Category: Witnessing

Answering Elsa

Note to Elsa: Before you begin reading my reply. It might help you to understand better where I am coming from. You can do that best by listening to this teaching/sermon called Hell’s Best Kept Secret. It’s meant to teach Christians how to share their faith, but if you will take the time to listen it will give me a point of reference and keep me from a lot more typing. And while you might not agree, you’ll at least understand my game plan.

To Elsa and the rest of the Internet: Because of the huge amount of material in Elsa’s comment (here) and because it takes us so off course from the original theme of my post about Ron Paul, I have started a series of posts to handle each point. Some will not go much further, but I would imagine some will take on a whole new life of their own as well.

  1. Matthew 24
  2. Does Science Disprove the Bible?
  3. Is God’s Plan Better?
  4. Why Ron (that’s me) Believes the Bible
  5. Personal Experience = Truth?
  6. Loving God and Hell Reconciled
  7. Could She Be Wrong?

George W. Bush: America’s first Universalist President?

Is George W. Bush America’s first Christian Universalist President? Chuck Baldwin asks Bush’s Faith-based supporters to consider the facts.

…how would our Christian brethren react if someone came into their church and said that “all religions pray to the same God”? I dare say such a statement would be met with the most vehement rejection. Yet, that is exactly what President Bush has said repeatedly. The latest example was just last Friday, October 5, 2007.

In an interview with Al Arabiya reporter Elie Nakouzi, Bush said, “I believe that all the world, whether they be Muslim, Christian, or any other religion, prays to the same God.” (Source: WND) Bush has made this same statement throughout his Presidency. The statement obviously reflects a deep-seated belief.

Of course, George W. Bush is the first President in U.S. history to celebrate Ramadan in the White House. He is also the first President to worship and pray in a Shinto temple.

Read the full story here.

UMCOR: Shhhh Don’t tell anyone we’re Christians

An excellent point by UMAction:

Methodist News – Institute on Religion and Democracy
“Muslim Aid is very open about the faith that motivates its relief and development work. UMCOR, in contrast, is largely silent about Jesus Christ and the Bible. No wonder there is such easy agreement between them.”
—Mark Tooley, IRD’s Director of UMAction

Come on UMCOR, use my donations to update your website to give praise to Almighty God who empowers us, through His Spirit and by the grace offered through Jesus Christ, to reach out in love to those who suffer and are less fortunate than ourselves; in the hope that God would be praised and Christ be made known throughout the world to the Glory of God.

Loving People Means Pointing Them to the
All-Satisfying God

Now back to what it means to be loved. The idea has been almost totally distorted. Love has to do with showing a dying soul the life-giving beauty of the glory of God, especially his grace. Yes, as we will see, we show God’s glory in a hundred practical ways that include care about food and clothes and shelter and health. That’s what Jesus meant when he said, “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16).

Every good work should be a revelation of the glory of God. What makes the good deed an act of love is not the raw act, but the passion and the sacrifice to make God himself known as glorious. Not to aim to show God is not to love, because God is what we need most deeply. And to have all else without him is to perish in the end. The Bible says that you can give away all that you have and deliver your body to be burned and have not love (1 Corinthians 13:3). If you don’t point people to God for everlasting joy, you don’t love. You waste your life.

[Source: Piper, Don’t Waste Your Life, p34-35, (emphasis added)]

Luke 9:26:  For whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words, of him shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he shall come in his own glory, and in his Father’s, and of the holy angels.

Luke 12:8-9:  Also I say unto you, Whosoever shall confess me before men, him shall the Son of man also confess before the angels of God:  (9)  But he that denieth me before men shall be denied before the angels of God.

2 Timothy 2:12:  If we suffer, we shall also reign with him: if we deny him, he also will deny us:

1 John 2:23:  Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father: but he that acknowledgeth the Son hath the Father also.

2 Peter 2:1:  But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction.