Maccabees
[In Maccabean times] Jewish youths (young priests among them) enrolled and took part in the games. Many wore the distinctive cap of Hermes, the patron of Greek sports, and athletes tried to remove the mark of circumcision so as to avoid the derision of the crowds…Some of the influences were insidious; others were quite open as in the case of the games in the gymnasiums which were normally accompanied by sacrifices to heathen gods. Russell, D.S., From Early Judaism to Early Church, (London, SCM Press Ltd., 1986), p. 6.
Macroevolution
As we have seen, there’s not only a lack of evidence for macroevolution; there’s positive evidence that it has not occurred. Norman L. Geisler & Frank Turek, I Don’t Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2004), p. 155.
Majority
Majority opinion – It means that if Hitler was able to get a 51 percent vote of the Germans, he had a right to kill the Jews. Francis A. Schaeffer, The Church At The End Of The 20th Century (Downers Grove: Inter-Varsity Press, 1970), p. 33.
Majority, Silent
Silent majority – who are living on the memory of the practical advantages that Christian culture gave but have no base for these advantages. Their values are affluence (they are practical materialists) and personal peace at any price. Francis A. Schaeffer, The Church At The End Of The 20th Century (Downers Grove: Inter-Varsity Press, 1970), p. 35.
Males, Battle Against
Whether in dramas, comedies, or commercials, the patriarchy is dead, at least on TV, where men are fools- unless of course they’re gay. David Kupelian, How Evil Works: Understanding and Overcoming the Destructive Forces That Are Transforming America (New York: Threshold Editions, 2010), p. 164.
Boys in the US bring home 70 percent of poor or failing grades and receive the bulk of school suspensions,” adds Voice of America…Boys are falling behind in almost every academic category from standardized test scores to college enrollment rates. David Kupelian, How Evil Works: Understanding and Overcoming the Destructive Forces That Are Transforming America, p. 164.
Family therapist and author Michael Gurian provides some disturbing specifics in his bestselling book, The Minds of Boys: Boys make up 80 percent of our discipline problems…Of children diagnosed with learning disabilities, 70 percent are boys…Of children diagnosed with behavioral disorders, 80 percent are boys…Over 80 percent of schoolchildren on Ritalin or similar drugs are boys…Of high school dropouts, 80 percent are young males. David Kupelian, How Evil Works: Understanding and Overcoming the Destructive Forces That Are Transforming America, p. 165.
Between four and nine million American children diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder – mostly boys- are taking Ritalin or similar dangerous psycho-stimulant drugs…Here’s what the Drug Enforcement Administration says about Ritalin, a trade name for methylphenidatge: “Methylphenidate, a Schedule II substance, has a high potential for abuse and produces many of the same effects as cocaine or the amphetamines.” David Kupelian, How Evil Works: Understanding and Overcoming the Destructive Forces That Are Transforming America, p. 166.
Mark D. Rapport, a clinical psychologist, professor, and longtime ADHD researcher at the University of Central Florida, conducted a meticulous, four-year study demonstrating that boys learn better if they’re simply allowed to fidget and move around all they want. David Kupelian, How Evil Works: Understanding and Overcoming the Destructive Forces That Are Transforming America, p. 167.
Curt Furberg, a professor of public health at Wake Forest University, said, “Nowhere else in the world are 10 percent of 10 year-old boys diagnosed and treated for ADD.” David Kupelian, How Evil Works: Understanding and Overcoming the Destructive Forces That Are Transforming America, p. 167.
168 Currently about 3 out of 5 college students are girls. David Kupelian, How Evil Works: Understanding and Overcoming the Destructive Forces That Are Transforming America, p. 168.
So extreme is this reflexive intolerance for boys’ natural behavior that a top British mental health expert insists “Winston Churchill would be put on Ritalin if he was a schoolboy today.” Dr, Tim Kendall, joint director of the National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health, notes the famous British wartime leader was inattentive and disorganized as a schoolboy- a perfect candidate for Ritalin. As Kendall quipped on the BBC radio show The Medicalization of Normality, “Almost every possible human behavior can be classified as being in some way aberrant.” David Kupelian, How Evil Works: Understanding and Overcoming the Destructive Forces That Are Transforming America, p. 168.
We’ve all heard that close to half of America’s marriages are ending in divorce, but did you know that most of those divorces – 2 out of 3- are initiated by the wives? David Kupelian, How Evil Works: Understanding and Overcoming the Destructive Forces That Are Transforming America, p. 169.
Fathers get custody of children in uncontested cases only 10 percent of the time and 15 percent of the time in contested cases. Women get sole custody 66 percent of the time in uncontested cases and 75 percent of the time in contested cases. David Kupelian, How Evil Works: Understanding and Overcoming the Destructive Forces That Are Transforming America, p. 169.
“Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times” G. Michael Hopf. We’ve had lots of good times and now the weak men are in charge.
Mankind
In pre-Nazi Germany the following statement of man was frequently quoted: “The human body contains a sufficient amount of fat to make seven cakes of soap, enough iron to make a medium sized nail, a sufficient amount of phosphorus to equip two thousand match-heads, enough Sulphur to rid one’s self of one’s fleas.” Perhaps there was a connection between this statement and what the Nazis actually did in the extermination camps: to make soap of human flesh. Fritz A. Rothschild, ed., Between God and Man, An Interpretation of Judaism, from the writings of Abraham J. Heschel, (NY: The Free Press, 1959), p. 233.
The one symbol of God is man, every man. Fritz A. Rothschild, ed., Between God and Man, An Interpretation of Judaism, from the writings of Abraham J. Heschel, p. 234.
Reverence for God is shown in our reverence for man. Fritz A. Rothschild, ed., Between God and Man, An Interpretation of Judaism, from the writings of Abraham J. Heschel, p. 234.
Together image and dust express the polarity of the nature of man. He is formed of the most inferior stuff in the most superior image. Fritz A. Rothschild, ed., Between God and Man, An Interpretation of Judaism, from the writings of Abraham J. Heschel, p. 235.
In Aquinas’s view the will of man was fallen, but the intellect was not…Man’s intellect became autonomous. Francis A. Schaeffer, Escape From Reason, A Penetrating Analysis of Trends in Modern Thought (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1968), p. 11.
The Bible says that you are wonderful because you are made in the image of God, but that you are flawed because, at a space-time point of history, man fell…Modern man tends to think that he is nothing. Francis A. Schaeffer, Escape From Reason, A Penetrating Analysis of Trends in Modern Thought, pp. 22-23.
The Reformation’s biblical view was, and is, very different. It is not a Platonic view…The biblical teaching, therefore, opposes the Platonic, which makes the soul (the ‘upper’) very important and leaves the body (the ‘lower’) with little importance at all. The biblical view also opposes the humanist position where the body and autonomous mind of man become important, and grace becomes very unimportant. Francis A. Schaeffer, Escape From Reason, A Penetrating Analysis of Trends in Modern Thought, p. 28.
Another question in the dilemma of man is man’s nobility…there is something great about man. I want to add here that evangelicals have made a horrible mistake by often equating the fact that man is lost and under God’s judgment with the idea that man is nothing – a zero. This is not what the Bible says. Francis A. Schaeffer, He Is There And He Is Not Silent (Wheaton IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1972), p. 3.
Man is different from non-man. This is the first problem” he is different because of his mannishness and yet he is finite. He does not have a sufficient integration point within himself. The second point concerning man and the dilemma of man is what I call the nobility of man…contrasted with this there is his cruelty…Or we could express it in yet another way- man’s estrangement from himself and other men in the area of morals… With an impersonal beginning, morals really do not exist as morals. Francis A. Schaeffer, He Is There And He Is Not Silent, pp. 21-22.
I am convinced that one of the great weaknesses in evangelical preaching in the last few years is that we have lost sight of the biblical fact that man is wonderful…we have tended to reduce man to a zero. Man is indeed lost, but that does not mean he is nothing…only the biblical position produces a real and proper “humanism.” Naturalistic humanism leads to a diminishing of man and eventually to a zeroing of man. But the Christian position is that man is made in the image of God and, even though he is now a sinner, he can do those things that are tremendous- he can influence history for this life and the life to come, for himself and for others. Francis A. Schaeffer, Death In The City (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1969), pp. 80-81.
Let us understand that true Christianity is not Platonic. Much, however, of what passes for Christianity does have the ring of Platonic thinking in it. Platonism says that the body is bad and is to be despised. The only thing that matters is the soul. But the Bible says God made the whole man…God made man spirit and body and he is interested in both. He made man with an intellect and he is interested in the intellect. Francis A. Schaeffer, Death In The City, p. 85.
First of all, man is separated from God’ second, he is separated from himself, thus the psychological problems of life; third, he is separated from other men, thus the sociological problems of life; fourth, he is separated from nature and thus the problems of living in the world, for example, the ecological problems. All these need healing. Francis A. Schaeffer, Death In The City, p. 86.
Marriage
If you are a child of God and you marry a child of the Devil, you’re going to have trouble with your father-in-law. Max Lucado, Max on Life, (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2010), p. 135.
[1971 Moriyama, Krueger & Stamler published Cardiovascular Disease in the United States] The study found that, even when controlling for all other factors, annual mortality of single people is three to five times higher than that of their married counterparts. Rabbi Daniel Lapin, Business Secrets From The Bible, (Hoboken: Wiley, 2014), p. 54.
