Transparent heart icon with white outline and + sign.

Life's busy, read it when you're ready!

Create a free account to save articles for later, keep track of past articles you’ve read, and receive exclusive access to all RP resources.

White magnifying glass.

Search thousands of RP articles

Equipping Christians to think, speak, and act

Open envelope icon with @ symbol

Get Articles Delivered!

Equipping Christians to think, speak, and act delivered direct to your Inbox!



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.

Click the cover to view in your browser
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 13 - Calling the Sabbath a delight

“If…you call the Sabbath a delight….Then you shall delight in the Lord.” - Isaiah 58:13,14

Scripture reading: Isaiah 58:1-14

Isaiah 58:13-14 is a wonderful passage to reflect on as we prepare to go to the house of the Lord for worship on this Sabbath day.  Notice clearly the if/then structure of these verses.  The Lord is telling us that if we call the Sabbath >

Today's Manna Podcast

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

Redemption: In His Presence

Serving #902 of Manna, prepared by D. VandeBurgt, is called "Redemption" (In His Presence).















Red heart icon with + sign.
Internet

Is AI just another tool, or something else?

We must ask how the technology fits into the Creation story lest it takes away from meaningful work and connection. **** It’s not uncommon to hear artificial intelligence (AI) described as a new “tool” that extends and expands our technological capabilities. Already there are thousands of ways people are utilizing artificial intelligence. All tools help accomplish a task more easily or efficiently. Some tools, however, have the potential to change the task at a fundamental level. This is among the challenges presented by AI. If in the end it is not clear what AI is helping us to achieve more efficiently, this emerging technology will be easily abused. AI’s potential impact on education is a prime example. Since the days of Socrates, the goal of education was not only for students to gain knowledge but also the wisdom and experience to use that knowledge well. Whether the class texts appeared on scrolls or screens mattered little. Learning remained the goal, regardless of the tools used. In a recent article at The Hill, English professor Mark Massaro described a “wave” of chatbot cheating now making it nearly impossible to grade assignments or to know whether students even complete them. He has received essays written entirely by AI, complete with fake citations and statistics but meticulously formatted to appear legitimate. In addition to hurting the dishonest students who aren’t learning anything, attempts to flag AI-generated assignments, a process often powered by AI, have the potential to yield false positives that bring honest students under suspicion. Some professors are attempting to make peace with the technology, encouraging students to use AI-generated “scaffolding” to construct their essays. However, this is kind of like legalizing drugs: there’s little evidence it will cut down on abuse. Consider also the recent flood of fake news produced by AI. In an article in The Washington Post, Pranshu Verma reported that “since May, websites hosting AI-created false articles have increased by more than 1,000 percent.” According to one AI researcher, “Some of these sites are generating hundreds if not thousands of articles a day. … This is why we call it the next great misinformation superspreader.” Sometimes, this faux journalism appears among otherwise legitimate articles. Often, the technology is used by publications to cut corners and feed the content machine. However, it can have sinister consequences. A recent AI-generated story alleged that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s psychiatrist had committed suicide. The fact that this psychiatrist never existed didn’t stop the story from circulating on TV, news sites, and social media in several languages. When confronted, the owners of the site said they republished a story that was “satire,” but the incident demonstrates that the volume of this kind of fake content would be nearly impossible to police. Of course, there’s no sense in trying to put the AI genie back in a bottle. For better or worse, the technology is here to stay. We must develop an ability to evaluate its legitimate uses from its illegitimate uses. In other words, we must know what AI is for, before experimenting with what it can do. That will require first knowing what human beings are for. For example, Genesis is clear (and research confirms) that human beings were made to work. After the fall, toil “by the sweat of your brow” is a part of work. The best human inventions throughout history are the tools that reduce needless toil, blunt the effects of the curse, and restore some dignity to those who work. We should ask whether a given application of AI helps achieve worthy human goals – for instance, teaching students or accurately reporting news – or if it offers shady shortcuts and clickbait instead. Does it restore dignity to human work, or will it leave us like the squashy passengers of the ship in Pixar’s Wall-E – coddled, fed, entertained, and utterly useless? Perhaps most importantly, we must govern what AI is doing to our relationships. Already, our most impressive human inventions – such as the printing press, the telephone, and the internet – facilitated more rapid and accurate human communication, but they also left us more isolated and disconnected from those closest to us. Obviously, artificial intelligence carries an even greater capacity to replace human communication and relationships (for example, chatbots and AI girlfriends). In a sense, the most important questions as we enter the age of AI are not new. We must ask, what are humans for? And, how can we love one another well? These questions won’t easily untangle every ethical dilemma, but they can help distinguish between tools designed to fulfill the creation mandate and technologies designed to rewrite it. ***** This column was first published to Breakpoint.org on January 8, 2024, and is reprinted with their gracious permission. We're sharing it because it's a good article on an important topic. But we have another reason. We wanted to give RP readers this sample of Breakpoint's Daily Commentaries to, hopefully, pique your interest. Breakpoint has an American focus and is not specifically Reformed (though some writers are), so we differ in some notable respects: they are anti-evolution and RP is specifically 6-day creationists; and while we'll highlight problems with the Pope both when he is acting Roman Catholic and when he is not, they'll stick to the latter. So, as with everything, there is a need to read with discernment. But when it comes to the hottest cultural battles of our day – sexuality, gender, the unborn, and God's sovereignty over "every square inch" of creation – they get it right, consistently, and they are timely, often replying to events that happened just the day before. That's why Breakpoint articles have been featured in our Saturday 6 column for years now. If this article did grab your interest, then you'll want to sign up here to get Breakpoint sent right to your email inbox each day....



