Was Easter Borrowed from a Pagan Holiday?

 Was Easter Borrowed from a Pagan Holiday? The historical evidence contradicts this popular notion. This is a very good article by Anthony McRoy regarding the evidence of the popular belief that Easter was usurped from a pagan celebration of Ostern.

Anyone encountering anti-Christian polemics will quickly come up against the accusation that a major festival practiced by Christians across the globe—namely, Easter—was actually borrowed or rather usurped from a pagan celebration. I often encounter this idea among Muslims who claim that later Christians compromised with paganism to dilute the original faith of Jesus. CONTINUE READING...

C. S. Lewis quote on Jesus

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic -- on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg -- or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to." 

--British author C.S. Lewis (1898-1963)

John MacArthur on Rob Bell - Part Four, "Bell's Inferno"

No one in all the Scriptures had more to say about hell than Jesus. No stern messenger of doom from the era of the Judges, no fiery Old Testament prophet, no writer of imprecatory psalms, and no impassioned apostle (including the Boanerges brothers)—not even all of them combined—mentioned hell more frequently or described it in more terrifying terms than Jesus.

CONTINUE READING...

John MacArthur on Rob Bell - Part Three, Rob Bell’s Unbelief in His own Words

Rob Bell’s denial of eternal punishment goes hand in hand with a warped view of the gospel. No wonder. Each error fuels and exacerbates the other. Eliminate every hint of punishment for sin; ignore the wrath of an offended deity; dismiss the demands of divine justice, and you abolish any need for the gospel.

CONTINUE READING...

Timelapse Video of San Francisco-to-Paris Flight Captures Aurora Borealis

SF to Paris in Two Minutes from Beep Show on Vimeo.

Discernment Quote

“Discernment is not knowing the difference between right and wrong it’s knowing the difference between right and almost right”

-- Charles Spurgeon

John MacArthur on Rob Bell - Part Two, Rob Bell: “Evangelical and orthodox to the bone?” Hardly.

Rob Bell: “Evangelical and orthodox to the bone?” Hardly.

In his books, sermons, and videos, Rob Bell has consistently promoted views that are antithetical to biblical Christianity and hostile to historic evangelical principles.
For example, although he claims to “affirm the historic Christian faith, which includes the virgin birth and the Trinity and the inspiration of the Bible” (Velvet Elvis, 26), Bell is clearly more interested in casting doubt on the fundamental truths of biblical Christianity than he is in defending them.

CONTINUE READING...

John MacArthur on Rob Bell - Part One, Rob Bell: a Brother to Embrace, or a Wolf to Avoid?

Well finally we hear from the Evangelical Pope (as named by Todd Friel) on the Rob Bell controversy from his book "Love Wins". As usual Dr. MacArthur pulls no punches and uses holy scripture to state his case.

Rob Bell: a Brother to Embrace, or a Wolf to Avoid?

If Christopher Hitchens or Deepak Chopra penned a book that scoffed at the
biblical teaching on hell, we would not be surprised. So why would anyone be
shocked or confused when Rob Bell writes Love Wins? Has Bell shown any
more commitment to gospel truth, or any more devotion to the principle of
biblical authority than Hitchens or Chopra? 

CONTINUE READING...

James White quote on Rob Bell quote in Love Wins book

“Hell is our refusal to trust God’s retelling of our story.”

Now when Rob Bell says, I’m not a universalist, I believe in hell, you need to understand in his book what he means is he’s talked to some people who have had some really tough lives and are going through rough things and that’s hell. That’s not the hell of scripture and that’s not the actual issue…there’s something about justice, there’s something about God’s holiness, and there’s something about the necessity of the demonstration of God’s justice that’s all bound up in what the cross is all about, and that’s gone, that has been evacuated from Rob Bell’s gospel, it’s not there anymore. I was very appreciative that one of the first full reviews pointed out that Rob Bell’s version of God’s love is twisted, it’s not biblical, it’s that kind of liberal, ooey gooey love that God must have but we would never respect any human being who had the same kind of love. We would never respect a human being who has the kind of love that liberalism asserts God has; undifferentiated, no categories to it, it’s clearly unbiblical.

Dr. James White from The Dividing Line program March 24, 2011

Lies My Pastor Told Me: Confronting 15 Church Clichés with the Gospel by Cole Brown

This is an interesting book written about the cliches so often taught to Christians. This book can be downloaded here for free in pdf format.
Here is the list of fifteen:

1. Don’t Put Your Mouth on the Man of God!
2. The Bible Is God’s Rulebook.
3. This Is God’s House
4. I Feel The Spirit
5. I Have Peace About This Decision
6. God Wants Me to be Rich
7. That Will Make You Sin
8. Speak It Into Existence
9. You’re Not Filled With the Holy Spirit if You Don’t Speak In Tongues
10. That’s the Devil
11. God Heals Those Who Have Faith
12. You Have A Generational Curse
13. She’s Not Anointed
14. Just Believe God
15. Doctrine Is Dangerous

2011 Ligonier National Conference Messages now available

If you were like me and unable to attend the Ligonier National Conference this year the messages are now available for purchase or streaming (free) here.

Where Americans Are Moving

Forbes.com has this interactive map you can click on any county in the US and see where people have moved from (black lines) and where they have moved to (red lines).
Where Americans Are Moving