“When he returned my paper, I was shocked. There was a big red X through each of my answers. I had failed. There had to be some mistake! I had written down exactly what Mr. Whitson said. Then I realized that everyone in the class had failed. What had happened?

“Very simple, Mr. Whitson explained. He had made up all the stuff about the cattywampus. There had never been any such animal. The information in our notes was, therefore, incorrect. Did we expect credit for incorrect answers? Needless to say, we were outraged. What kind of test was this? And what kind of teacher?

“We should have figured it out, Mr. Whitson said. After all, at the very moment he was passing around the cattywampus skull (in truth, a cat’s), hadn’t he been telling us that no trace of the animal remained? He had described its amazing night vision, the color of its fur and any number of other facts he couldn’t have known. He had given the animal a ridiculous name, and we still hadn’t been suspicious. The zeroes on our papers would be recorded in his grade book, he said. And they were.

“Mr. Whitson said he hoped we would learn something from this experience. Teachers and textbooks are not infallible. In fact, no one is. He told us not to let our minds go to sleep, and to speak up if we ever thought he or the textbook was wrong.

– David Owen, “Best Teacher I Ever Had,” Life, October, 1990; 13:70

It’s been nearly twenty years since I first read this story, but I remembered it recently, while studying a tale of three cities in Acts 17.

At Thessalonica, Paul’s method for introducing the gospel to a Jewish audience is explained this way: “And Paul, as his manner was… reasoned with them out of the scriptures, opening and alleging that Christ must needs have suffered, and risen again from the dead; and that this Jesus, whom I preach unto you, is Christ” (17.2–3).

That Paul “reasoned” with them tells me there is an intellectual component to the gospel. Christianity is a thinking man’s religion. And so effectively did the gospel grip the mind and fire the imagination in the first century that those bent on maintaining the status quo in Thessalonica accused Paul of “turning the world upside down” (17.6).

At Berea, (just down the road from Thessalonica) Paul encountered a group of Jews who “received the word [he preached] with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so” (17.11). For doing this—for not taking Paul’s word for it, but for verifying his propositions and premises for themselves—Luke termed them “noble” (17.11). Before God, true nobility is accorded those who think, those who use their mind.

At Athens, the “most famous of all ancient centers of intellectual activity” (Wilbur Smith, Therefore, Stand; New Canaan, CT: Keats Publishing, 1981, 203), Paul was completely disgusted when he found a city of the gullible, rather than the noble, for Athens was a “city wholly given to idolatry” (17.16). Known in history for its thinkers (Socrates, Plato, Aristotle), Athens is known in Scripture as the place that believed in the cattywampus.

If there is anything we tend to resist, it is thinking for ourself. Our readiness to consign our thinking to a preacher, priest, scholar, expert, parent, etc., rather than engage in careful thought and analysis ourself, is a denial of our humanity and invites a stupidity that winds up believing in the unbelievable—thus opening the door to religious, political, social, chemical, etc. enslavement.

In a time when ignorance is in the ascendency, the story of the cattywampus ought to remind us of what God designed us to do. In Luke 12.57, Christ asked, “Why don’t you judge for yourselves what is right?” (NIV); in other words, why don’t you use your brains? Good question.

Article by Kenny Chumbley

Like the grain of wheat that cannot be productive unless it “falls into the ground and dies,” so we must be willing to give up certain lesser things in order to have those that are greater. There is, as the saying goes, no free lunch. Whatever is worth having is worth paying for. And we are not wise to waste time looking for a way to beat the system and “get rich quick.”

The riches of the spiritual life are for those who are willing to make real investments of themselves. And the investments that are required will separate us from some things that we’re reluctant to let go of. An actual cost will have to be paid. There is no way to have it both ways. Either we make the investment or we do not. And whichever choice we make, we should not expect still to have all that we’d have if we’d made the other choice!

The discipline of prayer furnishes a simple illustration. It is a considerable understatement to say that there are “benefits” to having a rich prayer life. We often look with admiration upon those who have such a life and wish that we could enjoy what they enjoy. But prayer takes time, and those who have spent a great deal of time praying have had to make some sacrifices. Whatever it is that we’ve been doing while they were praying, they’ve had to do without those things. And if we suppose that some way can be found for us to have all the benefits that they enjoy and still do all the things that we presently do, then we’re only being silly. What we have is what we’ve been willing to pay for, and in all too many cases, that is not much.

In a way, it is only an insult that we offer to God when we try to give Him things that don’t involve any cost (1 Chronicles 21:24; Malachi 1:8). If the investments we make in our spiritual lives don’t require us to give up anything of real value to us, then they aren’t really investments, and the results won’t be worth very much. In the end, God’s value to us will be indicated by what we’ve exchanged for Him. “He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”

It is necessary that he who looks for gain, should incur expense.

Article by Gary Henry, www.wordpoints.com

What people see of the gospel in our lives determines who and even if we attract others to it. I can remember times past when we were so afraid of unscriptural denominational doctrines that we swung the pendulum too hard in the other direction and wound up being miserable. Since the scriptures plainly teach that it is possible to fall from grace and that humility is necessary for salvation, we never allowed ourselves to say, “I know I am going to Heaven.” Why, how arrogant could one be? Don’t you know that you can sin so as to lose your salvation? So hope, a confident expectation of salvation, disappeared from our lives.

We treated sin as a constant, a mysterious miasma that afflicted us every day of our lives whether we knew it or not. “Forgive us, Lord, for we know we sin all the time.” We thought we could not avoid it no matter how hard we tried, not even with help from the Lord. So we went around looking over our shoulders, wondering when it would attack us and hoping that when we died we would have seen death coming and had time to shoot off a quick prayer for forgiveness.

What did we present to the world? Fear, frustration, hopelessness, anxiety, bitterness, dread, desperation—and then we looked to our neighbors and said, “Hey! Don’t you want what I have?” Why were we so surprised when none did?

I think we would attract far more to our “feeder” if we showed them the joy, hope, peace, and love that the first century Christians did. We can because the scriptures plainly teach that we can overcome sin if we will and that God’s grace will help us when we fail; they teach that we can be assured of our salvation. God is not sitting up there watching and waiting for us to slip so he can say, “Aha! Gotcha!”

What’s on your bird feeder today? The seed of the Word of God, or just a bunch of bugs?

“My little children, these things write I unto you that you may not sin. And if any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: and he is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the whole world…These things have I written unto you, that you may know that ye have eternal life, even unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God.”  (1 John 2:1,2; 5:13).

Article by Dene Ward

He replied simply, “I can’t drive.”

Watching the governor of South Carolina cry like a little girl because his sexy e-mails got forwarded to his local newspaper, the State, made me wonder whether the real secret to a lasting marriage lies in limiting your means of escape. Whether you’re putting the Buick Regal in reverse or hitting Send on a love note, you’re busting out of your marriage, however temporarily, and soon enough there will be a price to pay.

And so two more American families discover a truth as old as marriage: a lasting covenant between a man and a woman can be a vehicle for the nurture and protection of each other, the one reliable shelter in an uncaring world — or it can be a matchless tool for the infliction of suffering on the people you supposedly love above all others, most of all on your children.

In the past 40 years, the face of the American family has changed profoundly. As sociologist Andrew J. Cherlin observes in a landmark new book called The Marriage-Go-Round: The State of Marriage and the Family in America Today, what is significant about contemporary American families, compared with those of other nations, is their combination of “frequent marriage, frequent divorce” and the high number of “short-term co-habiting relationships.” Taken together, these forces “create a great turbulence in American family life, a family flux, a coming and going of partners on a scale seen nowhere else. There are more partners in the personal lives of Americans than in the lives of people of any other Western country.”

An increasingly fragile construct depending less and less on notions of sacrifice and obligation than on the ephemera of romance and happiness as defined by and for its adult principals, the intact, two-parent family remains our cultural ideal, but it exists under constant assault. It is buffeted by affairs and ennui, subject to the eternal American hope for greater happiness, for changing the hand you dealt yourself. Getting married for life, having children and raising them with your partner — this is still the way most Americans are conducting adult life, but the numbers who are moving in a different direction continue to rise. Most notably, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in May that births to unmarried women have reached an astonishing 39.7%.

How much does this matter? More than words can say. There is no other single force causing as much measurable hardship and human misery in this country as the collapse of marriage. It hurts children, it reduces mothers’ financial security, and it has landed with particular devastation on those who can bear it least: the nation’s underclass.

The Marriage Gap

The poor and the middle class are very different in the ways they have forsaken marriage. The poor are doing it by uncoupling parenthood from marriage, and the financially secure are doing it by blasting apart their unions if the principals aren’t having fun anymore.

The growing tendency of the poor to have children before marriage—the vast majority of unmarried women having babies are undereducated and have low incomes—is a catastrophic approach to life, as three Presidents in a row have tried to convince them. Bill Clinton’s welfare-to-work program encouraged marriage, George W. Bush spent millions to promote marriage, and Barack Obama has spoken powerfully on the need for men to stay with their children.

The reason for these appeals to lasting unions is simple: on every single significant outcome related to short-term well-being and long-term success, children from intact, two-parent families outperform those from single-parent households. Longevity, drug abuse, school performance and dropout rates, teen pregnancy, criminal behavior and incarceration—if you can measure it, a sociologist has; and in all cases, the kids living with both parents drastically outperform the others.

Few things hamper a child as much as not having a father at home. “As a feminist, I didn’t want to believe it,” says Maria Kefalas, a sociologist who studies marriage and family issues and co-authored a seminal book on low-income mothers called Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage. “Women always tell me, ‘I can be a mother and a father to a child,’ but it’s not true.” Growing up without a father has a deep psychological effect on a child. “The mom may not need that man,” Kefalas says, “but her children still do.”

This turns out to be true across the economic spectrum. The groundbreaking research on the effects of divorce on children from middle- and upper-income households comes from a surprising source: a Princeton sociologist and single mother named Sara McLanahan, who decided to study the fates of these children with the tacit assumption that once you control for income, being part of a single-parent household does not adversely affect kids. The results—which she published in the 1994 book Growing Up with a Single Parent: What Hurts, What Helps—were surprising. “Children who grow up in a household with only one biological parent,” she found, “are worse off, on average, than children who grow up in a household with both of their biological parents, regardless of the parents’ race or educational background.”

The consequences for more-affluent kids tend to be far less devastating than for poor ones; they are less likely to become teenage parents and high school dropouts. But children of divorced middle-class parents do less well in school and at college compared with underprivileged kids from two-parent households. “There’s a ‘sleeper effect’ to divorce that we are just beginning to understand,” says David Blankenhorn, president of the Institute for American Values. It is an effect that pioneering scholars like McLanahan and Judith Wallerstein have devoted their careers to studying, revealing truths that many of us may find uncomfortable. It’s dismissive of the human experience, says Blankenhorn, to suggest that kids don’t suffer, extraordinarily, from divorce: “Children have a primal need to know who they are, to love and be loved by the two people whose physical union brought them here. To lose that connection, that sense of identity, is to experience a wound that no child-support check or fancy school can ever heal.”

Put A Ring On It

That prompts the question, Does the father have to actually be married to the mother of his children to have a positive effect on them?

