Here is a short film (7min) that draws a vision of future education under the dictate of equality and political correctness. If everyone is offended by everyone, everyone is trying not to offend someone and free speech is to dangerous because it could offend someone, than you really are a slave in a prison.
A very good (theological) overwiev about the decisions you have to make to believe in Pre-trib Rapture or post-trig Rapture by Dr. Michael Heiser.
http://www.michaelsheiser.com/Videos/ProphecyWk2PPT/ProphecyWk2PPT.html
Here is Lewis writing to his friend Arthur, amazingly within a year after his conversion:
During my afternoon “meditations,”—which I at least attempt quite regularly now—I have found out ludicrous and terrible things about my own character. Sitting by, watching the rising thoughts to break their necks as they pop up, one learns to know the sort of thoughts that do come.
And, will you believe it, one out of every three is the thought of self-admiration: when everything else fails, having had its neck broken, up comes the thought “what an admirable fellow I am to have broken their necks!” I catch myself posturing before the mirror, so to speak, all day long. I pretend I am carefully thinking out what to say to the next pupil (for his good, of course) and then suddenly realize I am really thinking how frightfully clever I’m going to be and how he will admire me…
And then when you force yourself to stop it, you admire yourself for doing that. It is like fighting the hydra… There seems to be no end to it. Depth under depths of self-love and self-admiration. (quoted in The Narnian by Alan Jacobs, 133)
(found in Dr. Lalith Mendis recent article about Self-Love)
Our decisions matter. Every decision against my old self, every denying self, every dying to myself, every “staying on the cross” brings us nearer to the “transfiguration” – into a mature son of god. Oswald Chambers explains it this way:
When holy character was fully matured in Our Lord, earth lost its hold on Him and He was transfigured. In all probability if Adam had transformed his innocence into holy character by obeying God‟s voice, transfiguration would have been the way out of this order of things, there would have been no death. The entering in of sin made that impossible. Adam was intended by God to partake in his own development by sacrificing the life of nature to the will of God, and in that way to transform innocence into holiness. Our Lord came on the same plane as Adam and He did all that Adam failed to do; He transformed innocence into holy character, and when He had reached the full purpose of His Manhood He was transfigured.
Oswald Chambers, Bringing Sons Unto Glory
That every Christian can be and should be filled with the Holy Spirit would hardly seem to be a matter for debate among Christians. … I want here boldly to assert that it is my happy belief that every Christian can have a copious outpouring of the Holy Spirit in a measure far beyond that received at conversion, and I might also say, far beyond that enjoyed by the rank and file of orthodox believers today.
It is important that we get this straight, for until doubts are removed, faith is impossible. God will not surprise a doubting heart with an effusion of the Holy Spirit, nor will He fill anyone who has doctrinal questions about the possibility of being filled.
In light of this, it will be seen how empty and meaningless is the average church service today. All the means are in evidence; the one ominous weakness is the absence of the Spirit’s power. … The power from on high is neither known nor desired by pastor or people. This is nothing less than tragic, and all the more so because it falls within the field of religion, where the eternal destinies of men are involved.
Fundamentalism has stood aloof from the liberal in self-conscious superiority and has on its own part fallen into error, the error of textualism, which is simply orthodoxy without the Holy Ghost. Everywhere among conservatives we find persons who are Bible-taught but not Spirit-taught. They conceive truth to be something which they can grasp with the mind.
If a man holds to the fundamentals of the Christian faith, he is thought to possess divine truth. But it does not follow. There is no truth apart from the Spirit. The most brilliant intellect may be imbecilic when confronted with the mysteries of God. For a man to understand revealed truth requires an act of God equal to the original act which inspired the text. … “Now we have received, not the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God; that we might know the things which are freely given us of God.”
For the textualism of our times is based upon the same premise as the old line rationalism, that is, the belief that the human mind is the supreme authority in the judgment of truth. Or otherwise stated, it is confidence in the ability of the human mind to do that which the Bible declares it was never created to do and consequently is wholly incapable of doing.Philosophical rationalism is honest enough to reject the Bible flatly. Theological rationalism rejects it while pretending to accept it and in so doing puts out its own eyes.
