How to Stop Sleep Paralysis For Good - Chris White - stopsleepparalysis.org

For those who are having issues with these events, and apparently there are many out there who are dealing with this, here's some help...

 

Link to the book: http://www.stopsleepparalysis.org/sle...
How to Become a Christian: http://www.stopsleepparalysis.org/how...
Christianity 101 DVD: http://www.stopsleepparalysis.org/c101/
 

Copy of wild kangaroo street fight Aussie style

Let me say I in no way am endorsing kangaroo fighting....and this video is here just because....

wild kangaroo street fight Ozzy style - "for usage and licensing, please contact licensing@viralhog.com"

1st Meeting of the Council of Chalcedon

To say the theologians and church leaders of time past were deep thinkers is an understatement. While it's unfortunate these issues were at times so divisive, it's remarkable how shallow most theology is coming out of the churches today.

When Jesus asked his disciples, "Who do people say that I am?" he received a multitude of answers. Some said he was John the Baptist, some said he was Elijah or Jeremiah or another one of the prophets. The disciple Peter came up with the correct answer when he said, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." The early Christians accepted Peter's confession, but they had many different ideas of exactly what it meant for Jesus to be the Christ. What was Jesus' real nature and person like? How was he related to God and to the Father? To what degree was he truly human? There were many debates over these issues in the fourth through the sixth centuries of the church.

When Constantine became emperor of the Roman Empire and made Christianity a legal religion, he believed unity of the Church was important to the political strength of the empire. So, in 325 he called a Council at Nicea to settle disputes over the nature of Christ. The council issued the Nicene Creed, agreeing that Christ was both man and God and that as the Son of God he had the same divine nature as the Father.

Once it was accepted that Jesus was both fully God and fully man, debates began to rage over how Christ's deity was related to his humanity. One group, the Apollinarians, said the divine Word of Christ took the place of Jesus' human mind and will so that his divine nature was always predominant. Others argued back that if Jesus did not have a human mind and will he could not be fully human. Yet another group argued that at the incarnation the divine and human were so combined in the person of Christ as to produce a new, unique individual. Others again thought that the divine and human natures of Jesus were kept so separate that it was almost like he was two persons. Very often each conflicting group became associated with a particular city - Antioch, Alexandria, Rome, Constantinople, so that political rivalry became entangled in theological debate.
In July, 450, Emperor Theodosius died from a fall off his horse and his brother-in-law Marcian ascended the imperial throne. Spurred by his wife, the Empress Pulcheria, one of Marcian's first acts was to call a church council to deal with some of these religious problems. He hoped for religious unity as a support to the political unity of the empire -- a political unity to face the growing military threat from the east.

On this day, October 8, 451, the largest of all church councils opened at Chalcedon, near Constantinople (modern Istanbul). Five or six hundred bishops were present representing the many conflicting views found within the church. After much debate, on the 22nd of October, a Chalcedonian creed was adopted which re-affirmed the divine and human natures of Christ recognized at Nicea and further stated that the two natures of Christ were "without confusion, without conversion, without severance, and without division." Jesus was affirmed as being both fully divine and human. His two natures were combined in one person without his becoming less divine or less human. The work Christ did was the work of his whole person, not of one nature or another. In that day Pope Leo stated the Chalcedonian position that in Christ the "lowliness of man and the majesty of God perfectly pervade one another...the two natures make only one person."

Some of the Egyptian, Turkish and eastern Christians could not bring themselves to accept the Chalcedon Creed, but it has been accepted by the Roman Catholic, the Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant churches. The Chalcedon Creed is an important basic statement on the nature and person of Christ, but even this creed which has stood for centuries cannot fathom fully the wondrous depths and mystery of Christ's person and nature.

Bibliography:

1. Adapted from an earlier Christian History Institute story.
2. Bellitto, Christopher M. The General Councils : a History of the Twenty-one General Councils from Nicaea to Vatican II. New York : Paulist Press, 2002.
3. "Chalcedon, Council of." The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. Edited by F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.
4. Guitton, Jean. Great Heresies and Church Councils. [English translation by F.D. Wieck] New York: Harper & Row, 1965.
5. Schaefer, Francis J. "Council of Chalcedon." Catholic Encyclopedia. (New York: Appleton, 1914).

Read this article at - http://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/301-600/1st-meeting-of-the-council-of-chalcedon-11629700.html

Will There Be a US Ebola Outbreak in 2015?

I think the question is, will there be an outbreak in 2014?

