Great Thoughtpiece for Christian Missionaries — from an Atheist

Missionaries are one of the few groups of outsiders that are doing any good in Africa. Read this article, written by an atheist, who makes our argument for Christ: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/matthew_parris/article5400568.ece

That brings to mind a story from few years back. I was riding a bus, I believe at Rutgers New Brunswick, and I heard a couple of ladies discussing a daughter of a friend of theirs who was going to Africa to do some social work. One of the ladies said, “She’s not going as a missionary, is she?” The other replied that she was not, but was in Africa as part of an NGO. “Oh that’s good,” said the woman. (Read: anything but Christ is OK.)

That is an example of pure evil or total ignorance, or maybe both.

Only the Word made flesh that dwelt among us, Christ Jesus, is the only hope for humanity whether on the Dark Continent or in comfortable convenience stores of Nu Joizey. Humanists, NGOs, altruism, whatever, won’t cut it in the face of evil and want.

O Believer, When You See an Unbeliever…

While some religions say we should strike off the heads of unbelievers, believers in Christ Jesus must take a different tack — that of love.

We cannot imitate the ways of the godless hordes either, click here for an example.

I know some of us would love to battle against the unbelievers. Many among us would love to don our Crusader gear and march on the Unbeliever’s cities and schools and places of their worship (like rock arenas, sports venues, and dance halls), especially the rabidly vocal God-haters and send them straight to the unrelenting fires of hell. But then I would challenge you with this: Were the Crusades truly Christian? I suspect that there were few Bible-believing Christians in Europe then. Most people were worshipers of organized Catholicism and the popes who commanded them. And one book that was not read very much back then was the Bible, which expressly forbids violence as a recourse to non-belief and any other form of ungentlemanly conduct.

Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord... Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good. (Romans 12:19, 21)

Moreoever, we cannot overlook the meek and gentle instructions of the New Testament and justify our savagery against the heathen using certain choice phrases out of the Old Testament.

Remember, O LORD, the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem; who said, Rase it, rase it, even to the foundation thereof. O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed; happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us. Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones. (Psalm 137:7-9)

We must love the sinners. We must love those who hate the thought of Christ and of God. That’s what I call tough love.

Repudiating Sin: Thank God I’m Narrow-Minded

Many non-believers in Christ say that Christians, especially fundamentalist joy-killers like myself, are narrow-minded, and I says this: Thank God for that. The broad-view of living that I once had nearly killed me. I am, of course, bearing joyfully in mind a few lines towards the end of the Sermon on the Mount: Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. (Matthew 7:13-14).

Indeed, I sit not on the sidelines watching sin, for the Bible also says: Let not thy heart envy sinners: But be thou in the fear of the Lord all the day long. (Proverbs 23:17) The dissection and interpretation to that is found here. And remember, the wages of sin is death: but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord (Roman 6:23).

I have read many of the blogs and websites of people who oppose the things of God in Christ, and I have noticed that some have an aggressive propensity to openly and licentiously flaunt their own sinfulness. These are people who decry the narrow-minded of Christ while indulging in innuendo and contumacy. (In fact, they say, to have an open mind one must be closed to such obtuse and weird beliefs such as religion, especially Christianity). 

Many of the anti-faith crowd engage in cynicism and enjoy the pathos too much. They dwell on the dark side and choose their tastes very meticulously, with an eye on the political mores du jour. Hey, I used to be there. I was dying, the whole time proclaiming my desire to “live life to the fullest.” I was a liberal in the broadest sense of the world and eschewed the concept of morality primarily because I didn’t want to emulate those religious folks. But then God threw me a lifeline. People began witnessing to me, some close, some far away. Even people who didn’t ever speak to me of their faith in Christ witnessed to me, because I knew that they were Christians and that they were clean and I was dirty and I watched them and resented the heck out of them, inwardly coveting what they had. Eventually, I became a Narrow-Minded Christian and the more Narrow-Minded I became, the more joy I found along the Way, the more freedom from sin I experienced, the more of God’s love I received. Sinner, God still loves you no matter what you do. But unless our eyes are upon Him, how can we receive it? When you were a child, did you ever shrink away from a parent expressing affection toward you? It’s a similar reflex to do that spiritually with God’s love. 

If this is your time to hear this kind of thing and come out of the dark then click here and get saved by the blood of Jesus Christ.

Let Them Try to Kill Christmas

It seems that every day news emerges about another organization striking out to challenge the preeminence of the Christmas holiday. Huge megastores announce proudly that they are taking the word “Christmas” out of their holiday sales literature in order to appease non-Christians; a state capitol building allows an atheist organization to display an anti-Christian attack placard right next to the Nativity scene; people on the street strike “Merry Christmas” from their vocabulary and replace it with “Happy Holidays,” thinking they are being more inclusive.

The great irony is, however, the more attacks opponents of faith make on Christmas, the more they actually help us Christians. Did not Paul observe this?

