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Magazine, Past Issue

July/Aug 2025 issue

WHAT'S INSIDE: Screen-fast, sports betting, & environmental stewardship

Our 10-day screen-fast challenge that we presented in the last issue is getting traction. Marty VanDriel has a story that shares how the fast went for him and others who gave it a try.

But that was just the start. Some generous supporters have recognized how important this issue is, so they are offering up a little extra motivation for us all. They have pledged to donate $100 to two fantastic kingdom causes – Word & Deed and Reformed Perspective – for every person who commits to and completes a 10-day fast from their screens from July 21 to 30 (to a maximum of $20,000 split between both causes).

Screens aren’t evil, but as the cover illustrates so well, screens can keep us from seeing reality – from seeing God’s loving hand upholding creation, this world, and our lives. Here now is your opportunity to join with some family and friends and maybe your whole church community to put screens aside and see the rest of the world unfiltered. Check out page 19 for more details or click on the QR code above to sign up.

Since sports betting was legalized in 2021, it has taken Canada by storm. If you watch any hockey you’ve noticed a lot of betting ads, and they bring with them a growing temptation for Christians to make some money while enjoying their favurite teams. But as Jeff Dykstra explains, we have good reason to steer clear of sports gambling.

In this issue we also do a deep dive into the topic of environmental stewardship by sitting down with two Christian women who work for an environmental group in the middle of a logging community in northern BC.

If you are an adult who tends to skip over the Come & Explore kids’ section, we encourage you to give this one a read. It will be sure to make you smile.

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or click here to download the PDF (8 mb)

INDEX: Are you still able: A nation-wide challenge to experience life without screens / Creation stewards in a logging town / Who do you want to be? RP's 10-day screen-fast challenge / We took the no screens challenge... and now we're changing our habits / What can I do anyways? 35 screen-alternative ideas / Is TikTok the ultimate contraception? / How to stay sane in an overstimulated age / Defeated by distraction / How to use AI like a Christian boss / Who speeches were they? On AI, and others, writing for us / The Way / Who is Mark Carney? / What if we said what we mean? - the political party edition / Am I lazy or just relaxing? What does Proverbs say? / Get out of the game: Christians need to steer clear of sports gambling / Man up: ARPA leaderboards and the call to courageous action / Christians don't pray / Our forever home / Calvin as a comic / The best comics for kids / Fun is something you make: 11 times for family road trips / Come and Explore: Mr. Morose goes to the doctor / Rachel VanEgmond is exploring God's General Revelation / 642 Canadian babies were born alive and left to die / 90 pro-life MPs elected to parliament / Ontario shows why euthanasia "safeguards" can't work / RP's coming to a church near you



News

Saturday Selections – July 12, 2025

Josiah Queen's "A Garden in Manhattan"

On the crowded streets,
all the people that I see
Want them to know the Jesus that I know
If I'm the closest thing to a Bible that they read
Let the words they read be what You wrote
Father, help me to go

I'll be a garden in Manhattan,
be a river where it's dry
When my friends can't find the road,
I'll be a roadside welcome sign
Sunshine in Seattle,
be a cool breeze in July
Light in the darkness
I'll be a garden, a garden in Manhattan

Florida after dark,
I know it ain't quite Central Park
There's souls in my hometown You wanna reach
Oh, God, use me where You have me...

Climate hypocrisy tells us what the elites really believe

When global warming proponents like Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates, and Jeff Bezos all jet off to an exotic locale to celebrate a wedding, you can know they aren't really worried about CO2 hurting the planet... or they wouldn't fly a hundred jets to a party. And as this article explains, EV cars are another hypocrisy gauge. They might make sense in some instances, but if they are being pushed whether they help lower CO2 emissions or not, then you know this is about show, not substance. As Bjorn Lomborg writes:

"In some parts of the world, like India, so much of the power comes from coal that electric cars end up emitting more CO₂ than gasoline cars...."

Now, to be fair, Lomborg himself is worried about global warming. But, as he highlights, the actions most governments take are not what would be needed to solve the issue if it did exist.

Parks Canada staff privately doubted Kamloops "graves" claim

“$12M spent by @GcIndigenous to find purported 215 children's graves at Indian Residential School was instead spent on publicists & consultants with no graves found to date...”

The legacy media is betraying Canada (10 min. read)

Soviet Union President Nikita Khrushchev is credited with saying, "The press is our chief ideological weapon." In contrast, US President George H.W. Bush is said to have said, "We need an independent media to hold people like me to account.” The dictator wanted to own the press so the government could use it to direct public opinion, while the US president touted the need for a press independent of government so it could hold those in power to account.

