I had never heard of Wes Huff before reading this article by Pastor Kent Brandenburg.
2Corithians 6:17 Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you,
“Jesus wept.”
‘Jesus was almost to the tomb of Lazarus and about to demonstrate his Divinity by raising His friend from the dead. But He was deeply moved in sympathetic sorrow by the distraught and weeping Mary and all those weeping around her. Here on the part of the Son of Man were tears of love, of sympathy, of compassion, and of deep emotion. The Bible says He was deeply moved. Jesus is not only perfectly divine, but perfectly human!
The verse from John 11:35, which is famously the shortest verse in the King James Bible, highlights the fact that tears demonstrate humanity – not only Christ’s identification with our humanity but humanity itself. In fact, they are an important part of our body, soul, and spirit!
Researchers say that human beings are distinct from animals because we can cry emotional tears. They also say that it can be a healthy thing to shed such tears. Tears can release hormones and other body chemistry which cleanse and renew us.
I remember I cried at the birth of each of our six children. I cried as I danced the father-daughter dance at her wedding reception. I’ve cried in worship experiences and other times in communion with the Lord, and at the passing of loved ones and other losses. I’ve also cried in repentance.
The human body is amazing and has many special distinctions from the animal kingdom. And we human beings are not only physical bodies, but are also made up of soul and spirit per the Bible (e.g., 1 Thessalonians 5:23). This means that the interactions between physicality, biochemistry, emotions, intellect, personality and things like repentance, forgiveness, and other interactions of a spiritual nature all overlap. Emotions can trigger release of biochemical hormones, and vice versa. Biochemical hormone release in the body can trigger emotions, as can drugs ingested into the body. And things like faith, fear, joy, and love can trigger biochemical hormones in the body. So it goes both ways across a continuum – the immaterial to the physical, and vice versa.
The human body is an amazing thing, interacting marvelously with mental and emotional focus. Baseball players can actually watch a baseball thrown toward them at 90 miles an hour by someone who doesn’t want them to succeed, and swing a bat around with their legs, hips, arms, and wrists all working together to hit the fast-moving spheroid into the field of play, and then run to first base. That the eyes, brain, and other body parts can work so well together – adjusting to fast balls, curve balls, sliders and other pitches over different parts of home plate – is really quite amazing. There is still no machine that can replace a baseball batter – yet, the human body is said to have evolved by chance and natural selection?!
The human eye can detect the faintest light possible – a single photon of light – and can also work with 10 billion photons of light. In the language of Optics, its “dynamic range”, that is the ability to capture “contrast”, is 10 billion to one! The best digital cameras can only reach half that. The human eye also has an enormous number of “pixels” (a very small area of illumination on a screen) especially compared to even the best HD TV screens – 130 million pixels versus 8.3 million for a 3840 x 2160, horizontal x vertical pixel HD TV. And those human eyes can also shed emotional tears.
Clearly, there is a God, the Biblical God, who designed and created all this! And clearly, human beings are unique in our intellectual, emotional and spiritual connection to Him and His marvelous creation! Once again, we are comprised of body, soul, and spirit – simultaneously!
Christians have understood this. Humanity is God’s special creation. And Christian movements over the years have declared, decreed, and organized their vision and mission around the Great Commission to redeem us to our Maker. Listen to the famous words of Pastor Robert Hunt on April 29, 1607 at the first landing on Cape Henry in the mouth of Chesapeake Bay during the founding of the Jamestown Colony. It was a special declaration that has been honored and proven true for over 400 years! – about the United States, and the gospel outreach that has flowed within and from “these shores”.
“We do hereby dedicate this Land, and ourselves, to reach the People within these shores with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and to raise up Godly generations after us, and with these generations take the Kingdom of God to all the earth. … May those who come here to inhabit join us in this Covenant and this most noble work, that the Holy Scriptures may be fulfilled. From these very shores the gospel shall go forth, not only to this new world, but the entire world.” Then he read from Psalm 22:27, “All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord. And all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before Thee.”
For many years, America has been organizing, spending and sending a bulk of the missions effort for worldwide gospel outreach. That continues to this day – in spite of all the evil influence of modern culture! It’s a wonderful legacy. Yet, we could do so much more. How is it that so many Christians can tip the server 15% at the restaurant but have a hard time giving 10% to gospel outreach?
For several years, Creation Moments has been responding to the Lord’s leading from Revelation 14:6-7 – to grow our efforts to expand the languages and worldwide broadcast reach for our pre-evangelism creation science and creation-evangelism programming. We have “heard the word” and “received the illumination” of God’s call to us about “the angel having the everlasting gospel” to “preach… to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people” a message that hinges on the truth of creation! “Worship Him that made heaven and earth, and the sea and the fountains of waters” (Revelation 14:7b). Here is the last use of the word “gospel” in the whole Bible. And it contains the most essential creationist messaging!’https://creationmoments.com/newsletter/august-2023-from-these-very-shores-the-gospel-shall-go-forth-not-only-to-this-new-world-but-the-entire-world/?mc_cid=d108c81508&mc_eid=00c1dcff3c
Romans 1:24-27 Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: 25 Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. 26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: 27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.
