A Word To The Backslider

Your are a Coward and Selfish!
You have given up on the Word of God. You are wearing a parachute full of holes because you put on the trust of your own words to righteously save you. You cannot rely on your own righteousness to save you. If you know the Ten Commandments and say that you abide in them (Gal. 5:18), then you are a liar! You broke the first and second Law. You made God in your own image, making yourself happy in a God you choose. You believe in a God that is all good and will never make you sad or angry. You made a God you could never hate. That is a false God. One that does not exist! You are weak in faith and that is why you have fallen. You believed in what the world tells you and you defaced Jehovah from your life. God has given you Jesus of Nazareth, God in the flesh. You can believe him, or you can trust him. You never trusted him! And still you don't trust God, only to the way you want Him to be. You only believe there is a God, and THAT will not save you. That is why you fail to believe (to accept the scripture to be true, and to have confidence and faith in it). Only if one believes in something can one act purposefully. You fail to look into yourself. Look into the mirror! Everyone who is proud of themselves will not look at themselves in the mirror because they are afraid of what they will see in themselves, who they really are, and the condemnation of God they don't want to face; the truth of themselves.

I say to you, don't look back to your faults and transgressions in case you become with your sin. Look forward to what you can be with God. Look at what you will become if you allow Him to burn within you. Some people are baptized with the Holy Spirit but fail to let God baptize them with the flame. Burn in His fire and become the person He wants you to be. Then, others will praise you for your strength in Him, and you will not fear any man. You will be a bearer of good fruit!

If you call yourself a Christian, first look a the 9 fruits of the Spirit a Christian should bear. If not, you are not a Christian! (Galations 5:16-26)

Galations 5:22

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.

Living By Faith: Trusting God

I had nothing when God came to me. It wasn't fear of death that turned me towards Him. It was the fear of my life of disobedience to Him.
Deal with your guilt! God can and will set you free!

Failure to Feed New Converts & Results

1 Cor 10:12, Gal 5:22–23, Eph 2:8–9, 2 Tim 2:1–4, 2 Pet 1:12, 2, 18, 19, 3:10–11, 17–18

Be Diligent to Grow Spiritually (2 Peter 3:17-18)

There are four “beloved” statements in 2 Peter 3 which summarize what Peter wanted to get across as he brought his second letter to a close.

“Beloved... be mindful” (c).

“Beloved, be not ignorant” (3:8).

“Beloved... be diligent” (3:14).

“Beloved... beware” (3:17).

The word translated “beware” means “be constantly guarding yourself.”

Peter’s readers knew the truth, but he warned them that knowledge not sufficient protection.

They had to be on their guard; they had to be alert. It is easy for people who have a knowledge of the Bible to grow overconfident and to forget the warning, “Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall” (1 Cor. 10:12).

What special danger did Peter see? That the true believers would be “led away together with the error of the wicked” (literal translation). He is warning us against breaking down the walls of separation that must stand between the true believers and the false teachers. There can be no communion between truth and error. The apostates “live in error” (2 Peter 2:18), while true believers live in the sphere of the truth (2 John 1-2).

The word wicked (2 Peter 3:17) means “the lawless.” Peter’s description of the apostates in 2 Peter 2 reveals how lawless they are. They even speak evil of the authorities that seek to enforce God’s Law in this world! (2 Peter 2:10-11) They promise their converts freedom (2 Peter 2:19), but that freedom turns out to be lawlessness.

True Christians cannot fall from salvation and be lost, but they can fall from their own “steadfastness.” What was this steadfastness? Being “established in the present truth” (2 Peter 1:12). The stability of the Christian comes from his faith in the Word of God, his knowledge of that Word, and his ability to use that Word in the practical decisions of life.

One of the great tragedies of evangelism is bringing “spiritual babies” into the world and then failing to feed them, nurture them, and help them develop. The apostates prey on young believers who have “very recently escaped” from the ways of error (2 Peter 2:18). New believers need to be taught the basic doctrines of the Word of God; otherwise, they will be in danger of being “led away with the error of the lawless.”

How can we as believers maintain our steadfastness and avoid being among the “unstable souls” who are easily beguiled and led astray? By growing spiritually. “But be constantly growing” is the literal translation. We should not grow “in spurts,” but in a constant experience of development.

