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Did Jesus Study in India Under Gurus?

Question: The gospels are silent about the approximately 18 years between the last time we hear of Jesus in the temple as a boy of 12 (Luke 2:41–52) and the beginning of His ministry at about 30 years of age (Luke 3:23). I have come across the report a number of times, not only in The Aquarian Gospel, but in newspapers as well, that during these missing years Jesus was in India studying under the gurus. The wisdom He acquired there supposedly became the basis for His ministry. Why not?

Response: The most widely circulated report involved an alleged Nicholas Notovitch, who claimed that while traveling in Tibet in the late 1800s he was told by Tibetan lamas that a record reporting the visit of Jesus existed in a Himalayan monastery. In the early 1900s another visitor to Tibet was allegedly told the same thing. However, no one capable of reading and translating such “records” ever saw them, no copy was brought to the West for examination, and now the story is that the “records” have been destroyed.¹

If the Bible were based upon no better evidence than that, the critics would have justifiably dismissed it long ago. Yet such speculative claims are instantly given credence by those who demand proof for anything the Bible says. That double standard betrays an intense bias on the part of skeptics who claim to be interested only in the truth.

All of the Evidence Is to the Contrary

First of all, there is not a particle of historical or archaeological evidence that Jesus ever visited India, much less studied there. Moreover, this theory is refuted by everything that Jesus said and did during His ministry. The teachings that Jesus brought to the Jews were in agreement with all of their Scriptures (which He frequently quoted as authoritative) and without the slightest taint of either Hinduism or Buddhism. Had He studied under the Masters of India or Tibet, He would have been obligated to uphold their teaching and to honor His guru. In fact, His teachings were the very antithesis of Eastern mysticism of any kind.

Furthermore, the New Testament account, which holds together consistently, is not compatible with Jesus ever having made such extensive travels. The people in his hometown of Nazareth knew him as “the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James and Joses and of Juda and Simon” (Mark 6:3). The implication certainly is that He was a familiar hometown personality who had grown up and continued in the local community, not that He was a Jewish Marco Polo who had traveled to exotic and distant places.

Friends and acquaintances were astonished when Jesus suddenly began to travel about Galilee and preach to great crowds. To family and neighbors it was a scandal for Jesus to present Himself as a religious teacher. They treated him with a contempt born of familiarity, not with the awe they surely would have given one who had traveled widely and studied in such far-off lands as India and Tibet.

Every guru who comes to the West lauds and honors his Master, because every Hindu, including the gurus themselves, must have a guru whom he follows. Yet the alleged “Guru Jesus” never referred to His guru or quoted any religious writings except the Jewish Scriptures. He claimed to have been sent not by some Master in the East but by His Father in heaven (John 5:23, 30, 36; etc.), a term unknown to the gurus and hated by the rabbis.

The gurus claim to be men who, through yoga and ascetic practices, have attained to the mystical “realization” that “Atman [individual soul] is identical with Brahman [universal soul]” and have thereby become “Self-realized” gods. Had Jesus studied under them, He would have taught the same delusion. Yet in complete contradiction to that impossible dream and far from claiming to be a man struggling upward to godhood, Jesus presented Himself as the very I AM (Yahweh) of the Old Testament, the God of Israel who had stooped down to become a man:

If ye believe not that I AM, ye shall die in your sins. . . . Before Abraham was, I AM. . . . Now I tell you [this] before it come to pass, that, when it is come to pass, ye may believe that I AM. . . . A little while, and ye shall not see me . . . because I go to the Father. . . . I came forth from the Father and am come into the world; again, I leave the world and go to the Father. . . . I and my Father are one. [Emphasis added] (John 8:24, 58; 13:19; 16:16, 28; 10:30)

Irreconcilable Differences Between Christ and the Gurus

The gurus deny the existence of sin or of any absolute moral standards. Each person’s dharma is different and an individual matter to be discovered on the mystical journey to union with Brahman. In complete contrast, Christ claimed to be the “light of the world” (John 8:12), whose very life exposed the evil in mankind. Moreover, He promised to send the Holy Spirit to convince the world of “sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment” (John 16:8). Jesus announced that He had come to call sinners to repentance (Mark 2:17) and to save them from eternal judgment by His sacrifice of Himself for the sins of the whole world.

Christ’s life and teachings stand in the fullest contradiction to the Hinduism He would have learned in India had He studied there and which He surely would have practiced and taught to the Jews when He returned to Israel. This theory finds absolutely no support in the New Testament record given to us by eyewitnesses:

The gurus teach a continuing cycle of death and reincarnation, whereas Jesus was resurrected as He said He would be, and He promised the same deliverance from death to His followers. Reincarnation and resurrection are opposites; one cannot believe in both.
The gurus teach a continual returning to this earth in life after life to work out one’s supposed “karma,” while Jesus taught forgiveness of sins by grace, thus fitting one for heaven.
To the gurus, heaven is a mystical state of oneness with the Absolute. Jesus, on the other hand, taught that being in heaven is to dwell forever in His Father’s house of “many mansions” (John 14:1–4).
The gurus are all vegetarians. Jesus ate the Passover lamb, fed the multitudes with fish, and even after His resurrection ate fish as a demonstration to His doubting disciples that He was bodily resurrected and not a “ghost,” as they supposed.
There have been thousands of gurus, but Jesus claimed to be the one and only Son of God, the only Savior of sinners.
The gurus teach that there are many ways to God. Jesus declared: “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man cometh unto the Father but by me” (John 14:6).
Everything Jesus said and did opposes the teachings of Hinduism and Buddhism and disproves the false claim that He studied in India or Tibet.

This fraudulent theory demonstrates once again how impossible it would be to invent a fictitious history of Jesus and to make it fit into actual events on this earth. The erroneous theory that Jesus studied in India under the gurus simply won’t fit into the New Testament record at all—and if it did, the New Testament would be incompatible with the Old instead of being its fulfillment, as it had to be. Nor would either the Old or New Testament records fit into the history of the world unless both were true. The perfect harmony of Scripture with established history is revealed by any careful and honest study of both.

1. Larry Whitham, “Book backs theory Jesus visited India before public life,” in Washington Times, November 27, 1987, p. E6.

—An excerpt from In Defense of the Faith (pp. 123-27) by Dave Hunt

Source: Berean Call

A Trip to India—to Learn the Truth About Hinduism and Yoga

By Caryl Matrisciana

Thirteen years had passed since my family had left India. Now I found myself on an airplane returning there. I was filled with excitement and nostalgic memories. Would I bump into old friends with whom I had lost contact over the years? Would anything have changed?

I was travelling with a small group of international cult experts. We had received a grant enabling our research group to travel around India, visiting gurus and their ashrams.

Calcutta
Our plane landed in Calcutta, the former capital of the British Indian Empire and the city of my birth—I was breathless with excitement. Yet my enthusiasm was tinged with fear and apprehension: I knew the India I would encounter over the next few weeks would be a very different India from that of my youth.

This time I would experience the hardships of living an ascetic life with gurus and their disciples, a lifestyle as foreign to me as it was to my companions.

We planned to examine various popular-in-the-West gurus. We would interview them as well as their disciples, trying to glean a basic understanding of their teachings, so that we could better educate our various organizations back home.

I anticipated hardships, knowing that many gurus hid themselves in the outbacks of India’s countryside. I knew that the diets and accompanying Hindu religious activities would be arduous and draining. If all this weren’t spiritually exhausting, it would definitely take its toll physically.
Any disappointments I expected certainly didn’t match up to the overwhelming reality, which I soon encountered. Calcutta is named after the frightful Hindu goddess Kali, the female counterpart of the male god Shiva. Both depict death and destruction, and the city clearly reflects this. Kali also has the benign title of Mother of Love. Calcutta, or Kali-ghat, “the steps to Kali,” embodies all the complex contradictions of the Hindu god-goddess makeup. Calcutta is also one of the biggest cities in the world, with a population of nearly thirteen million. Its harbors and industries make it a key center of Eastern commerce.

The first thing to overwhelm me as I stepped into Dum Dum, the bustling Calcutta airport, was the wild confusion resulting from overpopulation. Being in the midst of shoulder-to-shoulder people was a sensation I had almost forgotten after spending years in the West.

I recalled a conversation with an Indian friend who had visited America. He had commented on the emptiness of American streets. “Where are all the people?” he had asked in bewilderment. “I see houses with cars parked outside, open shops, offices, and restaurants . . . but where are all the people?” That question might seem peculiar to those who have not experienced India’s swarming mass of humanity.

My thoughts were soon flooded with other unpleasant recollections. Besides the pushing and shoving, we had to deal with stealing and lying—almost-forgotten aspects of my childhood memories.

Upon swift recall of necessary survival instincts, I made immediate efforts to beat the corruption of “the system.” Unfortunately, I wasn’t fast enough to protect our little group from the first “criminal.”

One of our party was taken in by a fellow claiming to be a porter. Our naïve traveling companion had paid an up-front deposit. Without hesitation, the imposter had proceeded to put our collective baggage onto a trolley. He had then wheeled it off down the road toward points unknown.

Because I was fluent in Hindi, I was assigned the recovery operation. Eventually, I caught up to the thief and ordered him to return our baggage to the airport lobby. He did so, but, of course, we lost the deposit. He stubbornly claimed it had not been paid to him. After this incident, I quickly learned to stay on my toes.

The next minor incident (our last show of naiveté) was a deliberately elongated taxi drive from the airport. Since I vaguely remembered the surroundings enough to put our cab driver back on course, we were spared the expense of being driven around and around the city. But, oh, the streets of Calcutta we drove through. Pitiful shacks made up of sackcloth, rags, and sticks engulfed the sidewalks and spilled onto the streets.

When our cab stopped for a moment at a traffic light, I was able to peek into the dark interiors of some of those “homes.” I was still horrified, after all the years, to see the number of people living inside. Sisters and brothers were curled against each other like young gerbils in a cage. I saw one pathetically skinny child in tattered rags with cow-dung matted in her hair. She was attempting to soothe a wailing toddler. She cuddled and caressed him, with a comforting smile on her sweet, sad face.

How could the Western spiritual seekers I had spoken to in England, Europe, and America overlook so much tragedy? How could they bypass it to focus on the “wisdom and love” of the East? Couldn’t they see that it was the very aloofness and madness of India’s religion, her so-called wisdom and love, that created such obvious agony for the poor and such cruel apathy in the rich?

They had only to look at any of the ever-present beggars. As a member of one of the largest professions there, each beggar belongs to a master. He is assigned to a specific territory where he collects money for his owner. In return, he is provided with a cramped space in some hovel for sleeping and an occasional meager meal.

Some of these homeless derelicts are horribly diseased. Others are intentionally mutilated by their masters. Some children are maimed from birth in order to elicit sympathy from prospective donors.

Equally heartbreaking are India’s prostitutes. According to one government-commissioned study, there are three million prostitutes in India, with many of them between the ages of twelve and fifteen.1 Young girls are often recruited by pimps who tour rural villages, making wild financial promises to poverty-stricken parents. Male prostitution in India is on the rise too.

