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Men will behave one way if they truly believe they were created by a God of infinite love who, nevertheless, holds them accountable for their attitudes, secret thoughts, and deeds on Earth and will either punish or reward them eternally after death. They will behave another way altogether if they think they were formed by blind forces that are impersonal and cannot judge, and that when they are dead, that is the end.

Court ruling kills atheist group’s lawsuit seeking to restrict college students’ religious rights

A federal court recently ended a four-year-old court battle waged by an atheist advocacy group seeking to reverse a Trump-era regulation barring universities from restricting students groups’ religious freedoms on college campuses.

The U.S. District Court for the District Court of Columbia on Jan. 15 ruled in favor of Trump’s 2020 “Free Inquiry Rule,” which allows student groups to have leaders who reflect the organization’s beliefs.

The Secular Student Alliance had sued Biden’s Department of Education in 2021 seeking to overturn the rule, arguing it is discriminatory.

“The rule gives religious student clubs the absolute right to use religion to discriminate while still receiving official university recognition and funding,” the alliance previously stated.

The court tossed the lawsuit after the education department admitted it had no plans for “publication of a final rule prior to the change in presidential administration on January 20, 2025.”

“We have a sense of freedom now, as if the wind is at our back,” said Corey Miller, president of Ratio Christi, a nationwide Christian campus apologetics ministry that had filed a friend-of-the-court brief in defense of the rule with the assistance of Alliance Defending Freedom.

“We can now have confidence that we’ll be treated fairly, inclusively, at the universities, which were largely started by Christians and for Christ,” Miller told The College Fix via email. “All we are asking for is equal freedom under the law. Sometimes we have to give continuing education to university administrators and remind them what the law of the land is.”

https://www.thecollegefix.com/court-ruling-kills-atheist-groups-lawsuit-seeking-to-restrict-college-students-religious-rights/

There are two extremes that the Church must continually face; either of which could prove fatal. Like driving down a road while punching in phone numbers on a cell phone it is easy to lose one’s concentration and veer off the center of the road. I almost hit the curb the other day doing that very thing.

The first extreme is for churches to start criticizing one another. There is no perfect church and we must remember Jesus’ prayer for unity that they all be one. If there was a perfect church it would not be perfect if we joined it. So, to argue about worship styles, music, how often we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, or just how last day events are going to work out I think is hurtful to the church at large.

The other extreme that many Christians have fallen into is that we just mind our own business. We really don’t care what the church down the road teaches. After all, who are we to judge? Our job is to preach the truth and not worry about others. Right? This attitude of non-involvement allows false teachers to pull thousands, yes, millions, into cult and quasi-cult organizations which compromise the gospel which was once for all delivered to the saints.

Therefore, on the one hand we must be careful not to condemn other churches which have a different style of worship and differences in other peripheral beliefs, yet on the other hand, Scripture is clear that we must confront false teachers who compromise the basic fundamental of Christianity—the gospel of Christ.

If you compare the book of Galatians to Paul’s other books, it will become immediately evident that Paul considered the Galatian problem to be of greater magnitude than any other problem he addressed in any of his letters.

First, we note that there are no words of endearment. If one compares, for example, Paul’s letter to the Corinthians we find that he addresses the Corinthians as “sanctified in Christ Jesus, saints by calling” (1 Cor:1:2Unto the church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our LORD, both theirs and ours:
See All...). Paul goes on to commend them saying, “you were enriched in Him, in all speech and all knowledge (1 Cor:1:5That in every thing ye are enriched by him, in all utterance, and in all knowledge;
See All...). “you are not lacking in any gift, awaiting eagerly the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will also confirm you to the end, blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor:1:7So that ye come behind in no gift; waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ:
See All..., 8). However we know that the church in Corinth was not very “saintly” in their behavior. There were factions, with jealousy and strife (1 Cor. 4). There was “immorality of such a kind as does not exist even among the Gentiles, that someone has his father’s wife” (1 Cor. 5). The Corinthians were taking one another to court (1 Cor. 6). There was false teaching about marriage (1 Cor. 6) and the list goes on and on.

Yet Paul could call them “saints in Christ Jesus!” Why? Because the problem of the Corinthians was one of behavior, immaturity and misunderstanding and not a blatant compromise of the gospel. When writing to the Galatians, however, there are no words of assurance or endearment. There is no mention of “saints” anywhere in the book of Galatians. There are terms of endearment in all of Paul’s other letters but not here. Why?—Because of the magnitude of the problem! We can justly conclude that for Paul the problem is Galatia was much worse than the situation in Corinth.

