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Magazine, Past Issue

May/June 2025 issue

WHAT'S INSIDE: If businesses tithed / Pierre Poilievre: sometimes access comes with too high a cost / Being thrifty and finding hope / A principled (and practical) guide to tithing / 5 things I'd like my kids to learn about money / God love a cheerful giver: 6 ways to restore the joy of giving / How to lock your phone from pornography... 101  / A Church response is needed to stop the porn crisis / RP's 10-day screen-fast challenge / Signing on the dotted line? A creative approach to boundaries in dating / Becoming Chinada? - a look at our country, from the eyes of a recently arrived Chinese family / Books: education littles will love (including "5 on our feathered friends") / 7,000 pages in, and now this? Another popular series, Keepers of the Lost Cities, takes a turn... in book 11 / Write down your story: sharing your history is sharing His history / What kind of Prime Minister could he still be? 5 things you might not have known about Pierre Poilievre / Upheld: a widow's story of love, grief & the constancy of God / Morning and Evening: a teen offers up a different sort of book review for Spurgeon's classic devotional / 3 on comforting suffering Christians / Stockholm Syndrome Christianity / Get to know John Calvin / Christian films for families / Come and Explore: Bald Eagle / Don't follow your heart / A word for a new mother... as given at her first baby shower / Our family's trip to the Ark / Ruth de Vos is quilting kids and creation / Wise and Innocent / Coming soon: RP's merch store! / and more!

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News

Saturday Selections – May 3, 2025

Be Present 

Reformed rapper Propaganda with a message that'll hit everyone hard:

"I guess you could say I've been through a divorce now – me and my phone are no longer married."

p.s. "finna" means "going to"

An encouraging message for Canadian Christians after election night

The same God who promises to turn everything to our good (Romans 8:28) was sovereignly in control when Mark Carney got voted in. So we know this is right, and to our benefit, even if we don't understand... at least in full.

One possible benefit – an evident silver lining – is the 90 pro-life MPs that RightNow says were elected. Pro-life candidates are banned from the NDP and Liberals, so these must all be Conservative, and 90 out of the 144 elected Conservatives is quite the sizeable segment. And being in opposition can be freeing, as it may allow these MPs to speak against government abuses more openly than they'd ever be allowed if they were government. Maybe some will start talking about the unborn, not just to fellow pro-lifers, but to the muddled middle who might yet be convicted of the wickedness of this slaughter.

Encouraging coverage of ARPA Canada

This week ARPA Canada got to make a presentation in the BC legislature with around 20 MLAs present, and this mainstream media account covered it straight up.

Want to improve your life?

"Open the Bible at least four times a week."

Stop valorizing doubt! (10-minute read)

As Trevin Wax notes, "Honesty about our doubt is a virtue, but it’s the honesty that’s commendable, not the doubt itself."

Syncretism is a pressing temptation

As Pastor John Van Eek notes in the video below, syncretism is the mixing of any two (or more religions) to form a completely new religion. Or to put it another way, Christianity plus anything isn't Christianity anymore.

In the past God's people might have mixed their true religion with Baal worship, but today's syncretistic temptation involves a very different religion: secularism. In the public square, the demand is that Christians limit ourselves to sharing a logical, scientific, or maybe "common sense" perspective, but never an explicitly Christian one. Now, Christianity is logical, and lines up with science (when properly understood) so this might seem a demand we could accommodate.

But when we understand that the secularism making these demands holds that man's reasoning is the source of all knowledge, including what is good, right, and meaningful, then we can see how secularism is another religion. And then we can also start to see the syncretistic element here. If Christians agree to act and argue as secularists do – with no mention of the God we were created to glorify (WSC Q&A 1) – then even when we are pursuing good ends, like fighting a trans agenda or trying to stop abortion, we are doing so by mixing secularism with our Christianity.

And then is that Christianity still?


