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Birdwell Lane Church of Christ Big Spring, TX |
Weekly Thoughts - February 2009
| <---- January 2009 | -- | March 2009 ----> |
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01 - EXPRESSING OUR LOVE TO GOD 08 - MAN — NO LONGER ENDOWED BY A CREATOR? 15 - ONLY GOD CAN MAKE A TREE - PSALMS 1 22 - IDEALS & VISIONS |
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EXPRESSING OUR LOVE TO GOD Most often, when we think about loving others, we focus on our friends and families. God is frequently left out except maybe as an afterthought. This is not the way God wants it to be. Throughout the Bible, He is careful to tell us that He loves us and, in turn, we should love Him. The apostle John in 1 and 2 John writes a great deal about God’s love for us and our love for Him. How do we love God? He is beyond our ability to know and understand, but love Him we must. Isn’t it true that one of the purposes of the Bible is to reveal God to us? Although we can never truly know and understand God, He does tell us enough about Himself so that we can know and understand Him to a small degree with our limited abilities.
See ya Sunday, Ralph |
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MAN — NO LONGER ENDOWED BY A CREATOR? “In the beginning was matter, which begat the amoeba, which begat the worm, which begat the fish, which begat the amphibian, which begat the reptile, which begat the lower mammal, which begat the lemur, which begat the monkey, which begat man, who imagined God.” This, according to atheist Charles Smith, is the genealogy of man. Sadly, he is far from being alone in his views of man’s origin. In fact, a vast majority of modern-day scientists cling vehemently to this Darwinist view of origins as “gospel” on the matter. It has become the light under which all new data is examined. It has become their religion—one for which they will fight for in order to secure its place in academia. And it appears that they are winning. While you may find the concept of men evolving from some primordial slime repulsive or sickening, the reality of the current politically climate is far worse. For in our country, the only theory about man’s origins allowed in the classroom is this fallacious concept of organic evolution: amoeba to man. And although our country declared its independence with these words: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” (emp. added), we now live in a land where we can no longer discuss that Creator in the classroom. When Thomas Jefferson penned those famous words, he illustrated that from the very beginning, America recognized human rights as a gift of God, not something created by government. This war to erase God has taken place in every form of media. If this movement had a special forces unit—such as the Navy Seals or Army Rangers—it would most surely be called evolution or neo-Darwinism. The belief of a special creation has been discounted in magazines, on the television, and has now fallen under attack within the Church. The atheists and agnostics of the world have been effective at casting doubt on the very first verse of the Bible, where it clearly states: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth” (Genesis 1:1). These words are no longer viewed as the words of Almighty God, but rather as a nice introduction to a fable or myth. Day-after-day our children sit at the feet of professors who, using fancy words and scientific theories, teach that man’s origins are the result of some Big Bang or Punctuated Equilibrium. And thus we find ourselves in a nation that has outlawed God from the classroom, and who now believes their own origin can be explained by some cosmological accident. But that is not the most heartrending part. The truly tragic part is that Christians are now clinging to this fictitious theory of how man arrived on the Earth. People who have confessed the name of Christ are suddenly giving more credence to a CNN news report, than to the inspired, God-breathed, Holy Bible. They, too, are willing to toss aside those powerful words—“In the beginning God created…”—in favor of man’s latest scientific theory. Sadly, in the process of discounting the first few chapters of Genesis, these Christians are undermining the very foundation of their own religion. If they question the way the Bible explains how man arrived on this Earth, then what makes them think they can believe what it says regarding salvation and the afterlife? If God did not do it the way He said He did, then why should we believe He sent His only Son to die for our sins? Have Christians not realized the embodiment of all that they are compromising when they buy into evolution and the idea of a six billion year old Earth? If we are to believe and protect the rest of the Bible, then we must be ready to believe and defend that God created the world around us the way He said He did—in six literal days. Brad Harrub, Ph.D. |
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ONLY GOD CAN MAKE A TREE - PSALMS 1
See ya Sunday, Ralph |
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IDEALS & VISIONS As you think, you travel; and as you love, you attract. You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts will take you. You cannot escape the result of your thoughts, but you can endure and learn, you can accept and be glad. You will realize the vision, (not the idle wish), of your heart, be it base or beautiful or a mixture of both, for you will always gravitate toward that which you, secretly, most love. Into your hands will be placed the exact result of your thoughts; you will receive that which you earn; no more no less. Whatever your present environment may be, you will fall, remain or rise with your thoughts, your vision, and your ideal. You will become as small as your controlling desire; as great as your dominate aspiration. So what is your vision for service to God and your ideals that motivate you to serve? Solomon said, “Where there is NO vision my people perish.” Whatever your ideals are and whatever your vision is may well determine where the congregation in which you worship will be a year or ten years from now. See ya Sunday, Ralph |
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