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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

Canada’s population almost shrinking

The latest population estimation from Statistics Canada is revealing a startling change: Ontario, Quebec, and BC all saw population declines in the first quarter of 2025.

The country as a whole grew by only 20,107 people, which, as a percentage, amounted to a 0.0% increase, the second-slowest growth rate in Canada since records began in 1946. The record prior was the third quarter of 2020, when border restrictions from the Covid-19 pandemic prevented immigration. The decrease has been attributed to announcements by the federal government in 2024 to decrease temporary and permanent immigration levels, with targets of 436,000 for this year, which is still well above the 250,000 level prior to the Liberal government taking office in 2015.

So, in the first quarter of 2025 we lost 17,410 people via emigration to other countries, and there was also a drop of 61,111 in non-permanent residents – people on temporary work or student visas, along with their families. The data also shows that there were 5,628 more deaths than births in the first quarter, largely due to Canada’s quickly declining fertility rate. That’s a collective loss of population of 84,140 people.

Then, going in the other direction, we had 104,256 people immigrate to Canada, for that small net increase of 20,107.

While it is a blessing that people from other countries are still willing and able to move to Canada, it is sobering to note that two-thirds of the world’s populations are now below replacement rate and the world’s population is projected to start declining later this century.

God’s first command to humanity was to “be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it” (Genesis 1:28). Imagine what the world could look like in a few generations if Christians fulfilled this cultural mandate with enthusiasm while the rest of the world continued on its course.


Today's Devotional

July 5 - Fellowship in action

“He who says he abides in Him ought himself also to walk just as He walked.” - 1 John 2:6 

Scripture reading: 1 John 2:3-6; John 14:19-24

When the Bible speaks about knowledge, there is a difference between knowing something in theory and actually knowing something intimately.  The key difference between the two is that something known intimately will actually change the way a >

Today's Manna Podcast

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

The Law of God

Serving #894 of Manna, prepared by B. Tiggelaar, is called "The Law of God" and is based on Matthew 5:17-26; 38-48.











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Assorted

Don’t follow your heart

When it comes to finding true happiness, do the opposite of what culture says ***** Making the happiness crisis in America even worse, especially for young people, are completely wrong diagnoses. What’s needed to increase happiness is not more money, more stuff, or more “authenticity.” As Dr. Thaddeus Williams explains in his book Don’t Follow Your Heart, at the root of our problem is the terrible advice about how to achieve happiness that’s been repeated across our culture for over a decade now. Here’s Dr. Williams to explain: “For years my children and I have played a game together called Spot the Lie. If they can identify a false idea in whatever we happen to be watching, they earn one dollar. When she was nine years old, my daughter Holland (‘Dutch’ for short) came cheerfully bounding down the stairs, saying, ‘You owe me another dollar!’ ‘What did you find this time, Dutch?’ ‘The commercial told me I should follow my heart,’ she answered. ‘Okay, so where’s the lie?’ I asked. Her answer, and I recall it verbatim, was, ‘Daddy, I don’t want to follow my own heart. My heart is fallen. I’d way rather follow God’s heart.’ Cue the proud daddy tears. Let’s just say she earned five dollars for that one. “Some may think, What a shame—he’s indoctrinating that poor girl. The opposite is true. I’m trying to make a heretic out of her. I want her to question and ultimately rebel against the doctrines of our day. According to Barna, 84% of Americans believe the ‘highest goal of life is to enjoy it as much as possible,’ 86% believe that to be fulfilled requires you to ‘pursue the things you desire most,’ while 91% affirm that ‘the best way to find yourself is by looking within yourself.’ It was Apple cofounder, black turtleneck enthusiast, and former Pixar chairman Steve Jobs who publicly declared, ‘There is no reason not to follow your heart.’ “Let’s resist the propaganda of expressive individualism of our day and answer the late Steve Jobs with four good reasons not to follow our hearts. “First, our hearts are too dull. Validating our every feeling might be exhilarating at first. Yet we end up as what David Foster Wallace called ‘lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation.’ Looking inside our hearts does not give us limitless freedom so much as a bad case of claustrophobia. Don’t get me wrong, I have no doubt that our hearts are fascinating. But compared with following the heart of God, our hearts hold all the thrill of a prison cell. “Second, our hearts are too dithering. The Greek philosopher Heraclitus famously said one never steps in the same river twice because it is always flowing. Our hearts, too, are in constant flux. Some hearts may be as turbulent as the Ganges in monsoon season, and others move like molasses on a cold day, but all human hearts are in motion. What God says is true about his image bearers is infinitely more trustworthy than whatever our fallen feelings say from one moment to the next. If we don’t want to end up in a chronic identity crisis, we shouldn’t take our flowing feelings at their word; take God at His. His joyous verdict about us is trustworthy and solid as stone. “Third, our hearts are too divided. In The Abolition of Man, C. S. Lewis said, 'Telling us to obey Instinct is like telling us to obey people. People say different things: so do instincts. … Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of all the rest.' Even Buddy Pine, the supervillain Syndrome from The Incredibles, gets the point. 'You always say, "Be true to yourself,’" Pine complains to his former idol, Mr. Incredible, 'but you never say which part of yourself to be true to!' “Fourth, our hearts are too depraved. The call to automatic obedience makes sense only if we follow Rousseau in his dogma that 'there is no original perversity in the human heart,' or Joel Osteen in his teaching that the 'heart is right.' The Bible offers us a humbling dose of realism. Jeremiah said, 'The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?' Ecclesiastes tells us, 'The hearts of the children of man are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live.' Given the sickness and insanity of our hearts, Proverbs 28:26 draws the blunt but correct conclusion: 'One who trusts in his own heart is a fool.' “Want to be miserable? Follow your dull, dithering, divided, and depraved heart. Want to find real joy? Take the wise advice of a 9-year-old, and follow God’s heart instead.” Dr. Thaddeus Williams is a professor at Biola University and author of numerous books on theology and culture, including Don’t Follow Your Heart and Revering God. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, go to Breakpoint.org. This is reprinted with permission from the Colson Center....

