Tag: Protestants

5 Short Points Concerning UFOs

  1. All extraterrestrials are in for a big shock because at the end of time God says He is going to roll up the heavens like a scroll and create a new heaven and earth:

“And,
            “THOU, LORD, IN THE BEGINNING DIDST LAY THE FOUNDATION OF THE EARTH,
            AND THE HEAVENS ARE THE WORKS OF THY HANDS;

     11THEY WILL PERISH, BUT THOU REMAINEST;
            AND THEY ALL WILL BECOME OLD AS A GARMENT,

     12AND AS A MANTLE THOU WILT ROLL THEM UP;
            AS A GARMENT THEY WILL ALSO BE CHANGED.
            BUT THOU ART THE SAME,
            AND THY YEARS WILL NOT COME TO AN END.” (Hebrews 1:10-12)

and also:


But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up. 11Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, 12looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, on account of which the heavens will be destroyed by burning, and the elements will melt with intense heat! 13But according to His promise we are looking for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells. (II Peter 3:10-13 NASB)

and one more:

And I looked when He broke the sixth seal, and there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth made of hair, and the whole moon became like blood; 13and the stars of the sky fell to the earth, as a fig tree casts its unripe figs when shaken by a great wind. 14And the sky was split apart like a scroll when it is rolled up; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places. (Revelation 6: 12-14 NASB)

If there are other living beings on other planets, they are in for a big surprise when this happens. They and their “advanced civilization” are going to be rolled up and thrown away by God Almighty.

2. The strange creatures from outer space always use the latest technologies.

There is a story in Mormon folklore ( I am not Mormon) that tells of a popular man in a certain community passing away. Later one day while they are having a get together outside, a paddle-wheeler boat (latest technology at that time) comes by IN THE SKY and guess who is standing on the deck waving at everyone. You guessed it… the guy who had just died. So don’t be surprised at the fast moving planes or ships or objects. They are just using the latest technology to dazzle earthlings.

3. Space aliens will be blamed for the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of born again believers after the Rapture of the true Church has occurred.

The leaders of false, work based so-called Christian groups, such as the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, the Prophet of the Mormons plus the priest of the Hindus, Buddhist, and clerics of the Muslims, are going to need to blame someone when all the truly born again Protestants disappear in the twinkling of an eye. Their followers will clamor for an explanation. These leaders will say something like “The aliens came and got these rebels and removed them for the good of mankind.”

New spirituality believers and New Age adherents will consider the Rapture a fulfillment of what their Ascended Masters have been saying all along. These deceiving spirits are quoted as saying in channeled New Age books that those who reject their teaching will have to be dealt with or eliminated so their movement can spread and take over the earth. They will celebrate the UFOs removing these rebels from their communities.

The UFO deception will be put to good use to deceive the remaining people on earth after the Rapture.

4. Aliens are real and they are already among us.

But they are not from outer space. They are from our space. They are Satan and his demonic hordes that Jesus Christ conquered on the Cross of Calvary. You can read about Jesus Christ casting them out of people in the New Testament. His followers went forth doing the same before the Cross and after His resurrection.

When Jesus encountered people controlled by aliens (demons) the demons knew that He was the Son of God and that there was coming a day when they would be cast into a place of torment. We await that joyous day!

5. To understand how to deal with the aliens (demons) and their tactics, please read the New Testament.

You can actually read what the head alien Satan and his demonic followers said in the New Testament.

Thank you for allowing me to share these thoughts with you.

Blessed is the one who knows the true God!

Carl

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Our Only Safety – Christ Jesus

“Our only safety is to have Christ ever before us as our all-governing object; and the more steadfastly we look on Him, the more will His character be mirrored on our souls, and the more distinctly shall we reflect it to others. In looking to Him, we are enlightened; to have any other object before us is to be in blindness of popish bigotry and the clouds that arise in the Christian’s heart of self-occupation. To be true witnesses of a heavenly Christ, we must be heavenly minded, and heavenly in our ways. And heavenly-mindedness is the result, not of trying to be so, but of occupation with a heavenly Christ, according to the revelation which we have of Him, through the power of the Holy Spirit. In what direction is the eye? is always the important question, for the heart is sure to follow the eye, and the feet the heart.

The following passage may be accepted as a practical view of Christianity, both negatively and positively. “For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us, that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present world; looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and Saviour Jesus Christ; who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purifying unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works” (Titus 2: 11-14).”

Source: Andrew Miller, Miller’s Church History (PICKERING & INGLIS LTD, London 1976), p. 898

These two paragraphs express the lesson learned from the Roman Catholic pope and Emperor Philip’s attempt to kill the Reformation in the Netherlands by murdering the Protestants over a span of 40 YEARS. This occurred in the 1500s.

Christ- our only safety and hope.

Carl

Mexican Census: Evangelicals at New High, Catholics at New Low

Thanks to migration, missions, and Pentecostal flair, Protestants now make up a 10th of the population.
GRIFFIN PAUL JACKSON|
Mexican Census: Evangelicals at New High, Catholics at New Low

Image: Manuel Velasquez / Getty Images

The Catholic majority in Mexico is slipping, as Protestants surpassed 10 percent of the population in the country for the first time ever.

