Quotes and Illustrations DEF

“Dark Ages”

The fall of Rome was, in fact, the most beneficial event in the rise of Western civilization, precisely because it unleashed so many substantial and progressive changes. Rodney Stark, How The West Won (Wilmington: ISI Books, 2015), p. 69.

They also harnessed water and wind power to a revolutionary extent. Rodney Stark, How The West Won, p. 70.

Belief in the Dark Ages remains so persistent that it seems appropriate to begin this chapter by quickly revealing that this is a myth made up by eighteenth-century intellectuals determined to slander Christianity and to celebrate their own sagacity. Rodney Stark, How The West Won, p. 70.

But studies based on isotopic analysis of skeletons have found the people in the so-called Dark Ages ate very well, getting lots of meat, and as a result they grew larger than people had during the days of the empire. Rodney Stark, How The West Won, p. 73.

It was during the Dark Ages that Europe took the great technological and intellectual leaps forward that put it ahead of the rest of the world. Rodney Stark, How The West Won, p. 76.

Long before the fall of Rome, the “barbarians” beyond the Rhine had invented a plow with an iron blade that was so much more effective than the one the Romans used that it resulted in a population explosion. Rodney Stark, How The West Won, p. 76.

Then perhaps in the ninth century, a rigid, well-padded horse collar appeared in Scandinavia (possibly brought from China). It placed the weight of pulling on the horse’s shoulders instead of neck, enabling a horse to pull even more weight than an ox could. Rodney Stark, How The West Won, p. 77.

During the eight century farmers stopped wearing out their land by constant planting. Instead, they adopted a system that divided their land into three plots 0 one planted in the fall (grain), one planted in the spring (of legumes such as peas and beans, or vegetables), and the third allowed to lie fallow… Rodney Stark, How The West Won, p. 77.

“Paper had traveled around the world,” Gimpel wrote, “but no culture or civilization on its route had tried to mechanize its manufacture” until medieval Europeans did so. Rodney Stark, How The West Won, p. 79.

Medieval Europeans quickly harnessed the wind as well. In Roman times large areas of what are now Belgium and the Netherlands had been under water. Medieval engineers developed windmills that allowed them to pump water away. Rodney Stark, How The West Won, p. 79.

After the fall of Rome, medieval innovators designed wagons with brakes and with front axles that could swivel, and they created harnesses that allowed large teams of horses to pull big wagons…As the horse became the primary draft animal, medieval Europeans also began to develop much larger, stronger breeds of horses. Rodney Stark, How The West Won, p. 79.

They were able to produce a special steel for the cutting edge of their swords or battle-axes which was unequalled until the nineteenth century… Rodney Stark, How The West Won, p. 81.

The Romans and Greeks sang and played monophonic music: a single musical line sounded by all voices or instruments. It was medieval musicians who developed polyphony, the simultaneous sounding of two or more musical lines – hence harmonies. Rodney Stark, How The West Won, p. 82.

The remarkable artistic era that emerged in eleventh- century Europe is known as “Romanesque,” despite the fact that it was quite different from anything the Romans did. Rodney Stark, How The West Won, p. 83.

Chain-mail armor probably was invented by the Celts… Rodney Stark, How The West Won, p. 84.

Without stirrups a cavalryman could not charge behind a lowered lance without being vaulted form his horse. Thus it wasn’t until the stirrup appeared sometime during the seventh century that there could exist the celebrated armored knight astride his great charger and armed with a long lance. Rodney Stark, How The West Won, p. 85.

The most popular and lethal weapon of medieval times was the crossbow, which was widely adopted during the tenth century. Rodney Stark, How The West Won, p. 85.

[Charlemagne] When he died in 814, his new empire included far more of Europe than the Romans had held. Rodney Stark, How The West Won, p. 91.

In terms of some technologies such as metallurgy, the people of the North were well ahead of the Romans. Rodney Stark, How The West Won, p. 91.

Christians devoted centuries to reasoning – about God’s nature and about the very meaning of God’s teachings. Rodney Stark, How The West Won, p. 161.

Rather, as the prolific Harvard scholar Charles Homer Haskins put it, “Universities like cathedrals and parliaments are a product of the Middle Ages.” Rodney Stark, How The West Won, p. 163.

It was the Scholastic s, not the Greeks, Romans, Muslims, or Chinese, who based their studies on human dissection. Rodney Stark, How The West Won, p. 164.

In fact, by the year 1200, only fifty years after its founding, the University of Paris is estimated to have had from 2,500 to 5,000 students and several hundred faculty. Rodney Stark, How The West Won, p. 166.

First of all, thirteen of the scientific stars (25 percent) were members of the clergy, none of them Roman Catholics. Rodney Stark, How The West Won, p. 309.

Concerning personal piety: 60 percent were devout, 38 percent were conventional and 2 percent were skeptic. Rodney Stark, How The West Won, p. 310.

The era of the “Enlightenment” is as imaginary as the era of the “Dark Ages,” both myths perpetrated by the same people for the same reasons. Rodney Stark, How The West Won, p. 310.

Darwin

[Julian Huxley, a leader of Darwinists as interviewed by Merv Griffin] “The reason we accepted Darwinism even without proof, is because we didn’t want God to interfere with our sexual mores.” Norman L. Geisler & Frank Turek, I Don’t Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2004), p. 163.

Ultimately the Darwinian theory of evolution is no more nor less than the great cosmogenic myth of the twentieth century…One might have expected that a theory of such cardinal importance, a theory that literally changed the world, would have been something more than metaphysics, something more than a myth…Today it is perhaps the Darwinian view of nature more than any other that is responsible for the agnostic and skeptical outlook of the twentieth century. What was once a deduction from materialism has today become its foundation. Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (Bethesda, MD: Adler, & Adler, Publishers, Inc., 1985), pp. 358- 359.

It is perfectly obvious, in the case of the feather, that function as an aero foil is impossible unless the hooks fit the barbules, that is, unless the components are exquisitely co-adapted to function together. It is the same in the case of the avian lung or in the case of the wing of a bat, and it is the same in the case of human artifacts such as a watch which can only function when all the cogwheels fit together and it is the same in the case of sentences. Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, p. 270.

Note Darwin in a letter written in 1861, two years after publication of Origin. “The eye to this day gives me a cold shudder.” Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, p. 326.

The capacity of DNA to store information vastly exceeds that of any other known system; it is so efficient that all the information needed to specify an organism as complex as man weighs less than a few thousand millionths of a gram. The information necessary to specify the design of all the species of organisms which have ever existed on the planet, a number according to G.G. Simpson of approximately one thousand million, could be held in a teaspoon and there would still be room left for all the information in every book ever written. Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, p. 334.

It is the sheer universality of perfection, the fact that everywhere we look, to whatever depth we look, we find an elegance and ingenuity of an absolutely transcending quality, which so mitigates against the idea of chance. Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, p. 342.

To the skeptic, the proposition that the genetic programs of higher organisms, consisting of something close to a thousand million bits of information, equivalent to the sequence of letters in a small library of one thousand volumes, containing in encoded form countless thousands of intricate algorithms controlling, specifying and ordering the growth and development of billions and billions of cells into the form of a complex organism, were composed by a purely random process is simply an affront to reason. But to the Darwinist the idea is accepted without a ripple of doubt- the paradigm takes precedence! Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, p. 351.

Evolutionary thought today provides many other instances where the priority of the paradigm takes precedence over common sense. Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, p. 352.

Evidence from the earliest sedimentary rocks gives no indication of a supposed primeval soup. Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, p. 352.

Like all nontheistic worldviews, Darwinism borrows from the theistic worldview in order to make its own view intelligible. Norman L. Geisler & Frank Turek, I Don’t Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2004), p. 130.

[Darwinists] Their “science” is not tentative or open to correction; it’s more closed-minded than the most dogmatic church doctrine the Darwinists are so apt to criticize. Norman L. Geisler & Frank Turek, I Don’t Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist, p. 158.

There are really only two possibilities: either God created us, or we created God. Norman L. Geisler & Frank Turek, I Don’t Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist, p. 165.

[Charles Darwin in his letters]. It’s amazing that this old man toward the very end of his life keeps saying, “I cannot believe with my mind that all this was produced by chance.” Francis A. Schaeffer, Death In The City (Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 1969), p. 101.

Darwinism

Darwinism is likewise too corrosive to be contained. It spreads through every field of study, corroding away all traces of transcendent purpose or morality. Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity (Wheaton IL: Crossway Books, 2004), p. 156.

More than any other factor, Darwinism is the reason Christianity is marginalized and dismissed in mainstream academia. Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity, p. 174.

On a Richter scale of thinkers, Darwin’s theory caused an earthquake that ranks well above 9.0. And its seismic waves were not limited to science. It also caused severe aftershocks in moral thought. Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body, Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality (Grand Rapids, Baker Books, 2018), p. 24.

[Engor’s medical research] He decided the best explanation of why living things function as if they were designed is that they were designed. “I came to see that Darwinism is a philosophical bias more than coherent science.” Nancy Pearcey, Finding Truth (Colorado Springs: David Cook, 2015), p. 180.

Gray complains [John Gray] But “Darwin has shown us that we are animals,” and therefore “the idea of free will does not come from science.” Instead “its origins are in religion – not just any religion, but the Christian faith against which humanists rail so obsessively.” Nancy Pearcey, Finding Truth, p. 229.

[Thomas Nagel, the author of Mind and cosmos] He argues that Darwinist theory “is almost certainly false: precisely because it leads to reductionism. And reductionist theories fail to explain what we know about the world…He is arguing that Darwinist theory cannot explain even human designers: “Something more is needed to explain how there can be conscious, thinking creatures.” Nancy Pearcey, Finding Truth, p. 230.

[Raymond Tallis a medical doctor and author of Aping Mankind] “How did a mindless process create beings with minds: How did a purposeless process create beings with purposes?” Nancy Pearcey, Finding Truth, p. 232.

[Tallis] “Isn’t there a problem in explaining how an undersigned process could produce “one species that is indeed a designer?” Nancy Pearcey, Finding Truth, p. 233.

A Yale historian says they accepted “determinism as a theory but not something to live by.” I would suggest that is because no one can live by it in practice. It is not true to life. Nancy Pearcey, Finding Truth, p. 260.

Dead Sea Scrolls

[The morning of Nov 29 after his perilous trip into Arab territory to acquire the scrolls] That night, as Sukenik deciphered the first of the Dead Sea Scrolls, in Flushing Meadow, New York, the United Nations was voting on partitioning Palestine and creating a Jewish state…(as speeches began in NY Sukenik was working painstakingly on a scroll which became known as The Thanksgiving Hymns ) “I was driven from my home like a bird from its nest…I was cast down, but raised up again.” Hirsh Goldberg, The Jewish Connection (NY: Bantam Books, Inc., 1976), p. 11.

Sukenik soon found that among the Dead Sea Scrolls lying in his home that night was a scroll that held added significance for the Jews – it foretold the triumph of the Sons of Light (seen to symbolize the new Israel) over the Sons of Darkness (view as representing the surrounding enemy nations). Hirsh Goldberg, The Jewish Connection (NY: Bantam Books, Inc., 1976), p. 12.

Death

[Woody Allen] “Its not that I’m afraid to die, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” George Guthrie, Hebrews, The NIV Application Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998), p. 120.

[Albert Einstein] “The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.” Stephen Mansfield, ReChurch: Healing Your Way Back to the People of God (Tyndale, 2010), p. 82.

When the death and burial of a biblical personage are discussed in detail, the sequence is always the same: death, gathering to the deceased person’s people, and then burial. Gerald Schroeder, The Hidden Face of God, How Science Reveals the Ultimate Truth (New York: The Free Press, 2001), p. 171.

It seems quite likely that there must have been death in the animal and vegetable worlds before man fell into sin. We have fossil records of many kinds of plants and animals which have been extinct for thousands of years. Anthony A. Hoekema, The Bible And The Future (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1979), p. 79.

I once saw a quaint inscription on a gravestone in an old British cemetery not far from Windsor Castle. It read,

Pause, my friend, as you walk by;
As you are now, so once was I.
As I am now, so you will be.
Prepare, my friend, to follow me!

I heard about a visitor who read that epitaph and added these lines:

To follow you is not my intent,
Until I know which way you went!

Warren W. Wiersbe, The Wiersby Bible Commentary, NT (Colorado Springs: David C. Cook, 2007), p. 722.

Death (of institutions)

Dr. Vance Havner has expressed it, “First there is a man, then a movement, then a machine, and then a monument.” Quoted in Warren W. Wiersbe, The Wiersby Bible Commentary, NT (Colorado Springs: David C. Cook, 2007), p. 486.

Deception

Then I saw that there was a way to hell, even from the gates of Heaven, as well as from the City of Destruction.” John Bunyan in Pilgrim’s Progress. Warren W. Wiersbe, The Wiersby Bible Commentary, NT (Colorado Springs: David C. Cook, 2007), p. 202.

Democracy

Alexander Fraser Tyler, a British professor over two hundred years ago, warned of how to create an economic crisis…He also knew that a democracy was a temporary and transitional government on its way to totalitarian government. In fact, it was Professor Tyler who stated, “A democracy can last as long and until a majority of its citizens discover that they can vote themselves largess (large gifts) out of the public treasury, and they will continue to elect the politician promising the most; the end result is a fall of that democracy due to economic ruin and chaos.” Larry Bates and Chuck bates, A Nation in Crisis: The Meltdown of Money, Government, and Religion (Lake Mary FL: Front Line, 2010), p. 3.

As William Penn said, “Men must be governed by God or they will be ruled by tyrants.” David Kupelian, The Marketing of Evil, (Nashville: WND Books, 2005), p. 176.

As Winston Churchill once observed, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried from time to time.” Michio Kaku, Physics of the Future (New York: Doubleday, 2011), p. 350.

George Bernard Shaw once said, “Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.”Michio Kaku, Physics of the Future (New York: Doubleday, 2011), p. 350.

Demons

Step 1 Personally affirm your faith in Christ
Step 2 Humble yourself
Step 3 Confess any known sin
Step 4 Repent of all sins
Step 5 Forgive all other people
Step 6 Break with the occult and all false religion
Step 7 Prepare to be released from every curse over your life
Step 8 Take your stand with God (James 4:7)
Step 9 Expel! (Breathe out)
In your prayer for deliverance follow these steps.

Derek Prince, They Shall Expel Demons (Grand Rapids: Chosen Books, 1998), pp. 204-205.

Idaho kidnapper and murderer of children Joseph Duncan III posted on his internet blog “The demons have taken over.” Colorado Springs Gazette, July 8, 2005.

Infamous BTK slayer who terrorized Wichita for 31 years said a demon got inside him at a young age. Colorado Springs Gazette, July 10, 2005.

Denominations

To be quite candid, the modern denominational system runs contrary to the organic nature of the church of Jesus Christ. Frank Viola, Reimaging Church: Pursuing The Dream of Organic Christianity (Colorado Springs: David C. Cook, 2008), p. 130.

Depersonalization

Indeed, we could well define modernity as the ongoing depersonalization of humanity…” Donald De Marco and Benjamin D. Wiker, Architects of the Culture of Death (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), p. 16.

“…the root of depersonalization is actually the rejection of the Person of all persons, God. Thus atheism leads directly to depersonalization…So it is that the rejection of the will of the Divine ultimately leads to the divinization of our own will. Donald De Marco and Benjamin D. Wiker, Architects of the Culture of Death, p. 16.

Depression

One in eight Americans today is being treated for depression of some sort, a percentage that is higher than at any other point in history – astoundingly, mental-health professionals believe the number of those who should be treated based on symptoms alone is one in five. I daresay this is not what Jesus intended when he promised abundance and peace and joy. Jack Graham, Unseen: Angels, Satan, Heaven, Hell, and Winning the Battle for Eternity (Minneapolis: Bethany House Publishers, 2013), p. 241.

Solid scientific research now shows clearly that antidepressants don’t actually work, or at least not in the way people think. James Davies, Cracked, The Unhappy Truth About Psychiatry (NY, London: Pegasus Books, 2013), p. 46.

Many incidences of depression spontaneously reduce by themselves after time without being actively treated. James Davies, Cracked, The Unhappy Truth About Psychiatry , p. 49.

Kirsch [Irving Kirsch] pointed out, that about “85 percent to 90 percent of people being prescribed antidepressants are not getting any clinically meaningful benefit from the drug itself.” James Davies, Cracked, The Unhappy Truth About Psychiatry, p. 54.

Once Kirsch published his second analysis showing that antidepressants worked no better than sugar pills for the vast majority of patients, it immediately became front page news in the most respected papers in the UK. James Davies, Cracked, The Unhappy Truth About Psychiatry, p. 54.

But for mildly\moderately depressed patients,” said Brown earnestly, [Walter Brown, professor of psychiatry at Brown University] “our results confirm that antidepressants offer no advantage over placebos, alternative therapies, or even moderate exercise.” James Davies, Cracked, The Unhappy Truth About Psychiatry, p. 56.

The next time you’re at a large-scale event with lots of people…take a look around and consider this: one in ten of those people is taking a psychiatric drug to treat a mood disorder. For women in their forties and fifties, one in four take an antidepressant…interestingly, antidepressant use does not vary by income status. David Perlmutter, MD., Brain Maker (New York: Little Brown and Company, 2015), p. 72.

Ever since serotonin-specific reuptake inhibitor medications (SSRIs) were approved by the FDA nearly three decades ago, we as a society have come to believe that drugs can improve symptoms of or even “cure” mental illness, particularly depression, anxiety disorders, and panic attacks, which together are the top targets of medication in the U.S. Such drug use has increased a whopping 400 percent over the past two decades. By 2005, antidepressants had become the #1 prescribed drug class in the country. David Perlmutter, MD., Brain Maker, p. 73.

I am saddened by the fact that the billion-dollar psychotropic pharmaceutical industry is predicated on the idea that people will take a pill to treat symptoms, while the underlying disorder is ignored. So there’s never any real focus on actually curing or even improving the root cause of the illness, let alone getting people off the medication. David Perlmutter, MD., Brain Maker, p. 73.

Psychologist Justin Barrett at Oxford University reports… Scientific evidence has shown that “built into the natural development of children’s minds [is] a predisposition to see the natural world as designed and purposeful and that some kind of intelligent being is behind that purpose.” Even if a group of children were put “on an island and they raised themselves,” Barrett adds, “I think they would believe in God.” It appears that we have to be educated out of the knowledge of God by secular schools and media. Nancy Pearcey, Finding Truth (Colorado Springs: David Cook, 2015), p. 31.

Despair

[The Line of Despair]. Thus we have a date line like this in Europe before 1800 and the US before 1935. Francis A. Schaeffer, Trilogy, The Three Essential Books in One Volume (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1990), p. 8.

“If there is no God, and everything, therefore, is permitted, the first thing permitted is despair!” [Francois Muriac echoing a line by Fyodor Dostoyevsky]. Luis Palau, God is Relevant, Finding Strength and Peace in Today’s World (NY: Doubleday, 1998), p. 27.

Determinism

Many persons, including Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins fail to comprehend how significantly quantum mechanics undermines a deterministic worldview. Dean L. Overman, A Case For The Existence of God (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2009), p. 83.

Devotion

Our lamps must be tended: Leviticus 24:4 “He shall be in charge of the lamps on the pure gold lampstand before the LORD continually.”

The great English revivalist, John Wesley was once asked about his enormous success in open-air preaching in England, because huge crowds would gather to hear him. His much repeated response was, “Every morning I set myself alight and people come for miles to watch me burn!”

[Oswald Chambers] Many hundreds of thousands have drawn nearer to God through his wonderful devotional, My Utmost for His Highest. Chambers died unexpectedly at age forty-two, and his dear wife, Biddy, spent the rest of her life compiling his scattered notes into the daily devotional. Few know her name, few know of her devoted labors, but without Biddy Chambers, the world would not have known Oswald Chambers and been blessed and edified by My Utmost for His Highest. Whose work was of greater significance: Oswald Chambers, whose name is known, or Biddy Chambers, who is relatively unknown? An interesting question. Linda Dillow, Satisfy My Thirsty Soul (Colorado Springs: Nav Press, 2007), pp. 152-153.

Others May, You Cannot

If God has called you to be really like Jesus, He will draw you into a life of crucifixion and humility, and put upon you such demands of obedience, that you will not be able to follow other people, or measure yourself by other Christians, and in many ways He will seem to let other good people do things which He will not let you do.

Other Christians and ministers who seem very religious and useful, may push themselves, pull wires, and work schemes to carry out their plans, but you cannot do it; and if you attempt it, you will meet with such failure and rebuke from the Lord as to make you sorely penitent.

Others may boast of themselves, of their work, of their success, of their writings, but the Holy Spirit will not allow you to do any such thing, and if you begin it, He will lead you into some deep mortification that will make you despise yourself and all your good works.

Others may be allowed to succeed in making money, or may have a legacy left to them, but it is likely God will keep you poor, because He wants you to have something far better than gold, namely, a helpless dependence on Him, that He may have the privilege of supplying your needs day by day out of an unseen treasury.

The Lord may let others be honored and put forward, and keep you hidden in obscurity, because He wants you to produce some choice, fragrant fruit for His coming glory, which can only be produced in the shade. He may let others be great, but keep you small. He may let others do a work for Him and get the credit for it, but He will make you work and toil on without knowing how much you are doing; and then to make your work still more precious, He may let others get the credit for the work which you have done, and thus make your reward ten times greater when Jesus comes.

The Holy Spirit will put a strict watch over you, with a jealous love, and will rebuke you for little words and feelings, or for wasting your time, which other Christians never seem distressed over. So make up your mind that God is an infinite Sovereign, and has a right to do as He pleases with His own. He may not explain to you a thousand things which puzzle your reason in His dealings with you, but if you absolutely sell yourself to be His love slave, He will wrap you up in a jealous love, and bestow upon you many blessings which come only to those who are in the inner circle.

Settle it forever, then, that you are to deal directly with the Holy Spirit, and that He is to have the privilege of tying your tongue, or chaining your hand, or closing your eyes, in ways that He does not seem to use with others. Now when you are so possessed with the loving God that you are, in your secret heart, pleased and delighted over this peculiar, personal, private, jealous guardianship and management of the Holy Spirit over your life, you will have found the vestibule of Heaven.

G. D. Watson, in Living Words https://bible.org/illustration/others-may-you-cannot

Diaspora

As many as two-thirds of the Jews in the first century were living outside Palestine…Estimates of the total numbers of Jews are little more than guesses and range from three to eight million, but even minimum estimates put the number of Jews at about 7 percent of the population of the Roman Empire. Everett Ferguson, Backgrounds of Early Christianity, Second Edition (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1987, 1993), p. 403.

Essentially every Arab state expelled its own Jews, many residents for generations. Evicted were more than 800,000 people. Confiscated was some $2.5 billion in land and wealth. Hirsh Goldberg, The Jewish Connection (NY: Bantam Books, Inc., 1976), p. 26.

At the time of the Roman destruction of the Second Temple, 250,000 Jews were living in Alexandria and one million in Babylonia – in contrast to Jerusalem’s all-Jewish population of 120,000. Hirsh Goldberg, The Jewish Connection, p. 38.

(The Jews) today they have existed longer without a homeland than with one…” Hirsh Goldberg, The Jewish Connection, p. 39.

The Jew had so flourished in Germany that, on the eve of the Holocaust, Jews, although just under 1 percent of the population of Germany, constituted 16 percent of its practicing lawyers, 10 percent of its doctors and dentists, and 17 percent of its bankers. In the commercial community, Jews accounted for 11 percent of the personnel in real-estate brokerage, 25 percent in retailing, 30 percent in the clothing trade, and 70 percent in department stores. Hirsh Goldberg, The Jewish Connection, p. 47.

Will and Ariel Durant point out, the Jews’ international connections facilitated world trade and built up multi-national banking houses. The Jew was, in a sense, civilization’s bee, pollinating one culture with the ideas of another – and bringing his own special contribution to the mix. Hirsh Goldberg, The Jewish Connection, p. 54.

According to one medieval tradition, there were at the time of the Claudian census in 48 AD some 6,944,000 Jews within the confines of the empire, plus what Josephus calls the ‘myriads and myriads’ in Babylonia and elsewhere beyond it. One calculation is that during the Herodian period there were about eight million Jews in the world, of whom 2,350,000 to 2,500,000 lived in Palestine, the Jews thus constituting about 10 per cent of the Roman Empire. Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews (NY: Harper & Roe, 1987), p. 112.

[Jews] Today, fewer than one hundred Jews remain in Egypt, most of them elderly, and they live in fear. But in 1933, up to eighty thousand Jews lived in the country. Erick Stakelbeck, The Brotherhood, America’s Next Great Enemy (Washington: Regnery, 2013), p. 80.

Today there are only 100 Jews left in Egypt and less than 8,000 in the entire Arab world, of whom just 6,000 remain in Morocco. Geert Wilders, Marked For Death: Islam’s War Against the West and Me (Washington: Regnery, 2012), p. 82.

Difficulty

As I probed my grandmother’s astonishing memory, I noticed a trend that seems almost universal in reminiscences of older people: they tend to recall difficult, tumultuous times with a touch of nostalgia. According to polls, 60 percent of Londoners who survived the Blitz now remember that time as the happiest period of their lives. Somehow a new spirit of community and patriotism sprang up to eclipse even the horror of bombs and V-2 rockets. Philip Yancey, Finding God in Unexpected Places (Nashville: Moorings, 1995), p. 175.

Digital Age

By the time today’s digital native reaches his twenties, he will have spent some 20,000 hours accessing the Internet and 10,000 hours playing video games. Tim Challies, The Next Story, Life and Faith after The Digital Explosion (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011), p. 44.

We keep our brains in a constant state of heightened stress, damaging our ability to devote ourselves to extended periods of thoughtful reflection and contemplation. Tim Challies, The Next Story, Life and Faith after The Digital Explosion, p. 45.

In his account of the Lewis and Clark expedition, historian Stephen Ambrose notes, “A critical fact in the world of 1801 was that nothing moved faster than the speed of a horse. No human being, no manufactured item, no bushel of wheat…no letter, no information, no idea, order, or instruction of any kind moved faster.” Tim Challies, The Next Story, Life and Faith after The Digital Explosion, p. 48.

Beginning in the middle years of the nineteenth century, the steam engine forever transformed travel. For the first time in human history, people could move faster than the horse. Tim Challies, The Next Story, Life and Faith after The Digital Explosion, p. 49.

In 1844 Samuel Morse, using a telegraph, famously tapped the words of Numbers 23:23, “What hath God wrought!” Tim Challies, The Next Story, Life and Faith after The Digital Explosion, p. 49.

It is no coincidence that the Associated Press news agency was founded just four years after Morse sent his first telegram. Tim Challies, The Next Story, Life and Faith after The Digital Explosion, p. 50.

If you were born after 1980, you are a digital native. Tim Challies, The Next Story, Life and Faith after The Digital Explosion, p. 56.

A medium is, quite simply, something that stands between. Tim Challies, The Next Story, Life and Faith after The Digital Explosion, p. 91.

Not surprisingly, the digital explosion has radically altered our sense of time and space, changing and shaping us along the way. Tim Challies, The Next Story, Life and Faith after The Digital Explosion, p. 120.

A recent study by Synovate found that more than 4 in 10 Americans say they can’t live without their mobile phone; 82 percent say they never leave home without it; nearly half of them sleep with it nearby. Tim Challies, The Next Story, Life and Faith after The Digital Explosion, p. 121.

If we surround ourselves by too many stimuli, we force our brains into a state of continuous partial attention a state in which we keep tabs on everything without giving focused attention to anything. Tim Challies, The Next Story, Life and Faith after The Digital Explosion, p. 125.

Many teachers today remark that students are unable to sustain a single thought or theme for more than one paragraph. Tim Challies, The Next Story, Life and Faith after The Digital Explosion, p. 125.

[Studies of Dr. Edward Hallowell, psychiatrist of Harvard Medical School]. ADT [attention deficit trait] is a product of the digital world, a result of our obsession with information- our desire to surround ourselves with it, with more of it, all the time. Tim Challies, The Next Story, Life and Faith after The Digital Explosion, p. 138.

Our minds are too scattered to think in a focused direction, too drawn to the mundane to endure times of sustained reflection. Tim Challies, The Next Story, Life and Faith after The Digital Explosion, p. 139.

When we collect, collate, and compare pieces of information, we have acquired knowledge. Knowledge makes information useful…finally, when we use knowledge to make good decision, when we apply facts and knowledge to life situations, we express wisdom. Tim Challies, The Next Story, Life and Faith after The Digital Explosion, p. 140.

The amount of digital data created by the end of 2010 surpassed a zettabyte, an amount that almost defies explanation (think of 75 billion iPads stuffed to capacity). By the year 2020 this amount is expected to increase by a factor of 44 (this gets just plain silly after a while, but imagine a stack of DVDs, each full of data, reaching halfway to Mars). Tim Challies, The Next Story, Life and Faith after The Digital Explosion, p. 142.

[Quintin Schultze, professor of communication arts and sciences at Calvin College] Observes the godlike importance we attach to information and coins the word informationism to describe it. According to Schulze, information is “a non-discerning, vacuous faith in the collection and dissemination of information as a route to social progress and personal happiness.” Tim Challies, The Next Story, Life and Faith after The Digital Explosion, p. 143.

What we are finding is that more information does not necessarily lead to more wisdom. In fact, the very opposite may be true…For the time being, we have print-age brains in a digital world, and in many ways we are overtaxing them with too much stimulus, too much information. Tim Challies, The Next Story, Life and Faith after The Digital Explosion, p. 144.

Biological memory is a living memory; computer memory is not. Tim Challies, The Next Story, Life and Faith after The Digital Explosion, p. 151.

As we outsource our brains to digital media, we threaten our ability to make information into knowledge and knowledge into wisdom. Tim Challies, The Next Story, Life and Faith after The Digital Explosion, p. 151.

What will it say if, fifty years from now, all search information data becomes public domain? It may not tell about things that are perverse and dark, but it may well tell of things that are personal and humiliating. Tim Challies, The Next Story, Life and Faith after The Digital Explosion, p. 153.

We are becoming a people whose knowledge is a mile wide and an inch deep. Tim Challies, The Next Story, Life and Faith after The Digital Explosion, p. 154.

Know and understand the difference between information, knowledge, and wisdom, and always seek information that can be turned into useful knowledge and wisdom to live by. Tim Challies, The Next Story, Life and Faith after The Digital Explosion, p. 155.

There is no digital equivalent to the benefit brought about by memorizing the Word of God. Tim Challies, The Next Story, Life and Faith after The Digital Explosion, p. 156.

A traditional encyclopedia has many limitations it must work within, the first of which is a limitation of space. With 65,000 entries, Encyclopedia Britannica already comprises thirty-two big and heavy volumes. Tim Challies, The Next Story, Life and Faith after The Digital Explosion, p. 163.

Disagreement

[Philippians 1:15-19] It is a matter of historic record that the two great English evangelists, John Wesley and George Whitefield, disagreed on doctrinal matters. Both of them were very successful, preaching to thousands of people and seeing multitudes come to Christ. It is reported that somebody asked Wesley if he expected to see Whitefield in heaven, and the evangelist replied, “No, I do not.” “Then do you think Whitefield is a converted man?” “Of course he is a converted man!” Wesley said, “But I do not expect to see him in heaven- because he will be so close to the throne of God and I so far away that I will not be able to see him!” Warren W. Wiersbe, The Wiersby Bible Commentary, NT (Colorado Springs: David C. Cook, 2007), p. 632.

Discovery

One of the most interesting aspects of discoveries concerning physical laws is that the discoveries move in the direction of deeper, more profound, and more beautiful explanations. Dean L. Overman, A Case For The Existence of God (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2009), p. 40.

Diversity

Studies in the early twenty-first century produced shocking results: diversity was badly fragmenting American society. As Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone, noted, “inhabitants of diverse communities tend to withdraw from collective life, to distrust their neighbors, regardless of the color of their skin…to volunteer less, give less to charity and work on community projects less often, to register to vote less, [but] agitate for social reform more…Other findings by a team at MIT and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy concluded, “all these studies have the same punch line: heterogeneity reduces civic engagement. In more diverse communities, people participate less…” A study in Germany put it even more bluntly, noting a significant “anti-social effect” on society brought about by low-skill immigration. One poll found that 90 percent of Mexican immigrants would vote in the next Mexican election, suggesting more than a little that their loyalties hardly resided with the USA! Larry Schweikart and Dave Dougherty, A Patriot’s History of the Modern World, Vo. 2 (NY: The Penguin Group, 2013), p. 521.