Paul comes right to the point and tells the Galatians that they are teaching a false gospel. “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ” (Gal:1:6I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel:
See All...,7).

The Greek makes it very clear that the “gospel” the Galatian false teachers were promoting was a gospel of a totally different kind from the true gospel of Christ. Paul goes on in the strongest language to condemn anyone who would teach this false gospel. “But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed! As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed!” (Gal:1:8But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.
See All..., 9)

Paul, why such strong, condemning language? Why?—Because of the magnitude of the problem!

—Dale Ratzlaff (1936–2024, Former Adventist Pastor and Founder, Life Assurance Ministries, for former Adventists).

[TBC: For the full article, here is the link:] https://blog.lifeassuranceministries.org/2025/01/16/do-adventists-preach-another-gospel/

The all-important question is whether the soul and spirit of man, which resided in the body, continue to exist even after the body is dead. If we don’t know how life arose, can we be sure what happens to it when it abandons the body in death? That is the most important question we face. The answer to it all hangs on the question of origins.

Young radicals trashed campuses in 2024 as part of their campaign against the Jewish state. For months, the nation’s colleges and universities saw day to day life disrupted by the anti-Israel activists who harassed and attacked Jewish students, spread anti-Semitic propaganda, glorified terrorism, and assaulted police officers. 

Now, the recently published Young Zionist Voices presents the views of those on the other side of the campus divide: Jewish students and alumni steadfastly opposing the anti-Semitic “Campus Tentifada” and “classic schoolyard bully dynamics,” as Eylon Levy, a former spokesperson for the Israeli government, states in the Foreword to the book. 

The young Jewish activists featured in the book are not a monolith. They represent voices from across the political and religious spectrums within Judaism, and, as Hazony points out, many of the essays “contradict each other” in certain points. Yet their differences bring into focus what unites them: a strong Jewish identity, a burning love of Israel, and a desire to stand up to anti-Semitic bullies, all part of a mission that transcends their political and theological disagreements. 

A common theme across the stories in the collection is how pervasive and virulent anti-Semitism is on campuses. Shabbos Kestenbaum, the Harvard University student who sued his school for its atmosphere of unchecked anti-Semitism, draws parallels between the current campus climate and Kristallnacht–the massive 1938 Nazi pogrom that murdered Jews and burned their businesses, homes, and synagogues to the ground. 

Kestenbaum warns that the anti-Semitism in higher education is “how a Kristallnacht begins.” He writes: “In my time at Harvard, swastikas were drawn in undergraduate dorms, a Jewish student was spat on, an Israeli student was asked to leave class because her nationality made classmates ‘uncomfortable,’ another Israeli was assaulted at the business school, a staff member taunted me with a machete and challenged me to debate the Jewish involvement in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, our hostage posters were defaced almost daily, and professors published antisemitic cartoons without facing discipline.”

A common refrain heard from many anti-Israel activists is that Israelis are “settler-colonialists.” They deny Jews’ historic connection to Eretz Yisrael–the land of Israel–by portraying Zionists as imperialists coming from abroad to dispossess indigenous natives. 

A University of Michigan Diversity, Equity, and inclusion (DEI) staffer named Rachel Dawson, for example, was recently fired after it was discovered she allegedly made comments that Jews–whom she apparently called “wealthy and privileged” people who “control” the university–have “no genetic DNA that would connect them to the land of Israel.”

But Bella Ingber, a New York University Psychology student, would beg to differ. 

Ingber states that Zionism and Judaism are inextricably connected. She mentions a trip to Israel in which she visited Biblical sites: “It seemed that no matter where I walked, where I looked, where I stood, the Jewish historical presence–both physical and spiritual–was there, irrefutable, supported by centuries of evidence.”

https://www.campusreform.org/article/book-review-young-zionist-voices-/27255

[TBC: History, Archeology, and most important of all, Scripture reports the presence of Israel in what is known as Israel. And, it is correctly pointed out that, “While the Romans expelled the majority of Jews in 70 CE, the Jewish people have always had a remnant in the land of Israel. A portion of the Jewish population remained in Israel throughout the years of Jewish exile while the rest settled around the world and became the Jewish diaspora. In particular, Jewish communities existed throughout much of this period in what is known as the Four Holy Cities: Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed (Tzfat), and Tiberias.]