We must grow “in grace.” This has to do with Christian character traits, the very things Peter wrote about in 2 Peter 1:5-7, and that Paul wrote about in Galatians 5:22-23. We were saved by grace (Eph. 2:8-9), but grace does not end there! We must also be strengthened by grace (2 Tim. 2:1-4). God’s grace can enable us to endure suffering (2 Cor. 12:7-10). His grace also helps us to give when giving is difficult (2 Cor. 8:1ff) and to sing when singing is difficult (Col. 3:16).

Our God is “the God of all grace” (1 Peter 5:10), who “giveth grace unto the humble” (James 4:6). As we study His Word, we learn about the various aspects of grace that are available to us as children of God. We are stewards of “the manifold grace of God” (1 Peter 4:10). There is grace for every situation and every challenge of life. “But by the grace of God I am what I am” wrote Paul (1 Cor. 15:10), and that should be our testimony as well.

Growing in grace often means experiencing trials and even suffering. We never really experience the grace of God until we are at the end of our own resources. The lessons learned in the “school of grace” are always costly lessons, but they are worth it. To grow in grace means to become more like the Lord Jesus Christ, from whom we receive all the grace that we need (John 1:16).

We must also grow in knowledge. How easy it is to grow in knowledge but not in grace! All of us know far more of the Bible than we really live. Knowledge without grace is a terrible weapon, and grace without knowledge can be very shallow. But when we combine grace and knowledge, we have a marvelous tool for building our lives and for building the church.

But note that we are challenged to grow, not just in knowledge of the Bible, as good as that is, but “in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.” It is one thing to “know the Bible,” and quite another thing to know the Son of God, the central theme of the Bible. The better we know Christ through the Word, the more we grow in grace; the more we grow in grace, the better we understand the Word of God.

So, the separated Christian must constantly be guarding himself, lest he be led away into error; he also must be constantly growing in grace and knowledge. This requires diligence! It demands discipline and priorities. Nobody automatically drifts into spiritual growth and stability, but anybody can drift out of dedication and growth. “For this reason we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it” (Heb. 2:1, nasb). Just as the boat needs the anchor, so the Christian needs the Word of God.

Physical growth and spiritual growth follow pretty much the same pattern. To begin with, we grow from the inside out. “As newborn babes” is the way Peter illustrated it (1 Peter 2:2). The child of God is born with everything he needs for growth and service (2 Peter 1:3). All he needs is the spiritual food and exercise that will enable him to develop. He needs to keep clean. We grow by nutrition, not by addition!

We grow best in a loving family, and this is where the local church comes in. A baby needs a family for protection, provision, and affection. Tests prove that babies who are raised alone, without special love, tend to develop physical and emotional problems very early. The church is God’s “nursery” for the care and feeding of Christians, the God-ordained environment that encourages them to grow.

It is important that we grow in a balanced way. The human body grows in a balanced way with the various limbs working together; likewise the “spiritual man” must grow in a balanced way. We must grow in grace and knowledge (2 Peter 3:18), for example. We must keep a balance between worship and service, between faith and works. A balanced diet of the whole Word of God helps us to maintain a balanced life.

It is the Holy Spirit of God who empowers and enables us to keep things in balance. Before Peter was filled with the Spirit, he was repeatedly going to extremes. He would bear witness to Christ one minute and then try to argue with the Lord the next! (Matt. 16:13-23) He refused to allow Jesus to wash his feet, and then he wanted to be washed all over! (John 13:6-10) He promised to defend the Lord and even die with Him, yet he did not have the courage to own the Lord before a little servant girl! But when he was filled with the Spirit, Peter began to live a balanced life that avoided impulsive extremes.

What is the result of spiritual growth? Glory to God! “To Him be glory both now and forever.” It glorifies Jesus Christ when we keep ourselves separated from sin and error. It glorifies Him when we grow in grace and knowledge, for then we become more like Him (Rom. 8:29). In his life and even in his death, Peter glorified God (John 21:18-19).

As you review this important epistle, you cannot help but be struck by the urgency of the message. The apostates are here! They are busy! They are seducing immature Christians! We must be guarding, growing, and glorifying the Lord, making the most of every opportunity to win the lost and strengthen the saved.

Be diligent! The ministry you save may be your own.

http://sermons.logos.com/

Evolution: Blind Faith

Scientists who reject the concept of a Creator God agree that all living things exhibit evidence of design.

Dr. Michael Denton, a non-Christian medical doctor and scientist with a doctorate in molecular biology, concludes:

It is the sheer universality of perfection, the fact that everywhere we look, to whatever depth we look, we find an elegance and ingenuity of an absolutely transcending quality, which so mitigates against the idea of chance. Alongside the level of ingenuity and complexity exhibited by the molecular machinery of life, even our most advanced artifacts appear clumsy. It would be an illusion to think that what we are aware of at present is any more than a fraction of the full extent of biological design.