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Assorted

How to be happier

Keep long lists, and short accounts ***** As I pad down the hallway to my home office, sometimes I’ll look down and remember that the laminate planking I’m walking on was laid down with the help of friends. I’m not the best with a hammer or saw, so while I did some of the sweating, my friends brought the skill. I was so very thankful at the time, and now whenever I remember it’s a warm feeling still. As of late I’ve been remembering these friends more often because of a curious book. It’s about a guy who set out to personally thank every person involved in getting him his morning brew. There’s the barista, of course, but a farmer had to grow the beans, and then there’s all the people in between – it turns out there are an astonishing number of people involved in a simple cup of coffee. Who picks the blend? How many are involved in the actual roasting? Someone had to design the lid (there’s quite some engineering to it), and then there’s the coffee cup sleeve – there wasn’t always a sleeve – and when we remember that coffee is about 1 percent beans and 99 percent water, then there’s a whole municipal water department to thank too. And who makes the pipes that carry the water? We haven’t even gotten into the boats and trucks involved and all the crews who man and make them. A long list to be thankful for This guy wanted to personally thank everyone involved but quickly realized that might amount to millions. So he narrowed it down to the one thousand most directly involved. G.K. Chesterton said that, “When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude,” and this book was an eye-opener for just how many blessings I’ve been taking for granted. If thousands – millions – are involved in making a cup of coffee, how many could I thank for everything I find even on my short journey from bed to shower each morning? How many designers, engineers, miners, and factory workers were involved in making the Kindle that wakes us up each morning? And what about our bedding, the bedroom carpet, bathroom tiles and that long-shower necessity, our tankless water heater? I normally clomp past it all, but I could choose to start each day just looking around in amazement. As Chesterton reminds us, “gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.” The author of this book is a sometimes-blasphemous atheist (which is why I’m not sharing his name - I don’t want to promote him) but even as an atheist he recognizes that his disposition to grumpy ingratitude isn’t good… for him. “…gratitude is the single-best predictor of well-being and good relationships, beating out twenty-four other impressive traits such as hope, love, and creativity. As the Benedictine monk David Steindl-Rast says, ‘Happiness does not lead to gratitude. Gratitude leads to happiness.’” But why is thankfulness next to joyfulness? He doesn’t seem to know, but we do. God created us to glorify Him and then gave us innumerable reasons to do just that. And because He loves us, He so fashioned mankind that when we do what we were made to do, it is good for us. And He’s so gracious that even when we do a half measure, thanking the people around us, but forgetting the God Who made us, it is good for us still. Sometimes we need a Jordan Peterson or Elon Musk – someone outside the Church – to remind us of what we have, and what unbelievers don’t. I was struck by that here, when this author shared, “…I’ll occasionally start a meal by thanking a handful of people who helped get our food to the plate. I’ll say, ‘Thank you to the farmer who grew the carrots, to the truck driver who hauled them, to the cashier at Gristedes grocery story who rang me up.’” This fellow is “praying” to people he knows will never hear him because he feels such a need to express gratitude. To quote Chesterton again, “The worst moment for an atheist is when he is really thankful and has no one to thank.” When I look around the dinner table at the food that’s there once again, and the family gathered around, and when I really stop to think of all I’ve been given here, my heart can’t help but swell, but now there’s another blessing I can bring to my giving, loving Father – I can thank God that I can thank God! Keeping short accounts But if Christians have so much to be thankful for, why aren’t we more joyful? Why am I too often grumpy, sullen, and short to the people God has gifted me? Part of it is that we take so much for granted. We easily forget what we have, so there’s something to keeping a thankful journal. Around Thanksgiving each year my wife gets some notecards and encourages us each day to draw something we’re grateful for, and then we put the cards up on the hallway wall. It’s quite the display by month’s end. But even more of it is taking for granted the biggest gift we’ve been given: forgiveness. In his booklet How to Maintain Joy in Your Life, Jim Wilson shares how, upon his conversion, he experienced joy liked he’d never had chasing after the world’s substitutes. But as this Navy midshipman set out on his Christian journey, he found that joy diminishing. And it continued diminishing for the next three years. Sitting in the stateroom of an American destroyer stationed in the Sea of Japan, he was struck that for the 3 years since his conversion he hadn’t really been confessing his sins. Oh, sure, he’d confessed some sins, but there were many he hadn’t taken to God for all sorts of reasons. When he confessed his sins, God forgave him, and once again he started feeling that same joy. Guilt is a weight. But, thanks to Jesus, it’s one we don’t have to carry. Guilt is also God’s way of getting our attention. As it says in Hebrews 12:11: “No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.” Jim Wilson was trained by that discipline, but like the rest of us, he was a slow learner. “I would again disobey, get disciplined, and lose my joy. This time, instead of not confessing, I would confess after a while… ten hours, a week, 2 weeks.” Eventually he realized that he didn’t have to wait to confess his sins – he could “keep short accounts.” Then, instead of a series of ups when he was forgiven, and downs when he wouldn’t go to God (or at least not yet), he started to experience ongoing joy. “Sometimes I went for a while before confessing, but generally I would confess right away or within a couple of hours. I’m not saying I have not sinned in those years…. But I have a low tolerance for discipline. I do not like it. As long as I am unrepentant, the discipline stays on me, the hand of the Lord is heavy. I can remove the discipline of the Lord by repenting now.” For those of us who’d prefer to stay miserable, he concludes his booklet with a list of what you can do instead of confessing your sin. You can justify, excuse, or hide it. You can blame someone else, procrastinate, or stand on pride. A favorite for many is “generalization,” where you readily admit “mistakes were made” without really getting into the dirt of what you did. But tricking yourself doesn’t trick God, and you can’t enjoy Him if you are hiding from Him. Conclusion If you want to be happier, it isn’t complicated. Open your eyes wide, and see the world as it really is. There are troubles, but then there is God, and He continues to bless us beyond any measuring. And the biggest of those blessings is that we can know for certain – we can count on Him – that when we come to our Father with our sins, He will always and forever forgive. That’s got me a little verklempt but I can assure you, they are happy tears....

