Does God Really Keep His Promises?

Does God Really Keep His Promises?

Are you confused about why God didn’t answer your prayer “yes” – especially in the way you expected Him to answer? Are you considering these factors?

1. He is God – I am not! Therefore, He is all-knowing and all-loving – you and I are not!
2. Are you praying Kingdom prayers, or “gimme prayers”? “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.” Matthew 6:33; “You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures.” James 4:3 (NKJV)
3. Are you praying according to the guidelines God Himself has given us? “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love… If someone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? And this commandment we have from Him: that he who loves God must love his brother also.” 1 John 4:7-8, 20-21; “Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him.” 1 John 5:14-15 (NKJV)
4. Is God Himself trustworthy? Consider this: “Not one word of all the good promises that the Lord had made to the house of Israel had failed; all came to pass.” Joshua 21:45 (ESV)

The Legacy of Evolutionism

   “After the work of Darwin, manipulative evolutionism was formed, which, ignoring the natural laws of biology, genetics, physics, informatics, geology and mathematical-logical reasoning, paleontological and historical artifacts, bears the character not of scientific theory, but a kind of atheistic religion, leeching constantly on the word ‘scientific’. From biology this principle of the spontaneous evolution from the simple to the complex, has spread to all cosmological processes, including the Big Bang Theory. All the fundamental laws of nature, mutations of genes experiments, selection of genes and likewise bio-genesis, unequivocally affirm that biological life (and the entire physical universe) has a transcendental origin from the Supreme Creative Mind, which laid into creation original information… Species do not have a mechanism for transition to another form, only a corresponding to the norm of reaction and adaptation to external influences within the boundaries of their own species only. If he were alive today, Darwin would no longer have remained a ‘Darwinist’, in spite of the futile attempts of neo-Darwinians to actually find the principles of self-organizing nature through the analysis of nonlinear or incompatible thermodynamics systems, the theory of punctuated equilibrium, and the synthetic theory of evolution, etc.

   Conference participants noted that in addition to fatal scientific errors, the theory of macro-evolution has a negative ideological and social influence. The initial position of the theory of evolution is that it is a chance process. In this case, Man is merely a particle of stardust, a result of a random process, disappearing into nothingness. Then there is no sense of moral values and human responsibility. If a person is not the image of God, but only an accident arising from the biomass of consciousness, then he descends to the level of the beast. From this perspective, it is easy to justify racism, genocide, abortion, euthanasia, and various sexual perversions, drug addiction, alcoholism and other spiritual and social vices. Rejecting the idea of intelligent design in the origins of life and the universe, the Theory of Evolution as a product of atheism, not only drives scientific thought into a dead end, but also leads modern civilization towards social and moral self-destruction.

   People should understand that the three boundary transitions in the genesis of the physical universe:

– The emergence of inorganic matter ‘out of nothing’›› (ex nihilo),

– The emergence of life from inorganic elements,

– The emergence of consciousness in ‘living’ matter cannot be explained by current knowledge about natural processes. Without doubt, these three cosmological transitions testify to the supernatural origin of the Universe through the creative power and intelligence of the Creator. On the other hand, creationist science is faced with the task of studying creation according to the Creator’s intention.’” ~ Anonymous

Who Should we Praise?

“Lord, I lift my thoughts to You in praise.

I cannot sing or shout for others are asleep;

But loudness is not the measure –

By which You judge sincerity of heart and mind,

And the depth of gratitude and pleasure that I feel.

How wonderful to lift this praise from an overflowing heart

To the God of all creation.

To the God who is real;

To the God who is not silent, but has spoken

Through His creation and His word.

To the God who listens and who cares for all His creatures.

How pathetic and insufficient to me it seems

To hear the evolutionist in muddled thought,

With warm-fuzzies gushing from his emotional heart,

Express the grandeur that he sees and feels;

‘Isn’t nature wonderful! We must save the snail darter!’

‘Thank you, Mother Earth! Gaia!’

But their unmoved mover is the ever-shifting sand

Of theory based on time and chance.

It is like feeling gratitude and awe for rolling dice.

But I have You, my God Eternal,

The Creator of heaven and earth,

And all the fulness thereof;

And the redeemer and sustainer of soul and body.”

