THE CHURCH IS GROWING

Church, Culture, Optimism July 12, 2016 1 Comment

PMT 2016-050 by Krish KandiahChurch growing

Without my glasses, younger children in my household look at me as though I am a stranger they have never met before. To me, the world around feels very different. Last week my glasses were stolen and I became very aware how my myopia caused me to feel disoriented, claustrophic, nervous, and unconfident.

Something similar happens to Christians when we lose our global glasses. We fail to see what God is doing on the world stage and instead we become parochial and introverted, limited in our vision and witness. Continue reading →

ISLAM IS DYING

Church, News, Non-eschatology Studies July 8, 2016 Comments: 5

PMT 2016-049 by Christian Muslim AnswersIslam killing

During the last centuries, the number of Muslims in the world has been increasing steadily. Statistics for the year 2010 are telling us that the Muslim population is 1.6 billion. 1 In 1973 the Muslim population was only 0.5 billion. 2 Many Muslims believe that Islam will be the world’s religion in future, because Islam is growing. However new statistics show that Islam is dying a slow death. The following reasons: Continue reading →

WHY THE LOCAL CHURCH IS TRENDING UP

Church, missions, Optimism July 5, 2016 Comments: 2

PMT 2016-048 by Brian DouglasUPward

Fear for the church’s future is trending. It’s almost too easy nowadays to fall into despair: Christians’ interactions with culture and politics can often seem clumsy or foolish, and you don’t have to look far for biblical compromise, destructive power-plays, or “scandal du jour” moral failure. Compounding the problem is the fact that the modern church has been shattered into 30,000 to 42,000 denominations (depending on which study you read)-a degree of division that further damages its credibility. Continue reading →

MUSLIMS TURNING TO CHRIST

missions, News, Non-eschatology Studies, Optimism June 17, 2016 Leave a comment

Muslim Christian 2PMT 2016-043 by David Garrison

(Ken Gentry: The following article by church historian David Garrison, Ph.D., was published in The Aquila Report (June 7, 2016). It contains encouraging research regarding Muslim conversions, which would fit postmillennial long-term expectations.)

Ten-year-old Nadia wasn’t surprised when her father signed her marriage contract, nor when she had to move in with her 20-year-old husband two years later. Nadia’s experience is not unusual in the Islamic Republic of Iran. It also wasn’t out of the ordinary when her husband became an opium addict (Iran has the highest rate of drug addiction in the world). Two of Nadia’s brothers also succumbed to drugs. One was sentenced to prison for killing a man in a drug-related dispute, the other committed suicide. One day Nadia’s cousin who had recently become a Christian quietly gave her a New Testament in the Persian language.

Nadia prayed, ‘Allah, show me your truth.’ As she read it, Nadia said, ‘I felt my heart open like an old door. Inside I felt very warm and thirsty. It was like drinking cool water, and I wanted to drink it all.

‘From that time on,’ Nadia recalls, ‘Jesus’ work started in me. It was a strange happiness like nothing I’d ever known.’ Within a week she’d led her husband and three children to faith in Jesus. Continue reading →

CHURCH AS KINGDOM NATION

Church June 14, 2016 Leave a comment

Church kingdomPMT 2016-042 by Don Strickland

Acts 17:26 And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place,

Jeremiah 31:33 “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the LORD, “I will put My law within them, and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.

Psalm 74:2 Remember your congregation, which you have purchased of old, which you have redeemed to be the tribe of your heritage!

Ephesians 1:5 He predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will.

Every nation (ethnos, from which we get our word “ethnicity”) comes from God. As the word implies, nation denotes a common people. Thus, a nation’s origin pertains to common ancestors, or ethnicity, with a common language, culture, and religion. Of course, that fact does not mean that those who are outside that common ethnic group cannot be a part of the nation. In the Old Testament, those outsiders wishing to join themselves to the nation of Israel, for instance, were allowed to do so (Isaiah 56.3). However, for those outsiders to join themselves to the nation, they had to assimilate themselves completely into the nation with its laws, customs, culture, and most importantly, religion (Num 15.13-16 and Ex 12.48-49). Remember Ruth’s words to Naomi, “Your people shall be my people, and your God my God” (Ruth 1.16). Continue reading →

DECREED BORDERS

Culture, Ethics June 10, 2016 1 Comment

Border 1PMT 2016-041 by Don Strickland

 

Acts 17:24-26 “The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, (25) nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. (26) And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place.”

Recently, Secretary of State John Kerry gave a commencement speech in which he spoke approvingly of a “borderless world.” Almost a week later, Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama) wrote an opinion piece for USA Today in which he stated that the coming presidential election will be a choice between nationalism and globalism. Will we remain a distinct nation, or lose our identity in the sea of the global community? Open borders, or nations without borders, is being pushed, and has been for years, throughout the countries comprising Western civilization – that is, those countries populated by the people native to Europe. Even otherwise theologically conservative Christian pastors have argued from a compassionate and/or evangelistic framework to justify the invasion crossing Europe’s and America’s borders. But what exactly does the Bible teach about national borders? Continue reading →

COVENANT THEOLOGY = REPLACEMENT THEOLOGY?

Church, Dispensationalism, Israel May 27, 2016 Comments: 4

Replacement TheologyPMT 2016-037 by R. Scott Clark

[Note: This is a helpful article by R. Scott Clark that responds to dispensational confusion regarding covenant theology.]

Recently I had a question asking whether “covenant theology” is so-called “replacement theology.” Those dispensational critics of Reformed covenant theology who accuse it of teaching that the New Covenant church has “replaced” Israel do not understand historic Reformed covenant theology. They are imputing to Reformed theology a way of thinking about redemptive history that has more in common with dispensationalism than it does with Reformed theology. Continue reading →