In Mumbai, there is an infamous street where young girls are kept behind iron bars. Cage after cage exposes scantily clad, heavily made-up teenagers. Some are extraordinarily beautiful. Others are barely ten years old. Many have been beaten and tortured into submission.2

How does the higher class Indian deal with all this cultural madness? With sure escape in mind, he does what any Westerner might do when stressed—he goes to the movies!

India has the largest film industry in the world, far surpassing the number of films made in the United States, and there are over 13,000 theaters. Every three months a billion people in India buy tickets to the cinema.3 Even in the poorest regions of the country, people would go short of food rather than give up their night with the movie stars.

In an impoverished, starving country some films cost their producers tens of millions of rupees. The controversial 1981 film, Gandhi, was all the rage in fashionable Indian circles. One-third of the film’s nine million pound (English sterling) budget was paid for by the Indian government.4 Such were India’s political priorities.

Meanwhile, alluring tourist propaganda puts out impressive statistics documenting India’s achievements. But these glowing reports fail to address the nation’s most sobering problems.

India is the seventh largest landmass in the world. Her population of over 1.1 billion makes her the second most inhabited country on earth.5

Yet, in spite of her size, a spectacular array of natural resources, and economic growth due to developing technological industries, India places twelfth among the economies of the world.6 And although India is rising economically, malnutrition, lack of educational opportunity, and overall poverty is still extremely high: nearly half of India’s children are underweight for their age;7 there are seventeen million child laborers in India; less than half of India’s children between the ages of six and fourteen go to school; more than one in three women in India and over sixty percent of the children in India are anemic.8

Ashrams of India
The first ashram our group visited was the Sivananda Ashram in Monghyr. Also known as the Bihar School of Yoga, it was founded in 1964 by Tantric Swami Satyananda Saraswati. When we arrived there, the powers-that-be required that we pay the exorbitant overnight accommodation fees in advance. We consented. We were tired and hungry and didn’t have the energy to complain over the high costs. We had had an exhausting overnight train journey from Calcutta. Jamalpur Junction, the train station nearest the ashram, was located six miles away. To make matters worse, we had arrived in the wee hours of the morning.

The station guard had warned us not to venture out of the station. “You’ll be robbed or murdered!” he had declared. He said that the State of Bihar was one of the most violent in all of India. Our kind friend felt it would be wiser if we stayed on the station platform until dawn. We did so, along with hundreds of other passengers.

Tired, but grateful for the sage advice, we settled down for a long night’s vigil. The gangways were festooned with sleeping bodies and the debris of luggage. The only place we could find to sit in was the filthy, dimly lit station restaurant. This was a far cry from the crisply clean and hygienic eating houses of my childhood I recalled so vividly.

A waiter appeared, wearing the same uniform of three decades past. It looked as though it hadn’t been laundered for almost that long! His faded red turban and cummerbund sadly reflected years of deterioration. It was barely discernible that his gray, permanently stained tunic had once been white. His gloves, once a colonial symbol of cleanliness, were almost too filthy to look at; the frayed seams at his fingertips exposed grease-stained nails.

I looked up into his face. “How many years have you been working for the railroad?” I asked him in Hindi.

“Since I was a child,” he smiled proudly. “Since the time of the British Raj.” His eyes looked back into the past and filled with sorrow at the reminiscence. “Things have changed a lot.” He looked around him, waving his arm slowly as if pointing out something. He glanced at the bedraggled uniform that he still wore with an element of pride, and shrugged. “Things have changed,” he repeated. Then he sighed and smiled in weary resignation, “What would you like to order, Mehemsahib?” His tiny, blunt pencil was poised above a pad that had been written on over and over again.

As dawn brightened the skyline, we collected our small bundles of luggage and hailed a rickshaw-puller. He took us a mile or so short of the Sivananda community. We walked the rest of the way.

The accommodations at the ashram were sparse; the spiritual tasks were arduous. All the disciples were Westerners who had to work hard for their keep. They did the most menial chores—cleaning lavatories, peeling vegetables, sweeping floors. All the jobs that my family’s untouchable servants had done in my youth were done by the residents there. Any Indians present were presumably the guru’s aides. They held “higher” responsibilities. The Westerners regarded their work as religious service. This fell under the category of Karma Yoga, the Yoga of “selfless labor” performed for the sake of “spiritual evolution.”

I slept in a large dormitory with about ten other girls. We were awakened at 4:00 a.m. each morning; some of the disciples gathered in meditation classes, while others involved themselves in private practice. On our first morning, the girl in the rope bed next to me woke me up. Her quiet alarm clock had sounded, making her sit bolt-upright. She then pulled her blanket over her head. She was getting herself poised in a lotus position, ready for her own brand of Yoga.

The girl sat still for quite some time, long enough for me to get comfortable and doze off to sleep again. Then she started an uncanny humming, low and monotonous. She hardly seemed to breathe in at all. She just kept blowing out one long, scary tone. It sent goose bumps up and down me. At last I could stand it no longer. I got up and watched the morning activities in the rest of the ashram.

There were those who practiced neti, the cleansing of the nose with warm salted water. The small container used could hold up to two cups of water and had a long spout. It looked rather like a strange teapot. The spout was shoved up the nostril. (It looked most uncomfortable to me.) The devotee breathed in and out, sneezing, choking, coughing.

Neti is said to cleanse the membranes inside the nose and to stimulate and strengthen the surrounding area, which includes the eyebrow center. To Hindus this is an important contact point for the anja chakra—the third eye.

Physical perversions are aspects of Kriya Yoga—the type Gandhi practiced. Perhaps it was part of the madness that had led him to administer enemas to his favorite female devotees. His weird sexual quirks had had him sleeping with nude teenage girls in an attempt to confirm his celibacy. And his extraordinary perspectives on fitness caused him to prescribe cow-dung pills for health!9

Gandhi had been a guru with his own ashram long before he became a political figure. Like a score of other god-men, he had believed that Kriya Yoga balances the psychic energies and awakens the chakras.

A young Australian girl sat next to a neti disciple as I spoke with him. Later that night she paid me an unexpected visit. Perched on a log with my rationed half-bucket of water, I was contemplating how to wash my face, teeth, hair, and underwear. Can I accomplish such a feat? I was wondering when I heard the cracking of a twig nearby. In a few seconds, I saw someone hesitantly come out of the shadows.

I recognized the girl and warmly asked her to join me. She did. There was probably about a minute of silence. Then she gathered up enough courage to say shyly, “You seem as though you have come from another planet. You’ve got such a warm and friendly glow of color all around you.”

I had learned not to laugh at such statements. I dipped my washcloth into the bucket and started wiping my face.

“You’ve got a different kind of life in you. Where are you from?” she questioned. We ended up talking for a couple of hours, until regulations caused the ashram to fall silent at 9:00 p.m.

I learned that Premananda was only twenty-one. She had been a disciple of Satyananda for five years, recruited while still at school. There are numerous branches of this guru’s ashram in many different countries. How quickly the different schools of Yoga are growing all over the world, I thought. That very morning I had read a large sign there at the ashram that said: “Yoga will emerge as a mighty world power and will change the course of world events.”10

“Do you practice all the methods of Kriya Yoga, such as Amoroli?” I asked the young girl. By that time, she trusted me.

“Well, I’m meant to do it,” she said apologetically. “But it tastes so terrible that it makes me feel sick.”

Poor girl, I thought. What a ghastly spiritual duty. Those poor devotees had to drink urine as part of their Yogic discipline. They had been taught that it contained redemptive qualities.

“Do you know what urine really is?” She shook her head. “Well,” I tried to explain, “it’s the body’s waste product. There’s nothing in it that the body needs anymore. So of course it makes you feel sick. And how can it possibly save you?”

Premananda went on to confide that one of her friends had been told to drink her guru’s urine. “I wouldn’t know what to do if that were to happen to me!” Her eyes grew wide at the prospect.

My research had shown that it was believed anything that touched the body of a guru was holy, from the dust of his feet to his dirty dishes. Drinking a guru’s bathwater is said to be enlightening. Should the guru desire sex, the disciple (whether male or female) is to look upon the act as a step up his spiritual ladder. So I knew that drinking the guru’s urine was a devotional duty of great significance.
All these specifics are spelled out in the Guru-gita, a Hindu scripture. “Meditate ceaselessly on the form of the Guru,” this ancient document commands. It also states:

[A]lways repeat his name, carry out his orders, think not of anything except the Guru. . . . Through service at the feet of the Guru the embodied soul becomes purified and all its sins are washed away.11

After a few days, we moved on to the next ashram, leaving behind many spiritual prisoners. I couldn’t help but pray for those poor victims. I also thanked God for the opportunity to speak to a handful of them. Some of the followers were closed, like the neti disciple. Others were open, like Premananda. Her guru, Satyananda, had demanded that his devotees cut themselves off from the outside world, but I had been able to encourage her to get in touch with her parents. I was able to activate her conscience regarding the rights and wrongs of some of her practices. Perhaps it would help her reconsider her commitment to a god of India.

Orthodox Hinduism teaches four stages of life: the learning stage of childhood, the stage of marital responsibilities, the stage of career obligations, and the stage of spiritual preparation for death. The Yoga disciplines teach how to cease the body’s functions, in preparation for death, or as Hindus believe, to enter into reincarnation. The traditional purpose of the Indian ashram had always been to teach people how to die through Yoga meditation.

West Goes East
It was only after the 1960s that young Westerners, inspired by the Beatles, began to flood India’s ashrams to sit spellbound at the feet of gurus. Initially, they used India’s spiritual communities as hostels. They provided cheap accommodations for the young seekers while they explored their mystical whims.

By the 1980s, their presence had changed the traditional atmosphere at many ashrams. Along with the youthful Westerners came children and a more family-oriented environment. The influx of Westerners also altered the ashrams’ structure: new requirements for ashram life and the practice of Yoga bypassed the ancient Brahmin qualifications; regardless of sex, nationality, caste, or creed, everyone was accepted. And what was once only available to elderly Hindus became available to all.

Although ashrams have been made available to outsiders, the message of the gurus and the purpose of Yoga remain unchanged. People in the West have been deceived into thinking it is the art of living; but to people in the East, it is the art of dying.

Many of the Western converts to Yoga have helped spread it in the West. One Westerner who spent time in a Hindu ashram and has had significant influence upon the Western world is Michael Ray, a Stanford University professor. Ray created the “Creativity in Business” course, which takes “much of its inspiration from Eastern philosophies, mysticism, and meditation techniques.”12 Ray describes his ashram experience:

I attended a meditation-intensive day at an ashram to support a friend. As I sat in meditation in what was for me an unfamiliar environment, I suddenly felt and saw a bolt of lightning shoot up from the base of my spine out the top of my head. It forced me to recognize something great within me . . . this awareness of my own divinity.13

Ray now tells his students they can get in touch with their “inner person” or “spirit-guide,” who will guide them through life.14 Since his visit to an ashram, Ray has passed on his Eastern wisdom to thousands through books and seminars.