~ Ivars Bitans

“Give ear, O heavens, and I will speak, and let the earth hear the words of my mouth. May my teaching drop as the rain, my speech distill as the dew, like gentle rain upon the tender grass, and like showers upon the herb. For I will proclaim the name of the Lord; ascribe greatness to our God! The Rock, his work is perfect, for all his ways are justice. A God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and upright is he. They have dealt corruptly with him; they are no longer his children because they are blemished; they are a crooked and twisted generation. Do you thus repay the Lord, you foolish and senseless people? Is not he your father, who created you, who made you and established you?” Deuteronomy 32:1-6 (ESV)

“In the absence of any other proof, the thumb alone would convince me of God’s existence” ~ Isaac Newton

Can an Atheist be a Loyal American?

Are you surprised that I would even ask such a question? Yes, I do have a copy of the Constitution of our U.S. Government, and yes, I have read it! Have you? I’m currently in the process of re-reading it in view of the planned insidious takeover of our country by Marxist ideology. Yes, the Constitution is our supreme law of our land, and yes, in Article VI it does say: “… all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

Also, Amendment 1 does say: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Yes, we have put “or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” in bold because that is the portion the Marxists (and all atheist-oriented groups) would like to eliminate, but there it is!

Now let’s go back to my original question in the heading, and let’s consider what our Founding Fathers meant by what they wrote in view of their other clarifications in the abundance of their other writings! It is clear that they did not want a state church such as the Church of England, Church of Scotland, nor a Roman Catholic state church as in several European countries. However, they did not design a pagan nation nor a secular humanist (atheist) nation either, no matter what the Marxists want to force us to believe and accept. The Declaration of Independence, which preceded our Constitution, says: “We hold these truths to be self-evident – that we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights…” They knew that our rights come from Almighty God, not from government. So, I’ll let you answer for yourself: “Can an atheist be a loyal American”?

The prayer for our country by its first president, George Washington, clinches the fact that the founders had no intention of giving us a secular nation. Here is that prayer: “Almighty God; We make our earnest prayer that Thou wilt keep the United States in Thy holy protection; that Thou wilt incline the hearts of the citizens to cultivate a spirit of subordination and obedience to government; and entertain a brotherly affection and love for one another and for their fellow citizens of the United States at large.” “And finally, that Thou wilt most graciously be pleased to dispose us all to do justice, to love mercy, and to demean ourselves with that charity, humility, and pacific temper of mind which were the characteristics of the Divine Author of our blessed religion, and without a humble imitation of whose example in these things we can never hope to be a happy nation. Grant our supplication, we beseech Thee, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

Also, Washington would have been appalled if anyone had told him that he could not close his prayer in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ! So, if you want to live in a secular nation or pagan nation, you are welcome to leave and go find one. But please don’t try to rob us of the wonderful country that our founding fathers planned for us (after much painstaking research).

True Social Justice

If we truly desire genuine social justice instead of the counterfeit perversion being promoted, pushed, and pressured in schools, colleges, institutions, universities, government agencies, and corporations, then we should honestly consider and apply God’s Word to Israel! Here it is: “You shall appoint judges and officers in all your towns that the Lord your God is giving you, according to your tribes, and they shall judge the people with righteous judgment. You shall not pervert justice. You shall not show partiality, and you shall not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and subverts the cause of the righteous. Justice, and only justice, you shall follow, that you may live and inherit the land that the Lord your God is giving you.” Deuteronomy 16:18-20 (ESV)

True Heroes

Next, we should honor those who are true heroes and stop the undermining of memorials to those who are genuine heroes, such as taking down memorials to Washington and Lincoln. Recently, we attended the memorial service for Bill Weech, who was a true American hero! No one claimed he was flawless, since all human beings are flawed in some way, but I did write down what I believe is a good definition of heroes:

Heroes live for something greater than themselves!

Heroes have a compound interest in the lives of others!

Heroes plant trees that give shade to others (and that they will not live to enjoy)!

Those demanding respect by promoting their perversion with Pride Month and cramming their agenda down our throats with threats, lawsuits, and violence deserve to be exposed as frauds rather than honored as heroes!

