Feed aggregator

Many, perhaps most these days, are not familiar with William Marion Branham. His followers are often called Branhamites by outsiders. He discipled a young preacher by the name of Jim Jones. A name most associated with the death of over 900 of his followers. Although the sheer size of the of the death toll is unusual, the details about smaller groups of Branhamites recorded in Mass starvation, a doomsday colony: 'The Message' inspires dangerous ‘cults’ worldwide by Emily Hamer and Tim Steller would indicate it may be more common than most are aware: “The year-long investigation is the first news-media account of The Message and its global influence.

“Leaders influenced by Branham have overseen a deadly starvation cult in Kenya in 2023, a colony in Chile that murdered and tortured prisoners and abused children in the 1970s, a trailer-park commune in Arizona that abused children in the 1960s and other high-control groups that have been accused of psychological manipulation and sexual crimes.”

“They point out that the way Branham structured the churches the pastor has no accountability. It is a system destined for severe abuse. The Message movement is not small: “Over the last 40 years, the sect has grown tenfold from an estimated 300,000 followers in 1986 to an estimated 3 million today, according to Voice of God Recordings distribution figures. The estimates are based on how many people get VGR’s materials, but the nonprofit doesn’t verify whether those people have accepted The Message, Evans said.

“Africa has the most Message churches of any continent, Evans said. About 1,500 churches in Kenya alone claim to follow The Message, he added.

“The Message also has a sizeable following in Latin America due not only to Voice of God but also other missionaries. Phoenix resident Jorge Hernandez Jr. worked for decades helping his father establish Message churches in Mexico, his native El Salvador, Peru and other countries, he said.”

Unfortunately, there are too few trained pastors in these areas and the 1,500 Message churches in Kenya offer those attending do not receive in other churches. Plug and play teaching. All that is needed is audio and video equipment. MCOI is trying to assist one church, but it is a bit difficult. Without a laptop, projector and speaker they are dependent on the pastor, his smart phone and an interpreter.

https://mailchi.mp/e952add3b916/we-are-not-enemies?e=169825fd77

Many, perhaps most these days, are not familiar with William Marion Branham. His followers are often called Branhamites by outsiders. He discipled a young preacher by the name of Jim Jones. A name most associated with the death of over 900 of his followers. Although the sheer size of the of the death toll is unusual, the details about smaller groups of Branhamites recorded in Mass starvation, a doomsday colony: 'The Message' inspires dangerous ‘cults’ worldwide by Emily Hamer and Tim Steller would indicate it may be more common than most are aware: “The year-long investigation is the first news-media account of The Message and its global influence.

“Leaders influenced by Branham have overseen a deadly starvation cult in Kenya in 2023, a colony in Chile that murdered and tortured prisoners and abused children in the 1970s, a trailer-park commune in Arizona that abused children in the 1960s and other high-control groups that have been accused of psychological manipulation and sexual crimes.”

“They point out that the way Branham structured the churches the pastor has no accountability. It is a system destined for severe abuse. The Message movement is not small: “Over the last 40 years, the sect has grown tenfold from an estimated 300,000 followers in 1986 to an estimated 3 million today, according to Voice of God Recordings distribution figures. The estimates are based on how many people get VGR’s materials, but the nonprofit doesn’t verify whether those people have accepted The Message, Evans said.

“Africa has the most Message churches of any continent, Evans said. About 1,500 churches in Kenya alone claim to follow The Message, he added.

“The Message also has a sizeable following in Latin America due not only to Voice of God but also other missionaries. Phoenix resident Jorge Hernandez Jr. worked for decades helping his father establish Message churches in Mexico, his native El Salvador, Peru and other countries, he said.”

