Category: Current Events

Nope. No Indoctrination Going On Here!

What is being talked about with history? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I was going to continue looking at the Muslim book, but I want to comment on a mailout that I got yesterday from Tom Woods. It’s actually going to take place right here in my own New Orleans. I saw a list of some of the topics he said were going to be spoken on and so I went and looked them up. Yep. They’re there.

You know how we’re constantly told that there’s no campaign going on to indoctrinate your kids?

They’re lying.

You can see the program here.

Doing a Ctrl+F, the word “Queer” shows up fifty-one times and LGBTQ shows up twenty-five times. There’s even a talk Woods pointed out on how to support “Pregnant-capable” students in abortion-ban states. That leaves me wondering what that has to do with American history. Check it out women. Now you are known as “Pregnant-capable” people. How’s that war against the patriarchy going?

Now I’m not saying all of the talks are like that. There could be some that are just fine to go to. I am saying that when you look at the bulk of these, they are more ideologically driven than anything else.

Remember, it was just within the past thirty years that we were told that all that was wanted was tolerance. Many of us at the time knew that was a lie. How can we tell it was? Because as soon as the party crying tolerance got into power, they treated anyone who disagreed with them with anything but tolerance. Cries of “Please just let us be!” became “Bake the cake or be ruined, bigot!”

If we want to talk about where our country really went off the rails, if I could point to one major event that started everything, I would point to the sexual revolution. Nothing has led to the breakdown of the family unit more than this disastrous event. Sadly, we in the church have not responded well as we are often just as informed on sexual matters. If anything, divorce and living together before marriage are too common in the church. (Keep in mind, I say this as someone who is divorced. In many cases, if you want to meet someone who hates divorce, find someone who was wrongfully divorced.)

Nowadays, your kids are not being taught history. They are being taught history and politics. They are not being taught science, but science and politics. I remember when I was in school learning about environmentalism in the fifth grade. (I also remember learning about fears of a coming ice age.)

The solution is also the same every time. More government. By the way, this is also something that goes along with redefining marriage. Since the State made up an artificial idea of marriage, they are the ones that have to defend it and force it on everyone else. Change the idea of marriage for one and you change it for all. All of this gives the state more power and more control.

Who knows? Maybe I’ll talk to some people here on campus and see if we might attend this event just to see what it’s like. It could be an interesting experiment, though before too long, we could be branded as heretics for not supporting the new orthodoxy.

Kind of like what cults do.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

 

Is Jesus A Friend With Benefits?

Do we treat Jesus as someone who is just there for us? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I don’t remember what it was I had been thinking about, but the thought that came next was so startling that that was what stuck. I think it was something I have been thinking about lately where people like to say what God is doing in their lives, when I want people to tell me what they are doing in the life of God. After all, when we say “This is what God is doing in my life”, many times that’s our opinion of what’s going on. We could be wrong. However, we do know what it is that we are doing and we have to ask if we are serving or not.

We often talk about what it means to love someone and if you love them, you want to know them more and more. If you aren’t really invested in the relationship, then you don’t care about learning more about the other person. You’re just in the relationship for what the other person can do for you.

Many marriages are falling apart because people go into the marriage not thinking “What can I do to build up this relationship with this person?” but rather “What can this person do for me?” To some extent, we all seek our own good and it’s unavoidable and not always wrong, but when we do it at the expense of others, we have a problem. When we treat people as objects while denying their personhood, there is an issue.

Yet this is often how we treat Jesus. Do people really want to learn more about Jesus? It’s easy to figure that out. Think fast. When was the last time you heard about a church service offering a course on the doctrine of the Trinity? If you’re like me, your answer will be, “I can’t remember such a thing.”

Now think about this. When was the last time you heard a church offer a course on improving your marriage, getting your finances straight, being a better parent, etc. I am not saying those are wrong. The church should be offering those things. We should not be ignoring the weightier matters of knowing who Jesus is.

Dare I say it, but if we knew more about who Jesus is, maybe we would actually need less of the other seminars.

I remember as a child who didn’t go on overnight trips seeing kids in the Methodist Church come back from a big youth event and they were on fire for Jesus! They were super-excited! They wanted to go out and spread the gospel!

For about two weeks.

Here’s another question to ask. What did your pastor preach on yesterday? (If you are not reading this on Monday, just think to the last Sunday you were in church.) Honestly, many of you might have forgotten by the time you got home on Sunday what your pastor preached on. Could it be because it wasn’t anything new? Have you heard it before? Now think about that TV show you’re watching you really enjoy. What happened in the last episode? I’m sure you can tell me that.

We live in a culture where the church doesn’t really know who Jesus is. We just speak about what Jesus does. Sadly, the person no longer matters. This is one reason groups that come with anti-Trinitarian ideas can easily demolish Christians. Christians tend to only know Jesus by what He does instead of who He is.