Once a Roman matron asked Rabbi Jose bar Halafta “How long did it take the Holy One, blessed be he, to create the world?” He said to her “Six days.” “And from then until now what has he been doing?” “The Holy One, blessed be he, is occupied in making marriages.” Genesis Rabbah 68:4
[Fewer Couples Embrace Marriage] In 2010 unmarried couples made up 12 percent of US couples, a 25 percent increase in 10 years according to Census data out today. Camden NJ, 35 percent of couples are not married, up from 28 percent in 2000 and the highest of any city with at least 50,000. Marriage is losing ground to a grinding economic slowdown. Two-thirds of the cities with the largest shares of unmarried couples were in the Northeast and Midwest. USA Today May 26, 2011.
Jesus demands that husbands and wives be faithful to their marriages. He does not assume this is easy. But he teaches that it is a great thing because marriage is the work of God himself whereby he creates a new reality of “one flesh” that surpasses human comprehension and portrays to the world in human form the covenant union between God and his people. Marriage is sacred beyond what most people imagine, because it is a unique creation of God, a dramatic portrayal of God’s relation to his people, and a display of God’s glory. Against all the diminished attitudes about marriage in our days, Jesus’ message is that marriage is a great work of God and a sacred covenant breakable only by death. John H. Piper, What Jesus Demands From the World (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2006), p. 301.
[Deut 24:1-4] The remarkable thing about these four verses is that while divorce is taken for granted, nevertheless the woman who is divorced becomes “defiled” by her remarriage (v.4). Therefore, it may well be that when the Pharisees asked Jesus if divorce was legitimate, he based his negative answer not only on God’s original intention expressed in Genesis 1:27 and 2:24, but also on the implication of Deuteronomy 24:4, that remarriage after divorce, while permitted, nevertheless defiles a person. In other words, there were clues in the writings of Moses that the divorce concession was on the basis of the hardness of man’s heart and did not make divorce and remarriage the most God-honoring path. John H. Piper, What Jesus Demands From the World, p. 308.
[Lk. 16:18] Here Jesus seems to call all remarriage after divorce adultery. These are strong words. Evidently the reason a second marriage is called adultery is because the first one is considered to still be valid. So Jesus is taking a stand against the Jewish culture at the time in which all divorce was considered to carry with it the right of remarriage. John H. Piper, What Jesus Demands From the World, p. 309.
What we have so far is two seemingly absolute prohibitions of remarriage after divorce in Luke 16:18 and Mark 10:11-12 since Jesus sees marrying a second time as adultery, even if you are the innocent party in the divorce. And we have a strong statement in Matthew 19:6 and Mark 10:9 that God has joined married couples together and therefore no man should separate them. John H. Piper, What Jesus Demands From the World, p. 310.
[Matthew 5:32] This would mean that remarriage is wrong not merely when a person is guilty in the process of divorce, but also when a person is innocent. John H. Piper, What Jesus Demands From the World, p. 311.
[Matthew] He is the only Gospel writer who would feel any need to make clear that Jesus’ absolute prohibition of divorce followed by remarriage did not include a situation like Joseph and Mary’s. That is what I think he does with the exception clauses. He records Jesus saying “Whoever divorces his wife – not including, of course, the case of fornication [porneia] between betrothed couples – and marries another, commits adultery.” John H. Piper, What Jesus Demands From the World, p. 315.
It provides an explanation of why the word porneia is used in Matthew’s exception clause instead of moicheia. John H. Piper, What Jesus Demands From the World, p. 315.
Jesus’ response is not to lower the bar so that marriage becomes less risky. Instead, he says, in essence, that the ability to remain single if necessary and the ability to stay in a hard marriage if necessary are both a gift of God. In other words, flourishing in singleness and flourishing in marriage are a work of divine grace. [Matt. 19:11]. John H. Piper, What Jesus Demands From the World, p. 318.
[MARRIED COUPLES NO LONGER A MAJORITY, May 29 2011,[US Census Bureau] In the 2010 census, married couples represent 48 percent of all households. That’s down from 52 percent in the last Census…The fast-growing older population is more likely to be divorced or widowed later in life, and 20-somethings are putting off nuptials for longer stretches…an aging population with more people living alone…a shift away from having kids at a young age…The median age for first marriages has climbed steadily since the 1960s, when men got married at about 23 years old, and women at 20. Now, men are waiting until they’re 28 and women are holding off until 26…people coupling but not being married…the opposite-sex unmarried couples living together jumped 13 percent from 2009 to 7.5 million…life expectancy of 78 years, nearly a decade longer than in the 1960s…About 39 percent of Americans say marriage is becoming obsolete, according to a Pew Research Center study published in November, up from 28 percent in 1978. The Colorado Springs Gazette, May 29, 2011.
Pew’s survey …found that more than one in four fathers – 27 percent – with kids 18 or younger live away from at least one of their children. That number is more than double the share of fathers who lived apart from their kids in 1960. Men with illegitimate children. 72 percent of black fathers; 59 percent of Latino fathers; 37 percent of white fathers. Three fourths of fathers who were 20 to 24 had children out of wedlock, compared with 36 percent for fathers 35-44.
The findings come as the latest census data show that marriages have fallen to a record low, pushing the share of US households with married couples below 50 percent for the first time. The Denver Post, Jun 16, 2011.
[Living Together] There is a much higher incidence of divorce among people who live together before marriage than among people who do not. James D. Kennedy, Why the Ten Commandments Matter (New York: Time Warner Book Group, 2005), p. 124.
A recent Pew report estimated that a quarter of Millennials will never get married at all. Matt Walsh, The Unholy Trinity, Blocking the Left’s Assault on Life, Marriage, and Gender (New York: Crown Publishing Group, 2017), p. 97.
Indeed, over 350 studies from over a dozen nations confirm the importance of a household with both parents present. Matt Walsh, The Unholy Trinity, Blocking the Left’s Assault on Life, Marriage, and Gender, p. 118.
A You Gov poll found that almost half of millennials have given up the hope – or even desire – for a monogamous relationship. Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body, Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality (Grand Rapids, Baker Books, 2018), p. 128.
…studies consistently show that the people who are happiest sexually are married, middle-aged conservative Christians. Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body, Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality, p. 130.
Marriage and family
Nearly four in 10 – or 39 percent – of people polled say the institution is becoming obsolete, according to a new survey from the Pew Research Center conducted in coordination with Time Magazine.
The report, which is supported by data from the U.S. Census Department, shows only 52 percent of adults 18 and over are married – an all-time low. Four out of five of those surveyed say an unmarried couple with children or a single parent constitutes a family. And three out of five say a same-sex couple with children is a family.
The report is based on land-line and cell phone interviews conducted with 2,691 adults during the first three weeks of October. The survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.6 percentage points. CBN Report, Nov. 18, 2010.
In the September, 1996 Reader’s Digest article entitled Teen Pregnancy, Let’s Get Real, author Suzanne Chazin lists some of the myths and realities facing children in the US. She points out that every year in the US some 350,000 teenage girls have babies out of wedlock. This figure has jumped from 16.7 per thousand in 1965 to 46.4 per thousand in 1994. She adds that more than half of all male and female teen-agers have now had sex by the age of 18, and more than 15 percent of teen-age mothers come from middle-class homes. (The figures have increased in recent years 1965 birth rate for unmarried teens (per 1000 ages 15-19 was 16.7. 1994 the figure had climbed to 46.4).
More than half of teenage mothers are not residing with their child’s father by the time that child reaches grade school. More than one quarter have never lived with the father
Only 20 percent of never-married mothers receive formal child support. By contrast four out of five women who wait until age 24 to give birth are still residing with the child’s father when the child reaches grade school – and two out of three of those children have never lived in poverty.
Fewer than half the teens who give birth out of wedlock marry within the next few years. Those who do marry are twice as likely to divorce in five years as women who marry in their 20s.
A growing number of studies suggest that fatherless children are more likely to take drugs, drop out of school, turn to crime and become teen parents themselves.
According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, only 70 percent of women who give birth as teen-agers finish high school compared to more than 90 percent of women who postpone childbirth. By the time her child reaches grade school, a young mother is 2.5 times less likely to own a home and 50 percent less likely to have savings than mothers who started families after they were 24. Marriage realities: from Let’s Get real about teen pregnancy,Suzanne Chazin, Reader’s Digest, Sept 1996, p. 49-54.
[After interviewing 3,142 randomly selected adults across the nation, including 1,220 born again Christians, here are the key findings]. Consistent with our earlier findings, we discovered that one out of every four adults (24 percent) who has been married has experienced a divorce.
Born again Christians are slightly more likely than non-Christians to go through a divorce. Twenty seven percent of Christians have seen their marriage break up, compared to 23 percent of non-Christians.
Adults who describe themselves as Christian fundamentalists are more likely than others to get divorced: 30 percent have experienced divorce.
Based on data comparing the ages at which people were married and at which they accepted Christ as their Savior, we found that accepting Christ does not reduce the incidence of divorce. Among adult Christians who have ever been divorced, 87 percent of those people experience their divorce after accepting Christ as their savior…Barna Research Group Ltd, 647 West Broadway, Glendale, CA 91204.
“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.
Dr. Phil stated on his show that the likelihood of a marriage succeeding that is born out of infidelity is less than 10 percent. (He was speaking of live-in relationships). Dr. Phil, (Apr. 7, 2005).
…in 1965 only 25 percent of black babies, and 5 percent of white babies, were born to single moms. By the early 1980s, these figures had risen to 50 percent for blacks and 15 percent for whites. By 2010, a whopping 72 percent of black children and 36 percent of whites were born to single mothers. Austin Ruse, Fake Science; Exposing the Left’s Skewed statistics, fuzzy facts, and dodgy data (Washington: Regnery, 2017), p. 123.
