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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.

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

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 7 - Fellowship expressed in relationships

“He who loves his brother abides in the light…” - 1 John 2:10 

Scripture reading: 1 John 2:7-11; John 13:31-35

When we think about fellowship with God as a result of believing on Jesus, our initial response is to focus on the relationship that has been established between a holy God and the individual sinner.  This, of course, is to be expected.  However, as >

Today's Manna Podcast

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

The Resurrection of Christ - It's Truth: The Resurrection of Christ

Serving #896 of Manna, prepared by William Den Hollander, is called "The Resurrection of Christ - It's Truth" (The Resurrection of Christ).











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News

Billy Graham (1918-2018): The last of the Great Revivalists

Without a doubt, Billy Graham has had a huge role in shaping American Christianity. His death on February 21, 2018 signals the passing of an era. American revivalism was a movement of spiritual wakening that began in the 1700s with Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield. It carried on with celebrity preachers like Billy Sunday and Dwight Moody – but it really reached both its climax and end with Billy Graham. Reformed roots, but Arminian  He was born and raised in a Christian home. His parents were members of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church. His wife Ruth was also a Presbyterian. He dates his conversion to 1934, when he was sixteen years old. Billy Graham says his conversion happened during an evangelistic campaign. Before he became a full-time evangelist, he served as a pastor of two churches and was also the president of a Bible College. By this time, he was a member of the Southern Baptist Church. Many Southern Baptists are monergistic in their doctrine of salvation (believing that salvation not a cooperative act between the Lord and Man, but rather the work of God alone) but sadly, Billy Graham was not. Let’s be up front with this fact: Billy Graham was an Arminian. The “Statement of Faith” of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association signals this clearly when it says: “…repentance of sin and faith in Jesus Christ results in regeneration by the Holy Spirit.” Rather than regeneration resulting in faith (the biblical view found in Reformed theology), the BGEA says faith results in regeneration. First you believe (using your free will) and then you are born again. Regeneration follows faith, rather than preceding it. That’s Arminianism and it was also evident in Graham’s 1977 book, How to be Born Again. Ever since that book was published, Reformed critics have pointed out that you can’t lay out steps for people to follow to be born again – regeneration is a sovereign work of the Holy Spirit who works this, as the Canons of Dort say, “in us without us” (CoD 3-4.12). Telling someone how to be born again is just as absurd as telling a baby in the womb how to be born. Preached to millions Graham began doing evangelistic work in about 1944. The first few years were spent in obscurity in the United States and England. But this changed dramatically in 1949. It happened in Los Angeles where Graham was doing a series of revival meetings. William Randolph Hearst was the head of an American newspaper chain. Somehow word about Graham reached him. He liked what he heard. Graham was patriotic and young people were attracted to him. Hearst was also an American patriot, and because this was the time of the Cold War, he was deeply concerned about the communist threat from the Soviet Union. He saw Graham as a figure who would encourage and support American values. Graham could be helpful in shielding America from the Soviet Union’s plans to dominate the world. Hearst sent a two-word telegram to all his newspapers to “puff Graham.” And they did. Newspapers all over the United States were covering Graham’s crusade in Los Angeles. He soon appeared on the cover of leading American news magazines. His crusade in Los Angeles was planned for three weeks, but because of the news coverage, Graham extended it to eight. And this is where the story of Billy Graham’s celebrity status begins. In 1950, he started the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. The Association started organizing crusades around the world. It also started a radio broadcast called “The Hour of Decision,” and eventually that led to his appearance on television as well. When I was a boy, I can remember watching the Billy Graham crusades on television sometimes. I grew up in a church of Dutch immigrants and I wasn’t used to hearing a preacher without a Dutch accent. He preached clearly. He often had a Bible in his hand, and he seemed to be preaching about what the Bible says. Billy Graham was a skilled communicator. He was simply a preacher, a man who preached with sincerity and