The Bible is probably the only ancient text that any Mike, Mary or Marcia waxes warm about despite stark ignorance of the book’s actual texts and historical contexts (plural). The lay critic may be very educated but (s)he and even most Christians need to understand how to read an ancient text from a different linguistic and cultural milieu than ours. I illustrate the need with the issue of slavery in the Bible, an issue I had to deal with in a Barbados newspaper years ago in response to a learned critic there. Said critic charged that “Slavery is justified in both principle and practice throughout the Old and New Testament.†Most of us learned in English literature class the basic point that a text must be read in light of its context. What contextual cues do we need to bear in mind to read the Bible responsibly? Well for starters we need to… read more
Bible
Here are 38 Beautiful Static Church Slides that can help with your communications in your church services. Church slides can play a vital role in communicating information to your church family. Whether you’re displaying this loop of slides before your service begins, at certain times during your service, or even as people are leaving, they are a great way to get the word out about upcoming events. Bokeh Church Service Slide Template Bokeh Church Service Slide Template can be used for variety of event presentation. Welcome, Offering, Upcoming Events and Goodbye message is included in the full download. Design with various bokeh background color options; blue, orange, green and lavender. A great tool for church services. Get this Photoshop template and customize the slides for your church occasion. Focus Church Slide Template Focus Church Slide Template is for church sermon series, bible studies, new years church planning meetings and conventions dealing with the direction and mission of the… read more
The Genesis Theory Videos by White Rabbit gives a lot of relevant information to understand the theory. The Genesis Theory is a new theory to explain the origins of the universe and our place in it, in relation to the Scriptures. It’s a 2 part series with information from the scientific and theological community. Part one focuses on presenting relevant information needed to understand the theory. In this video, you will be exposed to many different lesser-known scientific theories. Part two will focus on the actual theory and will reference this video several times, in addition to introducing new concepts. A third video was scheduled by White Rabbit to explain the theory, but because of the complexity of the theory and the amount of information available, he decided to write a book instead. The Name of the book will be “The Genesis Theory, Challenging the Consensus of Our Origins”.
This evening I was driving home from work and listening to the Joy 1250 radio station. There was a Christian program hosting Joni Eareckson Tada, a Christian lady who in 1967–at the age of 17 years old–became quadriplegic due to a diving accident. She said something that encouraged me to share with you my experience of God’s faithfulness in answering prayers. She said that prior to the accident she prayed that God would deepen her relationship with Him, but that she did not expect it to happen this way—she wasn’t thinking ‘paralysis’! But God used her paralysis to answer her prayer and she is so much closer to Him today than she ever could. Ten years ago I prayed a simple sincere prayer. I asked God, “Lord, I want to experience the love You have for mankind. I don’t want to only experience Your love for me but I also… read more
Ancient books are not always, if ever, easy to read properly, unless one can find helpful background information. The Herods in the New Testament are not clearly differentiated, so we read about King Herod in Mt. 2:1(re the nativity of Jesus) then there is a King Herod in Mk. 6:18 (the one whom John rebuked for marrying his brother’s wife) and there is yet another King Herod in Acts 12:1-2(who had James the brother of John killed). Same guy? No. The King Herod of the nativity accounts was King Herod the Great, that master-builder who was appointed puppet King of the Jews in 40 BC and who ruled as King of Judea from 37 BC until his death in 4 BC. When Herod the Great died in 4 BC the territories under his jurisdiction were divided among his sons. So [Herod] Archelaus (called ‘Herod the Ethnarch’ on his coins) ruled… read more
There are reasons why I chose to analyse her experience with the man she loved, rather than analyse my own experience with her: 1) I was very familiar with her. When she did something I already knew what motivated her. When she said something, I knew what she really meant and wanted to communicate. I knew her better than she knew herself. I knew how she was before her rejection experience with that man, and how she became afterwards. 2) I am not better than her. Whatever she went through I knew that I was going to go through the same thing. I am just a human as she is, so I knew “No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind.†(1 Corinthians 10:13) 3) Often times our own experience are too painful at the time for us to analyse them logically, and often times the strong emotions… read more
Why do we watch YouTube videos? Why do we spend so much time on Facebook and Flickr? Why do we read so many Wikipedia articles? Why do we play our favorite sports and watch our favorite TV shows? Why do we talk to our friends on the phone? Why do we chat? Why do we work? Why do we go shopping? The answer to these questions is either because ‘we want to’ and/or ‘we love to.’ Why do we work? Maybe it’s not because we enjoy our work but because we want to work: we want to make money, and we want to have a career, and we want to have a promotion, and we don’t want to sit home all day long. Why do we play sports? Because we enjoy playing them, we enjoy competing, and we enjoy to spending time with our friends. And we want to be in shape! If… read more
Recently I went to a wedding and after the wedding my aunt asked me what I was looking for in a wife and I told her, “About four thingsâ€, without being specific. She laughed and said, “Only 4 things! I was looking for 40 things!†I am not concerned with my future wife’s education, body type, hair or eye colour, skin colour, ethnic background, or family history. I am not saying physical attraction is not important, it is important because God created us all with different looks and different preferences. And those different preferences help us make decisions; imagine how difficult life would be if you liked all things the same way! But what I am really interested in are: -Her mind: how she thinks; her wisdom; submitting her thoughts to the Lord by making His thoughts her thoughts; rejecting evil thoughts. -Her heart (and I don’t mean that blood… read more