According to recently released data from Mexico’s 2020 census, the Protestant/evangelical movement increased from 7.5 percent in 2010 to 11.2 percent last year.

The Catholic Church has historically dominated the religious landscape across Latin America, but especially in Mexico, which ranks among the most heavily Catholic countries in the region. Today, though an overwhelming majority of Mexicans still identify as Catholic, declines are accelerating.

It took 50 years—from 1950 to 2000—for the proportion of Catholics in Mexico to drop from 98 percent to 88 percent. Now, only two decades later, that percentage has slipped another 10 points to 77.7 percent.

National church leaders attribute the boom in Protestantism to a range of factors, from the influence of Americans and fellow Latin Americans in the country to effective evangelical outreach in indigenous areas.

Pentecostalism dominates the Protestant landscape, and even many of Mexico’s historical denominations—think Baptists, Presbyterians, and Methodists—have been “pentecostalized” in some beliefs and practices, embracing energetic worship, healing, and spiritual gifts.

Nearly a million American-born people live in Mexico, as well as tens of thousands of Guatemalans and Venezuelans, and others from Central American countries. Some of them have brought evangelicalism with them, while others encounter it when they arrive in Mexico, according to Rosa A. Duarte de Markham, coordinator of the department of biblical translation at the Missionary Cooperation of Mexico (Comimex).

Markham also believes that the recent Protestant growth reflects how Mexican society longs for the sense of morality and family values upheld in evangelical churches.

“Mexico has been in mourning for several years due to enforced disappearances. Surely this has led to the search for God as a comforter, to value peace and justice,” she said. “On the other hand, the need to rescue the family nucleus has led mothers and fathers to search in the Word of God for values such as fidelity in marriage, harmony, love of children, honesty, and a healthy lifestyle.”

The 77.7 percent Catholic figure from the recent Census resembles ongoing polling on religious affiliation by Latinobarómetro, which found that the Catholic population in Mexico has hovered around 80 percent for at least 25 years.

The most popular Protestant affiliation in Mexico, according to Latinobarómetro, is nondenominational, at 3 percent of the population in 2018. Overall, Protestants are more active in their faith, with 63 percent of nondenominational Mexicans considering themselves practicing, compared to 41 percent of Catholics.

Fifty years ago, there were very few Protestants in Mexico, but missionary efforts were underway. Over the years, the population grew more committed to evangelism—particularly in areas where the Catholic Church didn’t have as prominent a presence—and the expansion over the past decade shows that their efforts have borne fruit.

“The most important thing is that the Catholic Church had a monopoly on belief for many years, and that monopoly broke most particularly after the Second World War,” said Roberto Blancarte, sociologist of religion and professor at El Colegio de México.

According to Blancarte, there were simply not enough priests in Mexico to meet the needs of all the people. At the turn of the century, there was only one priest for every 6,000 Mexicans, a staggering deficit that left a pastoral void in regions poorer and farther afield than major urban centers. Protestants stepped up to fill that void, sending pastors to rural, indigenous areas.

Today, Mexico’s northernmost states have significant Protestant populations thanks to American influence around the border. The far southern Mexican states of Chiapas and Tabasco have populations that are upwards of 35 percent evangelical, the most of any Mexican states. These are also the states with the largest indigenous populations, Blancarte points out.

“The big change was not missionaries themselves, but the translation of the Bible into native languages,” said Blancarte, referencing efforts by evangelical groups including SIL International. “That allowed many people to read the Bible directly and to have local ministers who develop, in their own language, their own services.”

Experts also saw popular Pentecostal-style worship appealing to indigenous believers’ backgrounds in ecstatic spirituality and magic, as well as ritual Catholics who still adhere to syncretistic spiritual beliefs.

For decades, the growth of Protestantism has corresponded with the decline of Catholicism in other Latin American countries, with dramatic changes in places like Honduras, Nicaragua, and Brazil. Even up until several years ago, Mexico was seen as an exception to the trend.

Now, as Protestantism rises in the majority Catholic country, so do the proportion of Mexicans without ties to organized religions. In the 2020 census, those with no religion rose from 4.7 percent to 8.1 percent. Another 2.5 percent consider themselves a believer but don’t have a religious affiliation.

The religious shifts have begun to foster a greater sense of pluralism and, for some, tolerance. They’ve also influenced the political sphere, according to Blancarte, with evangelicals becoming more visible and powerful, despite there being no monolithic evangelical voting bloc.

“We are still a minority, but we are a majority within this minority, and this gives us some force and the government is starting to look at us to see what we think about certain issues,” said Cirilo Cruz, president of CONEMEX, the National Evangelical Fellowship of Mexico.

Cruz also cautioned against the tendency to be seduced by political power for the sake of having influence and prays that evangelical leaders handle their new position in Mexican society carefully and prophetically.

“We need to be careful in regard to how we grow,” said Cruz. “That our DNA will be biblical. That our DNA will hold values, principles, and ethics emanating from the Word of our God.”

There is little data yet on the trajectory of Mexico’s Protestant community during the ongoing coronavirus health crisis, but church leaders have been adamant about continued evangelization in the midst of the pandemic.

“As for Mexican Protestants, in this time of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have understood that our call is to continue preaching the good news of salvation,” said Markham, “to bring love and hope to a world that is collapsing.”

Christianity Today