Tag: god

Which of us would let a kid touch a hot stove?

~ wzippler

child safety at home concept - toddler reaching for pan on the stove in kitchen
I often hear people telling others not to judge, but when we tell a kid to stop reaching for something on a hot stove, are we not judging their behavior?

If a young kid is doing something that is dangerous, we tell them to stop. Do we hate the child? NO!  Are we judging them? YES! Refusing to stop them from doing something that could end in tragedy would be a HATEFUL act!

Most of God’s laws are written for the same reasons,  parents judge their kids on a regular basis. We don’t do it because we are hateful tyrants, we do it because we love them, and want them to have the best life possible.

Most of God’s rules have negative consequences here on earth if you fail to follow them, that can and should be acknowledged by non-Christians as well as Christians. The CDC has a section of their website that specifically covers the dangers to men who have sex with men.   Thanks to political correctness, many don’t even know that Aids is still a high risk for bisexual and gay men. According to the CDC,  Gay and bisexual men accounted for 82% (26,376) of new HIV diagnoses among all males aged 13 and older and 67% of the total new diagnoses in the United States.
 82% of the people with this deadly disease are gay or bisexual, yet it is politically incorrect to warn them of the danger!!!! If we would just learn to follow the directions that our creator gave us, an unthinkable amount of premature deaths could have been avoided!

According to the Brookings Institute, there are three simple rules to escape poverty and enter the middle class.  Finish high school, get a full-time job and get married before having kids. Yet we continue to sexualize younger and younger children,  identify women by their sexual body parts, and parade them around as little pink hats! Yet if someone warns them of their impending danger, they are supposedly hateful and judgmental.  It’s like we are challenging them to touch that stove and get burned!

As tempting as it is to give up, we can’t God has told us to keep working for him until the day he comes back, and if you ask me I would say that some of us need to start putting in some overtime!

If you don’t have time to read the Bible, try listening to it.

Thoughts on our Constitution, by President John Adams

~ wzippler

United States Bill of Rights Preamble to the Constitution

    We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
President John Adams

Metaxas, Eric. If You Can Keep It: The Forgotten Promise of American Liberty (p. 61). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

William Lane Craig lectures on the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus — WINTERY KNIGHT

~ wzippler

Here is Dr. William Lane Craig giving a long-form argument for the historical event of the resurrection of Jesus, and taking questions from the audience. The speaker introduction goes for 6 minutes, then Dr. Craig speaks for 35 minutes, then it’s a period of questions and answers with the audience. The total length is 93 […]

Read more at William Lane Craig lectures on the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus — WINTERY KNIGHT

His Mercies Never End

~ wzippler

cross against the sky

Lamentations 3:22-24  Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB)

ח Khet

22 Because of the Lord’s faithful love
we do not perish,
for His mercies never end.
23 They are new every morning;
great is Your faithfulness!
24 I say: The Lord is my portion,
therefore I will put my hope in Him.

Many of you are probably thinking “yeah, that’s easy to say when things are going your way.”, Not so fast, when it comes to Bible interpretation, context makes all the difference.   Jeremiah and all of Isreal were going through some times that would make most of our nightmares look like day dreams.  Cities demolished, enslaved, starvation …

Yet Jeremiah wasn’t without comfort. He knew that the Lord would forgive, and deliver them.  While the Lord may seem far away at times, there is still hope. God will somehow deliver if you trust in him.

God in the Declaration of Independance

~ wzippler

The Declaration of Independence
When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitles them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. 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.

The words of The Declaration of Independence have been called America’s birth certificate.  The people who signed it risked not only their lives, but the lives of their families, and all their property.  You can bet they made sure to agree with every word it said before they signed it.  They even agreed with the phrases that I put in bold print, nature’s God, and endowed by their creator. Who could they have been talking about if not the God that inspired people to move here in search of religious liberty?

Some of its signers included; John Hancock, John Adams,  Samuel Adams,  Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson.

Yet some would have us believe even though the founders based their rights in their creator, who is nature’s God that they did not want God to have anything to do with this country. While it will take more evidence to prove that the God that they were referring to was the God of the Bible, those who read the Declaration in full with an open mind should be willing to consider the possibility that the founders had no problem with God.

You can read the Declaration of Independence in its entirety at

The Declaration of Independence  

or in the book Original Intent: The Courts, the Constitution, & Religion
available at Amazon

Colossians 2:8 is Philosophy bad?

~ wzippler

A photo of The Thinker by Rodin located at the Musée Rodin in Paris

Colossians 2:8

8 Be careful that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit based on human tradition, based on the elemental forces of the world, and not based on Christ.   (HCSB)

Many people assume that this verse is warning Christians away from philosophy, but this passage talks about a particular kind of philosophy, the kind that is based on what human tradition says. Philosophy based on Christ is a good thing.

Philosophy is a method of discovering truth. Many people claim that science is the only way to truth, but  I ask “What scientific study did you do to discover that truth?”, “How much does that “truth” weigh?”. There are several other questions I could ask to point out that not all truth is scientific.

In Jurassic Park, Dr. Ian Malcolm says ” Yeah, yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should. ”

The reason that they did not stop to think about that question is that should and ought are in the realm of philosophy, science can inform moral truth, but it can not discover it.
Philosophy is the love of wisdom, and true wisdom flows from God’s truth.
Wisdom is mentioned many times in the Bible, and most of the time it is in a good light. The wisdom of Solomon was at one time famous all over the then known world, and his wisdom came from God.

A good book that is filled with Christian Philosophy, that debunks the most common bad philosophy today, the “everyone is right but the Christians view” is
Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air by Greg Koukl
If you have ever been told not to judge, or that truth is relative, and did not know what to say,  you need this book.
                        

121 Quotes on Why We Need Apologetics-The Poached Egg

~ wzippler

 

I think increasingly we are going to need to be not only the bearers of the gospel to others but a people who have answers available to questions such as, “What about the problem of evil? and “How do I know God exists?” We will need to give basic answers to these objections. Typically, the same questions come up over and over again. You won’t need to learn lots of new material with each person you talk to. If we have a mastery of some of the basics, we can really go a long way. And, as we’re evangelizing, as we’re talking about our faith, we will have greater confidence in presenting the gospel and won’t be daunted by the potential questions that might come up, but rather will say, “I believe the Christian faith does a better job of answering these sorts of questions.” —Paul Copan (From the interview: Starting Right Where I Am)

To read more Apologetics quotes: click here
Works by Paul Copan include:
Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God

True for You, But Not for Me: Overcoming Objections to Christian Faith