Education is just knowledge you acquire to be able to practice a certain profession–it is nothing more and nothing less. It does not make you godlier, it does not make you love the Lord or others more, it does not make you more understanding or forgiving—it simply does not change your character to be more like Christ. The Holy Spirit is the only person who can change your character to the likeness of Christ’s character. He may use your education experience as a tool to change you, but education itself had not changed you—the Holy Spirit did. Education does not even have an eternal value unless you use it to glorify God. The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 10:31, “So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.†Of course, you cannot choose a career that is by definition dishonouring the… read more
There is something else I thought about the other day while walking to work. For years I prayed and cried for something I wanted God to do. But God in His infinite love and wisdom did not give me what I had asked for! If He did allow it to happen then I would have been absolutely miserable for the rest of my life! And you know what? Five years later while I was talking to Him about it I realized He did it because He loved me, and I thanked Him! Five years later I thanked Him! You know, if a stranger holds a public door for me for 2 seconds then I would thank him whole heartedly and without hesitation, yet I waited five years to thank my Savior and Heavenly Father for freeing me from an absolutely miserable life! This is a perfect example of the idolatry… read more
Christians can be persecuted for not only sharing the truth of Jesus Christ which is rejected by the world, but also for living a holy life. A couple of weeks ago when I wrote about modesty I remembered so many instances when as a child I attended the Roman Catholic church in Iraq where “Christian†women would ridicule a modest woman behind her back saying things such as, “Why is she wearing this? Is she this poor?â€, or, “My goodness she has no sense of style!â€, or, “She looks so ugly and old wearing this!â€, or, “Didn’t she wear this outfit last time?†As the above example shows: often times Christians are persecuted by other “Christiansâ€. My youngest uncle’s wife was born in Egypt to a Christian Coptic Orthodox family. In her second year of medical school she met some born-again youth, and soon after she accepted Jesus Christ as… read more
When I write I target a very small percentage of Christians. In this writing I am targeting even less–no more than a handful of ladies who are actually seeking to get closer to our Lord, to please Him, to live for Him a holy and blameless life. I am seeking those few ladies who are asking, “What can I do to get closer to Him? What can I do to be more like Him? What can I do to take my faith to the next level.†Let me tell you a story: Few years ago I was working in a warehouse as a general laborer. One day after I finished my lunch I decided to go sit in the warehouse reading my Bible for few minutes before my lunch time is over. So I sat on a box and I opened my Bible and prayed to the Holy Spirit to… read more
I am not doubting the sincerity of Christian women’s love for Christ, and so I am not saying that those Christian women who dress immodesty are doing it because they hate Christ. But the Bible does not say we are perishing because our lack of love, no, it says we are perishing because of our lack of knowledge: “My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge. ‘Because you have rejected knowledge, I also reject you as my priests; because you have ignored the law of your God, I also will ignore your children.’†(Hosea 4:6) Also, when you love someone you have to love that person the way they want and need. For example, if my wife wants to go to a certain restaurant but I take her to the restaurant I like then I have not expressed love toward her. So it is the same with Christ: we… read more
Now, here is what I think are some of the reasons immodesty is such a big sensual problem in the church today: 1) I believe, the biggest problem with immodesty is that it is a very well disguised idolatry. Anything that we replace God with to make us feel whole, to fulfill us emotionally, to make us feel wanted and desired, to lift our self-image, to make us reach our goals (such as attracting a husband-to-be), or to make our lives feel complete is an idol. For example, a man does not lust for the sake of lusting: a man lusts because momentary this physically attractive woman makes him feel a satisfaction he hasn’t fulfilled with his relationship to Christ. The same applies to other sins such as getting drunk–nobody gets drunk to make a fool of himself—people get drunk to escape a reality they do not like because they… read more
I was so pleased when I saw this group of youth dancing for the Lord on stage at the 2011 Jesus in the City parade in Toronto. I was particularly glad because the dancers were dressed so modestly, and so they looked so beautiful—more beautiful than any lady I have seen in a long while. Sadly, modesty was not the norm at this event: there was a worship group from Ottawa composed of two ladies who were dressed so immodesty that I didn’t photograph them (I didn’t even watch them), because I would’ve been nearly impossible for me as a photographer to edit their photos to make them acceptable with Christianity’s teaching about modesty. There was also another two ladies in the crowd who I avoided standing behind them because they wore such tight pants (both, to avoid temptation and to avoid photographing them), and so you can imagine my… read more
The Jesus in the City Parade was beautiful; it was beautiful to see so many children of God come together in a public square and have the freedom and right to worship and love their God. But there is something I want to talk about that’s not directly related to this event or this photo. It seems whenever I hear a preacher–whether at church, on radio, or at an event—they all seem to complain about how prayers and scripture reading were taken from public school and how that’s the work of Satan. Well, I disagree with that: first, I don’t think it’s a spiritually bad thing; second, I don’t think it’s the work of Satan—I think it’s the work of God. Here is why I don’t see a problem with that. First, it’s wrong to see Christianity as a state religion. Some preachers say that this country or that country… read more