Divisions

Where Christian love warmly flows, the cracks and crevices of divisions between believers are filled and healed. Edwin Markham deals with the matter of division in his poem “Outwitted:”

He drew a circle that shut me out-

Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.

But love and I had the wit to win:

We drew a circle and took him In !

GoodReads http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/179023.Edwin_Markham

Divorce

“Britain has seen a 600 percent rise in marriage breakdown since 1961. One third of all babies are born out of wedlock and a quarter of all single young men and women under the age of 40 are living together in unmarried relationships.” Prophecy Today Jan/Feb 1998, p. 5.

“The divorce rate among clergy is increasing faster than in any other profession. Statistics show that one in ten have had an affair with a member of their congregation, and 25 percent have had some illicit sexual contact.” Charles Colson with Ellen Santilli Vaughn, The Body: being a light in the darkness (Dallas: Word Publishing, 1992), p. 304.

According to the studies on the economic effects of divorce, the standard of living of a man goes up 42 percent during the first year after a divorce; in that same period the standard of living of a woman and her children drops 73 percent. Michael Reagan with Jim Denney, Twice Adopted (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2004), p. 46.

According to statistics from the US Census Bureau, the Centers for Disease Control, and the Department of Justice, 70 percent of long-term prison inmates- including 72 percent of adolescent murderers and 60 percent of all rapists – grew up in fatherless homes. Fatherless children account for roughly 90 percent of all homeless and runaway children, 85 percent of all youth in prison, 75 percent of adolescent patients in chemical abuse centers, 71 percent of high school dropouts, and 63 percent of youth suicides. Nearly 24 percent of all American kids-almost seventeen million kids-live in fatherless homes. Michael Reagan with Jim Denney, Twice Adopted, p. 82.

The most recent studies available suggest that one out of every two people – that’s fifty percent of the people sitting in our pews – are looking at and/or could be addicted to Internet pornography. Michael Reagan with Jim Denney, Twice Adopted, p. 210.

Researcher and writer Shaunti Feldhahn had long spoken of and quoted the statistics that most US marriages are unhappy and that 50 percent of marriages end in divorce. However, after some serious research Feldhahn realized that these statistics are not true. Her surprising revelations are made clear in her new book The Good News about Marriage. The real divorce rate for first time marriages is probably 20 to 25 percent. She points out how the 50 percent figure was projected in the 1970s and early 1980s as the rate was rising rapidly due to no-fault divorces. However, in recent years the rate has been dropping. Thus the 50 percent figure was never right and in fact we never came close. Feldhahn points out that the rate is much lower for churchgoers and is likely in the teens or single digits. The incorrect figure creates a hopelessness about marriage and Feldhahn is working to change this. “Divorce Shocker: Most Marriages Do Make It,” By Paul Strand, CBN News Washington Sr. Correspondent Tuesday, May 06, 2014.

Among adults who identify as Christians but rarely attend church, 60 percent have been divorced. Of those who attend church regularly, the number is 38 percent. Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body, Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2018), p. 11.

Children of unmarried or divorced parents are far more likely to suffer emotional, behavioral, and health problems. They are at higher risk for crime, poverty, depression, suicide, school difficulties, unmarried pregnancy, and drug and alcohol abuse. Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body, Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality, p. 242.

A 2008 study found that divorce and unwed childbearing cost taxpayers $112 billion each year. The nanny state does not come cheap. Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body, Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality, p. 243

DNA

“There is an identity structure between DNA (and protein) and written linguistic messages. Since we know by experience that intelligence produces written messages, and no other cause is known, the implication, according to the abductive method, is that intelligent cause produced DNA and protein. The significance of the result lies in the security of it, for it is much stronger than if the structures were mere similar. We are not dealing with anything like a superficial resemblance between DNA and a written text. We are not saying DNA is like a message. Rather, DNA is a message. True design thus returns to biology.” Josh D. McDowell, The New Evidence That Demands A Verdict (Nashville, Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1999), p. 19.

Even biochemist and spiritual skeptic Francis Crick, who shared the Nobel Prize for discovering the molecular structure of DNA, cautiously invoked the word a few years ago, “an honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going.” Lee Strobel, The Case For A Creator (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004), p. 42.

[Stephen C. Meyer] The origin of information in DNA-which is necessary for life to begin-is best explained by an intelligent cause. Lee Strobel, The Case For A Creator, p. 223.

The six-feet of DNA coiled inside every one of our body’s one hundred trillion cells contains a four-letter chemical alphabet that spells out precise assembly instructions for all the proteins from which our bodies are made. Lee Strobel, The Case For A Creator, p. 282.

In addition Meyer said the Cambrian explosion’s dazzling array of new life forms, which suddenly appeared fully formed in the fossil record, with no prior transitions, would have required the infusion of massive amounts of new biological information. Lee Strobel, The Case For A Creator, p. 282.

What is the source of information (instructions) in animate matter? What is the source of the instructions we find in the DNA that exists in all living things? This question is central to an understanding of life, because biological information is the central distinction between living and nonliving matter. Dean L. Overman, A Case For The Existence of God (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2009), p. 163.

The DNA for even the smallest single-celled bacterium contains over 4 million instructions…The current problem with self-organization theorists is that the mechanisms they claim could create life lack any plausible method of venerating the sort of information DNA contains. Dean L. Overman, A Case For The Existence of God, p. 164.

The simple mathematical fact that the genetic information contained in even the smallest living organism is much larger than the information content derivable from the laws of physics. Dean L. Overman, A Case For The Existence of God, p. 165.

Algorithmic information theory demonstrates that randomness and uncertainty are required to generate complex information; the order produced by the laws of physics is too simple to transmit the amount of information content required for life. Dean L. Overman, A Case For The Existence of God, p. 166.

The laws of physics by definition are compact formulas and simply do not contain enough information to generate the irregular, aperiodic, almost random sequences that are required in order to transmit the necessary instructions for life. Dean L. Overman, A Case For The Existence of God, p. 173.

If the fossil record is correct, the endowed wisdom of DNA seems to have been present from the very earliest stages of life on earth…Each human cell contains about two meters of DNA. Considering that a typical cell is nominally 30 millionths of a meter in diameter, squeezing in the two meters of DNA requires a feat of compression on a scale of one hundred thousand to one. Nature has the answer. Two complementary strands of the molecule twist and fold into a supercoiled helix, a helix within a helix, yielding a ball less than 5 millionth of a meter (approximately one one-hundred thousandth of an inch) in diameter. Gerald Schroeder, The Hidden Face of God, How Science Reveals the Ultimate Truth (New York: The Free Press, 2001), p. 191.

The biological system of information storage is phenomenally dense. If all the information in all the libraries in all languages were transcribed into the language of DNA, it could be recorded within a volume equivalent to 1 percent of the head of a pin. Gerald Schroeder, The Hidden Face of God, How Science Reveals the Ultimate Truth, p. 192.

The DNA helix is some 25 billionths of a meter thick, but reaches a tenth of a meter (about 3 inches) in length when unwound. If we were to unwind all the DNA of a cell and line it up, one cell’s worth would reach about the height of an adult. Put all the DNA in your body end to end and you get a thread that reaches to the sun and back about one hundred times. This is not some abstract fact. It is the wonder of you. Gerald Schroeder, The Hidden Face of God, How Science Reveals the Ultimate Truth, p. 195.

[The former atheist Anthony Flew] “What I think the DNA material has done is that it has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce (life), that intelligence must have been involved in getting these extraordinarily diverse elements to work together…It is all a matter of the enormous complexity by which the results are achieved, which looked to me like the work of intelligence.” Rice Broocks, God’s Not Dead, Evidence For God In An Age Of Uncertainty (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 2013). p. 89.

As Bill Gates said, “Human DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software ever created.” Rice Broocks, God’s Not Dead, Evidence For God In An Age Of Uncertainty, p. 90.

[Francis Collins] “Bacteria have DNA. Yeast have DNA…” Rice Broocks, God’s Not Dead, Evidence For God In An Age Of Uncertainty, p. 90.

The human genome consists of all the DNA of our species, the hereditary code of life. This newly revealed text was 3 billion letters long, and written in a strange and cryptographic four-letter code. Such is the amazing complexity of the information carried within each cell of the human body, that a live reading of that code at a rate of one letter per second would take thirty-one years, even if reading continued day and night. Printing these letters out in regular font size on normal bond paper and binding them all together would result in a tower the height of the Washington Monument. Francis S. Collins, The Language of God, A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief ( NY: Free Press, 2006), pp. 1-2.

[Speech by President Clinton] “Today, “he said,” “we are learning the language in which God created life. We are gaining ever more awe for the complexity, the beauty, and the wonder of God’s most divine and sacred gift.” Francis S. Collins, The Language of God, A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief , p. 2.

For me the experience of sequencing the human genome, and uncovering this most remarkable of all texts, was both a stunning scientific achievement and an occasion of worship. Francis S. Collins, The Language of God, A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief, p. 3.

The God of the Bible is also the God of the genome. Francis S. Collins, The Language of God, A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief, p. 211.

Doubt

The comforting reality is that questioning what you believe about religion or God is commonplace for most American adults who self-identify as Christian (or have in the past) (65%). Just over one-quarter (26%) say they still experience spiritual doubt, while four in 10 (40%) say they have experienced it in the past but have worked through it. Only about one-third (35%) claim to have never experienced it at all. Even devout groups like practicing Christians (19%) still experience doubt, though perhaps because they are the most active in their faith practice and enjoy the support systems and resources of a church community, they are also one of the most likely groups to have worked through their doubt (42%). The Pervasiveness of Doubt– Barna Group, Jul 25, 2017.

Dreams

The British wit, Max Beerbohm said, “People who insist on telling their dreams are among the terrors of the breakfast table.” Warren W. Wiersbe, The Wiersby Bible Commentary, NT (Colorado Springs: David C. Cook, 2007), p. 117.

Jack Nicalus dreamed about a golf swing that greatly improved his game…Elias Howe, inventor of the sewing machine, had a dream about a hole in the needle that was the solution to the operation of his machine…James Watson had a dream of a spiral staircase that led to the discovery of the double helix in DNA…Otto Loewi had a dream that led to the discovery that the primary language of nerve cell communication is chemical, not electrical, and won its dreamer the Nobel Prize in Medicine. Gordon Robertson, Dreams In The Night (CD), Christian Broadcasting Network, 2014.

Drugs

Drugs are merely a symptom of the terrible anguish of people; of their empty lives, their lack of a sense of worth. They have no King to worship, no authority to serve, no cause greater than themselves. Ray Stedman, Commentary on Colossians, vs. 1:15-17. http://www.raystedman.org/new-testament/colossians/the-great-mystery

Because the only hope of meaning had been placed in the area of non-reason, drugs were brought into the picture…Psychologist Timothy Leary…Gary Snyder…, author-philosopher Alan Watts …and poet Allen Ginsberg… were all influential in making drugs an ideology. Timothy Leary, for example, said that drugs were the sacraments for the new religion. Francis A. Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live? The Rise and decline of Western Thought and Culture (Wheaton IL: Crossway Books, 1976), p. 306.

The point is that in the lower story – nature – life makes no sense; it is meaningless…The basic reason that drugs are seriously taken today is not for escape or kicks but because man is desperate. Francis A. Schaeffer, Escape From Reason, A Penetrating Analysis of Trends in Modern Thought (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1968), p. 54.

You also lose any categories which would distinguish between reality and fantasy…The drug culture enters into this too. At the very heart of the thing is the loss of distinction between reality and fantasy by the taking of drugs. Francis A. Schaeffer, He Is There And He Is Not Silent (Wheaton IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1972), p. 56.

What we are left with today is the fact that modern man has no categories to enable him to be at all sure of the difference between what is real and what is only in his head. Francis A. Schaeffer, He Is There And He Is Not Silent, p. 57.

[Aldous Huxley] Huxley is the father of the modern cult of drug taking…He also made his wife promise that when he was dying she would give him LSD so he would die I the midst of a trip. Francis A. Schaeffer, The Church At The End Of The 20^th Century (Downers Grove: Inter-Varsity Press, 1970), p. 20.

Does Afghanistan produce anything that it can trade for grain? Its major cash export is heroin, resulting in 30,000 deaths in Russia annually. Afghan heroin also causes problems in Iran and on into Europe. So when things are weighed in the balance, the Afghans cause at least twenty times as many deaths outside the country as the inside of their country causes. David Archibald, Twilight of Abundance, Why Life In the 21^st Century Will Be Nasty, Brutish, and Short (Washington: Regnery Publishing, 2014), p. 45.

Drugs, Prescription

Consider: While living in an age of exponential growth in knowledge, 20 to 30 million Americans currently take powerful, mood-altering psychiatric drugs to deal with depression, bipolar disorder, and a slew of other “mental health” problems – despite the troubling link between those drugs and extreme violent behavior. David Kupelian, How Evil Works: Understanding and Overcoming the Destructive Forces That Are Transforming America (New York: Threshold Editions, 2010), p. Ix.

Columbine mass killer Eric Harris was taking Luvox, which like Paxil and Zoloft (and trendsetter Prozac) is a modern and widely prescribed type of antidepressant called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs. David Kupelian, How Evil Works: Understanding and Overcoming the Destructive Forces That Are Transforming America, p. 97.

Close to 10 percent of men and women in America are now taking drugs to combat depression. David Kupelian, How Evil Works: Understanding and Overcoming the Destructive Forces That Are Transforming America, pp. 101-102.

In fact, reports Fortune, “we’re popping so many SSRIs that their breakdown products in urine, gushing into waterways, have accumulated in fish tissues, raising concerns that aquatic animals may be getting toxic doses according to recent research at Baylor University.” David Kupelian, How Evil Works: Understanding and Overcoming the Destructive Forces That Are Transforming America, p. 102.

A 2008 Time Magazine cover story, [America’s Medicated Army] “According to an anonymous survey of US troops taken last fall, about 12 percent of combat troops in Iraq and 17 percent of those in Afghanistan are taking prescription antidepressants or sleeping pills to help them cope.” David Kupelian, How Evil Works: Understanding and Overcoming the Destructive Forces That Are Transforming America, p. 102.

Almost 40 percent of the Army’s suicide victims in recent years had been on psychiatric drugs, especially SSRI antidepressants such as Paxil, Zoloft, and Prozac. David Kupelian, How Evil Works: Understanding and Overcoming the Destructive Forces That Are Transforming America, p. 103.

[Risk of suicide from drugs] There have been 164 Army suicides in Afghanistan and Iraq from the wars’ start through 2007, and the annual rate there is now double the service’s 2001 rate. David Kupelian, How Evil Works: Understanding and Overcoming the Destructive Forces That Are Transforming America, p. 103.

The inescapable truth is that perpetrators of many of the most horrendous murder rampages in recent years were taking, or just coming off of, prescribed psychiatric drugs. David Kupelian, How Evil Works: Understanding and Overcoming the Destructive Forces That Are Transforming America, p. 97.

A very perceptive woman…summarized her experience this way: “Did you know what the Valium did for me.?” It deactivated my conscience.” David Kupelian, How Evil Works: Understanding and Overcoming the Destructive Forces That Are Transforming America, p. 107.

Ebionites

The Ebionites, who occupied a region to the east of the river Jordan, seem to have been one of the earliest Christian communities of the diaspora…The Ebionites seem to have believed that Jesus, having been dwelt in by the messiah from his baptism until shortly before his crucifixion, and purged the Law of Moses of all its distortions. It had now to be rigorously observed. Paul, who had a distinctly ambivalent attitude to the Law, they vehemently rejected. They refused him the title of apostle, and claimed he had been deluded by visions sent by the devil. They had one Gospel, that of Matthew, adapted to their own particular views. Michael Walsh, Roots of Christianity, (London: Grafton Books, London, 1986), p. 101.

Towards the end of the second century Julius Africanus, who despite his name may have been a native of Jerusalem, reported that in the area east of the river Jordan there were Christians who believed themselves descended from ‘the cousins of the Lord.’ Walsh, Michael, Roots of Christianity, p. 101.