seriousness. Over the years, Graham did over 400 crusades in 185 countries. His largest event ever was in Seoul, South Korea in 1986 where one million people attended a single crusade evening. His last crusade was in 2005. Through television and radio, he has preached to millions of people. Consider this fact: more people have heard Billy Graham preach than any other single preacher in the history of the world. That’s amazing. Minimized key doctrinal differences So what were some of the features of Billy Graham’s revival ministry? He preached for individual decisions for Christ. Following in the footsteps of revivalists before him, public relations campaigns were crucial. So was getting the sponsorship of local churches. Graham also made efforts to involve churches by having them send volunteers for his crusades. They would work as counsellors and in other capacities. Local churches would also be involved with follow-up. Billy Graham wanted to make sure that the people who made decisions would be contacted by local churches soon afterwards. Graham even said this was the most important aspect of his work. This became controversial in the late 1950s because of who he was working with. He worked with evangelical churches, but he also worked with the large mainline churches that were friendly to liberal theology. Converts from his crusades would be directed to become members of these liberal gospel-denying churches. That caused many fundamentalist Christians to become angry with Graham. Eventually Billy Graham even came to cooperate with Roman Catholic Churches. If someone would come to a crusade and make a decision and identify as a Roman Catholic, then they would be directed back to the Roman Catholic Church for spiritual care. Billy Graham was surprisingly open to Roman Catholicism. At one point he said, “I have no quarrel with the Catholic Church.” In another place, he said, “I feel I belong to all the churches. I am equally at home in an Anglican or Baptist or a Brethren assembly or a Roman Catholic Church.” He was invited to worship alongside Pope John Paul II at a service in South Carolina in 1987, and he would have if not for an unexpected invitation to China. Doctrinal differences were minimized and became irrelevant. Carrying on the tradition of previous revivalists like Dwight Moody, another important feature of the Billy Graham crusades was the music. Especially at the “moment of decision,” it was important to have the right music played and sung by skilled musicians. Billy Graham had a long-standing relationship with George Beverly Shea. Shea began working with Graham in 1947. Shea would sing a solo before Graham gave his message. That was to prepare the crowd to receive his words. After the message, however, Shea turned the singing over to the choir. They would sing the well-known hymn “Just As I Am” and people would be invited to come forward and make their decision. The music set the mood. The end of an era Billy Graham retired from active ministry in 2006. Since then, there hasn’t really been anyone to replace him in American revivalistic evangelism. His son Franklin has done some crusades, but he’s not as popular as his father was. The phenomenon of revivalism appears to have run its course. Revivals as big events with preaching and music can hardly compete with television, movies, and the Internet. With Graham’s death, the era of American revivalism definitely seems to have drawn to a close. End note All of this is from Iain Murray's Evangelicalism Divided, 68-69. This post is reprinted with permission from Dr. Bredenhof's blog, Yinkahdinay. The picture is from Shutterstock.com. __________________________ Quotes by and on Graham Fighting segregation “Millions of people were intensely charged over segregation, and any preacher defying the color line in the South in the 1950s was exposing himself to physical harm and even death….The story is told… of how at one of his early 1950s crusades, Graham asked the head usher to take down the ropes used to segregate blacks from whites. The usher refused. So Graham walked down off the platform and took down the ropes himself. I don’t care what you say, that’s courage right there.” - Dr. Joel McDurmon On staying free of scandal "We all knew of evangelists who had fallen into immorality while separated from their families by travel. We pledged among ourselves to avoid any situation that would have even the appearance of compromise or suspicion. From that day on, I did not travel, meet or eat alone with a woman other than my wife. We determined that the Apostle Paul’s mandate to the young pastor Timothy would be ours as well: “Flee … youthful lusts” (2 Timothy 1:22, KJV)." - Billy Graham on what would come to be known as the “Billy Graham rule” that he and his ministry team crafted back in 1948 in Modesto, California. On death "Someday you will read or hear that Billy Graham is dead. Don’t you believe a word of it. I shall be more alive than I am now. I will just have changed my address. I will have gone into the presence of God." - Billy Graham, adapting a quote from D.L. Moody...