Emergency and Survival Supplies Sales Now Soaring Above 4,000 Percent

by Donna Howell

---

Ebola Arrives in Texas on a Plane

This past month, Marthalene Williams, a woman in her seventh month of pregnancy, collapsed in Monrovia, Liberia. Naturally, concerned family members and community residents rushed to her aid. The source of the sudden attack against Williams’ body has been revealed as Ebola: a disease causing severe internal bleeding, high fevers, vomiting, and diarrhea. The Ebola Virus is on the whole considered fatal. The disease has now claimed over two thousand lives in Liberia,[1] a small country that has been described by the US Department of State to be approximately the size of Tennessee.[2] In Williams’ small village alone, nine people lay dead or dying.[3] In a news report released at the time of this writing, unsettling realities are descending upon even the youngest of the area’s inhabitants:

Nine-year-old Mercy is being looked after by her seventeen-year-old brother, Harris. Their mother, also, was among the first at Williams’ side. Days later, she, herself, was rushed to the hospital. Mercy doesn’t know this yet, but after we [the CNN News camera crew] leave, one of her neighbors is going to take her aside and explain that her mother is never coming back home.[4]

The local officials are currently establishing a list of those who have come into contact with Marthalene Williams, and as per this report, their list is approaching one hundred names that will now have to be placed under supervision to watch for the symptoms of this deadly disease. One man who was present at the moment that Williams collapsed was a Mr. Thomas Eric Duncan, who, like many, immediately responded to assist the pregnant woman during the episode.

On September 20, two weeks ago, Duncan arrived at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport in Texas in his visit to America. Days later, Duncan was diagnosed with Ebola and is now in critical condition in the Texas Presbyterian Hospital, after walking amidst the crowds of travelers in one of the most highly-populated airports in the United States. Currently, according to Texas health officials in the most recent reporting, the list of those who have been in close enough contact with Duncan to be considered a potential risk has also grown to one hundred.[5]                                                                                                       

Emergency and Survival Suppliers in the US Are Running Out of Stock                                                                                                                     

The United States is a fairly safe place to live in terms of health and medical concerns. As a result, many Americans with ample funds to buy fairly low-cost emergency supplies that would protect from the spread of epidemic disease find themselves all too willing to set aside their concern until disaster strikes. This sudden initial appearance of Ebola in the States has placed millions across the nation in a state of panic, which is depleting many emergency suppliers of regular stock items. Three days ago, the numbers for some of these protective items were as follows: Tyvek suit sales are up 233 percent; sales of 3M Co.’s particulate respirators is up 4,004 percent; hand sanitizers are up 20 percent; and online emergency preparedness stores across the nation are selling out of their supplies at a rapid rate, the likes of which have not been seen since the influenza outbreak of 2011, according to LifeSecure.[6]

With West African numbers quickly climbing to 7,500–8,000 dead or dying from the outbreak,[7] and now the first-ever diagnosis of Ebola on American soil,[8] Americans are understandably searching for protection from exposure. 

 

Read the rest of this article at - http://www.raidersnewsupdate.com/EbolaOutbreak.htm

Is Your Worship Christian or Pagan? (7 Tests)

Todd Pruitt

“To be human is to worship.” Those are the opening words of Daniel Block’s excellent new book on worship, For the Glory of God. Men and women are inveterate worshippers. Paul makes this clear in Romans 1. Even those who reject the plain knowledge of God which can be perceived within the created order do not cease worshiping. Rather they simply begin worshipping created things instead of the Creator (Rom 1:18ff). Given that we all worship and that our hearts tend to be deceptive, it is vital that our worship be shaped by what God has made clear in His Word rather than by personal opinions, past experiences, or intuitions. While not an exhaustive list, the following 7 points help us think more biblically about worship: 1. Worship is to be regulated according to Scripture. It matters to God how His people worship Him. Form matters. Just ask Nadab and Abihu. We are never invited to worship God in ways that seem right to us. Scripture never calls us to do what “feels right” in God’s presence. Rather, God’s Word makes quite clear those elements of which our worship should consist. They are the preaching of His Word, music and singing, the reading of Scripture, prayer, tithes and offerings, confession of sin, and the sacraments (baptism and the Lord’s Supper). In a day when many Christians operate as spiritual entrepreneurs, it is important to remember that we do not decide how to come to God (or “connect,” “experience,” “encounter” or whichever word is popular). To quote Block once more: “[The] goal of authentic worship is the glory of God rather than the pleasure of human beings, which means that forms of worship should conform to the will of God rather than to the whims of fallen humanity” (p. 6). 2. Worship is the response to God’s self-revelation. We worship God in response to that which he has revealed about himself. Christianity is a revealed religion. That is we cannot intuit the gospel or those attributes of God not clearly visible in the created order. In this way we are dependent upon the Scriptures to truly know and worship God. This is why God has made the proclamation of his Word central to worship. 3. Worship may be accompanied by affections but not guided by them. I wonder what is meant by statements like, “The worship was great”? I’m not trying to be picky here but we can tell what we believe about a thing from the things we say about it. It seems to me that the way we evaluate worship often has less to do with its adherence to God’s stated will and more to do with the depth of affections (emotions) that we feel. Certainly our worship of God ought to engage the affections. But we must always remember that emotions are tricky things susceptible to manipulation and misguidance. 4. Worship should not be governed by pragmatic concerns. If there is an unofficial religion among evangelicals today it may well be pragmatism. It’s the idea that if it works, then it must be good. If it grows our church, if it attracts young families, if it appeals to millennials, if it produces the right emotions then it is good. But the church’s worship must never be governed by such concerns as church growth, the preferences of unbelievers, attraction to a preferred demographic, or our subjective experience. 5. Worship is for God. While we are generally careful not to say so, there seems to be a tendency to treat worship as something which is for us. Don’t misunderstand. There are great blessings to be had in worshipping God. What is more, God does not require our worship as though he needs something from us (Acts 17:22-25). Rather, God calls us to worship him because of His essential worthiness. God demanded the release of his people from Egypt that they might worship Him (Ex 5:1). The Psalms repeatedly call upon the people of God to worship the Lord because of who he is and what he has done. We worship God because it is always right for the creature to worship the Creator. 6. Worship is not meant to facilitate mystical encounters with God. Based on some of the comments responding to my previous article on worship (Is Your Church Worship More Pagan than Christian?), it is clear that many Christians believe that music and worship play a mediatorial role in our relationship with God. But worship does not bring us to or otherwise facilitate an encounter with God. Certainly we worship just as we live coram deo (before the face of God). Jesus, by his dying and rising, has brought us to God. For all of the opining on this issue, I have yet to see anything in Scripture that tells us that music brings us to God. Jesus our Great High Priest has brought us near to God and he requires no further assistance. 7. Worship and obedience are inseparable. The Bible does not separate persons from their deeds. Neither does the Bible separate worship from obedience. The primary evidence of what is in the heart is not our words or emotions but our deeds. In his parable of the Vine and Vinedresser (Lk 13:6-9) Jesus teaches that branches that do not produce fruit are tossed into the fire. This principle is established by God in the form of covenant blessings and curses (Lev 26; Deut 28). God’s moral law (the 10 Commandments) may be properly understood as a call to live all of life for the glory of God. Todd Pruitt serves as Lead Pastor of Covenant Presbyterian Church in Harrisonburg, VA and blogs regularly at Ref21 and 1517. Raised a Southern Baptist, he is a graduate of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City. He, along with Carl Trueman and Aimee Byrd, hosts the podcast Mortification of Spin. Todd and his wife Karen have three children.