Even Christianity has been indirectly affected by Ray. In 1982, Jim Collins, a speaker at Christian conferences, took Ray’s course, “Creativity in Business.” He was so inspired by the course that he wrote the foreword for Ray’s 2004 book The Highest Goal. Collins says he discovered “the path to my highest goal” by reading the book. What is this highest goal that Michael Ray speaks of? His “own divinity.” In The Highest Goal, Ray speaks openly about Eastern meditation techniques and quotes Hindu gurus such as Ram Dass, Jiddu Krishnamurti, and Swami Shantananda.

Silence: The Only True Religion?
The influence of Eastern thinking and Yoga upon the West continues in many forms. In October 2007, television talk-show host Oprah Winfrey introduced fifty million viewers to a book titled, Eat, Pray, Love. The book, written by Elizabeth Gilbert, recounts how she left her husband and former way of life and found what she came to call the only true religion: the silence. Her journey took her around the world, and finally to India where she learned to meditate in an ashram.

Gilbert explained that the first step in her journey was to go on an eating binge in Italy:

I would not have been able to physically do the Yoga, the meditation, the hard rigor of spiritual work. So I went to Italy first and I ate my guts out for four months.15

From Italy, Gilbert traveled to India where she learned to meditate:

There was something about that Yoga path that really appealed to me—and you do that through silence and the discipline of meditation—and I really wanted to go pursue that full out.

None of this works without stillness . . . One of the great teachings that I learned in India is that silence is the only true religion.16

During her time at the ashram, Gilbert had a meditative experience in which she says, “the scales fell from my eyes and the openings of the universe were shown to me.”17

Interestingly, Gilbert related a story of how a newfound meditating friend experienced “colors,” “sounds,” “whirling,” and “twirling” during his meditation times.18 This is a description of the kundalini (meaning serpent power in Hinduism) effect experienced by Yoga practitioners. Kundalini is said to be lying dormant, coiled at the base of the spine. When it is awakened and encouraged up the spinal passage it ultimately achieves cosmic union with the third eye. The serpent’s journey passes through ‘chakras’ or psychic centers. And mystical powers are aroused as it progresses. A similar experience led to mystic and Catholic priest Philip St. Romain hearing the voices of other beings, which he called his “inner adviser[s].”19

Eat, Pray, Love was on the New York Times Best Sellers List for over 200 weeks and has sold over ten million copies thus far. Sadly, a popular Christian writer and speaker, Anne Lamott, wrote an endorsement for the book, which sits on the back cover. Lamott is best known for her own book, Traveling Mercies. Of Eat, Pray, Love she says: “This is a wonderful book, brilliant and personal, rich in spiritual insight.”20 But the “spiritual insight” from Gilbert’s book is the same “insight” the Hindu gurus teaching Yoga in India have been passing along to the masses for centuries.

The aim of all Hinduism is to escape the hopeless cycle of reincarnation, wherein the soul passes on from body to soul, to body to soul, over and over again. The purpose of Yoga is to prepare a person to cut off the relationship between himself and the physical world, in preparation for death. He is trained to stop his life processes, to stop thinking, to stop the senses, to stop breathing. Hindus believe the escape from all this living and dying is through Yoga.

Returning to India after thirteen years as a Christian on a research team, I was able to recognize how complicated and contradictory the philosophy of Hinduism really is. Through Yoga, the practitioner trains himself to slow down and eventually stop his life processes. Even the breathing exercises taught in Yoga are not intended to be a health benefit. They are not designed to enable one to breathe more efficiently, but to control one’s breathing. The purpose is to enable one to slow the breathing down to a minimum in order to stop it one day altogether. Yoga’s gift is merely a form of suicide.

In contrast, Jesus said He came to give those who follow Him life. He is the antithesis of death—His resurrection is a powerful illustration of this:

I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. (John 11: 25, 26)

Source: Lighthouse Trails Research Ministry

Endnotes
1. Upasana Bhat, “Prostitution ‘increases’ in India” (BBC News, Delhi, July 3, 2006, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5140526.stm).
2. Robert I. Friedman, “India’s Shame: Sexual Slavery and Political Corruption Are Leading to An AIDS Catastrophe” (The Nation, Vol. 262, No. 14, New York, April 8, 1996).
3. Central Board of Film Certification (Government of India, http://www.cbfcindia.tn.nic.in).
4. G.B. Singh, Gandhi: Behind the Mask of Divinity (Prometheus Books, 2004), p. 76.
5. “Population of India,” from http://www.indianchild.com/population_of_india.htm.
6. List of countries by GDP (nominal): taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal), the CIA’s World Factbook for 2007.
7. “Work Among Children” (South Asian Council for Community and Children in Crisis, http://www.sac-ccc.org/2006/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=16&Itemid=33).
8. Ibid.
9. Richard Grenier, “The Gandhi Nobody Knows” (“Commentary,” March 1983, published monthly by the American Jewish Committee, New York, NY, http://history.eserver.org/ghandi-nobody-knows.txt).
10. Quote by Satyananda Saraswati, accessed at http://www.7centers.com/10daytransformation.html.
11. The Gura Gita passages, accessed at: http://www.srinannagaru.com/articles/gurugita/gurugita.pdf.
12. Michael Ray, Creativity in Business (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., Inc, 1986, 1st Edition), back flap.
13. Michael Ray, The Highest Goal (San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 2004), p. 28.
14. Michael Ray, Creativity in Business, op. cit., p. 37.
15. Elizabeth Gilbert, quotes from Oprah Winfrey’s website: http://www.oprah.com/slideshow/oprahshow/slideshow1_ss_20071005_350/6.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid.
18. Ibid.
19. Philip St. Romain, Kundalini Energy and Christian Spirituality (Crossroad Pub. Co., 1995), p. 39.
20. Anne Lamott, on the back cover of Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert.

True Conquerors

“…those that forgive are the conquerors.”

“…those that revenge are the conquered.”

“Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” (Romans 12:21)

“Do not be overcome by evil.” Let not the evil of any provocation that is given you, or make such an impression upon you, as to dispossess you of yourselves, to disturb your peace, to destroy your love, to ruffle and discompose your spirits, to transport you to any indecencies, or to bring you to study or attempt revenge. He that cannot quietly bear an injury is perfectly conquered by it.”

“But overcome evil with good, with the good of patience and forbearance*, nay, and of kindness and beneficence to those that wrong you. Learn to defeat their ill designs against you, and either change them, or at least to preserve your own peace. He that hath this rule over his spirit is better than the mighty.”

Matthew Henry -Romans 12: 19-21 *forbearance means a suspension of wrath.

May it be so in our lives,

Carl

The first question I ask skeptics about God

By Robin Schumacher, Exclusive Columnist| Monday, September 11, 2023

When I’m requested to sit down with a skeptic to talk about God, the first question I ask them is this: Do you want Christianity to be true?

You should see some of the expressions I get.

If I take the person by surprise with my question and get a panicked look, they sometimes will toss out a flippant “yes,” so I’ll then briefly explain what accepting the truth of Christianity will personally mean to them. That epiphany can cause them to backtrack like they’ve just seen a ghost.

That’s not an uncommon reaction. There are more skeptics out there than you might think who will come clean and admit they don’t want the Christian faith to be legit, even if the evidence is there.

For instance, philosopher Thomas Nagel has written: “I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope that there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.”

Charles Darwin felt the same way saying, “I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my father, brother, and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine.”

Christopher Hitchens went so far as to declare he wasn’t an atheist but an “antitheist” because he didn’t want God to exist: “I am not even an atheist so much as an antitheist … I do not wish, as some sentimental materialists affect to wish, that they were true … I am relieved to think that the whole story is a sinister fairy tale; life would be miserable if what the faithful affirmed was actually true … I cannot imagine anything more horrible or grotesque.”

When a person has a strong predisposition for not wanting something to be true, they’ll go through some of the most contorted gymnastics you’ve ever seen to squirm out of admitting its actuality, which means anything more you say on the subject will be spilled milk on the ground. As philosopher and historian Richard Weaver says in his book Ideas Have Consequences: “Nothing good can come if the will is wrong. And to give evidence to him who loves not the truth is to give him more plentiful material for misinterpretation.”

Let me give you an excellent example of this from Scripture.

I don’t want Jesus to be the Messiah

Jesus’ healing of the man born blind is one of my favorite episodes of His ministry.

Recorded in John 9, Jesus assumes the role of a supernatural vision doctor and brings sight to a man who’s lived in the dark his whole life. Verified by multiple independent witnesses that include the man himself and his parents, surely no one in their right mind could deny the miracle had taken place and, therefore, that Jesus was who He said He was, right?

Wrong.

The verdict of the Jew’s religious body labeled Jesus a “sinner” (vs. 24). Come again? How in the world would they reach that conclusion? Perhaps because He healed the man on a Sabbath?

No, that was just a spur-of-the-moment excuse. John’s biography of Christ says the Jewish leaders had already made up their minds about Jesus: “… for the Jews had already agreed that if anyone confessed Him to be Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue” (vs. 22). Acknowledging Jesus’ miracle would be tantamount to an admission of His identity.

So, the Jews didn’t want Jesus to be the Messiah so therefore He couldn’t be the Messiah and nothing was going to change that predetermined decree. Not even an undeniable miracle.

We see the same unwillingness to admit the truth about God today.

OK, every drop of science today says the universe isn’t eternal and you can’t get something from nothing but hold on now, that doesn’t mean there’s a Creator.

Sure, a child can walk into a cave, see primitive drawings on a wall, and conclude an intelligent being vs. time and erosion was responsible, but I’m going to follow skeptics like Francis Crick who, when confronted with the massive design evidence in biological life, remarked: “Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved.”

Yes, something can’t give what it doesn’t have, but I’m still going to believe that an impersonal, amoral, meaningless, and purposeless universe accidentally created personal moral beings who are obsessed with meaning and purpose.

If that’s your attitude, you can certainly accept those things if you want, but in my opinion, it takes far more faith to believe in them than in God. This brings us back to the first question I ask skeptics…

If you deny God’s existence, is it because you don’t want Christianity to be true?

If so, why? Come on now, be honest. What’s really the reason?

Maybe you’re like Nagel, Darwin, or Hitchens and, for selfish reasons, don’t want the moral or other impositions a Creator brings to the table. Or … maybe, it’s because it seems too easy; too awesome to be true?

G. K. Chesterton thought this might be the case when he wrote, “What the denouncer of dogma really means is not that dogma is bad; but rather that dogma is too good to be true.”

It’s not.

That’s why Blaise Pascal offered this advice to those speaking about Christianity to others: “Make religion attractive, make good men wish it were true, and then show that it is. Worthy of reverence because it really understands human nature. Attractive because it promises true good.”

Of course, wanting something to be true doesn’t mean that it is, but in the case of Christianity, doing what Pascal said and showing that it really is true really isn’t that difficult. Plus, I don’t know anyone who isn’t eager for some “true good” these days, do you?

Robin Schumacher is an accomplished software executive and Christian apologist who has written many articles, authored and contributed to several Christian books, appeared on nationally syndicated radio programs, and presented at apologetic events. He holds a BS in Business, Master’s in Christian apologetics and a Ph.D. in New Testament. His latest book is, A Confident Faith: Winning people to Christ with the apologetics of the Apostle Paul.