“What we learn from all this is the HGU campaign does not ‘get’ Jesus, and it does not impress in the least those it seems to want to reach. The fact is Jesus just does not ‘market’ well. We also learn that the target of HGU, the Aja-style people of our culture, do not want to be ‘got’ by Jesus. They instead demand that Jesus, and everyone else, approve of them as they are: how they think, how they live, and how they ‘identify.’ Jesus, it is very clear from the gospels, is completely unwilling to do that. He demands change from us, and He will not compromise. Perhaps it is time for Jesus’s followers to accept that and live with it, even if our culture does not like it.” ~ Kent B. True (Strangeness of the Month Club, Restoration Herald, July 2024)

Concerning our Desperate Need for Hope

Evangelist Greg Laurie recently commented that the biggest export from California appears to be Californians. Why? Apparently because so many people in California have given up hope for positive change in that influential state. As you may know, Greg Laurie’s evangelistic ministry is based in southern California, along with the thriving church he planted many years ago – Harvest Church. Greg Laurie shares with multitudes on his email list the bright glimmers of hope in southern California that may be a precursor to the massive spiritual awakening for America that many of us have been praying for, for decades.

At the Saturday, July 20 Harvest Crusade in southern California, about 50,000 showed up at the arena and approximately 200,000 tuned in online. At the invitation, 5,000 chose to confess publicly their faith in Jesus. The next step will be the 2^nd Annual Jesus Revolution Baptism at Pirate’s Cove, where more than 4,500 people were baptized in 2023. Praise God! Let’s pray for multitudes of disciplers to step up and disciple the new converts Biblically and diligently! May the joy of hope and outreach grow stronger and stronger!

Concerning the Wild Speculations of Humanistic Poetry, Philosophy, Psychology – and the Foolish Ramblings of Bible Critics and Contortionists

Recently, for some of my recreational reading, I have been reviewing the lives of famous influencers, such as Immanuel Kant, Walt Whitman, Isaac Newton, David Hume, and Karl Marx. What a contrast – the perspective of Isaac Newton compared to Karl Marx! Isaac Newton, considered to be the greatest scientist by many scholars, was a believer in the Word of God! Marx was the philosopher whose writings produced mass murderers such as Hitler, Stalin, and Mao! Now I want to share with you a portion of my presentation, “The Power of Perspective” – which I shared at a Man and the Christian Worldview Symposium about 20 years ago. (It is now chapter 5 in our book, Ready to Give an Answer.)

The Wisdom of Men

   The word “philosophy” means the love of wisdom. When I enrolled in a philosophy class in college, I expected something much more impressive as a course of study than what I found it to be. I expected to be dumbfounded by the great wisdom of the learned philosophers. But instead, the wisdom of men was chaff after feasting on the wheat of God’s Word.

Vanity of Vanities!

   Here are some examples of the highly esteemed “wisdom” of the Greek philosophers that I encountered. Heraclitus reasoned that everything in the universe is in a constant state of fluctuation, and the only thing that is permanent is the law of change. His disciple, Cratylus, took it one step further and decided that since everything is constantly changing, not even the law of change could be permanent. Therefore, he concluded that since even the meanings of the words we use are in constant flux, it is senseless to attempt to carry on a conversation. He reached the point where his only response, when spoken to, was to wiggle his finger to indicate that he had heard.

   Pyrrho, “greatest” philosopher of the third century B.C. Platonic Academy, became so skeptical that he decided it was impossible to distinguish between truth and falsehood in any realm. With this view he determined that the only logical thing for a man to do was to suspend all judgment. Thus, it is reported that once when he was walking straight toward a cliff, his disciples had to divert him to keep him from walking over the edge.

   Solomon evaluated practically every basic human ideology and wrote, “vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” (Read Ecclesiastes in the Bible for a full clarification of his premise.) Human wisdom without divine revelation to enlighten it is utterly vain because it can never answer the ultimate questions of life as to where we came from, what our purpose is upon earth and what happens to us after death.