Going back to the title, this is where it comes in. What do you call a relationship where you go to the other person just for what they can do for you and you don’t invest in them? You claim to love them, but your commitment is based on what they do for you. In modern terms, we think of this as friends with benefits.

Dealing with depression and anxiety? Come to Jesus. Want to get some extra money coming in? Come to Jesus. About to have a painful operation? Come to Jesus. Need to learn to crucify yourself and die to the world? Let’s not be hasty.

The Jesus we have that is rooted in being all about us will not change the world. The good news we will share is the good news that will feed narcissism rather than crucify it. We can talk about a relationship with Jesus, but too often, it is a one-sided relationship. If your walk with Jesus is all about what He has done for you, then when the so-called benefits stop, so will you. If your walk with Jesus is built on who He is and His death and resurrection, then you will have a much easier time. You will have a true covenant relationship, a marriage if you will.

Bottom line is either Jesus is your king and you serve Him, or it’s the other way around.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

No. I Don’t Care About Pagan Origins.

Does where it came from really matter? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

“But Halloween is from paganism and is rooted in Samhain.”

So this the kind of conversation I had yesterday. First off, I said that point is highly debatable. The reality is that there have been more scholarly works written about Buffy The Vampire Slayer than about Halloween. Unfortunately, much of what you see on the internet is just nonsense. I really recommend the book Unmasking Halloween which is the best book I have read on this topic thus far.

So the first point I made was to dispute the Samhain connection. Well, that wasn’t going well as they didn’t want to hear any of it, so I tried another technique which I still stand by, but as expected, didn’t go well. I said that for the sake of argument, I am going to grant everything said about Halloween.

Then here’s what I say even if we grant that it fully came from the pagans and they did evil practices on this day.

So what?

I mean that. Who cares?

Let’s use one example I have heard used before. Wedding rings. There have been some claims I have heard that these are pagan in origin. Now let’s suppose I was married again and you were able to convince me that the rings that we exchange at our wedding are entirely rooted in paganism.

What would I do in response?

Absolutely nothing.

Why? Because when I put a wedding ring on a woman’s finger, I am not doing it to honor a pagan deity. I am doing it to honor my God and my wife. I am doing it as a symbol of my love for her and as a sign to the rest of the world that we are husband and wife.

I happen to believe in a God who redeems not just people, but redeems all of reality. This God could take something that was a symbol rooted in pagan tradition and change it so it becomes a symbol of His holiness and covenant and a representation of Christian teachings. God is in the business of transforming everything.

So what about Halloween? No one is worshiping the devil when they put on a costume and go door-to-door or take their children door-to-door and ask for candy. If anything, this would be seen as a victory. We took a day allegedly intended for evil, and we turned it into a day where kids travel the streets and get candy.

Not only this, but not everything in paganism was wicked and evil. We get our intellectual ways of thinking from the Greeks. We get our legal system from the Romans. We got Algebra from the Muslims. It would be a great loss to lose everything that came to us from the pagans.

Christians. Don’t be scared when someone says something is pagan in origin. First, you can investigate and see if it’s true. Odds are, it really isn’t. Second, even if it isn’t, so what? Do you do it to honor a pagan deity? No. You do it to honor Jesus. The one who honors a day does so to the Lord as Paul says.

Happy Halloween!

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Thoughts on the Asbury Revival

What’s my take on Asbury? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

The big news going around in many areas today is what’s going on at Asbury Seminary with a revival breaking out. There are some people who are absolutely convinced that this is a move of God. There are some people who are convinced it’s more a state of high emotion.

There are actually dangers to both sides. Many of us understand the dangers of saying “This is not of God.” After all, if God is behind it, isn’t it dangerous to deny His work? Could that be an idea in our minds that is really opposed to miracles and questioning anything that could be of God?

Certainly that possible, but we also forget that it can be a danger to go the other way. I always get cautious when I am in churches and I hear people say what God has done in the life of the congregation. I have heard this in Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox churches. Who are we to think we have secret insight into the throne room of God to know what He is and isn’t doing?

So my suggestion here at the start will be to go with caution.

However, there’s another reason for that. I don’t think we’ll be able to tell what has happened until after what has happened has passed. After all, how many of us have seen marriages that we thought on their wedding day would last forever and then a few years down the road, we find that they are divorced? (Yep. People said that about my case as well.)

When things are exciting and fresh and the emotions are high, it’s easy to claim that God is behind it. If you want to know if a couple truly loves each other, you don’t ask on their wedding day. As Sam Allberry said at Defend here last month, anyone can make a promise, but keeping one is something different.

Wait and see what happens when they are in financial straits. Wait and see what happens when one of them gets seriously sick. Wait and see what happens when children come along and the relationship gets taxed. In other words, you don’t see if they love each other when times are good. You see if they love each other when times are bad.