God will save all “whosoever” wills that will turn from their sins in repentance and come to Him by faith BUT He died for their sins and if they will not repent of their sins he will NOT save them. Luke 13:3 I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.
‘In the past, The Alpha Conference has been hosted by two ecumenical organizations — Major Change, a charismatic Evangelical organization, and Stone to Flesh, a charismatic Roman Catholic ecumenical organization. The two organizations have practically merged into one big ecumenical mess. And in the past, we’ve lambasted Hillsong Church for hosting the conference on their facilities.
But now that Hillsong Church is practically dead from its endless sex scandals among its leadership, Alpha seems to have found a new home—in the Southern Baptist Convention.
First Baptist Church in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, a Southern Baptist congregation according to both the Southern Baptist Convention’s church search engine as well as the church’s website, will be hosting the ecumenical conference this January 2023.’https://disntr.com/2023/01/02/major-southern-baptist-church-to-hold-ecumenical-conference-with-roman-catholic-speakers/
This was an email from The Voice of the Martyrs.
‘When Fu Xuanjuan saw a way to share God’s Word under the watchful eye of China’s Communist authorities, she prayerfully acted on it with help from other believers.
Her company, Shenzhen Tree of Life Technology Development, produced digital media players that contained a narrated recording of the Bible as well as sermons and hymns. The players were especially helpful to elderly Christians. But Chinese authorities discovered the devices’ content and came after those who developed them.
On July 2, 2020, Fu Xuanjuan was arrested for the production and distribution of Christian literature. Her husband, Deng Tianyong, and two other employees were also detained. After being convicted of “illegal business operation,” Fu Xuanjuan was sentenced to six years in prison. Her evangelist husband, who managed content for the digital players, received a three-year sentence. Feng Qunchao, a technician, was sentenced to 30 months in prison. And the company’s receptionist and accountant, Han Li, received an 18-month sentence and has since been released.
Fu Xuanjuan and Deng Tianyong’s adopted 14-year-old daughter and Deng Tianyong’s widowed mother have been cared for by church members since the arrests.’
History has shown that Denominationalism leads to liberalism! That’s exactly where the Southern Baptist Convention finds itself again! History has also shown that when liberalism gets a foot hold in a denomination the only thing to do is SEPARATE! However, the not so woke in the SBC say ‘We, concerned Southern Baptists of differing geographical, theological and vocational perspectives, in one voice nominate Pastor Tom Ascol for President of the Southern Baptist Convention, and SBC Missionary Voddie Baucham for President of the SBC Pastors’ Conference.
The Southern Baptist Convention plays a vital role in global Christianity, with the world’s largest missionary force and 11% of America’s churches. But perhaps even more importantly, through our six seminaries, we educate one third of America’s seminary students. Our institutions affect vastly more than just ourselves.
But the Southern Baptist Convention badly needs a change of direction. While baptisms and evangelism continue their freefall, a small group of leaders steers our institutions ever closer to the culture, from radical feminism masked as “soft complementarianism” to the false gospel of Critical Theory and Intersectionality. In Christ there is no Jew or Greek, there is no slave or free, we are all made one in Him. But this “Race Marxism” divides everyone by their most superficial features, in a never-ending cycle of recrimination and hate.
We reject these worldly dogmas. We stand together on the Baptist Faith and Message. We proclaim the sufficiency of Scripture. And we know the vast majority of Southern Baptists do too.
At this critical juncture, we need men to serve who can unite our convention around the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We believe there are no two better men to lead us in this vital task than Tom Ascol and Voddie Baucham.
For many years, Tom Ascol has been a faithful conservative voice in the SBC. The grandson of a Syrian Muslim immigrant who was murdered in the South in the 1920s, Tom Ascol has seen the grace of God at work in his family, and savingly in his own life. He believes the Gospel is the sole answer to the challenges we currently face as Southern Baptists.
Likewise, Voddie Baucham is one of the most faithful expositors of our day, a day in which sound preaching is more important than ever. He will give the exact kind of leadership needed for the SBC Pastors’ Conference, an event which in recent years has shifted radically from one of the high points of the entire year into what many have termed “Woke Fest”. The importance of restoring that pivotal event cannot be overstated.
We’ve been told “the world is watching”, and so it is, demanding that the church conform. But we believe that God is watching, that He alone defines our terms and sets our agenda.