Moral Relativism = Moral Chaos

   Humanistic philosophy has now led us into the maze of moral relativism. Do you realize that moral relativism is actually self-contradicting? C. S. Lewis once commented that the same man who declares that there are no fixed moral laws or absolutes will gripe if you steal his orange from his lunch. In America the moral climate has become so confused that a young unmarried couple only got two years in prison for murdering their baby by smashing his head with a brick and throwing him in the trash. Yet a man in Chicago was sentenced to ten years in prison for killing cats. That is despicable! It shows how distorted human morals become without the word of God as our standard.

   The line of reasoning behind these decisions shows a clear shift away from Christian morality, which honors the intrinsic value of human life because we are created in the image of God. In humanistic thinking, which is based on evolutionism, human beings are only animals and are not an endangered species; therefore, there is no intrinsic value in a human baby over a cat, a rat, or a whale. A human being is only valuable if someone wants him. The young couple didn’t want their baby and their crime in killing the baby was waiting until after he was born. There is no punishment for murdering a baby by abortion even when in the process of delivery. The man who killed cats made the legal blunder of killing cats someone else wanted; therefore, his animal cruelty was deemed far worse than cruelty to an unwanted baby. Do you realize that this is the same warped humanistic philosophy that Hitler used to justify exterminating people he didn’t want? Notice the power of an evolutionistic perspective, for Hitler was acting out his belief system, and so were the judges who gave such distorted decisions!

Rejecting God’s Light is a Moral Issue!

   True philosophy is beautiful and leads us into the open arms of Almighty God, but much humanistic philosophy is no more than a futile effort to reason around the truth and identity of Almighty God. The sham intellectualism of unbelief is merely a cover-up for what is actually a moral issue.

“For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him. Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only son. This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.” John 3:16-21 (NIV)

The Wisdom of God

(True Philosophy Loves God)

Actually, there is no secular humanistic system of philosophy that rightly deserves the title “philosophy” because all true love for wisdom brings us to the One who is Wisdom. Just as Christians must face and challenge the “opposition of science,” falsely so called (1 Timothy 6:20), so also must we face and challenge the oppositions of philosophy, falsely so called.

“Who among you is wise and understanding? Let him show by his good behavior his deeds in the gentleness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, do not be arrogant and so lie against the truth. This wisdom is not that which comes down from above, but is earthly, natural, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder and every evil thing. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy.” James 3:13-17 (NASB)

Conclusion

Whose wisdom do you choose to follow, apply, and promote for your own moral health and the moral health of our nation—God’s wisdom with its solid basis of objective moral standards or man’s wisdom, which is constantly changing with the winds of cultural shifts? Which perspective promotes moral health – a God-honoring perspective, which accepts His moral standards revealed in the Bible, or a humanistic perspective, which inevitably slides down into moral relativism?

From Our Mailbox

“Shalom! Grace and peace to you in Messiah’s love. Did you know that the first believers had more against them than any other generation in the history of the gospel? They were persecuted, they were maligned, slandered, arrested, beaten, tortured, beheaded, and fed to the lions. They were confronted with the threat of death everywhere they went. These were the very first believers who fled the Lord on the eve of His crucifixion because they feared death. But now there was no more fear. Instead of cowering before the threats, they became stronger. Instead of backing down, they pressed ahead. They could not be stopped. They boldly proclaimed the gospel in the very city of the crucifixion, Jerusalem, and then to the ends of the earth. They endured hardships, persecutions, threats, and dangers of death. What can explain that? The only way to so greatly counter a threat of the power of death is by that which is the opposite of death: the power of life. Only the very real event of the resurrection – the triumphing of life over death – can explain what transformed and carried the disciples the rest of their lives. When one loses one’s fear of death, there is nothing much that can stop them because of the power of Messiah.

We too are to be people of the resurrection. We too are to be people of life triumphing over death. So many fears that we live by are linked to the fear of death and the pursuit of survival. We worry about money because we believe that if we don’t have enough it will threaten our survival. We worry about health for the same reason. We deal with the fear of man and of rejection because we believe that it is linked to our wellbeing. But Messiah has conquered death. If He has conquered death, then He has conquered fear. If we truly are who we say we are and follow in His footsteps there is nothing much to stop us. God wants us to be free of fear, anxiety, and worry. We have to learn that our wellbeing does not depend on this world, but only on God. If God has conquered death, then there is nothing left to be afraid of and, if God be for us who can be against us? Start living a life free from the bondage of fear and replace it with a life of love where the stone has been rolled away. Live unbound. Confront your fears head on and overcome them because Messiah is the Prince of Life, and death has been vanquished in His Name. In His Name, live as a true disciple free from fear and alive to life…” ~ Jonathan Cahn