Marx, Karl
Marx never set foot in a mill, factory, mine or other industrial workplace in the whole of his life. Paul Johnson, Intellectuals (Harper & Row, 1988), p. 60.
When he and Engels created the Communist League, and again when they formed the International, Marx made sure that working-class socialists were eliminated from any positions of influence and sat on committees merely as statutory proles. Paul Johnson, Intellectuals, p. 61.
What emerges from a reading of Capital is Marx’s fundamental failure to understand capitalism…From start to finish, not just Capital but all his work reflects a disregard for truth which at times amounts to contempt. That is the primary reason why Marxism, as a system, cannot produce the results claimed for it; and to call it “scientific” is preposterous…But it can also be shown that its actual content can be related to four aspects of his character: his taste for violence, his appetite for power, his inability to handle money and, above all, his tendency to exploit those around him. Paul Johnson, Intellectuals, p. 69.
Marx quarreled with everyone with whom he associated… Paul Johnson, Intellectuals, p. 70.
His angry egoism had physical as well as psychological roots. He led a peculiarly unhealthy life, took very little exercise, ate highly spiced food, often in large quantities, smoked heavily, drank a lot, especially strong ale, and as a result had constant trouble with his liver. He rarely took baths or washed much at all. Paul Johnson, Intellectuals, p. 73.
Marx never seriously attempted to get a job…His mother not only refused to pay his debts, believing he would then simply contract more, but eventually cut him off completely. She is credited with the bitter wish that “Karl would accumulate capital instead of just writing about it.” Paul Johnson, Intellectuals, p. 74.
From the mid-1840s, when they first came together, until Marx’s death, Engels was the main source of income for the Marx family. So in 1869 Engels sold out of the business, securing for himself an income of rather more than 800 pounds a year. Of this 350 pounds went to Marx. Paul Johnson, Intellectuals, p. 75.
In 1849-50, during the darkest period of the family’s existence, Lenchen (faithful servant) became Marx’s mistress and conceived a child. Paul Johnson, Intellectuals, p. 79.
Marx was terrified that Freddy’s paternity would be discovered and that this would do him fatal damage as a revolutionary leader and seer. Paul Johnson, Intellectuals, p. 80.
Lenchen was the only member of the working class that Marx ever knew at all well, his only real contact with the proletariat. Paul Johnson, Intellectuals, p. 80.
Marxism
Deaths from Democide’ compared to deaths from International War, 1900-1987
Democratic Authoritarian Totalitarian
Killed by own government 2 million 29 million 138 million
Killed by international war 4.4 million 15.3 million 14.4 million
Stephen R.C. Hicks, Explaining Postmodernism, Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault, (Tempe, AZ, Scholarly Publishing, 2004), p. 148.
110 million were killed by Left, primarily Marxist, socialism. Stephen R.C. Hicks, Explaining Postmodernism, Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault, p. 149.
Materialism
We tend to think of materialism as a philosophy that places high value on the material world, because it claims that matter is all that exists. Yet, ironically, in reality it places a low value on the material world as purely particles in motion with no higher purpose or meaning. Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body, Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality (Grand Rapids, Baker Books, 2018), p. 24.
Christianity imparts greater value to the material realm than any version of materialism. Nancy Pearcey, Finding Truth (Colorado Springs: David Cook, 2015), p. 214.
Matter does not matter. All that matters is a person’s inner feelings or sense of self…Sexual identity is reduced to a postmodern concept completely disconnected from the body. Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body, Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality (Grand Rapids, Baker Books, 2018), p. 31.
Ancient pagan culture was permeated by world-denying philosophies such as Manichaeism, Platonism, and Gnosticism, all of which disparaged the material world as the realm of death, decay, and destruction – the source of evil. Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body, Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality, p. 35.
Eugene Wigner, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, in a classic essay on the implications of quantum theory, wrote that quantum theory is incompatible with the idea that everything, including the mind, is made up solely of matter: [While a number of philosophical ideas] may be logically consistent with present quantum mechanics…materialism is not. Stephen Barr, Modern Physics and Ancient Faith (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press), p. 228.
Matter
This was the transition of E (energy) into m (matter) of Einstein’s famous E=mc2. The c2, the speed of light squared or multiplied by itself, is a huge number and implies that even a tiny amount of matter contains a huge amount of energy and therefore requires a huge amount of energy to form. Gerald Schroeder, The Science of God: The Convergence of Scientific and Biblical Wisdom, (NY: The Free Press, 1997), p. 55.
Maturity
In 1960, 77 percent of women and 65 percent of men completed all the major transitions into adulthood by age thirty. These transitions include leaving home, finishing school, becoming financially independent, getting married, and having a child. By 2000, only 46 percent of women completed these transitions by age thirty, and only 31 percent of men… “Adultolesence” is the new normal. Robert Wuthnow, After the Baby Boomers: How Twenty-and Thirty-Somethings Are Shaping the Future of American Religion (Princeton NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 2007), p. 11.
Meaning
As Wolfgang Pannenberg puts it, “Secular culture itself produces a deep need for meaning in life and therefore also for religion.” Dinesh D’Souza, What’s So Great About Christianity (Washington: Regenery Publishing Inc., 2007), p. 10.
Man’s damnation today is that he can find no meaning for man. Francis A. Schaeffer, He Is There And He Is Not Silent (Wheaton IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1972), p. 11.
One long-time Cuban believer made these observations: “The search for meaning is just as crucial as the search for bread.” Frank Thielman, Philippians, The NIV Application Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1995), p. 70.
[Victor Frankl- imprisoned by Nazis] “Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, as Freud believed, or a quest for power, as Alfred Adler taught, but a quest for meaning. The greatest task for any person is to find meaning in his or her life.” Rice Broocks, God’s Not Dead, Evidence For God In An Age Of Uncertainty (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 2013), p. 116.
The western world is suffering from the backlash of the meaninglessness of atheism and unbelief. Suicide is increasing. Drug abuse, especially the respectable version of the abuse of prescription drugs, is choking the life out of a generation desperately self-medicating in hopes of not drowning in a sea of emotional pain. Rice Broocks, God’s Not Dead, Evidence For God In An Age Of Uncertainty, p. 116.
The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life but that it bothers him less and less. – Vaclav Havel
Meaninglessness
Plato did understand something crucial- not only in theoretical thought but in practical life. He saw that if there are no absolutes, then the individual things (the particulars, the details) have no meaning. Francis A. Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live? The Rise and decline of Western Thought and Culture (Wheaton IL: Crossway Books, 1976), p. 144.
Jean-Paul Sartre …the French existential philosopher, emphasized this problem in our own generation. His concept was that a finite point is absurd if it has no infinite reference point. Francis A. Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live? The Rise and decline of Western Thought and Culture, p. 145.
The Marquis de Sade, with his chemical determinism, who simply made this statement: “What is, is right.” No one can argue against this, if we begin with an impersonal beginning. Beginning with the impersonal, there is no explanation for the complexity of the universe or the personality of man. Francis A. Schaeffer, He Is There And He Is Not Silent (Wheaton IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1972), p. 26.
So thought Plato and the Greeks understood the necessity of finding a universal, and saw that unless there was a universal, nothing was going to turn out right, they never found a place from which the universal could come either from the polis or for the gods. Francis A. Schaeffer, He Is There And He Is Not Silent, pp. 40-41.
Modern man in his philosophy, his music and his art usually depicts a chaotic situation in the universe. But when you make a Boeing 707, it is beautiful. Why? Because it fits into the universe. The universe is not really the chaos that they picture. Francis A. Schaeffer, The Church At The End Of The 20th Century (Downers Grove: Inter-Varsity Press, 1970), pp. 13-14.
Media
One study of 100 leading television and film producers found that only 6 percent attended church. In another survey of 240 leading US journalists, 54 percent responded that they saw nothing wrong with adultery, 75 percent considered homosexuality an acceptable lifestyle, 86 percent seldom or never went to church or synagogue, and 90 percent believed that abortion was a woman’s fundamental right (study done by Stanley Rothman, Linda Lichter, and Robert Lichter), The Media Elite: America’s New Powerbrokers [Adler and Adler, 1986], quoted in David Aikman, “Press Is Missing the Scoop of the Century,” Christianity Today, 4 March 1988, 12. Taken from Charles Colson with Ellen Santilli Vaughn, The Body: being a light in the darkness (Dallas: Word Publishing, 1992), p. 366.
Nielsen Media Research indicates that in 2003 we spent nearly eight hours per day watching television…Motion Picture Association (MPA) total box office sales grossed more than $9.5 billion in 2004, up 25% from just five years ago…A recent study showed that constantly checking e-mails and voice mails temporarily lowers your IQ more than smoking marijuana. Apparently using e-mail too much can make you dumb! Charisma, Feb., 2006.
While slightly more than 40 percent of the population attend church every week, according to pollster George Gallup, only about 7 percent of the media elite ever darken the door of a church. D. James Kennedy, What If America Were A Christian Nation Again? (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2003), p. 154.
Unfortunately, the digital social media that now dominates our lives tends to foster more self-centeredness than deeper connections…it fosters the growth of narcissism, which is now seen as epidemic in our young people. Archibald D. Hart & Sylvia Hart Frejd, The Digital Invasion (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2013), p. 93.