Our Canadian government spends massive amounts of money funding the country's largest media outlets, and these outlets not only don't denounce the proposition, but take the money. That tells you a lot about which direction our media is heading.

While readers likely won't mind this article's anti-Liberal Party bias, some might be put off by just how loud it is. But read it anyways for the money trail.

The Scopes Monkey Trial is 100 years old!

In 1925, a Dayton, Tennessee high school teacher named John Scopes was put on trial for violating a state law that forbade teaching evolution. The case made big news then – across both the US and into Canada – and made big news again in 1960 when a movie version called Inherit the Wind was made, which portrayed the town of Dayton as a bunch of creationist hicks who wanted to storm the jail to get Scopes. That film was then shown in classrooms across the US for generations, convincing many students that only idiots like those onscreen could ever believe Genesis is literal.

But the truth is, the whole town was in on it – they challenged the law to get some attention for their hometown, and recruited Scopes, who agreed to be charged, and in an ironic twist, he probably never even taught evolution in his classroom. In another ironic twist, as this article lays out, much of the scientific evidence marshaled for evolution during the trial has been overturned since (ex. vestigial organs, similar embryonic development). So, even if it had been a bunch of dumb hicks, dumb hicks siding with God are a lot smarter than a gaggle of reporters and scientists siding against Him.

Is Trump doing good or is he doing bad? Yes.

Jeffrey Epstein was a sex trafficker with ties to many of the most powerful people in the world. This, then, was a man who could name names, and topple empires... and then he died mysteriously in his jail cell – a purported suicide but one that happened when his cell's video cameras were broken. The country's reaction was telling. No one was buying the coincidence. This past week, Epstein's client list was supposed to be released and the news now is that there was no client list. As the video below details, this has a lot of conservatives, Christians among them, feeling crushed. They don't believe it, and want to know where the justice is.

Part of the disappointment comes from the tendency we have of making politicians our dividing lines. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were monsters... so we should love Trump? That doesn't follow. Canadian prime ministers Trudeau and Carney have a litany of sins, most recently trying to push murder as a treatment for mental illness. But does that mean we have to look past the shortcomings of Pierre Poilievre? Christians don't have to. Our dividing line is not a Trudeau or Trump, because our unswerving loyalty lies only with God (Josh. 5:13-14). So, yes, Trump continues to stand strong against gender nonsense, but the missing Epstein list has people wondering if the swamp can ever be drained, and as Mindy Belz (sister-in-law of WORLD magazine founder Joel Belz) highlights, his results-now approach has undercut processes that protect everyone from government overreach.


Today's Devotional

July 14 - Children of God!

“Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God!” - 1 John 3:1 

Scripture reading: 1 John 3:1-3; Romans 8:12-17

There is no greater way to express the intimacy of the fellowship that believers enjoy with God than in the reality of our adoption into His family.  As we believe on the Lord Jesus >

Today's Manna Podcast

Manna Podcast banner: Manna Daily Scripture Meditations and open Bible with jar logo

Glorification: In His Presence

Serving #903 of Manna, prepared by D. VandeBurgt, is called "Glorification" (In His Presence).