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Assorted

C.S. Lewis on real happiness and real Christianity

So who does not want to be happy? We all do, but wanting something is not the same as finding it. We all strive after happiness, but how many people actually find true, lasting happiness? Of course for the Christian, we know this is a foolish quest. Search for joy and it will elude you. Search for God wholeheartedly and you will be found by Him and happiness will be thrown in as a by-product. This is basic Christian teaching, yet sadly even most Christians today seem to get this wrong big time. So many sermons we hear today are all about your own happiness and peace and satisfaction and having all your desires met. How can I be successful and happy and satisfied and prosperous? That is what we hear so often: it is all about self, self-satisfaction, self-fulfillment and personal happiness. Instead of the biblical emphasis on the denial of self, we get plenty of self-centered foolishness by church leaders who should know better. We expect the world to get it wrong here, but Christian pastors? Consider folks like Joel Osteen, the guy with the biggest church in America. This is what he said: “To find happiness, quit focusing on what’s wrong with you and start focusing on what’s right with you.” Um no, Joel, that is not the way it works at all. That is not even remotely biblical. We are to focus on God and God alone, and seek after holiness (without which no one will see God – Hebrews 12:14) and as a by-product, peace and happiness may well follow. But we are never told to seek after it, put it first, or to believe that we can somehow find it by focusing on our self. The real nature of happiness, and why it should not be our central concern, is something C.S. Lewis spoke often about. He wrote much about happiness, or joy. Indeed, he called his autobiography Surprised By Joy. In his many well-known works he speaks much to this. Here I want to look at some of his lesser-known writings as I discuss this issue. He wrote about these themes throughout his life, and even in his very last writing before his death in November 1963, he was discussing this. His essay “We Have No ‘Right To Happiness'” (later published in God in the Dock) speaks directly to this. A superficial happiness So what did he say in his last known writing? He mentions a woman who claimed a “right to happiness,” and says: “At first this sounds to me as odd as a right to good luck. For I believe – whatever one school of moralists may say – that we depend for a very great deal of our happiness or misery on circumstances outside of human control. A right to happiness doesn’t, for me, make much more sense than a right to be six feet tall, or to have a millionaire for your father, or to get good weather whenever you want to have a picnic.” He goes on to say that this woman meant primarily “sexual happiness.” He concludes his piece with these words: “Though the ‘right to happiness’ is chiefly claimed for the sexual impulse, it seems to me impossible that the matter should stay there. The fatal principle, once allowed in that department, must sooner or later seep through our whole lives. We thus advance toward a state of society in which not only each man but every impulse in each man claims carte blanche . And then, though our technological skill may help us survive a little longer, our civilization will have died at heart, and will – one dare not even add ‘unfortunately’ – be swept away.” Another essay, also found in God in the Dock, is entitled “Answers to Questions on Christianity”. Question 11 asks this: “Which of the religions of the world gives to its followers the greatest happiness?” To this he gave this now famous reply: “While it lasts, the religion of worshipping oneself is the best. I have an elderly acquaintance of about eighty, who has lived a life of unbroken selfishness and self-admiration from the earliest years, and is, more or less, I regret to say, one of the happiest men I know. From the moral point of view it is very difficult! I am not approaching the question from that angle. As you perhaps know, I haven’t always been a Christian. I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity. I am certain there must be a patent American article on the market which will suit you far better, but I can’t give any advice on it.” No abiding happiness apart from God But perhaps some of his most-well known comments about happiness come from his classic Mere Christianity. As he says there: “The moment you have a self at all, there is a possibility of putting yourself first – wanting to be the centre – wanting to be God, in fact. That was the sin of Satan: and that was the sin he taught the human race. Some people think the fall of man had something to do with sex, but that is a mistake. (The story in the Book of Genesis rather suggests that some corruption in our sexual nature followed the fall and was its result, not its cause.) “What Satan put into the heads of our remote ancestors was the idea that they could ‘be like gods’ – could set up on their own as if they had created themselves – be their own masters – invent some sort of happiness for themselves outside God, apart from God. And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history – money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery – the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy. “The reason why it can never succeed is this. God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion. God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.” And the very last paragraph of his book says this: “Give up yourself and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.” Conclusion Exactly right. This is indeed the basic Christian understanding, yet we have an entire generation of Christian teachers and preachers who have totally lost this, and are preaching a me-centered gospel which must disappoint. A focus on self, our wants, our desires, and our lusts is exactly what Satan wants us to do – but not God. Jesus made the secret to happiness absolutely plain in the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:1-12). Blessedness or happiness consists of being poor, being meek, mourning, being persecuted, and the like. That is the path to happiness. It is about denial of self, as Jesus spoke about so often. It certainly is not about being fixated on self, seeking your best life now, or aiming for material wealth and possessions. What Lewis said about happiness is just the simple Christian gospel. How can so many believers and preachers today miss this so thoroughly? Bill Muehlenberg blogs on culture daily at BillMuehlenberg.com where this first appeared. It is reprinted here with permission....



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Letter Writing

How letters mingle souls

"Sir, more than kisses, letters mingle souls, For thus, friends absent speak. – John Donne (1572-1631) When my father courted my mother, he wrote her sonnets in Dutch, German, English and French. Amazing! I think she was truly impressed and also touched by the fact that he took the time to do this especially for her. The personal touch I do not know a great many people who still write letters, let alone sonnets, to dear ones to express their feelings of love, appreciation and other issues. Letter writing seems to be a lost art. When we first immigrated from Holland to Canada, it was a happy day when an overseas blue vellum envelope was delivered by the mailman through the mail slot in our door. I can vividly recall my mother's happy face as she opened such a letter, avidly reading the news that my maternal grandmother sent her across the ocean. I also retain the memory of sitting around the luncheon table, home from school for an hour or so that first year in Canada, while my father read family bulletins in the form of letters from aunts and uncles to all of us – so that we would not forget the family we left behind. I can't think of anyone who does not enjoy receiving a card or letter with some encouraging words, some personal sentence, written next to the text. But truthfully, I can think of very few who actually put pen to paper to communicate such things. Yes, there is e-mail, but you cannot hold an e-mail in your hand. You cannot fold it up and put it in your pocket or purse, or lay it on your night table next to your bed to reread at your leisure before going to sleep. E-mail, although it is an easy way to correspond, has a certain amount of machine-feel to it, a good dose of impersonal touch. The flick of a button can send the exact same greetings to others besides yourself. An e-mail is simply not as individual as that letter which arrives in your mailbox addressed to only you. Actually, I remember a funny anecdote in which a teenage nephew of mine was so infatuated with a pretty face that he sent her a long letter in which he declared his undying devotion to her. In the epistle he detailed the girl's pretty cheeks, eyes, eyebrows, hair, and so on. On that same day he penned a letter to my father, his grandfather, telling him about his studies at medical school, his progress with those studies, and so on. When he got around to mailing these two letters, however, he put the wrong address on the envelopes. The girl received the letter intended for my father, and my father received the letter intended for the girl. I think I've never seen my father laugh so hard, and he certainly lost no time in phoning his grandson to tell him he was very touched by the fact that his elderly face was held in such high esteem. Seriously, to write something by hand forces one to think carefully and sincerely. You can't erase what you have written without making a bit of a mess. Scratching out words or sentences can create unsightly black blobs. Consequently words should be wisely chosen while reflecting on needs and encouragement needed by the recipient. Writing by hand makes one think carefully, slowly, and forces you to build relationships with others. More than anything else they remind the one receiving the letter that you are thinking of them, possibly praying for them and loving them. Letters, written in the right spirit, have an amazing ability to console, strengthen, and soften hearts that might have contained bitterness towards the world and God. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: loving, letter-writing husband One of my favorite preachers, although he died a great many years ago, is Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899-1981). Strongly opposed to liberal theology, he became the pastor of Westminster Chapel in London, England in 1939, and he remained in that church for thirty years. A gifted speaker, he preached to thousands, but classified himself, with regard to letters, "... a truly bad correspondent." Martyn Lloyd-Jones, however, had an intense affection for his wife. If he was away from her for more than a day or two, he always wrote her a letter. Iain Murray, who edited a book of his letters in 1994, more than twenty years ago, wrote about Bethan Lloyd-Jones, Martin's wife: "She was in every sense a partner in all that her husband did. Although a medical doctor herself, she happily gave her life to keeping him preaching and to the care of the home." They had a very good marriage. In 1937, while still a pastor at Sandfields, Aberavon in Wales, Dr. Lloyd-Jones went to the United States on a speaking trip. Bethan could not come with him as their youngest daughter Ann was only 5 months old. He wrote her: There is one constant regret right through everything – that you are not with me. I was counting it out in bed this morning, that by three weeks today, I ought to be with you again. You said in your letter that you hoped I would not forget you – I am prepared to enter into a competition with you on that score without the slightest hesitation! ... All my love to you, dearest girl in the world. There is no one like you anywhere. The more I see of others the more obvious does this become. Kiss each of the girls for me. Yours for ever and ever, Martyn. If you have ever heard Dr. Lloyd-Jones preach, his serious, throaty voice punctuating Biblical truths, and if you have stood in tremendous awe of his God-given ability to argue and defend the faith, these touching words in the letter to his dear wife will undoubtedly raise him to higher levels of affection and esteem in your heart. At the conference in Ohio, he penned thoughts to his dear spouse again: I have not had a letter from you since I left New York, but I have just realized that letters take an extra two days to arrive here. I felt very homesick on Monday. With me on the train was Dr. Wilson from New York... In the Pullman he met another minister and his wife. After talking for a while Dr. Wilson said to the other minister's wife; “You know, you make me feel very homesick for my wife - I think I'll send a card to her to come along.” “Yes, do,” said the other, “most of the wives are coming this time.” And me, having to think of the dearest little wife in the world, thousands of miles away, across the sea! I became totally depressed as I thought of it. When we arrived here, I saw that the wives were here by the dozen! This is surely one of the best hotels in the world. I never saw anything like it. I have a double-bedded room with a private bathroom, toilet, etc. This is real luxury. But Oh! the bed is much too big for one! You ought to be here with me. How wonderful it would have been for Mrs. Bethan Lloyd-Jones to receive that letter and to be able to read and reread her faithful husband's declaration of love, of his missing her. His words were simple and unadorned words – words we can all understand – and words which came straight from his heart. Saying it with written words With Valentine's Day on the loom, Hallmark cards and Hershey Kisses are for sale in supermarkets, drug stores and dollar outlets. It's a great market. Good business! Sales experts know that deep within all human hearts there lies that desire to be told they are special – loved as no other. Ironically, there is one letter which is addressed to all people and one which we can read and reread again and again. Sadly it is probably a letter which is gathering dust on bookshelves throughout North America. Yes, of course I mean the Bible. Listen to the words of the greatest of all Lovers, the Lord God Himself. ... Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed, says the Lord, Who has compassion on you (Isaiah 54:10). And, "...I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving-kindness..." (Jer. 31:3). These sentences are part of that old, extant letter which has been delivered to all mankind. We should read them aloud to our children so they will be caught up on the news of their Father as they gather around the lunch or supper table; and it is a letter which we should place on our night table so that we can reread its words when we feel lonely at night. Perhaps, lacking in ability to formulate words ourselves, we can even copy this letter's words and put them on cards for relatives and friends. For even as John Donne said a long time ago, "...more than kisses, letters mingle souls. For thus friends absent speak." Happy Valentine's Day! This first appeared in the January 2016 issue....