Meditation
Researchers are warning that the ability to “contemplate” or “meditate” declines in those who over-engage the digital world. Archibald D. Hart & Sylvia Hart Frejd, The Digital Invasion (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2013), p. 29.
There are researchers who also believe that life in the digital world is causing us to lose our “depth” – our depth of thinking, contemplation, feeling, and emotions, as well as depth in our relationships and work. Archibald D. Hart & Sylvia Hart Frejd, The Digital Invasion, p. 43.
Some have gone so far as to describe human multitasking as a “mythical activity in which people believe they can perform two or more tasks simultaneously as effectively as one.” Archibald D. Hart & Sylvia Hart Frejd, The Digital Invasion p. 75.
In another study of the thalamus, the “Grand Central Station” of the brain, Dr. Newberg [Dr. Andrew B. Newberg] called the changes “most unusual,” The thalamus plays a critical role in identifying what is real and what it not. In subjects who had meditated consistently for fifteen years, one side of the thalamus was lit up while the other side was dormant. “For advanced meditators,” Dr. Newberg reports, “this asymmetric reality becomes their normal state of awareness; God, tranquility, and unity become an integral part of their lives, no longer a thought but a palpable experience, as real as the book you are holding in your hand.” It’s curious that the “palpable experience: of God- tranquility, peacefulness, and unity- are exactly what Paul describes as the “fruit of the Spirit’ and evidence of a Christian lifestyle in Galatians 5. Robert Vera, A Warrior’s Faith (Nashville: Nelson Books, 2015), pp. 91-92. [quoting Andrew B. Newberg, MD, and Mark Robert Waldman, How God Changes Your Brain (New York: Ballantine Books, 2009), pp. 53-55].
Meekness
Moreover, after philosophy, or intelligence, pride was the core virtue of the classical philosophical outlook, the “crown of the virtues.”…In the classical understanding, the strong, the beautiful, the intelligent, the rich were not just better off but morally better than the weak, the poor, the meek, the downtrodden. Patrick Glynn, God, The Evidence: The Reconciliation of Faith and Reason in a Postsecular World (Rocklin CA: Prima Publishing, 1997), p. 155.
Mental Health
Beginning in the 1970s evidence began to emerge showing a powerful correlation between religious commitment and overall mental health… Today there is growing evidence that physical health, too, may have a spiritual dimension. Patrick Glynn, God, The Evidence: The Reconciliation of Faith and Reason in a Postsecular World (Rocklin CA: Prima Publishing, 1997), pp. 10-11.
Mercy
There is a line, by us unseen,
Which crosses every path,
Which marks the boundary between
God’s mercy and His wrath. – Joseph Addison Alexander
Messiah
As the incarnation of evil, Satan is the arch-enemy of the Messiah … God showed Satan the Messiah, and when he saw him, he trembled, fell on his face, and cried, “Truly this is the Messiah who will bruise me.” Walter Riggans, Yeshua Ben David (Crowborough: Monarch, Crowborough, 1995), pp. 295.
There are at least 332 distinct Old Testament predictions regarding the Messiah that Jesus fulfilled perfectly….. Professor Peter Stoner has calculated that the probability of any one man fulfilling eight of these prophesies is one in 100,000,000,000,000,000 (10 to the 17th power). That number of silver dollars would cover the state of Texas two feet deep. Stoner says that if you consider 48 of the prophecies, the odds become one in 10 to the 157th power. David Guzik Commentaries on the Bible. 2 Peter. 1997-2003, https://enduringword.com/bible-commentary/2-peter-1/.
Messiah, False
[of Bar Kochba]…Rabbi Akiba of the second century C.E. actually went so far as to say, “This is the King Messiah,” though his friend and colleague Rabbi Johannan bar Tortha retorted, “Akiba, grass will grow in your cheekbones and he still will not have come!” (b. Gittin 57-58) Eric M. Meyers & James F. Strange, Archaeology, The Rabbis & Early Christianity (Nashville: Abingdon, 1981), p. 70.
Middle East Conflict
According to the United Nations relief and Works Agency (UNWRA), 540,000 Palestinian Arabs were uprooted as a result of the 1948 war… Malka Hillel Shulewitz, ed., The Forgotten Millions, The Modern Jewish Exodus from Arab Lands (London & NY: Continuum, 1999), p. 132.
In 1945 there were close to 900,000 Jews living in the Arab world. Many of their communities dated back 2,500 years…A total of 608,799 found a safe haven in the State of Israel. A further 260,000 found refuge in Europe and the Americas. Malka Hillel Shulewitz, ed., The Forgotten Millions, The Modern Jewish Exodus from Arab Lands, p. 139.
[Terrorism under UNRWA] There have been sixty million refugees in the world since the Second World War, most of whom were uprooted from their homes following armed strife between countries, the United Nations has not established any other permanent agencies to deal with any specific body of refugees. All the refugees throughout the world, except the Palestinian Arabs, came under the High Commissioner for Refugees at the United Nations, who began operating in 1951, stressing the humanitarian and political character of the aid rendered. Malka Hillel Shulewitz, ed., The Forgotten Millions, The Modern Jewish Exodus from Arab Lands, p. 146.
Miracles
Miracles compared to magic
Miracles Magic
Under God’s control Under man’s control
Done at God’s will Done at man’s will
Not naturally repeatable Naturally repeatable
No deception involved Deception involved
Occurs in nature Does not occur in nature
Fits into nature Does not fit into nature
Unusual but not odd Unusual and odd
Josh D. McDowell, The New Evidence That Demands A Verdict, Nashville, Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1999, p. 666.
A God without power to heal a sick heathen’s body is a poor recommendation of his ability to save his soul”- John G Lake. Michael L. Brown, Whatever Happened to the Power of God, (Shippenburg, PA: Destiny Image Publishers, 1991), p. 77.
Bizarre as it sounds, miracles, once beyond the pale of an enlightened society, now have a scientific basis. Quantum mechanics has changed our understanding of nature. Not only are miracles theoretically possible according to QM, they are observed regularly in physics labs. Gerald Schroeder, The Science of God: The Convergence of Scientific and Biblical Wisdom, (NY: The Free Press, 1997), p. 74.
God satisfied the Israelite yearning for meat by having a wind blow quails, exhausted from their flight over the sea, to the campsite. There they fell in great numbers (Num. 11:31). The New York Times reported on a similar event under the title “When Quails Come Back to Alexandria.” In this more modern version, restaurateurs gathered the birds as they fell on the shore, exhausted from their trans-Mediterranean flight. Nature does have the habit of repeating itself! Gerald Schroeder, The Science of God: The Convergence of Scientific and Biblical Wisdom, p. 75.
Ever since the eighteenth-century philosopher David Hume, most people have defined a “miracle” as a violation of physical law. Frank J. Tipler, The Physics of Christianity (NY: Doubleday, 2007), p. 101.
Elmer Bendiner was a navigator in a B-17 during WW II. He tells this story of a World War II bombing run over Kassel, Germany, and the unexpected result of a direct hit on their gas tanks.
“Our B-17, the Tondelayo, was barraged by flak from Nazi antiaircraft guns. That was not unusual, but on this particular occasion our gas tanks were hit. Later, as I reflected on the miracle of a 20 millimeter shell piercing the fuel tank without touching off an explosion, our pilot, Bohn Fawkes, told me it was not quite that simple. On the morning following the raid, Bohn had gone down to ask our crew chief for that shell as a souvenir of unbelievable luck. The crew chief told Bohn that not just one shell but 11 had been found in the gas tanks. 11 unexploded shells where
only one was sufficient to blast us out of the sky!? It was, as if the sea had been parted for us. A near-miracle, I thought. Even after 35 years, so awesome an event leaves me shaken, especially after I heard the rest of the story from Bohn. He was told that the shells had been sent to the armorers to be defused. The armorers told him that Intelligence had picked them up. They could not say why at the time, but Bohn eventually sought out the answer. Apparently when the armorers opened each of those shells, they found no explosive charge. They were as clean as a whistle and just as harmless. Empty? Not all of them! One contained a carefully rolled piece of paper. On it was a scrawl in Czech. The Intelligence people scoured our base for a man who could read Czech. Eventually they found one to decipher the note. It set us marveling. Translated, the note read: ‘This is all we can do for you now. Using Jewish slave labor is never a good idea.’” This story is confirmed in Elmer Bendiner’s book, The Fall of Fortresses.
A Direct Hit – In the late hours of the night, an IDF truck loaded with arms and shells parked next to a building in Jerusalem. Its mission was to bring a fresh supply of ammunition to the front line outposts. The element of danger was great for if the truck was hit by enemy fire, the subsequent explosions of all the ammo would bring all the buildings in the area down on their inhabitants. Suddenly the whistling of an approaching enemy shell was heard, and the shell, indeed, scored a direct hit on the vehicle. But the Arab shell did not explode. It remained perched atop the pile of Israeli shells in the truck. John Hagee, Four Blood Moons (Brentwood TN: Worthy Publishing, 2013), p. 211.
The Protector of Israel: An Israeli defense Force (IDF) unit identified the home of a wanted Hamas terrorist in Gaza and made preparations to arrest their target by daybreak. As the soldiers were about to enter the building, they saw a white dove hovering overhead. This was a most unusual sight in such an active battle zone, so they momentarily stopped to watch the dove alight on a tiny string.
A second after the dove landed, there was a huge explosion and the house was destroyed with everyone in it. The building was booby-trapped: the string that was connected to the door was detonated by the dove.