The Ebionites, a Jewish-Christian sect which flourished for several centuries after A.D. 70, are most likely a continuing reflection of the Judaizing movement. An ascetic group, committed to poverty as a life-style, the Ebionites upheld the whole Jewish Law but rejected Paul’s letters on the grounds that he was an apostate from the Law. Wilson, Marvin, Our Father Abraham, Jewish Roots of the Christian Faith (Grand Rapids MI & Dayton, OH: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company and Center for Judaic-Christian Studies, 1989), p. 25.

Ecology

The Greenpeace organization started as an attempt to stem the tide of ecological damage done to the planet and its wildlife (not to mention human life) that has escalated with growing world population and increasing pollution. Though not always popular or law-abiding, Greenpeace has helped call the public’s attention to little-known uses of science. For example on March 3, 1998, Delta and Pipe Land Company (a division of Monsanto), along with the United States Department of Agriculture, announced that they had received a new patent on a process to genetically alter seeds so they will yield a crop but produce a following generation of seed that is sterile. Dubbed “terminator technology” by Greenpeace, this would prevent farmers from producing extra seeds for replanting or sharing with neighbors. All farmers would be forced to buy new seeds every season. Monsanto and the USDA are seeking to secure patents on their process in eighty-seven other countries. Yet, many poor farmers worldwide depend on second-generation seed for planting new crops in consecutive years. Organizations such a Greenpeace exist because science and those who wield its awesome power are no longer considered forces that are friendly toward life on earth. Chuck Smith, Jr., The End of the World As We Know It (Colorado Springs: WaterBrook Press, 22001), pp. 49-50.

Economics

Differences in economic performance are chiefly dependent upon spiritual rather than physical characteristics. Rabbi Daniel Lapin, Business Secrets From The Bible, (Hoboken: Wiley, 2014), p. 97.

Education

To give you the flavor of the original Harvard, here’s a snipper from its Rules and Precepts of 1642: “Let every student be plainly instructed, and earnestly presssed to consider well, the maine end of his life and studies is, to know god and Jesus Christ which is eternal life, John 17:3 and therefore to lay Christ in the bottome, as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and Learning. And seeing the Lord only giveth wisdome, Let every one seriously set himself by prayer in secret to seeke it of him Prov. 2:3.” David Kupelian, The Marketing of Evil, (Nashville, WND Books, 2005), p. 156.

Education…has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading. [British historian George Maculay Trevelyan]. Taylor Mali, What Teachers Make (Putman, 2012), pp. 55-56.

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education. [Mark Twain] Taylor Mali, What Teachers Make (Putman, 2012), p. 124

By one estimate, 65 percent of children entering grade school this year will end up working in careers that haven’t even been invented yet. Cathy N. Davidson, Now You See It; How The Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn (New York: The Penguin Group, 2011), p. 18.

Isn’t it wonderful that educators have figured out a way to make parents the instruments of their own undoing? Isn’t it brilliant that they have persuaded Christian moms and dads to finance the destruction of their own beliefs and values? Who said atheists weren’t clever? Dinesh D’Souza, What’s So Great About Christianity (Washington: Regenery Publishing Inc., 2007), p. 37.

I like what Penn State Professor Alan Kors said about the college madness for the Young American Foundation’s College Lecture Series. He challenged schools to have the courage to advertise their mind game of politically correct indoctrination. He said an honest advertisement aimed at parents and prospective students should read, “This University believes that your sons and daughters are the racist, sexist, Eurocentric, homophobic progeny of a racist, sexist, homophobic, oppressive American society. For $25,000 per year, we shall assign rights unequally on a compensatory basis and undertake by coercion the moral and political enlightenment of your children.” Star Parker, Uncle Sam’s Plantation (Nashville: WND Books, 2003), p. 94.

In a recent Zogby poll, 75 percent of American college seniors said their professors teach that there is no such thing as right and wrong in a universal or objective sense. Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity (Wheaton IL: Crossway Books, 2004), p. 113.

A French political philosopher recently said that nowadays when he wants to debate a Marxist, he has to import one from an American university. Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity, p. 135.

John Dewey did more to shape educational methodology than anyone else in the twentieth century. Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity, p. 238.

Dewey is the source of much of today’s moral education, where all values are treated as equally valid and students simply clarify what they personally value most. Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity, p. 239.

Ralph Reed, appearing on CBNs 700 Club, said that 1/4^th to 1/3^rd of US children are functional illiterates. In New York City this figure increases to 80 percent. This information he had taken from City University of NY. These students after High School graduation have to receive remedial classes to effectively function. CBNs 700 Club, March 19, 2014.

Undoubtedly, one of our difficulties is that most of our churches are in this upper-middle-class bracket, and the reason then why Christians are not understanding their own children is because the children are being educated into the other way of thinking. It is not merely that they think different things. They think differently. Francis A. Schaeffer, Escape From Reason, A Penetrating Analysis of Trends in Modern Thought (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1968), p. 44.

Most of the professors have been teaching that man is a machine. The result: Students are being treated like machines. Francis A. Schaeffer, The Church At The End Of The 20^th Century (Downers Grove: Inter-Varsity Press, 1970), p. 17.

Fifty-two percent of Chicago’s fourth-graders are below basic levels of reading; 32 percent are below basic in math. About 40 percent of Chicago’s students drop out, and just 6 percent go on to obtain four-year college degrees. Lou Dobbs, Upheaval (New York: Threshold Editions, 2014), p. 81.

This was what the great nineteenth-century pioneer of meteorology, James Pollard Espy, was shown in a chance encounter as a young man. Unable to read and write until he was eighteen, Espy attended a rousing speech by the famous orator Henry Clay. After the talk, a spellbound Espy tried to make his way toward Clay, but he couldn’t form the words to speak to his idol. One of his friends shouted out for him: “He wants to be like you, even though he can’t read.” Clay grabbed one of his posters, which had the word CLAY written in big letters. He looked at Espy and said, “You see that boy?” Pointing to a letter. “That’s an A. Now, you’ve only got twenty-five more letters to go.” Espy had just been gifted the process. Within a year, he started college. Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle Is The Way (New York: Penguin Group, 2014), p. 89.

The top public school discipline problems

1945

Talking
Chewing gum
Making noise
Running in the halls
Getting out of turn in line
Wearing improper clothing
Not putting paper in wastebaskets

1985

Drug abuse
Alcohol abuse
Pregnancy
Suicide
Rape
Robbery
Assault

David Reagan, God’s Plan ForThe Ages (McKinney, TX: Lamb & Lion Ministries, 2005), p. 268.

[President Reagan’s speech at Notre Dame in 1981] “A university like this is a storehouse of knowledge because the freshmen bring so much in and the seniors take so little away.” Craig Shirley, Last Act: The Final Years and Emerging Legacy of Ronald Reagan (Nashville: Nelson Books, 2015), p. 88.

Silicon Valley for example, is roughly 50 percent foreign born, many coming from Taiwan and Inia. Nationwide, 50 percent of all PhD students in physics are foreign born. At my university, the City University of New York, the figure is closer to 100 percent foreign born. Michio Kaku, Physics of the Future (New York: Doubleday, 2011), p. 322.

Education, Christian

Herein is the root and stem of contemporary Christian education. It is built on the Platonic idea that knowledge is the equivalent of moral character. Therein lies the great flaw. Frank Viola and George Barna, Pagan Christianity? Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. 2002, 2008), p. 215.

Einstein

Einstein marveled at the intelligibility of the universe. He knew that science could not even begin if the world was not intelligible. As he noted, “Let us concede that behind any major scientific work is a conviction akin to religious belief, that the world is intelligible.” Dean L. Overman, A Case For The Existence of God (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2009), p. xxvi.

In 1917 when Albert Einstein…applied his newly discovered theory of gravity to the universe. Einstein realized that his equations implied the expansion (or contraction) of the universe in the large, but he was unable to accept this conclusion on philosophical and religious grounds. Einstein hated the idea of a personal God, who created the universe a finite time ago; he envisaged the universe as self-existent…Such a universe was not allowed by his equations of gravity, so he modified them to a new set of equations that would allow an unchanging, eternal universe: The Einstein static universe… Frank J. Tipler, The Physics of Christianity (NY: Doubleday, 2007), p. 46.

American astronomer Edwin Hubble (1889-1953) discovered that the galaxies are, in the large, all moving away from one another. Einstein’s original equations, unmodified by philosophical and religious considerations, were correct. Einstein later characterized modifying his original equations, adding a term called the cosmological constant term, as “the worst mistake of my life.” Frank J. Tipler, The Physics of Christianity, p. 46.

The meaning of the equation is that the energy that is latent within matter is equal to the mass of that matter multiplied by the speed of light squared…the explosive power within the nuclear components of any given mass is so great as to be beyond description….Mistakenly but perhaps inevitably, relativity became confused with relativism… So it was that the popular interpreter of Einstein in his day found himself quickly saying, “All things are relative.” Dave Breese, Seven Men Who Rule the World from The Grave, (Chicago: Moody Press, 1990), pp., 109, 111, 112.

Thus was created the era in which absolutes faded and eventually disappeared in the minds of many and in which relativism became the prevailing spirit of thought and action… So it was that at the cocktail parties, on the streets, and especially in the academic circles the relativity of Einstein developed its social application in relativism. Dave Breese, Seven Men Who Rule the World from The Grave, pp., 112, 114.

Einstein developed an enormous respect for the universe and for the God who stood behind it all. He certainly could not be called a conventional atheist, but rather an honest Jewish theist. Dave Breese, Seven Men Who Rule the World from The Grave, p. 119.

Einstein so disliked the implications of General Relativity-a theory that is now proven accurate to five decimal places-that he introduced a cosmological constant (which some have since called a “fudge factor” into his equations in order to show that the universe is static and to avoid an absolute beginning. Norman L. Geisler & Frank Turek, I Don’t Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2004), p. 73.

Einstein, who was responsible for the scientific revolution of relativity as well as some of the first theoretical steps into quantum theory, is regarded by some as the last of the great classical physicists. F. David Peat, From Certainty to Uncertainty: The Story of Science and Ideas in the Twentieth Century (Washington: Joseph Henry Press, 2002), p. 10.

Einstein’s special theory of relativity showed that energy and mass are equivalent, as shown by the formula E=mc2. F. David Peat, From Certainty to Uncertainty: The Story of Science and Ideas in the Twentieth Century, p. 19.

In his original 1905 paper about invariance, “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies” …Albert Einstein did call his first postulate the Principle of Relativity. But later he regretted this name, because the logical foundation of his theory is constancy, and because he saw the silly analogies that people drew between his theory about relativity in physics and their ideas about relativity in ideology, to claim support for their ideas about relativism and subjectivism. People extended his claims about the relativity of specific things (time, space, and mass) into claims about the relativity of everything (including values and ethical standards) in all areas of life, as if Einstein was saying “everything is relative.” But he never said this. Craig Rusbult, Ph.D., Einstein’s Theory of Relativity should be called a Theory of Invariance because it is based on Constancy, not Relativity. http://www.asa3.org/ASA/education/views/quantum-z.htm.

Albert Einstein discovered that matter is actually pure congealed or condensed energy, energy in the form of solid matter. Gerald L. Schroeder, God According to God, A Physicist Proves We’ve Been Wrong About God All Along, (NY: Harper Collins, 2009), p. 2.

Einstein, And Religion

[George Sylvester Viereck, 1929 interview with Einstein] “As a child I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene….Unquestionably! No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life.” Max Jammer, Einstein and Religion, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), p. 22.

Einstein “I am of the opinion that all the finer speculations in the realm of science spring from a deep religious feeling, and that without such feeling they would not be fruitful.” Max Jammer, Einstein and Religion, p. 32.

Like Spinoza, Einstein denied the existence of a personal God, modeled after the ideal of a superman as we would say today. Max Jammer, Einstein and Religion, p. 47.

Einstein then reaffirmed his belief that cosmic religious experience “is the strongest and noblest driving force behind scientific research.” Max Jammer, Einstein and Religion, p. 80.

[Einstein’s statement] “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” Max Jammer, Einstein and Religion, p. 120.

Ferre cited Einstein’s 1930 interview with James Murphy and J.W. N. Sullivan: “I [Einstein] am of the opinion that all finer speculations in the realm of science spring from a deep religious feeling.” Max Jammer, Einstein and Religion, p. 134.

Einstein’s cosmic religion is, of course, incompatible with the doctrines of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and all other theistic religions. Max Jammer, Einstein and Religion, p. 149.

But Einstein never regarded his rejection of a personal God as a denial of God. Max Jammer, Einstein and Religion, p. 149.

In spite of his denial of a personal God and his rejection of religious customs and rituals, he had a high respect for traditional religion. Max Jammer, Einstein and Religion, p. 149.

Ralph Waldo Emerson’s trenchant aphorism “the religion that fears science, insults God and commits suicide.” According to Einstein’s maxim, religion is not only compatible with science, it is also promoted by science just as it promotes science by stimulating and sustaining scientific research as exemplified by Kepler and Newton. Max Jammer, Einstein and Religion, p. 155.

Einstein apparently used a paradox by calling himself a “deeply religious nonbeliever…” Max Jammer, Einstein and Religion, p. 157.

E-Mail

Today, as we increasingly use e-mail or text messaging as replacements for face-to-face communication, we no longer have access to the signals of voice and body language that are an integral part of oral communication. Tim Challies, The Next Story, Life and Faith after The Digital Explosion (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011), p. 95.

As a result, the tone of e-mails is misunderstood more than half of the time, compared to just a quarter of the time over the phone and even less often face-to-face. Tim Challies, The Next Story, Life and Faith after The Digital Explosion, p. 96.

The new Gnosticism calls us to a wholehearted embrace of mediated communication and quietly begins suggesting to our hearts that this way of life may actually be superior. Tim Challies, The Next Story, Life and Faith after The Digital Explosion, p. 102.

What is markedly different about our new digital communities is that they bring people together apart from their bodies. We now consider community what was previously mere communication. Tim Challies, The Next Story, Life and Faith after The Digital Explosion, p. 103.

Shared interests rather than shared space now define community…Our perception of community is becoming disembodied, a product of mediated communication based on shared interests rather than a product of face-to-face communication based on shared space. Tim Challies, The Next Story, Life and Faith after The Digital Explosion, p. 103.

In 2003, Barry Wellman coined a useful term that describes who we are in our online communities. He spoke of networked individualism, noting that today’s users of digital technologies now identify less with local groups and increasingly as parts of geographically scattered networks. Tim Challies, The Next Story, Life and Faith after The Digital Explosion, p. 104.

Without the traditional ties of geography or genetics, we have less reason to care for our communities to nurture them, to be concerned with their long-term strength and success. Tim Challies, The Next Story, Life and Faith after The Digital Explosion, p. 104.

The mediated community will span the limitation of space, but it must do so at the cost of immediacy, of true presence, of the truest manifestations of love. Tim Challies, The Next Story, Life and Faith after The Digital Explosion, p. 109.

Mediated communication gives us the ability to dedicate less of ourselves to more people. Tim Challies, The Next Story, Life and Faith after The Digital Explosion, p. 112.

In 2005, a study conducted by the Institute of Psychiatry at the University of London found that workers distracted by emails or phone calls suffered from a fall in their IQ level of 10 points, twice as much as found in marijuana smokers…. Archibald D. Hart & Sylvia Hart Frejd, The Digital Invasion (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2013), p. 76.

Those distracted by incoming email and phone calls suffered a 10 percent decrease in their working IQ. Archibald D. Hart & Sylvia Hart Frejd, The Digital Invasion, p. 82.

Emptiness

Earnest Hemingway, before he died, said, “I live in a vacuum which is as empty and as lonely as a radio tube when the batteries are dead and there is no current to plug it into.” Ray Stedman, Ray Stedman, Simple Christianity, comment on Romans 5:14. http://www.raystedman.org/romans1/0005.html

Encouragement

Pastor and carpenter George Young didn’t make much money in either profession. Finally after many years of struggle he and his wife were able to build their own home and move into it. Soon afterwards, as they were holding meetings in another town, someone set fire to their new house and burned it to ashes. From that experience pastor Young wrote “Some through great sorrow but God gives a song, In the night season and all the day long.” William J. and Ardythe Petersen, The Complete Book of Hymns (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 2006), p. 390.

End of Time

“Blasted be the bones of those who calculate the end, for when the calculated time comes and the Messiah does not appear, people despair of his ever coming” Talmud, Sanhedrin 97b.