“Not if he behaves exactly like a married man,” says Robert Rector, a senior research fellow of domestic policy at the Heritage Foundation. If a man is willing to contribute 70% of his income to the child’s upbringing, dedicate himself around the clock to the child’s well-being and create a stable home life—a home life that includes his actually living there with mother and child—he might be able to give his child the boon of fatherhood without having to tie the knot. But that rarely happens. When children are born into a co-habiting, unmarried relationship, says Rector, “they arrive in a family in which the principals haven’t resolved their most basic issues,” including those of sexual fidelity and how to share responsibilities. Let a little stress enter the picture — and what is more stressful than a baby? — and things start to fall apart. The new mother starts to make wifelike demands on the man, and without the commitment of marriage, he is soon out the door.

Poignantly, the one thing that unites the poor and the middle class in their hopes for family life is the imperishable dream of being married forever, grabbing hold of the golden ring of lasting partnership. The low-income mothers studied by Kefalas and co-author Kathryn Edin spoke repeatedly of their wish to get married; they “cherish marriage and hold it to an impossibly high standard,” the authors found, but too often forgo it as a result. Meanwhile, the middle class has spent the past 2½ decades — during which the divorce culture became a fact of life — turning weddings into overwrought exercises in consumer spending, as if by just plunking down enough cash for the flower girls’ dresses and tissue-lined envelopes for the RSVP cards, we can somehow improve our chance of going the distance. Think of the touching moments on Inauguration Night, when at ball after ball, crowds of young people swooned at the sight of Barack and Michelle Obama dancing together, artlessly but sincerely and clearly with great affection. They are an immensely appealing couple, and it was a historic night, but what we saw reflected in the faces of those awed young people — and in the country’s insatiable appetite for photographs of the First Family’s private life — was wonder at the sight of a middle-aged man and woman still together, still in love.

We want something like that for ourselves; we recognize that it is something of great worth, but we are increasingly less willing to put in the hard work and personal sacrifice to get there. The Obamas, for example, are enjoying their time of family closeness after almost two years of enforced separation, an interlude that would have caused many less committed couples to turn in their cards and give up. A lasting marriage is the reward, usually, of hard work and self-sacrifice.

The Ballad of Jon and Kate

Last summer, I had an opportunity to find out how meaningful the “in sickness and in health” clause of the marriage vows is when I underwent six rounds of chemotherapy, during which my husband treated me with great kindness. I began strong, making it to the dinner table every night and putting up a brave front for our children. But chemo, she will beat you down. I spent the last week on a friend’s bedroom floor, heavily drugged, mildly nauseated and watching Jon & Kate Plus 8.

Ideal viewing conditions, as it turns out. I grew fond of the titular characters, in particular Kate, who seemed to stand like a colossus over their Pennsylvania tract home, constantly corralling and cajoling her uncountable — and, to the layperson, indistinguishable — children into doing relatively simple things, each of which became a hellish exercise in the improbable simply because of the logistics. Sixteen little shoes had to be found and tied before the family could even leave the house. That they weren’t a pack of barefoot shut-ins was a testament to Kate’s indomitable will.

Lying on the floor, drifting in and out of consciousness, I would gaze up at her and feel strangely comforted, the way you do around a certain kind of bossy, sexless power mom. The show approximated family life exactly: it was mostly good-natured and often boring and centered on the most basic transactions of daily existence — getting everybody dressed and fed, cleaning up, keeping quarrels to a simmer, not a boil. Now and then — in moments that genuinely did seem unscripted — Kate would wilt, leaning against the kitchen counter with a cup of coffee and seeming, for the twinkling of an eye, as though she were allowing herself to absorb the shock of it all. But then she would shake it off, plow forward, harass Jon into making himself a lower-calorie lunch and go back to wiping down the counters and giving orders. (See the top 10 skanky reality shows.)

Even though it was gimmick-filled reality television, there seemed to be a bit of actual — even profound — truth in it. The underlying premise was that Jon and Kate Gosselin’s marriage was an enterprise dedicated not to making themselves happy but to taking care of the cavalcade of children they had produced, that they were laboring at something more significant than their own pleasure.

I got well, I went home, and I pretty much forgot about Jon and Kate until a few weeks ago, when they catapulted to the forefront of trash culture because they were — according to the tabloids — separated. I assumed it was a rumor, but it turned out to be true. Jon had gotten bored with being bossed around by Kate, he’d had a fling with a 23-year-old teacher, and the couple had filed for divorce. He still loved the kids, he said — with complete guilelessness, as though loving the kids and doing right by them were unrelated events: “I have a new chapter in my life. I’m only 32 years old. I really don’t know what’s going to happen.” And of course, the Gosselins command more attention now that their union is broken than they did when it was intact.

America’s obsession with high-profile marriage flameouts — the Gosselins and the Sanfords and the Edwardses — reflects a collective ambivalence toward the institution: our wish that we could land ourselves in a lasting union, mixed with our feeling of vindication, or even relief, when a standard bearer for the “traditional family” fails to pull it off. This is ultimately self-defeating. It is time instead to come to terms with both our unrealistic expectations for a happy marriage and our equally unrealistic beliefs about the consequences of walking away from the families we build. (See pictures of classic weddings on LIFE.com.)

The fundamental question we must ask ourselves at the beginning of the century is this: What is the purpose of marriage? Is it — given the game-changing realities of birth control, female equality and the fact that motherhood outside of marriage is no longer stigmatized — simply an institution that has the capacity to increase the pleasure of the adults who enter into it? If so, we might as well hold the wake now: there probably aren’t many people whose idea of 24-hour-a-day good times consists of being yoked to the same romantic partner, through bouts of stomach flu and depression, financial setbacks and emotional upsets, until after many a long decade, one or the other eventually dies in harness.

Or is marriage an institution that still hews to its old intention and function—to raise the next generation, to protect and teach it, to instill in it the habits of conduct and character that will ensure the generation’s own safe passage into adulthood? Think of it this way: the current generation of children, the one watching commitments between adults snap like dry twigs and observing parents who simply can’t be bothered to marry each other and who hence drift in and out of their children’s lives—that’s the generation who will be taking care of us when we are old.

Who is left to ensure that these kids grow up into estimable people once the Mark Sanfords and other marital frauds and casual sadists have jumped ship? The good among us, the ones who are willing to sacrifice the thrill of a love letter for the betterment of their children. “His career is not a concern of mine,” says Jenny Sanford. “He’ll be worrying about that, and I’ll be worrying about my family and the character of my children.” What we teach about the true meaning of marriage will determine a great deal about our fate.

Article by Caitlin Flanagan, Time Magazine (Copyright © 2009 Time Inc.)

In thundering tones, Solomon tells us of the utter uselessness in attempting to hide or conceal any thing from God. Not only does he see all things but his omnipresence is everywhere (Psalms 139:1-2; Proverbs 5:21). Just think about this, not only does the Lord see all but he knows the thought, and the motive behind every thing we do (Psalms 94:11). This is one of the great lessons that all people need to learn. Some in time past have been brought to a realization of this attribute of God in a very awesome way. Adam learned that God knew what he had done and that it was futile to attempt to hide from God (Genesis 3). Achan coveted some Babylonian garments, some silver and gold, took them, then tried to hide what he had done (Joshua 6:17-19; Joshua 7:19-27). Neither Adam or Achan could hide from the eyes of God what they had done. Both had to account to God for their conduct and they suffered the consequences of their transgressions.

What tremendous emotion should be stirred within each of us today as we come to the realization that we are exposed completely, laid bare to the all seeing eye of God. The Hebrew writer expresses it this way, “Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and open unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do” (Hebrews 4:13). All things naked and opened, every thought, every act, every motive, everything simple laid bare to the eyes of our God.

This is both a fearful thought and a comforting thought. Fearful for those who harbor secret, unrevealed thoughts, acts, desires that are sinful. Unknown to man perhaps, but not unknown to God! Fearful to those who do not love, obey and serve God. The judgment day could be faced calmly by these people if somehow all sinful acts could be kept secret from God but alas that is impossible (1 Corinthians 4:5; Romans 2:16; Romans 14:12; 2 Corinthians 5:10).

It is a comforting thought to the faithful child of God because it assures that we are always visible to our God and because he knows our circumstances he is able to defend, comfort, guide and sustain us always. As a child of God we find hope and confidence in the knowledge that there is an all seeing, all knowing God ever hovering over us (Psalms 34:4. 7, 15, 17-19; 1 Corinthians 10:13; 2 Thessalonians 3:3;Hebrews 1:14; 1 Peter 3:12-13; 2 Peter 2:9; Psalms 48:14).

Article by Charles Hicks

As “Darwin’s bulldog,” Huxley would himself engage in intrigue, deceit and intellectual property theft to make his master’s theory gospel truth in Great Britain.

He is quoted above for two reasons.

First is House passage of a “cap-and-trade” climate-change bill. Depending on which scientists you believe, the dire consequences of global warming are inconvenient truths – or a fearmongering scheme to siphon off the wealth of individuals and empower bureaucrats.

The second is publication of “The End of Darwinism: And How a Flawed and Disastrous Theory Was Stolen and Sold,” by Eugene G. Windchy, a splendid little book that begins with Huxley’s lament.

That Darwinism has proven “disastrous theory” is indisputable.

“Karl Marx loved Darwinism,” writes Windchy. “To him, survival of the fittest as the source of progress justified violence in bringing about social and political change, in other words, the revolution.”

“Darwin suits my purpose,” Marx wrote.

Darwin suited Adolf Hitler’s purposes, too.

“Although born to a Catholic family Hitler become a hard-eyed Darwinist who saw life as a constant struggle between the strong and the weak. His Darwinism was so extreme that he thought it would have been better for the world if the Muslims had won the eighth century battle of Tours, which stopped the Arabs’ advance into France. Had the Christians lost, (Hitler) reasoned, Germanic people would have acquired a more warlike creed and, because of their natural superiority, would have become the leaders of an Islamic empire.”

Charles Darwin also suited the purpose of the eugenicists and Herbert Spencer, who preached a survival-of-the-fittest social Darwinism to robber baron industrialists exploiting 19th-century immigrants.

Historian Jacques Barzun believes Darwinism brought on World War I: “Since in every European country between 1870 and 1914 there was a war party demanding armaments, an individualist party demanding ruthless competition, an imperialist party demanding a free hand over backward peoples, a socialist party demanding the conquest of power and a racialist party demanding internal purges against aliens – all of them, when appeals to greed and glory failed, invoked Spencer and Darwin, which was to say science incarnate.”

Yet a theory can produce evil-and still be true.

And here Windchy does his best demolition work.

Darwin, he demonstrates, stole his theory from Alfred Wallace, who had sent him a “completed formal paper on evolution by natural selection.”

“All my originality…will be smashed,” wailed Darwin when he got Wallace’s manuscript.

Darwin also lied in “The Origin of Species” about believing in a Creator. By 1859, he was a confirmed agnostic and so admitted in his posthumous autobiography, which was censored by his family.

Darwin’s examples of natural selection – such as the giraffe acquiring its long neck to reach ever higher into the trees for the leaves upon which it fed to survive-have been debunked. Giraffes eat grass and bushes. And if, as Darwin claimed, inches meant life or death, how did female giraffes, two or three feet shorter, survive?

Windchy goes on to relate such scientific hoaxes as “Nebraska Man” – an anthropoid ape ancestor to man, whose tooth turned out to belong to a wild pig – and Piltdown Man, the missing link between monkey and man.