Another Temple in Jerusalem?

Just an update on the continuing struggle of the Orthodox Jews (who openly reject Jesus as Messiah) and the many evangelical Christian organizations that support them (even though they openly reject Jesus as Messiah!) to build a third temple on the "Temple Mount" in Jerusalem.  One is coming soon, but who will build it?  Messiah, Jesus Christ?  Or the "seed of the serpent", the Antichrist?

News out of the Middle East makes it seem impossible that Jewish religious rites will ever again be performed on the Temple Mount. Yet the Bible explains events that will unfold at the site.

Past: A model of Jerusalem and the Temple, located in the Israel Museum, shows what the city looked like during the time of Christ.
Source: Thinkstock

Twenty-three. That is the number of times armies have surrounded the city of Jerusalem throughout history. Egyptians, Assyrians, Romans, Muslims, and Christian Crusaders have all had their turn.

Fifty-two. This is how many additional occasions the city has been attacked. It has been utterly destroyed twice.

Forty-four. That is how many times Jerusalem has been captured and recaptured.

Yet surpassing all these numbers combined, which come from Eric H. Cline’s Jerusalem Besieged: From Ancient Canaan to Modern Israel, are the differing opinions on how to bring actual and lasting peace to the City of Peace.

Today, tensions between Israelis and Palestinians largely center on the Gaza Strip, which is just over twice the size of Washington, D.C., and is governed by the terrorist organization Hamas. For years, the global community has favored a two-state solution, with the idea of having two official nations—one Israeli, the other Palestinian—peacefully exist side by side. Often this answer includes the contested city of Jerusalem being under international supervision.

Yet repeated failures to implement this have left many disillusioned. For example, in the wake of the most recent Israeli response to Hamas firing rockets into the Jewish state, The Washington Post published an article titled “Beneath the Conflict in Gaza Lies the Death of the Two-State Solution.”

The publication cited a Pew research poll that showed a growing segment of Middle Easterners believe that Israel and an independent Palestine could never peacefully co-exist. In Egypt, the number of people who believe this jumped from 40 to 48 percent over last year. Tunisia rose 14 points to 71 percent during the same time. Among Israelis, it went from 38 to 45 percent, and in the Palestinian territories it rose from 61 to 63 percent.

The Post article stated that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “signaled clearly…that the two-state solution was off the table. In a speech discussing the current Operation Protective Edge [the military campaign to stop rocket fire from Hamas], he made this stark pronouncement: ‘I think the Israeli people understand now what I always say: that there cannot be a situation, under any agreement, in which we relinquish security control of the territory west of the River Jordan.’”