Today's Devotional

May 8 - An unbreakable covenant

“While the earth remains, seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.” - Genesis 8:22 

Scripture reading: Jeremiah 33:14-26; 2 Peter 3:8-13

Many “experts” predict that the world will end due to a great calamity from climate change or a meteor striking the earth. But the Lord assures us that the sun will rise and set >

Today's Manna Podcast

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

The Enduring Word of God

Serving #836 of Manna, prepared by Greg Bylsma, is called "The Enduring Word of God".















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News

Halloween decorations overtaking Christmas decorations in BC

A survey of BC residents concluded that, for the first time, more people in the province are going “all out” with their decorating for Halloween than for Christmas. The survey was conducted by BC Hydro, the crown corporation that provides most of BC’s hydro power. It found that half of BC residents decorated their homes for Halloween this year, thirteen percent of which put on a “mega display” (defined as ten or more strings of lights and at least one plug-in inflatable). Just over half plan to decorate for Christmas, of which ten percent plan a “mega display.” Although the numbers are similar, and the survey was done before Christmas, when one compares Halloween decorations with Christmas, the contrast is striking. Halloween decorations generally celebrate death with tombstones, skeletons, and even effigies, ropes around their necks, hanging from trees, and then there’s the embrace of the occult, witches, and darkness. In contrast, most Christmas decorations radiate light, joy, and beauty, a fitting display to mark a holiday that celebrates the birth of our Incarnate Lord. BC recently made headlines for being the province with the highest proportion of people who say they have “no religious affiliation” (now up to 41 percent). As such, it isn’t surprising that there is waning enthusiasm for the celebration of Christ’s birth. Yet it is sad that a population would willfully celebrate the darkness which Christ came to save us from. “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness” (Isaiah 5:20)....

