"For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths." Northwoods is a ministry dedicated to refreshing Christians and challenging them to search for the truth in Christianity, politics, sociology, and science
"I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life"
Father God, thank you for the love of the truth you have given me. Please bless me with the wisdom, knowledge and discernment needed to always present the truth in an attitude of grace and love. Use this blog and Northwoods Ministries for your glory. Help us all to read and to study Your Word without preconceived notions, but rather, let scripture interpret scripture in the presence of the Holy Spirit. All praise to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
Please note: All my writings and comments appear in bold italics in this colour
Nurta Mohamed Farah, the 17 year old who converted to Christianity in Somalia and was persecuted by her own parents, has been shot and killed.
After finding out that she had converted to Christianity, her parents beat her, drugged her, tied her to a tree during the day and locked her in a small dark room by night. And they thought she was crazy....
There was no news about her for six months in spite of my complaining to CompassDirect, but finally this month, December 2010, we found out that she had escaped from her parents and ran to an aunt in another territory of Somalia. It wasn't far enough. Two men showed up one night and shot her in the stomach and the head, killing her.
Most believe it was an 'honour killing.' That's how messed up these Muslem fanatics are, that they would think that killing their own daughter would somehow restore honour to their family.
That Nurta suffered so horribly and ultimately was martyred, is a testimony to how powerful a real conversion to Christ is. All the disciples except John were martyred and many are still being martyred today. Christ is real and worth dying for.
Compass Direct News Lazarus Masih, Rawalpindi, Pakistan, said one of his three daughters, 14, was kidnapped on May 29 by five men identified only as Guddu, Kamran, Waqas, Adil and Ali.
“They threatened that if I don’t get her married to Guddu, they would kill her,” Masih said. “One of them said, ‘We attended an Islamic religious convention, and the speaker said if you marry a non-Muslim or rape a non-Muslim girl, you will get 70 virgins in Heaven.”
Family members said the suspects took her to a house near Islamabad, where they gave her a drug that rendered her unconscious, and raped her. A medical report confirmed that she was given drugs and raped. Police found her on June 6th, but the suspects escaped.
Lord, shut forever the mouths of those who preach such evil, and deliver the foolish who believe such things. Lord, we pray for grace, mercy and healing for the young girl who was so badly abused. We pray you will soon bring an end to the Satanic control over Islam. Amen.
A 17-year-old Somali girl who converted to Christianity was severely beaten by her parents for leaving Islam, and they have regularly shackled her to a tree at their home for more than a month.
Nurta Mohamed Farah of Bardher, in southern Somalia, has been confined to her home since May 10, when her family found out that she had converted to Christianity from Islam.
A doctor assumed that she had gone crazy for leaving Islam and prescribed medication which her parents forced upon her. When the medication and the beatings failed to shake her faith, her parents began chaining her to the tree and locking her into a small dark room at night.
A Christian leader in the area said that she is very sick and undergoing intense suffering.
The gospel… is constantly bearing fruit and increasing, even as it has been doing in you also since the day you heard of it and understood the grace of God in truth.
First, we should note that Paul says the gospel is constantly bearing fruit and increasing. This is the nature of the gospel and the reality of the Colossian experience. We have to consider the fact that if we are not bearing fruit and constantly increasing as Christians, we may not have fully heard and understood the grace of God. If we are not producing fruit, then we need to examine ourselves and determine why, for it is the expectation of God that we do bear fruit.
Let’s examine this bearing fruit and how it occurs. When we first hear the gospel and understand it, we are the fruit. Lots of people hear the gospel but not so many understand it. What is the difference? Why some and not others? It has to do with the will. Many people are not willing to believe in the gospel. They may believe parts of it but not accept the whole thing. Their will is closed to the reality of Jesus Christ. They may be afraid of what others might think or say. They may have had some bad experience with a “Christian” in the past and painted all Christians with the same brush. They may be angry at God for some circumstance that caused them great pain in their lives. Whatever the reason, they are not willing to subject themselves to the Lordship of Christ.
Others may be open to the Lord and so His Spirit can come alongside and reveal the truth of the Gospel to them. This is really the only way to truly understand the grace or the gospel of Christ, if the Holy Spirit reveals it to us. The Colossians, having fully heard and understood, were certainly aided by the Holy Spirit. If we are not open to the Spirit, if our will is not open to believe the truth, no matter how disagreeable it may seem to us at first, then we can never, ever really hear and understand the truth and the reality of the gospel and the grace of God.