Some indeed preach Christ even of envy and strife; and some also of good will: The one preach Christ of contention, not sincerely, supposing to add affliction to my bonds… whether in pretence, or in truth, Christ is preached… (Philippians 1:15-16)

What Paul was saying was that Christ can be preached even by people who are campaigning against him, just by virtue of using his name in passing. Well, with all the contention and strife over Christmas, the name “Christ” is being preached, often  in passing, often inadvertently by the very people who seek to erase him from our world’s cultural memory. This gives Christians an opportunity to further promulgate the faith. It gives us a chance to build on the mystique and the super-eminence of the Lord Jesus Christ, born of a virgin, died on the cross to pay for our sins, was resurrected, and ascended to God the Father.

The other day I exited a supermarket and stuffed a few bucks into a jar held by a lady raising money for our troops overseas. She thanked me and added, “Happy Holidays.” I immediately replied, “Thanks and Merry Christmas.” She said, “Oh, yes, of course, Merry Christmas.” An unspoken message in my retort had occurred at that moment. It said something like this: “Hey listen lady, Christ is the reason for the season.” Silently, she acknowledged him. The point had been won. Christ’s name, however inadvertently, had been preached.

In the past, when people wished each other Merry Christmas, they might have been doing so our of a sense of tradition. Tradition is a great killer of faith, so it’s far better that when people wish each other Merry Christmas, they are cognizant on some level of the actual meaning of the words that they are saying. In the past, before I was a Christian, I wished people a Merry Christmas. I did not think about the words I said. I did it because I felt I had to. But then Christmas began to get controversial, and as the faith crept closer to me, I began to think more and more about why Christmas was so controversial. Was it because it alienated Jewish people and Muslims, and Buddhists, etc? No it was more than that. There seemed to be something indescribable going on when Christmas was spoken. The concept of Christmas aroused in me more than just a curiosity about why this man Christ was so important that we celebrated his birthday 2,000 after the event.

Nowadays, with all these attacks on this Christian holy day, a large number of people might actually be the same mysteries that impelled me to meditate on the Christ in Christmas. The controversy forces the issue. I realize that there are whole legions of nonbelievers in Christ who will remain unchanged by 10,000 exhortations to have a Merry Christmas. There may be nothing we can say to them. I’m talking about the people in the middle. The ones who acknowledge Christmas, who may even observe the inexplicable sense of peace and gorgeous serenity befalling the world on Christmas Day. The ones who get dragged to church by their parents and go through the motions a few times a year.

The nominal Christians, or the ones like the person I used to be, who don’t know what they believe or don’t believe. The Christmas controversy may compel legions of people to want to meet this Jesus for the first time, and so we must do what we can to keep up the dialogue.

And so we must maintain the defense of the faith. We should continue to boycott national chain stores that refuse to wish shoppers a Merry Christmas. We should write letters to business leaders and politicians that perpetrate these constant attacks on the faith. We should remind people who wish us “Happy Holidays” that indeed the Holy-Day that they are hinted at is called Christmas, honoring the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Let them try to kill our Christmas. They could not accomplish that even if they tried! Even if they had us all locked up someday in a massive stadium-sized prison because we would not cease and desist from celebrating Christmas, the very trees on the earth would start chanting for Jesus. The very rocks would cry out.

If God be for us, who can be against us? (Romans 8:31b)

So then, friends and associates, let us keep the controversy in Christmas.

A World Without God? Go Ahead, Take Your Chances

Some of you out there might be thinking, Ah, what a coup. A rash attack on faith in the Washington Capitol in Olympia; a condescending swipe at religious nuts who ride buses in Britain, a slew of books by leading Atheists holding that God is surely not only not great, but is simply — ahem — not.

It’s not a matter of choice; it’s a matter of fact. God does not need me or anyone else to believe in Him.

But I’ll defer to my own simple logic for the sake of argument: Suppose there was a 0.1% chance that God existed, and out of that 0.1%, another half a percentage point that the God of the Bible existed, the Christian Bible, with a definitive fork in the road post-mortem: heaven or hell, and an eternity there with no chance to cross over from one to the other. What is 0.05% of eternity?

Too massive for me to even want to consider. I’ll take my chances on Jesus.

Follow whichever path suits your fancy, but know this: There is a literal heaven and a literal hell.

Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels… (Matthrew 25:41)

Atheists say the world does not need God because it has ethics to get it through the night undefiled. We can rely on our own goodness. But the Bible says that all men are sinners and incapable of generating our own goodness. I side with this concept. Otherwise, how could we explain such a profusion of evil in this world if man could simply will it away?

Other related issues project out of the rubble of our dying lands… drugs, murders, suicides, assisted suicides, lying, cheating, rapes, gambling, greed, thievery, envying. God took a stand on these.

Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind,

Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. (I Corinthians 6:9-10)

I simply do not want to be on that list and have to account for my being on that list in front of an Almighty God on that appointed day. Those who have made this fantastic leap of faith to the Jesus Camp won’t have to, because all of those and other sins will have been expunged from the record.

Again, it sounds all too far-fetched, but I’ll take my chances.

And I’ll leave off with this quote about our subjuct du jour: “Atheism is so senseless. When I look at the solar system. I see the earth at the right distance from the sun to receive the proper amounts of heat and light. This did not happen by chance.” And these, my friends, were the words of Sir Isaac Newton, scientist and devoted Christian.