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Letter Writing

Activism 101: 4 tips on being heard

If you are waiting in-line at a grocery store you are guaranteed to be bombarded by flashy magazines. These magazines are often, if not always, an assault on the senses. They are visually disturbing with pictures of scantily clad women and men. Not only that, the headlines and featured articles promote gossip and obsession about sex, weight-loss, image and power (unfortunately those topics all seem to go hand in hand). It is interesting that these magazines are a temptation for women. On a first glance you would think that it would only be visually tempting for men (which they are). However I admit, and know many other females that would concur, that each time again I have to choose to refuse to look at or read the covers of these magazines. They are there for a reason. And it is not uncommon to see women spontaneously buy the latest glossy bit of smut. In fact, that is the very reason they are displayed there. To add to the problem, women who are grocery shopping are often accompanied by their small children. Enough is enough As a family living in Lethbridge (at that time) we witnessed this onslaught of images and ideas each time we shopped. It often bothered me that this was practiced by companies that received so much business from Christian families like ours, who did not want to see these magazines at all. One particular day my husband was shopping at the Lethbridge Save-On-Foods. He saw a young boy (maybe seven or eight years old) waiting in line with a parent. This child happened to be at eye-level with a Cosmopolitan magazine and out of sheer curiosity was staring at it. The cover featured a woman pulling her shirt wide open to reveal herself wearing only a white lacy bra. Now we all know the power of images and how hard they are to purge from your mind. And we all know the vulnerability of a young school-aged mind. And so when he told me about it I felt physically sick. I had had enough. The next time I was in the store I went from the checkout to the customer service counter and filled out a comment card. I briefly described what had been seen and suggested that they also would probably not care for their eight-year-old to see these images. I requested that the magazines be removed. If that was for some reason impossible I asked that they provide a family-friendly checkout that did not have the magazines. Quite a response It was very encouraging to receive a personal phone-call from the local store’s manager a few days later. He said that he agreed with me but then apologized that he could not change the store’s layout. Apparently every Save-On-Foods across Canada follows the same design and this layout is dictated from the head office. However he provided me with the email for the national customer service centre and offered to also contact them to add his support to my suggestions. Soon after, I sent an email to the head office with my concerns, suggestions and contact information. I then forwarded the email I had just sent to friends and family so that they could also send a similar email. After all, the more response that Save-On-Foods would receive the better. Right? A few weeks later a manager from the Overwaitea/Save-On-Foods head office phoned our home. He spoke with my husband and (at that time) agreed that something should be done. He offered to initially contact some of the magazine companies to see if the covers could be improved. If this wasn’t possible then he would look into cascading them or removing all or some of them from the checkouts. He let us know that it would likely be a few months before we would see any changes in the stores. It was once again a very encouraging response. We were looking forward to seeing what changes would take place. Quiet response Unfortunately, since then we have not noticed any significant change. The store in Lethbridge did provide one checkout aisle where they put a plastic cover in front of just one of the magazines (Cosmopolitan) so that only the cover was showing. However, this was the only change and on one’s first glance for a free checkout it was impossible to notice this. We waited for a few months like the manager had suggested but we did not see any other improvements. After that waiting period I sent a follow up email to see if anything was going to be done but I did not receive a response. My husband called again two months after that and was able to speak with the same manager. Unfortunately he was no longer so helpful. It was very disappointing to hear that they have no plans to standardize the idea of family friendly checkouts. According to him, the store is “not in the business of censoring.” They believe that most customers are not upset by the magazines being there and that they are serving their customers. He also reported that one of the stores in Abbotsford, B.C. does provide family friendly checkouts but he refused to provide any suggestions on how or if they could be implemented at other stores. Not the end? I suppose the reason is obvious. When it comes to consumerism, the almighty dollar writes the rules. The magazines are there because they rely on impulse buyers. The customer service team simply has not felt enough pressure to change. So the next logical step is for more customers to step forward. After all, how do you feel when you notice an innocent eight-year old staring at the cover of Cosmopolitan? If one comment card and one email could create a stir like this just think what could happen if more of us step up to the plate! Things we learned from this 1) Follow up, follow up, follow up. Keep the contact information of every person you spoke with in the issue so that you can speak to the same person again. Be sure to let them know in your email or phone call that you plan to contact them again. 2) Set a date. Write on your calendar when you are going to contact them again. Life is busy so it’s easy to forget how much time has gone by. 3) Get more people involved. A message is always stronger if it is spoken by more people. The decision makers need to know that they are serving more people by changing the status quo. 4) Offer your assistance. Ask how you can continue to help with this so that the decision makers don’t feel it’s all placed on their shoulders. They are also busy and they may feel more disposed to help you if you are also helping them. Below is the email sent to the Customer Service Team: To whom it may concern, I am a resident of Lethbridge, Alberta after moving here from Langley, B.C. and I work as a physiotherapist in the local area. I have been a long time shopper at Save-On-Foods in Langley and now here in Lethbridge and I have been very happy with most of the service. However I have always been disturbed by the magazine displays at the checkout aisles. There are always glossy magazines with full front cover stories that include pictures of very scantily clad women. If they are not in a very tiny bathing suit that shows most of the breast, they are in a dress that reveals almost as much. Recently there was even a full cover picture of a woman pulling her shirt open and holding it open to display her breasts barely covered by a lacy bra. Now I have no need to see these, what I would consider pornographic, pictures. I realize that as an adult I can choose to turn my head away, which I do, but it becomes even more of a concern to me when I see a small child of 7-8 years old peering at the cover of Cosmopolitan which has been put right at his eye level. Would you want your child perusing the cover of Cosmopolitan? How confusing for our kids to be taught about people's privacy at home and then to be bombarded by these images at the local grocery store. As a leading business group in Canada I would highly encourage you to rectify this situation, to make a moral stand and refuse to have those magazine covers take over your checkout aisles. Customers know where to find them in the magazine section. There is no reason to have them at every aisle. It is a disgrace to an upstanding business such as yours. Why sponsor this industry? If somehow the increased magazine sales trumps that decision, I also have a few suggestions: You could opt to display the magazines in a cascading order so that only the title is visible as opposed to the entire cover. Alternatively, you could offer "family friendly" checkout aisles which do not have the magazine displays. I can not express how grateful I would be to see the change occur. Please take the time to consider these suggestions. I appreciate hearing back from you regarding this email. Sincerely, Jaclyn Penninga This was first published as "One comment card and one email" in the October 2008 issue of Reformed Perspective....