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News

The Mike Pence rule won’t save us…but can it help us?

In the spring of 2017 the Washington Post got mainstream media pundits chortling, when they revealed that US Vice President Mike Pence had a rule that he wouldn’t dine alone with any woman other than his wife. The media hated this “Mike Pence rule” mocking it as some combination of childish and prudish. It was said to be sexist, suppressing advancement opportunities for women since they wouldn’t be able to get the same alone time with the boss as the boys. A half year later the New Yorker ran an exposé on Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, accusing him of sexually harassing or assaulting 13 women. The publication of these accusations prompted dozens of other women to come forward with further accusations. This spawned a “#MeToo movement” with more and more women coming forward, alleging abuse at the hands of powerful men of all sorts, including US senator Al Franken, Today host Matt Lauer, storyteller Garrison Keillor, US senate candidate Roy Moore, actor Dustin Hoffman, and, just this week, the now former leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party, Patrick Brown. And while most of the accused admitted to at least some sort of misconduct, others, like Brown, claim to be completely innocent. So in light of the #MeToo movement, and the enormous abuse of power it exposed among influential men of all sorts, is it time to revisit the Pence rule? Some say no, Christians among them. A month after the Weinstein allegations came out, Katelyn Beaty, an editor at Christianity Today wrote “A Christian case against the Pence Rule” for the New York Times. In it she gave this less than flattering assessment of the rule: “The Pence rule arises from a broken view of the sexes: Men are lustful beasts that must be contained, while women are objects of desire that must be hidden away. Offering the Pence rule as a solution to male predation is like saying, ‘I can’t meet with you one on one, otherwise I might eventually assault you.’ If that’s the case, we have far deeper problems around men and power than any personal conduct rule can solve.” This is quite the condemnation! And yet Beaty granted that the Pence rule – also known as the Billy Graham rule, as he adopted it long before the Vice President – has saved Pence from ever facing the same allegations that were leveled at Roy Moore, Patrick Brown and others. Beaty also grants that the “Bible says a lot about humans’ proclivity to sin.” In fact, she makes a good case for the rule before she then presents her case against: the Pence rule can be frustrating to women who know that alone time with the boss, and “the informal and strategic conversations” that can occur in that setting are “the stuff of workplace advancement.” There’s something to what she says – the Pence rule may make it harder for women to advance in some workplace settings…though a smart boss will be sure to create such opportunities other ways for valued female employees. But even if we grant the rule can cause such hindrances, so long as we live in an imperfect world, we need to acknowledge there are no perfect solutions, only tradeoffs. So then the issue is not, is the Mike Pence rule perfect? It is not. Instead we should ask, does it help more than it hinders, and is it better than the available alternatives? And in answer to that, consider: A large numbers of men have been accused of, and many have then admitted to, victimizing women. The harassment or assault often occurring when they got a woman alone. Other men have been accused of assault or harassment and deny it by women they spent time alone with. One man has a system by which he not only would never commit sexual sin, but could never even be accused of it. That man is mocked as a prude, Pharisee, fool, misogynist, etc. The Pence rule does more than shield women from male predation, so, no, it doesn't presume every man is a "lustful beast." It acknowledges that sexual temptation is real, and the workplace environment involves long hours of time spent together. This rule, then, also helps both men and women avoid workplace temptation. And it serves as an assurance to their spouses. Finally, it helps protect men from false accusations. There are downsides to this rule, but it also has quite the upside. It's important to note that, while there is a biblical basis to the Pence/Graham rule – it acknowledges the fallen nature of men and women and the powerful pull of sexual temptation – we aren’t going to find the rule itself in Scripture. That’s why we mustn’t treat it as something sacred or something every Christian business owner must be implementing. Maybe they have their own ways to combat sexual harassment, minimize temptation, and protect against false accusations. But there is a reason that Mike Pence and Billy Graham have never been tainted by sexual scandal, even as so many others in their positions have – there is wisdom to be found here. That said, we shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking this rule is going to save us. As Reformed blogger Tim Challies writes: Rules have their place, but they must never be separated from a prayerful determination to put sin to death. Picture is modified from file by Laurel L. Russwurm. It is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license....

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Assorted

Am I a fanatic?

In 1957 Billy Graham came to a crowd of 3,000, in Urbana, Illinois with a rebuke. These young people had come from all over to attend an InterVarsity conference so these were engaged, interested young Christians. But it was precisely their interest and engagement that Graham was questioning. They served the one true God. Their Savior had triumphed over death, and secured for them eternal life. They had every reason to be zealous, to be fanatics. But were they? In 2 Samuel 12 the prophet Nathan tells a story to King David about a heartless rich man, and reveals to David at the end, “You are that man!” At the conference Billy Graham read an excerpt from a letter – a letter by a true fanatic – to reveal to his listeners that, “You are not this man.” It was by a young convert to communism, who was explaining to his fiancée why he was breaking off their engagement. We Communists don’t have the time or the money for many movies, or concerts, or T-bone steaks, or decent homes and new cars. We’ve been described as fanatics. We are fanatics. Our lives are dominated by one great overshadowing factor, the struggle for world communism. We Communists have a philosophy of life which no amount of money could buy. We have a cause to fight for, a definite purpose in life. We subordinate our petty, personal selves into a great movement of humanity, and if our personal lives seem hard, or our egos appear to suffer through subordination to the party, then we are adequately compensated by the thought that each of us in his small way is contributing to something new and true and better for mankind. There is one thing in which I am in dead earnest and that is the Communist cause. It is my life, my business, my religion, my hobby, my sweetheart, my wife and mistress, my bread and meat. I work at it in the daytime and dream of it at night. Its hold on me grows, not lessens as time goes on. Therefore, I cannot carry on a friendship, a love affair, or even a conversation without relating it to this force which both drives and guides my life. I evaluate people, books, ideas, and actions according to how they affect the Communist cause and by their attitude toward it. I’ve already been in jail because of my ideas and if necessary, I’m ready to go before a firing squad. This zealot worshipped a false god. In comparison, our God in infinitely greater – the one true God who made all of reality: the Earth, the stars, the animals, everything. And He sent his very own Son to die for us. This, then, is a God worthy of all honor! Yet, are we willing to make everything – our ego, our ambitions, our business, and our relationships – secondary to Him? Do we love Him like that? How do we compare to this young zealot? In Revelation 2, God congratulates the Church at Ephesus for their toil, their perseverance, and their discernment. But there was a problem: "I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Therefore remember from where you have fallen, and repent and do the deeds you did at first..." The Christians in Ephesus had a lot going for them but they had stopped being fanatical. After what God has done for us – He made us, and He saved us – He deserves so much better than a lukewarm love. So here's a question for us all: am I a fanatic? Would anyone say that about me? Or do I need to repent?...