Read the rest of this article at - http://realtruth.org/articles/140917-005.html

Apologetics Saves Lives (Literally)

The important thing here is apologetics alone, like intellect alone, without the Holy Spirit, accomplishes nothing.  But theology, apologetics, the wisdom of God along with the empowering of His Holy Spirit changes lives every day....

Apologetics (giving a rational defense of one's beliefs) is an intellectual endeavor, but the consequences can be quite practical. Since people often act on their beliefs (e.g., helping those in need because we believe that it's the right thing to do), defending true beliefs and refuting false beliefs will occasionally be a matter of life and death.

Take Oklahoma beheader Alton Nolen (who now goes by the name "Jah'Keem Yisrael") as an example.

According to Nolen's Facebook page (before it was taken down), he was raised in a Christian home:

However, as evidenced by his complete ignorance of basic Christian doctrine, he was given absolutely no intellectual foundation. When he was eventually presented with a variety of objections to Christianity in prison, he converted to Islam.

Let's look at a few of Nolen's posts to see what would have happened if he had encountered a Christian apologist.

How difficult are these objections? Watch how easy this is:

(1) Christians worship Jesus because (a) he is God; (b) he said that we must honor him just as we honor the Father (John 5:22-23), and one of the ways we honor the Father is through worship; and (c) he accepted worship from his disciples. (Click here to watch "Jesus Accepts Worship.")

(2) Christians pray in Jesus' name because he said, "Whatever you ask in my name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son" (John 14:13). (Notice that Jesus tells his followers that he can answer their prayers.)

(3) Jesus is the Creator:

John 1:3—All things came into being through Him [Jesus], and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.

Colossians 1:16—For by Him [Jesus] all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him.

(4) Jesus is the Forgiver:

Mark 2:5-12—When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, "Son, your sins are forgiven." Now some teachers of the law were sitting there, thinking to themselves, "Why does this fellow talk like that? He's blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?" Immediately Jesus knew in his spirit that this was what they were thinking in their hearts, and he said to them, "Why are you thinking these things? Which is easier: to say to this paralyzed man, 'Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, 'Get up, take your mat and walk'? But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins." So he said to the man, "I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home." He got up, took his mat and walked out in full view of them all. This amazed everyone and they praised God, saying, "We have never seen anything like this!"

Read the rest of this article at -  http://www.answeringmuslims.com/2014/10/apologetics-saves-lives-literally.html

Extraordinary Lottie Moon Reached China

"If I had a thousand lives, I would give them all for the women of China," said Lottie Moon. These words were a testimony to how much Christ had changed her. She wasn't always so dedicated. On the contrary, as a child she was called a "devil" because of her defiant attitude.

Lottie's father was a was well-to-do cotton merchant when she was born in Viewmont, a Virginia plantation in 1840. But he died when she was thirteen. Did bitterness toward God for the loss of her dad drive her into rebellion?

Lottie did not like to go to church. But because of a friend, she agreed to attend a missionary meeting. At that meeting the Holy Spirit showed her how ugly her spirit was. After praying all night, she confessed her bad behavior to God and to others. She decided to become a missionary herself. A good student, Lottie worked hard and graduated with her masters degree. Two years later she sailed as a Southern Baptist missionary to China. Her appeals inspired drives for mission funds in the United States, especially at Christmas. Arriving in China on this day, October 7, 1873, she began work in Tonchow, Northern China.

The Chinese did not respond well to her overtures at first. When she offered them home-baked cookies they refused them, thinking they were poisoned. Gradually, she broke down barriers. She used her knitting and sewing skills to interest Chinese women.

Eleven years after coming to China she prepared for a much needed furlough. As she was about to leave for the United States, men from Pintow arrived on foot, pleading with her to come work in their city where many were eager to hear the gospel. Lottie immediately abandoned her plans for a rest, moved to Pintow, and led many people to know the Jesus who had changed her own life. During her forty years in China, she took only three furloughs.

When she was in her seventies, China suffered severe famine. Lottie would not eat because her people had nothing to eat. Naturally she became ill. She was put on boat to return to America but died of starvation when the ship reached Kobe, Japan. She may not have given a thousand imaginary lives for China but she gave the one she had.

Bibliography:

1. Deen, Edith. Great Women of the Christian Faith. New York: Harper, 1956.
2. Tucker, Ruth. Guardians of the Great Commission: the story of women in modern missions. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Academie Books, 1988.
3. Various internet articles.

Potter & The Clay: Drugs, Adversity, My Testimony, Hannah, Suicidal Thoughts, Gratefulness

Great testimony here, well worth the time to check out...

Mysterious Pope St. Mark

Constantine the Great was ruler of the Roman Empire. Persecution against the church had ceased. In spite of this aura of peace, the life of the church was often poorly recorded.

Take, for example, the life of the bishop of Rome, Pope St. Mark. We think he was born a Roman and that his Father's name was Priscus, but little more than that is known about his personal life. We cannot even venture a reasonable guess as to when he was born. But we know that he was consecrated pope on January 18, 336.