Discovered in England in 1912, Piltdown Man was a sensation until exposed by a 1950s investigator as the skull of a Medieval Englishman attached to the jaw of an Asian ape whose teeth had been filed down to look human and whose bones had been stained to look old.

Yet three English scientists were knighted for Piltdown Man.

Other myths are demolished. Bird feathers do not come from the scales of reptiles. There are no gills in human embryos.

For 150 years, the fossil record has failed to validate Darwin.

“The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontologists,” admitted Stephen J. Gould in 1977. But that fossil record now contains even more species that appear fully developed, with no traceable ancestors.

Darwin ruled out such “miracles.”

And Darwinists still have not explained the origin of life, nor have they been able to produce life from non-life.

The most delicious chapter is Windchy’s exposure of the Scopes Monkey Trial and Hollywood’s Bible-mocking movie “Inherit the Wind,” starring Spencer Tracy as Clarence Darrow.

The trial was a hoked-up scam to garner publicity for Dayton, Tennessee. Scopes never taught evolution and never took the stand. His students were tutored to commit perjury. And William Jennings Bryan held his own against the atheist Darrow in the transcript of the trial.

In 1981, Gould had this advice for beleaguered Darwinists:

“Perhaps we should all lie low and rally round the flag of strict Darwinism… a kind of old-time religion on our part.”

Exactly. Darwinism is not science. It is faith. Always was.

Article by Patrick J. Buchanan, copyright 2009 HUMAN EVENTS

Ancient Spiritualism

The practice of “spiritualism” (not to be confused with the biblical use of the term “spiritual”) reaches far back into antiquity. It was voguish in both Babylon and Egypt (the latter country being known as “the mother of the occult”). There is considerable evidence that even the Hebrews, during the Old Testament era, became entangled in this mysticism on occasion. Of the wicked king Manasseh it was said:

“And he made his son to pass through the fire, and practiced augury, and used enchantments, and dealt with them that had familiar spirits, and with wizards: he wrought much evil in the sight of Jehovah, to provoke him to anger” (2 Kings 21:6).

The inspired prophets were clear in their denunciation of this evil ritualism. The person who sought to contact the dead was called a “necromancer” (Deuteronomy 18:11). The Hebrew term seems to mean “one who inquires of the dead.” Such an individual attempted to obtain information from the dead, and was believed to possess that ability. The necromancer claimed to have access to a “familiar spirit” (modern “mediums” call them “controls”) who could access and convey the desired information.

Moses wrote that there shall not be found among Israel any one who is a consulter with a familiar spirit, or a wizard, or a necromancer. Whoever practiced these things would be an abomination unto Jehovah (see: Deuteronomy 18:10-12). Again: “Turn not to them who have familiar spirits” (Leviticus 19:31), the reason being, “the soul that turns unto them that have familiar spirits, unto the wizards, to play the harlot after them, I will set my face against that soul, and will cut him off from among the people” (Leviticus 20:6). To be “cut off” was the equivalent of being subject to the death penalty (20:27).

Contacting the Dead

The expression “familiar spirit” (16 times in the KJV) renders the Hebrew term ‘ob, the precise meaning of which is disputed. Some associate the word with a “hole,” e.g., a hole in the ground, or perhaps the idea of “hollowness,” e.g., hollow like a “leather bottle” or a “wineskin” (cf. Job 32:19). Initially, the term may have hinted of a “hole” from which dead spirits ascended from the spirit-world to earth’s environment to communicate with the living, with the word eventually being used for the spirits themselves (Hoffner, 385-401). Others think the expression may have suggested the “hollow tone” of the spirit’s voice as it issued from the hole in the ground (cf. Unger, 344).

Many subscribe to the notion that in ancient times there were some people who actually had the power (satanically imposed) to summon spirits from Hades. Some believe that devilish influences operate in this manner even today, though there is no genuine evidence for this idea.

Some scholars argue that no one could actually contact the dead, even in the antique world, and that claims of such were false. They appeal, for instance, to the Greek version of the Old Testament (LXX), which usually renders the expression ‘ob, (“familiar spirit”) by the Greek term engastrimuthos, a word that signifies “to prophecy from the belly.” This would suggest that the “voices of the dead” were merely the result of ventriloquism on the part of tricksters who feigned communication with the dead (Brown, et al., 15; cf. McClintock, 477). Some, with minimal force, have thought to negate this position by arguing that the death penalty likely would not have been imposed against mere tricksters.

One thing is clear. God’s people were strictly forbidden to attempt any contact with those in the realm of the dead. Such was considered to be a substitution of other counsel in the place of that provided by Jehovah himself, and so in a measure was a form of idolatry.

The “Witch of Endor” Case

One Old Testament incident that has occasioned considerable controversy involves king Saul’s consultation with the “witch of Endor” (1 Samuel 28; the “witch of Endor” expression is common in literature, though not found in the Bible). In this instance, Samuel is represented as having been summoned from the dead. But was he?

Some scholars contend that Samuel did not return from the dead to communicate with Saul; rather, the record in 1 Samuel 28 reflects the chicanery of the woman of Endor. The situation depicted was only what Saul “perceived” it to be, under the influence of this evil woman. It is argued, for instance, that this woman had no power over Samuel, and since the Lord already had refused to communicate with Saul (v. 6), it is unlikely God would have orchestrated the affair.

It is probably safe to say that a majority of Old Testament students believe that, in the Saul/Samuel episode, something actually happened that the woman of Endor did not anticipate. For instance, the text indicates that “when the woman saw Samuel, she cried with a loud voice” (28:12), with seeming surprise and alarm. Too, she apparently only related what was happening; she said, “I see…,” while Saul “perceived” that the mysterious figure was Samuel, based upon her description. But twice the text affirms that, “Samuel said…” (vv. 15-16).

Additionally, the message from Samuel was extremely negative regarding the king – a circumstance quite unlikely if the woman was manufacturing the communication on her own, for she had a great dread of what Saul might do to her (v. 9), in spite of his pledge concerning her safety. “The most prevalent view among orthodox commentators is that there was a genuine appearance of Samuel brought about by God himself” (Kaiser, 217). For a balanced presentation of arguments representing both viewpoints, see Van Baalen, 40ff.

Modern Frauds

To say that the “spiritualist” movement is “haunted” by fraud is a tremendous understatement. Before his death, the renowned magician Harry Houdini, a vigorous opponent of necromancy, pledged to his wife that if it were at all possible to contact her from the post-mortem realm, he would do so. Though she anxiously awaited a message for years, it never came and ultimately she abandoned hope.

Dr. Robert E.D. Clark noted that “sometimes the presence of the dead seems convincing but the evidence is valueless; all spiritualists admit widespread impersonation and heartless fraud.” Clark told of a medium, Blanch Cooler, who communicated with Gordon Davies, a military man supposedly killed in battle. “His voice was imitated, unusual features of a house were described, the future was seen, statements, unknown to sitters, were verified. But it transpired that Davies was alive and had no interest in Spiritualism” (501).

The Futility of Spiritualism

The claims of spiritualists are as useless as they are sinful. As Job might describe these religious con artists, they are “forgers of lies” and “physicians of no value” (Job 13:4). The following points are well worth considering.

The dead cannot analyze the complexity of earth’s events on behalf of the living, because the dead “know not anything … under the sun,” i.e., upon the earth (Ecclesiastes 9:5-6; cf. Isaiah 63:16).

The dead cannot reveal the secret counsels of God because “the secret things belong unto Jehovah our God: but the things that are revealed belong unto us and our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law” (Deuteronomy 29:29).

The dead cannot inform the living of their own plight, nor send messages regarding after-death experiences. The rich man, referenced by Christ in Luke, chapter 16, recognized his inability to communicate with his brothers on earth, for he pled with Abraham to send someone to them with a message of warning. The rich man was informed, however, that his brothers had “Moses and the prophets,” i.e., the Old Testament scriptures, and those documents were sufficient for their preparation for eternity.

Conclusion

Let all who honor God shun the occult, lest a “lying wonder” be believed, resulting in condemnation (2 Thessalonians 2:9-12). The Bible is “crystal” clear; those who dabble in the “mystic arts” will not enter “into the gates of the city” celestial. Rather, the “sorcerers” will be outside, with the dogs, fornicators, murderers, idolaters, and all who love and tell lies (Revelation 22:14-15). The famous lines from Kipling are a “cryptic” warning for occultists.

Oh, the road to En-dor is the oldest road,
 And the craziest road of all, Straight it runs to the witch’s abode,
 As it did in the days of Saul.
 And nothing has changed of the sorrow in store,
 For such as go down on the road to En-dor.

Article by Wayne Jackson (www.christiancourier.com)

Sources/Footnotes

Brown, Francis, Driver, S.R., Briggs, Charles (1907), Hebrew English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, Co.).

Clark, Robert E.D. (1999 ed.), “Spiritualism,” Wycliffe Dictionary of Theology (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson).

Hoffner, Harry, Jr. (1967), Journal of Biblical Literature, LXXXVI.

Kaiser, Walter C., Davids, Peter H., Bruce, F.F., Branch, Manfred T. (1996), Hard Sayings of the Bible (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press).

McClintock, John and Strong, James (1969 ed.), Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature (Grand Rapids: Baker), Vol. III.

Unger, Merrill (1966), Unger’s Bible Dictionary (Chicago: Moody).

Van Baalen, J.S. (1956), The Chaos of the Cults (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans).

(Malachi 1:6-8).

Malachi came preaching late in Israel’s history, after they had returned from captivity to Jerusalem. The temple had been reestablished. The priests were back to their old jobs. The walls of the city had been rebuilt. While they were still under the thumb of the Persian Empire, they were basically free to worship God as they saw fit in their Law. It seemed that God had finally restored His people as He promised through older prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah. Better still, there was no more rampant idolatry in the land. The golden calves had been done away with. People were no longer sacrificing to Baal or to the other Canaanite gods, but to Yahweh. It is easy to see how Israel might have gotten a high opinion of their spirituality at this point. It is easy to see how Israel could have gotten the notion that they had somehow “arrived” at the height of their nation again and come back into God’s favor.

Yet no one ever “arrives”. Malachi comes into the scene with a message from God, asking, “Where is my respect? Why do you despise My name?” The people respond as if they are unaware what God is talking about: “How have we done that?” God responds with the problem-apathy. Israel no longer cares to serve God sacrificially. They no longer care to worship in a manner that demonstrates utmost reverence and respect for God. Instead, Israel makes excuses for itself and even pretends to be unaware of the problem.

The actual problem seems somewhat outlandish to those of us in the present day that do not have a part in the Levitical sacrificial system. The people were presenting the blind and the lame animals for sacrifice. Some might think, “What is the big deal? The animal is going to die either way, so it will not be of use to anyone?” That was probably the logic of Israel in this situation too. A keeper of sheep or cattle who was obligated to make a sacrifice would look out into his flock, see a blind or lame animal, and realize that it was not going to bring any benefit to his flock. It certainly should not be allowed to reproduce. The most logical decision was to put it to death. What better way to do that than by sacrificing it to Yahweh? This action would kill two birds with one stone, because it would both fulfill worship obligations and it would remove a pesky defected animal from the flock.