As one of the soldiers later testified in his synagogue, “Had it not been for God’s protection, our entire army unit would have been killed.” John Hagee, The Three Heavens, Angels, demons and What Lies Ahead (Brentwood TN: Worthy Books, 2015), p. 221.
Missing Link
[Archaeopteryx – bird/reptile] In the entire Bible there is one reference to an animal that falls into two categories, the tinshemet. In the entire fossil record there is one fossil that falls exactly midway between two classes of animals, the archaeopteryx…It is the link that was never missing Gerald Schroeder, The Science of God: The Convergence of Scientific and Biblical Wisdom, (NY: The Free Press, 1997), p. 96.
No less an authority on evolution than Ernst Mayr, professor emeritus of zoology at Harvard University, former curator at the American Museum of Natural History, and avowed lifelong advocate of Darwinian evolution, has finally come to admit that the origin of our species is a “puzzle: (to use his word) that may never be solved. The link that leads directly to Homo sapiens is missing. Gerald Schroeder, The Science of God: The Convergence of Scientific and Biblical Wisdom, p. 127.
Missions
Witness is alive across Africa. If churches are burned, leaders emerge from the fire. Five thousand two hundred Nigerian missionaries serve in fifty-six countries today under the umbrella association of NEMA, the Nigerian Evangelical Missions Association. This is a network of more than one hundred Nigerian denominational and parachurch organizations. Miriam Adeney, Kingdom Without Borders, The Untold Story of Global Christianity (Madison, WI, InterVarsity Press, 2009), p. 241.
2,644 language groups… still don’t have the Bible. Loren Cunningham, The Book That Transforms Nations: The Power of the Bible To Change Any Country (Seattle: YWAM Publishing, 2007), p. 201.
This Third World Christianity is coming our way. South Korea has become the world’s second-largest source of Christian missionaries. Dinesh D’Souza, What’s So Great About Christianity (Washington: Regenery Publishing Inc., 2007), p. 9.
The Washington Post reports that there are 150 churches in Denmark and more than 250 in Britain run by foreigners. Dinesh D’Souza, What’s So Great About Christianity (Washington: Regenery Publishing Inc., 2007), p. 10.
That Christianity reached China by the end of the first century has long been dismissed as a myth. Now, says the Chinese People’s Daily, evidence suggests it really happened. Wang Weifan from Jinling Seminary says tombstone carvings from about A.D. 86 depict Bible stories and Christian designs. “Somebody certainly was taking the Great Commission rather seriously,” says Ralph Covell, senior professor of world Christianity at Denver Seminary. Though this discovery may reset the date of Christianity’s arrival by 550 years, Covell notes that the A.D. 635 meeting between Nestorian Christian Alopen and Chinese emperor T’ang T’ai Tsung had much greater influence. Did Apostles Go to China? Evidence suggests Christianity reached China in the first century.By Ted Olsen Christianity Today, posted Oct. 21, 2002.
Mistakes
Not too long ago, a pastor performed a wedding in New York and was interrupted when the church doors flew open, and a man hurried up the aisle, dragging an obviously pregnant woman. The man shouted, “Stop the wedding! You can’t let this go on – look at what Manuel did to my sister!” The bride looked horrified, but the pastor calmly said, “There’s no Manuel here.” The man looked confused, and said “Oh no! Wrong wedding!” and left the church. David Guzik, Commentary on Mark, 2:1-4. http://www.studylight.org/commentaries/guz/view.cgi?bk=40&ch=2
John H. Holiday, who was the founder and editor of the Indianapolis News, stormed into the composing room one day, determined to find the culprit who had spelled height as hight. A check of the original copy indicated that he had been the one responsible for the misspelling. When he was told that he said, “Well, if that’s the way I spelled it, that has to be right.” For the next thirty years, The Indianapolis News misspelled the word height.” Steve Brown, Overcoming Setbacks (Billy Graham Evangelistic Assn., 1993), p. 132.
Molestation
Wherever I go out and speak, I’m conscious of the statistics that one-third of all girls and one-fifth of all boys will be sexually molested during their lifetime. Michael Reagan with Jim Denney, Twice Adopted (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2004), p. 320.
Morality
“Evidence of this nation’s social and moral decline can also be found in the Index of Leading Cultural Indicators, published in 1993 by the Heritage foundation and Empower America, a research group headed by Bennett and Jack Kemp. Since 1960, the population of the United States has increased 41 percent…But according to Bennett’s study, during the same thirty-year period, there was a 560 percent increase in violent crime and a 400 percent increase in illegitimate births. Despite massive levels of public assistance and unprecedented welfare spending, we witnessed a quadrupling of the divorce rate, a tripling of the number of children in single-parent homes, a 200 percent increase in teenage suicides, and a drop of 75 points in the average SAT scores of high school students.” Jim Nelson Black, When Nations Die, Ten Warning Signs of a Culture in Crisis(Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.,1994), p. 6.
Our Constitution was made for a moral and religious people,” said John Adams. “It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey, How Now Shall We live? (Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 1999). p. 373.
Morality undergirds virtually everything we do. It not only affects us financially, but, in certain circumstances, it also affects us socially, psychologically, spiritually and even physically. Norman L. Geisler & Frank Turek, I Don’t Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2004), p. 67.
The person who denies all values, values his right to deny them. Norman L. Geisler & Frank Turek, I Don’t Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist , p. 173.
Moral law is not always the standard by which we treat others, but it is nearly always the standard by which we expect others to treat us. Norman L. Geisler & Frank Turek, I Don’t Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist , p. 175.
Even the number one virtue of our largely immoral culture- tolerance- reveals the Moral Law, because tolerance itself is a moral principle. Norman L. Geisler & Frank Turek, I Don’t Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist , p. 181.
The plea to be tolerant is a tacit admission that the behavior to be tolerated is wrong. Norman L. Geisler & Frank Turek, I Don’t Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist , p. 181.
So consistent Darwinists can only consider murder and rape as personal dislikes, not real moral wrongs. Norman L. Geisler & Frank Turek, I Don’t Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist, p. 191.
The post-religious Western world is struggling to adjust to a profound loss of moral and philosophical moorings. Melanie Phillips, The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle over God, Truth, and Power (New York: Encounter Books, 2010), p. 6.
When morality became privatized, the questions “what is right” and “what is true” turned into “what is right or true for me.” Melanie Phillips, The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle over God, Truth, and Power, p. 283.
Muliculturalism also took a sledgehammer to the idea of truth. Melanie Phillips, The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle over God, Truth, and Power, p. 292.
Aristotle, who knew all about Socrates’ work from Plato, wrote: “Socrates occupied himself with ethics, and not at all with nature as a whole.” Paul Johnson, Socrates, A Man of our Times (NY: Penguin Group, 2011), p. 81.
What he sought was ways in which he could help individual men and women to become better morally. This was the mission God had given him in life, as he truly and even passionately believed. Paul Johnson, Socrates, A Man of our Times, p. 108.
Knowledge led directly to virtue, In Socrates’ view. Paul Johnson, Socrates, A Man of our Times, p. 112.
As a result, the same people who aspire to be liberated from what they call oppressive moral codes are actually paving the way for new forms of oppression. Nancy Pearcey, Saving Leonardo, A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, & Meaning (Nashville: B&H Publishing Group, 2010), p. 41.
If what we call evil is a natural product of evolutionary forces, then we have no basis for opposing it. Nancy Pearcey, Saving Leonardo, A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, & Meaning, p. 42.
As a result, they are constantly making mental judgments. He shouldn’t do that. She’s so insensitive. People cannot function for even a few hours without making moral evaluations. Nancy Pearcey, Saving Leonardo, A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, & Meaning, p. 43.
Nobody has ever discovered a way of having real “morals” without a real absolute. Francis A. Schaeffer, Trilogy, The Three Essential Books in One Volume (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1990), p. 117.
[Colorado mass shooting] Sadly, these kinds of acts are gradually becoming more common because of the decreasing presence of the knowledge of God in society. This knowledge is an immune system in our souls. Rice Broocks, God’s Not Dead, Evidence For God In An Age Of Uncertainty (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 2013). p. 41.
Friedrich Nietzsche, who heralded the phrase “God is dead,” also asserted that with the death of God came the death of morality. Rice Broocks, God’s Not Dead, Evidence For God In An Age Of Uncertainty p. 50.
When the restraining force of God and His knowledge are removed, evil is free to fully express itself. Rice Broocks, God’s Not Dead, Evidence For God In An Age Of Uncertainty, p. 50.
[Fyodor Dostoevsky’s books] The warning rang out through his writings: “without God all things are permissible.” Rice Broocks, God’s Not Dead, Evidence For God In An Age Of Uncertainty, p. 53.
It was precisely this fact of the logical movement of atheism toward violence and cruelty that made the twentieth century the bloodiest in history. The godless regimes of Stalin, Hitler, Mao Zedong, and Pol Pot eclipsed the horrors of previous centuries primarily because the moral restraint was removed when God was eliminated from their thinking. Rice Broocks, God’s Not Dead, Evidence For God In An Age Of Uncertainty, p. 54.
[Lewis, Mere Christianity, 47-48] “In reality, moral rules are directions for running the human machine. Every moral rule is there to prevent a breakdown, or a strain, or a friction, in the running of that machine. That is why these rules at first seem to be constantly interfering with our natural inclinations.” Rice Broocks, God’s Not Dead, Evidence For God In An Age Of Uncertainty, p. 57.
