The Greatest Gift has been given. Now what?

  Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. (Matthew 5: 15)

According to the Scriptures

Legacy Moment | Crawford Loritts
1 Cor. 15:3-4

Recently I had a conversation with some friends. We were talking about how important it is to believe that the Bible is the Word of God, that it’s the final authority for how we live and what we do with our life. It’s without error. Not everyone who claims to be a Christian believes that. In the course of the conversation, I made reference to a seminary I know about. They teach people how to be preachers and Bible teachers, and they release people to Christian service. But a few faculty members are post-Christian. They would say they’ve grown beyond the need to believe that the Bible is the Word of God. They embrace other teachings, even though they might contradict the Bible. They’re post-Christian.

Well, it’s not popular to say this in our relativistic culture, but not everybody can be right. The claims of Jesus Christ are not merely warm sentiments and optional perspectives. The Gospel is not advice to be considered, it is objective Truth to be believed.

That was the Apostle Paul’s passion when he penned these words in 1 Corinthians chapter 15 verses 3 and 4; “…I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.”
Notice: Paul appeals to authority, and his appeal to authority is nothing less than to the Word of God. He says, “I’m not giving you ideas, I’m not giving you my truth, I’m not giving you my insight. What I’m telling you is anchored to the Truth.”

Here’s what I want you to remember today. It matters a great deal whether or not we believe the Bible is the Word of God. It’s the difference between a life-changing message and merely good-but-impotent advice.

The Individual and the Internet

The Quest for Community
By: Chuck Colson

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social networking sites claim to foster the community so many people need. Find out how badly those claims are overblown.

Man was made to live in community. In Genesis 2, we're told it's not good for man to be alone. And in a classical world the worst punishment was to be banished from society, because you had no meaning once you were.

Our founders in America created a country that respected individual rights and liberties, but always in the context of the people. And the people united in communities and associations, which secured individual rights from an otherwise all-powerful government.

So you had a balance. And in the context of those communities, we prospered like no other nation on earth. Tocqeuville when he came to America praised the civic virtue of Americans -- their collective self-reliance in building hospitals, schools, churches, etc. But in recent times, not only in America but throughout the Western World, "individual autonomy," the code word of modern liberalism, has become ascendant outside the context of community. And not surprisingly, as radical individualism grew, the power of government grew as well, especially in the 20th Century.

Here's why.

Robert Nisbet argued in his 1953 book, The Quest for Community, that radical individualism caused communities to break down. Family, church, clubs, groups, associations, that came between the individual and the state, all weakened in the face of this desire for individual autonomy. So it's no wonder we've witnessed an explosive growth in government over the last fifty years. But as face-to-face communities decline, people are flocking to virtual, online communities. Many see these as "communities for a new generation."

A recent conference revisited Nisbet's ideas in light of online communities. The results were not encouraging.

Christine Rosen, senior editor of The New Atlantis, noted that in a face-to-face community, I come as I am. In virtual communities I come as the image I want to project. The resulting interaction is too tame to be called community. Instead, as Wheaton College professor Read Schuchardt added, we end up with narcissistic groups of false selves.

Rosen acknowledged that in the online world we may have more friends than we could have in face-to-face community. But the quality of those friendships is so poor that sociologists have coined the phrase “migratory friendships” to describe digital friends who have lots of information about each other, but don’t actually know each other.

The hard work of genuine community has been outsourced, she said, to technology -- so we become the product of our technology, shaping our image to meet the demands of the market.

Well, what are we to make of this? Virtual communities cannot replace real, face-to-face communities. They can't perform the function of providing meaning and fellowship in the same way. And they certainly can't serve as intermediate structures between the individual and an all-powerful government. Virtual community is really no substitute for the real thing.

For the sake of our well being and freedom as men and women created not to be alone, it is so vital now that the church be a catalyst for rebuilding real communities in a very real way.

For Plan B, a Dose of Reality

The two sides of the abortion debate don't share much in the way of ideology, but there was a common reaction from both camps yesterday after the decision over Plan B: shock. For years, the Left has been pushing to make the "morning-after" pill available for anyone of any age without a prescription. They assumed the Obama administration, headed by the most militant pro-abortion President in history, would go along with the idea. They assumed wrong. Tuesday, the head of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, announced that she was overruling the FDA in one the most jaw-dropping decisions of this White House's term. Sebelius, one of the abortion movement's most reliable allies, agreed with groups like FRC that making Plan B as accessible to buy as aspirin was a dangerous decision, especially for young girls. " ...[T]he switch from prescription to over-the-counter for this product requires that we have enough evidence to show that those who use this medicine can understand the label and use the product appropriately. I do not believe that Teva's application met that standard. The label comprehension and actual use studies did not contain data for all ages for which this product would be available for use." For now, Plan B will stay behind pharmacy counters--where it belongs.