Red heart icon with + sign.
News

Saturday Selections - July 13, 2019

Fined $8.2 million for pro-life work, this pastor wouldn't pay Randy Alcorn's name is well known in Christian circles for the many books he's written. Less known is how he worked at a minimum wage for 20 years so he wouldn't have to pay an $8.2 million judgement to an abortion clinic. This is an amazing story of faithfulness! Free e-book: Transgender In this short 80-page book, Vaughan Roberts lays out the biblical understanding of gender and body and shows how to talk lovingly to transgender folk. To get the free e-book you do have to give your email address, and you do have to act quickly because it will only be free for a short while. Parents: 8 tips for a snark-free summer Our kids don't always talk to us the way they should. Here are some practical tips to help them and you. Hell interrupted The eternal punishment of hell is a difficult doctrine for many to accept. But as Greg Koukl and Tim Barnett make clear in this 5-minute read, it is what Scripture teaches. Can China's demographic nightmare be undone? China's four-decade-long one-child policy taught citizens that children were a burden, rather than the blessing God says they are. The country is now facing a demographic nightmare, with siblingless couples the sole working support for their two sets of parents and four sets of grandparents. Not having children has been the real burden – if their parents and grandparents would have had more children then there would have been brothers and sisters and cousins to share the work. And while the government now allows families to have two children, they're finding they can't undo the "children are a curse" outlook they spend 40 years creating. Evolution can't explain the origin of life (7 min) If life originated without design or intent, but by chance, why can't the world's most brilliant minds – with their computers and chemicals and machines helping them and with the blueprints provided by already living cells – make life from scratch? This is a fascinating video, though the Intelligent Design perspective underlying it doesn't explicitly give God His due. ...

Red heart icon with + sign.
In a Nutshell

Tidbits - November 2018

Lame Dutch joke of the month A Canadian and a Dutchman were out riding horses. Canadian: “We’ve got quite the set of fine horses here. How do you say ‘horses’ in Dutch?” Dutch equestrian: “Paarden.” Canadian: “I’m sorry…WHAT I SAID WAS HOW DO YOU SAY ‘HORSES’ IN DUTCH?" Apologetic on homosexuality? “Imagine this. Imagine I'm standing up here to preach a message about adultery. And as I introduce my message on adultery I say, ‘I just want everyone to know I love adulterers. I have friends who are adulterers. And I think we need to be kind to adulterers. We need to embrace adulterers.’ "That would sound kind of odd, wouldn’t it? If I was talking about pedophilia, or if I was talking about drunkenness, it would sound odd. But folks, that's the way almost every sermon on homosexuality starts today. With a thousand excuses and explanations and apologies for what's about to come.” – Voddie Baucham There is a hell. Jesus says so. Some theologians, including big names like Rob Bell and John Stott, don’t believe in hell, or at least that it is eternal. Instead, Stott suggested that lost souls might be annihilated and cease to exist. However, as Thor Ramsey notes in his book The Most Encouraging Book on Hell Ever, this doctrine does serious damage to our understanding of God’s holiness and justice. And what then are we to make of what Jesus says in Matt. 26:24: “It would have been better for that man if he had not been born”? “Jesus is saying for Judas, non-existence – having never existed at all – would be better than something else….Jesus is clearly saying Judas is on his way to hell. But from the perspective of annihilationism the question becomes: Is non-existence better for someone than an eternity of non-existence? Huh? “If annihilationism is true, then what Jesus said here about Judas is pretty much nonsense….Jesus was basically just babbling. And he didn’t do that.” Hell does exist; Jesus says so. And the world needs to be told to turn from their sin and flee God’s coming wrath. One verse to rebut them all Christians know that while there are many groups battling it out for influence and position in our cultural wars, there are only two sides: God’s, and the other. And that dividing line is spelled out right in the very first verse of the Bible: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” As Henry Morris has noted, in his The Genesis Record this short verse presents a stark contrast to so many of the ideologies of the past and present. It rebuts atheism (God created), pantheism (because God is separate from His creation), polytheism (because one God created), materialism (because something before and beyond matter created matter), humanism (because God, not Man, is the measure of all things), and evolutionism (because God created). Dr. Joel McDurmon has noted that this verse also seems to (though less explicitly) rebut unitarianism too, which says God is one person, because, even as the verb created here is singular, the word for God here Elohim is in the plural, giving a hint as to God’s Triune nature. Direction matters “So if one man wants to drive to the East Coast in a Ford, he has more in common with a man who wants to do the same thing in a Chevy than he does with another man driving to the West Coast in a Ford. Couple this with the fact that it is possible to pass someone on the road who is going the opposite direction, and at the precise moment when you do that, you are in exactly the same spot. Further, somebody else who is going to the same place you are might be a hundred miles behind you” – Douglas Wilson in Empires of Dirt On the real reason for democracy "Thus the principle of democracy does not in itself testify that everyone is so competent that their opinion must be acted upon. The principle of democracy testifies that everyone is so subject to corruption that the reins of power must not be left for long in anyone's hands without check." – Harry Blamires...