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Evangelical Churches are Growing Faster than Liberal Ones — Well, Duh
In the I-could-have-told-them-that department, a recent study on Canadian churches reported that evangelical churches were growing faster than their liberal counterparts, even in the same denomination. (BTW, please keep in mind that “evangelical” doesn’t mean a political conservative, although many are — it means a conservative approach to the literal truth of the Bible.) The Christianity Today article titled “Even in Canada, Conservative Churches Are Growing” discusses the research. It’s good, please read it. And here is my take: liberal churches are essentially telling their congregants to be nice and go out and help people. But you don’t need to attend church to do that, so why bother going on…
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We Don’t Like the Word “Obey” Much. We Should Get Over It.
We don’t like the word “obey” much, do we? “I’m independent, gosh darn it. I’m strong, free, and self-directed. You’re not the boss of me.” When you’re Christian and hear yourself say things like that it’s pretty funny stuff. In fact, as much as we might not like to think that we obey someone, there’s some of that in everyone’s life. Healthy obedience means to obey a law enforcement officer’s legal order, especially as pertains to getting you out of a dangerous situation. We obey our bosses’ ethical requests. We obey street signs. There is all sorts of good and healthy obedience of the world. And when God directs us…
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Miracles in Jericho
Jericho was certainly where the Bible said it was in Joshua 5 and 6 – the tumbled walls are still there. The question was when did it happen? Some scholars think the city was destroyed over a century before the Hebrews got there. Now new evidence from studies of ceramics, royal objects, seismic activity in the region, carbon-14 dating, and the ruins themselves show new evidence that the city was destroyed when most scholars believe that the Hebrews arrived – about 1400 BC. ”When we compare the archeological evidence at Jericho with the biblical narrative describing the Israelite destruction of Jericho, we find a quite remarkable agreement,” Dr. Bryant G.…