P.r.o.o.f. of eXistence

giovannypanginda:

Just got my issue of Inheritance Magazine. And guess what? I’m on the cover with my friends.

Praying that people will be blessed by reading this issue!

My friend and Fraternity Brother Gio holding up a magazine in which he wrote an article about… and invited myself, my girlfriend and friends to be on the cover for the photo.

I am the dude to the right of Gio in the red flannel. My lady is partially blocking me. Can’t wait to get my issue. Click the link to check out the magazine!

(via iamgiovanny)

• Question: Thanks, I thought surviving child prostitution and just wanting equality SOME equality qualified me as a feminist. Now I realize that to have the rights of a feminist, I must: 1-be married. 2 - wake up before everyone in my family and cook them food 3- make the bed and sew my own clothing 4 -wear specific fabrics. 5- depend on my husband to get me respect in society. I thought as a woman I got to choose, but thanks for reminding me that your religious book and your penis know better. - Anonymous
• Answer:

  [A Response I received to my Post-Link: True Feminism]
  
  Dear Anon,
  
  Hello.
  
  I am glad you got a chance to read the Word of God. Unfortunately, you took great offense… this tends to happens when people face things such as Truth or simply things they do not like.
  
  I am sorry to hear about your previous and grave misfortune. Thats horrible but surprisingly not uncommon even in the US. 
  
  I just want to address some of the issue you have with what I posted, while answer some statements you made.
  
  1) Seeking equality does not make you feminist. It makes you a human. Unfortunately today, a radical group of women across generations have taken a vastly liberal agenda and labeled it feminist, when it truly is nothing more than sexism. Yes, females can be sexist (much like blacks can be racist).
  
  [Did you know that Christianity - more than any governmental system or religion has provided the most means for female equality? Its true… look up the sexist system under the Pharisees and Sadduccees… or under the Greeks, or Persians etc. before Christianity and you will see a HUGE shift in female-male equality. Paul, a Pharisees turned Christian, made huge pushes for women in Christianity. Jesus himself began it. [Google Paul and Christian Gender Equality: here is a good start: LINK]. So please, if your thought process is furthered, do not mistake Christianity for chauvinism.]
  
  Now Concerning you words:

   Now I realize that to have the rights of a feminist, I must: 1-be married. 2 - wake up before everyone in my family and cook them food 3- make the bed and sew my own clothing 4 -wear specific fabrics. 5- depend on my husband to get me respect in society.

   Of course I recognize the sarcastic and angry tone you carry here, but let me point out a few things. 1) This is an Old Testament text that is anachronistic - meaning, the roles women had in this society were different and limited. 2) For those of us today, it is to be read and garnered for it value and not on its face. [This is What Can be Read from Prov. 31]
  
  What do I mean? Well, you shouldn’t just take it for what you just did… It is mean to be read for what values it shows. Consider your numbered points…
  
  
  1) In your first point - Marriage is a beautiful thing that in today’s society adds honor, and prestige for some, while providing a valuable and beautiful relationship bound by a covenant.
  
  2) This point here you describe is not to be taken as “I must do this to be a feminist” but instead for its value (as I said earlier). This show some beautiful attributes of feminism including:  a) Caring heart for her family b) a gentle spirit c) a provider and nourisher. 
  
  3) This idea of “chores” simply shows a woman who is a) hard working b) a clean person …and c) Talented. [Sarcastically speaking - last time I checked feminist push(ed) hard for these things to be practiced today]. Is it wrong for a woman to have those attributes?
  
  4) Wear Specific Fabrics… so what? A woman that dresses well demands a lot of respect, wouldn’t you say?
  
  5) A woman, if married, should have a desire for her husband to have respect and status - its encouraging and loving to him. He likewise should do the same for her, especially if he is married to her, as the Bible commands for men to love their wives…
  
  As a woman, you do get to choose, but yes there are limitations, as issued by God and as found in society. (If Society is not in line w/God then throw it out the window). Likewise there are limitations on man in the same way. 
  