Without intelligent input to increase information, natural selection will not work as a mechanism for evolution.

Denton confirms this when he states:

It cannot be stressed enough that evolution by natural selection is analogous to problem solving without any intelligent guidance, without any intelligent input whatsoever. No activity which involves an intelligent input can possibly be analogous to evolution by natural selection.

A Christian states:

What we see in God's world agrees
with what we see in God's word.

What kind of faith is Christianity then? It is not blind faith as some may think. In fact, it is the evolutionists who deny the Creator who have the blind “faith.” They have to believe in something (i.e., that information can arise from disorder by chance) which goes against real science.

Only the Bible gives the true and reliable account of the origin of all basic entities of life and the entire universe. And over and over again, the Bible’s historical account has been confirmed by archaeology, biology, geology, and astronomy. No contradiction or erroneous information has ever been found in its pages, even though it was written over hundreds of years by many different authors, each inspired by the Holy Spirit.

Scientists from many different fields have produced hundreds of books and tapes defending the Bible’s accuracy and its claim that it is a revelation to us from our Creator. It not only tells us who we are and where we came from, but it also shares the good news of how we can spend eternity with our Lord and Saviour. Take that first step and place your faith in God and His Word.

So Who Created God?

God has always existed—nobody created Him. God is the Self-Existent One—the great “I Am” of the Bible. He is outside time; in fact, He created time. Think about it this way: everything that has a beginning requires a cause. The universe has a beginning and therefore requires a cause. But God has no beginning since He is beyond time. So God does not need a cause. There is nothing illogical about an eternal Being who has always existed even though it might be difficult to fully understand.

For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse.
Romans 1:20 (NKJV)

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/nab/is-there-really-a-god

An Interview With God

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fR3YUDEHZI

God's Word

Some people say the Bible is full of mistakes. Yes it is! The first mistake was when man rejected God. Don't make that same mistake! People say men wrote the Bible. Of course men did! It didn't just evolve! God used men as instruments to pen his Word to humanity. For the Bible to make sense you must be born in the spirit. You must have God open you to understand it.

Don't Give Up!

The darkness will find you. Let it try!

John 1:5
The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness can never extinguish it.

John 12:35
"My light will shine for you just a little longer. Walk in the light while you can, so the darkness will not overtake you."

Psalm 18:28
The Lord, my God, lights up my darkness.

1 Peter 2:9-10
You are royal priests(a royal priesthood), a holy nation, God's very own possession. As a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light.

"Once you had no identity as a people;
now you are God's people.
Once you received no mercy;
now you have received God's mercy."

Reborn Christians Listen!

Titus 3:3-7
Once we, too, were foolish and disobedient. We were misled and became slaves to many lusts and pleasures. Our lives were full of evil and envy, and we hated each other.
But -- "When God our Saviour revealed his kindness and love, he saved us, not because of the righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He washed away our sins, giving us a new birth and new life through the Holy Spirit. He generously poured out the Spirit upon us through Jesus Christ our Saviour. Because of his grace he declared us righteous and gave us confidence that we will inherit eternal life."

Let Us Pray

Father,
Thank you for your Word. Thank you that you haven't left us wander aimlessly in the dark hoping that we've figured it out. But that you have provided, preserved, and protected for us your self of relation in the Bible. So that we can know who you are, and who we are, and what it means for us to be reconciled to you. I pray that you grant us wisdom, and humility to hear and to head your word.
I pray this in Christ's name and for his sake.
Amen!

Dr. Voddie Baucham

Worthy Is The Lamb

From what we know, God is unpredictable and we will be disappointed. But these disappointments should teach us something, we would never learn from our mistakes if we never made any! God is constantly testing us, even if it makes us angry, frustrated, and disappointed. He tests us so that we may learn what He wants for us. He loves us so much! He just wants the best for us!
So understand that the world isn't perfect, no one is perfect. We all make mistakes and break the law. We are human, it's expected since the beginning. Like the first battle in heaven, angels were free to make their own decisions because God loved them so much that He wanted them to see how good and right He is. When Lucifer had the chance to show God how evil man can be, God gave him the opportunity. Evil was created by God because He was so caring to show how good He is. We would never have known right from wrong if we never knew God. We wouldn't know the law unless it was appointed to us.