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News

Saturday Selections – May 31, 2025

Click on the titles to go to the linked articles... Winnie's song Father Brian Sauvé, sharing some of the prayers he has for his little girl, Winnifred. Doubling Alberta’s natural gas production could slash global CO2 emissions If someone told you they were desperate for work, but refused to apply for any jobs, you'd understand they shouldn't be taken seriously. As Jesus tells us, we can judge a tree by its fruit (Matt. 7:15-20). So, when climate catastrophists steer us away from fossil fuels and nuclear energy too, that's some fruit. Solar and wind might be their ideal, but these are more expensive than fossil fuels, and higher energy costs would hurt billions. Nuclear does have considerable downsides, but it is the only CO2-free energy source that could produce the energy we need at the prices we'd need to fill the gap that banning fossil fuels would create. So, to not have it as an option is to mark these "environmentalists" – their fruit shows them to be either uncaring or naive. Now Alberta is offering the country another option – natural gas. It's still a CO2 emitter but an improvement on coal and other CO2 sources. This option could effectively scrub all of Canada's CO2 emissions. Great news, right? Well, we'll see if the federal government thinks so. Their response will provide us with some more fruit we can assess. Answering kids' hardest questions... "Why can't I have screen time all the time, Mom and Dad?" "Maple-washing" misleads the public Does buying Canadian really have an impact on American producers? Not if those "Canadian goods" are actually American. It seems some stores are mislabeling goods to funnel patriotic outrage towards padding their bottom dollar. Ontario shows why euthanasia "safeguards" can't work "Ontario’s euthanasia regulators have tracked 428 cases of possible criminal violations — and not referred a single case to law enforcement, say leaked documents." Murder is the unlawful and euthanasia the lawful taking of a human life. So what would it be then, if someone committed euthanasia unlawfully? Well, isn't an unlawful taking of a life murder? But how many doctors do you think would be willing to do a procedure that, if they ever didn't do it quite right, would send them to jail for murder? Not many, right? That kind of chill might put an end to euthanasia altogether. And that's what pursuing these 428 cases could do for any doctors considering killing as their living – put a chill on that  So, for euthanasia to be both legal and available, the government is motivated to overlook any irregularities. Jeff Durbin: A bro in a skirt doesn't care about biology (or logic) God's people too often seem intent on logic-ing our culture into the Kingdom. We address sins like abortion and transgenderism with arguments that are common sense but not specifically Christian – we channel Ben Shapiro and Pierre Poilievre but we don't talk about God. And how's that working out? We've misunderstood the fight we're in. This isn't a debate that we'll win on points. What we're contending with is a rebellious world that needs to be called to repentance by the power of the Holy Spirit. We profess that God's Word is "like fire...and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces" (Jer. 23:26), it is "alive and active, sharper than any two-edged sword" (Heb. 4:12), and "it will not return to Me empty but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it" (Is. 55:10-11). What might God work through us, if we were willing to stand with Him instead of just with logic? ...





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Evangelism

It's necessary: use words!

I hadn’t expected to meet a witch on the bus, what with their alternative form of transportation. Yet there she was, not a wart to be seen, sitting across the aisle. She had started the ride buried in a book, but her head came up when my friend and I discussed a particular point of theology in a slightly louder than normal fashion. This friend was on his way to becoming a minister, and theological topics always had the effect of cranking up his volume. I suspected that this was a conscious decision, rather than just an outburst of enthusiasm, since he always talked about how Christians had to be more of a light to the world. And he was a light: a roaring, exploding bonfire of light that could not be ignored by anyone within earshot. Whether we were sitting in a steam room, or hanging out at a coffee house, or sitting on the bus, he provoked obviously unchristian people into talking with us. This time around it was the witch. A few minutes into the ride she interrupted us to ask us what religion we followed. My friend was happy to explain, and then asked her what church she went to. “Oh, I don’t go to a church,” she said, “I worship my personal goddess at home.” The way she explained it, witches (or Wiccans) sounded a lot like New Agers. They did try and cast the occasional spell, but only love spells, and the central tenet of their religion was a respect for all of nature. It was just mumbo jumbo, nothing shocking or new for us, until she started talking about her personal goddess. After listing all sorts of benefits that came from having a goddess on call, she admitted it was nothing but a fabrication. That admission left both me and my conversationally-endowed buddy at a loss for words; we just couldn’t understand how someone could knowingly choose a delusion over a real, caring, and powerful God. So we asked. They don't understand The question surprised her. “You guys have to understand,” she blurted, “You pray and that makes you feel better, right? So what’s the difference between what you do and what I do?” The basic fact she didn’t understand, the thing no one had told her before, was that we Christians serve the one real God. This woman had never heard that before. Her Wiccan experience with religion was an openly delusional one, so she, quite logically, assumed that all other religions were similarly based. I found her ignorance surprising, but since then I’ve found it isn’t unusual. In fact, I had a similar sort of encounter less than a month later. This time my friend and I were making our semi-regular pilgrimage to a display sponsored by our university’s pro-choice club. I always went to pick up as many free brochures as possible, which, once I was out of sight, I would gleefully destroy. It was a small thing – a very small thing – but I thought it was at least as good an approach as the one my friend tried time and time again. He always debated with the pro-choicers. But what was usually a waste of breath turned out a differently that day. After a heated five-minute exchange one of the young ladies at the table asked for clarification, “Do you mean you really, honestly think it’s a baby?” “Of course,” my friend replied, “Why else would we even care?” Well, that just didn’t fit with what she had been told, “I thought you religious types were just using this issue to try to control women.” Her friend nodded in agreement. They didn’t understand – they were utterly ignorant. Conclusion I’ve always wanted to believe that evangelism was as simple as living a good Christian life. I wanted to believe I didn’t actually have to talk about God as long as people could see His presence in my life. Actions are louder than words, right? The problem is, in this post-Christian age people don’t have the background – they don’t know the basics of Christianity – to understand our actions. A Christian who doesn’t work on Sunday is just a guy who gets the day off. No sex before marriage becomes the rational act of someone who’s scared of sexually transmitted diseases. Action against abortion is understood as a power grab against women, and even prayer can be explained away as nothing more than a type of meditation or some psychological self-talk exercise. Actions only speak louder than words when the reasons for the actions are understood. And the world doesn’t have a clue anymore. So, as John MacArthur once put it, we need to “Preach the Gospel and always use words.” The world doesn’t understand so we all have to start talking and explaining. If you already are, you may have to start talking a little louder. And if you’re uncomfortable with cranking up the volume maybe you can just hang out with a conversationally-endowed buddy who isn’t. A version of this article first appear in the January 1999 issue under the title "Dumb, but not deaf"...