  God Bless ya. 

True Feminism

Truth

Church Clothes - Purpose, Passion and Progression

The truth is: God is still at work! 

Thanks to everyone who is downloading and spreading the “Church Clothes” mixtape. 

I’m blown away at the response. It’s humbling and pushes me to keep going. 

 At the beginning of my musical career, my intention was to enrich and give hope to the listener (it still is). I was volunteering at a halfway house, and the young men there embraced Hip Hop music that encouraged their low ideals and detrimental perspectives. Over the years, some, due to their new found faith in God, had their ideals changed but now had few musical offerings. There were always Christians doing Hip Hop, but the music was usually inaccessible or unpopular.  I would listen to the radio and wonder where was the Christian’s perspective being heard in Hip Hop culture? “Contemporary Christian Music” had developed, “Gospel” had its lane, but where was Hip-Hop that articulated faith in Jesus? Hard to find.

 Interestingly enough, those genres are the only ones categorized based off the content and not the style of music. Though it gives people identifying marks for their music, it can also (in many ways) limit their reach. Many people take these titles to mean the music is for an exclusively Christian audience. If indeed the true Gospel is what transforms people outside the faith, then why should the term Gospel seem exclusive to those in the faith? Of course that’s not the intention, it’s just a reality that any missionary should consider. 

 As far as Hip Hop music done well by Christians, there were always a few groups and artists over the years that helped ease my woes; but I was not at all content. The general market was flooded with Hip Hop artists, but I rarely heard anything that embodied a worldview that God would endorse. Trying to be a part of the solution, I took to the studio and recorded an album. It captured my southern roots, love for lyricism, and I tried to make it as current in production as I could. (I produced most of it.) The result was a tool for my fellas at the halfway house and other areas with similar struggles.  That project opened doors for me to travel a bit—mostly prisons, churches and inner city outreaches—and perform my songs. I found that I had a gift for catalyzing people toward truth and creating anthems for Christians to live sacrificially and unashamedly for their faith. 

Personally, I couldn’t simply talk about change. I had to be apart of it, so I spent my life living in the inner city, doing foreign missions and serving in the local church. All of that was ammunition for my Rebel album. My life bled out in that project, and the result was God showing tremendous fruit and people’s lives being transformed by His power.

But one problem I faced was that, in my hood, only the kids in after school programs and the Christians were feeling it. Sure, some were rejecting the Gospel but others didn’t give it a spin at all due to the labels placed on it.  I was respected by my non-religious friends, but my music to them was very limited and didn’t speak to any areas of life other than salvation and living right.  I sought advice and was led to books by people like Francis Shaffer, CS Lewis and others. (There are links below.)

I was challenged in more ways than you can imagine. 

Desperate to help the lost, broken and hurting, I tried building relationships with my newfound understanding. It was difficult and awkward, but God showed me plenty of grace.  People came to Jesus and grew deeply, and I found I was liberated and matured in ways I could not articulate. 

I’m starting to get it. God hasn’t changed my vision, He’s expanded it. 

 Only 4% of all Americans have a biblical worldview and only 10% of Christians see the world with a biblical lens. (There’s a test link below to check ya self!)  

 We tend to wear bifocals—partially seeing things as spiritual and seeing other things as secular or non-spiritual.

 We limit spirituality to salvation and sanctification. As long as we are well versed in personal piety and individual salvation, we think we’re good. But most Christians have no clue how to engage culture in politics, science, economics, TV, music or art. We tend to leave people to their own devices there.

We subscribe to views like, “Politics and movies are evil or of the devil,” and we don’t touch them. Leaving them to be dominated by non-biblical worldviews. Or, since we don’t have a philosophy or filter, we do it the way culture says to…chasing vain ambition. 

Most professing Christians have no idea how to direct their careers with biblical lenses, but instead of praying for and offering solutions we usually just shake our heads and dismiss these “sellouts & compromisers.”