In His parable of the sower, Christ spoke of those who receive the word with great joy and then fall away when times get hard. In other words, if you had looked at the start, you would have thought these people were in it for the long haul. Look at their joy! However, when trouble and temptation came, they fled.

Now keep in mind, I am not saying that this is definitely the case at Asbury. I am explaining why I have caution. Also, I want to bring up an article I read yesterday from NotTheBee. One part stood out for me.

The Asbury “revival” started after a 10 am chapel service last week Wednesday when a group of about 20 students and the worship team said they felt prompted by the Holy Spirit to continue worship past the end of the chapel service.

According to one of the students I talked to, a few hours later, the president of the seminary sent an email to the students encouraging them visit the chapel to join the 20 students on what he described as an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Apparently 200 students arrived for worship at the chapel soon after, and there has been non-stop worship ever since.

The student maintains the “revival” wasn’t planned. But it’s worth noting that Asbury University is part of what is known as the revivalist movement — a group of Charismatic Christians who consistently attempt to produce revivals.

No. It’s not that last paragraph. What stood out is what happened in the first two where things were immediately attributed to God. Readers here know I get cautious when I hear someone talking about how they feel the Spirit is leading them to do XYZ. Yet after that, the president immediately attributes this to the Holy Spirit. Sorry, but it sounds like jumping the gun a bit to me.

However, I agree with much of what the author says in the NotTheBee article about this. It’s easy to say that a revival is going on when people are excited. The way to know revival has truly happened will be what happens when persecution comes their way.

As a boy growing up in the Methodist church, I used to see kids come back from an event called Resurrection. The kids would be excited and put on a show during the worship service yet even in my pre-apologetics days, I noticed something. It didn’t last long. Give it a couple of weeks and these kids would go right back to not coming to Sunday School and not really caring about their faith.

That emotional high can feel good, but it will not last. The question is what will happen when it is done. If you go back to the way you were before, then you were not having joy over the Holy Spirit’s work. You were just having some joy for a feeling.

What I am saying then is we cannot know if this is from God yet or not. We will know when we see the results months or even years down the road when the fervor has died down. As long as we are in the high season, we cannot tell.

You see, your faithfulness to Jesus is not measured by how excited you are about Jesus. It is not measured by what kind of experiences you are having. It is measured by how much you are living a Christlike life.

That will also be measured by how you will handle persecution and challenges. Will these people involved in this be better able to handle persecution coming in our country from groups like the LGBTQ community? Will they be willing to take a hard stand against the evil of abortion when it gets hard? Will they be more likely to go back to their dorms and resist the urge to watch pornography? Will they be loving their neighbors as themselves?

That’s why we have to watch to see what happens next. What will happen when someone gets cancer and isn’t miraculously cured of it? Will they and those around them remain faithful? What happens if a disaster hits the community, like if something that was an offshoot of the disaster in Ohio comes? Will they remain faithful?

Some of you might think it’s scandalous to raise the question of if this is of God or not. It isn’t. It’s testing the spirits. It’s doing my due diligence.

“Well, if these people are faithful when persecution comes and this lasts, won’t you be embarrassed?”

No. I will be thankful. I hope the people involved go out and change their societies for the better. I hope they live more faithful lives to Jesus. I hope that for myself and all other Christians.

I am also not saying that emotions and experiences are bad things. I am saying these are not the indicators of a Christian life. The ones who deny Jesus in the end in Matthew 7 have a lot of experiences. What they do not have is faithfulness.

So is this of God? Time will tell.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

Yes. I am Celebrating Halloween

Why do I celebrate today? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Every Halloween some people always get on Facebook and talk about how Halloween is the day of the devil. Color me skeptical that the devil is really honored when kids put on funny costumes and pretend they’re superheroes and princesses and go door to door asking for candy. One would think the grand master of darkness would want more. Also, I have no indication that this is a sort of gateway drug to full-fledged satanism.

So tonight, I will likely be out on the seminary with several students. One of them is going to let me borrow a lawn chair and I have bags of candy to give to trick-or-treaters. Yes. I am calling it that. You can go and say “Our church doesn’t celebrate Halloween. We have a harvest festival instead.” Bull. You’re not celebrating a harvest and everyone knows it.

Now this doesn’t mean that anything goes on Halloween. Are there some things I would not dress up as and would not want my kids if I had them to dress up as? Sure. For me, I’m simply wearing my Smallville T-Shirt as my usual outfit is to go out as Clark Kent from Smallville, my favorite series. To quote Romans, let each be fully convinced in his own mind.