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In a Nutshell

Tidbits – November 2024

Burke’s best Most have probably run across Edmund Burke’s most famous quote: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Quite the punchy point, but like all wisdom, a man can sidestep it without too much effort: maybe good men need to get busy, but what can little ol’ me do? Well, Burke had a response to this sort of thinking too: “No one could make a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little.” My new favorite knock-knock joke Part 1 Knock, knock. Who's there? Cows. Cows who? No, no, cows don’t who, they mooooo! Part 2 Knock, knock. Who's there? Owls. Owls who? Indeed they do. Popsicle babysitting A few years back, this was quite a thing in some Canadian Reformed Churches – popsicle babysitting. The premise is that every church has a lot of mothers in need of babysitting, who are also willing to do some babysitting. So every mom who wants to sign up is given 30 popsicle sticks, with each stick worth an hour of babysitting for one child. If you want another mother to babysit your four children for two hours, you’ll have to “pay” her eight sticks. That mom would then have 38 sticks to “spend” and you would be down to 22. If you quickly become low on sticks that means that you had better start babysitting someone else’s kids to build up your stick reserve. All babysitting requests and offers are handled via group emails. As one of the organizing mothers put it, “This gives you the option to have a ‘guilt-free’ sitter” because they don’t cost you a cent. So you can go out and have a good, inexpensive date night, or bible study, or doctor’s appointment, or whatever! I don't know if this is still a thing, but if not, maybe it should be again. 10 truths from a man with one eye Vivek Ramaswamy is a part of Donald Trump’s incoming government, earning his spot there with his uncommon amount of common sense, and his impressive ability to articulate it. As an observant Hindu who rejects Jesus as Savior, he is, however, blind to what matters most. Still, a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind is going to be able to see far better than most, even if his sight is still impaired. In a discussion with Tucker Carlson he shared that he holds to 10 truths, and he was able to articulate all 10 off the tip of his tongue: • God is real • There are 2 genders • Fossil fuels are a requirement for human prosperity • Reverse racism is racism • An open border is not a border • Parents determine the education of their children • The nuclear family is the greatest form of governance known to mankind • Capitalism lifts us up from poverty • There are three branches of government in the United States, not four • And the US Constitution is the strongest and greatest guarantor of freedom in human history God has given us His Word to allow us to see even more clearly, and He charges us in 1 Peter 3:15 to always be ready with an answer for the hope that is in us. So, if we were asked to articulate our own lists of truths, would we be ready? And what would our one, two, or ten truths be? Truth vs. tolerance “If anybody comes along espousing some message and asking for tolerance, you can be sure it’s error because error demands tolerance, whereas truth demands scrutiny.” – John MacArthur Ventilation by Jay Adams Not too long ago there was a psychological theory called “ventilation.” I’m not sure whether or not it has died out everywhere yet. But theory or no theory, it’s still seems to be a popular idea – If you’ve got something churning inside, you’d better get it out, for your own good. “What’s wrong with that?” Well, several things. I think I’ll just mention two. First, the self-centeredness of it is apparent. Who cares what happens to the other guy when I take out my ire on him—I’m the one who counts! “Well, I can see that. What’s the second thing?” Let me read you what God says about the issue in Proverbs 29:11: “A stubborn fool fully ventilates his anger, but the wise, holding it back, quiets it.” “Wow! Didn’t know God had spoken about the matter!” Quite explicitly. Who wants to make a fool of himself? And it doesn’t hurt you to “hold it back” as the Freudians thought, either. In fact the more you work yourself up into a lather that finally spills out, the worse things get – not the better. Not only for you – but for everyone around you. And first thing you know, you have to go around seeking forgiveness. To vent your anger is foolish in every way you can imagine. For sure, ventilation isn’t an option for the believer. Something to think about, eh? “Yea!” SOURCE: Reprinted with permission from Jay Adams’ June 1, 2009 entry at www.nouthetic.org/blog. High view of sex It’s an irony that chastity is portrayed in today’s popular fiction and film as being a matter of prudishness, as if only