However, this sort of behavior was expressly forbidden. In the regulations for sacrifice in Leviticus 1-7, the phrase is repeatedly echoed that the animals offered to Yahweh were to be offered “without defect” (Leviticus 1:3; 1:10; 3:1; 3:6; 4:3; 4:23; 4:28; 4:32; 5:15; 5:18; 6:6) and recurs even more throughout the Mosaic Law. God specifically commanded that whatever bulls or goats were offered to Him were to be offered “without defect” because of how holy He was. But surely this law was not fair! After all, it caused the worship of Yahweh to be especially costly for the shepherds and cattle-herders in that they had to give up their favorite choicest animals. The worship of God does not cost the worshippers, does it?

Yet, David understood this lesson substantially better. This is one of the reasons he is called “a man after God’s own heart.” In 2 Samuel 24, as he is atoning for his sins of numbering the people on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite, Aruanah tries to give him the oxen for the burnt offering free of charge, and David refuses. His statement is especially profound-”No, but I will surely buy it from you for a price, for I will not offer burnt offerings to the LORD my God which cost me nothing” (2 Samuel 24:24). David understood that the true nature of a relationship with God was not one rooted in convenience. Rather, the worship of God was rooted in a sacrificial and selfless service. A “sacrifice” is a misnomer if it does not cost the one who is sacrificing.

Today, physical animal sacrifices have been done away with. Yet in many ways, our calling is even higher. God demonstrates the true nature of sacrifice through His Son. “You were not redeemed with perishable things like silver and gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers, but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ” (1 Peter 1:18-19). Peter then later goes on to say that we “as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 2:5). We have an obligation to sacrifice to God on the spiritual level, rather than the physical level. We need to be living and behaving in such a manner that demonstrates our mind is on the “imperishable” rather than the “perishable”.

Being a Christian means substantially more than making appearances in the pew every Sunday and Wednesday. Some come to worship, but do not put their hearts into it, because that will “cost” them effort and concentration. Some tap their foot and watch the clock to make sure they get out at the correct time, because a worship service that dares go five minutes longer would “cost” them their time. Some feel they have done “enough” to get their ticket into heaven, and do not need bother themselves with unnecessary “costs”. Some do not want to study further, because they feel more knowledge will make them accountable and it will “cost” them something. This fear of “cost” is yet another example of the human capacity for selfishness and pride, and it can affect all Christians at some time. The truth is that Christianity is a costly religion. Those that would profess some kind of earthly gain that comes with Christianity are not offering true service to Christ.

Consider Paul, who had to give up his way of life in order to follow Christ. “Whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ” (Philippians 3:7-8). Paul paid a large price for being a Christian, but he counted that “cost” as nothing because he had the proper perspective of value. To gain a relationship with Christ requires one to give up “all things”. It requires one to pay substantial costs. It requires honor and respect for God, and the realization of who He is in relation to us. But the end result will far outweigh the cost paid.

Let us take a lesson from Israel. If we offer to God what costs us nothing based on our profitable human “logic”, that is all we will ever have, and in the next life, we will have nothing. But if we work and toil and give God our all, we shall attain great riches in the resurrection of the dead.

Article by Wayne Welsh

Such displays are a testimony to the insatiable curiosity of man; devoted scholars have spent their lives learning to read most of these messages. And so, I stood entranced, reading the cards and plaques which told spartan tales of hunting lions and capturing slaves and slaying enemies. The “great” had ordained that it be written down, engraved in stone, so that the ages would remember the deeds of those called “mighty” and “brave” and “powerful.” Now, before me, their foresight lay in pieces of rubble. All that remained were half-told stories of times too remote for our imagination. Passing by their memorials was an endless stream of gawking and pointing tourists who neither knew nor cared about the difference between Ramses the Great and Alexander the Great.

Still, there is in all of us a craving for immortality – a desire to let the world know that we have been here. In hundreds of trivial ways we try to leave our marks. Note the trees that carry the message that John loves Mary, and the concrete walks engraved with neighborhood initials, and the water towers touting the “class of ’86,” and, in a more generic vein, the age-old message left in countless places that “Kilroy was here.”

I confess that I am as guilty of this human frailty as are the children who leave their marks in sidewalks. On my recent trip, I was working in the British Library, which is housed in the same building with the museum. After I finished my work, I found myself drawn to the catalog which lists the 9,000,000 volumes housed in the library. I could not leave without seeing whether or not the world’s famous library had any of my books in its collection. I am not going to tell you what I found until the end of this article.

The point of this tale is, I think, perfectly clear. Fame is fleeting and immortality is not within your grasp. Wherever you write your name – on official documents, in books, or in stone – the time will come when it will be irrelevant and irretrievable.

The image that came to my mind as I pondered these things was the biblical language in Revelation 20:12, 15: “And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works….And whatsoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.”

Well, I shall now tell you that three of my books were in the British Library – that is one of every three million books in the collection. But I hope I can truthfully say that it was curiosity and not pride which led me to look. This much I know: some day the British Library will be gone – as the great libraries of Alexandria and Nineveh have been destroyed. But my name is in a book which will never decay or be destroyed. “But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven…” (Hebrews 12:22-23).

I shall never be forgotten.

Article by David Edwin Harrell

A Christian becomes involved in sin. Brethren try to reason with and restore the wanderer. The Christian, hardened by pride and often bolstered by biased friends and family members, refuses to repent. Finally, the local church withdraws its fellowship from the sinner in an effort to correct him. But instead of having his heart pricked, he has grown selfish enough to persist in his error and is lost to the Lord.

Time passes. More time passes. Brethren forget the actual cause for discipline. The impenitent is still impenitent. There comes a time when the sinful brother, still as selfish and rebellious as ever, begins to tell his tale of woe to any who will listen. But the story is now different. Inserted into the “facts” is information that had nothing to do with the original problem. But as the revised story is perpetuated, brethren come to view the church’s discipline as punitive rather than corrective, and the sinner is suddenly a “victim.”

At last, when the local church experiences a change in leadership, the sinful brother is welcomed back into the fold, without ever facing or acknowledging his sin. All seems peaceful and happy again. But the impenitent sinner is still facing the eternal condemnation of God.

Many years ago a young woman came to my study with the report of serious marriage problems. She was accompanied by her mother – who was the greatest problem this couple faced. As the young wife explained her difficulties, I asked a series of questions trying to determine what advice to offer. When leaving, she seemed hopeful and I was naively optimistic that things would be patched up. I was profoundly wrong.

The problem lay in the fact that this young woman and her mother had no intention of working things out with the husband. They were only seeking a “justifiable” excuse for divorce, which I hadn’t given her. In short order, they resorted to Christians in another local church and proceeded to relate “facts” that contradicted the very questions I had asked earlier. Before long, both churches were in turmoil.

In time, this deceitful young woman rallied a supportive faction, divorced her husband (not for the cause of fornication), married someone else, and is today embraced by her new church family as though she were the very model of Christian virtue. And whenever the story is retold, it is completely different from her original account, having been reshaped to her advantage.

A selfish, impenitent heart cannot afford to deal truthfully. “For everyone who does evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen that they are done in God” (Jn 3:20-21). One who is genuinely penitent will behave as the Prodigal Son (Luke 15). He will not be proud of his sin but will readily confess it, recognizing his need for forgiveness. “I have sinned against heaven and in your sight…” To ignore one’s guilt, even though he may be “restored” to a local church, will not make him right with God. “Unless you repent you will all likewise perish!” (Lk. 13:3,5). One’s pride may be spared by avoiding repentance, but at what cost?

Brethren, we never serve the best interests of a wayward disciple by seeking to overlook or excuse his sin. We only embolden him to sin further.

“Deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus” (1 Cor. 5:5). Cures are often as unpleasant as illnesses, but we admit their necessity. Surely a sick soul is worth healing, no matter how tough the cure.

Article by Steve Dewhirst

My religious background could be summed up by saying there was almost none. My Baptist grandmother took me to the Methodist church when I was five years old and gave me a Bible that I still possess. When I was about twelve years old, because there was no Baptist church nearby, she begged the Methodist preacher to baptize me by immersion. Though he insisted it was unnecessary, he baptized me in an Assembly of God building, so I would later call myself a Methodist Baptist.

From that point, my life unraveled. My mother left my father for a young man, and my father remarried. I graduated from high school, joined the military, and left God far behind. I smoked, drank, and used other drugs, and was surrounded by pornography. During three years in the military, after which my grandmother died, I became sick of sin. My conscience always bothered me, which amazed me. While I was drinking or doing drugs, my friends would get frustrated because I would bring up God and want somebody to help me understand him. But I was so confused and uninformed that I continually remained frustrated.

After leaving the military, I returned to work at International Harvester in Louisville, Kentucky. I began to associate with fellows affected by Vietnam and other things. I became friends with those like me: a longhaired, bead-wearing, motorcycle-riding, drug-using hippie.

Then one day a man boldly approached me on the assembly line. He asked me three questions: “Do you believe in God?” l did not want to answer that question, so I continued working as if I did not hear, but he just waited. When he persisted, I decided to tell him the truth. I turned to him and said, “Yes, sir, I do.” I hoped that would end the conversation, but then he asked, “If you die right now, do you believe you would go to heaven or hell?” I didn’t answer that question for a moment or two, and he just waited. Finally I said, “I believe I would go straight to hell.” I went back to work, but he raised the final question: “Does that bother you?” I pondered what to say and finally just looked into his eyes and said, “Yes, it does, and I’m going to do something about it.”

I did. I went home, shaved off my beard, cut my hair, threw my pornography in the garbage, flushed some drugs down the commode, and poured out all the whiskey I had in the house. And I sat down on the couch, and tried to read my Bible, but I had a big obstacle: I had graduated from high school without learning how to read.

I sat and cried and thought what to do. Soon l went searching for the Bible on tape, and began to sit up until about three or four each morning and listen to it. I wanted to saturate my mind with just what the Bible said.

My next step was to attend different churches on Sundays and ask everybody that I could questions about the Bible, but the more I investigated, the more confused and discouraged I became, until I began to see that some religious groups were closer to the Bible than others were.

Eventually, learning from the Bible that I needed to believe, repent, confess and be baptized, I found my way to the Christian Church. I decided that I would be baptized and join their work; until I went to tell my grandpa, whom I thought would be so proud. But when I told him what I was planning, he kept pounding his Bible on my leg, saying, “Don’t do it, don’t do it!” I was shocked and puzzled, because my grandpa had become a Christian at age 69 after being a Roman Catholic. I asked him why not and he said the Bible said I should be baptized. He then questioned me about mechanical instrumental music in worship, which I believed was nitpicking, but then asked why I wanted to be baptized: “Why will you nitpick about the plan of salvation and not nitpick about worship?” For the first time, I was learning about biblical authority (Matt 7:13-27).

It was a new concept to me, and I needed to learn more. I wasn’t baptized that next Sunday, but I kept searching. Finally I approached Bill Bryant at International Harvester. I asked him where he went to church. He said he was a Christian, a member of the Lord’s church.

Bill opened a door I never knew existed. He brought me tracts on instrumental music, but I was too ashamed to tell him I couldn’t read. Finally he directed me to a church of Christ near where I lived, where Ken Green preached. I was determined to be baptized, so I went to services on Wednesday night, and Ken introduced himself. I said, “I’m Gerry Sandusky, and I’m here to be baptized and stuff like that.”