I learn by examples best, so I think the best way to explain what being born-again means is through an example: Let us say you are a cat, and you want to live as a human. So you start your day by trying to wash your face but the sink is too big for you and the faucet was not designed to be turned on by paws. Then you try to make the bed but the bed is so big–because it is a human bed–that there is no way you can do it. Then you try to put on a shirt but shirts were designed for humans so they will not fit you and you cannot button up the shirt with your paws anyway. Even if you succeeded in doing those tasks the fact of the matter is that you are still a cat. You can try to pretend to… read more
Eight years ago I took a sexual purity online course, and it was the best Christian teaching I got. It was a daily online course for two months and I loved every day of it. One thing though I disagree with them is that they said many members who do not follow the precautionary rules (such as: move your computer to an open space in the house, or install Internet filtering software, or acquire an accountability partner, etc) fall back into sin even though they were free from it for a period of time. The problem I have with that statement is that I believe a person is only truly free if he is free on the inside through being set free by the power of the Holy Spirit. I think the best way to explain this topic is by talking about what it means to be born-again and what… read more
I took this photo at the Jesus in the City parade in Toronto. At first I wanted to make everything black and white except for the robe of the actor who is portraying our Lord Jesus Christ, then I realized this will make the robe the center of attention so I changed my mind. Here I just want to talk about the crucifixion. In 2004 a non-Christian co-worker told me that he went to watch The Passion of the Christ movie and said it was very brutal then added, “But it wasn’t the worst [physically] torture that anyone had endured.†Of course, he was right: our Lord did not endure the most physical torture in the history of mankind, because some men were crucified for days before they died, many others died more horrible physical deaths. As far as we know the two thieves who were crucified alongside our Lord… read more
One of my favorite activities is on Saturday morning right after I wake up and pray is to start cleaning my room as good as needed which usually takes about an hour to an hour and a half (yea, I know some people are slow!) Before I clean my room I open the curtains in the apartment and all doors so the apartment is full of the morning light. And turn on a sermon by Dr. Stanley and start cleaning! My room is always organized so I don’t have to put things in place or anything like that, but the dust I have no control over so I wipe the dust off everything. Then I wipe the floor clean and lastly change the bed sheet and the billow cases, and the comforter if needed. Of course I also have to make the mirror shine again! These are by far my… read more
I personally like when people are honest with me and point out my faults, so that I know my weaknesses and I can submit those weaknesses to Christ through prayer. That’s why I find the sermons of Dr. Charles Stanley, Paul Washer, and Billy Graham attractive, because they are effective. Of course I didn’t enjoy all honest and Biblical sermons because God used them to require change in me; it is very difficult to submit an area of weakness to Him to direct us through the change process. I can remember sermons of Dr. Stanley I listened to that I thought I would never need because I would never come across that situation, yea, right! that same sermon came in so handy a couple of years later! The same thing with reading the Bible…I read the Bible few times and some verses didn’t really apply to my situation, but they… read more
For a long time now it has been my heart’s desire to get married to the woman God has meant for me, according to His timing. Second to only knowing Jesus more and more and become more like Him and fulfilling His purpose for my life, having my own family has been my biggest dream. However, waiting has not been an easy task, especially few years ago when I knew what God’s will was from reading the Bible, but I didn’t have enough faith to live a worry free life in Christ—simply put, I knew He was faithful but I didn’t trust Him fully all the time. A few years ago I felt so lonely and saw how everyone around me has someone, whether according to God’s will or not, and so I went to pray and started crying out to Him, I was so troubled in my heart that… read more
Today I wanted to talk about the idea of relationship. If there is one thing I’ve noticed, it’s that Christians really do want a relationship with God. I think that we see the fire that others have and we see how happy they are and we crave that. But we want it in some easy form, we want to swallow a pill and get on with our day. I hate to break it to you but that’s not how a relationship works. How close would you be with your friends or family if you never spent time with them? You want a fire for God? You want to experience Him more deeply? Then you have to make time for Him. Read your Bible and spend time in prayer. I know it’s sickeningly simple, but that’s just how it is. It might mean that you have to say “no” to other… read more
When I took this photo of the white flower I remembered how in Christ we are new creation. But here I would like to just talk about the joy of being new creation in Christ, because it seems that joy is the first gift Christ gives us through the Holy Spirit when we surrender our lives to Him. Here is a little story… In the summer of 2003, I had just graduated from high school and by then I was in Canada for 4 years, I decided to find Christian chat rooms online. I had never been to a chat room before (or since) but I really wanted to join one because I needed spiritual advice on how to overcome lust, and I didn’t have any other source of help. So I went to MSN chat rooms (been closed for a while now) and I looked through few Christian chat… read more