One of Mark's undertakings was to compile stories of the lives of martyrs and bishops before his time. It is too bad that someone didn't do the same for him, because his activities as pope are cloudy. There is some reason to believe he founded two churches in the area of Rome. One of them is still known to this day as the Church of San Marco, although it is greatly changed since his time. The other church was at the Catacomb of Balbina, a cemetery. Emperor Constantine gave gifts of land and furnishing for both buildings.

Why was Mark named a saint? We don't know, although his name was added to the list quite early. There is a fragment of an old poem which some scholars think refers to Mark. It says, "filled with the love of God, despised the world . . . the guardian of justice, a true friend of Christ." If that is speaking of him, it is high praise, indeed; but there is no real evidence that he was the person meant.

St. Mark left a lasting legacy on the ceremony of the Roman Church, however. It seems that it was he who decreed that the Bishop of Ostia (a port near Rome) should be the one to consecrate the Bishops of Rome (later known as Popes). Mark is also said to be the one who declared that the Bishop of Ostia should wear a pallium.

The pallium is white wool sash that symbolizes the authority of the Pope which, according to the Roman Church, came in a direct line from the apostles. Anyone who is awarded a pallium shares in that power. However, it is unlikely St. Mark is responsible for this, because it was almost two centuries later before there is a reliable record of a pope bestowing it on someone else.

It was said that St. Mark wrote a letter to Athanasius, the bishop of Alexandria who battled for the proper understanding of Christ's nature. However, this has been shown to be a forgery. Mark may have been mentioned in one of Constantine's letters, before he became pope, but again no one is sure. Constantine may have been referring to another Mark who was associated with the church in Rome.
St. Mark died on this day, October 7, 336. That date is well established. He had served as Bishop of Rome less than ten months. At his own request, he was buried in the cemetery of Balbina, where one of his churches was being built.

Bibliography:

1. Brusher, J. Popes Through the Ages. Princeton, New Jersey: Van Nostrand, 1964.
2. Keck, Karen Rae. "Mark." The Ecole Glossary. http://cedar.evansville.edu/~ecoleweb/glossary/pmark.html
3. Kirsch, J. P. "Pope St. Mark." The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton, 1914.
4. Various internet and encyclopedia articles.

Read this article at - http://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/301-600/mysterious-pope-st-mark-11629657.html

Dealing with Dark Fantasies, Supernaturally Charged Dark Thoughts, Voices, Feelings and Pictures - Russ Dizdar

He starts this podcast by going over the how of the "Slenderman" sacrifice attempt by two 12-year old girls in Wisconsin.  Fascinating stuff, helping to reveal the strategies of the evil one and how those suffering from these oppressive spirits can be set free...

 

Why Does God’s Creation Include Death and Suffering?

This is actually an excerpt from chapter 26 of The New Answers Book.  I will share the first part of this chapter on the origin/cause of death and suffering here, and you can follow the link here or at the bottom to read the rest of the chapter.  If you have ever wondered, the Bible has the answer!

by Dr. Tommy Mitchell

Why do bad things happen? Through the ages, human beings have sought to reconcile their understanding of an all-powerful, loving God with the seemingly endless suffering around them.
One prominent example of this struggle is the media mogul Ted Turner. Having lost his faith after his sister died of a painful disease, Turner claimed, “I was taught that God was love and God was powerful, and I couldn’t understand how someone so innocent should be made or allowed to suffer so.”1

Is God responsible for human suffering? Is God cruel, capricious, and vindictive, or is He too weak to prevent suffering? If God truly is sovereign, how can He let someone He loves suffer?

A World of Misery and Death

Each day brings new tragedy. A small child is diagnosed with leukemia and undergoes extensive medical treatment only to die in his mother’s arms. A newlywed couple is killed by a drunk driver as they leave for their honeymoon. A faithful missionary family is attacked and killed by the very people they were ministering to. Thousands are killed in a terrorist attack. Hundreds drown in a tsunami, while scores of others are buried in an earthquake.

How are these things possible if God really loves and cares for us? Is He a God of suffering?
Man’s usual response to tragedy is to blame God, as Charles Darwin did after the death of his beloved daughter Annie.

“Annie’s cruel death destroyed Charles’s tatters of beliefs in a moral, just universe. Later he would say that this period chimed the final death-knell for his Christianity . . . . Charles now took his stand as an unbeliever.”2

Is this the proper response? A correct view of history, found in the Bible, provides the answer.

Was God’s Creation Really “Very Good”?

In the beginning, about 6,000 years ago, God created the universe and everything in it in six actual days. At the end of His creative acts on the sixth day, God “saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good” (Genesis 1:31).

To have been very good, God’s creation must have been without blemish, defect, disease, suffering, or death. There was no “survival of the fittest.” Animals did not prey on each other, and the first two humans, Adam and Eve, did not kill animals for food. The original creation was a beautiful place, full of life and joy in the presence of the Creator.