When Yeshua taught about His Second Coming, He compared it to the flood of Noah and the destruction of Sodom. Those were real historical events, yet they also serve as patterns for what will come upon the earth in the end times. Luke 17:26, 28 “As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the Son of Man.” Likewise as it was also in the days of Lot…

In both of those events, there was total destruction as a punishment from God. In both the people were totally caught by surprise. In the case of Noah, the destruction was worldwide by flood of water. In the case of Lot, the destruction was by fire in the area of Sodom. We can conclude from this that at the Second Coming, the punishment will be worldwide not local, but of fire not of water (II Peter 3). If the punishment will be similar, we can imagine the sin will be similar. The circumstances that prevailed in those days will prevail once again in the end times. In the case of Noah, the most prevalent sin was violence. Genesis 6:11, “The earth was corrupt… and filled with violence.” (Interestingly, the word for “violence” in this text is “hamas,” which sounds in Hebrew the same as the name of the terrorist organization, Hamas, even though there is no etymological connection). Is it possible to think of a world overrun with crime, financial corruption, and terrorist violence? In Sodom, the sin was homosexuality. The kind of homosexuality then was aggressive and violent (Genesis 19:4-11)… There is an aggressive movement pushing homosexual values across the Western world. Anyone who speaks against them is attacked… the dominating sins of our generation are Jihad and Homosexuality. “As In the Days,” By Asher Intrater, Revive Israel, 4/26/13.

Entropy

The second law of thermodynamics tells us that all non-managed, or random, systems always pass to a state of greater disorder…the cup of tea gets cooler… Gerald Schroeder, The Science of God: The Convergence of Scientific and Biblical Wisdom, (NY: The Free Press, 1997), p. 96.

Unless order is imposed on a system, random choice among all possibilities always falls in the immense expanse we refer to as disorder. Gerald Schroeder, The Science of God: The Convergence of Scientific and Biblical Wisdom, p. 97.

Order out of chaos is, however, such an unusual and improbable trend of events that the Torah mentions it six times. Gerald Schroeder, The Science of God: The Convergence of Scientific and Biblical Wisdom, p. 97.

The idea of the spontaneous genesis of life in its present form is therefore improbably, even on the scale of billions of years. Gerald Schroeder, The Science of God: The Convergence of Scientific and Biblical Wisdom, p. 112.

Envy

“Few things are harder to put up with,” wrote Mark Twain, “than the annoyance of a good example.” Warren W. Wiersbe, The Wiersby Bible Commentary, NT (Colorado Springs: David C. Cook, 2007), p. 638.

Eschatology (last things)

Biblical eschatology will be seriously impoverished if we do not include in it the present state of the believer…full-orbed biblical eschatology must include both what we might call “inaugurated” and “future” eschatology…This expression, which is to be preferred to “realized eschatology”…refers to the believer’s present enjoyment of eschatological blessings.” Anthony A. Hoekema, The Bible And The Future (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1979), p. 1.

We must note, therefore, that what specifically characterizes New Testament eschatology is an underlying tension between the “already” and the “not yet.”- between what the believer already enjoys and what he does not yet possess…[Oscar Cullmann says] “The whole theology of the New Testament…is qualified by this tension.” Anthony A. Hoekema, The Bible And The Future, p. 14.

This is the element of truth in the position associated with C.H. Dodd, commonly called “realized eschatology.”…I prefer to speak of “inaugurated” rather than “realized” eschatology. The advantage of this term is that it does full justice to the fact that the great eschatological incision into history has already been made, while it does not rule out a future development of eschatology in the future. Anthony A. Hoekema, The Bible And The Future, pp. 17-18.

To the same effect is the following statement by Hendrikus Berkof: “In short, in the New Testament the future is the unfolding and completion of that which already exists in Christ and the Spirit and which will be carried through triumphantly in spite of sin, suffering, and death.” Anthony A. Hoekema, The Bible And The Future, p. 21.

Essenes

Among the scriptures Jesus maybe and the Essenes probably had special fondness for the same books, namely, Deuteronomy, Isaiah, and especially the Davidic Psalms. James H. Charlesworth, ed., Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls (NY: Doubleday, 1992), p. 10.

Everyone had to be as holy as the priests serving before God…Hence, the ideal of becoming a kingdom of priests and a holy people (Ex 19:6) was pursued at Qumran. James H. Charlesworth, ed., Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls, p. 94.

The long exile at Qumran and its opposition to the Jerusalem priesthood led to a spiritualization of the Temple of God and the cult. James H. Charlesworth, ed., Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls, p. 96.

He [Jesus] came quite close to the Qumran vision of a spiritual sanctuary. James H. Charlesworth, ed., Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls, p. 98.

Eternity

Monuments of stone are destined to disappear; days of spirit never pass away. Fritz A. Rothschild, Between God and Man, An Interpretation of Judaism, from the writings of Abraham J. Heschel (NY: The Free Press, NY, 1959), p. 228.

Ethics

Some eleven thousand courses are now being taught in American colleges about ethics, mostly by psychologists or academics, and virtually all of them are relativists. D. James Kennedy, What If America Were A Christian Nation Again? (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2003), p. 64.

Dr. Benjamin Spock – he helped produce the most rebellious, disobedient generation that ever walked upon this continent. (And in his old age he even admitted it and apologized). D. James Kennedy, What If America Were A Christian Nation Again? p. 86.

Eugenics

Not only was Darwin a eugenicist, but also a racist and a moral relativist. Donald De Marco and Benjamin D. Wiker, Architects of the Culture of Death (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), p. 76.

[Ernst] Haeckel…provided the bridge from Darwin’s racial and eugenic arguments to the racial and eugenic policies of Hitler’s Third Reich. De Marco and Wiker, Architects of the Culture of Death, p. 105.

Euthanasia

Margaret Sanger, who founded Planned Parenthood in 1921, was another disciple of Darwin. Modern feminists honor her as an early promoter of birth control, but many do not know that she also promoted death control (euthanasia)… Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body, Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2018), p. 88.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. was one of the most revered Supreme Court justices in American history. Many are surprised to learn that he too, was an avid Darwinian who supported euthanasia and eugenics. Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body, Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality, p. 88.

Evangelism

“In fact, of all the different ethnic groups on earth, the Jews currently have the highest rate of coming to faith. At least, Jesus’ own brothers and sisters are embracing him as their Savior and Messiah.” Prophecy Today Jan/Feb 1998, p. 5.

“…less than a quarter of adults attending church are motivated to evangelize or even to witness.” Prophecy Today, Jan/Feb 1998, p. 11.

William Barclay gives us this poem by C.T. Studd, the great English missionary

Some want to live within the sound

Of church or chapel bell;

I want to run a rescue shop

Within a yard of hell.

William Barclay, The Gospel of Mark, The New Daily Study Bible ( Louisville: John Knox Press, 1975, 2001), p. 66.

April 1 1885 a Sunday school teacher Mr. Kimball prayed for a shoe clerk, an orphan. His name was Dwight L. Moody. Moody came to Christ. He began to share Jesus in the inner city with boys and girls in the Sunday School movement. He heard a man Henry Varley who said “God has yet to see what God can do with a man totally surrendered to him.” Moody said to himself, “I will be that man.” God began to bless Moody and he became an international evangelist although he had little education. He went overseas and preached at the church of F.B. Meyer. Meyer, a cultured Brit, was aghast at his poor English. Moody told some tear jerking stories about a man who was about to die and won every member of his Sunday School class to the Lord before he died. Everybody was weeping but Meyer was mortified. However, after the service Meyer was having tea with one of his ladies. He asked how she was and she exclaimed, “wonderful, since Moody has been here I have led every one of my Sunday School members to a saving knowledge of Christ.” Meyer said “I have learned from Moody the language of the soul and my life was changed.” Later Meyer came to the US and was preaching at a Bible college. He was talking about total surrender. There was a man listening by the name of Wilbur Chapman who was ready to drop out of school, who thought he wanted to be a minister but was not willing to pay the price. Meyer said, “If you are not willing to do what God wants you to do, God will start with you where you are. Would you tell God in all honesty ‘ O God I am not willing, but I am willing to be made willing.’” Chapman said “That is me. I am not willing but I am willing to be made willing.” God made him willing and he became a great evangelist and was used mightily. When Wilbur Chapman was ready to retire he needed some help and asked a young man to assist, Billy Sunday, a former prof. baseball player. Sunday helped set up tent, put out chairs, songbooks. Every so often he would preach. As Chapman retired he asked Sunday to take over. He did so even using his sermon notes. Billy Sunday began to hold incredible revival meetings. It is said that Sunday led over a million people to Christ. He held a great meeting at Charlotte, NC and shook the city. Out of the crusade a prayer meeting began. The men prayed week after week saying “O God, send another revival to Charlotte that will shake Charlotte and will shake the world.” In 1934, an evangelist named Mordechai Ham came to Charlotte North Carolina. He held a revival and the crowds were great. A 16 year old farm boy, a lanky lad, came just to see the girls, but God was also there. This boy Billy gave his heart to Jesus. Billy Graham has been used more than anyone else to bring souls to Christ. It is a wonderful story but an unbroken chain. You don’t know what you are doing when you bring somebody to Jesus Christ. Sermon by Adrian Rogers. Title: Every Christian An Evangelist Sunday, April 21, 2013, http://www.lightsource.com/ministry/love-worth-finding/

We’ve drifted away from being fishers of men to being keepers of the aquarium. – Paul Harvey.

The Jesus Film – Since it was produced in 1979, it has been shown to 5.1 billion people worldwide in more than 800 languages. David Reagan, God’s Plan For The Ages (McKinney, TX: Lamb & Lion Ministries, 2005), p. 268.

In 1900 there were only 10 million Christians in Africa. Today there are more than 350 million. Latin America is being swept by revival. In China, 25,000 people per day area accepting Jesus as their Savior. Among Muslims, more have been converted to Jesus in the last 20 years than in the previous 1,000 years. David Reagan, God’s Plan For The Ages, p. 269.

As a prominent historian of Roman religion, Ramsay MacMullen, states: “Of any organized or conscious evangelizing in paganism there are very few signs indeed.” Bart D. Ehrman, The Triumph of Christianity (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018), p. 116.

What may be far less expected is that ancient Judaism also lacked any genuine missionary impulse. Bart D. Ehrman, The Triumph of Christianity, p. 116.

Look, indeed, at what God is doing globally: there’s no mistaking that the harvest is accelerating. In the year 2000, Every Home for Christ followed up with 756,000 new believers and those responding to EHC’s home-to-home evangelism. In 2007 that number grew to more than 8,400,000 over a similar twelve-month period. Other ministries could report similar exponential advances. Dick Eastman, Look What God Is Doing! (Grand Rapids: Chosen Books, 1997, 2009), p. 61.

[At the death of Reinhard Bonnke] “All told, more than 79-million people made Christ their Lord as a result of Evangelist Bonnke’s ministry. Bonnke was best known for his gospel outreach campaigns throughout Africa. It is no exaggeration to say that his work transformed the continent.” Christian Broadcasting Network, Dec. 7, 2019.

Evil

This evil may be ignored by Western culture and its naturalistic worldview, but evil is understood very well by the non-Western developing world, which constitutes two-thirds of the planet. Rice Broocks, God’s Not Dead, Evidence For God In An Age Of Uncertainty (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 2013), p. 56.

Hugh Ross [Why the Universe Is, p. 159] explained that God allowed the possibility of evil in space and time so that He could eliminate it for all eternity in a new creation that will replace the universe: “As an expression of his love for humanity, God created the universe the way he did to protect us from a future touched by evil. He made this cosmos to serve as an arena in which evil and suffering can be rooted out, finally and eternally- while simultaneously maintain the human capacity to exercise free will and, thus, to experience and express love. Rice Broocks, God’s Not Dead, Evidence For God In An Age Of Uncertainty , p. 61.

As C.S. Lewis is credited with saying, “No clever arrangement of rotten eggs will make a good omelet.” David Jeremiah, The Coming Economic Armageddon (New York, Boston, Nashville: Faith Words, 2010), p. 45.

The very existence of evil suggests a standard of goodness or a design plan. Paul Copan, How Do You Know You’re Not Wrong? (Grand Rapids, Baker Books, 2005), p. 209.

Evil, Problem of

After all, we have somehow been given free will, the ability to do as we please. We use this ability frequently to disobey the Moral Law. And when we do so, we shouldn’t then blame God for the consequences. Francis S. Collins, The Language of God, A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (NY: Free Press, 2006), p. 43.

Evolution

Michael Denton is an Australian molecular biologist and medical doctor who has lived and worked in London, Toronto and Sydney, and who is best known for his biological research. He says: “If biologists cannot substantiate the fundamental claims of Darwinism, upon which rests so much of the fabric of twentieth-century thought, then clearly the intellectual and philosophical implications are immense.” Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (Bethesda, MD: Adler, & Adler, Publishers, Inc., 1985), pp. 15-16.

Nowhere was Darwin able to point to one bona fide case of natural selection having actually generated evolutionary change in nature, let alone having been responsible for the creation of a new species. Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, p. 62.

Breeding experiments with domestic animals had for generations revealed a distinct limit beyond which further change became impossible. Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, p. 103.

Since Darwin’s time the search for missing links in the fossil record has continued on an ever-increasing scale. So vast has been the expansion of paleontological activity over the past one hundred years that probably 99.9 percent of all paleontological work has been carried out since 1860…But virtually all the new fossil species discovered since Darwin’s time have either been closely related to known forms or, like the Poganophoras, strange unique types of unknown affinity. D Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, pp. 160-161.

It is one of the most striking features of the fossil record that most new kinds of organisms appear abruptly. Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, p. 165.

Molecular biology has shown that even the simplest of all living systems on earth today, bacterial cells, are exceedingly complex objects. Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, p. 250.

The complexity of the simplest known type of cell is so great that it is impossible to accept that such an object could have been thrown together suddenly by some kind of freakish, vastly improbable, event. Such an occurrence would be indistinguishable from a miracle. Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, p. 264.

The question, then, is why humans would evolve in such a way that they come to believe in things that don’t exist. Dinesh D’Souza, What’s So Great About Christianity (Washington: Regenery Publishing Inc., 2007), p. 13.

You can build an engine part by part (and that takes intelligence), but you can’t drive to work with only a partial engine under the hood. Nor could you drive to work if one essential part of your engine were modified but others were not. In the same way, living systems quickly would become nonfunctional if they were modified piece by piece. Norman L. Geisler & Frank Turek, I Don’t Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2004), p. 145.

[Michael] Behe’s discoveries are fatal for Darwinism. Irreducible complexity means that new life cannot come into existence by the Darwinian method of slight, successive changes over a long period of time. Norman L. Geisler & Frank Turek, I Don’t Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist , p. 146.

[Nonviability of transitional forms] Another problem that plagues the plausibility of natural selection creating new life forms is the fact that transitional forms could not survive. Norman L. Geisler & Frank Turek, I Don’t Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist, p. 148.

[Charles Darwin] He did recognize that the fossil record posed a big problem for his theory because it didn’t show gradualism. That’s why he wrote, “Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain, and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory.” Norman L. Geisler & Frank Turek, I Don’t Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist, pp. 151-152.

In 2001 a television documentary aired that included an interview of serial killer and cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer. He said that evolution in school undermined his faith that human life had any value… D. James Kennedy, What If America Were A Christian Nation Again? (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2003), p. 122.

“Scientists who utterly reject evolution may be one of our fastest-growing controversial minorities….Many of the scientists supporting this position hold impressive credentials in science.” [Larry Hatfield in Science Digest]. Lee Strobel, The Case For A Creator (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004), p. 31.

After spokespersons for the Public Broadcasting System’s seven-part television series Evolution asserted that “all known scientific evidence supports [Darwinian] evolution” as does “virtually every reputable scientists in the world,” these professors, laboratory researchers, and other scientists published a two-page advertisement in a national magazine under the banner “A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism.” Their statement was direct and defiant. “We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life,” they said, “Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.” …These were not narrow-minded fundamentalists, backwoods West Virginia protestors, or rabid religious fanatics – just respected, world-class scientists like Nobel nominee Henry F. Schaefer, the third most cited chemist in the world; James Tour of Rice University’s Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology; and Fred Figworth, professor of cellular and molecular physiology at Yale Graduate School. Lee Strobel, The Case For A Creator, p. 32.

