man who made an unfortunate choice in life. But the reproof revealed that he was a criminal who had despised the moral Law, and that God’s wrath hovered over him for his terrible transgression.

We need to be Nathans to this nation and faithfully preach the Word, in season and out of season. We must “reprove, rebuke, exhort, with all patience and doctrine,” and the well-spring of our words must be love for sinners. We cannot let fear stop us from showing them that they have despised the Law, and that they have personally sinned against God, as Paul did in Romans 2:20-24.

In another portion of the newsletter, Living Waters reveals Hollywood’s humanist bias. The producers of Alfie left out inconvenient portions in their remake of the 1966 movie. If we’re just animals looking out for our own best interest, what’s to stop someone from murdering an unborn child? If the law is the only thing protecting human life, no one should sleep too easily. Laws can be changed.

Personally, I’ve come to the belief that if you want to do friendship evangelism, or make balloon animals and pass them out and tell people Jesus loves them, you should go for it. However, be sure that you’re not discouraging those who are practicing confrontational (intentional witnessing to strangers) evangelism, because there’s a much better biblical case for this type of evangelism than for friendship evangelism.

On page 39, the author provides guidelines for what your church can do to become an evangelistic church.

• Provide biblical, effective evangelism training.
• Provide a wide variety of confrontational evangelism opportunities.
• Encourage and work with those promoting Biblical evangelism in the congregation.
• Have an evangelism budget.
• Provide creative evangelistic outreaches for church members to invite unsaved friends to (ladies teas, sportsman dinners, career focused dinners, etc.).
• Mention personal evangelistic opportunities in lessons and sermons.
• Mention evangelistic prayer requests in appropriate settings.
• Announce confrontational and invitational evangelistic opportunities and encourage and model involvement.
• Invite guest speakers who specialize in evangelism.
• Challenge one another to be intentionally evangelistic.
• Pray the Lord of the harvest to raise up workers for the harvest (Matthew 9:38).

I think my wife is giving a lot of benefit of the doubt when she says our church does five of the eleven items. If we go to the most evangelistic church in our small town, and still don’t get a passing grade, what does that tell you about how good the church in America is at evangelism?

I encourage everyone who’s interested in the topic to to purchase the book, which is available here.

Darwin speculated on the evolution of the giraffe:

“So under nature with the nascent giraffe, the individuals which were the highest browsers, and were able during dearths [drought] to reach even an inch or two above the others, will often have been preserved…for they will have roamed over the whole country in search of food….Those individuals which had some one part or several parts of their bodies rather more elongated than usual, would generally have survived. These will have intercrossed [bred] and left offspring, either inheriting the same bodily peculiarities, or with a tendency to vary again in the same manner; whilst the individuals, less favoured in the same respects will have been the most liable to perish…By this process long continued…it seems to me almost certain that any ordinary hoofed quadruped might be converted into a giraffe.”

According to Darwin, during a period of drought, the tallest gazelles (for example) would have had food to eat, while the shorter gazelles would have starved. The taller gazelles would have had taller offspring, and eventually, after millions of generations, gazelles became the giraffes we have today. Let’s play along with Darwin and see where his idea takes us.

While all of Africa’s other grazing animals seem to have done quite well, the shorter gazelles that weren’t quite as tall as their cousins starved. What caused them, specifically, to starve to death? Maybe, in seeing their fellow creatures eat leaves from tall trees, they were too proud to lower their heads to eat grass. This may seem plausible until we recognize that all grazing animals (including modern giraffes) bend down to drink water. Darwin, however, maintains they died of starvation—not thirst.

Since only the tallest giraffes survived, all the females also must have died, as females are on average two feet shorter than the males. How exactly, then, do giraffe’s reproduce today?

Another Huge Problem

The giraffe’s heart generates enormous pressure in order to pump blood all the way up its long neck to its brain. Were it not for its complex blood pressure regulating system, when a giraffe bent over, it would suffer serious brain damage. If it managed to bend over without dying, it wouldn’t be able raise its head again. Its brain would suffer from a sudden lack of oxygen, and it would pass out. Here’s a four minute video with more info on that:

Furthermore, after a century of intense fossil exploration, no intermediate forms are on display in any museum in the world. The billions of giraffazelles have kept their remains well hidden. There is no intermediate form linking the giraffe to any other creature.

If you still believe that giraffes evolved, you may want to check yourself into a mental institution, or the biology Ph.D. program at a university. There are few other places where such fairy tales are believed. But keep your chin up. National Atheist’s Day is right around the corner.

In the past, I’ve tried to reason with the questioner, and explain that God is infinitely holy. When we break His law, we sin against Him and Him alone. Since our sin is against an infinitely holy Being, our punishment is infinite. If I lie to a child, I probably will not suffer any consequences. If I lie to my boss, I could be fired. If I lie while under oath in court, I could go to jail. Under the right circumstances, if I lie to the U.S. government, it would be considered treason, and I could be executed. The same sin receives varying levels of punishment, depending on whom I’ve wronged.

I think that’s a valid explanation for why hell is eternal, but it’s somewhat long and hard to understand. The real reason that hell is eternal is because the Bible says it is. But what’s a good way to explain that to people who don’t care about the Bible?

It’s no surprise that people ask this question. It’s our fallen human nature to ask. I can’t imagine that a very high percentage of the criminals sitting on death row think they deserve the death penalty. I can’t imagine very many speeders in traffic court agree with the fine they’ve been given.

God, being just, is obligated to punish guilty sinners for breaking His law. Is it really any surprise that those guilty lawbreakers don’t like the punishment that’s been promised to them?

I think the best way to answer the question is to remind the person of their guilt, and that it’s their nature to whine and complain about it. The guilty don’t determine their fair sentence; the Judge determines the sentence. It is only ours to take our punishment or run to the Savior.

Most Americans realize that soccer is a terrible sport. But in most parts of the world, soccer is the most popular sport. A quick way to draw a crowd is to bring out a soccer ball. What better gift for people who love soccer than a soccer ball with a solid gospel message printed on it? How many people will get to read the message on the soccer ball?

Whenever a Christian tells my friend and me that we’re not witnessing properly, he always responds that they don’t have to do it our way, and rattles off a list of creative ways for them to preach the gospel. There is no shortage of creative ways to preach the gospel, only a shortage of people willing to actually carry out the ideas. I think this soccer ball idea is fantastic, and I’ll be praying for their success.

You can check out their website to find out more. They’re currently trying to raise money to have 10,000 soccer balls manufactured.

United Nations Photo by Mark Garten

Israel consistently takes a beating in the arena of public opinion for causing civilian casualties among the Palestinians. However, a little bit of truth came out in the UN Security Council.

John Holmes, the Humanitarian Affairs Chief of the UN said, “The reckless and cynical use of civilian installations by Hamas and indiscriminate firing of rockets against civilian populations are clear violations of international humanitarian law.”

So, Hamas was firing rockets from Palestinian civilian locations at Israeli civilians. That’s terrorism and murder. I know it’s hard to believe that Muslims are using terrorist tactics.