Texas Education Commissioner W. N. Kirby has implicitly proposed that all high school biology textbooks used in the public schools in Texas should be required to claim not only that all human beings who have ever lived on the earth (but are now dead) but also that all who are now living owe their ultimate origin to evolution (by purely naturalistic forces) from non-living, non-intelligent, non-purposive matter (for example, from rocks and dirt). This is the basic affirmation of evolutionism.
Read MoreWhere and when this article is being written, one might say, “The weather outside is frightful!” The temperature is zero with a beautiful white landscape of 8-10 inches of snow on the ground. I think of Elihu’s words:
God . . . does great things that we cannot comprehend. For to the snow He says, “Fall on the Earth” . . . He seals up the hand of every man, that all men whom He made may know it. Then the beasts go into their lairs, and remain in their dens. From its chamber comes the whirlwind, and cold from the scattering winds. By the breath of God ice is given, and the broad waters are frozen fast. . . . Hear this, O Job: stop and consider the wondrous works of God. (Job 37:5-10, 14)
Read MoreThe late William F. Buckley, Jr., wrote in his 1951 book, God and Man at Yale, that he believed “the duel between Christianity and atheism is the most important in the world” (xvi). That was 70 years ago. What Buckley said was true then, and it is still true today. One year following the publication of Buckley’s book, in which he challenged the unbelief that was rearing its ugly head at Yale, a former KGB spy and defector from atheistic communism published an autobiography, which is the dark story of his former atheism, espionage, treason, and terror.
Read MoreDavid Berlinski, author of The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions, has described the Old Testament as “the greatest repository of human knowledge and wisdom in the history of civilization, anytime, any place. . . . It is an enormously complex, rich, and dramatic piece of work.”
Have you ever given thought to the final two verses of this “complex, rich, and dramatic piece of work?” The reading is as follows:
Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the LORD comes. And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction. (Malachi 4:5-6, ESV)
Read MoreWhen the late Russian writer Solzhenitsyn delivered his Templeton Prize speech in London, May 10, 1983, he referred to how societies were “losing more and more of their religious essence as they thoughtlessly yield up their younger generations to atheism.” He affirmed that this abandoning of God among the young was sowing seeds of hatred, whatever its basis might be—race, class, or ideology. He added, “Such hatred is in fact corroding many hearts today. Atheist teachers . . . are bringing up a generation in a spirit of hatred of their own society.” Solzhenitsyn’s conclusion: “All attempts to find a way out of the plight of today’s world are fruitless unless we redirect our consciousness, in repentance, to the Creator of all. . . .”
Just shy of forty years later, journalist Cal Thomas has now issued the same warning the Russian writer was addressing. In his book, America’s Expiration Date: The Fall of Empires and Super Powers and the Future of the United States, Thomas says
Read Moreohn W. McGarvey (1829-1911) was a highly acclaimed Bible scholar. His volume on The Authorship of Deuteronomy (1902) was recognized in reviews in America and Great Britain as a premier work of its kind.
It is of no small thing when one with a reputation like McGarvey writes as he did in his autobiography, when referring to his contemporary Moses E. Lard. J. W. McGarvey wrote concerning Lard that he had “unequaled eloquence. . . . Some of his sermons were acknowledged by all hearers to be the most thrilling they had ever heard, and there is no doubt that his power to stir the deepest depths of the heart was above that of any other preacher of his time.” McGarvey called Lard ‘the most powerful preacher we had.”
Read More“Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker!” (Psalm 95:6, ESV). A man who was a great preacher of the gospel of Jesus Christ for more than seven decades, and a dear friend of mine, was Denver E. Cooper (1923-2015). He once shared with me that when he began his preaching career in the 1930s many church people would kneel when they prayed. Do we do much of that today? If not, one wonders why.
Read MoreThere are a number of contemporary movements which hold to the same ideas as to their basic “foundation stones.” These are: pluralism, ecumenism, liberalism, and secular (atheistic or agnostic) humanism. All of these hold to—in more or less the same stringent form—relativism, agnosticism, misology (or logophobia), and “union-in-diversity.” It should be helpful to say at least just a bit about what each of these viewpoints actually mean. . . .
Read MoreThe historic Warren-Flew debate on the existence of God occurred on four consecutive September nights during America’s Bicentennial year of 1976. Conducted on the campus of what was North Texas State University (now University of North Texas), the event attracted nightly audiences of several thousand. Some attendance estimates have been as high as 9000 for one evening of the debate.
The Warren-Flew debate is considered by some as the most devastating defeat suffered by atheism in the 20th century—likely including earlier centuries. Dr. Antony Flew was recognized as one of the most highly acclaimed philosophical atheists of his time. Flew died in 2010. Dr. Thomas B. Warren was a great preacher of the gospel of Christ and a brilliant philosopher. He passed away in 2000.