Is the day usually associated with death? Yes. It’s a reminder to me that when the day is seen as a pathway to getting candy, that death is not really treated as a threat and really, it isn’t, not if you’re a Christian. Death is a defeated foe. Christ conquered. Christ is the Lord of every day. The devil is not the Lord of Halloween. Jesus Christ is the Lord of Halloween and every other day.

That also in turn reminds me that Jesus is Lord over all the days that I consider sucky days. Was Jesus Lord the day that the divorce papers from my ex-wife came in the mail and I signed them? Yep. Was He Lord the day that I learned I was officially divorced? Yep. You have your own days that are sucky days. When you look back, Jesus is Lord even of those days.

So I plan then on making this day not be a sucky day for the children, and just in case, I also made sure to get candy I liked so that if no one got any, I would be able to enjoy it myself. (And that’s Reeses because any candy with peanut butter is good.) If you’re one being a sort of Halloween Scrooge, if anything, children are likely learning from you what they don’t want to be like, and you might want to consider if you’re really not acknowledging fully that Jesus is the Lord of this day.

Also, please don’t be the one who gives out gospel tracts. Kids won’t care about those. If you give out candy, you give out the best candy that you can on the block. Halloween is for children. Let them be children.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

The Failure of Bros

Is this due to “homophobia”? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I’ve seen on YouTube today a lot of talk about the failure of a movie called Bros. If you haven’t heard of this movie, it’s supposed to be a romantic comedy, but the lovers in this are a pair of men. This was the first of its kind and its fail was tremendous.

Billy Eichner, who is behind the movie, has sadly taken the lower path in handling this. Instead of looking at himself and looking at his movie and seeing why it is no one went to see it, he is instead blaming the audience. Why did it fail? It is because YOU must be a homophobe.

However, if that is the case, then even assuming everyone who saw the movie in America is gay, a lot of them even didn’t see it, so does that mean someone in the homosexual community is a homophobe? Eichner has also been on Twitter sending out regular tweets about this. Little tip here. If you want your audience to listen to you, it’s probably not a good idea to call them homophobes and anything else at the same time.

Well here are a lot of reasons most people didn’t go see this movie.

First, romcoms are normally meant for women. For the most part, men do not go to see romcoms unless their girlfriends or wives insist on it. Men would rather see an action flick of some kind. They want to see some fights, car chases, shootings, and something getting blown up. If they do go see a romcom, they want to at least see a beautiful woman in that movie.

A gay romcom has neither. No straight guy I know of wants to see two dudes getting it on together. Add in there are supposedly multiple orgies in this and we’re even less interested.

While men will go see action flicks wanting to be the man in the films, women go see romcoms because for the most part, they want to be romanced. They like the love story and it’s their kind of fairy tale. They are not interested in seeing two dudes either.

If you’re wanting men to go see your film, don’t make it a romcom.

Second, people don’t want to see something if they think they’re being preached to. Most people do not go to church for entertainment value and there’s a reason we’ve called a long message we don’t want to hear a sermon. There’s a reason we refer to a negative onslaught of what we ought to do as preaching. When people see a system they don’t want regularly put in their face, they lose interest. It’s the whole “Go woke, go broke.”

Consider how it is in superhero comics. Most people I know wouldn’t really care too much if someone wanted to make a gay superhero. What they don’t want is to take a traditional superhero who has never shown any inkling of being gay and then turning them gay to appeal to diversity. People go to comics for entertainment. They don’t go for politics.

Third, yes, a lot of people don’t agree with homosexuality, including myself, but it doesn’t do anything to call us all homophobes any more than calling non-Christians Christophobes is going to get them to repent or seriously examine Christianity. Instead of having any debate on the topic, instead, it is easier to just shout an insult at someone. It doesn’t help your side any.

That means when we go see a movie, we don’t want to see an orgy with a bunch of guys in it. That might appeal to the homosexual community, but not to heterosexual community. We also don’t care for a movie that tells us that we had a good run. You don’t tell us our time is done and then respond negatively when we choose to not show interest in you.

Ultimately, if people don’t like your work, no matter how passionate you are about it, you need to look to yourself. You will never have something that pleases everyone, but I have to do the same thing here. If people aren’t interacting with my content or taking it seriously, I have to look at myself mostly. Now there’s no harm in looking at my audience and asking what they want. I wrote about divorce for quite awhile, for instance, because I saw views were up on my blog when I did that. Give the people what they want.

If someone isn’t interested in my content, I can ask what I can do to make it interesting to them. I could look at my writing style or website presentation or anything else. The first place to start if someone doesn’t like my work is always with me. It is not with the audience.

So Billy, take a look at yourself. How passionate you are about the work doesn’t matter a bit. I can be super-passionate about selling overcoats, but it won’t work if I’m talking to people in the Middle East most likely. I can be super passionate about pork products, but it won’t work with Muslims or Orthodox Jews. Passion doesn’t equal success. Having a good product or service and then knowing your audience well and what they want does.