[Interview with Jonathan Wells PHD, PHD, Doctorate in in molecular and cell biology from Berkeley; research biologist at Berkeley; widely published scientific writer].

Evolution – “It’s becoming clearer and clearer to me that this is a materialistic philosophy masquerading as empirical science.” Lee Strobel, The Case For A Creator, p. 41.

[Interview with Jonathan Wells] Regarding the Archaeopteryx supposed ancestor of modern birds. Not at all, Palentologists pretty much agree on that. There are too many structural differences. Larry Martin, a paleontologist from the University of Kansas, said clearly in 1985 that the archaeopteryx is not an ancestor of any modern birds; instead, it’s a member of a totally extinct group of birds. Lee Strobel, The Case For A Creator, p. 58.

“There is no encompassing theory of [human] evolution,” conceded Berkeley evolutionary biologist F. Clark Howell. “Alas, there never really has been” Lee Strobel, The Case For A Creator, p. 64.

[Jonathan Wells] – “My conclusion is that the case for Darwinian evolution is bankrupt. Lee Strobel, The Case For A Creator, p. 65.

[Interview with Stephen C. Meyer, PHD – Earned degrees in physics and geology; degree in history and philosophy of science at Cambridge University, where he focused on the history of molecular biology, the history of physics, and evolutionary theory. Doctorate at Cambridge]. For the last 15 years Meyer has become one of the most knowledgeable and compelling voices in the burgeoning Intelligent Design Movement. “Taken together the Big Bang and general relativity provide a scientific description of what Christians call creatio ex nihilo-creation out of nothing.” Lee Strobel, The Case For A Creator, p. 77.

There is evidence of design in molecular machines that defy explanation. Lee Strobel, The Case For A Creator, p. 77.

The problem with irreducibly complex systems is that they perform no function until all parts are present and working together in close coordination with one another. Lee Strobel, The Case For A Creator, p. 77.

Human consciousness certainly supports a theistic view of human nature. Lee Strobel, The Case For A Creator, p. 80.

We must concede that there are presently no detailed Darwinian accounts of the evolution of any biochemical systems, only a variety of wistful speculations. [Biochemist Franklin M. Harold]. Lee Strobel, The Case For A Creator, p. 193.

Evolutionary psychology fails the practical test: No one can live by it. Since universal human experience confirms the reality of moral choice, evolutionary psychologists cannot actually live on the basis of their own deterministic theory. Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity (Wheaton IL: Crossway Books, 2004), p. 218.

The scientific theory of evolution as such is not incompatible with Christian belief; what is incompatible with it is the idea that evolution, natural selection, is unguided. Alvin Plantinga, Where The Conflict Really Lies, Science, Religion, and Naturalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 63.

More recently, Murray Eden at MIT has been using high-speed computers to ask a question: Beginning with chaos at any acceptable amount of time up to eight billion years ago, could the present complexity come by chance? So far the answer is absolutely No. Francis A. Schaeffer, The Church At The End Of The 20^th Century (Downers Grove: Inter-Varsity Press, 1970), p. 15.

Shake a bag full of letters and occasionally clusters will form that spell words, but never ones that spell long sentences. And further shaking always destroys the initial orderly arrangement…In any situation where order is not imposed, momentary order always degrades to chaos. Gerald Schroeder, The Hidden Face of God, How Science Reveals the Ultimate Truth (New York: The Free Press, 2001), p. 53.

We can find order arising spontaneously in nature, but never on the scale of complexity associated with life. Gerald Schroeder, The Hidden Face of God, How Science Reveals the Ultimate Truth, p. 54.

The emergence of the specialized complexity of life, even in its most simple forms, remains a bewildering mystery. Gerald Schroeder, The Hidden Face of God, How Science Reveals the Ultimate Truth, p. 58.

Cro-Magnon fossils overlap in age with the more primitive Neanderthal…Discovery of this overlap countered the theory that Neanderthal developed (evolved) into Cro-Magnon. Gerald Schroeder, The Science of God: The Convergence of Scientific and Biblical Wisdom, (NY: The Free Press, 1997), p. 117.

Maximum reported mutation rates in human body cells are about one per ten cell divisions. In gametes [mature sex cells] mutation rates are much lower: from one per 10,000 to one per 100,000 generations. The lower rate for gametes is not surprising. Gametes are the source of the next generation. As expected, they have considerable biological machinery to guard against mutations and then to correct for any that get past the first line of defense. Gerald Schroeder, The Science of God: The Convergence of Scientific and Biblical Wisdom, p. 121.

No less a scientist than Roger Penrose states: “To my way of thinking, there is still something mysterious about evolution.” Gerald Schroeder, The Science of God: The Convergence of Scientific and Biblical Wisdom, p. 129.

Pure chance (random occurrence) does not seem to be reasonable, because a random emergence of a highly complex system from a far less complex one is highly improbably. Robert J. Spitzer, New Proofs For The Existence Of God, Contributions of Contemporary Physics and Philosophy (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2010), p. 51.

In the absence of natural explanation for this highly improbable occurrence, many physicists have concluded that our universe was influenced by a supernatural designing intelligence. Robert J. Spitzer, New Proofs For The Existence Of God, Contributions of Contemporary Physics and Philosophy, p. 59.

So contrary to atheist boasting, evolution cannot provide an ultimate explanation for life because evolution itself presupposes specific environmental conditions and specific entities with specific properties. Dinesh D’Souza, Life After Death, The Evidence, Washington: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2009, p. 98.

Evolution itself presumes and requires cells that come fully formed with the capacity for metabolism and self-replication. No reproduction, no natural selection. Dinesh D’Souza, Life After Death, The Evidence, p. 99.

In regard to the Darwinian theory of evolution, the world-famous paleontologist of the American Museum of Natural History, Dr. Niles Eldridge, unequivocally declared, “The pattern that we were told to find for the last one hundred and twenty years does not exist.” Gerald L. Schroeder, Ph.D., Genesis and the Big Bang, The Discovery of Harmony Between Modern Science and the Bible (New York: Bantam Books, 1990), p. 25.

The trend in the universe is toward chaos, not toward cosmos. Gerald L. Schroeder, Ph.D., Genesis and the Big Bang, The Discovery of Harmony Between Modern Science and the Bible, p. 100.

As we experience it, life is required to produce life. Gerald L. Schroeder, Ph.D., Genesis and the Big Bang, The Discovery of Harmony Between Modern Science and the Bible, p. 110.

There are 20 different types of amino acids used in forming proteins. The probability of duplication, by chance, two identical protein chains, each with 100 amino acids, is 1 chance in 20¹⁰⁰, which equals the digit 1 followed by 130 zeros or 10¹³⁰. To give magnitude to this number, realize that there have been less than 10¹⁸ seconds in the 15 billion years since the Big Bang. Gerald L. Schroeder, Ph.D., Genesis and the Big Bang, The Discovery of Harmony Between Modern Science and the Bible, p. 113.

There is no evidence in organisms larger than microbes that succeeding generations will inherit an acquired trait. Gerald L. Schroeder, Ph.D., Genesis and the Big Bang, The Discovery of Harmony Between Modern Science and the Bible, p. 142.

The fossil record is now 100 times more elaborate than during the lifetimes of Darwin and Wallace. The increase in the number of known fossils has revealed even more jumps in the flow of life form the simple to the complex. Gerald L. Schroeder, Ph.D., Genesis and the Big Bang, The Discovery of Harmony Between Modern Science and the Bible, p. 162.

The very basis of Darwin’s theory of evolution is that nature does not make jumps; yet jumps are most prominently there for all to see. Gerald L. Schroeder, Ph.D., Genesis and the Big Bang, The Discovery of Harmony Between Modern Science and the Bible, p. 163.

“If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.” –Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species. Rice Broocks, God’s Not Dead, Evidence For God In An Age Of Uncertainty (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 2013), p. 88.

Contrary to the current tenets of evolutionary dogma that pervade modern science, no conclusive evidence has been presented that all of life arose from a common ancestor by an unguided natural process. Rice Broocks, God’s Not Dead, Evidence For God In An Age Of Uncertainty, p. 95.

[Hugh Ross] “Earth never had a prebiotic soup nor any kind of prebiotic mineral substrate. Physicists now know why earth never could have possessed any prebiotics. It is due to the oxygen-ultraviolet paradox. If the environment of earth at the time of life’s origin contained any oxygen, that oxygen would immediately and catastrophically shut down prebiotic chemistry. On the other hand, if earth’s environment at any time of life’s origin contained no oxygen, ultraviolet radiation from the sun would penetrate earth’s environment to a sufficient degree as to similarly, immediately, and catastrophically shut down prebiotic chemistry. Either way, earth never could have naturalistically possessed any prebiotics.” Rice Broocks, God’s Not Dead, Evidence For God In An Age Of Uncertainty, p. 98.

The stunning miracle of how reproductive life emerged – male and female- is so impossible to imagine that it sounds like a fairy tale. And how did life know that every living thing needed a genetic code or that all the parts of the eye had to appear at once? Rice Broocks, God’s Not Dead, Evidence For God In An Age Of Uncertainty, p. 99.

A car can be designed and built by intelligence, but a multitude of factors can lead to its breakdown or malfunctioning. This breakdown due to human error or environmental impact does not prove it was not a product of intelligence. Rice Broocks, God’s Not Dead, Evidence For God In An Age Of Uncertainty, p. 109.

Naturalistic models for the origin of life have been refuted by two recent breakthroughs. One is the discovery that life originated on earth in a geologic instant of time. The other is that life’s origin occurred without the benefit of any natural source of prebiotic molecules. Rice Broocks, God’s Not Dead, Evidence For God In An Age Of Uncertainty, p. 113.

Despite being brought up to believe in God and that human beings are intrinsically valuable, Jeffrey Dahmer was exposed to naturalistic evolution. The result was devastating. This sexual predator and cannibal “placed the blame for [his] murders on his atheistic beliefs and the theory of evolution.” Paul Copan, How Do You Know You’re Not Wrong? (Grand Rapids, Baker Books, 2005), p. 136.

I only want to show that evolutionary theory does indeed dominate modern thought in virtually every field – every discipline of study, every level of education and every area of practice. Henry M. Morris, The Long War Against God: The story and impact of the Creation/Evolution Conflict (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1989), p. 18.

[Sir Julian Huxley] “The concept of evolution was soon extended into other than biological fields. Inorganic subjects such as the life-history of stars and the formation of the chemical elements on the one hand, and on the other hand subjects like linguistics, social anthropology, and comparative law and religion, began to be studied from an evolutionary angle until today we are enabled to see evolution as a universal and all-pervading process.” Henry M. Morris, The Long War Against God, p. 19.

Evolution is not merely a biological theory of little significance. It is a world view – the world view diametrically opposing the Christian world view. Henry M. Morris, The Long War Against God, p. 23.

The most significant feature about the fossil record is the utter absence of any true evolutionary transitional forms. Henry M. Morris, The Long War Against God, p. 27.

There is probably no academic field of study and application more thoroughly saturated with evolutionary thinking than psychology and the other fields dealing with human behavior. Henry M. Morris, The Long War Against God, p. 32.

It has always been known that Freud was an ardent follower of Darwin, but this has been even more emphasized by the recent discovery of certain papers left by him. Henry M. Morris, The Long War Against God, p. 33.

Social Darwinism, racism, militarism, and imperialism finally reached their zenith in Nazi Germany under the unspeakable Adolf Hitler. Henry M. Morris, The Long War Against God, p.75.

Karl Marx and his associate Friedrich Engels were already evolutionists and atheists before they encountered Darwin’s The Origin of Species, but it was the latter with which they quickly became enamored, once it was published. Henry M. Morris, The Long War Against God, p. 83.

It is clear, therefore, that Marx and Engels based their communistic philosophy squarely on the foundation of evolutionism. Henry M. Morris, The Long War Against God, p. 84.

The continuing commitment of modern communism to atheistic evolutionism is evident in communistic publications all over the world. Henry M. Morris, The Long War Against God, p. 85.

[Jacques Monod, Nobel Prize-winning biologist] “The ancient covenant is in pieces; man knows at last that he is alone in the universe’s unfeeling immensity, out of which he emerged only by chance. His destiny is nowhere spelled out, nor is his duty.” Henry M. Morris, The Long War Against God, pp., 110-111.

Evolution is the most cruel and inefficient process that could be devised for populating a world and creating man – and God should not be held responsible for any such system! Henry M. Morris, The Long War Against God, p. 113.

[Mortimer Adler] Adler also maintains that there is no scientific evidence that any animal other than human beings can understand universals. Stephen Barr, Modern Physics and Ancient Faith (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press), p.192.

Existentialism

There are two basic ways to use the term existential. It may refer to existentialism, a philosophy that says there is no real, or reasonable, meaning to man. This definition is perhaps too simple, but it will do. On the other hand existential refers to moment-by-moment reality. Francis A. Schaeffer, Death In The City (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1969), p. 88.

The Christian, then, should be the true existentialist, moving upon the knife edge of time, in every given moment being in relationship with God. Moment-by-moment living by faith is what is taught here. Francis A. Schaeffer, Death In The City, p. 88.

It is often said that Soren Kierkegaard, the Dane (1813-1855), is the father of all modern thinking. And so he is. He is the father of modern existential thinking, both secular and theological thinking. Francis A. Schaeffer, Trilogy, The Three Essential Books in One Volume (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1990), p. 14.

Extremism

Extremism leads to strange behavior like the lady who went to the psychiatrist because her family had urged her to go. The psychiatrist asked her, “What really seems to be your trouble?” She said, “They think it is strange that I like pancakes.” He answered, “There is nothing wrong in liking pancakes. I like pancakes myself.” So she said, “You do: Well, come over sometime; I have trunks filled with them!” J. Vernon McGee, Through The Bible Commentary Series, 1 Corinthians (Nashville, Dallas: Thomas Nelson, 1991), p. 125.

Facebook

The average Facebook user has 130 “friends” but only interacts regularly with four to six of them. And 80 percent of a person’s Skype phone calls are placed to just two people. Scott Cleland with Ira Brodsky, Search & Destroy, Why You Can’t Trust Google Inc. (St Louis MO: 2011), p. 211.

One of every nine people on Earth is on Facebook. Archibald D. Hart & Sylvia Hart Frejd, The Digital Invasion (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2013), p. 94.

As of February 2013, Facebook has more than one billion active users. Archibald D. Hart & Sylvia Hart Frejd, The Digital Invasion, p. 95.

To put it in a nutshell, for the most part, Facebook friendships make no demands on us. Archibald D. Hart & Sylvia Hart Frejd, The Digital Invasion, p. 95.

The feeling that one is missing out on life is quite common in Facebook users and is known as “Facebook façade.” Archibald D. Hart & Sylvia Hart Frejd, The Digital Invasion, p. 100.

Studies show that too much time spent on Facebook and other social networks can cause “Facebook Depression.” Archibald D. Hart & Sylvia Hart Frejd, The Digital Invasion, p. 101.

Social psychologists have come to believe that such an addiction is possible and call it “FAD,” or “Facebook Addiction Disorder.”…According to Psychology Today, Facebook and Twitter are more addictive than tobacco and alcohol…A recent study shows as many as one in five divorces now involve Facebook affairs. Archibald D. Hart & Sylvia Hart Frejd, The Digital Invasion, p. 103.

Fads

The hula hoop craze lasted from January to October 1958 and then fizzled. During those nine wild months, Wham-O sold more than one hundred million hoops. Political contagions usually build more slowly and last longer. David H. Davidow, Overconnected, The Promise and Threat of the Internet (Harrison, NY: Delphinium Books, 2011), p. 158.

Faith

And, as Menachem Begin pointed out in his book The Revolt, “Faith is perhaps stronger than reality, for faith itself creates reality.”

Faith is a verb. Dr. James Macdonald http://www.oneplace.com/ministries/walk-in-the-word/read/articles/faith-is-a-verb-9891.html

Does faith matter? One need only consider the last century to see grim proof that, at the least, no-faith matters. Stalin and Mao, ardent enemies of religion, together caused the deaths of one hundred million of their own citizens. Philip Yancey, What Good is God? In search of a faith that really matters (FaithWords, 2010), p. 286.

There is this awkward fact: The twentieth century was not an age of faith, and it was awful. Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and Pol Pot will never be counted among the religious leaders of mankind. David Berlinski, The Devil’s Delusion (New York: Crown Forum, 2008), p. 19.