Both humans and animals were vegetarians at the time of creation. In Genesis 1:29–30 the Lord said, “See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food. Also, to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food.”

This passage shows clearly that in God’s very good creation, animals did not eat each other (and thus, there was no animal death), as God gave Adam, Eve, and the animals only plants to eat. (It was was not until after the worldwide Flood of Noah’s Day—1,600 years later—that man was allowed to eat meat, according to Genesis 9:3.)

Because eating a plant can kill it, some people claim that death was part of the original creation. The Bible makes a distinction, though, between plants and animals. This distinction is expressed in the Hebrew word nephesh, which describes an aspect of life attributed only to animals and humans. Nephesh can be translated “breathing creature” or “living creature” (see Genesis 1:20–21, (24)). Plants do not possess this nephesh quality and so cannot die in the scriptural sense.

The original creation was very good. According to Moses in Deuteronomy 32:4, “His work is perfect.” Obviously, things are not like this any longer.

Why Do We Die Now?

If there was no animal or human death when God finished His creation and pronounced it very good, why do we die now? We see death all around us today. Something must have happened to change creation—that something was sin.

With the rebellious actions of one man, death entered God’s creation.

God placed Adam and Eve in a perfect paradise. As their Creator, He had authority over them. In His authority, God gave Adam a rule: “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Genesis 2:17).

Sometime after God declared His completed creation “very good” at the end of the sixth day, one of God’s angels, Lucifer, led a rebellion against their Creator.3 Lucifer then took on the form of a serpent and tempted Eve to eat the fruit God had forbidden. Both Adam and Eve ate it. Their actions resulted in the punishment that God had warned them about. God is holy and cannot tolerate sin in His presence. The just Creator righteously kept His promise that punishment would follow their disobedience. With the rebellious actions of one man, death entered God’s creation.

Ashamed and afraid, Adam and Eve tried to escape the consequences of their sin by making coverings of fig leaves. But by themselves, they could not cover what they had done. They needed something else to provide a covering. According to the writer of Hebrews, “Without shedding of blood, there is no remission [of sin]” (9:22). A blood sacrifice was necessary to cover their guilt before God.

To illustrate the horrible consequences of sin, God killed an animal and made coats of skin to cover Adam and Eve. We are not told what type of animal was killed, but perhaps it was something like a lamb to symbolize Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, who would shed His own blood to take away our sins.

Genesis 3 also reveals that the ground was cursed. Thorns and thistles were now part of the world. Animals were cursed, the serpent more than the rest. The world was no longer perfect but sin-cursed. Suffering and death now abounded in that once-perfect creation.

What Does All This Have to Do with Me?

If it was Adam’s decision to disobey God that brought sin into the world, why do we all have to suffer punishment?

After Adam and Eve sinned and were banished from the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:20–24), they began to have children. Each child inherited Adam’s sinful nature, and each child rebelled against his or her Creator. Every human is a descendant of Adam and Eve, born with the same problem: a sinful nature.

If we are honest with ourselves, we will realize that Adam is a fair representative for all of us. If a perfect person in a perfect place decided to disobey God’s rules, none of us would have done better. The Apostle Paul writes, “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned” (Romans 5:12).

The sad things that happen around us and to us are reminders that sin has consequences and that the world needs a Savior.

As children of Adam, we all inherit Adam’s sin nature. We have all, at some point, disobeyed a command from the Creator, so we all deserve to die and suffer eternal punishment in hell. We must understand that not one of us is innocent before God. Romans 3:23 says, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Not one of us is worthy to stand before the Creator of the universe because we would each bring a sinful, rebellious nature into His presence.

In the beginning, God sustained His creation in its perfect state. The account of the Israelites wandering in the wilderness provides a glimpse of how things might have been in the original creation. The garments of the Israelites did not wear out, nor did their feet swell for the forty years they camped in the desert (Deuteronomy 8:4). God is omnipotent and perfectly capable of sustaining and protecting His creation.

When Adam sinned, however, the Lord cursed the universe. In essence there was a change, and along with that change God began to uphold the creation in a cursed state. Suffering and death entered into His creation. The whole universe now suffers from the effects of sin (Romans 8:22).

The sad things (e.g., the death of a loved one, tsunamis that kill thousands, hurricanes that leave many dead or homeless, etc.) that happen around us and to us are reminders that sin has consequences and that the world needs a Savior.

God took pleasure in all of His creation (Revelation 4:11), but He loved people most of all. He uses the deterioration of the created universe to show us the consequences of our sin. If we did not experience the consequences of our rebellion against the Creator, we would never understand that we need salvation from our sin, and we would never receive His offer of mercy for our sin.
Most people easily recognize that there is a problem in the world. We need to realize that there is One who has overcome this problem of death and suffering—Jesus Christ.

Read the rest of this article at - https://answersingenesis.org/suffering/why-does-gods-creation-include-death-and-suffering/?utm_source=homepage&utm_medium=featured-slider&utm_campaign=why-does-gods-creation-include-death-and-suffering

 

Translator William Tyndale Strangled and Burned

The death of William Tyndale, one of the true heroes of the Christian faith, is a day that the church should remember well. 