Read MoreAs regards the eternal purpose of God, Paul said:
Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, was this grace given, to preach unto the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ; and to make all men see what is the dispensation of the mystery which for ages hath been hid in God who created all things; to the intent that now unto the principalities, and the powers in the heavenly places might be made known through the church the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord; in whom we have boldness and access in confidence through our faith in him. Wherefore I ask that ye may not faint at my tribulations for you, which are your glory. (Ephesians 3:8-13)
The eternal purpose of God is inextricably related to His providence. This chapter is about that relationship.
Read MoreThe Psalmist asked the same question that is asked by man in each generation. “for what futility have you created all the children of men?” (Psalm 89:47, New King James Version). The New English Translation reads, “Why do you make all people so mortal?” And the New Living Translation reads, “Remember how short my life is, how empty and futile this human existence!”
There are circumstances in life that drive people to express such sentiments, but in their expressive frustrations, many choose different answers. The Psalmist never lost sigh of rationality; he knew well the Lord God brought man into existence. He was not of the irrational mindset that said the material universe came into existence from nothing, absolutely nothing. Neither was he of the silly notion that the material university has always existed. He may not have known much, but he knew that he was brought into existence by a power, force, mind greater than anything of human creation.
Read MoreI do not know if you have ever met Marian Anderson or not, but she is a great singer and declared by those who know her as a very great person. Over three decades ago, she made a tour around the world to take the message of good will and the friendship of the United States to the people of other lands. This great singer, great artist in music, also carried another message and one far greater in the solution of world problems. This greater message was carried in the words of a song that she sang, and which song she made popular (it also helped to make her famous). Everywhere she went she sang, “He’s Got The Whole World In His Hands.”
Read MoreMore than half a century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.
Since then I have spent well-nigh fifty years working on the history of our Revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous Revolution that swallowed up some sixty million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.
Read MoreThe Bible is the one ultimately authoritative book with the right answers to life’s most crucial questions. One of these questions is the following: “If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?” (Psalm 11:3). One writer described the situation as the pillars being pulled down. The pillars, the foundations of civil society, provide for the ongoing existence and well-being of society.
Presently, there are some who have the intention of literally pulling down historical American monuments and memorials. As deeply troubling as their agenda may be, there is something more troubling, because it is more foundational. It is the efforts of those who intend to pull down what Washington called the “indispensable supports . . . great pillars . . . the foundation of the fabric” of “every species of free government” which Washington identified as religion and morality in his 1796 Farewell Address.
Read MoreI try to do as the Apostle Paul did, to preach the whole counsel of God.” I try to preach that every man ought to love every other man on this Earth; that if there is any answer to the racism we find in the world, it is in the religion of Jesus Christ; that the gospel has the great purpose of drawing all men into one body, that we may all be one in Christ, no matter whether you are from Africa, Europe, China, South America, or wherever. Paul makes this clear in Ephesians 2:13-16. And to intimate that we Christians do not love those who live in adultery or in homosexuality or that we do not love those who are even guilty of murder is to simply and flagrantly misrepresent us. The fact that we point out that these things are sin and that those who live in willful disobedience and who die in that condition will be lost, does not mean that we do not love them!
Read MoreSome Introductory Matters
1. The problem and its importance. Presently many Christians are very naïve about the danger (to the cause of Christ) of skepticism both in our own nation and around the world. But every Christian should be easily alerted to this great danger by coming to realize just how widespread skepticism is today. For example, atheism is a fundamental element of Marxist Communism, which is now the dominant power in nations which comprise approximately one-half of the world’s population. Marxism is militantly anti-God and anti-religion. The devotees of Marxism hold that it provides an all-around criticism of any and all religion and shows ways and means of ridding the world of it. In the light of this fact, it is fearful to realize that not only is Marxism completely dominant in such nations as Russia and China, but clearly gaining followers in such “religious” nations as Italy, France, and Portugal.
Further, Marxism apparently has a considerable number of followers here in America. And, other philosophies which are widely taught and accepted in our own nation are either atheistic or agnostic. I dare say that there is not a state college or university in the United States which could not be described accurately as a “hotbed” of both atheism and agnosticism. The theory of atheistic evolution is taught, not as a mere theory, but as an established fact not only in our state colleges and universities but also in our public schools. The influence of this false theory against the cause of Christ is indeed enormous.
Read MoreMR. PRESIDENT:--The small progress we have made, after four or five weeks’ close attendance and continual reasoning with each other, our different sentiments on almost every question, several of the last producing as many noes as ayes, is, methinks, a melancholy proof of the imperfection of the human understanding. We indeed seem to feel our own want of political wisdom, since we have been running all about in search of it. We have gone back to ancient history for models of government, and examined the different forms of those republics which, having been originally formed with the seeds of their own dissolution, now no longer exist; and we have viewed modern States all round Europe, but find none of their constitutions suitable to our circumstances.
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