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“Brothers and Sisters in Christ, back as early as 1970, Harry Hay, one of the fathers of the homosexual rights movement, set up their goals and plans. Today it looks like every goal they ever had has been achieved. So why are they still unhappy? They’ve brought court cases, citing ‘discrimination,’ while they themselves are making laws discriminating against Bible-believing Christians. Anyone who questions their agenda meets with a violent response. When people simply state their opinions, or quote Bible verses, they scream ‘Hate speech!’

They invaded the public square, and even moved into the churches – to establish their ‘gender identity’ and their desire for your children. They are after your children! Yet if anyone, no matter how radical, questions any part of their agenda, they’re treated as an enemy, even if they support the movement 99%. It’s 100% or nothing and always one step more. Back in the 1970s, they admitted their goal was not equality – it was domination. But few paid attention. They got what they wanted, even bodily mutilation of children, yet they are not happy. And many, whose bodies were permanently altered, are miserable and even suicidal. Now education itself has been radically perverted… In Christ Jesus, and for His service, David Daniels (Chick Publications)”

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“Rick, praying for you during this time of transition. You continue to serve the Lord with integrity and love. May this next season bring much joy and fruitfulness as you rest in him. Please let me know if I can serve you with anything.

Your brother in Christ, David Witt, Chief Executive Officer, Spirit of Martyrdom”

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“Beloved brothers and sisters. Thank you so much for all your loving concern, fraternal care, sacrificial help, and unceasing prayers! With great joy, I present to you the Christian Center for Science and Apologetics Midsummer 2024 newsletter. We are so thankful for your faithful prayers! We feel their power all the time. Despite the war’s challenges, air raids, missile attacks, blackouts, etc., summer continues to be the busiest time of the year because of camps and children programs added to our regular work of teaching, training, publishing, media production, etc. The Lord continues to lead and encourage us through grateful testimonies we hear about our resources’ impact. May His name be praised!

The shadows of the war can be observed everywhere. It is so painful every time heading out of Kyiv westward to pass by the piles of civilian cars shot by Russians on the very day we were escaping from the city (they were collected together and burned afterwards). And we praise the Lord every time we pass the place for sparing us by His messenger who had directed us to take a longer detour which happened to be safer. That was real protecting grace!…

Please continue to pray for peace in Ukraine and for the safety of our fellow workers wherever they are. Please continue to pray for our teammates who defend our land. May the Lord protect them! Please pray with us for the Lord’s intervention in the midst of troubles, and for many people in other countries who care and help. Please pray for the lives of soldiers and civilians. Most of all, please pray for the Lord’s guidance for us in these difficult times. You all are in our prayers! Yours by the grace of Jesus, Sergei (Golovin)”

Note: This is a much-abbreviated piece of Sergei’s full report. If you would like a copy of his full report, either by email or print copy, please let us know.

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“Rick, thought you might be interested in this, news via IDES…
UKRAINE: This is the Kherson Antonovka Church. The minister’s name is Pastor Oleg Derkachenko. John and Ruth Chesnut have been working closely with them over the past two years. This church has grown exponentially during those years to now running up to 600 per week. John received word from Pastor Oleg that last Thursday the Russians dropped a bomb on their church property where his car was parked at the time. This was the first time that the church property was attacked. His car was badly damaged along with the church’s toilet, some windows and doors. No one was injured. Pastor Oleg also shared that there were still 250 people at their Sunday service. They ask for prayers for God’s protection and mercy.”  – from David Davolt

“Quips & Quotes”

• “’Non-binary’ is a made-up word. You are either male or female. Stop teaching children lies.”
• “The propitious smiles of heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which heaven itself has ordained.” (George Washington)
• “Father’s Day and Mother’s Day: ‘The two days out of the year when suddenly no one is confused about what a man and a woman is.”

Prayer Requests

Please continue in fervent prayer for America, Israel, and Ukraine!