Unfortunately, there are too few trained pastors in these areas and the 1,500 Message churches in Kenya offer those attending do not receive in other churches. Plug and play teaching. All that is needed is audio and video equipment. MCOI is trying to assist one church, but it is a bit difficult. Without a laptop, projector and speaker they are dependent on the pastor, his smart phone and an interpreter.

https://mailchi.mp/e952add3b916/we-are-not-enemies?e=169825fd77

There are scientists who are atheists and there are scientists who are Christians. Is there a difference? As far as talents, intelligence, and qualifications go, there is no difference in favor of either side. At the beginning of the modern scientific era, scientists who were theists far outnumbered atheists and agnostics. That balance has changed in more recent times in favor of the unbelievers. But there are still many highly qualified scientists who are firm believers in God.

We're looking for a color-coded new world: a green pill for anxiety, and yellow pill for frustration, an orange pill for unhappiness, a black pill for a bad day at the office, and a white one when all else fails ... I believe that these pills are not necessary; only because there's a certain man in this country that has failed to give the right pill. The preacher has not given the god-pill. Therefore, they're on every pill you can think of, and none of them are working.

—Lester Roloff (June 28, 1914 – November 2, 1982, American Independent Baptist preacher, and cited as a major influence on both the Christian homeschooling and youth movements).

Recently John Piper’s organization, Desiring God, published an article by Dr. Jonathan Worthington. His abstract begins, “Learning to read Genesis 1–2 through Paul’s eyes cuts through the stalemate of contemporary debates about the age of the earth and mode of its creation, for Paul turns readers’ attention instead to the glory of the triune Creator and the given goodness of what he has made.”

So, according to Worthington, Paul is not concerned about when and how God created the world. The implication is that Christians today shouldn’t be concerned about those questions either. I beg to differ and here’s why.

Paul taught that all Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for our learning (2 Timothy 3:16–17). In it, God never lies (Titus 1:2). His words are always true, unlike man’s (Romans 3:4). And he believed everything in the Scriptures (Acts 24:14). He treated the details of Genesis 1–11 as literal history just like he did the details he cites in the rest of Genesis and elsewhere, even where miraculous events happened (e.g., Romans 4:9–22; Galatians 4:22–24; 1 Corinthians 10:1–112).

He taught that all people descended from one man (Acts 17:26), who was Adam, the first man (1 Corinthians 15:45–47). He believed that Adam was made from the earth (dust) first, and then Eve was made from Adam (1 Corinthians 15:47, 11:8–9; 1 Timothy 2:13).

He believed that God created different kinds of creatures to reproduce after their kind from the seed in them (1 Corinthians 15:36–39), just as Genesis 1 teaches.

He warned that Satan would use the same strategy on us that he (in the form of a serpent) used on Eve when he deceived her and led Adam into sin (2 Corinthians 11:3; 1 Timothy 2:14—he undoubtedly shared John’s understanding that Satan used the serpent: Revelation 12:9).

Most importantly, Paul taught that Adam brought sin and death into the world (Romans 5:12 and 1 Corinthians 15:21–22) and that Jesus, the last Adam, came to undo the damage caused by the first Adam. That rebellion of Adam precipitated God’s judgment on the whole creation. Paul taught that the creation would one day be liberated, just as Christians will be, from all the suffering and corruption at the return of Christ.

And if all that doesn’t help us to see Genesis correctly through Paul’s eyes, he tells us in Romans 1:18–20 that all people are inexcusably guilty for not thanking and worshipping our Creator God. That is because “since the creation of the world” all people have seen the witness of creation to the existence and at least some of the attributes of the Creator (his eternal power and divine nature). This clearly indicates that Paul believed man was there when the heavens and earth were made (days, not billions of years after they were made). Paul clearly had David’s words (1,000 years before Paul) in Psalm 19:1–6 in mind when he said that everyone has heard about God from looking at the heavens, which reveal the glory of God (Romans 10:17–18). He would have remembered the declaration of Psalm 97:6 that the heavens reveal the righteousness of God, at least from the orderly movement of the heavenly bodies, which Paul knew guaranteed God’s faithfulness to Israel (Jeremiah 31:35–37). And as a Pharisaic student of Scripture, Paul would have remembered Job’s declaration about the time of Abraham (about 2,000 years before Paul) that the animals and the earth point to God’s existence and creative work (Job 12:7–10).