Well, naturally, Ken thought I was a nut. He did not baptize me, fearing I did not have any idea what it meant. I went back on Sunday and during the invitation song I went forward, determined that if I had to, I would embarrass him into baptizing me. When he asked me what I wanted, I responded loudly, “I’m here to be baptized and stuff like that.” He said, “OK,” and so my journey as a man who had found a clean conscience began (1 Pet 3:21).

You may wonder about all the sinful habits I had. I thought the battle with tobacco was a mountain I would never climb, but I knew the only way I would was to take one step at a time. Instead of putting cigarettes in my shirt pocket, I put the little Bible from my grandmother. Each time I reached for a cigarette, I would pull my Bible out of my pocket, search for the shortest passage, ask somebody to read it, and begin to memorize it. I didn’t know that was a biblical principle, but the more I began to replace the sin in my life with the sincere milk of the word (I Pet 2:2), the more I grew.

I knew particles of the Bible but hardly any applications, but here are some things I learned that may help you convert some longhaired hippies someday. First, most people believe themselves to be right. What we want to do with such a person is try to get him or her thinking. Jesus was the master at this kind of work, at being “wise as a serpent and harmless as a dove” (Matt 10:16).

Jesus used the same tool many times: asking simple questions. And as with the woman at the well in John 4, he made people want to know what he had to say. The man who made me think did not quote a passage; he just made the gears in my own mind begin to turn, made me realize there was a hole in my thinking. People who know they’re wrong and facing a terrible disaster will be bothered and want to change.

Second, in trying to reach people, we often fail to recognize their living consciences. Though to look at me you would have thought my conscience was dead. All the while I was living in the world, I was burdened because I knew I was a long way from God (Matt 11:28; Acts 17:27). This inner police force that each person has can be stirred by kindness, patience, and the right questions. We don’t want to present obstacles, as my uncle (a member of the church) did when he said to my wife and me before we married, “You both better have fun while you’re living, because you’re going straight to hell when you die.” At that point we both said we would never be members of the church of Christ, because instead of pricking our consciences, he had placed a stumbling block on the road (Col 4:5-6).

The third thing that will help us is understanding discipleship (Matt 28:18-20). I had decided I was going to be a disciple of Jesus. I knew that baptism was a part of it and that a lot of other “stuff” went with that, but I did not care what the “stuff” was or what the cost might be (Luke 9:23). I was afraid my wife and I would divorce, because she saw me then as a religious nut. I lost all my friends because I kept talking to them about what I had learned. My family, at first, turned away from me.

I’m glad to tell you today that I had the pleasure to baptize my father, my step-mother, and my brothers and sisters, and even to see my wife obey the gospel. But all of that occurred because they could sense that I was a disciple of Jesus. That factor played a great role in my ability to teach others, even though I was still memorizing scriptures because I could not read.

I hope these points about my decision to leave the world help you as you better reach out to others to save them (Jude 22-23). Don’t waste your time with dishonest people. We must have good hearts and honesty – but those qualities can be hiding under a beard or long hair, sitting on a motorcycle beside you.

A lady in Kentucky told me that my conversion helps her every time she sees a hoodlum on a motorcycle. “I always roll my window down now and invite him to the gospel meeting” because, she says, “I just keep thinking, ‘That fellow might make a gospel preacher someday’.”

Article by Gerry Sandusky

Brethren, I want it clearly understood that I believe the Bible to be the inspired Word of God -and this includes the miracles. I believe everything Joshua 10 records. But, this article that is going around is not true. And instead of being “wonderful proof’ or “amazing confirmation,” it is plainly false!

The Article

The article under consideration tells of a “Mr. Harold Hill, President of Curtis Engine Co., In Baltimore, MD., and a consultant in the space program.” The rest of the article is presented as a direct quote form Mr. Hill. Mr. Hill supposedly told of some space scientists who were checking the position of the sun, moon, and planets to determine where they would be 100 and 1,000 years from now. as they began to trace backward they “found there is a day missing in space in elapsed time.” A religious fellow on the team told them about Joshua’s long day. The article says “they checked the computers going back into the time it was written and found it was close but not close enough!”

That statement alone should be enough to tell anyone that something about this article is wrong. Indeed! What time was it (the book of Joshua) written? If we knew when the book of Joshua was written that might well end all controversy over the date of this Bible book. And what a boon this would be in settling the problem of the date of the Conquest of Canaan.

Harry Rimmer told the same general story in The Harmony of Science and Scripture (251-82). Rimmer’s book was written in 1936, so the setting of the story about finding the “missing day” is different. Rimmer even gave the exact date of the battle – it was Tuesday, June 22. Rimmer said that “a book by Prof. C. A. Totten of Yale, written in 1890″ established this point “beyond the shadow of a doubt” (28). The part of the story about the 40 minutes unaccounted for is also told in Rimmer as it is in the newspaper article we are considering. And sure enough, the 40 minutes are found in Hezekiah’s sun dial.

Bernard Ramm, in The Christian View of Science and Scripture (156-61), discusses “The Long Day of Joshua” and mentions the argument made by Rimmer and others:

“Second, there is the claim made by Harstad, Black (Bible and Science), and Rimmer (The Harmony of Science and Scripture) that it is common knowledge among astronomers that one full day is missing in our astronomical calculations and that Prof. Pickering of the Harvard Observatory traced it back to the time of Joshua. Maunders of Greenwich and Totten of Yale are then supposed to have taken it right back to the time of Joshua, practically to the year and day. Then Totten added to this the 10º (sic) of Ahaz’ dial to round out the full day. This I have not been able to verify to my own satisfaction. (159)”

Ramm also says that “Dr. Kulp has tried to check this theory at Yale and in England, and has found nothing to verify it.”

I Wrote Mr. Hill

After seeing the article in a couple of bulletins I wrote Mr. Hill as follows:

“I was wondering if you could give me more precise information about this lost day from the scientific records. Has there been an article on this in any scientific (or other) journal?”

In a few days Mr. Hill wrote back sending three items with his letter: (1) a photo copy of a newspaper article pertaining to another matter, (2) a page from his own notebook, and (3) a copy of Voice magazine giving his “own experience in meeting God personally a few years ago.” The page from mr. Hill’s notebook included the same general information about “The Missing Day.” In the newspaper article from The Evening World it appeared that Mr. Hill was actively working with the space scientist who found the “missing day.” In his notebook Mr. Hill has “it was reported’ without any reference. In his letter he said: “[have not been able to come up with the source of the “Missing Day” incident but when [do, I’ll sent it along” (Emphasis mine, FJ.).

It is evident that Mr. Hill was simply repeating a story he had read or been told and not one he actually knew from experience to be true. We are no more impugning his motives than we are those of the good brethren who unwittingly aided this falsity. Whether Mr. Hill elaborated upon this matter as reported in The Evening World (he did not indicate otherwise in his letter), or someone else made the elaboration is unknown to me.

The Voice magazine which Mr. Hill sent is published by the Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship International (Jan. – Feb., 1968) and contains his personal “testimony.” He tells of being healed by Oral Roberts, receiving Holy Spirit baptism and speaking in tongues.

A Concluding Recommendation

Brethren, we need to be cautious about picking up everything that happens to appear in a newspaper. Material like this does not “confirm faith” or point to the “amazing accuracy” of the word of God; it makes those who propagate it the laughing stock of the scientific and intellectual community. Do not say this does not matter, because one of the purposes in publishing such must be to bring about the conversion of the men of science. There are many good reliable books on the general area of “science and Scripture” and we would do well to study some of the established arguments and use them.

This article was published in Truth Magazine, Feb. 26, 1970. Vol. 14, No. 16.

Subsequent Developments

After my article was published I learned the following things about the newpaper article.

Oct. 10,1970: Article first appeared in “Mary Kay’s Kollum.” Mrs. Mary Kathryn Bryan said, “The article is a copied one of which there is no idea of its origin…”

After Dec. 13, 1969, Mrs. Bryan wrote Elam Kuykendall: “The article…is as handed to me and I do not know the origin…”

Jan. 16, 1970: Hill wrote Joe Corley that he made the speech at “the Admore, Oklahoma CFO Camp awhile ago. I do not have documentation available at this time but will forward it to you when I come across it again. So many of these things are happening these days that I cannot keep up with them all.”

Feb. 21,1970: Gary Fiscus claimed he was the first to run the article in a bulletin. He copied it from the Spencer, Indiana, newspaper.

June 9, 1970: Hill sent me a sheet: “I did not write it but assume it was adapted from one of the many talks I have made…. I have misplaced the source information and so am unable to give you names and places but will forward them as soon as I locate them. In the mean time I can only tell you that had I not considered the source to be completely reliable, I would not have made use of this information in the first place. I am interested in facts and not fiction.”

March 25, 1970: Mrs. Bryan reprinted the article, admitting they “really started something.” In a note to me she said, “I think the column is self explanatory and needs no affirmation or confirmation under a byline.”

Sept. 11, 1970: Christianity Today exposed story under the title “Missing Day or Missing Data?” 1998: The article is being distributed via Email.

Article by Ferrell Jenkins, www.bibleworld.com

The Origin of Easter

Some church historians assert that Easter observance began in the first century, but they must admit that their first evidence for the observance comes from the second century (Schaff, History of the Christian Church, 11:207; Latourette, A History of Christianity, 1:137). There soon arose a bitter controversy over which day Easter was to be celebrated. Some were observing it on any day of the week, and others were celebrating it only on the nearest Sunday. This indicates that they had no instruction from the Lord on this matter. By AD 325 the council of Nicaea decreed that it should be on Sunday, but did not fix the particular Sunday. The exact time of observance was determined by later councils.

Is Easter in the Bible?

The word Easter is only found one time in the English translation of the Bible and there it is a mistranslation. The King James rendering of Acts 12:4 used the phrase “intending after Easter.” Albert Barnes, a noted Presbyterian commentator who wrote in the nineteenth century when the King James version was widely used, said,

There never was a more absurd or unhappy translation than this. The original is simply after the Passover. The word Easter now denotes the festival observed by many Christian churches in honor of the resurrection of the Saviour. But the original has no reference to that, nor is there the slightest evidence that any such festival was observed at the time when this book was written. The translation is not only unhappy, as it does not con-vey at all the meaning of the original, but because it may contribute to foster an opinion that such a festival was observed in the time of the apostles. (Barnes Notes on the New Testament, XI: 190)

The word translated Passover, and the one used in Acts 12:4, is pascha (nuaxu). It means “a passing over” and is used with reference to the Jewish festival of Pass-over which was celebrated on the 14th of the month Nisan. This same word is used in Matthew 26:2; Mark 14: 1 , Luke 2:41; 22: 1; John 2: 13,23 and other places, and in every instance is translated Passover in the King James Version except Acts 12:4. More recent versions correctly use the term Passover in Acts 12:4. It is absurd to think that Herod Agrippa I wanted to celebrate the resurrection of Christ. The Scripture says that he “laid hands on some who belonged to the church, in order to mistreat them. And he had James the brother of John put to death with a sword… he proceeded to arrest Peter also” (Acts 12: 1-3).