[Ravi Zacharias] “One of the great blind spots of a philosophy that attempts to disavow God is it’s unwillingness to look into the fact of the monster it has begotten and own up to being its creator.” Rice Broocks, God’s Not Dead, Evidence For God In An Age Of Uncertainty, p. 130.
[Physician Leon Kass] “It seems indisputable that the world suffers more from the morally and spiritually defective than from the genetically defective.” Paul Copan “How Do You Know You’re Not Wrong? (Grand Rapids, Baker Books, 2005), p. 77.
Naturalism undermines moral responsibility. Paul Copan, How Do You Know You’re Not Wrong?, p. 107.
[Peter Singer, bioethics professor at Princeton] He goes so far as to say that bestiality is morally permissible. Paul Copan, How Do You Know You’re Not Wrong?, p. 130.
The very charge of “Speciesist!” presupposed an objective moral standard and makes a value judgment. Where did this come from in a naturalistic world? Paul Copan, How Do You Know You’re Not Wrong?, p. 134.
We have basic moral instincts or intuitions that reflect an objective moral order. This is part of God’s general revelation… Paul Copan, How Do You Know You’re Not Wrong?, p. 138.
A close study of history reveals a recurring moral code held more or less in common by all peoples – including prohibitions against theft and murder and admonitions to honor parents and care for children. Michael P. Foley, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Christianity (Washington D.C.: Regenry Publishing, 2017), p. 7.
A number of philosophers and ethicists have pointed out, with good reason in my view, that moral obligations upon which law ultimately rests are “unintelligible apart from the idea of God.” Jeremiah J. Johnston, Unimaginable, What Our World Would Be Like Without Christianity (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 2017), p. 30.
Mothers
Dr. G. Campbell Morgan, famous British preacher had five sons, all of whom became ministers of the gospel. One day a visitor in their home dared to ask a personal question: “Which of you six is the best preacher? Their united answer was “Mother!”…her life was a constant sermon on the love of God. Warren W. Wiersbe, The Wiersbe Bible Commentary, NT (Colorado Springs: David C. Cook, 2007), p. 996.
Multiculturalism
“A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy.” Ingrid Newkirk, founder of the world’s largest animal rights organization, the six-hundred thousand-member People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), made this amazing statement to Vogue magazine in 1989. ..Her actual quote “Animal liberationists do not separate out the human animal, so there is no rational basis for saying that a human has special rights. A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. They’re all mammals.” Quoted in David Kupelian, The Marketing of Evil, (Nashville: WND Books, 2005), p. 91.
(multiculturalism) is actually a hatred of and rebellion against Judeo-Christian values… And when you turn out the lights, everything looks the same in the dark-that’s multiculturalism. David Kupelian, The Marketing of Evil, pp. 94 & 99.
Multitasking
The bottom line is this: We function best and most efficiently when we do one task at a time. Archibald D. Hart & Sylvia Hart Frejd, The Digital Invasion (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2013), p. 66.
Some have gone so far as to describe human multitasking as a “mythical activity in which people believe they can perform two or more tasks simultaneously as effectively as one.” Archibald D. Hart & Sylvia Hart Frejd, The Digital Invasion, p. 75.
Multitasking facilitates better learning is one of the greatest myths surrounding the digital world. Archibald D. Hart & Sylvia Hart Frejd, The Digital Invasion, p. 76.
Brain scientists are very clear on this point: the brain functions best when it only has one task to process at a time. Archibald D. Hart & Sylvia Hart Frejd, The Digital Invasion, p. 79.
One explanation for why multitasking is less efficient is that our “memory neutrons” become confused and overloaded when we multitask. Archibald D. Hart & Sylvia Hart Frejd, The Digital Invasion, p. 80.
There is overwhelming evidence that multitasking lowers our level of performance. Archibald D. Hart & Sylvia Hart Frejd, The Digital Invasion, p. 81.
For instance, the Top Gun fighter pilot training program of the US Navy does not welcome multitaskers as fighter pilots. Archibald D. Hart & Sylvia Hart Frejd, The Digital Invasion, p. 81.
Multitasking robs us of the ability to pay attention. Archibald D. Hart & Sylvia Hart Frejd, The Digital Invasion, p. 85.
This is why Dr. Hallowell has proposed the idea that the distraction of trying to perform two or more tasks simultaneously can lead to a condition called “Attention Deficit Trait.” Archibald D. Hart & Sylvia Hart Frejd, The Digital Invasion, p. 85.
Murder
[Professor Peter Singer] His academic standing is a symptom of the moral impoverishment of our academia…Singer wants to abolish the old rule that killing innocent humans is wrong, and replace it with the new rule that it is wrong only if the subject possesses certain cognitive capacities. Dr. Thomas Szasz, The Medicalization of Everyday Life (Syracuse: The Syracuse University Press, 2007), p. 136.
Music
Gregory [the Great] wiped out the last vestiges of congregational singing, believing music was a clerical function and the exclusive right of trained singers. Frank Viola and George Barna, Pagan Christianity? Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. 2002, 2008), p. 160.
Interestingly, there is no evidence of musical instruments in the Christian church service until the Middle Ages. Frank Viola and George Barna, Pagan Christianity? Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices, p. 162.
Narcissism
Between 1982 and 2006, sixteen thousand American college students filled out the Narcissistic Personality Inventory…The trend was consistent: the average student in 2006 had a higher narcissism score than 65 percent of college students a generation earlier….In the 1950s only 12 percent of teenagers identified with the statement, “I am an important person.” A half century later, it ws 80 percent. Ross Douthat, Bad Religion, How We Became A Nation of Heretics (New York: Free Press, 22012), pp. 234-235.
[Breitbart and Ebner, Hollywood, Interrupted] Every celebrity, by design and necessity is a narcissist. The desire to become a star requires an incredible appetite for attention and approval. David Kupelian, How Evil Works: Understanding and Overcoming the Destructive Forces That Are Transforming America (New York: Threshold Editions, 2010), p. 77.
The full-time job of parenting requires absolute selflessness. In contrast, the full-time job of celebrity requires absolute selfishness. David Kupelian, How Evil Works: Understanding and Overcoming the Destructive Forces That Are Transforming America, p. 78.
Worship does extremely weird things to human beings. David Kupelian, How Evil Works: Understanding and Overcoming the Destructive Forces That Are Transforming America, p. 78.
What exactly is “narcissistic personality disorder”? According to Mayo Clinic, it’s “a mental disorder in which people have an inflated sense of their own importance and a deep need for admiration. They believe that they’re superior to others and have little regard for other people’s feelings. But behind this mask of ultra-confidence lies a fragile self-esteem, vulnerable to the slightest criticism. David Kupelian, How Evil Works: Understanding and Overcoming the Destructive Forces That Are Transforming America, p. 79.
[October 2006 Journal of Research In Personality] confirmed their darkest suspicions: “Our work suggests that contemporary culture has become fixated on a group of stars whose narcissistic tendencies appear to be approaching personality-disorder levels.” David Kupelian, How Evil Works: Understanding and Overcoming the Destructive Forces That Are Transforming America, p. 79.
[Jean M. Twenge, & W. Keith Campbell, The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement]. In data from 37,000 college students, narcissistic personality traits rose just as fast as obesity from the 1980s to the present, with the shift especially pronounced for women…By 2006 1 out of 4 college students agreed with the majority of the items on a standard measure of narcissistic traits. David Kupelian, How Evil Works: Understanding and Overcoming the Destructive Forces That Are Transforming America, p. 80.
By 2006, 1 out of 4 college students agreed with the majority of the items on a standard measure of narcissistic traits. [Jean Twenge, Keith Campbell, in The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement. David Kupelian, How Evil Works: Understanding and Overcoming the Destructive Forces That Are Transforming America, p. 80.