The decay of belief in an unchanging God is now being followed by the decay in belief in the existence of unchanging physical law underlying the natural world. Frank J. Tipler, The Physics of Christianity (NY: Doubleday, 2007), p. 124.

Faith is the fuel that drives both commerce and religion, despite what academia would have you believe. Rabbi Daniel Lapin, Business Secrets From The Bible, (Hoboken: Wiley, 2014, p. 32.

Faith is not a leap in the dark; it’s the exact opposite. It’s a commitment based on evidence…It is irrational to reduce all faith to blind faith and then subject it to ridicule. John Lennox. Rice Broocks, God’s Not Dead, Evidence For God In An Age Of Uncertainty (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 2013), p. 19.

[2011 Harvard prof. Niall Ferguson] Professor Ferguson wrote that the greatest dangers facing us are probably not “the rise of China, Islam, or carbon dioxide emissions” but “our own loss of faith in the civilization we inherited from our ancestors.” David Archibald, Twilight of Abundance, Why Life In the 21^st Century Will Be Nasty, Brutish, and Short (Washington: Regnery Publishing, 2014), p. 75.

The opposite of belief isn’t just unbelief. It’s false belief. Mark Batterson, The Grave Robber, How Jesus Can Make Your Impossible Possible (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2014), p. 111.

Nick Vujicic, who was born without arms or legs, always kept a pair of shoes in his closet… Mark Batterson, The Grave Robber, How Jesus Can Make Your Impossible Possible, p. 109.

I don’t remember who said it or where I heard it, but it’s always been one of my favorite definitions of faith: faith is climbing out on a limb, cutting it off, and watching the tree fall. Mark Batterson, The Grave Robber, How Jesus Can Make Your Impossible Possible, p. 191.

To have faith is not to capitulate but to rise to a higher plane of thinking. To have faith is not to defy human reason but rather to share divine wisdom. Abraham Joshua Heschel, Thunder in the Soul, ed. Robert Erlewine (Walden, NY, Plough Publishing, 2021), p. 111.

Faithfulness

We can relate to the reaction of some US soldiers in Afghanistan. A troop member received a Dear John letter. He was devastated. To add insult to injury, his girl wrote, “Please return my favorite picture of myself because I would like to use that photograph for my engagement picture in the county newspaper.” Ouch! But his buddies came to his defense. They went throughout the barracks and collected pictures of all the other soldiers’ girlfriends. They filled an entire shoe box. The jilted soldier mailed the photos to his ex-girlfriends with this note: “Please find your enclosed picture and return the rest. For the life of me I can’t remember which one you were.” Max Lucado, Grace, More Than We Deserve, Greater Than We Imagine (Nashville; Dallas: Thomas Nelson, 2012), p. 56.

Falling

There is an art, or rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. Pick a nice day and try it. Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy (NY: Harmony Books, 1979).

Falling away

What is seemingly acceptable to the saved today was often simply abominable for the unsaved yesterday. Michael L. Brown, Whatever Happened to the Power of God (Shippenburg, PA: Destiny Image Publishers, 1991), p. 1.

Fall of Man

Francis Bacon, who could be called the major prophet of the Scientific Revolution, took the Bible seriously, including the historic Fall, the revolt of man in history. He said in Novum Organum Scientiarum (1620), “Man by the Fall fell at the same time from his state of innocence and from his dominion over creation.” Francis A. Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live? The Rise and decline of Western Thought and Culture (Wheaton IL: Crossway Books, 1976), p. 134.

Fame

Mindy McCready, who hit the top of the country charts before personal problems sidetracked her career, has died. She was 37. Waren Olmstead, the coroner in Cleburne County, Ark., said in a statement McCready died Sunday apparently of a single, self-inflicted gunshot wound. An autopsy is pending. Just last month David Wilson, McCready’s boyfriend and the father of her 9-month-old son Zayne, was found dead on the same porch where McCready’s body was found. His death also was investigated as a suicide. http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2013/02/18/country-singer-mindy-mccready-dead-apparent-suicide/#ixzz2LGAunm6x

Family

Researchers have tried to isolate the most important factors in predicting high SAT scores…The one factor most positively correlated with high SAT scores was whether or not the student had had family meals at home that involved conversation in which the child was allowed to participate. Rabbi Daniel Lapin, Business Secrets From The Bible, (Hoboken: Wiley, 2014, p. 200.

Throughout the civil rights movement and up until 1965, Census Bureau statistics show that 78 percent of black household were comprised of intact families with a husband, wife, and children. But by 1995, after the political manipulations of the welfare state, black marriage rates had dramatically declined, and 69 percent of its children were being birthed outside of wedlock. Star Parker, Uncle Sam’s Plantation (Nashville: WND Books, 2003), p. 66.

According to researcher Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation, in 2002 the poverty rate for all children in married couple families was 8.2 percent compared to the poverty rate for all children in single-parent families, which was four times higher at 35.2 percent. Nearly a third of all American children born last year were born out of wedlock. The African-American our-of-wedlock birth rate is consistently around 70 percent, according to figures from the US Department of Health and Human Services and the Census Bureau. Star Parker, Uncle Sam’s Plantation , p. 113.

Children born in single-parent households are seven times more likely to be poor than those born to couples who stay married. Girls raised in welfare homes are five times more likely to give birth before marriage. Star Parker, Uncle Sam’s Plantation , p. 115.

With the help of feminism, marriage in secular America is dying. In 1965, about 11 percent of all families with children were single-parent households. In 1995, that number was dangerously close to one in three American families. Research by CURE found that, of those homes, about 90 percent are homes without a father. Star Parker, Uncle Sam’s Plantation , p. 115.

Teen mothers accounted for about 30 percent of all unwed births in 1996. Half go on welfare within one year of the birth of their first child, and 77 percent are on welfare within five years of the child’s birth, according to research done by CURE in 1997. Star Parker, Uncle Sam’s Plantation , p. 133.

The death rate by homicide in the 1980s of youth between the ages of 15 and 19 increased by 60 percent. For African American males the homicide rate is almost eight times that of the rate of whites. Star Parker, Uncle Sam’s Plantation, p. 134.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that about four million teenagers will contact one or more sexually transmitted diseases this year. Star Parker, Uncle Sam’s Plantation, p. 136.

Neither Asians nor Jews qualify for minority status with regards to affirmative action disbursements. Star Parker, Uncle Sam’s Plantation, p. 145.

As a stirring historical model, consider Jonathan Edwards, the Congregational pastor, scholar, and leader of the First Great Awakening. He and his wife, Sarah, reared 11 children; and by the year 1900, the family had 1,400 descendants, among them 13 college presidents, 65 professors, 100 lawyers, 30 judges, 66 physicians, and 80 prominent public officials, including 3 governors, 3 senators, and a vice president of the United States. Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey, How Now Shall We live? (Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 1999). p. 326.

According to an article in the July 1926 issue of the Atlantic Monthly, the Bolsheviks hated the institution of the family with a fierce passion. They forbade all religious ceremonies, which had the effect of turning marriage into just a piece of paper issued by a clerk…The article contained some startling facts to back up the report: “It was not an unusual occurrence for a boy of twenty to have had three or four wives, or for a girl of the same age to have had three or four abortions. Some men have twenty wives, living a week with one, a month with another…They have children with all of them, and these children are thrown on the street for lack of support…The party’s long-term goal? To throw families into chaos, thus making children loyal to the state rather than to their parents. Mike Huckaby, A Simple Government (NY: Penguin Group, 2011), p. 10.

A study in Britain found that non-religious parents have a near 100 percent chance of passing on their views to their children, whereas religious parents have only about a 50/50 chance of passing on their views. The controlling force in politics is no longer business but ideology. Nancy Pearcey, Saving Leonardo, A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, & Meaning (Nashville: B&H Publishing Group, 2010), pp. 12-13.

The results of a CASA study (Center of Addiction and Substance Abuse) at Columbia University…Teens who eat dinner with their families infrequently are twice as likely to use tobacco and marijuana as those who have family dinners “frequently.” Mike Huckaby, A Simple Government (NY: Penguin Group, 2011), p. 13.

According to the National Fatherhood Initiative, about one in three American kids lives in a home without a dad on the premises….fatherless families affect all of us and our descendants. The so-called dad deficit added more than $300 billion to the national deficit in 2010 because of welfare payments to moms. Mike Huckaby, A Simple Government, p. 15.

Out of wedlock births to African Americans were 25 percent in 1965 and 75 percent in 2008. Mike Huckaby, A Simple Government, p. 16.

A startling 71 percent of poor families have unwed parents. Although just under half of all first babies in America are born out of wedlock, 83 percent of babies whose mothers lack a high-school diploma are born out of wedlock. Lou Dobbs, Upheaval (New York: Threshold Editions, 2014), p. 166.

For most of human history, this has meant parents caring for children when they’re young, and children caring for parents when they’re old. But in the modern era, the creation of a government safety net for the old has led most families to reverse the intergenerational flow of support at the latter stages of the life cycle. Now, more older parents support grown children than the other way around. Paul Taylor, The Next America: Boomers, Millennials, and the Looming Generational Showdown (NY: Public Affairs Books, 2014), p. 192.

Family Meltdown

Numerous studies show that adult children of divorce have more psychological problems than those raised in intact marriages. David Kupelian, The Marketing of Evil (Nashville: WND Books, 2005), p. 107.

“Fatherlessness far surpasses both poverty and race as a predictor of social deviance.” David Kupelian, The Marketing of Evil, p. 107.

If they don’t have a real father in their lives, they’ll gravitate to another male role model, even a poisonous one. David Kupelian, The Marketing of Evil, p. 107.

Divorce today is not simply a phenomenon; it is a regime-a vast bureaucratic empire that permeates national and local governments, with hangers on in the private sector. In the United States, divorce and custody comprise over half of civil litigation, constituting the cash cow of the judiciary and bringing employment and earnings to a host of public and private officials, including judges, lawyers, psychotherapists, mediators, counselors, social workers, child support enforcement agents and others. David Kupelian, The Marketing of Evil, p. 107.

Many are women with feminist leanings. Whatever pieties they may voice about the plight of fatherless, poor, and violent children, the fact remains that these practitioners have a vested interest in creating as many such children as possible. The way to do so is to remove the fathers. David Kupelian, The Marketing of Evil, p. 108.

“We have to abolish and reform the institution of marriage…” Gloria Steinem, quoted in the Saturday Review of Education, March 1973. David Kupelian, The Marketing of Evil, p. 111.

“Being a housewife is an illegitimate profession..” Vivian Gornick, feminist author and tenured professor at the University of Arizona, Daily Illini, April 15, 1981. David Kupelian, The Marketing of Evil, p. 112.

“If women are to effect a significant amelioration in their condition it seems obvious that they must refuse to marry.” Germaine Greer, author, scholar, and lecturer at the University of Warwick, England. David Kupelian, The Marketing of Evil, p. 112.

“Like prostitution, marriage is an institution that is extremely oppressive and dangerous for women.” Radical feminist author Andrea Dworkin, 1983. David Kupelian, The Marketing of Evil, p. 112.

“Until all women are lesbians, there will be no true political revolution.” Feminist author and journalist Jill Johnson. David Kupelian, The Marketing of Evil, p. 112.

[Regarding California’s no-fault divorce] But Reagan later regretted the decision as one of the worst he ever made… David Kupelian, The Marketing of Evil, p. 115.

According to statistics from the US Census Bureau, the Centers for Disease Control, and the Department of Justice, 70 percent of long-term prison inmates- including 72 percent of adolescent murderers and 60 percent of all rapists- grew up in fatherless homes. Fatherless children account for roughly 90 percent of all homeless and runaway children, 85 percent of all youth in prison, 75 percent of adolescent patients in chemical abuse centers, 71 percent of high school dropouts, and 63 percent of youth suicides. Nearly 24 percent of all American kids-almost seventeen million kids-live in fatherless homes. Michael Reagan with Jim Denney, Twice Adopted (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2004), p. 82.

By 2011, some 85 percent of college grads had returned home. For a pregnant girl, all that meant was that her mother would end up watching the child as the daughter went back into the low-wage work-force, introducing a new cycle of poverty to onetime middle-class children. If the grandmother had to work as well, children were left to watch other children! Larry Schweikart and Dave Dougherty, A Patriot’s History of the Modern World, Vo. 2 (NY: The Penguin Group, 2013), p. 546.

Fasting

Origen said of fasting: “Do you still want me to show you what kind of fast it is appropriate for you to practice? Fast from every sin, take no food of malice, take no feasts of passion, do not burn with any wine of luxury. Fast from evil deeds, abstain from evil words, hold yourself from the worst evil thoughts. Do not touch the secret loaves of perverse doctrine. Do not desire the deceptive foods of philosophy which seduce you from truth. Such a fast pleases God.” Peter Gorday, ed., Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, NT, IX (Downers Grove: Inter-Varsity Press, 2000), p. 184.

Fear

Frank Furedi documented an increasing use of fear in the media by counting the appearances of the term “at risk” in British newspapers. In 1994 the term appeared 2,037 times. By the end of the next year, the total had doubled. It increased by half in 1996. During the year 2000 at risk appeared 2,037 times. By the end of the next year, the total had doubled. It increased by half in 1996. During the year 2000 at risk was printed more than eighteen thousand times.

Even though life expectancy has doubled and disease research is at an all-time high, you’d think the bubonic plague was raging in the streets. Reporter Bob Garfield tracked health articles in major publications and discovered that, among other health issues,

59 million Americans have heart disease
53 million Americans have migraines
25 million Americans have osteoporosis
16 million struggle with obesity
3 million have cancer
2 million have severe brain disorders

Reportedly, in total, 543 million Americans consider themselves to be seriously sick, a troubling figure since there are 266 million people in the country. As Garfield noted, “Either as a society we are doomed, or someone is seriously double-dipping.” Max Lucado, Fearless (Nashville, Dallas, Thomas Nelson, 2009).

Fear of God

The remarkable thing about fearing God is that when you fear God you fear nothing else, whereas if you do not fear God you fear everything else. – Oswald Chambers

Feelings

As feelings rule in place of ideas in our society, men and women will increasingly believe nonsense…and dissent will be disallowed (“How can you disagree with how I feel?”). Josh McDowell & Bob Hostetler, The New Tolerance: How a cultural movement threatens to destroy you, your faith, and your children (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. 1998), p. 65.

Fellowship

Fellowship is not having a meal with somebody. Fellowship is mutual participation and exchange. It’s a two-way street. If you and I have fellowship, that means that I receive what the Lord has given you and that you receive what the Lord has given me. And we are both enriched. That’s fellowship. Frank Viola, Revise Us Again (Colorado Springs: David Cook, 210), p. 137.

Feminism

It was not until 1953 that another major feminist milestone appeared on the scene. The Second Sex, written by French existentialist, atheist, and abortion advocate Simone de Beavuoir, was the first feminist manifesto calling for women’s independence. Star Parker, Uncle Sam’s Plantation (Nashville: WND Books, 2003), p. 102.

IN 1961 the first oral contraceptive pill was developed making it possible for the first time for the reproductive consequences of sexual intercourse to be consistently avoided. In 1964, The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan was a bestseller. Star Parker, Uncle Sam’s Plantation, p. 102.

They had a common goal: the deconstruction of the family to make way for a socialist utopia. In 1971 the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) passed the House of Representatives. The following year, the Senate passed the ERA by a vote of 84-8. Star Parker, Uncle Sam’s Plantation, p. 102.

On January 22, 1973…the Supreme Court ruled that a woman’s decision to have a first-trimester abortion was between her and her doctor, in the case of Row v. Wade. Star Parker, Uncle Sam’s Plantation, p. 103.

Indeed it is interesting that even Betty Friedan admitted that the feminist movement was a failure. D. James Kennedy, What If America Were A Christian Nation Again? (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2003), p. 89.

Let’s look a bit more closely at one prominent feminist author and anti-pornography crusader, Andrea Dworkin, who died in 2005. “Like prostitution,” she wrote, “marriage is an institution that is extremely oppressive and dangerous for women.”…Dworkin had been severely abused by the men in her life. At nine, an unknown man reportedly molested her in a movie theater, and when she eventually married, her anarchist husband would frequently punch, kick, and burn her, sometimes beating her head against the floor until she was unconscious. No wonder she developed a hatred for men. David Kupelian, How Evil Works: Understanding and Overcoming the Destructive Forces That Are Transforming America (New York: Threshold Editions, 2010), p. 177.

