JOEL 2 GENERATION

I believe that the Christian answer to the problem of evil is BY FAR the best answer that any religion, philosophy or theistic system offers, BUT….. There are "Christian answers" to this question that first of all I would argue are NOT truly Christian and that if true would make Christianity one of the worst  Thanks again to Roger Olson for defending what I believe to represent the truly Biblical picture of the way God is sovereign and oversees His creation.  This was written before the Boston Marathon bombings, but in God's providence this seems to be a very relevant word. Here is a summary of his view of "Relational Sovereignty" (contrasting it with the other so-called "Christian" notions of God's Sovereignty). http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2013/04/a-non-calivinist-relational-view-of-gods-sovereignty /

Less than a week after his baptism, one of the new Iranian believers was in Iran visiting a sick relative who had been in the hospital for 4 months waiting for a kidney to have a transplant.  Nothing was happening, the family was there in mourning.  He asks if he can pray.  He lays hands on him and prays.  One hour later a kidney is found.  The family wants to know what exactly he prayed because they said, "because when we prayed NOTHING happened".  4 months waiting for kidney with the muslims praying continually and NOTHING.  A new Christian arrives, prays and 1 hour later a kidney "unexpectedly" is found!  And the entire muslim family knows that it was due to the prayer.  Eventually one of the older more religious relatives pushes him a bit and he tells them that he prayed in Jesus' Name thereby testifying to his faith in Christ.  Before he leaves Iran, the family thanks him for his prayer and his family and friends are interested in h...

Adolph von Harnack is widely considered to be one of the greatest Church Historians of all time. Here are his conclusions as to what the "most important" factors were in the spread of Christianity in the 2nd and 3rd centuries. He writes: "In its missionary activities, the Christian religion presented itself as something more than the gospel of redemption and of ministering love; it was also the religion of the Spirit and of power. No doubt, it verified its character as Spirit and power by the very fact that it brought redemption and succor to mankind, freeing them from demons (see above, pp. 125 f.) and from the misery of life. But the witness of the Spirit had a wider reach than even this. “I came to you in weakness and fear and with great trembling; nor were my speech and preach­ing in persuasive words of wisdom but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power" (1 Cor. ii. 3, 4). Though Paul in these words is certainly thinking of his conflict with demons an...

Here is an exciting testimony of a Muslim woman who just gave her life to Christ. 1. I approach N at Starbucks to pray for her because I think she is limping. It turns out I am wrong but that she does have shoulder pain. I pray and God heals her. 2. N is very surprised/excited because she had just got a Bible and was about to start reading it. She declares that this "is no coincidence." It turns out she lives 5 min. away from me. 3. N comes over for dinner and tells me that her older sister became a Christian 11 years ago after she was visited by Jesus in person (he showed up in the flesh in her room). She had to leave her Middle-Eastern country as a refugee and now resides in the United States. 3. N comes to our Friday night worship meeting and gets radically touched by God. She receives several accurate prophetic words and more healing. At the end, God decides to perform a sign/wonder and covers Nr's hands with sparkly ...

Tonight when we gathered, these were some of the testimonies from this week. My son saw a man limping and thought, “I should pray for him”.   It was a s occer injury.  He put his hand on it and prayed.   The man g ot up and tested it – every step, it kept improving.   He felt something happening. And it drastically improved.   He was h ardly limping afterwards. At an Iranian New Year's celebration, a religious Iranian muslim man was told that Isaac of Ninevah could "hear from God" and he was interested to see what God would say to him.  Isaac began to "read his mail "– things about his character.   About f amily land in Iran and digging up a treasure that was hidden in a field.   It turns out the man had family land and had dug up  a gold ring on his family land!   He p rayed for him to have a vision – he saw the “outline of a man with no face”.   Isaac felt it meant the H oly Spirit.   He then p rayed for...

Dan Mohler (a balanced Grace teacher) has a great quote directed at those distorting the "grace message" - well said by one of the Body of Christ's greatest true Grace teachers! "There's a movement of grace out there right now that is perverting the  grace message; that's just saying "It's a big party and everybody's O.K." - YOU'RE O.K. WHEN YOU LOOK LIKE JESUS. - You are O.K. when the dictates of flesh are so crushed by the Spirit of God in you that they have no voice. - You're O.K. when you've surrendered in the secret place. There's a [so-called grace] doctrine that's coming out there. It's really spreading out there. Be careful! It says that men don't have to even repent; they're already saved; there's no hell, [because] God's mercy endures forever. And it's sweeping [the Body of Christ] because people want an easy out without the stewardship of life. They just want to party. Be c...

On the occasion of St. Patrick’s Day, I thought I would post about the “real” Patrick.  Most of what I have written here comes from a couple of books about his life and ministry – one is a biography entitled Let Me Die in Ireland , The True Story of Patrick by David Bercot (Scroll Publishing, 1999) and the other, “ The Celtic Way of Evangelism – How Christianity Can Reach the West Again ” (George G. Hunter III, Abingdon Press, 2000).  Many Christians today “claim” Patrick as their own – most are surprised that he doesn’t really fit any modern labels that we might try to put on him or the movement he birthed. Patrick was NOT a Roman Catholic, but rather a British Roman citizen born in the late 4 th century (AD386) on the West Coast of Britain.  He was a part of the independent British or Celtic Church which did not come under Roman control until the 6-8 th centuries.  His father was an ordained Deacon and his grandfather had been an ordained P...