A new analysis of the American Freshman Survey, which has accumulated data for the past 47 years from 9 million young adults, reveals that college students are more likely than ever to call themselves gifted and driven to succeed, even though their test scores and time spent studying are decreasing. Fox News Jan. 8, 2013, Dr, Keith Ablow: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/01/08/are-raising-generation-deluded-narcissists/#ixzz2Hbq0tOoe
Psychologist Jean Twenge, the lead author of the analysis, is also the author of a study showing that the tendency toward narcissism in students is up 30 percent in the last thirty-odd years. This data is not unexpected. I have been writing a great deal over the past few years about the toxic psychological impact of media and technology on children, adolescents and young adults, particularly as it regards turning them into faux celebrities—the equivalent of lead actors in their own fictionalized life stories. Dr, Keith Ablow: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/01/08/are-raising-generation-deluded-narcissists/#ixzz2Hbq0tOoe
On Facebook, young people can fool themselves into thinking they have hundreds or thousands of “friends.” They can delete unflattering comments. They can block anyone who disagrees with them or pokes holes in their inflated self-esteem. They can choose to show the world only flattering, sexy or funny photographs of themselves (dozens of albums full, by the way), “speak” in pithy short posts and publicly connect to movie stars and professional athletes and musicians they “like.” Dr, Keith Ablow: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/01/08/are-raising-generation-deluded-narcissists/#ixzz2Hbq0tOoe
We must beware of the toxic psychological impact of media and technology on children, adolescents and young adults, particularly as it regards turning them into faux celebrities—the equivalent of lead actors in their own fictionalized life stories. Dr, Keith Ablow: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/01/08/are-raising-generation-deluded-narcissists/#ixzz2Hbq0tOoe
Using Twitter, young people can pretend they are worth “following,” as though they have real-life fans, when all that is really happening is the mutual fanning of false love and false fame. Dr, Keith Ablow: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/01/08/are-raising-generation-deluded-narcissists/#ixzz2Hbq0tOoe
Using computer games, our sons and daughters can pretend they are Olympians, Formula 1 drivers, rock stars or sharpshooters. And while they can turn off their Wii and Xbox machines and remember they are really in dens and playrooms on side streets and in triple deckers around America, that is after their hearts have raced and heads have swelled with false pride for “being” something they are not. Dr, Keith Ablow: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/01/08/are-raising-generation-deluded-narcissists/#ixzz2Hbq0tOoe
On MTV and other networks, young people can see lives just like theirs portrayed on reality TV shows fueled by such incredible self-involvement and self-love that any of the “real-life” characters should really be in psychotherapy to have any chance at anything like a normal life. Dr, Keith Ablow: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/01/08/are-raising-generation-deluded-narcissists/#ixzz2Hbq0tOoe
These are the psychological drugs of the 21st Century and they are getting our sons and daughters very sick, indeed. Dr, Keith Ablow: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/01/08/are-raising-generation-deluded-narcissists/#ixzz2Hbq0tOoe
As if to keep up with the unreality of media and technology, in a dizzying paroxysm of self-aggrandizing hype, town sports leagues across the country hand out ribbons and trophies to losing teams, schools inflate grades, energy drinks in giant, colorful cans take over the soft drink market, and psychiatrists hand out Adderall like candy. Dr, Keith Ablow: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/01/08/are-raising-generation-deluded-narcissists/#ixzz2Hbq0tOoe
False pride can never be sustained. The bubble of narcissism is always at risk of bursting. That’s why young people are higher on drugs than ever, drunker than ever, smoking more, tattooed more, pierced more and having more and more and more sex, earlier and earlier and earlier, raising babies before they can do it well, because it makes them feel special, for a while. They’re doing anything to distract themselves from the fact that they feel empty inside and unworthy. Dr, Keith Ablow: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/01/08/are-raising-generation-deluded-narcissists/#ixzz2Hbq0tOoe
Distractions, however, are temporary, and the truth is eternal. Watch for an epidemic of depression and suicidality, not to mention homicidality, as the real self-loathing and hatred of others that lies beneath all this narcissism rises to the surface. I see it happening and, no doubt, many of you do, too. Dr, Keith Ablow: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/01/08/are-raising-generation-deluded-narcissists/#ixzz2Hbq0tOoe
Nation
Little by little the greatness of the country changes because of the men we admire. Unknown.
Naturalism
Why, given naturalism, should any animals- human or nonhuman- have any rights or value at all? Why think that anything has value if all organisms have emerged from valueless processes? Paul Copan, How Do You Know You’re Not Wrong? (Grand Rapids, Baker Books, 2005), p. 140.
Natural Selection
In short, natural selection is not the magic bullet biologists once thought it was: You can’t explain away the order in nature by reference to a purely random process. Patrick Glynn, God, The Evidence: The Reconciliation of Faith and Reason in a Postsecular World (Rocklin CA: Prima Publishing, 1997), p. 48.
For example, in order for the monkey to have a reasonable chance of accidentally typing the words Mary had a little lamb, it would have to type about 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 pages. Stephen M. Barr, Modern Physics and Ancient Faith (Notre Dame: Notre Dame Press, 2003), pp. 71-72.
While we are on the subject of biological structures, it should be mentioned that there is one huge question about life that natural selection does not seem able to answer, and that is how the first living thing originated…It cannot have been by the ordinary Darwinian mechanism of natural selection, since for natural selection to operate there already has to be life – that is, self-reproducing organisms able to pass on their traits genetically. Stephen M. Barr, Modern Physics and Ancient Faith, p. 74.
The origin-of-life problem is made very hard by the fact that the first, “primitive” life-form was probably already enormously complicated…biologists have given some thought to the minimum requirements for a self-reproducing one-celled organism. It appears that it needs to have quite an elaborate structure, involving dozens of different proteins, a genetic code containing at least 250 genes, and many tens of thousands of bits of information. Stephen M. Barr, Modern Physics and Ancient Faith, p. 74.
Nazareth
Excavations at Nazareth tend to support the view that this was not an open city but a tiny agricultural village not far off the beaten path and, indeed, close to the major trade routes. There is no incongraphy or pagan symbolism to support a syncretistic hypothesis. In fact, if anything, the archaeology tends to support Nathanael’s negative attitude toward Nazareth recorded in the Gospel of John (1:46), since it appears to have been such an unpretentious place. On the other hand, we have literary evidence that one of the twenty-four priestly courses settled here after 70 C. E., which implies that the remnants of temple Judaism found Nazareth “clean” and unsullied by paganism. Eric M. Meyers & James F. Strange, Archaeology, The Rabbis & Early Christianity (Nashville: Abingdon, 1981), p. 27.
Nazareth is not mentioned in ancient Jewish sources earlier than the third century C. E. This likely reflects its lack of prominence both in Galilee and in Judea. Eric M. Meyers & James F. Strange, Archaeology, The Rabbis & Early Christianity, p. 56.
Judging from the extent of its ancient tombs, Nazareth must have been about 40,000 square meters in extent, which corresponds to a population of roughly 1,600 to 2,000 people, or a small village…the principal activity of these villagers was agriculture. Nothing in the finds suggests wealth. Therefore Nazareth would have no particular claim to fame… Eric M. Meyers & James F. Strange, Archaeology, The Rabbis & Early Christianity, pp. 56-57.
Nazism
Godwin’s Law – the principle that “as an online debate increases in length, it becomes inevitable that someone will eventually compare someone or something to Adolf Hitler or the Nazis.” Michael P. Foley, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Christianity (Washington D.C.: Regenry Publishing, 2017), p. 7.
While walking through the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, I felt dwarfed by the large Rembrandt canvases. I was awed even more by the story the curator told about the fate of these huge canvases during World War II. When the Dutch realized they were about to be conquered by the Third Reich, they took the unwieldy canvases off their immense stretcher bars and rolled them up like carpets. They sealed them in with wax and began to move such splendid paintings as “Night Watch” and “Dutch Masters” all over Holland in a huge art underground. The canvases were passed from culvert to granary to silo to mill to warehouse, all in an attempt to keep high Dutch culture out of the hands of the Germans. Calvin Miller, Into The Depths of God (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 2000), p. 67.
Needed (being needed)
In those days, the US Government was buying heavily into these not-so-secret secrets, as if anticipating that needy moment scheduled to arrive at the end of the twentieth century when Richard Barnet of the Institute for Policy Studies would write for Harper’s in a voice freighted with doom: “The problem is starkly simple. An astonishingly large and increasing number of human beings are not needed or wanted to make the goods or provide the services that the paying customers of the world can afford.”
In the decades prior to this Malthusian assessment, a whole psychological Institute for Social Cookery sprang up like a toadstool in the United States to offer recipe books for America’s future. Even then they knew that 80 percent of the next generation was neither needed nor wanted. Remedies had to be found to dispose of the menace psychologically. John Taylor Gatto, The Underground History of American Education (NY: The Oxford Village Press, 2003), p. 260.
Neo-Platonism
Starting with the West, the quasi-pantheistic ideas we are talking about took root in the third century with the ancient Greeks. This was a period when Asian religions became fashionable in ancient Greek culture, much as they did in America in the 1960s. The result was a school of thought known as neo-Platonism, which merged Plato’s philosophy with Indian pantheism…The main spokesman for this melding of East and West was Plotinus, who taught that the world was an “emanation” or radiation of being from a non-personal Spirit or Absolute. Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity (Wheaton IL: Crossway Books, 2004), p. 358.
From the beginning, neo-Platonism was not just a philosophy but also a mystical religion…Surprisingly, many of the early Christians were nevertheless sympathetic to neo-Platonism and were greatly influenced by it – notably Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Augustine…Eastern philosophy was actually synthesized with Christianity by an unknown writer posing as a first-century convert of St. Paul’s called Dionysius the Areopagite. Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity, p. 386.
New Earth
Just as God presented Eve to Adam in Eden, so he will bring Christ’s bride to the second Adam, Christ, on the New Earth. Randy Alcorn, Heaven (Tyndale House Publishers, 2004), p. 366.
Dutch theologian Herman Bavnick said of the New Earth, “All those nations – each in accordance with its own distinct national character – bring into the New Jerusalem all they have received from God in the way of glory and honor.” Randy Alcorn, Heaven, p. 376.
[Wayne Grudem] “God will not completely destroy the physical world (which would be an acknowledgement that sin had frustrated and defeated God’s purposes), but rather he will perfect the entire creation and bring it into harmony with the purposes for which he originally created it.” Randy Alcorn, Heaven, p. 481.
Heaven was made for the angels, not for man. It is the temporary abode of the departed saints until the new heavens and new earth are brought into being, but man’s eternal dwelling-place will be on the perfect earth (Rev. 21:1-3). Kenneth S. Wuest, In These Last Days, II Peter, I, II, III John, and Jude in the Greek New Testament (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1954), p. 240.
[Methodius c. 290] It is not satisfactory to say that the universe will be utterly destroyed and that the sea, earth, and sky will no longer exist. For the whole world will be deluged with fire from heaven and burned for the purpose of purification and renewal. However it will not come to complete ruin and corruption…God did not work in vain. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, eds., The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1956), Vol. 6, p. 365.
That is the hope. Not that we leave this world but that Jesus returns and transforms it, and us with it. N. T. Wright, Simply Good News, Why The Gospel Is Simply Good News and What Makes It Good (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2014), p. 95.