Few there are who without restraint will open their whole heart to the blessed Comforter. He has been and is so widely misunderstood that the very mention of His name in some circles is enough to frighten many people into resistance.
It is no use to deny that Christ was crucified by persons who would today be called fundamentalists. This should prove to be disquieting if not downright distressing to us who pride ourselves on our orthodoxy. An unblessed soul filled with the letter of truth may actually be worse off than a pagan kneeling before a fetish. We are saved only when our intellects are indwelt by the loving fire that came at Pentecost. For the Holy Spirit is not a luxury, not something added now and again to produce a deluxe type of Christian once in a generation. No. He is for every child of God a vital necessity, and that He fill and indwell His people is more than a languid hope. It is rather an inescapable imperative.
Now the Bible teaches that there is something in God which is like emotion. … God has said certain things about Himself, and these furnish all the grounds we require. “The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing” (Zeph. 3:17). This is but one verse among thousands which serve to form our rational picture of what God is like, and tell us plainly that God feels something like our love, like our joy, and what He feels makes Him act very much as we would in a similar situation; He rejoices over His loved ones with joy and singing.
Here is emotion on as high a plain as it can ever be seen, emotion flowing out of the heart of God Himself. Feeling, then, is not the degenerate son of unbelief that is often painted by some of our Bible teachers. Our ability to feel is one of the marks of our divine origin. We need not be ashamed of either tears or laughter. The Christian stoic who has crushed his feelings is only two-thirds of a man; an important third part has been repudiated. Holy feeling had an important place in the life of our Lord. “For the joy that was set before Him” He endured the cross and despised its shame. He pictured Himself crying, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost.”
The work of the Holy Spirit is, among other things, to rescue the redeemed man’s emotions, to restring his harp and open again the wells of sacred joy which have been stopped up by sin.
An interesting quote from John Piper:
God humbles Charismatics by making their children Calvinists; and Calvinists by making their children speak in tongues.
The ecclesiastical bloodhounds are already reasoning if John Piper has lost his doctrinal mind…
Übersetzung: Ein interessantes Zitat von John Piper: “Gott demütigt die Charismatiker, indem er ihre Kinder Calvinisten werden lässt und er demütigt die Calvinisten, indem er ihre Kinder Charismatiker werden lässt.
Dr. Heiser explains the appearances of the person later known as “Jesus” in the “Old Testament”. This is an eye-opener – Jesus, the Word, is everywhere in the Old Testament, and he is very “personal” and very “physical”.
The Jews used to have a doctrine of “Two Powers” or “Two Jahwes” in Heaven, this doctrine explained all the appearances of “The Angel of the Lord“, the “memra“, the “Word of the Lord appearing“, the personification of “Wisdom” and other manifestations of the one and only God. That is one of the reasons, John picked up on the “logos” beeing Jesus – that was not greek influence, but building on the pentateuch/torah foundation. When the jewish Rabbis later realized, that the christians using this as a proof for Jesus, they decided, the doctrine of the second Jahwe or of the “two powers” is heresy and against the “Sh’ma“…
A very interesting and enlightening article about The Eternal Word of God or the “Only begotten” Son Jesus Christ, appearing again and again in the Old Testament.
+ Dr. M. Heiser – The Unexpected Word (Pdf)
For further study on this subject and especially the subject of the Divine Council go to this website:
Some very plain words from Open Doors USA Director Dr. Carl Moeller about the American Church, you find the whole article in the link below the quote:
“For years we’ve said wake up and strengthen what remains, Open Doors USA President and CEO Dr. Carl Moeller told The Christian Post in an exclusive interview. We would think of the American church as a napping church and that we would elbow it and it would wake up and rouse itself and do something.
In my mind today, the picture I have is a church in a diabetic coma that has gorged itself on the sweets of affluence, materialism, and the idolatry of worshipping the materialistic world. That diabetic coma is now life threatening. We as a church are at the point of death – not the church in the Middle East. We are the ones who can no longer rouse ourselves to even pray for an hour on behalf of things that God would have us pray for.”
He also prophesies a coming persecution to the USA and explains that the task of the Church is not to entertain the people, ubt to prepare them for the spiritual battle that is raging around us.