those who hate sex would fail to indulge in it whenever and with whomever. It is not the chaste, but their opposite – the promiscuous – that can best be likened to sex-hating prudes. The prude and the promiscuous both share a low view of sex: the prude thinking it something so unattractive as to be done without, the promiscuous thinking it so ordinary as to be done with everyone and anyone. The chaste, however, think sex is special. So special in fact, that we need to protect it, treating it as we would gold. We reserve it as a special gift as to be shared only with our intimate other, and even then, only after promises have been made, and two lives have been bound together. We don’t hate sex; we treasure it, protect it and love it! A one-question test on the 5th Commandment “Do you honor your mother and father? I’ll ask you one question to see if you do… Is your room clean? What does it mean to honor them? To obey them, right?” – Earl Taylor Jr., an American Civics teacher, to a class of students who all seemed to think they honored their parents, but most failed this one-question test. Post-secondary miseducation isn’t new When I hear from nieces and nephews about the woke nonsense being pitched to them in university today, I can offer a strange bit of encouragement: at least it’s nothing new. Two decades back, it wasn’t transgenderism, but another ideology that was not to be questioned. At least one of your profs was going to make you ingest Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth documentary, which had a generation worried about the planet’s certain, and imminent demise! It didn’t matter if you were taking English, Engineering, Medicine or Physical Education, you were going to see it! Three decades ago, R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. had this harsh evaluation, which seems every bit as topical today: “In college one is exposed to a vast amount of information that is quite untrue, and it is most unjust that one should have to demonstrate one’s mastery of untruths to graduate – one has to go even further to graduate with honors.” And William F. Buckley Jr. articulated his own indictment of post-secondary education more than seventy years ago: “I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University. Not, heaven knows, because I hold lightly the brainpower or knowledge or generosity or even the affability of the Harvard faculty: but because I greatly fear intellectual arrogance, and that is a distinguishing characteristic of the university which refuses to accept any common premise. In the deliberations of two thousand citizens of Boston I think one would discern a respect for the laws of God and for the wisdom of our ancestors which does not characterize the thought of Harvard professors – who, to the extent that they believe in God at all, tend to believe He made some terrible mistakes which they would undertake to rectify; and, when they are paying homage to the wisdom of our ancestors, tend to do so with a kind of condescension toward those whose accomplishments we long since surpassed." Spurgeon on the need for earnest preaching “It is an ill case when the preacher: Leaves his hearers perplex'd – Twixt the two to determine: ‘Watch and pray,' says the text, ‘Go to sleep,’ says the sermon.” “You may depend upon it that you may make men understand the truth if you really want to do so; but if you are not in earnest, it is not likely that they will be. If a man were to knock on my door in the middle of the night, and when I put my head out of the window to see what was the matter, he should say, in a very quiet, unconcerned way, ‘There is a fire at the back part of your house,’ I should have very little thought of any fire, and should feel inclined to empty a jug of water over him.” SOURCES: C.H. Spurgeon’s Lectures to my Students and The Soul Winner Lyric o’ the month Addison Road’s What do I know of Holy? I made You promises a thousand times I tried to hear from Heaven But I talked the whole time I think I made You too small I never feared You at all, No If You touched my face would I know You? Looked into my eyes could I behold You? I guess I thought that I had figured You out I knew all the stories and I learned to talk about How You were mighty to save Those were only empty words on a page Then I caught a glimpse of who You might be The slightest hint of You brought me down to my knees What do I know of You Who spoke me into motion? Where have I even stood But the shore along Your ocean? Are You fire? Are You fury? Are You sacred? Are You beautiful? What do I know? What do I know of Holy? What do I know of Holy? What do I know of wounds that will heal my shame? And a God who gave life "its" name? What do I know of Holy? Of the One who the angels praise? All creation knows Your name On earth and heaven above What do I know of this love? ...