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News

Saturday Selections - June 20, 2020

Homosexuality vs. transgenderism This video below is fantastic, but there's a lot packed in here, so the argument is worth writing out as well. What the narrator, Joseph Backholm, is explaining is that there is a fundamental conflict between homosexuals and transgenders. Whereas homosexual men say they are attracted to men, transgenders say you can't even know someone is a man by looking at him because gender is not tied to biology. Or, in other words, maleness and femaleness can only be known by asking not by seeing. It then makes no sense for a homosexual to say they are physically attracted to one gender or the other, because there are no physical attributes unique to one gender or the other – ie. men can have breasts, and women, penises. So transgenderism and homosexuality can only remain allies so long as they don't discuss their foundational assumptions. While homosexuality and transgenderism can't both be right, they can both be wrong. Backholm notes that "Our fundamental identity is not found in our sexual attractions, or in our feelings about how masculine or feminine we are." But he leaves it at that. Christians need to carry on and note that attractions may fade, and feelings may change, so grounding our identity in either of those is going to be disappointing. But we can find our true identity by turning to the One who made us.  Does systemic racism exist?  "Systemic racism isn’t whatever I – as a black man – says it is. My perceptions are not proof. My experiences are not authoritative. I am not God. "....Therefore, if we’re going to accuse our governments of participating in systemic racism today, we should be able to list examples of systemic partiality against black people today. ...Social justice proponents are unable to list racist laws or policies to support their accusations, so they usually resort to perceptions and racial disparities as evidence for their accusations.... Systemic racism theory essentially demands groups to prove they’re not systemically racist – instead of demanding social justice proponents to prove the legitimacy of their accusations." Deepfakes show the need for knowing your sources are trustworthy Deepfakes are faked videos of celebrities or political leaders that can't be distinguished from the real thing. We live in a world in which Justin Trudeau can be made to say anything, the video posted on YouTube, and the viewing audience would not, just from seeing and hearing it, be able to tell it from the real thing. The only way to discern whether it is true or not would be whether it was received from a trustworthy source, or not. But with trustworthy sources at a minimum these days, it underscores the need for higher standards in our media consumption. We can't believe everything we find in our social media feed...and we shouldn't be passing on what we ourselves don't know is reliable. Vaccines that use aborted fetuses' cells draw fire COVID-19 vaccines are being developed using cells from aborted fetuses. These fetuses were aborted long ago – more than 30 years ago – so the question is raised, does it really need to concern us now? Pastor Douglas Wilson proposes that before answering that question we should reframe it properly and ask: "Is it lawful for Christians knowingly to use vaccines that were grown in the cultivated remains of a murder victim?" Men: don't let chivalry die on your watch J. Aaron White (and the apostle Peter) on how gentlemen should be studying our wives, serving our wives, and enjoying our wives. Romeo and Juliet 2020 remix For all the English teachers out there... ...

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Assorted

Stepping into the story: Hamlet with a happy ending?