All goodness in the world comes from God, and sometimes disappointment. The goodness of God would not be seen if evil wasn't present. We all can be good, but we can choose to do wrong.
Adam and Eve didn't want to reveal their sin to God. But as good and just God is, He kicked them out of the garden that He created from His love for Adam.
We have been revealed our sins so that we would understand God, be so humble to Him, and be thankful that God had shown us the shame that sin will bring to our hearts.
God has written the law on our hearts, but it is up to us to repent and ask for his mercy, but most importantly accept Jesus Christ as our saviour, the one born of a virgin woman, a perfect man.
The LORD God, the giver of life, came to us in the flesh in Jesus Christ to take the judgment of our sins. Jesus went through great torment and anguish before his crucifixion. Born to be our King pure of heart, sinless(1 Peter 22) to show us God's love to strengthen our faith, and to die for us. He loved us so much to take the punishment and shed his blood for us. For hours of iniquity on the cross he took the full penalty for our sins. The ultimate penalty of death for our salvation. The same judge that condemns us has provided for us a way to escape from eternity of damnation.

John 3:16-21
16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.
17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.
18 He that believes on him is not condemned: but that believes not is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
20 For every one that does evil hates the light, neither comes to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.
21 But he that does truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.

God offers you the gift of everlasting life.
Please take this seriously! We never know when we will die, and when it comes to your time, which can be any day, will you be ready? Don't you owe it to Him? Choose life and live! Put your trust in Jesus and turn away from the shadow you hide under.

The table may only seem clean in the dim light, but the flaming torch reveals the dust. You can wash away the dust from the table, but as soon as you're finished the dust in the air will grasp to the table.

Dinosaurs

Dinosaurs are used more than almost anything else to indoctrinate children and adults in the idea of millions of years of earth history. However, the Bible gives us a framework for explaining dinosaurs in terms of thousands of years of history, including the mystery of when they lived and what happened to them. Two key texts are Genesis 1:24-25 and Job 40:15-24.

Genesis 1:24-25
24Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth the living creature according to its kind: cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth, each according to its kind”; and it was so. 25 And God made the beast of the earth according to its kind, cattle according to its kind, and everything that creeps on the earth according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.

Job 40:15-24
15 “Look now at the behemoth, which I made along with you;
He eats grass like an ox.
16 See now, his strength is in his hips,
And his power is in his stomach muscles.
17 He moves his tail like a cedar;
The sinews of his thighs are tightly knit.
18 His bones are like beams of bronze,
His ribs like bars of iron.
19 He is the first of the mways of God;
Only He who made him can bring near His sword.
20 Surely the mountains nyield food for him,
And all the beasts of the field play there.
21 He lies under the lotus trees,
In a covert of reeds and marsh.
22 The lotus trees cover him with their shade;
The willows by the brook surround him.
23 Indeed the river may rage,
Yet he is not disturbed;
He is confident, though the Jordan gushes into his mouth,
24 Though he takes it in his eyes,
Or one pierces his nose with a snare.

According to evolutionists: Dinosaurs first evolved around 235 million years ago, long before man evolve. No human being ever lived with dinosaurs. Their history is recorded in the fossil layers on earth, which were deposited over millions of years. They were so successful as a group of animals that they eventually ruled the earth. However, around 65 million years ago, something happened to change all of this—the dinosaurs disappeared. Most evolutionists believe some sort of cataclysmic event, such as an asteroid impact, killed them. But many evolutionists claim that some dinosaurs evolved into birds, and thus they are not extinct but are flying around us even today.

There is no mystery surrounding dinosaurs if you accept the Bible’s totally different account of dinosaur history.

According to the Bible: Dinosaurs first existed around 6,000 years ago. God made the dinosaurs, along with the other land animals, on Day 6 of the Creation Week Genesis 1:20–25, 31). Adam and Eve were also made on Day 6—so dinosaurs lived at the same time as people, not separated by eons of time.

Why Such Different Views?

How can there be such totally different explanations for dinosaurs? Whether one is an evolutionist or accepts the Bible’s account of history, the evidence for dinosaurs is the same. All scientists have the same facts—they have the same world, the same fossils, the same living creatures, the same universe.

If the “facts” are the same, then how can the explanations be so different? The reason is that scientists have only the present—dinosaur fossils exist only in the present—but scientists are trying to connect the fossils in the present to the past. They ask, “What happened in history to bring dinosaurs into existence, wipe them out, and leave many of them fossilized?”