 We are missing out on the gospel’s power of redemption and glorification in all things. 

 The whole idea of a secular/sacred divide was born because ancient Greeks (specifically Plato) thought matter (or things) was preexisting and eternal. They thought matter contained the ability to resist the gods or just God—making it evil. But as Christians, we defeat that claim with the doctrine that only God is preexisting and eternal. He is the source of ALL creation.

 PSALM 24:1 “The Earth is the Lord’s and all it contains.”

 In Genesis 1, God repeatedly identifies His creation as good, meaning no part of creation is inherently bad or evil.

 Paul in 1 Tim 4:4 says, “Everything created by God is good and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving.”

 I can already hear people saying, “So pornography and crack is good if embraced with thanksgiving!?” Obviously not. The origin of objects and God’s intended function are what’s good; it’s man’s direction that distorts them. So the origin and function of sex is good, but the depravity of man to direct and distort it into pornography is a manifestation of man’s darkened heart. 

 Is there such a thing as evil music?  Well, the artist’s heart may be evil and because of that you are hearing their heart. Matt 12:34 says that out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. The heart is therefore the problem, not the music. Changed hearts produce changed music. 

 When Adam and Eve rebelled, they sinned. The trees didn’t sin, the ground didn’t sin, humanity sinned. The natural world was, however, affected by human sin. Humans were the housekeepers of God’s creation, so their sin had a ripple affect into the natural world.

 Humanity had authority and there is a consequence for authority. If the owner of a house is lazy, the house is going to catch the effect of his laziness. It’s going to look ragged and filthy. It’s not that the house wants to look ugly or creepy, but the people’s sin has affected it. Even good things fall to the depravity of people.

 Evil and disorder are not intrinsic, built-in or inherent in material things like art, dance, or alcohol. “The heart is wicked,” the Bible says in Jeremiah 17:9. We take those things and distort them, because the human will and volition are rebellious and wrong. 

 Paul writes in Romans 14:14 nothing is unclean itself. It becomes unclean when sinners use it to express their rebellion towards God. The line between good and bad is therefore not in the thing, the music, the movie, the politics, but in the heart.

 A butcher knife is usually depicted as an evil murderous tool. But God made the ore and wood and man can use it to make a knife that cuts food and feeds people.

 A skull is typically viewed as evil and demonic, but God made skulls. We all have them and they are VERY good. They protect our brains! So wearing a skull on your shirt doesn’t make you less of a Christian, even though society has given it negative associations.

 All this to say that the “secularizing” of things or music speaks more to the heart’s intention on not painting a picture that God would endorse. After all, food, music and school buildings are just things. They don’t have a soul or mind and can’t have intentions. The people who are involved in them do.

 Worldliness does not mean engaging culture, it’s when the culture shapes your thoughts over God. Jesus prayed we would remain in the world but protected. He also tells us the gates of Hell will not prevail against us. Gates were established to protect cities, so for the gates not to prevail would mean we are trying to storm them. We are here to engage culture not run from it.

 Wrestling with worldly ideas challenges us and gives us new ways to depend on God. Is this my new direction? No, it’s just an expansion on what I’ve already been doing.

 Will I continue to write songs like “Don’t Waste Your Life” and “Go Hard”? ABSOLUTELY!  But after seeing how powerfully God is using my latest efforts, I will also write songs to engage culture and speak to things that humanity in general will wrestle with and think on.

 So, thank you for supporting me and helping the success of the mission and vision.  I’m not concerned at all with being a “star”. I got in this to bring hope and that’s how I’m going out. 