We just don’t want Bros. Time to accept that and move on.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: Fault Lines

What do I think of Voddie Baucham Jrs book published by Salem Books? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Baucham is concerned about the evangelical church in America and the rest of the world for that matter. Too many good Christians are buying into Critical Race Theory. It might look good for awhile. After all, who wants to say that black lives don’t matter? Don’t we all agree that racism is a bad thing? Don’t we all want justice? Of course, but there are bad ways to get good things.

Baucham does agree that racism is in America, but America is not systematically racist. Racism is not at the root of all of our ills. He also sees CRT as Marxist and pagan in its origins. It will do more harm by far than good.

Baucham also deals with statistics on crime and other issues. For example, he tells the story of a young man who died tragically at the hands of police. A police officer pinned him to the ground and mocked him. He pleaded with the officers saying that they were going to kill him. The officers did nothing and kept making jokes.

No. That’s not George Floyd. That’s Tony Timpa. Timpa had schizophrenia and had called the police himself because he was off his meds and he had already been handcuffed by a security guard. Timpa died under those police officers before the paramedics arrived.

Most of you never heard of him because he was white.

On October 5, 2016, an officer was nearly beaten to death by a suspect. She knew she should have used her weapon. Her supervisor told her she should have. Why didn’t she?

Because she knew the next day she and her family would undergo scrutiny on the national news. There are real world consequences?

What about Dylan Noble? During a routine traffic stop, he reached into his wasitband and was shot 11 times. Why do you not know about him? He’s white.

Breanna Taylor made the national news when she did in a shooting involving the police. A police officer served an eviction notice on her Dad. The Dad pulled a weapon and the officer pulled out his gun and fired. The bullet passed through his arm and hit Ciara which caused her death eventually. Why do you not know about this? She was white.

Why bring these up? Because people love to bring up stories that fuel a narrative. In this case, it’s the idea that the police treat the black population unfairly. Baucham argues there is further evidence to back this.

Meanwhile , a National Academy of Sciences study ignited controversy when its authors proclaimed, “ We find no evidence of anti – Black or anti – Hispanic disparities across shootings, and White officers are not more likely to shoot minority civilians than non – White officers. ” 14 More fundamentally, the researchers noted that “ using population as a benchmark makes the strong assumption that White and Black civilians have equal exposure to situations that result in FOIS, ” which is the only way the 2.5 – to – 1 ratio could be viewed as prima facie evidence of police bias. Instead, they noted that contrary to the accepted narrative, “ If there are racial differences in exposure to these situations, calculations of racial disparity based on population benchmarks will be misleading. ” 15 In other words, the 2.5 – to – 1 ratio, taken at face value, is actually misleading.

CRT will not bring about unity. It will only bring further division. For example, if every incident involving interaction between blacks and whites is made into racism, even if no racist motives can be shown, then there will be hesitancy to act in any situation. Not only that, but if you cry wolf, real racism will go unnoticed. Even today, I am highly suspicious as soon as someone says “racist” about something or someone.

Baucham stresses that CRT has Marxist origins and thus is highly antithetical to Christian values. The church could let the nose of this camel in thinking they are doing good, only to wind up having the whole camel in and that will lead to chaos on other issues.

For many on the CRT side, if you deny that you are a racist, well that just shows you are a racist. No matter what you do, you are racist. You can marry someone of the another race or have children of another race and still be considered to be racist. You are guilty of racism until you are proven innocent, and you cannot be proven innocent.

I was amazed also to read parts of a sermon that Obama gave to a black church on a Father’s Day. I never supported Obama, but I have to say I agree so much with what he said.

Yes, we need more cops on the street. Yes, we need fewer guns in the hands of people who shouldn’t have them. Yes, we need more money for our schools, and more outstanding teachers in the classroom, and more afterschool programs for our children. Yes, we need more jobs and more job training and more opportunity in our communities. But we also need families to raise our children. We need fathers to realize that responsibility does not end at conception. We need them to realize that what makes you a man is not the ability to have a child — it’s the courage to raise one.

The problems for the black community by and large are not from without but from within. Fatherlessness is too common and too many black men are dying at the hands of other black men. Restoring the family to the black community would be the best gift that could be given. CRT will not do that as groups like BLM are opposed to the typical nuclear family.

This book is written from a Christian perspective, but I think a non-Christian would get something out of it. They won’t care likely about what is going on in the church over this, but I would hope they would look at the case either way. I really hope Baucham is wrong about a future earthquake coming, but I fear that he is right.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Should Christians Support Israel?

Is Israel the nation to support? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Israel is facing trouble again and that means Christians in America have taken sides, as well as no doubt many other places in the world. However, America has a strong connection to futurism and dispensationalism especially. We often see ourselves as a chosen people and our ability to function is somehow tied to Israel. After all, aren’t the Jews the people of God?