It all starts with an invitation from the Grade Twelve English teacher, Tom Van Swift, to come and enjoy the final field trip of the year, just before graduation. When the students meet in the school foyer at the beginning of the school day, Mr. Van Swift tells them to take the elevator to the second floor. When the seven students, along with Mr. Van Swift, arrive at the second floor, they find the room (which should be the library) to be pitch-dark. “Where are we?” asks Adam. Mr. Van Swift answers, “I made a few minor modifications to the elevator. You’re now in some other dimension – of sight, of sound, of mind.” The track star of the bunch, Barbara, replies with a wit just as quick as her feet, “It’s a little too dark in here for The Twilight Zone. Can we please get some light?” "Lights… and action" So, Mr. Van Swift calls, “Lights… and action,” and that is the last the class sees or hears of him for some time. What they do see, in fact what they are standing on, is the battlements of a medieval castle, in the dying light of early evening. They themselves are dressed in Elizabethan clothes, and the man standing before them looks very familiar… “Hey, wait a minute, you’re William Shakespeare!” exclaims Cedric. “Yeah,” says Isaac, and adds, “and this is a re-creation of one of your plays. Hamlet, right? ” Suddenly, Johanna speculates, “Is this, like, a time machine?” “Forsooth, forsooth,” laughs Shakespeare. “Hinder me not, and I will repay your queries with what wit I can muster, in proper order. First, I am indeed the Bard of Avon, William Shakespeare. And this is – as you have truly divined – what you call a… re-creation of part of my own favorite play, Hamlet. Howe’er, as to whether this is a… time machine, I know not what thou dost speak of.” “Well, that’s a little hard to explain,” says Muriel. “But… why are we here?” “Fairly asked, young maiden, and ’twill be fairly answered,” says Shakespeare. “Over the centuries that my plays have been performed – and studied – in your schools, I have oft heard complaint and protest (methinks, too much) over the ending of my favorite play. It seems that people, especially students, bewail the death of my sweet prince Hamlet as much as I often do.” “Yeah, why should he die?” asks Oliver, who played the Emperor in the school production of The Emperor’s New Clothes. “My character’s vanity was a tragic flaw, just like Hamlet had… but he didn’t die from it.” “Aye, but your play was a comedy, was it not?” counters Shakespeare. “In a tragedy, as oft in the real world, life must, alas, be lost when once we leave law’s limits. There is a way to save my Hamlet, but first let us scan this closely: What brings Hamlet headlong to his deadly destiny?” “Well, some say Hamlet’s weakness was indecision,” rejoins Oliver confidently, “but Mr. Van Swift says that he read a Christian book that said his real flaw was being too vengeful.” “Well, if what thou sayest be truth,” Shakespeare replies, “it is certainly clear that vengefulness deserveth death. Still, do you wish to seek to save my Hamlet? Is our quest to be, or not to be?” Muriel hesitantly answers, “To be, I guess. What do we need to do?” Shakespeare explains, “Paint for me how my Hamlet was too vengeful.” “I think I know,” replies Johanna. “Is it partly that he resents his uncle Claudius for getting married to his mother so soon after his father’s death? That makes Hamlet only too ready to believe that Claudius poisoned his father for his throne, right?” “Yeah, that’s right,” says Isaac. “And then Hamlet doesn’t accuse his uncle publicly, but starts acting like he’s some kind of private eye.” “Yeah, and he doesn’t even tell his best friend what he’s thinking, but goes on a personal vendetta against Claudius and his servants,” says Barbara, who also quickly accuses Hamlet of fleeting love toward his girlfriend: “He even treats Ophelia badly ’cause he thinks all women are like his mother – disloyal to their true love.” “Don’t forget that Hamlet won’t kill Claudius when he thinks Claudius is praying, because he wants to send his uncle not just to death, but to hell. Now that’s vengeful!” concludes Adam. “And thou hast not even mentioned that Hamlet hath innocent blood on his hands, either by mistake or by malice, when he killeth Polonius, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern,” says Shakespeare, “because he believeth they are working with Claudius against him.” “I know,” says Mr. Van Swift finally, stepping out from behind a pillar. “And this battlement is where it all starts, when Hamlet sees his father’s ghost on a moonless night just like this one. But now, how about changing the ending?” “Well, as I wrote the ending,” Shakespeare replies, “Hamlet dieth when Laertes, the son of the old man Hamlet killed, stabs Hamlet with a poisoned sword in a fencing competition arranged by Hamlet’s uncle Claudius.” “We know that,” says Mr. Van Swift. “However, because this is not a time machine, but a mind machine, you simply have to rewrite this original manuscript I just found in my hand, with this quill pen I just found in my front shirt pocket, and the ending of every copy of Hamlet in the world will be changed.” “O brave new world, that hath such cunning wonders in it,” says Shakespeare. “There is only one way in which thou hast overleaped thyself, Mr. Van Swift. My play is, and should be, a tragedy. If Hamlet doth not die for his tragic flaw, then someone else must die willingly in his place.” Startled, the class hears Mr. Van Swift say casually, “So write somebody in to step in the way of the poisoned blade. How about that pompous Osric guy?” “But, Mr. Van Swift,” pleads Shakespeare, “how can I ask one of my characters to die willingly for the sins of another? That is not right. Besides, Osric has his own faults to be punished for. He cannot stand in for another. No, there is only one person who can save Hamlet – his maker… me.” A quick rewrite Now it is Mr. Van Swift’s turn to be dumbstruck. “You? You’re willing to die for Hamlet? But you’re a person, created in God’s image. He’s only a character.” “Be not so hasty in thy reasoning. The person of Shakespeare is not in peril. My soul is not here. Its destiny rests in God’s hands. What I would lose is my reputation, my glory. If I write myself into the script to save Hamlet, the name of Shakespeare will disappear. No-one will ever again know who really wrote Hamlet or Midsummer Night’s Dream or any of my more than thirty other plays. In fact, no-one will even know whether or not all my anonymous plays were written by the same person. In the public mind, my sweet prince Hamlet will live on, as he should, but Shakespeare will vanish.” Mr. Van Swift is paralyzed in horror as Shakespeare takes the manuscript and quill and begins to insert some lines for a character named… William of Avon… who overhears Claudius’s plot; is captured; escapes; and at the last minute warns Hamlet, but is stabbed by the poisoned sword himself. Even as Shakespeare writes, his features change. His face grows younger, more like his earlier actor self. Then he begins to fade as the scene in the mind machine changes to a royal palace in the middle of a fencing match between Hamlet and Laertes, with a roaring fireplace at one end of the room, and the rewritten manuscript lying near it. The class sees a new character, a sort of young-looking Shakespeare, rushing in to warn Hamlet. Just before “William of Avon” can step in between Hamlet and his opponent, Mr. Van Swift screams, “No!” and hurls the rewritten manuscript into the blaze in the fireplace. The flames seem to fill the room for a moment, and everyone’s eyes close against the glare. The last act When the students open their eyes, they are back on the castle walls, with the “old” Shakespeare chuckling as he rebukes their teacher: “Really, Mr. Van Swift, I hope thou hast learned something from all thy meddling with literature. Art thou not a Christian? Yet thou art shocked when I am willing to treat one of my sinful characters, whom I had made, as a friend. Doth not God do the same for His people? Jesus said, ‘I no longer call you servants, but friends.’” “Yes, but to have Shakespeare’s name disappear!” says Mr. Van Swift. “It’s unthinkable! There is glory and majesty in that name!” “The Son of God had far greater glory and majesty,” counters Shakespeare, “but He did not count His equality with His Father as something to be greedily held on to. Rather, He gave up His glory and humbled Himself unto death. He was willing to step into the story He had written as one of the Persons of the Tri-une God, rather than let it simply perish in the flames – as you were only too willing to let happen.” “But what good is all this to our Grade Twelve students?” replies Mr. Van Swift. “I was trying to show them how they have the power to change things, and you’ve just shown them that everything stays the same.” “Actually, Mr. Van Swift, thou shewest them that when thou did not let me change the play. However, thou also revealed what a great and terrible thing it is for the Maker to step into His own story. Meditate upon that for a while, as thou ponderest also how to respond to the love of the Divine Storyteller.” “This all reminds me,” says Mr. Van Swift, slowly, “of Philippians 2. One way to respond to a God who steps into His own story is ‘with fear and trembling,’ as we ‘work out’ the roles he has set for us in the story He has written for us.” “Now that, forsooth, is an ending worth keeping,” says Shakespeare, as both he and the castle begin to fade. “Remember me,” he says faintly, with a ghostly grin, as the students find themselves in their own school library. “So, class,” says Mr. Van Swift. “Not what I meant to teach, but remember this as you graduate from our school. God the Son, who with God the Father and the Spirit is our Maker, gave up His glory and stepped into His story to save us, calls us His friends, and now enables us to carry out, with fear and trembling, the parts He has given us, in His-Story.” Jeff Dykstra admits that C. S. Lewis thought of making Shakespeare a character in his own play first – as a symbol for the Incarnation. However, Jeff wrote it as a story first....



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Religion - Pentecostal

What do Pentecostals believe about the miraculous spiritual gifts?