Love y’all 

Lecrae 

Links:

Biblical Worldview Testing - http://www.nehemiahinstitute.com/peers_test.htm

Francis Shaffer - http://amzn.to/KnKnab

Chuck Coloson - http://amzn.to/JWeM1Y

Nancy Pearcy - http://amzn.to/Lng2Q7

CS Lewis - http://amzn.to/J9A4bs

Tim Keller - http://sermons2.redeemer.com/category/sermon-hierarchy/mission/renewal/arts

Church Clothes - Mixtape: HERE

It is my hope that by now, you have read PART 1: If not click the link. If you have, continue on…

The 2nd witness or evidence for the Bible’s trustworthiness is… 

2. ARCHAEOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES

Archaeology could never prove that the Bible is divinely inspired, but it can help build a case for the historical reliability of the Bible. And it certainly has. For the past 150 years archaeologists have been verifying the exact truthfulness of the Bible’s detailed records of various events, customs, persons, cities, nations, and geographical locations.

In every instance where the Bible can be, or has been checked out archaeologically, it has been found to be 100% accurate. The Bible has proven so accurate that archaeologists often refer to it as a reliable guide when they go to dig in new areas.

Nelson Glueck, who appeared on the cover of Time magazine and who is considered one of the greatest archaeologists ever, wrote: “No archeological discovery has ever controverted [overturned] a Biblical reference. Scores of archeological findings have been made which confirm in clear outline or in exact detail historical statements in the Bible. And, by the same token, proper evaluation of Biblical descriptions has often led to amazing discoveries.” [Nelson Glueck, Rivers in the Desert (Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publications Society of America, 1969), 31.] 

These are the words of a man who has who has been credited with uncovering more than fifteen hundred ancient sites in the Middle East. [ “Archaeology: The Shards of History,” Time, December 13, 1963, accessed November 18, 2010.] 

There have been more than 25,000 discoveries within the region known as the “Bible Lands” that have confirmed the truthfulness of the Bible. What’s staggering about this enormous number of discoveries is that less than one percent of the dirt in Israel has even been excavated. There are literally thousands of discoveries just waiting to be found. I have written an entire book on this topic called Archaeological Evidence for the Bible. Allow me to give you three examples:

A. Pontius Pilate

The New Testament authors tell us that Pontius Pilate was the Roman governor of Judea at the time of Christ who oversaw Jesus’ trial and then sentenced Him to death by crucifixion (Matthew 27:2; Luke 3:1). Was he a legendary figure that the authors of the New Testament invented? No. In June of 1961, a team of Italian archaeologists was digging in Caesarea, on the shore of the beautiful Mediterranean Sea in Israel, about fifty-five miles northwest of Jerusalem. While digging in the jumbled ruins of a Roman theater these archaeologists made an amazing discovery. They found a limestone block about three feet tall and two feet wide that had been turned upside down and reused as part of a flight of steps during one of the renovations of the theater. It bore an inscription in Latin mentioning “Pontius Pilate, Prefect of Judea.”

This is an amazing evidence outside of the Bible that Pontius Pilate was an actual historical person, that he reigned in the position ascribed to him by the Gospels, and that as prefect he would have had the authority to condemn and pardon as the Gospel accounts report. Since the time of this discovery in 1961, Pilate’s official residence at Caesarea has also been identified.

B. Caiaphas

The New Testament tells us that the name of the Jewish high priest at the time of Jesus was Caiaphas (Matthew 26:3). Caiaphas was the one who presided over the late night Jewish trial of Jesus wherein Jesus confessed Himself to be the Messiah resulting in His condemnation (Matthew 26:57–68). It was also in the courtyard of Caiaphas’s house that Peter denied knowing Jesus (John 18:24–27). Was Caiaphas a New Testament fabrication? No.

In 1990 a team of construction workers building a water park approximately two miles south of Jerusalem accidentally unearthed a first-century burial cave. A bulldozer unintentionally broke through the roof of the cave. The yield of this discovery was an uncharacteristically ornate ossuary (a bone box used in burial) with an inscription on it in Aramaic that read “Joseph, son of Caiaphas.” Inside the ossuary were the bones of a man who was approximately sixty years old at the time of his death. Although the Gospel writers and the Roman historian Josephus referred to the high priest as “Caiaphas,” Josephus tells us that his full name was “Joseph Caiaphas,” the very name etched into the side of the ossuary. “Biblical scholars are convinced that this was the man who presided over the trial of Jesus.”