And God is not Woke.’https://founders.org/2022/03/22/statement-from-southern-baptists-nominating-tom-ascol-and-voddie-baucham/
‘Perhaps you, like me, as a Christian, pay attention to certain celebrity conservatives, who take many of the same or similar viewpoints as you. You know there are differences. Where is the overlap? In diagnosing a worldview, there are various components to understanding it, as some people have or might put it, to see the map of the world. Some of them are knowledge, ethics, purpose, and epistemology, but among the others, I want to explore two of them, reality and truth, as they relate to celebrity conservatives versus true Bible believers. In general, very often true Bible believers are interested in the celebrity conservatives without their being interested in them. Part of their “fan base” are Christians, who listen to their podcasts and watch their shows. One of the celebrity conservatives, Jordan Peterson, the famous PhD professor, author, and public intellectual and speaker from Canada, doesn’t even call himself a conservative. Celebrity conservatives today might call themselves classic liberals (you can look up classical liberalism). Maybe he really isn’t conservative, but you also shrink your audience if you call yourself one. As well, “liberal” might mean you keep your job and other opportunities. Peterson does resonate with true Bible believers and they listen to, watch, and read him. When I write, celebrity conservatives, I’m especially saying, Peterson, Ben Shapiro, Charlie Kirk, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, the late Rush Limbaugh, Dennis Prager, and Candace Owens. There are many others. There is overlap between their worldviews and the worldview of a true Bible believer. Before Covid hit and also before he had major health issues, my wife and I and another couple got tickets to hear Jordan Peterson in person in San Francisco, sponsored by the Independent Institute. As I was listening to him, I enjoyed many things he was saying. However, I knew he and I did not have the same worldview. I was glad he could say what he did in public, but it wasn’t nearly enough for me either. The celebrity conservatives like him are disappointing. In the last week, I was thinking about the difference between the worldviews of celebrity conservatives and true Bible believers. Even as I write this, I think about how a true Bible believer could even be a celebrity in our world. I don’t think it’s possible. The greater the celebrity status, the more you must be doing something wrong, and that includes evangelical leaders who have their own celebrity. They in part got there through capitulation and compromise. Their greater celebrity doesn’t speak well. The common ground in worldview, I believe, is that there is more proximity between celebrity conservatives and true Bible believers in their view of reality. I would say that they both attempt to function according to reality, even if it means abandoning the truth. The truth and reality do go together. They overlap completely for a true Bible believer, but they don’t for celebrity conservatives. Even actual reality and the reality of celebrity of conservatives don’t overlap identically. To stay a celebrity, like everyone else who isn’t a true Bible believer, celebrity conservatives forsake actual reality and even more so, the truth. Let me explain. I want to use Jordan Peterson as an example. Jesus either rose from the dead or He didn’t. Jesus can’t be the greatest figure who ever lived if He wasn’t truth and He lied about the resurrection. Peterson says that he’s not sure if he believes Christianity, but he tries to live like one. He’s also saying, he’s not committing to the truth of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, while living like Jesus did resurrect from the dead. He borrows a reality based upon the truth without actually believing the truth. Other conservatives do that, and it’s easy to see. The world we live in is the real world. Celebrity conservatives more than the mainstream culture try to explain positions according to reality, even if they deny much of the truth or many truths, depending how you want to put that. You may live a reality of Jesus and defend a life that fits His existence and deny the pivotal truth of His resurrection. Peterson does that. Complementarianism is the truth and celebrity conservatives borrow from a complementarian reality without the truth of complementarianism. Gender fluidity proceeds from egalitarianism. God designed men and women differently. That’s the truth. Celebrity conservatives deny complementarian truth while defending a complementarian reality. Let me get more simple. Whether you think he’s a conservative or not, let’s consider President Donald J. Trump as if he were a conservative. Trump operates according to a certain Christian reality that results in Christian support, including from true Bible believers. Trump thinks that one thing is better than another. Certain behavior is wrong. He believes that America as a standard of living better than other countries, which can be and should be protected at the border. This is one of the most fundamental conservative beliefs and it is a reality that borrows from the truth. Former President Trump doesn’t believe the truth, but he functions as though there is truth. He is a realist in that we must have standards. Things won’t be better when we can’t discern the differences of one thing from another. This is a reality according to a Christian worldview. The truth is more important. However, people who eject from reality are much further away from the truth. These either practical or positional nihilists must be rejected for something short of the truth, if that’s the choice. The path to the truth won’t come through their relativism. It can come through someone who at least embraces reality, even if it doesn’t mirror actual reality. The answer for humanity is still the truth. It isn’t the reality of celebrity conservatives.’https://kentbrandenburg.com/2021/09/12/reality-and-truth-celebrity-conservatives-versus-true-bible-believers/
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