Source: Christian Post

‘De-conversions’ and the knowledge of the truth

By Rob Schwarzwalder, CP Guest Contributor| Monday, September 11, 2023

Recently, I watched a video by a young former pastor who has renounced his Christian faith. He was gracious and not hostile toward evangelicals. Rather, he explained why he had jettisoned his relationship with Jesus.

The reason came down to this: How could a loving God reject people who were sincere in whatever faith they held? Would He truly condemn them because they understood Him differently than those professing faith in Jesus Christ as their Savior and Lord?

In a word, this young man’s issue was not the historical credibility of the resurrection of Jesus or the reliability of the Exodus narrative. Instead, he was offended by the idea that a God of mercy would not welcome into eternal life everyone who seemed to be earnest in whatever faith they have.

Put simply, this former pastor decided to create a new god, one in his own image.

In reading various “de-conversion” stories, accounts by and about people who have left their once-vibrant Christian faith, I’m struck by this persistent theme. It’s not about the reasonableness of Christianity, its intellectual coherence, or the credibility of its propositional claims. Rather, the “Evangelicals” come to a point where their dislike of certain doctrines or practices emboldens them to abandon their walks with Christ. They jettison their faith because it does not comport with their preferences. Or, put another way, the God of Scripture is not Who they want Him to be.

Former evangelical pastor Rob Bell turned from biblical faith several years ago by denying the reality of Hell. None of us like to imagine people suffering for all eternity. It seems excessive and even inconsistent with the nature of the God Who is love. Yet God is also holy, infinitely pure, and therefore rightfully enraged by our sin. He cannot turn a blind eye to human evil.

In sum, God is not like us. He cannot denigrate the purity of His character by acting as though our transgressions really aren’t a big deal, a grandfather in the sky who pats us on the shoulder and tells us to behave a little better. And that’s the sticking point: the eternal Triune God is not concerned with conforming to our expectations. His character is not malleable, and He is not accountable to us for what He does.

Consider the story of Job. God allows Job’s entire family to be murdered, his vast wealth stolen, and his health broken. Job calls out to God, demanding to know why He has permitted these things given that he, Job, has been so faithful to Him. God is uncompelled to justify Himself to Job. Instead, He says, “Will the faultfinder (Job) contend with the Almighty? Let him who reproves God answer it” (Job 40:1).

Similarly, when Paul debates with an imaginary rhetorical opponent about God’s sovereignty and human free will, the apostle does not try to dissect something beyond man’s grasp. Instead, he affirms that “there is no injustice with God” and asks, “Who are you, o man, to answer back to God?” (Romans 9:14, 20).

But this same God is infinitely loving and desires no one to perish but all to come to repentance and faith in His Son (II Peter 3:9). This is why He invites us into relationship with Himself. In His great, undeserved kindness, God has revealed Himself to us. “His invisible attributes, namely, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made,” Paul asserts (Romans 1:20). His power, intelligence, and love are displayed in a world that is complex, ordered, and abundant. The heavens, “the work of His fingers,” declare His glory (Psalms 8:4, 19:1).

He has revealed Himself in our very natures, with the weight of moral duty “written on our hearts” (Romans 2:15) and eternity placed within them (Ecclesiastes 3:11). He has revealed His character and desires, His demands, and His offer of everlasting life, in the pages of text composed by numerous men over the course of many centuries. The Bible is His written revelation.

Most profoundly, He has revealed Himself in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of Man and Son of God, sinless and righteous, Who took the penalty for sin we deserve as He died on the cross and Whose resurrection heralded His victory over sin, death, and the devil. Trusting in Him and Him alone for forgiveness, we receive life, eternal life, that He alone can give.

This is news so grand that it invites adoration of the One offering it. It should create in us a longing to know and follow Him, not turn our backs on Him because He does not seek to appease our finite indignation about things we can’t grasp. Would you really want to serve a God so eager to be liked He debases His majesty to plead for our approval?

“A man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship Him,” wrote C.S. Lewis, “than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word ‘darkness’ on the walls of his cell.” He is Who He is and invites us to know Him — and that’s the best news of all.

Originally published at The Washington Stand.

Source: The Christian Post

Rest and Satisfaction

God has so created man, that he does not find complete rest and satisfaction until his entire being is swallowed up in the sweet will of God.

Jesus told his disciples what makes “life” worthwhile and satisfying:

“For whoever would desire to save his soul, will lose it. But whoever will lose his soul for My sake and the gospel, will save it. For what shall it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul? For what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? (Mark 8: 35-37)

Being properly related to Him as our Lord and Savior and to His mission, the gospel, brings our soul into rest and satisfaction in this world of unrest and dissatisfaction.

God has so created man, that he does not find complete rest and satisfaction until his entire being is swallowed up in the sweet will of God.

Some translations use “life” instead of “soul” in this verse. But ‘the Greek word is psuche which refers not to one’s physical existence (bios) and its need but to a person’s soul which is the part of man that wills, thinks, and feels, or in other words, to the will power, the reason, and the emotions, to the personality with all his activities, hopes, and aspirations.’ (Wuest)

It is interesting to me that I Peter 5: 8 warns us to ‘Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls about like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour’. ‘Devour’ means “to drink down or swallow up’.

If we allow the enemy to swallow us up, we will spend our lives trying to gratify our soul… and the flesh. We will lose that which alone makes the activity of the soul, worthwhile and satisfying; a biblical relationship with the only true God and Jesus, His Son.

Who has swallowed you up? God or the devil?

Carl

Source: compiled from Kenneth S. Wuest’s study of Gospel of Mark.

The Value of Your Soul

Ponder how valuable your soul must be for Satan to tirelessly pursue it, and the King to lay down his own life for it.

“The Bible Is a Dirty Book”: Unbelief and Hatred for the God of the Bible

JUNE 29, 2023

KASPARS OZOLINS

This month, Loren Seibold, editor of Adventist Today, wrote a provocatively titled piece: “The Bible Is a Dirty Book: …which also contains the words of eternal life.” This title, while clearly intended to grab attention, in no way exaggerates the author’s true feelings toward Scripture. For as I read it, I was taken aback by the content no less than I was shocked by the title. Thus it is that the formerly feigned reverence for the Word of God by progressive Adventists gives way to unveiled contempt.

Seibold’s article gives some initial examples of explicit wording and sexually graphic content from Scripture, before moving on to his real objection to the Bible (what he calls “the worst pornography”): its graphic violence. Particularly objectionable to the author is the fact that God is portrayed as commanding the Israelites to slaughter their enemies, seemingly indiscriminately. Seibold cites Deuteronomy 20:16–18 as an example (in the outdated KJV for maximum effect):

But of the cities of these people, which the Lord thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth: But thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee…

The three dots at the end of the quotation conceal the entirety of verse 18. This was probably done by Seibold in order to make God’s command appear as unreasonable and offensive to modern ears as possible. The inhabitants of these cities were decreed by God for destruction “that they may not teach you to do according to all their abominable practices that they have done for their gods, and so you sin against the LORD your God” (v. 18). Sin is deadly, and a deadly serious matter, at that. But that’s not at all how a modern religious person would view these things.

Seibold is equally incensed at another passage, Numbers 31:17–18:

Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man by lying with him. But all the young girls who have not known man by lying with him keep alive for yourselves.

His response is incredulous, outraged, and mocking: “Seriously? God said you should ‘keep the little girls alive for yourselves’? Since their virginity is particularly noted—uh, what exactly did God intend you to do with them?” Seibold completely leaves out the entire context of Numbers 31, namely that it was commanded as a response to the Midianites’ incitement to sexual sin and spiritual adultery at Baal Peor (Numbers 25).

God did not command the Israelites to keep alive little girls for the perverse satisfaction of Israelite men.

God did not command the Israelites to keep alive little girls for the perverse satisfaction of Israelite men. Instead, this passage protects the innocent Midianite women who had not participated in this horrific sin against the Israelites. However, it seems that Seibold does not care about these details, but is instead trying to drive home his point: The Bible is a dirty book.

A Christian attitude toward Scripture

I routinely tell my students in class that it is right for believers to wrestle with challenging issues in Scripture, such as the highly controversial “Canaanite genocide” issue. When we read the text faithfully and contextually, good solutions often present themselves, as shown above. But even when we may not get the full picture, or when the solution is not as satisfactory as we might wish, the Bible’s inner theological coherence keeps us grounded.

I routinely tell my students in class that it is right for believers to wrestle with challenging issues in Scripture, such as the highly controversial “Canaanite genocide” issue.

God is the author of all life. God gives life, and takes life. God has the right and prerogative, as Creator, to take human life (especially in a context of human sin and rebellion). Furthermore, God has the right to use human instruments as a chosen vehicle of divine justice. Governments are charged with carrying out God’s judgment, for example (Rom 13:4). So the difference between vigilante vengeance and legitimate justice is partly due to whether or not God has authorized a particular agent (such as the Israelites) to carry out his judgment.

Noted Old Testament scholar Tremper Longman helpfully describes some of what is going on in these difficult narratives: “We should not be amazed that God ordered the death of the Canaanites, but rather we should stand in amazement that he lets anyone live. The Conquest [of Canaan] involves the intrusion of the ethics of the end times, the consummation, into the period of common grace. In a sense, the destruction of the Canaanites is a preview of the final judgment.” Notice that the Israelite conquest represents something out of the ordinary. But sooner or later, judgment will come to all sinners, hence our dire need for the gospel. Listen to the sobering words of the Lord Jesus, in response to the crowds who told him about a horrible thing that Pilate had done to some Galileans (Luke 13:2–5):

Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.

One day God will set to right every injustice. But that includes the injustice of every sinner, both great and small. That is why these stories about God’s righteous judgment being executed in this life ought to fill us with wonder at the gospel. They ought to make us love the Savior who bore our own judgment in his body so that not one drop of condemnation would fall upon those who believe.

This is what I mean by a Christian attitude toward Scripture. It is fine to have unresolved questions, to seek answers from the text, to wrestle with Scripture. But it is never right for a Christian to question Scripture’s trustworthiness or its goodness, because to do so is to question the trustworthiness and goodness of its Author. There is a very particular attitude toward Scripture which God has promised to honor: “But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my Word” (Isa 66:2).

An unbelieving attitude toward Scripture

If you dig down deep enough (though it is perhaps surprising to some), one key aspect of false religion and unbiblical worldviews is an unmistakable hatred for the God of the Bible and for what the God of the Bible has said in his Word. I said “dig down” because sometimes this reality is hard to uncover, though it truly is there. Some individuals, after reading Seibold’s article, might counter that he doesn’t really hate God, only that he has misunderstood what the Bible actually claims about God and his interactions with human beings.

While I do think Seibold has twisted the sense of some of the passages he cites in his article, he seems to have a much bigger and fundamental issue with the Bible than merely the odd verse. Listen to his fairly clear evaluation of Scripture:

Someone is going to say here, “You’re trashing the Bible.” No, I’m trashing one very bad way of reading it. The Bible contains the words of eternal life, but not every word in the Bible is a word of eternal life. Much of it is terribly hard to understand—but even when understood, there’s a surfeit of really bad theology, a horrible lack of respect for human life, and much that is utterly irrelevant to spiritual growth. In its pages some great “holy men of God” did convey to us the astonishing love of God and God’s desire to save us. But it appears some of the words in the Old Testament and Revelation were written by angry, vengeful men—or, in Ezekiel’s case, possibly even mentally ill men.