Now in this, I am not going to even begin to recommend solutions regarding conflict between Christians and Palestinians. I know some Christians who do think Palestine has a case and they are not anti-Semitic. That’s something else that needs to be said. Just because someone thinks the Jews could be in the wrong does not mean you can go and kill all the Jews you want and treat them horribly.

A few weeks before this all broke out, I remember being on Facebook and seeing a post asking something along the lines of how Christians should see Jews today. I answered, “People who need Jesus just like everyone else does.” I stand by that 100%. Jews need their Messiah.

However, any support I would give to Israel is not for theological reasons. Again, it seems to need to be constantly said that just because you do not support for theological reasons does not mean that you cannot support for any other reasons. It also doesn’t mean that you immediately jump over to the other side and think they’re all just fine.

Modern end-times people have often tried to connect end-times prophecy with the formation of the state of Israel, but that has not been too successful. Some were speculating it would be within a generation, vis a vis the “this generation” prophecy of Jesus, of the founding of Israel that the “rapture” would take place. Well, that hasn’t happened. Then it was the Six-Day War which turned out to be a swing and a miss. So far, this hasn’t worked well.

But isn’t Israel in the land? That means God was behind it. Right?

I find it strange that the people in end-times circles who want to take the Bible so “literally” often ignore how the text makes repentance a constant requirement for returning to the land.

Deuteronomy 4

25 “When you father children and children’s children, and have grown old in the land, if you act corruptly by making a carved image in the form of anything, and by doing what is evil in the sight of the Lord your God, so as to provoke him to anger, 26 I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that you will soon utterly perish from the land that you are going over the Jordan to possess. You will not live long in it, but will be utterly destroyed. 27 And the Lord will scatter you among the peoples, and you will be left few in number among the nations where the Lord will drive you. 28 And there you will serve gods of wood and stone, the work of human hands, that neither see, nor hear, nor eat, nor smell. 29 But from there you will seek the Lord your God and you will find him, if you search after him with all your heart and with all your soul. 30 When you are in tribulation, and all these things come upon you in the latter days, you will return to the Lord your God and obey his voice. 31 For the Lord your God is a merciful God. He will not leave you or destroy you or forget the covenant with your fathers that he swore to them.

Deuteronomy 30

“And when all these things come upon you, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before you, and you call them to mind among all the nations where the Lord your God has driven you, 2 and return to the Lord your God, you and your children, and obey his voice in all that I command you today, with all your heart and with all your soul, 3 then the Lord your God will restore your fortunes and have mercy on you, and he will gather you again from all the peoples where the Lord your God has scattered you. 4 If your outcasts are in the uttermost parts of heaven, from there the Lord your God will gather you, and from there he will take you. 5 And the Lord your God will bring you into the land that your fathers possessed, that you may possess it. And he will make you more prosperous and numerous than your fathers. 6 And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live. 7 And the Lord your God will put all these curses on your foes and enemies who persecuted you. 8 And you shall again obey the voice of the Lord and keep all his commandments that I command you today. 9 The Lord your God will make you abundantly prosperous in all the work of your hand, in the fruit of your womb and in the fruit of your cattle and in the fruit of your ground. For the Lord will again take delight in prospering you, as he took delight in your fathers, 10 when you obey the voice of the Lord your God, to keep his commandments and his statutes that are written in this Book of the Law, when you turn to the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.

1 Kings 8

46 “If they sin against you—for there is no one who does not sin—and you are angry with them and give them to an enemy, so that they are carried away captive to the land of the enemy, far off or near, 47 yet if they turn their heart in the land to which they have been carried captive, and repent and plead with you in the land of their captors, saying, ‘We have sinned and have acted perversely and wickedly,’ 48 if they repent with all their heart and with all their soul in the land of their enemies, who carried them captive, and pray to you toward their land, which you gave to their fathers, the city that you have chosen, and the house that I have built for your name, 49 then hear in heaven your dwelling place their prayer and their plea, and maintain their cause 50 and forgive your people who have sinned against you, and all their transgressions that they have committed against you, and grant them compassion in the sight of those who carried them captive, that they may have compassion on them 51 (for they are your people, and your heritage, which you brought out of Egypt, from the midst of the iron furnace). 52 Let your eyes be open to the plea of your servant and to the plea of your people Israel, giving ear to them whenever they call to you. 53 For you separated them from among all the peoples of the earth to be your heritage, as you declared through Moses your servant, when you brought our fathers out of Egypt, O Lord God.”

Has anybody seen the nation en masse turning to Jesus as Messiah? I know several Jews are, but for the most part, Israel is still a secular nation. Now if you want to take the text literally, then that would indicate God is not the one directly behind this. That does not mean that you cannot support Israel. You can do so for other reasons. For example, I think Israel is a helpful buffer to have against Islam in the Middle East. Before anyone asks, I have not looked at the conflict between Israel and Palestine so I have no opinion on that one.