The science that addresses such issues is known as historical or origins science, and it differs from the operational science that gives us computers, inexpensive food, space exploration, electricity, and the like. Origins science deals with the past, which is not accessible to direct experimentation, whereas operational science deals with how the world works in the here and now, which, of course, is open to repeatable experiments. Because of difficulties in reconstructing the past, those who study fossils (paleontologists) have diverse views on dinosaurs.5 As has been said, “Paleontology (the study of fossils) is much like politics: passions run high, and it’s easy to draw very different conclusions from the same set of facts.”
Dinosaurs: Faded away

A paleontologist who believes the record in the Bible, which claims to be the Word of God, will come to different conclusions than an atheist who rejects the Bible. Willful denial of God’s Word (2 Peter 3:3–7) lies at the root of many disputes over historical science.

Many people think the Bible is just a book about religion or salvation. It is much more than this. The Bible is the History Book of the Universe and tells us the future destiny of the universe as well. It gives us an account of when time began, the main events of history, such as the entrance of sin and death into the world, the time when the whole surface of the globe was destroyed by water, the giving of different languages at the Tower of Babel, the account of the Son of God coming as a man, His death and Resurrection, and the new heavens and earth to come.
The Bible: History book of the universe

Ultimately, there are only two ways of thinking: starting with the revelation from God (the Bible) as foundational to all thinking (including biology, history, and geology), resulting in a Christian worldview; or starting with man’s beliefs (for example, the evolutionary story) as foundational to all thinking, resulting in a secular worldview.

Most Christians have been indoctrinated through the media and education system to think in a secular way. They tend to take secular thinking to the Bible, instead of using the Bible to build their thinking (Romans 12:1–2; Ephesians 4:20–24).

The Bible says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” (Proverbs 1:7) and “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10).

If one begins with an evolutionary view of history (for which there were no witnesses or written record), then this way of thinking will be used to explain the evidence that exists in the present. Thus, we have the evolutionary explanation for dinosaurs above.

But if one begins with the biblical view of history from the written record of an eyewitness (God) to all events of history, then a totally different way of thinking, based on this, will be used to explain the same evidence. Thus, we have the biblical explanation given above.

Are There Other Ancient Records of Dinosaurs?

In the film The Great Dinosaur Mystery, a number of dragon accounts are presented:

• A Sumerian story dating back to 2000 BC or earlier tells of a hero named Gilgamesh, who, when he went to fell cedars in a remote forest, encountered a huge vicious dragon that he slew, cutting off its head as a trophy.
• When Alexander the Great (c. 330 BC) and his soldiers marched into India, they found that the Indians worshipped huge hissing reptiles that they kept in caves.
• China is renowned for its dragon stories, and dragons are prominent on Chinese pottery, embroidery, and carvings.
• England and several other cultures retain the story of St. George, who slew a dragon that lived in a cave.
• There is the story of a tenth-century Irishman who wrote of his encounter with what appears to have been a Stegosaurus.
• In the 1500s, a European scientific book, Historia Animalium, listed several living animals that we would call dinosaurs. A well-known naturalist of the time, Ulysses Aldrovandus, recorded an encounter between a peasant named Baptista and a dragon whose description fits that of the small dinosaur Tanystropheus. The encounter was on May 13, 1572, near Bologna in Italy, and the peasant killed the dragon.

Petroglyphs (drawings carved on rock) of dinosaurlike creatures have also been found.

In summary, people down through the ages have been very familiar with dragons. The descriptions of these animals fit with what we know about dinosaurs. The Bible mentions such creatures, even ones that lived in the sea and flew in the air. There is a tremendous amount of other historical evidence that such creatures have lived beside people.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/nab/what-happened-to-the-dinosaurs

My Variable
It might sounds bias to use the Bible for evidence. But its strictly bias to not use other options of evidence other than theory. We all use the fossils and what we find on earth for evidence. But why not a book of history; the history that is the missing link in the evolutionary gap? The Bible is the only other option, that's why scientists continue to lie and make up their own story, and fail to patch up the missing link. We can use the evidence of the present and the past, but still fail to link them together.
We can conclude from the Bible some answers from the book of Genesis such as how the creatures and people that didn't make it into the Ark had to have drowned by the flood, leaving fossils scattered all over the earth, even on top of mountains; proving evidence of a massive global flood. Evolutionists will continue to try to patch up the missing link(which is already given in Genesis), but remain skeptical to find it themselves with the lack of historical evidence provided by theory.