Things are even further clarified when one pays careful attention to the author’s use of pronouns throughout the article:

“[this] surely isn’t inspired by my God”
“a God worthy of our worship has to be better than the god [sic] pictured in Numbers 31:17-18.”
“our God isn’t always accurately depicted in the book that was written about him.”

Those are fairly shocking admissions. Sometimes Seibold seems to even move past the idea of the God of the Bible merely being a literary invention of its authors: “Undoubtedly some angry person thought God felt that way, but I’d want nothing to do with a God who actually thought that was a good idea [emphasis added].” And again: “It is impossible for me to believe that God insisted on so much violence—and if God did, that’s not a God I can worship or regard as holy in any way [emphasis added].”

If Seibold hates the God of Scripture, just what sort of God does he profess to worship? What are his criteria for sorting through those parts of this “dirty book” he can accept?

If Seibold hates the God of Scripture, just what sort of God does he profess to worship? What are his criteria for sorting through those parts of this “dirty book” he can accept? His instructions at the end begin with a summary statement: “[T]o be a holy and godly person takes more than just following the Bible.” Ultimately, he claims “we Christians must read it through the lens of Jesus.” In fact, Seibold explicitly sets up a sharp contrast between Jesus and the God of the Old Testament:

When Jesus said, “If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father,” he was correcting the Old Testament. He was illustrating, by his life, that that picture of God was erroneous. That’s why he didn’t say, “If you’ve seen what the Father did in the Old Testament, well, that’s what I’m like.” Because he wasn’t.

Nevertheless, even Jesus can be a fallible guide to what Seibold’s God is like. For among his illustrations of the Bible as a “dirty book” is even a passage from the New Testament (Revelation 19:19–21). This prompts him to lament: “The New Testament, which introduces us to the wonderful figure of Jesus, is not entirely free of taint in this regard either.”

Ultimately, the only fully reliable guide to what Loren Seibold’s God is like is Seibold himself (along with his like-minded Adventist friends). The technical term for this mode of thinking is idolatry.

The Doctrine of Scripture and the Doctrine of God

The rejection of the trustworthiness of Scripture is not peculiar to progressive Adventism, but lies at the very heart of the entire movement, as its prophetess acknowledges:

The Bible is written by inspired men, but it is not God’s mode of thought and expression. It is that of humanity. God, as a writer, is not represented. Men will often say such an expression is not like God. But God has not put Himself in words, in logic, in rhetoric, on trial in the Bible. The writers of the Bible were God’s penmen, not His pen. Look at the different writers (Ye Shall Receive Power, p. 225).

Adventists can (and do) make adamant claims about Ellen G. White’s high view of Scripture, as did GC President Arthur Daniells, at her funeral in 1915: “No Christian teacher in this generation, no religious reformer in any preceding age, has placed a higher value upon the Bible.” But White’s teaching of “thought inspiration” is not an isolated phenomenon. It is fundamentally linked to her vast universe of writings that present an alternative worldview (the Great Controversy), an alternative god (“the three great worthies”), and an alternative salvation (the Three Angels’ messages).

The more fundamental reality of false religious systems is not their faulty doctrine of Scripture. It is their faulty doctrine of God.

The more fundamental reality of false religious systems is not their faulty doctrine of Scripture. It is their faulty doctrine of God. And at the very heart of a faulty doctrine of God is a rejection and hatred of the God of the Bible. As Calvin famously stated: “When the Bible speaks, God speaks.”

To reject the words of the Bible is not merely to claim to have a different hermeneutic; it is to reject the God of the Bible Himself. †

Kaspars Ozolins

Kaspars Ozolins was born in Latvia to an Adventist family. They moved to Los Angeles where Kaspars attended Adventist elementary and high schools in Glendale, California, and his father was an Adventist pastor. He met Ieva, his wife, while studying in Latvia before pursuing a doctorate at UCLA in historical linguistics. After Kaspars completed an M. Div. at The Master’s Seminary in Sun Valley, California, he served as a research associate at Tyndale House in Old Testament and the Ancient Near East. He is now on the faculty at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary as Assistant Professor of Old Testament Interpretation.

God And The “Trans “Movement

Apostle Paul wrote the following about the Old Testament:

Now these things happened as examples for us, that we should not crave evil things, as they also craved.

And do not be idolaters, as some of them were; as it is written, “THE PEOPLE SAT DOWN TO EAT AND DRINK, AND STOOD UP TO PLAY.”

Nor let us act immorally, as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in one day.

Nor let us try the Lord, as some of them did, and were destroyed by the serpents.

Nor grumble, as some of them did, and were destroyed by the destroyer.

Now these things happened to them as an example, and they were written for our instruction, upon whom the ends of the ages have come.

Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.

In I Corinthians 10: 6-12, Paul is telling the Corinthian believers, who are mainly Gentile believers, that they need to pay attention to the Old Testament. Not so they can learn how to be saved by the Jewish law (no one was ever saved by keeping the law) but so they could receive instruction on how to live a life pleasing to God avoiding the snares of satan’s world with their deadly, eternal consequences.

Often things that displease God are called an “abomination”. An abomination ‘when used with reference to God, this nuance of the word describes people, things, acts, relationships, and characteristics that are “detestable” to him because they are contrary to His nature ‘ (Vines). Something that is “detestable” is ‘arousing or meriting intense dislike’ (Webster).

Pastor W. C. Campbell-Jack, a Christian Apologist, retired Church of Scotland minister and now pastor of the Free Church of Scotland, shares the following Old Testament instructions concerning the “trans” movement.

“Another basic principle of Scriptural interpretation is that we should compare Scripture with Scripture; thus protecting us from going off on a wild goose chase of our own devising. When we look at the rest of the Bible, we find passages which directly prohibit making yourself look like the opposite sex. Crossing sexual boundaries is explicitly forbidden.

Deuteronomy 22:5 tells us that men shall not put on women’s clothing and that women should not wear men’s. The person who does this is an abomination to the Lord. We should be clear that this does not mean that women should not wear trousers or men kilts….What is forbidden is the attempt to appear as an actual member of the opposite sex.” (Source: Berean Call)

Carl

Satellite Imagery & The Garden of Eden

…. there are currently no archaeological data for the garden of Eden. However, scholars have attempted to deduce its location from the evidence in the biblical account, which names four rivers associated with the river flowing through Eden (Genesis 2: 10-14).

Two of those rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates, are presumed to be the same as those known to us today, as is the location of the country (Assyria) identified with the Tigris. The identity of the other two is less certain. One, the Pishon, is said to wind through the land of Havilah, where there is gold, aromatic resin, and onyx. The other is the Gihon, said to flow through the land of Cush.

Many different locations for these rivers and of Eden have been proposed. Astronomer Hughes Ross has made a suggestion informed by satellite imagery:

“The details here point in the direction of the Hejaz, a mountainous region in the west central part of Saudi Arabia. This 6,000-foot range contains the only known source of workable gold in the region. The land of Cush has long been identified with Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa. Given that the Bab el Mandeb strait and much of the Red Sea were dry near the end of the last ice age (between 20,000 and 7,000 BC), Cush would have included the mountains in Arabia’s southwest corner…. Satellite imagery reveals the dry beds of two major rivers that once flowed from west-central and southwestern Arabia into the Persian Gulf region. (Ross, NG, 97-8)”

Ross notes that the one location where these two rivers could come together with the Tigris and Euphrates is in the Persian Gulf region. (Ross, NG, 99) Archaeological finds on the northern coast of the Arabian Peninsula and on islands in the Persian Gulf, notably the island of al-Bahrain, are associated with the ancient kingdom of Dilmun*. (Britannica, s. v. “Dilmun”) Interestingly, ANE** literature refers to the land of Dilmun as an ancient paradise reminiscent of Eden. (Arnold and Bayer, RANE, 15-19)

Josh McDowell & Sean McDowell, Evidence That Demands A Verdict (Thomas Nelson, 2017) pp. 438-439

This side of heaven, we will never know exactly where the Garden of Eden was located. But the Lord and you can turn your heart into a paradise as you walk with Him through this world. And when you exit this life, He is going to take you to Paradise to be with Him forever.

Carl

** Dilmun: Sumerian name of an ancient independent kingdom that flourished c. 2000 BCE, centred on Bahrain Island in the Persian Gulf. Dilmun is mentioned as a commercial centre in Sumerian economic texts of the late 4th millennium BCE, when it was a transshipment point for goods between Sumer and the Indus Valley. Copper and a variety of other goods, including stone beads, precious stones, pearls, dates, and vegetables, were shipped to Sumer and Babylonia in return for agricultural products. (Britannica)

**Ancient Near East literature

Martin Luther: God Hater to God Lover

Martin Luther was one of the famous Reformers in the Protestant Reformation. He unknowingly started the Reformation on October 31, 1517.

There was a time in his life when he confessed:

“I actually hated the righteous God who punishes sinners…”

In 1505 he became a Roman Catholic monk by entering a monastery at Erfurt in Saxony Germany. In 1533 he described his life as a monk:

“I was indeed a pious monk and kept the rules of my order so strictly that I can say: “If ever a monk gained heaven through monkery, it should have been I. All my monastic brethren who knew me will testify to this. I would have martyred myself to death with fasting, praying, reading, and other good works had I remained a monk much longer.”

Luther was a very pious, moral, Roman Catholic monk trying to work his way to heaven. A heaven which is ruled by a righteous God who he confessed hating.

Why did Luther hate God? At the root of it was his ignorance. Apostle Paul writing about the unbelieving Gentiles says they are “excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in” them (Ephesians 4:17-18). Such was Luther’s case. The following explains, in his own words, what happened:

“Meanwhile, that same year I had again turned to the exposition of the Psalter, confident that after the academic treatment of the Epistles of St. Paul to the Romans and Galatians and the Epistle of the Hebrews I was better trained. Certainly, I had been possessed by an unusually ardent desire to understand Paul in his Epistle to the Romans. Nevertheless, in spite of the ardour of my heart I was hindered by the unique word in the first chapter: ‘The righteousness of God is revealed in it.’ I hated that word ‘righteousness of God’, because in accordance with the usage and custom of the doctors I had been taught to understand it philosophically as meaning, as they put it, the formal or active righteousness according to which God is righteous and punishes sinners and the unjust.”

“As a monk I led an irreproachable life. Nevertheless, I felt that I was a sinner before God. My conscience was restless, and I could not depend on God being propitiated by my satisfactions [good works]. Not only did I not love, but I actually hated the righteous God who punishes sinners…. Thus a furious battle raged within my perplexed conscience, but meanwhile I was knocking at the door of this particular Pauline passage, earnestly seeking to know the mind of the great Apostle.”