C. David

Up until 1993 not a shred of evidence could be found anywhere outside of the Bible that David the king of Israel ever existed and so “it had become fashionable in some academic circles to dismiss the David stories as an invention of priestly propagandists who were trying to dignify Israel’s past after the Babylonian exile.” The critics’ verdict was that David was “nothing more than a figure of religious and political mythology.”

Well, their skepticism regarding David “collapsed overnight” in 1993 when a nearly 3000-year-old inscription on black basalt was discovered in the town of Dan, a little north of the Sea of Galilee in Israel. The inscription, written in Aramaic by Israel’s enemies, describing the defeat of the kings of Judah and Israel, mentioned “the king of Israel” and the king of the “House of David.” This was an amazing discovery and helped to verify for the first time that David was an actual historical figure. Michael Lemonick, writing for Time magazine, acknowledged, “The skeptics’ claim that King David never existed is now hard to defend.” U. S. News & World Report religion writer, Jeffery Sheler, said:

“The fragmentary reference to David was a historical bombshell. Never before had the familiar name of Judah’s ancient warrior king, a central figure of the Hebrew Bible and, according to Christian Scripture, an ancestor of Jesus, been found in the records of antiquity outside the pages of the Bible. Skeptical scholars had long seized upon that fact to argue that David was a mere legend…Now, at last, there was material evidence, an inscription written not by Hebrew scribes but by an enemy of the Israelites a little more than a century after David’s presumptive lifetime. It seemed to be a clear corroboration of the existence of King David’s dynasty and, by implication, of David himself.” [Sheler, Is the Bible True? 60–61.]

Archaeology has not proven so helpful for other religious writings. Consider the Book of Mormon. “Not one piece of evidence has ever been found to support the Book of Mormon — not a trace of the large cities it names, no ruins, no coins, no letters or documents or monuments, nothing in writing. Not even one of the rivers or mountains or any of the topography it mentions has ever been identified.” [Dave Hunt, p.156, In Defense of the Faith; also see p. 107 in The Case for Christ, by Lee Strobel]. Nothing which demonstrates that the Book of Mormon is anything other than an early nineteeth century piece of American fiction, invented by Joseph Smith has ever been found.

The National Geographic Society stated on August 12, 1998, “Archaeologists and other scholars have long probed the hemisphere’s past, and the Society does not know of anything found so far that has substantiated the Book of Mormon.” The Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C. has also verified this utter lack of evidence saying in 1996 when they said, “The Smithsonian Institution has never used the Book of Mormon in any way as a scientific guide. Smithsonian Archaeologists see no connection between the archaeology of the New World and the subject matter of the Book.”

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Lecture notes by Charlie Campbell
Director of The Always Be Ready Apologetics Ministry
Twitter: @CharlieABReady

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See entire series here (All 10 To Be Continued: Bible Trustworthiness)

The Bible is unarguably an incredible book. It is the best-selling, most quoted, most published, most circulated, most translated, most influential book in the history of mankind. There is no close second.

But why should anyone believe that the Bible is actually true? 

Might not the Bible be a fraud?

Might not it be an ancient book of mythology, filled with the fanciful, yet deceitful writings of men?

What about other books, like the Qur’an? or the Book of Mormon? What makes the Bible any different than those books?

Those are questions that intelligent, critical thinking people are asking today. Those are the questions I used to ask about the Bible. We need to, as Christians, be able to answer these questions (1 Peter 3:15). So, in our time together this evening I’d like to share with you some of the evidence that I think demonstrates that the Bible is indeed what it claims to be, the inspired, trustworthy Word of God.

I want to do that by bringing to the witness stand, if you will, ten witnesses or evidences that all testify to this truth. My prayer is that, if you are already a Christian, your faith in the Bible will be strengthened, and if you are a skeptic that you will reconsider your skepticism.