You are the fruit of another’s branch. Someone led you to the Lord and possibly nurtured you along the way until you grew. Then you were either picked or just dropped off the branch. You were either eaten by someone or something(s) until your flesh was nearly gone and there was little left. Then you were either thrown to the ground or left there to rot away or to be eaten by birds or insects.
I’ll skip the next little bit, but eventually you end up on the ground again as nothing more than a seed; everything else has been stripped away. Once it is stripped away, the seed can sprout, take root, grow and produce fruit of its own. But the seed can never reproduce while the flesh is strong. We must be willing to die to ourselves, or as Oswald Chambers put it, we must give up our right to ourselves.
The Holy Spirit is planted in you as a seed. It needs the fertile soil of the word of God, it needs weeding from the Truth, and it needs the early and the latter rains which is the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. We receive the Truth and the outpouring when we enter into the Presence of the Living God in worship or in prayer.
As the seed grows and the flesh dies, a glorious harvest will be the most natural thing in the world. Are you producing fruit?
Some people believe Heaven will be dreadfully boring, just sitting around on a cloud playing a harp. Sounds OK for a little while, but eventually it would get pretty boring.
There’s one problem here. Boredom in Heaven is an impossibility! Boredom requires an element of time – doing the same thing over and over, or not having anything to do for a period of time. However, there will be no time in Heaven. Heaven, or Eternity, is not a long time but the absence of time.
In Eternity, we will be living in the moment without concern for past or future. Boredom will simply not be possible.
The kingdom of God has suffered a great deal from men who would rather fight than pray. It has also been done great harm by men who would rather be nice than be right.
False worship: Cain worship – Assumes God to be different than Who He is,
- Assumes a relationship to God that isn’t there,
- Assumes sin is not as serious as it really is.
Samaritan worship – Heretical worship
- Picks out what you want to believe and rejects or ignores the rest.
True worship:
“Worship must lie within the confines of eternal truth. God is Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.
Only the Holy Spirit can enable man to worship God acceptably.
Only the Holy Spirit can pray acceptably, or do anything acceptably. I believe that all the gifts of the Spirit not only ought to be but have been present in His church all down the centuries.”
To worship him in truth, I must believe what God says about Himself, about His Son, about me, about sin, and about grace.
We must never edit or apologize for God.
We must believe Jesus is our Saviour and Lord.
We must believe all that God says about us – what He will do for us, and that we are as bad as He says we are.
We must believe that sin is repulsive to God, and unacceptable in Eternity.
We must believe that God’s grace is as great as He says it is.
The first definition I came across was, “instead of lies and supernaturalism.” Supernaturalism; where did that come from? What was this, the beginning of an attack on faith?
Then I found this astounding revelation, “on veridical truth, as opposed not only to proven falsehood, lying and promise-breaking but also to institutionalized religion and other forms of supernaturalism.” So it is an attack on faith. (Veridical, by the way, means real, actual, or genuine.)
It would appear that veridical truth is not opposed to non-institutionalized religion. You gotta be careful what you read on the internet; there is all kinds of clap-trap.
Later I found a better definition, “conformity with fact or reality.” I also found that the word is Anglo-Saxon in origin and has an element of “faithfulness” at its roots. Isn’t that ironic?
Also, the Biblical definition of the word is, “opposed to falsehood,” “fidelity” (which has an element of faithfulness), and, of course, Jesus referred to Himself as the Truth.
My search for truth in Christianity will take me in many different directions. I invite you to come along and help me on this quest. Much of it will question popular doctrine, especially those which have become popular in the last 50 years or so. You will see a number of articles with “Romantic Christian” in the title. This is one of the terms I use to describe what I believe are Christians who have strayed from Biblical truth.
There are so many Christians, including entire denominations, big ones, that have romanticized Christianity to the point where it is not the least demanding, not at all difficult, there is no real requirement of us, no cross to carry, in fact, it’s become just a warm, fuzzy way to supplement our lives and make them better. This, of course, has nothing to do with Christianity.
Christianity is about restoring a fallen race to the God Who created them. It demands much of us; it is exceedingly difficult at times, but always with help available; it requires obedience, submission, sanctification, sincerity, sacrifice, discipline, and truth. And it requires us to pick up our cross daily.
The cross has lost its meaning in recent decades. It used to mean a burden, or difficulty in one’s life meant to help that person grow in character and closer to God. Paul’s cross was the ‘thorn in his side, the messenger of Satan” that the Lord afflicted him with to keep him humble. Modern Christians, Romantic Christians, reject that kind of stuff and will go to great lengths to reject such crosses to their own detriment.
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