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Showing posts from September, 2019

Praying to Plants?

This is one of those times when we may wonder if the apostasy of the end times is upon us, especially with the extremely rapid moral decline in society. It is one thing for people to have no concern or even contempt for God, but to pray and confess our sins to plants? Credit: freestocks.org Some Native Americans would pray to the spirits of the animals they had killed, and they had other elements of pantheism and animism in their eclectic religions. Now some global warming activists and owlhoots at an allegedly Christian seminary are having people confess their sins to plants. Union Theological Seminary was, for a short time, orthodox in its theology until it became extremely liberal. They are the ones involved in these shenanigans. Let's ride up on the hill and look at the bigger view for a spell. We have to look all the way back to Genesis, where God gave us dominion and stewardship over creation. Plants were created on the third day of creation week, with land animals an

Christians and Philosophy

Cowboys riding the long trail usually clam up, but once in a while, someone commences philosophizing. When the subject is met with little more than grunts from the others, silence ensues again. If you study on it, it seems that everybody has a philosophy of some sort. There are many philosophers throughout history, and many are relegated to history books. Le Philosophe by Henri Martin When people talk about philosophers, images of smug intellectuals taking solitary walks and pondering, or discussing their versions of the meaning of life while smoking pipes. I have stated that I find philosophy useless because I have no use for the ideas of Kierkegaard, Rousseau, Kant, and so on. However, I learned a few things about philosophy since then, especially the practice and purpose. Some folks shy away from philosophy as ungodly, referring to Colossians 2:8. Context, people! Chasing after worldly  philosophies can be very harmful, but the Bible is actually loaded with philosophy. Regu

Listen to my Bible Story?

Our choice of words is vital when we want to communicate about important subjects. An important reason of this is the connotations of words. For example, my mother took exception to my description of a fragrance: it reeks. It did reek, but that word implies that the fragrance was unpleasant. Credit: Clker clipart Words change their meanings over the years. One example is in Genesis 1:28 KJV, where God commanded mankind and animals to replenish the earth. Back in 1611, that was understood to mean fill, but newer translations avoid replenish. In A. Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes story, "The Adventure of Black Peter", we read: "The outhouse was the simplest of dwellings, wooden-walled, shingle-roofed, one window beside the door and one on the farther side. Stanley Hopkins drew the key from his pocket and had stooped to the lock, when he paused with a look of attention and surprise upon his face." As Americans can probably see, an outhouse  is more aptly n

Science and the Depravity of Man

It is interesting and sometimes fun to identify ways in which scientists have discovered things that were in the Bible long before. Yes, we know, the Bible is not a science textbook. When scientific items are mentioned, however, it is always correct. It seems that scientists are learning about human depravity. Credit: Freeimages / Cyan Li God's Word tells us in Jeremiah 17:9 that the heart of man is (depending on the translation) desperately sick, wicked corrupt, incurable. Our righteousness is repulsive to God (Isaiah 64:6, Psalm 10:4, Ephesians 2:1-5). We may have the notion that we are good people and God looks on us fondly, bragging to the angels about how wonderful we are, but that is the opposite of the truth. Our hearts are deceitful and corrupt, and we think we are doing good things for the right reasons, but that's not necessarily the case. Sure, sometimes people will do great things, but that is because God has placed knowledge of himself in our hearts (Romans