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In a Nutshell

Tidbits - October 2023

Halloween in a small American town I live in a delightful and occasionally comical small town where the church-attending Christians make up a solid majority of the population. This is such a Christian town that when Halloween comes around, one of the local churches will set up a hot chocolate stand for our area, and you'll see a dad or two dressed up as a monkish Martin Luther, tonsure and all. When I first moved here Halloween fell on a Sunday, and I was impressed to see most of the kids did their trick-or-treating on Saturday instead. Then I was quite surprised when one of the trick-or-treaters at my door – a little princess – told me "my brother is the devil." Sure enough, there he came toddling up the path, a two-year-old dressed in a bright red satin, forked tail wagging behind. Lynden: it's a town where trick or treating on Sunday is verboten, but dressing up as Satan ain't no big thing. “The free market is a bathroom scale” “The free market is simply a measurement. The free market tells us what people are willing to pay for a given thing at a given moment. That’s all the free market does. The free market is a bathroom scale. We may not like what we see when we step on the bathroom scale, but we can’t pass a law making ourselves weigh 165. Liberals and leftists think we can.” – P.J O’Rourke Are you wearing anything ten years or older? About ten years back, Christian Courier's editor Angela Bick shared that her friends were surprised to learn that they weren’t wearing anything as much as ten years old. The surprise was probably prompted by the realization that 40 years ago the situation would have been quite different. Kids’ clothing in particular was treated differently then, with patches (and patches upon patches) being far more common. Darning socks was more common, and the resoling of shoes too. Whenever one generation decides to do something differently than the previous, it is worth a moment’s reflection - if you aren’t wearing anything from a decade ago, why might that be? Is it a result of shoddy manufacturing and living in a throw-away culture? Are clothes simply not made to last like they once were? Are we financially blessed, to the point that we don’t need to wear worn out clothes? Are we financially irresponsible, spending money on clothes when that money could be put to better use? Is it a matter of clothes being less expensive to replace than they once were? Might it mean we are overly concerned with keeping up with the latest fashions? The way it was… and could be? In the 1940s, in the Netherlands, most men worked six days a week at physically-taxing jobs. So, come Sunday it could be quite a struggle for these men to stay attentive through the church service, especially when it came time to pray and eyes were shut and heads were bowed. And to make it harder still, the prayers were quite often fifteen minutes long. In his wartime biography The Way It Was, author Sid Baron notes that to help these men stay awake it was the practice then to allow the option of standing during prayer. So throughout the church, as most bowed their head to pray, many farmers and laborers would rise. This practice is no longer common anywhere in Reformed churches, most likely because ministers no longer tax their congregation’s attention with fifteen-minute prayers, and because far fewer members do heavy physical labor. Still, it might be a practice worth reviving for some particularly sleep-deprived folk: the mothers and fathers of newborns! Brother, can you spare a dime? by Gregory Koukl You can't help having mixed feelings when people beg for food on the street. Your heart goes out to them, but you have reservations too. Is there a real need here, or is this just laziness disguised? Here's a simple solution. Give food to the poor by helping fill the cupboards of your local church feeding program. If your church doesn't have one, find a Christian facility that does. They make sure food goes to people with a genuine need, and the Gospel goes out along with it. Another alternative is to make up a couple of bags of food and keep them in your trunk. Include the kinds of things that can be opened without tools and eaten without cooking. Include plastic silverware that's sealed together with a napkin that you get from take-out food places. Then give it in Jesus' name. Welfare is not God's answer to the needs of the poor. Instead, He asks for charitable, responsible, obedient giving. Don't give money to someone begging in the street. Instead, send your money to a reputable Christian agency in your area, or give food in prepackaged parcels. You'll have the peaceful confidence you've really done something for the poor and homeless. SOURCE: Reprinted with permission from www.str.org Biblical, musical ABCs Jamie Soles is well known among conservative Reformed churches in Canada, but for those that don’t know of him, below are the lyrics of a song from one of his children’s albums “The Way My Story Goes” which is available (along with more info) on the artist’s website SolMusic.ca. “These Are They” Jesus said, “You search the Scriptures For in these, you say, your life will never end, Don’t be misled; the life you’re looking for Is found in Me, for I am found in them. And… "These are they, these are they, These are they which speak of Me.” Adam, Abel, Abraham, Aaron, Ammon, Amnon, Andrew, Abishai, Abishag, Abigail, Ahab, tell the world of Me. Ahaziah, Amaziah, Ahimaaz, Ahasuerus, Ahithophel, Abiathar, Ahitub, too, Asahel and Absalom, Abner and Abednego, Asa and Amasa, just to name a few. Now… These are they.... Boaz, Balaam, Barzillai, Balak, Barak, Baal, Babel, Baasha, Baruch, Benjamin, all tell the world of Me. Barnabas and Bethel, Bezalel and Bilhah, Benaiah, Belial, and Bashan, too, Bethlehem and Ben-Hadad, Beelzebub and Babylon, The Bible bubbles over with Me; how ‘bout you? Now… These are they.... Caesar, Caleb, Caiaphas, Canaan, Cain, and Chedorlaomer, Cushi, Chloe, Claudius, all tell the world of Me. Corinthians, Cyrenians, Cyrus and the Cretans, Cornelius, Capernaum, and Chimham, see? These are only part of it This is but the start of it Stories are your biblical ABCs! Now… All these stories, they show My glories These are they which speak of Me. Top 10 verses: important omission BibleGateway.com is a website that includes dozens of different translations of the Bible. It gets more than 8 million visitors each month, and back in 2011. when they listed their site’s most-searched for verses of the Bible, Collin Hansen at TheGospelCoalition.org noticed a startling omission among them. While the top ten includes verses that are often emblazoned on shirts, or are held up on signs at sports events (John 3:16 was the #1 verse) none of the top ten most-searched-for-verses talked about sin! It isn’t until verse #19 that sin is mentioned: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” It’s not surprising that talking about sin is unpopular. But the Good News of the Gospel only makes sense after we understand our own sinfulness, and God’s hatred of sin. Then it is good news indeed that God has sent us a Savior and Mediator! So it isn’t a surprising omission, but it is a glaring one. It should be polite to ask a woman’s age Our culture worships youth, so it’s no wonder they think it’s rude to make mention of someone’s age. But why do we think it’s rude? After all, the Bible speaks quite highly of the elderly, as it is with age that wisdom can come (at least among the righteous). That’s why Proverbs 20:29 notes that “gray hair is the splendor of the old” and Prov. 16:31 tells us: “the silver-haired head is a crown of glory.” Among Christians old should be excellent! 30% of Gen Z Americans would welcome gov’t monitoring inside their homes Nearly a third of Americans under 30 would welcome a government surveillance device in their homes, in the name of reducing spousal and child abuse. Clearly they haven’t been taught about the surveillance states of the past, like the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. And they must not know about China’s current “social credit system,” where citizens are constantly monitored and granted freedoms based on how obliging they’ve been to their government’s every requirement. And they haven’t read 1984 or any other dystopian fiction. That a third of American young people trust the government to watch their every move isn’t an endorsement of our political leadership’s trustworthiness, but is instead an indicator of how badly they are educating our youth in their public schools. Now Christians might think that if we aren’t doing anything wrong what does it matter if we are being watched? But do you spank your children? Might some government official somewhere want to recast as abuse what you know to be appropriate and measured? Do you teach your children that God made us male and female? Do you insist that marriage is between one man and one woman? What might the government think about that? To be constantly monitored is to be constantly assessed. And knowing, as we do, that our governments don’t measure right and wrong by God’s standards, we should fear the prospect....