While Sebelius's decision was the right one, it certainly knocked the wind out of the abortion movement. This morning, liberals were still seething that, for once, HHS put women's safety ahead of their radical agenda. Kirsten Moore, part of the Reproductive Health Technologies Project, told the Washington Post that her group is "outraged that this administration has let politics trump science." Funny, they don't seem to mind when the White House is ignoring science on stem cell research, RU-486, or the contraceptive mandate in ObamaCare. The reality is, we shouldn't be lining store shelves with pills packed with several times the hormones of a standard birth control dose.

As FRC's Jeanne Monahan said in dozens of media interviews yesterday, that kind of convenience is not in the best interest of young women's health. Not only is Plan B linked to an increase in teen pregnancies, but a 2010 study found that it's partially responsible for a spike in adolescent STDs. Allowing young girls to buy Plan B directly off store shelves also robs parents of more authority. These are pills that can, in some instances, abort a human life. Surely, moms and dads have a right to know that their daughters are considering these risks. Meanwhile, abortion groups are acting as if Plan B has been outlawed altogether. Hardly. All Sebelius asks is that girls under 16 consult their doctors first. Whatever politics may have motivated yesterday's decision, we applaud HHS for getting this right. When it comes to drugs like Plan B, which FRC has opposed from the beginning, women and their unborn children deserve as much protection as possible.

The Lie, Now and Then

Nothing Left to Say
By T. M. Moore | Published Date: December 06, 2011

“And the LORD said to Satan, 'The LORD rebuke you, O Satan! The LORD who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you!'”  - Zechariah 3:2

We have seen that both David and Paul acknowledged a day when lies would be widespread among the human community. They also saw the reign of the Lie to be a short-lived phenomenon. David insisted that all those who speak lies will be stopped (Ps. 63:11), and Paul, echoing that, promised that those who reject the Truth of God will not continue to make progress (2 Tim. 3:9).

We should take great comfort in these words, because the epidemic of lies with which our world is presently infected is wreaking havoc in the affairs of people and nations.

We need to ask ourselves whether we actually believe this. The Word of God says it – and not just in these two passages. In various places the Scriptures indicate that those who traffic in lies will not be able to stand against the Truth as it marches on through the ministries of the Church. Here is just a sample: God promises to bring the plans and schemes of the nations to naught (Ps. 33:10). His glory and the testimony of His children will still His enemies (Ps. 8:2). God will shut the mouths of all wicked people (Ps. 107:42) and all who practice injustice (Job 5:16). He puts to silence every sinful mouth before the testimony of His Law (Rom. 3:19). He raises up church leaders to stop the mouths of those who traffic in lies (Titus 1:7, 8).

What the Scriptures promise throughout is symbolized in Zechariah’s vision in chapter 3 of his book. The prophet saw the High Priest and Ruler of God’s people – named, “Joshua” or “Jesus” – being condemned by Satan because He was dressed in filthy garments in the presence of the Holy God. Here is the tale of the ages: the father of lies railing against the very embodiment of Truth. This is the very essence of the Lie – the denial of validity to the Truth of God.

But those filthy garments which Zechariah saw are our sins. Jesus bore them in His own body before the Father. His sacrifice accepted, He was clothed in proper garments of righteousness, and Satan was commanded to shut up and was sent packing.

The righteousness of Jesus Christ is the ammunition we need to stop the mouths of liars. As we read in Matthew 22:46, once Jesus established His deity, sovereignty, and coming Kingdom, on the authority of God’s Word, all those who had to that point opposed him publicly and outspokenly were no longer able to answer Him and had nothing left to say. From that point on they would turn to violence rather than words.

It was the testimony of Jesus and His power to make all things new that Peter and John proclaimed before the religious leaders of their day, leaving those enemies of Christ with nothing left to say (Acts 4). The salvation of Jesus Christ – His forgiveness, holiness, transforming grace and power – lived out and declared by His people, is the power of God for salvation, the power to stop the Lie and lead men into the light of Truth. And while we do not expect a complete vanquishing of the Lie here and now, we do expect to see real progress of the Truth; moreover, we know that a day is coming, then and there, when all lies and liars will be eternally banished from the presence of God.

It is toward that far horizon that we are called to strive against the Lie in all our daily activities.

Download the series "Nothing Left to Say." Click here:  Nothing Left to Say