New Testament Christians Did Not Observe Easter

The famous fourteenth edition of Encyclopedia Britannica says,

“There is no indication of the observance of the Easter festival in the New Testament, or in the writings of the apostolic Fathers. The sanctity of special times was an idea absent from the minds of the first Christians.” (VII:859)

The apostle Paul warned against the observance of feast days, new moons, etc. (Gal. 4: 10-11; Col. 2: 16-17). Another reliable source says, “In apostolic times the Christians commemorated their Lord’s resurrection every Sunday, by meeting on that day for worship. When Paul refers to Christ as our passover (1 Cor. 5:7) his language is metaphorical and cannot be regarded as containing any allusion to a church function. (A Dictionary of Religion and Ethics, 140)

For many people, Easter has become the one time of the year they attend church services. Concerning urging of Catholics to receive Holy Communion the question was asked, “They must go at least once a year if they would be regarded as Catholics?” “Father” Smith answers, “Yes, during Easter time” (Father Smith Instructs Jackson, 159). Many forget the admonition of Hebrews 10:25: “not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more, as you see the day drawing near.”

Importance of Christ’s Resurrection

Let no one imagine that we oppose the resurrection of Christ. It is the bedrock of Christianity and the deity of Jesus rests upon it (Rom. 1:4). Christians today meet every first day of the week, as did the early Christians, to ob-serve the Lord’s Supper (Acts 20:7). The first day of the week is a memorial to the resurrection of Christ. The death, burial and resurrection of Christ, serves as the form of an individual’s death to sin, burial in baptism, and resurrection to walk a new life as a new creature in Christ (1 Cor. 15:1-4; Rom 6:3-11; Col. 2:12).

Conclusion

“Whoever speaks, let him speak, as it were, the utterances of God” (1 Pet. 4: 11). The celebration of Easter began too late, and without the expressed authority of God!

Article by Ferrell Jenkins, www.biblicalstudies.info

For most women, motherhood is a great privilege, a crowning joy and a sublime fulfillment. Perhaps the greatest privilege of motherhood is that of sharing and giving. No one shares and gives as a mother does. She shares her body with another in order to conceive. She shares it again with her unborn child. Then she shares her time, energy and talent with it after it is born in order to meet its needs and cause it to grow and develop. But most of all, she shares her heart and her love as she weeps, laughs, sorrows and rejoices with her child through the months and years of infancy, adolescence and youth and adulthood.

Motherhood, while being a great privilege, also involves obligation. No task on earth requires more dedication, greater skill or fuller commitment. Her responsibilities demand devotion to the highest ideals and patient perseverance over long years of time. Her task is formidable because there is no human obligation that is less adaptable to substitution than motherhood. You can substitute for the teacher, policeman, governor and almost anyone else but no one has found an adequate substitute for a mother’s love.

The greatest writers and speakers of the ages have tried to capture the fullness of motherhood but all have failed to maximize it. Only in Scripture do we see the blessedness of a good mother fully described. (Prov 31:28-31).

Happy and blessed is the home and the children of a loving mother – one devoted to her husband, children and the Lord. Let us thank God if our home is so blessed.

Article by Gene Taylor, www.centervilleroad.com/articles/mothers.html

It is lamentable how this verse has become the focal point for the controversy regarding the roles of faith and obedience based on its quotation in both Romans 4:3 and James 2:22-23. Paul uses the incident to show how Abram’s faith here justified him without any works; James speaks of how it is fulfilled when Abram demonstrates his obedience to God by being willing to offer Isaac his son upon the altar (cf. Genesis 22). Abram’s example does not teach either that faith only saves or that works save– Abram’s example shows us that we must have faith and be obedient to God in order to obtain the blessing.

Such controversy often overshadows the great depth of faith put forward by Abram. Abram here is in his eighties; Sarai his wife is in her seventies. She has borne him no children, and he has no biological heir. God has made all of these promises regarding Abram’s offspring inheriting the land, yet Eliezer of Damascus, Abram’s servant, currently stands to inherit what remains to him (Genesis 15:2-3). Yet God promises that he will have a son, and his son will be his true heir (Genesis 15:4-5).

On what basis should Abram believe God? After all, he is well over the age most people have children, and women do not often have children in their seventies! According to the human, earthly perspective, there is no reason to believe God. On a physical level alone, Abram is doomed to have no descendants if he is waiting on Sarai.

But Abram knows that what is impossible with men is possible with God (cf. Matthew 19:26). He and 318 men just defeated four Mesopotamian kings whom the five kings of the valley could not best (Genesis 14). God had brought him from the land of Ur and Haran and had blessed him so far (Genesis 12:1-4). Abram was willing to trust God, and God counted it as righteousness.

Abram’s faith teaches us what faith should be. Faith is trust and confidence, even if there is no good earthly or physical basis on which to base that trust or confidence! The Hebrew author speaks of faith as “assurance of things hoped for, a conviction of things not seen,” (Hebrews 11:1), and this was certainly true in relation to Abram and his children. Abram had every reason not to trust in God’s promise, and he trusted anyway.

God proved faithful to Abram even when Abram was not as faithful to God. The very next chapter shows what happens when Abram and Sarai attempt to meddle in God’s purposes– Abram fathers Ishmael through Hagar, but he is not the chosen one (cf. Genesis 16). Instead, God waits another 15 years, and Sarah bears to Abraham a son, Isaac, in his old age, she at 90, he at 100 (Genesis 21, Romans 4:18-22)! What is impossible with man is possible with God.

Are there good earthly, physical reasons to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, crucified for our sin, and raised on the third day in power? Upon what basis should we accept that God will raise us also from the dead and provide glory and eternal life if we are found faithful? Why should we think that God loves us and is willing to give us all things, especially when things do not look so good for us? According to an earthly, human perspective, there are no good reasons. That’s why faith is so critical– no mere intellectual assent to a proposition, but a willingness to trust and cling to God no matter how implausible or impossible His promises may seem.

If God is able to create the universe as we know it and allowed a woman of 90 years to give birth, He is certainly able to redeem us from sin and gather us to Him for all eternity. Will we be willing to believe what is impossible according to men? Can we trust in things hoped for and show conviction despite not seeing? And are we willing to obey and serve, even if it costs us everything? If so, we will have a faith that God will count for righteousness, and we can share in all those “impossible” promises!

Article by Ethan Longhenry

It’s one thing when teenagers and members of lower socioeconomic classes fall prey to this phenomenon. But the out-of-wedlock birthrate is so high that it suggests a problem spread much wider than could have been imagined. This outrageous number of out-of-wedlock births across age and socioeconomic sectors signal the wholesale disintegration of our American family.

Welcome to the dawn of the age of the American lust child.

Some would question why it matters. What does society care whether or not children are born to wedded mothers at all? After all, if the parents are together but not married, or single but wealthy enough to support the child, then no big deal, right?

Wrong.

There is more to raising children than just food, clothing and shelter. There are non-material things that parents provide that cannot be quantified in dollars and cents, but are just as essential for that child to grow up and become a productive member of society. They include providing a strong moral foundation, teaching faith, perseverance and discipline. It’s not that one parent is incapable of doing this alone. But in most U.S. households, where someone has to work to bring in an income, the moral education of children requires teamwork if it is to be done correctly.

Of course, two people do not have to be married in order to have a committed team for child-rearing purposes. But the reality is that the bond of commitment between the parents is strengthened when sanctioned before their wider family and when bolstered by the social and economic benefits conferred by marital status. Married couples can more easily combine income to purchase homes, and enjoy distinct advantages under the tax system for raising their families. Children of married couples are more likely to graduate from college, and enjoy a higher degree of success than those raised by single parents.

Moreover, marriage leads to the creation and preservation of intergenerational wealth. Even as far back as Shakespeare’s time, people recognized that parental legitimacy conferred social and economic benefits on children that even moral perfection could scarcely equal. In “King Lear,” Edgar, the illegitimate son of the Earl of Gloucester questioned society’s judgment of him, regarding the system of marriage and legitimate birth as a cruel joke.

“Wherefore should I stand in the plague of custom and allow the curiosity of nations to deprive me [of my inheritance]?” he insisted. But the reality is that legitimacy confers a name, and a name becomes a legacy. Legacies, in turn, create nations and empires.

Just ask the children of professional athletes and entertainers born within wedlock, and those born outside of it. While the law may compel the absent father to pay child support, it cannot force him to become a father. Those children, the “legitimate ones” if you will, end up far better off than the babies born out of on-the-road romances.

In many ways, social disintegration is the symptom of modernity. All of the trappings of modern life – the degrees, the jobs, mortgages – and marital responsibilities lead many to view their lives as surreal and lacking any real foundation. The individual, they feel, gets drowned out by notions of social status. In rejecting social institutions like marriage, they feel that they can only be authentic when divested of the cultural trappings that seem to shield them from the difficult truth about their existence. They want to perceive themselves as individuals who are free to choose any option that they might find appealing.

It is precisely at this point that we begin to fall apart as a society, and the true costs of naked individualism, the “if it feels good, do it” mentality becomes clear.

People like Nadya Suleman, the infamous “Octo-Mom,” exemplify the effects of this mentality at its extreme. While it’s all well and good for her to go around having 14 children, including octuplets, out of wedlock, it’s society that ends up paying the price. Although free to make an individual (and some would say, selfish) choice, she must now rely on society to supply her children with medical care and housing.

The notion of individuality is based upon a vain aspiration to live independently of the transcendent moral laws. That people feel this way is not entirely their fault: We live in a society that has failed us in so many ways. Leaders have been shown to be hypocritical, and political concepts such as liberty and freedom have in many cases rung hollow in the face of discrimination and oppression.

But this should not make us cynical about our own moral responsibilities. True freedom for the individual can only be achieved by living in harmony with a higher order that governs the universe and everything in it. And that order requires that children be afforded the opportunity to grow up in a married household.

Article by Armstrong Williams, in the Washington Post.

Let none imagine that the subjoined propositions are at all intended as an overture toward a new creed or standard for the Church, or as in any wise designed to be made a term of communion; nothing can be farther from our intention. They are merely designed for opening up the way, that we may come fairly and firmly to original ground upon clear and certain promises, and take up things just as the apostles left them; that thus disentangled from the accruing embarrassments of intervening ages, we may stand with evidence upon the same ground on which the Church stood at the beginning. Having said so much to solicit attention and prevent mistake, we submit as follows:

Prop. 1. That the Church of Christ upon earth is essentially, intentionally, and constitutionally one; consisting of all those in every place that profess their faith in Christ and obedience to him in all things according to the Scriptures. and that manifest the same by their tempers and conduct, and of none else; as none else can be truly and properly called Christians.

2. That although the Church of Christ upon earth must necessarily exist in particular and distinct societies, locally separate one from another, yet there ought to be no schisms, no uncharitable divisions among them. They ought to receive each other as Christ Jesus hath also received them, to the glory of God. And for this purpose they ought all to walk by the same rule, to mind and speak the same thing; and to be perfectly joined together in the same mind, and in the same judgment.

3. That in order to this, nothing ought to be inculcated upon Christians as articles of faith; nor required of them as terms of communion, but what is expressly taught and enjoined upon them in the word of God. Nor ought anything to be admitted, as of Divine obligation, in their Church constitution and managements, but what is expressly enjoined by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ and his apostles upon the New Testament Church; either in express terms or by approved precedent.