We should also see if our interests are in line with Israel or not. Do we have the same goals? Are we truly friends or not? If Israel was doing something that was wrong, would we support them because they are Israel? Let’s suppose for some reason Israel had invaded Kuwait instead of Iraq around 30 years ago. Would we be supporting Israel then and attacking Kuwait? Would we ignore an SOS from Kuwait asking for help because Israel are our allies?

None of this is also to speak ill of my dispensationalist friends. Most know that I don’t consider the view to have any Biblical credibility, but I am thankful for my brothers and sisters who hold this position not because they hold it, but because we’re all one in Christ. I also recommend they go and look at the passages about returning to the land and see how often repentance is mentioned.

By all means also, pray for Israel if you desire, but I would also add to pray that everyone over there, Jew and Gentile both, come to Messiah Jesus.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

If I Had Two Months To Preach

What would I speak on? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Someone messaged me asking what I would preach on at a church if I had two months to preach on an apologetics topic not necessarily political, but it wouldn’t be race either. What would I preach on? I immediately answered sex and marriage. I was asked if there was anything else since this was two months. I stated that I think this is two years worth and I stand by it. Why?

Let’s start out with getting people into the church. Imagine if on the sign outside the church you had the announcement “Come join us these next two months as our pastor preaches on sex and marriage.” Would you get more people in to see what was said? Yes. That could even include people outside the church.

After all, ask which people if they had to choose one, which they would rather see a TV movie about? Would it be the Sermon on the Mount or would it be David and Bathsheba? I know a lot of Christians would choose the former, but most on the other side would choose the latter, and let’s face it, a lot of Christians could very well choose the latter.

Not only that, but one of the greatest problems we have today is men don’t want to go to church. Church has become way too feminine. I would like every pastor to read Why Men Hate Going To Church. Many of our songs about Jesus could be what a girl sings about her boyfriend and guys don’t care about that, but if you talk about what men are interested in, they will come. Not only that, but statistically, if the father/husband comes, he brings the rest of the family with him.

Next, this is a topic our whole culture is confused on. We want to treat sex like something that you just do for fun, but when one person sleeps with someone different, the idea is that cheating has taken place. Kissing someone other than your lover can be cheating, but this brings it to a whole new level.

We know there’s something different. If the couple kisses or goes on a date, that’s said to be nice, but the goal really comes when they sleep together. Then you know that they are a couple. I am not saying that I agree with that, but I am saying that’s the perception.

Another reason to talk about this is this is a great cause of people leaving the faith. If there is any moral reason people abandon Christianity, it’s because it interferes with their sex lives. People don’t really like the stance Christianity takes on sex, and many times, that includes those of us who are Christians.

This is especially so with young people who we’ve sold a false bill of goods to. Many of us have told them that if they have sex before they marry, they will feel guilty. They might. Some do. Some don’t. Those that don’t wonder what else the church has lied to them about.

Another problem with this is purity culture where we have told women especially that if they give themselves away before marriage, they are damaged goods. I certainly think women should save themselves, but they are not damaged goods. We also have this strange idea of purity until marriage. No. You should stay pure after marriage. Sex isn’t something dirty that taints you.

For many men, pornography is a huge issue. Sadly, many more women are starting to get into this as well. The understanding I have is that one in three men in the church struggle with pornography and it’s probably more than that. This is also destroying many marriages. Why is it so many men are struggling with pornography and we never talk about it from the pulpit?

Our young people especially need a worldview of sex. Why not sleep together if you’re in love? They need a whole worldview of sex, and so do so many of the adults as well. I got after the guys about pornography, but the women need a message to. Too many women are engaging in sexting, that is, sending intimate pictures of themselves on their phones. They can think it will go away, but it won’t. I say this especially to the women because let’s face it, a woman’s body at the intimate level is much more appealing to people than a man’s is.

If a young man and a young woman are on a date, they need more than a few verses in Paul to stop them from going too far. They need a whole worldview. This could not only teach them good thinking about sex, but good thinking about everything else. Good thinking carries over after all. If you learn to think well in one area, you can do so in others more likely.

Also, our marriages need enrichment. I realize that Shaunti Feldhahn has dealt with a lot of myths about Christian marriage, but too many are in trouble and need help. We need whole sermons on the topic. Having a seminar every now and then is good, but we need more.

This also does have political ramifications. Teach on sex and you touch most everything else. You wind up addressing abortion, homosexuality, and transgenderism. You will get people learning what it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman.

We also have many failures recently in this area. How many pastors who are prominent have fallen because of sexual temptation? Do I need to mention Ravi Zacharias again? He used to be one of my heroes and today, the first aspect of him I think of is the scandal.