How many Bibles do you have in your house? For most of us, Bibles are easily accessible, and many of us have several. That we have the Bible in English owes much to William Tyndale, sometimes called the Father of the English Bible. 90% of the King James Version of the Bible and 75% of the Revised Standard Version are from the translation of the Bible into English made by William Tyndale, yet Tyndale himself was burned at the stake for his work on this day, October 6, 1536.
Back in the fourteenth century, John Wycliffe was the first to make (or at least oversee) an English translation of the Bible, but that was before the invention of the printing press and all copies had to be hand written. Besides, the church had banned the unauthorized translation of the Bible into English in 1408.
Over one hundred years later, however, William Tyndale had a burning desire to make the Bible available to even the common people in England. After studying at Oxford and Cambridge, he joined the household of Sir John Walsh at little Sudbury Manor as tutor to the Walsh children. Walsh was a generous lord of the manor and often entertained the local clergy at his table. Tyndale often added spice to the table conversation as he was confronted with the Biblical ignorance of the priests. At one point Tyndale told a priest, "If God spare my life, ere many years pass, I will cause a boy that driveth the plough shall know more of the Scriptures than thou dost."

It was a nice dream, but how was Tyndale to accomplish this when translating the Bible into English was illegal? He went to London to ask Bishop Tunstall if he could be authorized to make an English translation of the Bible, but the bishop would not grant his approval. However, Tyndale would not let the disapproval of men stop him from carrying out what seemed so obviously God's will. With encouragement and support of some British merchants, he decided to go to Europe to complete his translation, then have it printed and smuggled back into England.

In 1524 Tyndale sailed for Germany. In Hamburg he worked on the New Testament, and in Cologne he found a printer who would print the work. However, news of Tyndale's activity came to an opponent of the Reformation who had the press raided. Tyndale himself managed to escape with the pages already printed and made his way to the German city Worms where the New Testament was soon published. Six thousand copies were printed and smuggled into England. The bishops did everything they could to eradicate the Bibles -- Bishop Tunstall had copies ceremoniously burned at St. Paul's; the archbishop of Canterbury bought up copies to destroy them. Tyndale used the money to print improved editions!

King Henry VIII, then in the throes of his divorce with Queen Katherine, offered Tyndale a safe passage to England to serve as his writer and scholar. Tyndale refused, saying he would not return until the Bible could be legally translated into English. Tyndale continued hiding among the merchants in Antwerp and began translating the Old Testament while the King's agents searched all over England and Europe for him.

Tyndale was finally found by an Englishman who pretended to be his friend but then turned him over to the authorities. After a year and a half in prison, he was brought to trial for heresy -- for believing, among other things, in the forgiveness of sins and that the mercy offered in the gospel was enough for salvation. In August 1536, he was condemned; on this day October 6, 1536 he was strangled and his body burned at the stake. His last prayer was "Lord, open the King of England's eyes." The prayer was answered in part when three years later, in 1539, Henry VIII required every parish church in England to make a copy of the English Bible available to its parishioners.

Bibliography:

1. Adapted from an earlier Christian History Institute story.
2. Bowie, Walter Russell. Men of Fire. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1961.
3. Daniell, David. William Tyndale, a biography. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994.
4. Dictionary of National Biography. Edited by Leslie Stephen and Sidney Lee. London: Oxford University Press, 1921 - 1996.
5. Kunitz, Stanley L. British Authors Before 1800; a biographical dictionary. New York: H. W. Wilson, 1952.
6. Mozley, J. F. William Tyndale. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge; New York: The Macmillan company, 1937.
7. Sampson, George. Concise Cambridge History of English Literature. Cambridge, 1961.
8. "Tyndale or Tindale, William." The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. Edited by F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone. Oxford, 1997.
9. Wild, Laura Huld. The Romance of the English Bible; a history of the translation of the Bible into English from Wyclif to the present day. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1929.
10. Various encyclopedia articles.

Read this article at - http://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/1501-1600/translator-william-tyndale-strangled-and-burned-11629961.html

Predicted Staged Bio Release in 2008

By: Jay

The one time I was a semi-guest guest on Alex Jones, you will recall that I discussed the very thing we are seeing: a staged bio release scenario that has yet to be seen in its full implications. In fact, if I recall, this was a recording I made even prior to 2010, around 2007, following I Am Legend (2007) but I’m not positive. As you can see, it was uploaded 2010, but no journalism credit will swing my way. How did I make this call? Not by any inside information, but simply by following the entire thesis of this site, that the future moves of the establishment are telegraphed ahead of time in symbolic and subtle (and sometimes obvious fashion) means, through pop culture. This doesn’t mean all apocalypse scenarios in pop culture are legitimate or valuable information, rather, it requires skilled sifting of wheat and chaff, combined with the best approximation of legitimate news and information. Yet regardless of JaysAnalysis’ stellar track record of prognostications, the skeptics (idiots) refuse to give credit or heed.