“Day and night I tried to meditate upon the significance of these words: ‘The righteousness of God is revealed in it, as it is written: The righteous shall live by faith.’ Then, finally, God had mercy on me, and I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that gift of God by which a righteous man lives, namely, faith and that this sentence -The righteousness of God is revealed in the Gospel – is passive, indicating that the merciful God justifies us by faith, as it is written: ’The righteous shall live by faith.’ Now I felt as though I had been reborn altogether and had entered Paradise. In the same moment the face of the whole of scripture became apparent to me. My mind ran through the scriptures, as far as I was able to recollect them, seeking analogies in other phrases, such as the work of God, by which he makes us strong, the wisdom of God, by which he makes us wise, the strength of God, the salvation of God, the glory of God.”

“Just as intensely as I had before hated the expression ‘the righteousness of God’, I now lovingly praised this most pleasant word. This passage from Paul became to me the very gate to Paradise.”*

In another place Luther writes about this experience,

“At first whenever I read or sang the Psalm: ‘Deliver me in thy righteousness’, I was frightened, and I hated the words ‘the righteousness of God’ and ‘the work of God’, for I believed that the righteousness of God meant his severe judgment. Were he to save me accordingly, I should be damned for ever. But the words ‘the mercy of God’ and ‘the help of God’ I liked better. Thanks to God, when I understood the matter and learned that the righteousness of God means that righteousness by which he justifies us, the righteousness bestowed as a free gift in Jesus Christ, the grammar became clear and the Psalter more to my taste.”*

And in one last place he writes,

“These words ‘righteous’ and ‘righteousness of God’ struck my conscience as flashes of lightning, frightening me each time I heard them: if God is righteous, he punishes. But by the grace of God, as I once mediated upon these words in this tower and heated room: The righteous shall live by faith’ and the ‘righteousness of God’, there suddenly came into my mind the thought that if we as righteous are to live by faith, and if the righteousness of faith is to be for salvation to everyone who believes, then it is not our merit , but the mercy of God. Thus my soul was refreshed, for it is the righteous of God by which we are justified and saved through Christ. These words became more pleasant to me. Through this word the Holy Spirit enlightened me in the tower.”*

As we can read, Luther goes from a ‘God hater’ to a ‘God lover’ once he is no longer ignorant of the following verse:

‘For in it [the gospel] is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, The just shall live by faith.’ (Romans 1:17)

Martin was no longer “excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in” him. By the Lord’s revelation to him, Martin went from being a lost Roman Catholic monk seeking to be saved by his good works to a person who was saved by God’s grace by faith ALONE. He says this truth ‘became to me the very gate to Paradise’. Now he could participate in the life of God with a clear conscience knowing that his sins were forgiven in Christ. He realized his good works amounted to nothing when it came to being saved from the guilt and penalty of his sin.

All of his anger and hate toward God was due to not properly understanding God’s ‘righteousness’. The Roman Catholic doctors who had taught Luther only understood one side of the ‘righteousness’ coin. In His heart Luther knew he was a sinner and he had been taught that this “righteousness” was responsible for God punishing sinners and the unjust. And he said he hated this righteous God because of this.

Unfortunately, Luther’s teachers had received an unbiblical, false work-based salvation from their Roman Catholic ancestors and could not teach Luther the other side of the “righteous” coin. This being that when sinners place their faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ on the Cross ALONE for salvation, this very righteousness is imputed or credited to their account and thereby they stand before God legally as if they had never sinned. All because of what Jesus Christ did and they are now in Him through their faith and God’s grace.

His teachers did not believe this.

The believer becomes the ‘righteousness of God’ in-Christ Jesus (II Corinthian 5:21). All of God’s moral excellence and virtue is imputed or credited to the believing sinner’s account. Hallelujah!

What about you?

Is your ignorance about God hindering your relationship with Him?

Do you have a clear conscience before Him or in your heart of hearts you know something is not right, maybe very, very wrong.

Have you ever checked God and Jesus Christ out by reading the New Testament yourself? If not, I encourage you to do so.

If your relationship with the God of the Holy Bible needs a correction or is non-existent, I pray that you will not rest until you are at peace with God the Father through Jesus Christ alone.

“The Lord … is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.” (Peter – II Peter 3: 9)

Carl

* Martin Luther quotes from Hans Hillerbrand, Editor, The Reformation – A Narrative History Related by Contemporary Observers And Participants (Baker Book House, 1972) pp. 27-28

Tree of Shame

He who hung the earth [in its place] hangs there,
He who fixed the heavens is fixed there,
He who made all things fast is made fast upon the tree,
The Master has been insulted,
God has been murdered, 
The King of Israel has been slain by an Israelitish hand.
O strange murder
Strange crime!
The Master has been treated in unseemly fashion,
His body naked,
Not even deemed worthy of a covering,
That [His nakedness] might not be seen.
Therefore the lights of the heaven turned away, 
And the day darkened,
That it might hide Him who was stripped upon the cross.

Melito's Homily on the Passion 
Martin Hengel, Crucifixion (Fortress Press, 1977 (English Translation)) p 21

Jesus Christ, “who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Therefore also God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him that name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE SHOULD BOW, of those who are in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. ” (Philippians 2: 5-11 emphasis added)

“Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, GOD IS NOW DECLARING to men that all everywhere should repent, because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man who He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead.”(Acts 17: 30-31 emphasis added)

Jesus Christ is both the Savior of the world who died on the tree of shame for you and me and He is also coming again as the Judge of all mankind. Every knee will bow and every tongue will confess He is Lord.

For most it will be too late. The ‘bill’ for their sins will have come due and payment is required, eternity in the lake of fire.

For others it will be the most joyous day of their lives when He comes because they have placed their faith in what Jesus did for them on this tree of shame where He paid for their sins with His precious blood.

Do you want to pay for your sins for eternity in the lake of fire or repent* and put your trust in His work of atonement for you and accept that He has already paid for your sins? Do it today if you have not already!

Even so…Come Lord Jesus!

Carl

*Repent is to change your mind about how you’re living with corresponding change in behavior.

Conversation With a Truth Seeker

As a result we are no longer to be children tossed here and there by waves, and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by the craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him, who is the head, even Christ….. (Ephesians 4: 14-15)

It is a blessed thing to see Christians who are builded up by the spirit of God and accordance with the truth. But so many always seemed to be running after some new thing, never seeming to have any discrimination. Let me give you an absurd case.

Years ago as I sat in my office in Oakland there came in through the book room a man whose very appearance betokened a heretic. He was tall and gaunt, had long flowing hair coming down over his shoulders, and a long unkept beard. He came up to where I sat writing. I did not like to be interrupted, for I felt that he was going to waste my time with some religious oddity. He said, “I gather, sir, from the books I have seen in the window that you are a truth seeker, and I thought I would come in and have a chat with you.”

“You are mistaken,” I said; “I am not a truth seeker at all.”

“Oh, you are not; may I ask why you are not?”

“Why, because, sir, I have found him who is the Way, the Truth and the Life, and therefore my seeking is at an end. Once I was a truth seeker, but now I am a truth finder, for I know Christ.”

“Well, but are there not many things that you still need to know?”

“Oh, yes; there are a great many things that I need to know, but I have found the great Teacher, and I am not going around seeking truth any longer. He instructs me through his Word.”

“Well, as for me, I am always seeking; I go anywhere and everywhere that I think I can learn more.”

“Yes,” I said, “I was reading of you in my Bible the other day.”

“Of me?”

“Yes.”

“What did it say about me?”

“It said, ‘Ever learning, but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.’”

“Why, that has no reference to me,” he said.

“Pardon me, but you said that you are always seeking and if a man is always seeking he is never finding. But, you see, those of us who know Christ have found him and have been found of him.”

Then he began to impart some of his weird gospel to me and said, “But you don’t know who I am.”

“No,” I said; “beyond what is written here I do not know who you are.”

“I am one of the 144,000 of whom you read in Revelation.”

“What tribe, please?” I asked.

“Well, the Lord knows; I don’t,” he said.

“Then you will have to excuse me for not taking your word for it and really believing that you are one of the 144,000.”

“But have you not heard that the first resurrection has already taken place?” he asked. “I am in my resurrection body.”

“Oh, I am dreadfully disappointed,” I said. “I never thought it would look like that. I thought it was to be something beautiful.”

Maybe I was a little discourteous to the poor old gentleman, but he was so indignant he turned and cursed me in the name of the Lord and tramped out knocking his shoes against the floor to shake off the dust as a witness against me.

“Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.” (II Timothy 3:7)

Source: H. A. Ironside, LITT.D, In The Heavenlies [Ephesians] (Loizeaux Brothers, 1937) pp. 197-199

If you are a truth seeker seeking to know the truth of the universe, let me point you to Jesus Christ who made the universe. He is, as revealed in the Holy Bible, The Truth. Once you meet Him, your journey will be at an end.

Speaking of Jesus, it is written:

And He is the image of the invisible God, the first born of all creation. For by Him all things were created, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities –all things have been created by Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.

And He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the first born from the dead; so that He Himself might come to have first place in everything. (Colossians 1: 15-18)

Following The Teacher,

Carl

Eric Metaxas calls on the Church to ‘wake up’ or face disastrous consequences: ‘Everything’s at stake’

By Leah MarieAnn Klett, Assistant Editor

ORLANDO — Eric Metaxas isn’t afraid to speak difficult truths into an increasingly secularized culture, and he’s issuing a clarion call to the American Church to do likewise, warning that neglecting this call will lead to disastrous consequences.

“There are many pastors and Christian leaders being silent in the face of evil today,” the bestselling author and radio host told The Christian Post. “They are not all consciously working for the devil, they are, nonetheless, effectively working for the devil because they are unaware that what they’re doing is not what God calls His Church to do.”

Metaxas penned his latest book, Letter to the American Church, out of a conviction that the Church must “wake up” to the realities of evil and stand for biblical truth. In it, he draws from both history and the Bible to highlight the need for the church to speak out against societal evils.

“There are all kinds of figures from history and in the Scripture who understand that, ‘My duty is to God, and if that makes me unpopular, if that makes me attacked, who cares?’” he said.UnmuteAdvanced SettingsFullscreenPauseUp Next

According to Metaxas, the Church’s silence on critical issues effectively aids the forces of evil.

In his book, he draws sobering parallels between the modern church and the German Church of the 1930s, in which “pastors were somehow fooled into buying the idea that … we’re not supposed to go against the governing authorities.”

“What the German church did in the ’30s, they had no idea that they were getting this stuff wrong. They had all kinds of theological reasons why they thought it was good not to comment on politics,” he said. “We now see what the results were; it was a nightmare out of the pit of Hell. The evil that was unleashed because of the silence of the German Church is part of the ugliest history imaginable.”

“We look at Germany, and it’s very easy for us to say, ‘Oh, they should have spoken out against the Nazis,’” he added. “But we have pastors today who are effectively not speaking out against the Nazis. The Chinese Communist Party is as wicked as the Nazis ever were, with infinitely greater technology. They are doing satanic things. The Uighur Muslims in China are being murdered for their organs, which can be sold for a lot of money that accrues to the Communist Party. Where is the Church on that issue? How can you not be outraged?”

The Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy author added that many Americans have been sheltered from the harsh realities faced by others in the world and thus fail to recognize the value of their freedoms and the need to defend them. Just like the German Church, he said, the American Church has grown “complacent.”

“The German Church woke up when it was too late, and evil overtook that nation in Europe,” he said. “The blame lies at the foot of the German Church. And I think the same can be said of the American Church today if we don’t wake up.”

“What we have is a blessing from God, entrusted to us to protect, to keep and to give to our children and grandchildren,” he stressed. “If you don’t get that, it just sort of drifts away. We are at a moment where it’s drifting away very quickly.”

Metaxas contended that the cultural zeitgeist and misguided interpretations of biblical principles have led to the belief that the Church should remain apolitical — an idea he dismisses as nonsensical. The Church, Metaxas said, must understand its duty to God and not prioritize personal comfort or congregational numbers over speaking the truth.

“Imagine if a pastor got up and said, ‘I have no position on slavery. I have no position on legalized racism and apartheid. I have no political position on Jim Crow laws.’ You wouldn’t go to that church. You’d say, ‘What an idiot, what a moral pygmy that he thinks that he can be a pastor and not have an opinion on those issues,’” Metaxas said.

Pastors are called to speak out on all issues that affect human lives and dignity, he stressed: “You have an obligation to speak truth on these issues,” he said. “So any pastor that has his head in the sand on these issues, God will hold him responsible.”

While avoiding controversial or divisive topics might seem appealing, the author emphasizes that it ultimately “devalues the Gospel” and hinders evangelism.

“For every person that’s going to get ticked off that you said something, there’s another person that’s going to say, ’Thank goodness somebody is saying this; I didn’t know where to look anymore.’”

People are “looking for leadership from Christians,” Metaxas said. He pointed out that pastors who have been boldly speaking out against the “lunacy” of transgender ideology, cultural Marxism, critical race theory, open borders and defunding the police have seen their congregations surge in attendance.

“Things have gotten so bad that a lot of people finally are understanding, ‘OK, maybe I missed something. Maybe we had it so good that we forgot that evil is still alive, that we haven’t defeated evil, and we have to do what God calls us to do in the midst of it, and we haven’t been doing it,’” he said.

Historically, when the Church has drifted along with culture,” it has gone “dramatically badly,” Metaxas said.

“The issues are always different issues, but the results are always the same, and the guilt is always the same. God wants us to be alive to what is happening,” he said.

“Everything’s at stake. God has always looked to His Church, and we have dramatically disappointed Him in the past. I don’t believe it’s His will that we disappoint him this time, but it really is up to individual Christians.”

Letter to the American Church is available everywhere books are sold.

Leah M. Klett is a reporter for The Christian Post. She can be reached at: leah.klett@christianpost.com

Voddie Baucham identifies 3 ‘red flags’ churches are capitulating to modern, Neo-Marxist ideology (pt. 1)

By Leah MarieAnn Klett, Assistant Editor

Prominent pastor and author Voddie Baucham has identified three signs a church is abandoning Scriptural truths for modern, Neo-Marxist ideology in a culture where truth is under attack and Christianity is increasingly marginalized.

In an interview with The Christian Post, the 54-year-old dean of theology at African Christian University in Zambia highlighted several concerning trends in modern churches that he fears are eroding the foundations of Christianity, beginning with a de-emphasis of the Bible, where there is a lack of commitment to systematically teach and exposit the Scriptures.

“There’s not a commitment to a systematic exposition of the Bible, and what we hear from the pulpit is rooted and grounded in more psychology and philosophy than text and theology,” Baucham said.

The second red flag involves the church’s alignment with post-Christian culture. Baucham noted that some leaders preach messages that resonate with the values and agendas of the secular world, including issues related to LGBTQ+ concerns.

“You begin to hear things in the church, from the pulpit, from the leadership that resonate with this post-Christian culture, for example, the LGBTQ-plus, whatever agendas,” he said.

Finally, he said apologizing for essential Christian doctrines is another red flag indicating a departure from true, biblical Christianity.

“We’re apologizing for the ‘creation myth.’ We’re apologizing for the Gospel. We’re apologizing for the Reformation. We’re apologizing for Christian morality, these sorts of things. These are some signs that things have gone very wrong,” he said.

A May 2021 survey from Evangelical pollster George Barna found that just 6% of Americans have a “biblical worldview.” Similarly, survey data compiled in January 2020 showed that only 2% of millennials hold a biblical worldview, even though 61% identify as Christian.

Baucham, who is gearing up for a revised release of his 2004 book The Ever-Loving Truth: Can Faith Survive in a Post-Christian Culture?explained that for many decades, the Western Church has assumed and then forgotten the essence of the Gospel, leading to a foundation built on shifting sand rather than the solid rock of Christ.

The ramifications of that, he lamented, are becoming increasingly visible in today’s post-Christian America.

“For a long time, because of the assumptions of the culture, one of the things that we did was we assumed the Gospel,” Baucham said. “The message of the Gospel is an offensive message in a lost and dying world. But we assumed the Gospel. Then, after we assumed the Gospel, we forgot the Gospel and we left the Gospel behind. And we begin to build churches — and really, I use that term loosely because, in many instances, they aren’t churches — and gather people based on commonalities that were not Gospel-centered. We gathered people because we liked the same kind of music or we were in the same social class. We had those things as our foundation instead of having the Gospel as our foundation.”

Baucham, who previously served as pastor of Grace Family Baptist Church in Texas, stressed that the Gospel message is considered “offensive to the world.” And, in an attempt to avoid offense, many churches have neglected its transformative power. He warned that such churches, lacking a Gospel-centered foundation, are ill-prepared for the challenges of the post-Christian era.

“In this post-Christian era, where we’re all being sort of painted with the same brush, people who have not relied on the Gospel to build solid foundations are seeing their sheep scattered. They’re really not legitimate sheep in the first place, and they also don’t really know how to respond, because the response in many instances has been, ‘No, no, no, no, we’re not like them.’ And ‘them,’ of course, are conservative, Bible-believing Evangelicals, those people who have always been vilified by the culture at large.

“But that’s not working anymore,” he said, “because it’s not enough to just not hold firmly to the truths of the Gospel and to not hold firmly to those things that the culture finds offensive. Any identification now with Christianity, which is seen as the sort of ultimate hegemonic boogeyman in modern, Neo Marxist culture, is offensive. So, a lot of people are caught off guard because of compromises that they made a long time ago that looked like they were paying off.

Baucham issued an urgent call for a bold return to the core of Christianity: the unadulterated Gospel. He emphasized the need for churches to stand firm on biblical truths without compromise, even in the face of cultural pressure and vilification.

“We need to prepare ourselves for the opposition, not only the opposition coming, but for the opposition that’s already here,” he said. “We need to know what we believe and why we believe it. We need to be prepared to give an answer to those who ask us for the reason for the hope that is in us. We need to be prepared to speak to this post-Christian culture. Finally, we need to be prepared to accept the consequences of doing so, which are unpleasant.”

The Ever-Loving Truth: Can Faith Survive in a Post-Christian Culture? will be released on Sept. 16.

Leah M. Klett is a reporter for The Christian Post. She can be reached at: leah.klett@christianpost.com

Isn’t It Narrow-Minded To Claim That Jesus Is The Only Pathway To God?

It certainly would be narrow minded if Christians were saying “Jesus is the only way because he’s my way”, or if they were just trying to edge out the competition from other religions. But this idea did not originate with some pastor or theologian. It goes back to Jesus himself. He’s the one who said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).

People who bristle at this idea are ultimately arguing with Jesus — not with the Christians who are simply trying to be faithful to his teachings.

But was Jesus narrow minded? Well, in a sense he was. In fact, in the Sermon on the Mount he said, “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it” (Matthew 7: 13-14).

If Jesus was right about this, then he was being appropriately narrow minded. He was being like parents who are narrow enough to insist that their children walk on the sidewalk and not in the street, or a doctor who limits his prescriptions to medicine that will actually help people rather than poison them, or the airline pilot who restricts his landing options to that narrow path to life called a runway, rather than trying to put the airplane down on a cornfield or a beach.

You see, we really want narrow approaches — as long as they are based on truth and point us in the direction that’s best for us.

Jesus gave us every reason to believe he was telling the truth and that he loves us enough to lead us towards forgiveness, life, and an eternity with him.

“I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. They will come in and go out, and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” JESUS in John 10:9-10

Source: Lee Strobel, The Case For Christ Answer Booklet (Zondervan, 2017), p. 35

Ex-psychic repents of ‘demonic’ fixation on numerology: ‘A desire for control’

By Nicole Alcindor, CP Reporter

Unsplash/Scott Rogerson

Two former psychics who turned away from the occult and became Christians say the New Age practice of numerology is “demonic,” “deceptive” and addictive because it can potentially lead to an unhealthy fixation on satanic influences that are far from God.

Former psychic Doreen Virtue joined ex-psychic Jenn Nizza on a recent episode of Nizza’s “Ex-Psychic Saved” podcast, where they warned listeners about what they say are the harmful effects of numerology.

Numerology is the belief in a mystical relationship between numbers and their symbolism in people’s lives and futures. Both women shared that they know firsthand how tempting practicing numerology can be when someone is lured into the practice.

“I was a psychic medium. I was not a numerologist. … But, I went to many. And then, when I would be doing psychic medium readings, numbers would be used because then, I had some sort of New Age understanding of what the demons told numerologists — what was channeled — and they would use numbers in my readings,” Nizza shared.

Even though she wouldn’t describe herself as a former numerologist, Nizza said when she was a psychic medium, she taught a divination class in which she would use numbers and specific equations that she received from demons to deliver messages to her clients.

At that time, Nizza said she desired wisdom that always seemed unattainable, and she would chase after what she believed was psychic knowledge.

“That’s what divination really is. … You’re getting information. You’re wanting control. You don’t have it. You want power. This person thinks they have power. And then, you have to go to other psychics, probably, after that, or do manifesting, and you keep going back to the problem for the solution. … That’s my story with numerology. And of course, angel numbers and so on and so forth,” Nizza shared.

Virtue said she too wanted power that always seemed out of reach.

“This is a desire for control. It’s a desire for secret wisdom and hidden information, just like the serpent offered to Eve in Genesis 3. And so, I was no different. I was looking for a way to predict the future to control the future, manifest the future,” Virtue said.

Virtue said she was led into numerology after having a detailed dream about her grandmother Pearl. Looking back now, 20 years later, she said she knows she did not really see her grandmother but rather a demon impersonating her grandmother.

After having the dream, Virtue said she was led to study Pythagoras, which led her to explore numerology.

“I learned the classical numerology, which by the way, is different for different teachers. And that’s another reason why New Age is not valid because … depending on who you talk to, five could mean ‘change’ or five could mean ‘death’ or, you know, six can mean ‘materiality’ or in the Bible, it can be ‘the mark of the beast 666.’ The same number can mean different things to different systems. So, that shows you right there that the interpretation is not valid,” Virtue said.

For her book Angel Numbers, Virtue said she would meditate on numbers and notice her thoughts and visions. And she would believe that “so-called Angels” were sending her messages. She later realized that the “angels” were really “Satan’s demons or minions” masquerading as angels of light.