The first witness or evidence for the Bible’s trustworthiness is…

1. FULFILLED PROPHECY

Fulfilled prophecy is something that sets the Bible apart from every other religious book. There are 26 other religious books that people of faith believe are divinely inspired (the Vedas, the Bhagavad-Gita, the Mahabharata, the Upanishads, the Qur’an, the Book of Mormon, the Tripitaka, etc.). Of these twenty-six books, none of them, not a single one, contains any specific, fulfilled prophecies!

The Bible, however, is filled with hundreds of specific, detailed prophecies that were written hundreds of years before their fulfillment! In fact, an amazing 27% of the Bible (more than 1 out of every 4 verses) contains what was predictive prophecy at the time that it was written. And the authors of the Bible did not just predict some vague things like Nostradamus or Jeanne Dixon (who by the way, have proven to be wrong over and over again), they were very specific. Consider some of the more than 100 different and very specific prophecies made concerning the Messiah, who the Old Testament prophesied would come.

The Old Testament foretold, hundreds of years in advance, very specific details about: the Messiah’s ancestry, that He’d be born of the seed of Abraham (Gen. 12:1-3, 22:18), of the tribe of Judah (Gen 49:10), of the house of David (2 Samuel 7:12f), etc. The city in which He would be born (Micah 5:2), that He’d come while the temple was still standing (Malachi 3:1), that He would be born of a virgin (Isaiah 7:14), that He would perform miracles (Isaiah 35:5-6), that He’d be rejected by His own people (Psalm 118:22; 1 Peter 2:7), the precise time in history when He would die (Daniel 9:24-26; 483 years after the declaration to reconstruct the city of Jerusalem in 444 B.C. This was fulfilled to the very year.), how He would die (Psalm 22:16-18, Isaiah 53; Zech 12:10), that He would rise from the dead (Psalm 16:10; Acts 2:27-32). 

These are just a few of the prophecies related to the coming of the Messiah. There are many other prophecies about the rise and fall of nations, the regathering of the Jewish people back into their homeland (something that’s being fulfilled right now).

The fact that these prophecies and hundreds of others have been fulfilled, even though they were spoken hundreds and even thousands of years before their fulfillment is strong evidence that a God who is all-knowing and all-powerful orchestrated the Bible’s completion. No other religious writing is able to substantiate its claims with this kind of supernatural evidence.

Now, obviously a lot more could be said about this. A great book that discusses fulfilled prophecies is Every Prophecy of the Bible by Dr. John Walvoord.

[parts 2-10 coming soon…] 

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Lecture notes by Charlie Campbell
Director of The Always Be Ready Apologetics Ministry
Twitter: @CharlieABReady

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Professor Peter W. Stoner who authored “Science Speaks” stated that the probability of just eight particular prophecies being fulfilled in one person is 1 in 10^17, i.e. 1 in 100,000,000,000,000,000).  The eight prophecies used in the calculation were:

1. Messiah is to be born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2; fulfilled in Matt. 2:1-7; John 7:42; Luke 2:47).

2. Messiah is to be preceded by a Messenger (Isaiah 40:3; Malachi 3:1; fulfilled in Matthew 3:1-3; 11:10; John 1:23; Luke 1:17).

3. Messiah is to enter Jerusalem on a donkey (Zechariah 9:9; fulfilled in Luke 35-37; Matthew 21:6-11).

4. Messiah is to be betrayed by a friend (Psalms 41:9; 55:12-14; fulfilled in Matthew 10:4; 26:49-50; John 13:21).

5. Messiah is to be sold for 30 pieces of silver (Zechariah 11:12; fulfilled in Matthew 26:15; 27:3).

6. The money for which Messiah is sold is to be thrown “to the potter” in God’s house (Zechariah 11:13; fulfilled in Matthew 27:5-7).