What do Pentecostals believe? That's quite the question – how does one fairly and accurately describe the beliefs of a group that numbers in the hundreds of millions? Turn that tables and imagine for a moment that a Charismatic magazine – let's say, Pentecostal Perspective – tried describing what it meant to be a Reformed Christian. That would be tough too. If their focus was too narrow they might investigate the Christian Reformed Church and conclude being Reformed means having women ministers. Or maybe they would drop by some Free Church of Scotland congregations and decide that being Reformed meant doing without instrumental accompaniment, or conversely, after attending a Canadian Reformed service, conclude organs seem to be a Reformed requirement. Definition So we don't want to get lost in the differences that exist between different Pentecostal denominations. We'll keep our focus quite broad here (although that has its own problems) and stick to the one universally-held Pentecostal belief – that the miraculous spiritual gifts of speaking in tongues, healing, and prophecy, that were a part of the Apostolic Church, continue to be a part of the Church today. These "continuationists" or "charismatic" believers also exist in other denominations, so this belief isn't unique to Pentecostals. But it is uniquely foundational to it. You can be Baptist, Roman Catholic, or Anglican and be charismatic or not, but there is no such thing as a non-charismatic Pentecostal. Now, Christians of all sorts know and agree that God continues to do miracles today – that's why we pray and ask God to heal the sick – but it is a Pentecostal belief that Christians can expect to be agents for these miracles – that some will be given the gift of healing, others the gift of prophecy, and yet others the gift of tongues. This universal stand prompts a universal question, one you can ask any and all Pentecostals and charismatics too: if these miraculous gifts, described in the New Testament, are still with us today then why aren’t the manifestations more…well…miraculous? Questions for Pentecostals As Rev. Holtvlüwer showed in his article "Tongue Twisters" in the March 2004 issue, when the Apostles spoke in tongues they were speaking in a variety of foreign languages they had never learned. That’s miraculous indeed, and is it any wonder that listeners were “amazed and perplexed” (Acts 2:12)? But today few tongues speakers claim to be talking in identifiable earthly languages. Instead many say they are speaking in the “tongues of angels” and cite 1 Corinthians 13:1 as a proof text. It’s here that the Apostle Paul says, “If I could speak in the tongues of men and of angels but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.” But this approach to tongues-speaking has problems: This is the only time the “tongue of angels” is ever mentioned in the Bible, and it is clear in this passage that Paul is using hyperbole to make a point. He isn’t claiming to actually speak in the tongue of angels; he’s only emphasizing the importance of love. This is made clear in the very next verse where Paul writes, “If I…can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge…but have not love, I am nothing.” Is Paul claiming that he is actually able to fathom all knowledge? Clearly not – that would make him God. It should also be clear that Paul wasn't claiming to speak in the tongue of angels. No one knows what language angels speak, so it is impossible to verify whether a person is indeed speaking this language. Someone suddenly able to speak Spanish or Chinese could have their claim easily tested, but not if they say they're speaking "angel." This isn't a question of sincerity – this isn't to say that Pentecostals are pulling something over on the rest of us. We shouldn't think they are lying. But there is good reason to think they are mistaken. Even in an emotionally-charged state, one cannot start speaking Chinese unless a miracle is involved. But Pentecostals – or at least the vast majority of them – don't suddenly start speaking a new foreign language. Instead, they start doing what, in any other context, would be called babbling. And if someone were in a distraught or otherwise emotional state, it isn't hard to believe they could start blurting out nonsensical "words," but that wouldn't involve a miracle. The issue here isn't one of sincerity, but labeling: Pentecostals have been taught that this is speaking in tongues, but it is something very different from what happened in the biblical accounts. It is also puzzling when you consider that speaking in tongues also occurs in the Oneness Pentecostal movement, a cult that denies the Trinity. Can Christians and cultists share the same gifts? Similarly the gift of healing today seems far less miraculous than the gift described in the New Testament. While Peter, John, and Paul healed people who had been crippled from birth (Acts 3:1-10 14:8-10) Pentecostal churches have started ministries aimed at aiding the disabled, rather than healing them. And consider how today’s gift of prophecy is a letdown as well. Rather than the infallible prophecy described in the Bible (Deut 18:22) many Pentecostals admit that their prophecy can be mistaken1. To sum up, instead of the awe-inspiring miraculous gifts described in the New Testament, the gifts manifested in Pentecostal churches seem to be something else entirely. And entirely less impressive. Cessationism Even as our focus here is on Pentecostals, we'd be remiss if we didn't get at least a general understanding of what the other side believes. "Cessationists" (the root here is “cease”) believe that some of the gifts of the Spirit mentioned in 1 Cor 12:8-10, 28-31 & Romans 12:6-8 stopped or ceased soon after the Apostles died. This list of gifts includes prophecy, speaking in tongues, teaching, wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, discernment, interpretation, encouraging, and apostleship. For almost all Christians, the question is not whether some of these gifts have ceased, but rather which ones, as even Pentecostal churches believe that the role of the apostles has ceased. Thus there is a very real sense in which even Pentecostals are "cessationists" (though on a trip to New York I did come across a number of churches that claimed to have Apostles). More commonly, "cessationist" refers to a person who believes the miraculous gifts of the Spirit – specifically healing, speaking in tongues, and prophecy – have ceased. But even as cessationists deny that prophecy occurs today (because the Bible is complete) that isn't a denial that God can give people inner guidance. We’ve probably all experienced a time when we were in the right place at the right time and led to say just the right thing to one of our brothers or sisters. But while we would call this God’s guidance, a Pentecostal might well call this prophecy. This is not just a matter of semantics – it is one thing to say you think God is leading you to speak something and quite another thing to declare: “Thus says the Lord…” Prophecy as it is described in the Bible is without error (see Deut. 18:22) so any Pentecostal who claims to be prophesying is making quite a claim indeed, and is making a claim that no cessationist would dare make. God is still doing miracles As we conclude, it's important to clarify that rejecting Pentecostalism and holding to cessationism doesn't mean denying God can and does still deliver miracles. The gift of miracles might be over, but miracles certainly do keep on occurring. In the video below one remarkable example is shared: pro-life activist John Barros tells about how God translated his English preaching into Spanish so a couple about to get an abortion could be confronted with the Gospel message to repent and believe. There are also accounts of Muslims being confronted with the Gospel in their dreams, and God blinding the eyes of government officials who are searching for illegal bibles. While God does seem to ordinarily use "ordinary means" to spread His Gospel, there is a reason we still pray for miracles – our God can do anything! Endnote 1 C. Samuel Storms (pages 207-210) in Are Miraculous Gifts for Today? and Eric Davis' "Addressing Continualist Arguments from 1 Corinthians 14"...



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Culture Clashes

How can everyone be wrong about the world?