“I have a BA and MA in counseling psychology and I studied, you know, human psyche. … The mind looks for patterns because it’s wanting control. So, if you notice three’s all day long, your mind is going to want to try and pigeonhole what does this mean and try and find meaning out of it in a meaningless world, meaningless universe,” Virtue explained.

“The only meaning of this universe is that it’s God’s universe. God made it and our purpose is to glorify Him, and doing divination is the opposite of glorifying God. He commanded us not to do any form of divination or look for signs or omens. That’s in the Old Testament and the New Testament. And the reason is because He loves us and doesn’t want us to be misled by the demons.”

Instead of turning to “demonic” and “occult” practices, such as, numerology, God “wants us to turn to Him for wisdom through His Word, through His book, the Bible, and not to try and lean on our own understanding,” she continued.

“It’s absolutely a trap. I followed numerology. I taught numerology. I repent and apologize that I was wrong.”

Virtue advises listeners struggling to turn away from numerology to seek Christ and surrender their sinful desires to Him.

“People all the time, ask me: ‘How do I get the obsession with numbers out of my head?’ Because once you learn these angel number patterns or numerology patterns and then, you know, let’s say you leave New Age — praise the Lord — [people in these scenarios] they have a hard time letting go of noticing the license plates, and the receipts and the telephone number patterns,” Virtue said.

“As we talked about your brain goes to patterns trying to make order out of this world. So, what you want to do with any thoughts, whether it’s sexual tension, thought or selfish thought or a hateful thought is you always want to lay that at the foot of the cross,” she continued.

“You can get on your knees and repent. Repent, of course, in Greek means metanoia, change your mind. You are apologizing to God, just like David showed us in the songs how he poured his heart out to God. He wasn’t worried about being politically correct. He was just raw with God and we want to be the same.”

Virtue said that numerology and divination are sinful acts that are punishable by God, as noted in Deuteronomy 18, Acts 16:16, Acts 19:19 and Revelation 22:15.

“What you want to do is you can ask God, … to relieve you of these recurring patterns that are in you. You can ask Him, like in Psalm 139, to ‘purify you.’ You can ask God; ‘please purify my heart. Please purify my mind. Please purify my intentions,'” Virtue advised. “We have to understand what’s a biblical thought and what’s a nonbiblical thought and take them all to God.”

Nicole Alcindor is a reporter for The Christian Post.

Use What Is Already in Place

pixabay.com/Pixel 2013

Barbed wire was invented shortly after the Civil War. Though first resisted by open range cattlemen, it eventually came to be widely used.

I recently read an article concerning large cattle ranches in Texas, California, Montana, and Kansas in the late 1800s and early 1900s using their barbed wire fences for a new technology, telephones. The telephone was invented 1876.

The XIT ranch (1885 -1912) in the Texas Panhandle covered more than 4500 square miles with three million acres enclosed by barbed wire fencing. You can imagine the communication problems cowboys on horseback faced trying to manage such a vast cattle operation. In the early 1900s a great many telephones were placed on the ranch to help solve this problem.

Where possible the top line of barbed wire on the fences was used as a telephone line. Though the service was ‘atrocious’ it did allow for quick communication concerning emergencies such as grass fires that required immediate help.

The cowboys, always an inventive lot, improved the call quality by using the broken necks of whiskey bottles and soda pop bottles to lift the wire off the fencepost to improve conductivity. This made the signal go further and clarified the voices they carried.

Historian Don Anderson, who earned a doctorate in electrical engineering from Stanford University, said that barbed wire phone systems led to the conclusion that “using whatever is already in place is smart planning”.

When rural Texas wanted to extend phone service from town to town, the engineers came up with the idea that they could use the existing rural power lines, already installed by the Rural Electrification Act and run the phone signal right through the electric lines – just at a different frequency. That saved a lot of money and brought phone service along with electricity to rural areas.

The philosophy espoused by Mr. Anderson also applies to spreading the Good News of Jesus Christ.

God wants to use ‘whatever is already in place’ in your community and state. You and I, the Christ followers, are the ‘asset’ that is already in place. We do not have to reinvent the wheel so to speak, i.e., bring in some professional person.

The hope giving message of salvation can flow through us along with all the other daily living activities that flow through us.

When we let the Holy Spirit send His power and desire through us, just like the phone current went through the barbed wire fence, it is a joyous privilege to use our hands to give someone a Gospel tract, our mouth to speak edifying words to a person who needs an encouraging word, to send our money to missionary organizations spreading the Gospel in hostile places around the world, use our money to purchase Bibles for the underground church where it is estimated each Bible brings 2-3 new believers into the church, our feet to go help hurting people who need to see the love of Jesus in action plus hear the saving message, use our resources to help the poor in our community, or do one of a million other task to tell and show people that,

‘For God so loved the world, that He gave His only beloved Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.’ (John 3:16)

May you and I be the ‘barbed wire’ for God’s love and power to flow through to reach our neighbors and fellow human beings!

May it be so,

Carl

Sources: Texas Standard article: Atrocious but efficient: How ranchers used barbed wire to make phone calls and Texas Coop Power Magazine (January 2022 issue)

‘I was dead inside’: Ex-astrologer on bold mission to slay evil, demonic forces after escaping witchcraft, New Age

By Billy Hallowell, Contributor

istock/Thanumporn Thongkongkaew

Tailah Scroggins felt dead inside. After growing up in a Christian home, she somehow fell into the occult, embracing astrology, witchcraft and the New Age.

But after embarking on a dark journey and losing the will to live, she had an incredible interaction with Jesus that changed everything.

Today, Scroggins is an online evangelist, writer, and truth-teller on a mission to help others escape evil. She recently shared her story with “Billy Hallowell’s Playing With Fire Podcast,” explaining how she was raised in a Christian home and believed in God before stumbling into the occult.

She said she was first introduced to the New Age in high school when someone she trusted in her family told her about astrology.

“They had this big … textbook of everything astrology, and they were like, ‘This describes my personality so perfectly — look what it says about you,’” Scroggins said. “I was caught off-guard, and I remember … I was like, ‘But how can this be true? If God created all of us and he made our personalities, how can a planet dictate my future or dictate my personality?’”

She said this was the first “seed of deception” the devil planted in her life, and her perspective started to shift. With her family friend stating God created astrology as a system “He put in order,” she started down what she now believes was a dangerous path.

“They provided me some explanation that was totally false, but I didn’t know the word of God enough,” Scroggins said. “I knew a lot about God, but I didn’t know … what the Bible said about the occult — about the darkness, about the battle. I just knew the good things, and so I became an astrologer.”

Scroggins spent 11 years as an astrologer, describing it as her “worldview” and “life.”

Still, she attended church and clung to some Christian ideas. She said the entire experience opened her up to “so much deception and confusion” as she lived life as a “lukewarm Christian” plagued by her occultic practices.

As Scroggins entered college, she said she was disappointed in God, feeling frustrated He hadn’t answered her wants and whims on her timeline.

“It’s spiritual immaturity,” she said of her perspective at the time. We don’t trust God’s timing, and so I’m young, I’m 18 at this time, and I’m mad — I’m mad that God didn’t open the door that I wanted Him to open, and that’s just kind of part of being a baby Christian.”

Her spiritual immaturity also led her to join in on the party lifestyle. Scroggins said “the enemy lied” and she “took his bait” and began down a negative path, getting drunk every weekend.

“The more I rebelled and lived in this party lifestyle, the more I craved astrology, the witchcraft, the divination, and all of that,” Scroggins said. “It was like this hunger exploded … it was like this black hole … I needed to be consuming it.”

She said depression soon took hold and suicidal thoughts reigned. Scroggins would find herself crying for two hours every day for no reason, as she grappled with the emptiness left by the abandonment of her relationship with the Lord.

Scroggins added, “It was like I had no reason to live.”

A family friend aware of her situation ended up intervening — and the experience brought Scroggins true healing. The woman was at Scroggins’ home one day, and she candidly spoke with the then-college student.

“She just looked at me one day, and she said, ‘Today is the day of your freedom,’ and I said, ‘OK, I don’t know what that means, but I have no will to live,’” Scroggins recalled. “I hadn’t attempted to do anything or take my life, but I was dead inside. And so I was like, ‘You can pray and do whatever you want to me because there’s nowhere else for me to go. I’m already at rock bottom,’ and so she prayed for me.”

Those invocations, which Scroggins described as “deliverance prayers,” had a profound impact. Scroggins said they “cast every spirit of death and depression out,” and she immediately felt “huge weights being lifted off.”

She now believes the entire experience was “supernatural,” leading her to a fruitful and meaningful relationship with Christ.

“The depression never came back, the suicidal thoughts never came back — ever,” she said. “It’s been over six years. I was delivered.”

Scroggins continued, “God completely healed me, set me free.”

Over time, she abandoned her occultic practices and clung close to Jesus. A few years later, though, she found herself alarmed by how many others were being enraptured by the same world she had escaped.

Scroggins said she was shocked during COVID-19 to see how interest in witchcraft, Tarot cards, crystals, and the occult exploded online.

“It grieved me because that was my story,” she said. “I was into New Age. I was into the false spirituality in witchcraft.”

Realizing she had been “set free … by Jesus,” she decided to counter occultic videos getting millions of views with content of her own that would instead point people toward Jesus.

“I was like, ‘I’m gonna share my testimony, and I’m going to expose astrology. I’m going to expose the New Age, I’m going to expose all of it,’” she said. “And I just started telling people what I went through and what God saved me from. And what came into my life when I started doing those practices — and it was all evil.”

Listen to Scroggins explain her journey and why she’s openly shared her testimony.

This article was originally published by CBN’s Faithwire.

Source: Christian Post

Seeing Eye Fish

There’s an old saying that people seldom remember how rapidly the job was done, but they do appreciate good workmanship. However, the staggering variety and number of things created by God did not limit the elegance of His fine workman-ship.

The relationship between the snapping shrimp and a fish called the goby is a good example of the Creator’s attention to the finest detail. The snapping shrimp has very poor eyesight, while the goby has excellent eyesight. Both share the same burrow, which is dug by the shrimp and guarded by the goby.

The shrimp uses the goby as a blind person uses a Seeing Eye dog. Whenever the shrimp is outside its burrow, it always keeps one antenna on the goby. The shrimp stays hidden inside the burrow if the goby should temporarily swim away. When danger approaches, the goby signals and disappears inside the burrow. The shrimp is right behind him.

Neither the goby nor the shrimp can survive without each other, so pairs are established for life when both goby and shrimp are very young. In order for this system to work, both goby and shrimp reproductive systems, which differ greatly, are synchronized so that shrimp and goby youngsters are ready to pair at the same time.

This astonishing relationship shows us how our Creator’s standards of excellence bring His love to every corner of the creation.

Prayer: Dear Father in heaven, as Your Word says, You have done all things very well. I thank You for the comfort of knowing that nothing in the creation is too unimportant for Your loving attention. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

_____

REF: Yanagisawa, Y. 1990. Strange seabed fellows. Natural History, Aug. p. 46. Photo: Gobi and shrimp – by Steve Childs CCA By 2.0

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