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News

Saturday Selections - October 23, 2021

"Who's on first?" gets a modern update At the risk of killing the joke, it's worth a moment's reflection on what makes this funny. In Abbott and Costello's original, the confusion was caused by the unlikely names of the players. This time the confusion is caused by people who want to unhinge pronoun usage from the biological reality of sex, and instead tie it to the social construct of gender. And because a social construct is, well, constructed that means it can be reconstructed, right? And not just once either. That's how we get to individualized pronouns, which can change on a whim. The benefit of this approach? What it lacks in clarity, it might make up for in hilarity. Except "they" don't really have a sense of humor. The other alternative? To ignore gender as the ill-defined, meaningless social construct that it is, and use pronouns to refer to an unchanging biological reality instead. As always, it is Christ or chaos. Atheists and agnostics who admire Christianity (10-minute read) Jonathon Van Maren on the notable unbelievers who've come to believe that much of the good in the world springs out of a Christian worldview. Gratitude is good for you But as John Stonestreet notes, secular folk don't know Who to be grateful to. Covid vaccines, fetal cells, and ethical concerns Pro-life advocate Randy Alcorn shares his careful research. On Christians celebrating Halloween "...This obviously can (and should) include kids dressing up and getting boatloads of candy, but I would strongly urge that no one have their kids dress up as members of the other team — witches, ghosts, devils, imps, or congressmen.... So if you take your kid around to grandma’s house dressed up like a red M&M, or like Theodore Beza, don’t have them say trick or treat the same way some ghost or witch would. Of course, repent or perish or sola fide probably wouldn’t work either. Let’s do this differently, and intelligently, and still have fun. So have them say trick or treat the way a cute M&M would." More ground-breaking research evolutionists won't do Were the layers in the Grand Canyon folded soon after they were laid down by the Flood, or did it happen later, as the evolutionary account presumes? This is testable... Should there be racial quotas at university? Ophelie Jacobson asked University of Florida students if they supported "diversity quotas" (a form of affirmative action) where students are identified by their race, and admitted in proportion to the local racial make-up. In other words, if the local population was 35% white, 30% black, 25% Hispanic, and 10% Asian, then that's the percentage of whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians that should be let into university, irrespective of their grades. The students were generally in favor... until Ophelie asked if that would also be a good approach for their beloved football team (and she was asking this on Game Day!). Diversity quotas have meant Asians need to score higher than whites and blacks on admissions tests to get into some universities. Why? Because there are, by diversity quota standards, too many Asians on campus. So some colleges lower their numbers by specifically raising the requirements for Asians. Do two wrongs make a right? If it was wrong to discriminate against blacks in the past (and it was) then how can the fix be to discriminate against Asians now? The Bible condemns discrimination, whichever direction it goes (Ex. 23:2-3, Lev. 19:15). ...