Feminists are the matriarchs of modern liberalism, and now they are watching as their movement suffers devastating and possibly fatal blows, not at the hands of conservative Christians but at the hands of men in dresses. Matt Walsh, The Unholy Trinity, Blocking the Left’s Assault on Life, Marriage, and Gender (New York: Crown Publishing Group, 2017), p. 168.

After all, feminism merely wants to make women people. Christianity wants to make them saints. Matt Walsh, The Unholy Trinity, Blocking the Left’s Assault on Life, Marriage, and Gender, p. 184.

They can call a man’s challenges less severe, but they never explain why guys kill themselves at a rate four times higher, and face a much higher probability of developing substance-abuse disorders. And they talk about violence against women but they don’t mention that men are 76 percent more likely to be the victims of murder. Matt Walsh, The Unholy Trinity, Blocking the Left’s Assault on Life, Marriage, and Gender, p. 189.

Feminism presents masculinity as the ideal while also tearing it down. It hates men because they’re men, and women because they aren’t. It is, in short, an insane and delusional philosophy. Matt Walsh, The Unholy Trinity, Blocking the Left’s Assault on Life, Marriage, and Gender, p. 196.

Pornography, transgenderism, abortion. These are the real enemies of women in our culture. Matt Walsh, The Unholy Trinity, Blocking the Left’s Assault on Life, Marriage, and Gender, p. 197.

It is a remarkable omission today that so many self-described feminists utterly disregard the revolutionary influence of Jesus on female equality. Jeremiah J. Johnston, Unimaginable, What Our World Would Be Like Without Christianity (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 2017), p. 190.

Food

Most of the world’s population already spends a quarter to a half of their income on food. Thus rising food prices will have a severe impact on their discretionary spending, shrinking the market for goods and services. David Archibald, Twilight of Abundance, Why Life In the 21^st Century Will Be Nasty, Brutish, and Short (Washington: Regnery Publishing, 2014), p. 2.

The difference between what happened in Ireland and what will happen in the MENA countries is that society did not break down in nineteenth-century Ireland. It is said that there are seven meals between civilization and anarchy. David Archibald, Twilight of Abundance, Why Life In the 21^st Century Will Be Nasty, Brutish, and Short,, p. 62.

At the start of the twentieth century, horses were the main source of power on farms, and 20 percent of farm production went to keeping farm horses fed. David Archibald, Twilight of Abundance, Why Life In the 21^st Century Will Be Nasty, Brutish, and Short, p. 65.

Proportion of personal expenditure on food by country in 2009 (a sampling of food prices)

US 6.9 lowest
UK 7.2
New Zealand 12.1
Japan 14.2
Israel 17.2
South Africa 19.8
Argentina 20.3
Mexico 24.0
Russia 28.0
China 32.9
Morocco 43.8
Pakistan 45.5 highest

David Archibald, Twilight of Abundance, Why Life In the 21^st Century Will Be Nasty, Brutish, and Short , p. 68.

Countries currently spending under 20 percent of income on food might be able to survive a doubling of food prices without too great a contraction in total economic activity. The reverse holds for those already spending more than 20 percent. David Archibald, Twilight of Abundance, Why Life In the 21^st Century Will Be Nasty, Brutish, and Short, p. 69.

Fools

Note that true wisdom, understanding and knowledge are not necessarily intellectual, they are moral. As Derek Prince points out, there are many clever fools around. Bridges For Peace Teaching Letter, 10;66.

Forgiveness

O man, forgive thy mortal foe,
Nor ever strike him blow for blow;
For all the souls on earth that live
To be forgiven must forgive.
Forgive him seventy times and seven:
For all the blessed souls in Heaven
Are both forgivers and forgiven.

-Alfred Lord Tennyson (Play- Promise of May)

“Forgiveness is the greatest miracle that Jesus ever performs. It meets the greatest need; it costs the greatest price; and it brings the greatest blessing and the most lasting results.” Warren W. Wiersbe, The Wiersby Bible Commentary, NT (Colorado Springs: David C. Cook, 2007), p. 94.

Refusing to forgive is like drinking poison and hoping the other person will die. – Don Finto

Fornication

Dr. Phil (Apr.7, 2005) stated on his show that the likelihood of a marriage succeeding that is born out of infidelity is less than 10 percent.

Fossil Record

Niles Eldredge, curator at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, “The fossil record that we were told to find for the past 120 years [since Darwin] does not exist.” Gerald Schroeder, The Science of God: The Convergence of Scientific and Biblical Wisdom, (NY: The Free Press, 1997), p. 10.

Founding Fathers (of America)

Dr. M.E. Bradford of the University of Dallas researched the founding fathers, including the Christian commitments of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. He concluded that of the fifty-six men who signed the nation’s birth certificate, clearly fifty, maybe fifty-two, were Trinitarian Christians…David Barton points out that of the fifty-six men, definitely twenty-four, possible twenty-seven, had seminary degrees. D. James Kennedy, What If America Were A Christian Nation Again? (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2003), p. 31.

Political science professor Donald S. Lutz, author of The origins of American Constitutionalism, said, “And the most fundamental assumption [of the Constitution] is that the American people are a virtuous people.” D. James Kennedy, What If America Were A Christian Nation Again?, p. 61.

Even as late as 1775 – 150 years after the Pilgrims landed—the makeup of America was 98.4 percent Protestant, 1.4 percent Catholic, and .2 percent Jewish. D. James Kennedy, What If America Were A Christian Nation Again?, p. 205.

[on the 2^nd day of the Continental Congress] Rev. Jacob Duche led the whole group in prayer in a service that lasted three hours. D. James Kennedy, What If America Were A Christian Nation Again?, p. 207.

The Constitutions of all fifty states mention God in one way or other. D. James Kennedy, What If America Were A Christian Nation Again?, p. 211.

The Liberty Bell has a Bible verse engraved on it. (Lev. 25:10). D. James Kennedy, What If America Were A Christian Nation Again?, p. 212.

Fraud

Last year (2003) victims lost $122 million in Internet-related fraud schemes, according to a Federal Trade Commission database… Colorado Springs Gazette, May 3, 2004.

Freedom

[Engraved Torah – Exo. 32:16] The Torah uses the Hebrew word for engraved: ChaRuT. What you may not know is that this word has two meanings…The second meaning of ChaRT is freedom…The more we restrict our freedom by setting rules and limitations on ourselves, the freer we are to actually be productive. Rabbi Daniel Lapin, Business Secrets From The Bible, (Hoboken: Wiley, 2014, p. 129.

Fish leap out of their tank – they are free, but they are also dead. D. James Kennedy, What If America Were A Christian Nation Again? (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2003), p. 62.

In truth, there are more black men in the grip of the criminal justice system- in prison, on probation, or on parole-than were in slavery then [1850]….Over all, there are now more people under ‘correctional supervision’ in America – more than six million- than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height. Journalist Adam Gopnik. John W. Whitehead, A Government Of Wolves, The Emerging American Police State (New York: Select Books, Inc., 2013), p. 193.

Consider this despite the fact that violent crime in America has been on the decline, the nation’s incarceration rate has tripled since 1980…presently one out of every one hundred Americans is serving time behind bars. John W. Whitehead, A Government Of Wolves, The Emerging American Police State, p. 194.

Freedom isn’t simply doing what we want. A drug addict or an alcoholic may do what he wants, but he has become enslaved over time through a series of choices he has made. Paul Copan, How Do You Know You’re Not Wrong? (Grand Rapids, Baker Books, 2005), p. 105.

Free Will

[Albert Plantinga] – “God can create free creatures, but he cannot cause or determine them to do only what is right. For if he does so, then they are not significantly free after all; they do not do what is right freely. Dinesh D’Souza, God Forsaken (Tyndale, 2012), p. 91.

If God were to intervene to prevent any harm from resulting from a bad choice by a human, God would be incessantly interfering with the lives of human beings and defeating any authenticity and integrity in their choices. Dean L. Overman, A Case For The Existence of God (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2009), p. 93.

The capacity of love could never develop in such a world in which God intervened to remove all of the consequences of one’s action. Dean L. Overman, A Case For The Existence of God, p. 94.

The atheist cannot know for certain that allowing the existence of evil does not result in far greater good. Dean L. Overman, A Case For The Existence of God, p. 95.

An imperfect world allows the development of greater character and growth in values of integrity, love, compassion, courage, truth, and self-giving. Dean L. Overman, A Case For The Existence of God , p. 98.

The Christian position is that the chief end of man is to know and glorify God and enjoy him forever. The chief end of man is not his eternal pleasure or his constant happiness. Dean L. Overman, A Case For The Existence of God, p. 99.

If you want love, you must have free will, and for our wills to be free they must have the capacity to choose evil. Michael P. Foley, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Christianity (Washington D.C.: Regenry Publishing, 2017), p. 9.

Any system that begins with non-personal forces will, in the end, suppress human personhood. Nancy Pearcey, Finding Truth (Colorado Springs: David Cook, 2015), p. 129.

Freud

Freud attacked religious belief repeatedly. In The Future of an Illusion (1927) he branded faith as a form of mental disorder, a “universal obsessional neurosis,” rooted in “infantile” and “narcissistic” patterns of thought – a neurosis that he predicted humanity would “outgrow.” Patrick Glynn, God, The Evidence: The Reconciliation of Faith and Reason in a Postsecular World (Rocklin CA: Prima Publishing, 1997), p. 57.

Psychoanalysis was more than a critique of religion; it was designed as a replacement. Patrick Glynn, God, The Evidence: The Reconciliation of Faith and Reason in a Postsecular World, p. 59.

Freud believed the credibility of religion must be destroyed. It was, quite simply, the “enemy.” Patrick Glynn, God, The Evidence: The Reconciliation of Faith and Reason in a Postsecular World, p. 59.

Freud’s ideas about dreams were also heavily influenced, if not taken directly, from existing European literature. E. Fuller Torrey, M.D. Freudian Fraud, The Malignant Effect of Fraud’s Theory on American Thought and Culture, p. 6.

Freud periodically consulted “soothsayers” who were alleged to have telepathic powers. E. Fuller Torrey, M.D. Freudian Fraud, The Malignant Effect of Fraud’s Theory on American Thought and Culture, p. 9.

Freud’s interest in the occult was well known to his friends and peers. In 1911 he became a Corresponding Member of the Society for Psychical Research in London and in 1915 was made an Honorary Fellow of the American Society for Psychical Research… Freud…confessed that “If I had my life to live over again I should devote myself to psychical research rather than to psychoanalysis.” E. Fuller Torrey, M.D. Freudian Fraud, The Malignant Effect of Fraud’s Theory on American Thought and Culture, p. 10.

Freud’s use of cocaine in the 1890s was a third important influence on his thought during the time when the foundations of his theory were being laid…Freud was extremely enthusiastic about cocaine before it was proved to be addicting, and he gave quantities of it to his fiancée and sisters as well as taking it regularly himself. E. Fuller Torrey, M.D. Freudian Fraud, The Malignant Effect of Fraud’s Theory on American Thought and Culture, p. 10.

The fact that Freudian theory evolved simultaneously with a sense of destiny, an interest in the occult, and the use of cocaine does not in itself negate the validity of the theory. It does, however, cast a shadow over its scientific foundation. E. Fuller Torrey, M.D. Freudian Fraud, The Malignant Effect of Fraud’s Theory on American Thought and Culture, p. 13.

By 1916 the association of Freud with sexual freedom was firmly implanted in the public’s mind. E. Fuller Torrey, M.D. Freudian Fraud, The Malignant Effect of Fraud’s Theory on American Thought and Culture, p. 16.

R.S. Woodworth a respected psychologist who was sympathetic to Freudian theory, asserted in 1917 that “the element of sex gratification is the main factor in the spread of the [Freudian] movement. E. Fuller Torrey, M.D. Freudian Fraud, The Malignant Effect of Fraud’s Theory on American Thought and Culture, p. 17.

It is virtually impossible today for an educated person in America to avoid exposure to Freud’s theory of human behavior. E. Fuller Torrey, M.D. Freudian Fraud, The Malignant Effect of Fraud’s Theory on American Thought and Culture, p. 207.

Eysnck wrote: “Freud…without doubt a genius not of science but of propaganda, not of rigorous proof but of persuasion, not of the design of experiments but of literary art. His place is not, as he claimed, with Copernicus and Darwin but with Hans Christian Anderson and the Brothers Grimm, tellers of fairy tales.” E. Fuller Torrey, M.D. Freudian Fraud, The Malignant Effect of Fraud’s Theory on American Thought and Culture, p. 218.

[Genetic determinants of personality] Direct and indirect tests of Freud’s theory have consistently suggested that the theory is incorrect, evidence has emerged that genetic factors are the single most important determinants for many, if not most, personality traits. E. Fuller Torrey, M.D. Freudian Fraud, The Malignant Effect of Fraud’s Theory on American Thought and Culture, p. 224.

More than any country in the world, America accepted Freud’s theory and popularized his name, and yet America was the one country that Freud truly hated. E. Fuller Torrey, M.D. Freudian Fraud, The Malignant Effect of Fraud’s Theory on American Thought and Culture, p. 240.

Perhaps the most fundamental change in American culture wrought by Freud’s legacy has been the popularization of counseling and psychotherapy. E. Fuller Torrey, M.D. Freudian Fraud, The Malignant Effect of Fraud’s Theory on American Thought and Culture, p. 246.

[contributions] One of the most important of these has been Freud’s contribution to the “Me” generation, a suzerainty of self that focuses one’s primary attention on personal happiness…Alfred Kazin, who wrote, “The overwhelming success of Freudianism in America lies in the general insistence on individual fulfillment, satisfaction and happiness….The insistence on personal happiness represents the most revolutionary force in modern times.” E. Fuller Torrey, M.D. Freudian Fraud, The Malignant Effect of Fraud’s Theory on American Thought and Culture, p. 247.

A second major liability of Freud’s theory has been its promotion of irresponsibility…A third important effect of Freud’s theory on American culture has been the denigration of women…Freud’s theory is inherently misogynistic and patronizing. E. Fuller Torrey, M.D. Freudian Fraud, The Malignant Effect of Fraud’s Theory on American Thought and Culture,, pp. 249-250.

Freud himself virtually ignored patients with serious mental illnesses, writing, “I do not like these patients.”…One result is the sad spectacle of approximately 200,000 untreated mentally ill individuals among the nations’ homeless population, despite the fact that America has more mental health professionals than any other country; the scene is one more legacy of Freudian theory. E. Fuller Torrey, M.D. Freudian Fraud, The Malignant Effect of Fraud’s Theory on American Thought and Culture, p. 252.

Nobel Laureate Peter Medawar suggested that Freud’s theory will be seen in retrospect as “the most stupendous intellectual confidence trick of the twentieth century.” E. Fuller Torrey, M.D. Freudian Fraud, The Malignant Effect of Fraud’s Theory on American Thought and Culture, p. 256.

Freud was a committed Darwinian, treating sexuality solely as a biological drive. He wrote that pleasure is “the main purpose” or our entire “mental apparatus.” Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body, Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality (Grand Rapids, Baker Books, 2018), p. 131.

Friends

Friends are the face of God in everyday life. Hugh Hewitt, The Embarrassed Believer (Nashville, Word Publishing, 1998), p. 54.

A Duke University study found that Americans reported having an average of three people with whom they discussed important matters in 1985, but only two in 2004; the percentage with exactly zero confidants doubled, and the percentage who talked only to family members rose from 57 percent to about 880 percent. Ross Douthat, Bad Religion, How We Became A Nation of Heretics (New York: Free Press, 2012), p. 240.

Fullness of Times

The period between the rise of Alexander the Great (356-323 BC) and the birth of Christ was one of the most remarkable periods in history, to be compared in not a few respects with the age in which we ourselves are now living…National, political and cultural barriers were thrown down in his triumphant march eastwards toward India; men of diverse customs and traditions were made to feel that they belonged together within ‘the inhabited world’ (oikumene). The ecumenical movement in his day included within its scope not just ‘religion but the whole of life.’ Russell, D.S., From Early Judaism to Early Church, (London, SCM Press Ltd., 1986), p. 1.

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