 

 

 

Read this article at - http://jaysanalysis.com/2014/10/06/jaysanalysis-predicted-staged-bio-release-in-2008/

So The Earth Is at the Center of the Universe After All....

Dr. Farrell beats around the bush a little in this commentary, but the observation that earth appears to be at the center of the universe, oddly named the "axis of evil" by scientists, is undeniable. 

by Joseph P. Farrell

Copernicus, among many others, was a crucial part of that alchemical “transmutation of consciousness” that occurred during the Early Enlightenment, arguing, as we all know, that the Sun and other planets and stars did not revolve around the Earth. At the very beginning of his treatise, he even paid a little tribute to the Hermetica, a point not lost on other late Renaissance/Early Enlightenment figures such as Giordano Bruno.
As science and technology have expanded, scientists have gradually come to see that the Universe(or at least what we can see of it), is oddly “clumped,” with clusters of galaxies, rather than the random distribution of galaxies one might expect along conventional views of Big Bang theory. It’s as if the data was suggesting that the Big Bang was some kind of “shaped charge.” But wait, there’s more, for now that “galactic clumping” seems to be revealing even deeper cosmic structure, one that has suggested to some scientists that Earth is, indeed, at some sort of “cosmic center”, which, because of its deeply “theory shattering” nature, astrophysicists are dubbing “the axis of evil”, since it so radically challenges and overturns some of the cardinal assumptions of astrophysics thus far:
Planck Satellite Confirms WMAP Findings: Universe is not Copernican
Now there’s a lot to absorb here, so let’s break it down: 1) there is a kind of “cosmological” or better, “cosmic axis” structure; and (2) this structure is aligned to the plane of the ecliptic of the Earth-Sun solar system and (3) this structure is revealed by the distribution of “hot” and “cold” zones of the background radiation, which zones appear to be correlated to the Earth-Sun solar system ecliptic:

“Without getting overly technical, the Copernican and cosmological principles require that any variation in the radiation from the CMB be more or less randomly distributed throughout the universe, especially on large scales. Results from the WMAP satellite (early 2000s) indicated that when looking at large scales of the universe, the noise could be partitioned into “hot” and “cold” sections, and this partitioning is aligned with our ecliptic plane and equinoxes. This partitioning and alignment resulted in an axis through the universe, which scientists dubbed “the axis of evil”, because of the damage it does to their theories. This axis passes right through our tiny portion of the universe. Laurence Krauss commented in 2005:

“ But when you look at [the cosmic microwave background] map, you also see that the structure that is observed, is in fact, in a weird way, correlated with the plane of the earth around the sun. Is this Copernicus coming back to haunt us? That’s crazy. We’re looking out at the whole universe. There’s no way there should be a correlation of structure with our motion of the earth around the sun — the plane of the earth around the sun — the ecliptic. That would say we are truly the center of the universe.”

Now, while this may or may not be good news for physicists inclined toward some version of the Anthropic Cosmological Principle, it does pose a significant problem, and already – as the article itself avers – some physicists see the need for “a new physics,” while the article itself concludes with its own tongue-in-cheek barb against current cosmological physics:

“The question is ‘what will modern science do now’? Will they invent additional parameters to keep the current theories alive (in addition to those already added: dark matter, dark energy, redshift as expansion, big bang inflation, etc.) or will they consider the possibility that we are in a special place as observations clearly indicate?”

Read the rest of this article at -  http://gizadeathstar.com/2014/10/satellite-goodbye-copernicus-center-universe-well-sort/

The Way Out Is Up

     Psalm 50:14–15

Sacrifice thank offerings to God, fulfill your vows to the Most High, and call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you will honor Me.  NIV

     There’s the divine way out of trouble. You’re in the midst of trouble, pressures are against you, and you don’t see any way out. But there is a way up, a way to God: “Sacrifice thank offerings.” That sounds senseless, doesn’t it?

     In the midst of all the pressures and the trouble, stop worrying and start thanking God. Lift your voice in thanksgiving to God. Offer Him an offering of thanksgiving. Something that costs you something, something that goes against the grain, but it’s a sacrifice acceptable to God. And God says, “When you offer Me that sacrifice of your thankfulness in the midst of all the trouble, then I’ll intervene on your behalf. I will deliver you and you will honor Me.” God is waiting to deliver, but the way that He wants us to prepare for His deliverance is to offer Him thank offerings right in the midst of the trouble.

     In the last verse of the same psalm He says this, “He who sacrifices thank offerings honors Me and he prepares the way so that I may show him the salvation of God.” You see, when you offer God thanksgiving in the midst of trouble, that’s the purest expression of faith that you can make. And when you offer Him that thanksgiving you prepare the way in your life, in your heart, that God may show you His salvation, that God may come to your rescue.
 

—Derek Prince