4. That although the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are inseparably connected, making together but one perfect and entire revelation of the Divine will, for the edification and salvation of the Church, and therefore in that respect can not be separated; yet as to what directly and properly belongs to their immediate object, the New Testament is as perfect a constitution for the worship, discipline, and government of the New Testament Church. and as perfect a rule for the particular duties of its members, as the Old Testament was for the worship, discipline, and government of the Old Testament Church, and the particular duties of its members.

5. That with respect to the commands and ordinances of our Lord Jesus Christ, where the Scriptures are silent as to the express time or manner of performance, if any such there be, no human authority has power to interfere, in order to supply the supposed deficiency by making laws for the Church; nor can anything more be required of Christians in such cases, but only that they so observe these commands and ordinances as will evidently answer the declared and obvious end of their institution. Much less has any human authority power to impose new commands or ordinances upon the Church, which our Lord Jesus Christ has not enjoined. Nothing ought to be received into the faith or worship of the Church, or be made a term of communion among Christians, that is not as old as the New Testament,

6. That although inferences and deductions from Scripture premises, when fairly inferred, may be truly called the doctrine of God’s holy word, yet are they not formally binding upon the consciences of Christians farther than they perceive the connection, and evidently see that they are so; for their faith must not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power and veracity of God. Therefore, no such deductions can be made terms of communion, but do properly belong to the after and progressive edification of the Church. Hence, it is evident that no such deductions or inferential truths ought to have any place in the Church’s confession.

7. That although doctrinal exhibitions of the great system of Divine truths, and defensive testimonies in opposition to prevailing errors, be highly expedient, and the more full and explicit they be for those purposes, the better; yet, as these must be in a great measure the effect of human reasoning, and of course must contain many inferential truths, they ought not to be made terms of Christian communion; unless we suppose, what is contrary to fact, that none have t right to the communion of the Church, but such as possess a very clear and decisive judgment, or are come to a very high degree of doctrinal information; whereas the Church from the beginning did, and ever will, consist of little children and young men, as well as fathers.

8. That as it is not necessary that persons should have a particular knowledge or distinct apprehension of all Divinely revealed truths in order to entitle them to a place in the Church; neither should they, for this purpose, be required to make a profession more extensive than their knowledge; but that, on the contrary, their having a due measure of Scriptural self-knowledge respecting their lost and perishing condition by nature and practice, and of the way of salvation through Jesus Christ, accompanied with a profession of their faith in and obedience to him, in all things, according to his word, is all that is absolutely necessary to qualify them for admission into his Church.

9. That all that are enabled through grace to make such a profession, and to manifest the reality of it in their tempers and conduct, should Consider each other as the precious saints of God, should love each other as brethren, children of the same family and Father, temples of the same Spirit, members of the same body, subjects of the same grace, objects of the same Divine love, bought with the same price, and joint-heirs of the same inheritance. Whom God hath thus joined together no man should dare to put asunder.

10. That division among the Christians is a horrid evil, fraught with many evils. It is antichristian, as it destroys the visible unity of the body of Christ; as if he were divided against himself, excluding and excommunicating a part of himself. It is antiscriptural, as being strictly prohibited by his sovereign authority; a direct violation of his express command. It is antinatural, as it excites Christians to contemn, to hate, and oppose one another, who are bound by the highest and most endearing obligations to love each other as brethren, even as Christ has loved them. In a word, it is productive of confusion and of every evil work.

11. That (in some instances) a partial neglect of the expressly revealed will of God, and (in others) an assumed authority for making the approbation of human opinions and human inventions a term of communion, by introducing them into the constitution, faith, or worship of the Church, are, and have been, the immediate, obvious, and universally-acknowledged causes, of all the corruptions and divisions that ever have taken place in the Church of God.

12. That all that is necessary to the highest state of perfection and purity of the Church upon earth is, first, that none be received as members but such as having that due measure of Scriptural self-knowledge described above, do profess their faith in Christ and obedience to him in all things according to the Scriptures; nor, secondly, that any be retained in her communion longer than they continue to manifest the reality of their profession by their temper and conduct. Thirdly, that her ministers, duly and Scripturally qualified, inculcate none other things than those very articles of faith and holiness expressly revealed and enjoined in the word of God. Lastly, that in all their administrations they keep close by the observance of all Divine ordinances, after the example of the primitive Church, exhibited in the New Testament; without any additions whatsoever of human opinions or inventions of men.

13. Lastly. That if any circumstantials indispensably necessary to the observance of Divine ordinances be not found upon the page of express revelation, such, and such only, as are absolutely necessary for this purpose should be adopted under the title of human expedients, without any pretense to a more sacred origin, so that any subsequent alteration or difference in the observance of these things might produce no contention nor division in the Church.

I strongly disagree with parents who keep their children from attending funerals. I suspect that oftentimes it is not the children but rather the parents who are having trouble coping with death – probably because they didn’t attend enough funerals as children themselves. Solomon described the various stages of life as all having “an appointed time” – “A time to give birth and a time to die; … a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a tie to dance” (Ecclesiastes 3:1-4). We must all learn about death eventually; we might as well start early.

My fondest memory of my grandfather’s funeral is walking with my little cousins through the cemetery and looking at headstones. We saw where Pawpaw’s body would be placed – next to Mimmee, who had preceded him. We talked about how our spirits leave our bodies when we die, and how they will go to heaven if we believe in God and live the right kind of life (Hebrews 11:6). We talked about how funerals help us remember all the great lessons good men like Pawpaw taught us, and all the good times we had working in his garden and tending his cattle.

God keeps the spirit, the ground keeps the body, and we keep the memories. If we can’t keep all three for ourselves, I think that’s a pretty fair bargain.

Article by Hal Hammons.

It’s a shame we never learned the solid moral values necessary to accomplish these goals and maintain a healthy civil society.

The Millennials have been born into prosperity and leisure. Before now, we have not witnessed a major economic downturn and the closest most of us have been to war is playing a video game. For better or for worse, we are the “coddled generation,”  watched by overzealous “helicopter parents” who would do anything to give their child the edge. We grew up being told that we’re “special” by everyone from little league coaches who give trophies to both winners and losers, to the late Mr. Rogers, who reminded us every morning that the world revolves around us.

We are also the “bling” and reality TV generation. Television shows like MTV Cribs deluded us into thinking that we will one day be able to afford the grand houses, personal chefs, and enormous shark-filled fish tanks of the stars.  We couldn’t stop watching reality shows like I Love New York and Flavor of Love, where the dregs of society congregated for their fifteen minutes of fame. Contestants hoped to cash in on their newfound celebrity, emulating Omaraosa Manigault-Stallworth, who, after debuting on The Apprentice, has appeared on more than 20 shows. Other programs, like I Love Money, provide an outlet for money-hungry reality “stars,” degrading themselves in the process. With all this worship of money, it’s no wonder that rapper 50 Cent’s album Get Rich or Die Tryin’ was the best-selling album of 2003.

Beyond excessive coddling and the unrealistic pursuit of “bling,” there is a greater weakness in my generation that may spoil our plans for success: our moral compass is pointing in the wrong direction. According to the Josephson Institute For Youth Ethics 2008 Survey on ethics of American Youth,  64 percent of high school students admitted cheating on a test during the previous year and 38 percent did so two or more times. 30 percent admitted to stealing from a store within the past year. Yet, incredibly, an astounding 93 percent of those same high school students said they were satisfied with their personal ethics and character.

My personal experiences have confirmed these statistics. I know of one instance where rich parents offered a brand-new BMW to an SAT tutor to take the test for their child, who was surely in on the scheme. The parents didn’t want their child to achieve on merit alone and encouraged cheating. The tutor declined the offer, but I am confident this is not the only case.

To share another personal example of twisted morality, two summers ago I was eating at a diner with some recent acquaintances. After we finished, I left a generous tip. As we were leaving, my companions started to laugh hysterically. I asked what was so funny and they revealed that they had taken my tip, a reward for service that was perfectly fine, and replaced it with a penny. These boys essentially stole the major source of income from a waitress, insulting her in the process – all to “teach me a lesson” about over-tipping.

From Enron to Madoff, we have witnessed the economic consequences of immoral behavior. The current financial crisis was in part caused by immorality: buyers bought homes they couldn’t afford, sellers sold homes to people who couldn’t afford them, and the government sat back, enjoying the show.

The ruling generations are now debating whether capitalism has failed us and America should become more socialist.  The outcome of this debate will dictate what kind of country we Millennials will inherit.  Although I am only a junior in high school and haven’t even taken Econ 101, it does not take an advanced degree to know that moral behavior is essential to any economy – capitalist, socialist, or communist.  Immoral people can make any economic system dysfunctiona.  If all economic systems have the same possibility for immoral, economically destructive behavior, why not choose the one with the greatest reward for the most people: capitalism. The public is too quick to forget how America achieved its place as king of the world economy. It was not through nationalized industries and government subsidies, but through fierce yet healthy competition and rapid growth of the private sector.

So far, we Millennials have not had much of a chance to step up to the plate and prove ourselves morally capable of becoming the leaders of the American economy.  But we will have no choice and, unless we change our ways, our immoral behavior can have disastrous consequences. Get Rich or Die Tryin’ may have been a popular album, but it must not become the mantra of a generation.

As Rabbi Hillel said two thousand years ago when he summarized the Torah, “That which is hateful to you, do not do to others. All the rest is commentary.”

Article by Charlie Nathan (Charlie Nathan is a high school junior at The Masters School in Dobbs Ferry, NY.  He has a blog at themastersmob.com.)

Even though they did not always live by it, the ancients considered “moderation in all things” as the ultimate ideal. When and if this ultimate equilibrium could be reached, life would be most pleasant.

Yet we, as humans, are not always well-balanced creatures. We often go to extremes. In some aspects of life, we may practice self-denial; in others, we throw ourselves into consumption. Our imbalances lead to feelings of craving or guilt.

We would do well, therefore, to maintain a “sound mind” and to be “sober,” or, as in other versions, to exhibit self-control and sober-mindedness. These attributes require discipline and balance, striving to be neither too stringent nor too lax (Colossians 2:20-23, Galatians 5:17-21).

Self-control means that we know when to say “yes” and when to say “no,” and to translate that knowledge into action. Self-control knows when to say, “enough,” either in denial or pleasure. Self-control must be accomplished in every aspect of life if it will be of real value. Even though self-control is listed at the end of the manifestations of the fruit of the Spirit, it is hard to see how anyone can manifest the other characteristics without it (Galatians 5:22-24)!

When we think of sobriety, we generally think of not being on drugs or alcohol. Yet sobriety is much more than that– it means that we are free from any and all intoxicants. To be sober-minded means to not allow any thing to intoxicate or control the mind, save the believer subjecting his mind to the will of Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5). That includes drugs and alcohol, but also includes greed, lust, and anything else that would intoxicate the mind and distract us from our main purpose!

Let none be deceived: self-control and sober-mindedness are not forced upon anyone on account of circumstances. They are qualities that must be consciously developed whether in good times or bad. Are we willing to put effort into disciplining ourselves (1 Corinthians 9:24-27)?

We would also do well to consider why Peter says we ought to be self-controlled and sober-minded: “the end of all things is at hand.” If we knew for a certainty that this would be the last day of our lives, and that Jesus is going to return tomorrow, how would our story end? Would we be found as the “good and faithful servant,” doing the will of the Master despite His absence, showing proper self-control and sober-mindedness (Matthew 24:45-47)? Or would we be as the “wicked servant,” who has not acted as circumspectly, and fallen under condemnation for his sin (Matthew 24:48-51)?

In this circumstance, would knowing that Jesus is returning tomorrow change the way you lived? Would it lead you to “straighten up” and apply yourself more diligently to self-control and sober-mindedness? Even though we may not know for certain whether Jesus will come today, tomorrow, or in a thousand years, the New Testament makes clear that we must live as if He will return momentarily (1 Thessalonians 5:1-10, Matthew 25:1-30). Let us develop self-control and sober-mindedness so that we may be found faithful in the Kingdom!

Article by Ethan R. Longhenry

I picked up the gingerbread tube and thought I would just flip open the top and give it a sniff. Nothing. I do have more trouble these days smelling things because of all the medications. So I decided to give the tube a light squeeze so a puff of scented air from inside the tube would give me a better whiff.

Instead of air, a big glop of orange creamsicle-colored lotion shot straight into the air and arced over to the catchall shelf of sorts that I carry in front of me. Plop! A big orange spot appeared on my bright blue sweater.

Wait! Is anyone looking? Did anyone see? I looked around guiltily and then, because I had nothing else with me, started wiping if off with my finger. The sweater was dark enough and nubby enough that the spot no longer showed, but I had a big dollop of lotion to get rid of and the best I could think was to just rub it into my hands and arms. I am sure the security people were laughing their heads off as they viewed the monitor that picked up this “I Love Lucy” moment.

You know what? I did not like the smell. A friend later asked me if I had spilled machine oil all over myself. No, just gingerbread body lotion, and I carried it about with me for a long eight hour day because I had a doctor’s appointment afterward. Yuk!

Let that be a lesson to you. Sometimes we start wondering what we are missing out there in the big, bad world. I have been good all my life-brought up “in the church,” taught to obey all authorities–parents, teachers, policemen–memorized all the no-nos for a Christian, and the scriptures to go along with them. If all those things out there are so bad, why do so many spend their lives pursuing them? What do they know that I don’t? Just one little whiff is all I want.

But that little whiff can easily become a big glop of smelly stuff that we carry with us far longer than the actual experience lasts. Consequences can raise a big stink in your life. In fact, they can ruin your life, and even the lives of those you love and have no desire to hurt.

It is not a question of what those folks out there know that you don’t; it’s a question of what you know that they don’t-that sin is deceptively easy to fall into and sometimes impossible to get out of. God will forgive you, but he will not wash away the consequences-like ruined relationships, like destroyed trust, like physical diseases or injuries, like jail time and a record that follows you everywhere.

Though I did not really like it much, that little glop of lotion did not smell quite that bad when it landed on my sweater. But as the day grew longer, it began to reek. Sin will do exactly the same thing.

There is no soundness in my flesh because of your indignation; there is no health in my bones because of my sin. For my iniquities have gone over my head; like a heavy burden, they are too heavy for me. My wounds stink and fester because of my foolishness, I am utterly bowed down and prostrate; all the day I go about mourning. For my sides are filled with burning, and there is no soundness in my flesh. I confess my iniquity; I am sorry for my sin. Do not forsake me, O LORD! O my God, be not far from me! Make haste to help me, O Lord, my salvation! (Selected verses from the 38th Psalm.)

Article by Dene Ward

James 1:13-15 NASB Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone. (14) But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. (15) Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death.

If God cannot be tempted by evil and that is why He does not tempt us, that leads me to conclude – thinking backwards – that I can tempt others because I am tempted by evil. I am the tempter as much as Satan is the tempter (Mt.4:3; 1 Thess.3:5). I am what Satan is…. Can any read that last sentence without trepidation?

It is accepted that I can be tempted. It is terrifying, frightening and sobering that I can tempt others because I can be tempted. I can lead people to sin. I can lead people to hell. There’s a biblical word for this effect – stumbling: Mark 9:42 NASB “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe to stumble, it would be better for him if, with a heavy millstone hung around his neck, he had been cast into the sea.

Let us all remember the effect – whether for good or bad – that we can have on others. That effect can be either a blessing or a curse. Which will we make it today?

Article by Perry Hall

Some of us studied Latin in high school and learned why it is called a “dead” language—it is no longer spoken and therefore no longer changes. A living language changes every day. Take the word “silly.” We know it means “absurd, foolish or stupid.” Did you know that it originally meant “happy and blessed?” How about “lewd?” It now means “sexually unchaste;” originally it meant “a common person as opposed to clergy.” “Idiot” now has the specific meaning of “someone whose mental age does not exceed three,” and a colloquial meaning of “a foolish or stupid person.” Originally it meant “someone in private station as opposed to someone holding public office.” So five hundred years ago, most of us could have been described as silly, lewd idiots and we would not have taken offense!

The same changes are true of every language, including Greek and Hebrew. When you search for meanings in a lexicon, be sure you find out what meaning the word had when it was written in the scriptures. In fact, that is why I usually limit my studies to the various ways a word was translated into English. Psallo once meant “to pull out one’s hair,” but by the time Ephesians 5:19 and Colossians 3:16 were written it had gone through several changes and simply meant “to sing praises.” That is why we sing to God instead of standing before him pulling out our hair!

Another thing to be careful of is root words. A lot of arguments have been made based on the root of a Greek word. Let me just give you a quick example in English to show you how dangerous this can be. Do you know what the root word for “nice” is? The Latin nescius. Nescius means “ignorant!” Think about that the next time someone tells you how nice you look on Sunday morning.

We do all sorts of other things that we think are so smart and really are not. We talk about compound words as if just knowing the two parts to one will instantly enlighten us to the real meaning of a Greek word. Not necessarily. How about “pineapple?” The bush certainly does not look like a pine, and the fruit neither looks, tastes, nor smells like an apple! Truly, a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

Then there are those simplistic definitions we often use. “Faithful means full of faith.” Really? Ask someone whose spouse has been “unfaithful” what that word means and you are much more likely to get an accurate and useful definition.

And what does all this have to do with anything? God chose to use his written word to communicate his will to us. I need to be very careful how I use it. Translations are fine. Jesus used one—the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, completed about 200 BC. However, I must be careful in my study lest I think that learning a few things makes me an authority. I know it is a cliché, but it is so true—the more I learn, the more I realize I do not know. But God has made sure I know what I need to know.

We have in our hands the Words of Life. Be careful with them.

Article by Dene Ward

It was once the case that the only time “love-handles” were exposed in public was when an overweight plumber was struggling to repair the faucet (no offense to plumbers intended).

These days, every other teenage girl at the mall is wearing her favorite pair of “I wear a size 8, but the 6’s fit so tight, I went ahead and got the 4’s” low-rider jeans that let her wiggle around in pride, showing off her new tattoo just above the caboose along with the bellybutton ring she bought with last week’s allowance.

From early on, our society teaches the feminine child that body glitter and exposed cleavage are the rites of passage that will carry her to the status of “cosmopolitan womanhood.” From the time they can fantasize with the Barbie doll that has become progressively more lumpy over the years, to the day she can pick up the latest “sophisticated” women’s magazines, our daughters are slowly being pressed into a mold of destruction and ruin.

Even underwear that only a few years ago was considered “for adults only” is now in vogue for innocent girls at the tenderest age. Recently, the infamous Abercrombie& Fitch porn and clothing store began testing the limits by peddling a line of thong underwear for girls as young as 10 or 12years old garnished with pictures of cherries, and suggestive words like “kiss me, “wink wink,” and “eye candy.” Despite the public outcry, the hustlers know that they can pull back, wait a while, then steam on ahead.

When your daughter is walking around with “kiss me” stamped on her derriere, what kind of message do you think is being advertised?

The young men in our culture are no less targets of the allure of “glamorous” living. Almost every break in any given televised sports event is peppered with seductive women and carefree young men promoting one prevailing hedonistic message. The adolescent men walk around with their underwear hanging out all over the place, with perhaps something that might be called a shirt. And when mom or dad complain about their son’s behavior, the boys reaffirm their independence and personal sovereignty—then ask for twenty bucks and the car keys.

What is the result of this permeation of sexual marketing and anemic parenting? The fallout is devastating.

Every year, some 12 million Americans contract a sexually transmitted disease; 63% are less than 25 years old.

Every year, nearly 1 million girls between the ages of 15-19 become pregnant; approximately a quarter million of these end their pregnancy by aborting the baby.

The teen mother who keeps the baby will most likely not complete high school, and become a permanent dependent of her parents. Her child will probably have poorer health, fall behind in school, and is more likely to become the victim of abuse and neglect. The father is long gone on to greener pastures—frequently without a thought of the fruit of their sinful, irresponsible behavior. The new mom and her parents are left with heartache and stress, and a child that desperately needs a family as God planned for her (TeenPregnancy.org: General Facts and Stats).

There may be exceptions to the bleak picture painted above. Still, they are exceptions.

In the not-too-distant past, it was the case that if you went to a public amusement park, or even to the local shopping mall, you would expect to see the fashion sense of worldliness walking around.

Now, however, it is increasingly the case that the young women and men in the Lord’s church are not only wearing immodest apparel with abandon, but they are even arriving to worship the Lord of heaven and earth dressed so inappropriately. Young women, with exposed cleavage and tight, revealing clothes sit beside disheveled young men wearing wrinkled T-shirts and scruffy sweatpants. Occasionally, they even have the nerve to “make-out” on the church parking lot.

Preacher and elders need to lovingly, yet firmly, address this type of behavior. We ought not be intimidated by permissive parents who resist biblical teaching when it is applied to their precious off spring. Lessons from the pulpit are important. But so is courageous, personal counseling.

Parents, especially fathers, you need to exercise the authority and discipline the Father has bestowed upon you. If your children are dressed for success in Satan’s cause, it is your fault. If they live in your house, take a stand. They may kick and scream, but it’s up to you to set the standard in your household.

Moms, please don’t make your daughter the object of your vicarious teenage rebellion. Teach your tender offspring the value of purity and honor. The greatest gift you can give her is the self-respect of not needing to rely upon her curls and curves to achieve the great milestones in life. Actively teach her that she can instead rely upon the majesty of her heavenly Father (1 Pet. 2:9), the mind of Christ (Phil. 2:5), and the humility of Mary (Lk. 1:38). Those traits will last much longer, even into eternity.

Young men, tuck in your shirts and show some dignity. Act like Timothy, not like p-Daddy diddly-doo or whoever is the big-shot rapper of the day (Dude, that means, like, read 1 & 2 Timothy!). A good dose of the Proverbs is prescribed as well.

Ladies, the way you dress does matter. Please, put on some decent clothes. You may not contract an STD or get pregnant, but avoiding those results are pretty good reasons to live pure and wholesome lives.

If those aren’t good enough reasons, at least dress modestly for the sake of those around you. There are men who will be weakened by your display. And if you don’t care about them, at least have the dignity and self-respect to not advertise yourself as a cheap sex object.

Ultimately, you ought to comport yourself as the temple of the Holy Spirit, for such you are (1 Cor. 6:19). Instead of trying to turn the heads, try turning the hearts with a beauty of holiness and depth of character possessed by the great women in the Bible.

“And be not fashioned according to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God” (Rom. 12:2).