Hans Rosling discovered that whether it’s world leaders or everyone else, we all share a tendency to overdramatize the state of the planet ***** How well do you know what is going on in the world? Let’s put it to a test. Without consulting the internet or someone else, give these questions your best shot: How did the number of deaths per year from natural disasters change over the last hundred years? a. More than doubled b. Remained about the same c. Decreased to less than half In the last 20 years, the proportion of the world population living in extreme poverty has… a. Almost doubled b. Remained more or less the same c. Almost halved Worldwide, 30-year-old men have spent 10 years in school, on average. How many years have women of the same age spent in school? a. 3 years b. 6 years c. 9 years In the 1990s, bald eagles, giant pandas, and snow leopards were all listed as endangered. How many of these three species are more critically endangered today? a. Two of them b. One of them c. None of them How many of the world’s 1-year-old children today have been vaccinated against some disease? a. 20 percent b. 50 percent c. 80 percent Worse than chimps The right answers are all C. How many did you get correct? If you didn’t get a great score, you are in good company. These questions come from Hans Rosling, the author of the fascinating book Factfulness. He made a quiz with 13 questions total, about different aspects of the state of the world – how we are doing as a planet. He asked about things like access to electricity, world population, and where people live in the world. Then he gave the quiz to nearly 12,000 people in 14 countries. On average they got just 2 of the 13 right. That’s remarkable when you consider if people filled in answers at random, they would have done better, getting a third of the three-answer questions right (averaging between 3 and 4 right). More remarkably, out of the 12,000 quizzed nobody got them all right. And just one person got 11 out of 12 right. Why? Is the problem that people aren’t educated enough? Rosling first thought this may be the case, but then he tested the most educated among us – medical students, teachers, scientists, journalists, business leaders, among others – and discovered that the majority still got most answers wrong and some did worse than the general public. Then Rosling realized that not only are people wrong about their understanding of the world, they are systematically wrong – they do worse than if they had no knowledge at all. As Rosling explained, if he went to the zoo to give the same quiz to chimpanzees, “the chimps, by picking randomly, would do consistently better than the well-educated but deluded human beings who take my tests.” Not only is the public consistently wrong, but their errors skewed in one direction – participants consistently underestimated the true state of the world: “Every group of people I ask thinks the world is more frightening, more violent, and more hopeless – in short, more dramatic – than it really is.” Why do we underestimate the good so badly? Since the mid 1990’s, Rosling devoted much of his time to exploring and explaining why we can be so wrong about rather basic facts about the world. At first, he thought that people’s knowledge simply had to be updated and upgraded – they just needed to get educated. So that is what he set out to do – Rosling developed some amazing teaching tools and brought them to TED talks around the world, in addition to board rooms, banks, and even the US State Department. He was excited to show everyone how the world had changed for the good. But it didn’t take long and his enthusiasm waned. “The ignorance we kept on finding was not just an upgrade problem. It couldn’t be fixed simply by providing clearer data animations or better teaching tools.” It was one gathering in particular that convinced him. He was presenting to thousands of the most influential people of the world at the 2015 World Economic Forum (alongside Bill and Melinda Gates). His listeners included heads of state, heads of UN organizations, leaders of multinational companies, and famous journalists. He asked them just three questions – about the true state of poverty, population growth, and vaccination rates in the world. Although 61 percent answered the question about poverty correctly, when it came to population growth and vaccination, the crowd once again did worse than chimps. That is when things crystalized for Rosling. He saw that the reason people were misperceiving the world was because they had a faulty worldview. “People constantly and intuitively refer to their worldview when thinking, guessing, or learning about the world. So if your worldview is wrong, then you will systematically make wrong guesses.” But he was also quick to explain that this isn’t the fault of media or fake news. Rather, he believes that it is inbuilt, and comes from how our brains have a tendency to “overdramatize” things. Look at the two lines on this page. Which is longer? If you’ve seen this trick before you know that they are the same length. But even with that knowledge, they still look different, don’t they? Despite what we know we can still misperceive. Rosling thinks something similar is going on with how our brains analyze the world – even when we know better, we can still fall for the “more frightening, more violent, and more hopeless – in short, more dramatic” misperception of things. Rosling proceeded to devote the rest of his life to this curiosity, and his book Factfulness flowed from this work. “Start to practice it, and you will be able to replace your overdramatic worldview with a worldview based on facts. You will be able to get the world right without learning it by heart.” Through the rest of the book, he trains readers to be aware of the various ways we systematically misperceive the world because of our “gap instinct, negativity instinct, …fear instinct” and more. Most of us would do well to learn about these instincts, which have us consistently underestimating the good around us. The Gap Instinct: Rosling calls it “that irresistible temptation we have to divide all kinds of things into two distinct and often conflicting groups, with an imagined gap – a huge chasm – in between.” For example, many believe that the developing world’s infant mortality rates will always remain much higher than ours. But whereas the global child mortality rate was 27% in 1950 (that’s the percentage of children who didn’t live to reach the end of puberty), now the very worst child mortality rate in the world is about half that, at 15% in Niger. Globally it is down to 4.3 percent (as of 2022). When it came to child mortality there was once a divide between the West and rest, but today that divide persists in people’s minds, and not in reality. The Fear Instinct: We have an inbuilt focus on the frightening, which makes it hard for us to see how things may be improving. So, when a hurricane hits, we might hear about how climate change is going to cause more and more of these, and what we don’t hear is how many fewer people died than in decades past. As they say, if it bleeds, it leads, so we hear lots about what is scary but little of what is reassuring and encouraging. The Negativity Instinct: Rosling shared that when people in 30 countries were asked, is the world getting better, staying the same, or getting worse, more than 50% picked “getting worse” no matter what country they came from (roughly 75% of Canadians said “getting worse”). Yet there are some huge improvements happening, including that the number of people living in extreme poverty – surviving on less than $2/day – has dropped from 50% of the world in 1966 to just 9% in 2017. If our decision makers in government and the Church had read this book before making decisions about Covid restrictions, we would all have benefitted. Then the fears that emanated from Covid and hospitalization projections would have been put into a much more reasonable context. But the implications go well beyond pandemics. I don’t think the world is prepared for the future we will face with half as many children being born per woman as just 50 years ago. Most people, including many in the Church, wrongly assume that the straight line of population growth will keep extending upwards. And they see that as a threat, with an ever-expanding population exceeding the planet’s ability to feed them all. But, as mentioned, even as population grows, fewer people are in extreme poverty. And just as a child won’t keep growing at the same rate through life, we’re seeing the birth rate take a sharp decline. The more informed worry is not overpopulation but a coming population collapse. Which worldview? As helpful as Rosling’s book is, he had his own misperception. He eventually recognized the importance of worldview, but he did so from a evolutionary vantage point. “The human brain is a product of millions of years of evolution,” he wrote, when answering why so many people would be consistently wrong. “We are hard-wired with instincts that helped our ancestors to survive in small groups of hunters and gatherers.” The beginning of wisdom Christians have a better explanation. That people would consistently overlook the many blessings around them and focus instead on troubles, many of them even imagined, is what sinful people do. A look through the Old Testament shows that God’s people are not immune to this ingratitude. But we are blessed to also have the answer. To fight negativity, fear, and ingratitude, we need only remember who God is. He isn’t just the God of the universe – He is our loving Father, the One Who knows who we are and has a perfect plan for our lives and for the future of the Church and the world. When we take this to heart, we can begin to get a glimpse into how this will change how we look at the world. Is it a scary place? Do we have reason to fear the future? Are things going to hell in a handbasket? Not at all. Those conclusions flow from a godless worldview, and perhaps also the worldview from some other major religions (like Islam), where their god is powerful but not a loving father. And they sure aren’t consistent with reality. By God’s grace, the world has been becoming a safer, healthier, more abundant place to live (contrary to what we would think if we only got our information from the news). But even if we face another war or pandemic, we can take comfort knowing that God “still upholds heaven and earth and all creatures, and so governs them that leaf and blade, rain and drought, fruitful and barren years, food and drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty, indeed, all things, come to us not by chance but by his fatherly hand” (Lord’s Day 10, Heidelberg Catechism)....