We should also remember that Paul was an obedient slave and apostle of Jesus Christ, who also believed Genesis and was a young-earth creationist. Jesus taught that Adam was at the beginning of creation (Mark 10:6, 13:19), not 13.8 billion years after the beginning as old-earth Christians believe, as they follow the secular scientists.3 He linked the global flood of Noah to the global judgment at his second coming (Matthew 24:37–39). He believed that Abel was murdered (Luke 11:50–51). Jesus also taught that Jonah was in the belly of a fish for three days, using that fact to predict his own resurrection (Matthew 12:39–40). He warned his listeners to repent or face judgment, referring to the destruction of Sodom (Matthew 10:15) and to Lot’s wife being turned to salt (Luke 17:28–32). He affirmed the historicity of God feeding the Israelites in the wilderness with manna and of the miracles of Elijah and Elisha (Luke 4:25–27). And he called Nicodemus to repentance and faith as he reminded him about the bronze serpent that Moses raised in the wilderness, as he pointed to his own atoning death on the cross (John 3:14–15).

Paul’s writing and faithfulness to Christ give us strong reasons to conclude that Paul was a young-earth creationist, and so we should be too.

https://answersingenesis.org/bible/genesis-through-pauls-eyes/

In spite of the rampant unbelief among the general public and the efforts of atheists such as Dawkins to convince the world that faith in God is anti-science, there are still many Christians among top scientists and modern Nobel laureates:

“William D. Phillips won the 1997 Nobel Prize in chemistry for using lasers to produce temperatures only a fraction of a degree above absolute zero. Phillips once quipped that so many of his colleagues were Christians that he couldn’t walk across his church’s fellowship hall without “tripping over a dozen physicists. . . .” Professor Richard Bube of Stanford says, “There are [proportionately] as many atheistic truck drivers as atheistic scientists.” But among Nobel laureates, the number who recognize the hand of God in the universe is remarkably high.”

Francis Collins is another case in point. Certainly one of the foremost geneticists alive today, he was director of the National Human Genome Research Institute from 1993-2009, having “headed a multinational 2,300-scientist team that co-mapped the 3 billion biochemical letters of our genetic blueprint, a milestone that then-President Bill Clinton honored in a 2000 White House ceremony. . . . He is also a forthright Christian who converted from atheism at age 27 and now finds time to advise young evangelical scientists on how to declare their faith in science’s largely agnostic upper reaches.”

In most cases parents really love and want to protect their children. Many Christian parents homeschool or send their kids to Christian schools in an effort to protect them but is that enough? The short answer is, no. In "Why Preparing Kids to Stand Firm in Faith Matters," John Stonestreet notes : 

“Opting for alternatives to public education like homeschool  or private Christian schooling is a good start. But it can’t stop there. A 2022 study found that of 57,000 undergrads from 159 of the nation’s most elite postsecondary institutions, homeschooled and private schooled kids “are as or more likely to identify as LGBTQ or non-binary as those from public or private school backgrounds.”  

“In other words, it’s not enough to insulate children from bad ideas, especially when insulation is accompanied by silence on issues our kids are hearing about all the time by the wider world. Of course, many parents remain silent because they simply do not know how to think about everything. And yet, as a recent Gospel Coalition article noted, silence on these issues undermines Christian formation.  

“On the one hand, we could unintentionally communicate that God doesn’t care about our sexuality. If we never tell our children that God says a clear ‘no’ to same-sex sexual relationships, we could leave them to conclude that Christians can just follow their hearts.”

Often what is not clearly taught is falsely assumed by our children to their spiritual detriment. 

https://mailchi.mp/0315ec0ba01d/animal-sacrifice-in-haitian-voodoo?e=169825fd77