The whole truth is that Jesus himself, in his risen physical body, is the beginning of God’s new creation. N. T. Wright, Simply Good News, Why The Gospel Is Simply Good News and What Makes It Good, p. 100.
The new creation has already happened; that is the good news about the past. N. T. Wright, Simply Good News, Why The Gospel Is Simply Good News and What Makes It Good, p. 102.
The lordship of the risen Jesus, who has launched his new creation in the middle of the present old one, means that real and lasting change is possible at personal, social, cultural, national, and global levels. N. T. Wright, Simply Good News, Why The Gospel Is Simply Good News and What Makes It Good, p. 118.
The whole point of what Jesus was doing was that this coming together of earth, and heaven was starting right then, with his work. N. T. Wright, Simply Good News, Why The Gospel Is Simply Good News and What Makes It Good, p. 163.
Obedience
Our great Father of the faith, Abraham, gives us some important lessons in obedience. In Genesis 17:10-14 God commands Abraham that he and all males in his family are to be circumcised. Since no one had been circumcised before this, we can only imagine the apprehension that Abraham and his whole family felt. Should we receive such a command today we would probably search the Internet for days, consult with the medical establishment and ponder the decision for some additional days, weeks or even months. However, we see in verse 23, that Abraham responded immediately, and “On that very day” he circumcised himself, his son and all the males in his household. That is obedience— unflinching obedience.
We see Abraham doing a similar thing when God commanded him to offer his only son as a burnt sacrifice. We see him arising “early the next morning” (Gen. 22:3), taking his son and leaving to face this awful trial. Abraham was a man of faith. He was instant in season and out of season. – J. G.
Everything we shall ever need, for time and eternity, is already provided. The only condition for remaining in this perfect provision is believing and obeying the Word of God. Derek Prince, War in Heaven (Grand Rapids: Chosen Books, 2003), p. 101.
“In July 1976 Israeli commandos made a daring raid at an airport in Entebbe, Uganda, in which 103 Jewish hostages were freed. In less than fifteen minutes, the soldiers had killed all seven of the kidnappers and set the captives free.
As successful as the rescue was, however, three of the hostages were killed during the raid. As the commandos entered the terminal, they shouted in Hebrew and English, “Get down! Crawl!” The Jewish hostages understood and lay down on the floor, while the guerrillas, who spoke neither Hebrew nor English, were left standing. Quickly the rescuers shot the upright kidnappers.
But two of the hostages hesitated – perhaps to see what was happening – and were also cut down. One young man was lying down and actually stood up when the commandos entered the airport. He, too, was shot with the bullets meant for the enemy. Had these three heeded the soldiers’ command they would have been freed with the rest of the captives.” Quoted in Debbie Macomber, One Perfect Word, One Word Can Make All The Difference (New York: Howard Books, 2012), p. 22 & flyleaf.
Obesity
The bigger the belly (i.e., the larger a person’s waist-to-hip ratio), the smaller the brain’s memory center, the hippocampus. The hippocampus’s function is dependent upon its size. If your hippocampus shrinks, so does your memory. More striking still, the researchers found that the higher the waist-to hip ratio, the higher the risk for small strokes, which are associated with declining brain function. David Perlmutter, MD., Brain Maker (New York: Little Brown and Company, 2015).
Occult
The Dec. 1994 Consumer Reports published a survey of 17,000 young people age 10-14. The query concerned what games were played and which ones were enjoyed most. Out of 83 games listed Monopoly was #1 but the Ouija Board was #2. John Ankerberg and John Weldon, Encyclopedia of New Age Beliefs (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 1996), p. 151.
Psychic and spiritist Harold Sherman, president of ESP Research Assoc. Foundation in Little Rock Ark.: “The majority who have become involved with possessive and other entities come by this experience through the Ouija Board.” Quoted in John Ankerberg and John Weldon, Encyclopedia of New Age Beliefs, p. 152.
Dungeons and Dragons sales in 1982 were 150 million. John Ankerberg and John Weldon, Encyclopedia of New Age Beliefs, p. 154.
In Dungeons and Dragons, magic is prevalent and can be used in a variety of ways. Also demons, necromancy, astral projection, spells, etc. also used. John Ankerberg and John Weldon, Encyclopedia of New Age Beliefs, p. 158.
Wicca is believed to be one of the fastest-growing religions among high school and college students [National Public Radio, May 13, 2004]. David Kupelian, How Evil Works: Understanding and Overcoming the Destructive Forces That Are Transforming America (New York: Threshold Editions, 2010), p. 115.
Wicca is believed to be one of the fastest-growing religions among high school and college students [National Public Radio, May 13, 2004] David Kupelian, How Evil Works: Understanding and Overcoming the Destructive Forces That Are Transforming America, p. 115.
Neopaganism Growing Quickly: Numbers Roughly double every 18 months in United States, Canada and Europe. [Denver Post, June 26, 2008] David Kupelian, How Evil Works: Understanding and Overcoming the Destructive Forces That Are Transforming America, p. 115.
Wicca has become the spiritual home for many feminists, including lesbians. David Kupelian, How Evil Works: Understanding and Overcoming the Destructive Forces That Are Transforming America, p. 128.
Most of us are unconsciously addicted to the power of lies that keeps our pride alive- our love of the great illusion of life that says we ourselves can be our own gods. David Kupelian, How Evil Works: Understanding and Overcoming the Destructive Forces That Are Transforming America, p. 137.
If bureaucratization of science and the growth of Gnosticism are the reasons for the end of Greek scientific development, then our own civilization is gravely at risk. At the end of the nineteenth century, there began an interest in the occult, a trend that has been steadily increasing in Western civilization to the present day. Frank J. Tipler, The Physics of Christianity (NY: Doubleday, 2007), p. 118.
Interest in magic drives out interest in natural science. Frank J. Tipler, The Physics of Christianity, p. 119.
Old age
A senior citizen began her poetic letter to an old friend with these words:
Just a line to say I’m living, that I’m not among the dead
Though I’m getting more forgetful, and mixed up in my head.
I got used to my arthritis, to my dentures I’m resigned;
I can manage my bifocals, but I sure do miss my mind.
Pentecostal Evangel, Oct. 20, 1996, p 6.
One World Government
Today’s proponents of the one-world economy embrace the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Fredrich Hegel, a German philosopher of the 1800s. Hegel theorized that by planning and actually producing crises, leaders can gain enormous power by stepping in and promising solutions. David Jeremiah, The Coming Economic Armageddon (New York, Boston, Nashville: Faith Words, 2010), p. 52.
Omnipotence
Even an omnipotent being cannot make an individual who has the capacity of free will always choose to do what is right. Dean L. Overman, A Case For The Existence of God (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2009), p. 92.
Opportunity
Carl Henry captures the possibilities of the hour in which we now live: “All the modern gods are sick and dying. The nations that long lusted after power are now terrified by it. Sex has played itself out for many who thought an infinity of it would be heaven on earth. The almighty dollar is falling like a burned-out star. It is a day made-to-order for sons of the prophets, for sons of the apostles, for Protestant Reformers, and for evangelical giants” (Henry 1986:107). Ray Stedman, Commentary On Hebrews, ch. 10, vs. 32-39. http://www.studylight.org/commentaries/rsc/view.cgi?bk=57.
Opposition
A testimony of true spiritual transformation will always drive the establishment crazy (Acts 22:23) – Michael Brown
Oral Sex
[Scientists from Boston’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Tulane University]. On monkeys they discovered it took 6000 times less AIDS virus to infect monkeys orally than rectally. Tonsils contain large numbers of the kinds of lymph cells favored by HIV and SIV. “What we are saying is that oral sex is not safe.” Time, June 17, 1996, p. 51.
Tim LaHaye organization conducted a sex survey among Christians. There were 1705 wives and 1672 husbands polled. To the question, “Does husband manipulate wife’s clitoris orally?”
wives husbands
yes 68% 67%
never 31 33
Tim & Beverly LaHaye The Act of Marriage, The Beauty of Sexual Love (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1976).
Originality
A really original man will always run the risk of being called mad. Festus thought that Paul was mad in later days (Acts 26:24). William Barclay, The Letters to the Philippians, Colossians, and Thessalonians, Revised Edition (Louisville: The Westminster Press, 1975), p. 188.
Overcomers
By Lieutenant Iain McConnell, helicopter pilot with the US Coast Guard in the rescue attempts after Hurricane Katrina.
“During events like Katrina, some people question the existence of God. ‘How could a benevolent Creator allow such a tragedy?’ They ask. In my line of work, however, it’s exactly then-in the midst of tragedy and chaos-that I’m most thankful for God’s presence.” Today’s Christian, Jan/Feb. 2006, p. 39.
Do little things as if they were great, because of
the majesty of the Lord Jesus Christ who dwells in
thee; and do great things as if they were little and
easy, because of his omnipotence. – Blaise Pascal
Everyone has heard of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the famous British preacher, but few know the story of his wife, Susannah. Early in their married life, Mrs. Spurgeon became an invalid. It looked as though her only ministry would be encouraging her husband and praying for his work. But God gave her a burden to share her husband’s books with pastors who were unable to purchase them. This burden soon led to the founding of the “Book Fund.” As a work of faith, the “Book Fund” provided thousands of pastors with tools for their work. All this was supervised by Mrs. Spurgeon from her home. It was a pioneer ministry. Warren W. Wiersbe, The Wiersbe Bible Commentary, NT (Colorado Springs: David C. Cook, 2007), p. 630.