Scripture speaks about this constantly for a reason. We should listen. Our young people and the rest of the church get to hear the world’s message on this topic six days a week. We have one day a week and we don’t use it.

So again, without hesitation, this is what I would speak on. It covers a multitude of topics and it is not based on race. Actually, all races could benefit from this. Last I checked, we all reproduce the same way.

And maybe you’re not a guest pastor, but you’re the actual pastor. Could it be time to update that sign outside the church?

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: White Fragility

What do I think of Robin DiAngelo’s book published by Beacon Press? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Multiple thoughts go through one’s head reading this book. I think of the trick Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay did where they wrote a paper that was absolute nonsense as they intended and got it published to show how lacking the academy is with publishing. Reading DiAngelo’s book, I wonder if it was one of those papers.

Then I think of the Life of Brian. In one scene in the movie, Brian is being followed by a crowd who is convinced he’s the Messiah. He denies it and is told that the true Messiah will always deny that he is the Messiah. Then when he says he is the Messiah, everyone jumps and says he is the Messiah.

I also think of presuppositionalism and see this book as a form of that. The author starts out with the assumption that all white people are racist. If they agree with that, they are working on their racism. If they disagree, that demonstrates their racism. No matter what the response, they are racist.

At the start, on page 15, she says race, like gender, is socially constructed. With this one claim, I think her whole thesis goes up in flames. Could a white person not just say that they are really a black person born in a white person’s body? You might think that sounds ridiculous, but if a person can be misgendered at birth, why not misraced?

Throughout the book, DiAngelo keeps switching definitions of racism and is not clear what kind she is talking about. She does say being a racist doesn’t mean a hate-filled racist automatically who actively hates black people. She sometimes does speak of Latinos, (Using the term Latinx which I’ve never seen a Latino person use) but her emphasis is on the black community.

The sad point is that when she does make some points that are valid, she’s already accused her audience enough that no one wants to listen to her. After all, she has started with her conclusion already and nothing anyone can say can change her mind so shut up and accept you’re a racist you bigot. The conclusion is here so who cares about the evidence?

There is a saying that if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. I also know the counterpart that if all you have is a hug, everything looks like a kitten. Unfortunately, in DiAngelo’s world, everything is racism. Not only that, every myth about racism she buys into. Michael Brown becomes an innocent victim even though he wasn’t.

The problem here is that racism is always being used so that nowadays, most people I encounter don’t really listen to the claims anymore. Everyone has to jump on the bandwagon. I recall seeing a liberal friend of mine on Facebook saying he had changed his mind on a case where a black man was shot by a cop and decided the police acted properly. What was the immediate charge made? Racism.

Yet if racism is not the problem at root, then we are not going to deal with the issues that are going on in this country properly. If anything, we could be making it worse and sadly, I think that is what DiAngelo is doing. She is contributing to a problem by making everything about race.

Not only that, she doesn’t interact with real problems that are going on. I don’t see anything in the book about how we need to deal with the problem of fatherlessness in the black community. There is nothing said about crime or gangs or the lyrics sang in much of the rap music today.

It’s a case often where the minority ruins it for the rest of us. Most people in the black community are not like that. Most people in the white community are not racists or white supremacists. Most men are not rapists.

Yet that is what is going on here as the majority are treated like the minority. What if I went and spoke to every woman like she was a golddigger wanting to use men and had that as my conclusion? What if I just assumed that every atheist had a burning hatred of God in their soul? What if I assumed every Muslim had a deep desire to be a terrorist and blow up and kill the infidel?

Such a situation would result in chaos, and yet DiAngelo has done that very thing. There is no doubt we can all improve the communication that we have between the races and the relationships that we have, but why assume racism is the problem? Why not ask all races why they respond to the others like they do? Then work with those answers.

If we picture this nation having a few people being a problem and those few representing a small fire that is burning, a book like this is pouring gasoline all over that. It will not help any problem, but it will heighten any supposed problem and make it worse. DiAngelo could have written a good book pointing out difficult issues and real problems and how to work on them, but instead she just straight to accusation every time. It’s not a shock people get defensive when they are accused and yet she has it that that demonstrates her case. In either situation, DiAngelo is right.

There is also a problem today that everyone is made responsible for everyone else’s feelings. We cannot make anyone feel miserable or feel happy. That is up to them. This is not to say we should be rude to people or anything of the sort, but it does say that when it comes to how someone feels, they must always own that. It is always something they can work on, no matter how difficult it may be. Unfortunately, our culture has a victim mentality going on where people seem to practically glorify in being victims when in turn, they actually become the perpetrators making real victims.

Do yourself a favor. Don’t read this. If you want better relations with a person of another race, just go and talk to them.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)
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