7. Messiah is to be silent before His accusers (Isaiah 53:7; fulfilled in Matthew 27:12).

8. Messiah is to be executed by crucifixion as a thief (Psalm 22:16; Zechariah 12:10; Isaiah 53:5,12; fulfilled in Luke 23:33; John 20:25; Matthew 27:38; Mark 15:27,28).

This statement was validated by the American Scientific Affiliation.  This number has been illustrated as follows:

If we take 1 X 10¹⁷ silver dollars and lay them on the face of Texas, they’ll cover all of the state two feet deep. Now mark one of these silver dollars and stir the whole mass thoroughly, all over the state. Blindfold a man and tell him that he can travel as far as he wishes, but he must pick up one silver dollar and say that this is the right one. What chance would he have of getting the right one?

Professor Stoner went on to consider 48 prophecies and says, “… We find the chance that any one man fulfilled all 48 prophecies to be 1 in 10¹⁵⁷.

“This is a really large number and it represents an extremely small chance. Let us try to visualize it. The silver dollar, which we have been using, is entirely too large. We must select a smaller object. The electron is about as small an object as we know of. It is so small that it will take 2.5 times 10¹⁵ of them laid side by side to make a line, single file, one inch long. If we were going to count the electrons in this line one inch long, and counted 250 each minute, and if we counted day and night, it would take us 19,000,000 years to count just the one-inch line of electrons. If we had a cubic inch of these electrons and we tried to count them it would take us, counting steadily 250 each minute, 19,000,000 times 19,000,000 times 19,000,000 [nineteen million times nineteen million times nineteen million] or 6.9 times 10²¹ years.

This is approximately the total number of electrons in all the mass of the known universe.  In other words the probability of Jesus Christ fulfilling 48 prophecies is the same as one person being able to pick out one electron out of the entire mass of our universe.

Such is the chance of any one man fulfilling any 48 prophecies. Yet Jesus Christ fulfilled not just 48 prophecies, not just 61 prophecies, but more than 324 individual prophecies that the Prophets wrote concerning the Messiah.  I haven’t been able to find the statistical projection representing the possibility of Jesus Christ fulfilling 324 prophecies but I really don’t think it matters given the illustrations set forth above. 

Does it really take faith to come to salvation through Jesus Christ?  Absolutely but that faith is not a blind faith as some would want you to believe but instead, it is a faith based upon facts.  How much faith?  Maybe not very much if one really takes the time to look at the facts and take into consideration the statistics and probability of the prophecies concerning the Messiah.

When someone tries to tell you that Christianity is a religious faith based upon ignorant acceptance of certain precepts that have no basis in fact, they are sadly mistaken.  Christianity only makes sense.  It is a faith that not only can be an emotional faith (which it is), it is also an intellectual faith. 

Given the odds, I wouldn’t bet against it.  Would you?
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- John Funk 

Memorial Day

Because we needed more proof the NAACP doesn't actually support the views of Blacks...

Pew Research Center polls have found that African Americans have become more supportive of same-sex marriage in recent years, but remain less supportive than other groups. A poll conducted in April showed 39 percent of African-Americans favor gay marriage, compared with 47 percent of whites. The poll showed 49 percent of blacks and 43 percent of whites are opposed.

The Human Rights Campaign, a leading gay rights advocacy group, applauded the step by the Baltimore-based civil rights organization.

“We could not be more pleased with the NAACP’s history-making vote today — which is yet another example of the traction marriage equality continues to gain in every community,” HRC President Joe Solmonese said in a statement.

—-
Of course they couldn’t go against the Big Man Obama… Their big man.
NAACP is nothing but a Liberal political front that claims to support blacks but instead perpetuates an attitude of victimhood rather than progress..
 

Listen… seriously. 
(He is using a character he has, no he doesn’t really act/talk like that, but the message…LISTEN).

“‘I was born this way’ Okay… but you can be born again.’” 

Willie Mo Jr - Christian Rapper.