Where TRUTH Takes Priority Over Popularity. Find spiritual refreshment as the hymns of faith stir your soul; sweet fellowship encourages you; and the preaching of the KJV Bible, God's Holy Word, challenges you to walk more closely with God each day!

What The Bible Says Good Samaritan's Penny Pulpit by Pastor Ed Rice

The wager only scratches the surface of his relevance to a post-Christian era.It is a common lament that we live in a post-Christian era. This fact raises challenges to our witness to the world. Most of our audience thinks that, in G. K. Chesterton’s words, Christianity has been tried and found wanting (rather than found wanting and left untried). It is not considered a live option. How do we bear witness well in this cultural context? We might do well to reconsider one of the most enigmatic thinkers in Christian history, Blaise Pascal.Pascal suffers from a public relations problem. As the source of Pascal’s wager, he is often considered a gambling man. He urges the non-believer to bet that God exists. What does one have to lose? In Beyond the Wager: The Christian Brilliance of Blaise Pascal, philosopher Douglas Groothuis shows that there is more to Pascal’s life and thought than his most famous argument. Groothuis demonstrates that we have much to learn from this brilliant thinker. Pascal, he argues, is a crucial thinker for our time.Essential writingsPascal came on the scene in the 17th century, during the early years of the Scientific Revolution. Several of his works contributed to this movement, including treatises on the geometry of conic sections, theories of probability, and conclusions to extensive experiments he had done to test the possibility of a vacuum. He invented the first functional calculator, which he had built to help his father with his work of assessing taxes.His best-known works, however, focus on Christianity. In the Provincial Letters, Pascal defends the Jansenist movement, which was condemned by the Catholic church, against the Jesuits. The Jansenists emphasized that the depth of human sinfulness required a work of God for our salvation. The Christian life ...Continue reading...

Asian Christians must navigate ethical dilemmas in everyday life. This recent book can help.There are rules to follow in every culture, particularly in Asia, where many children must bear the responsibility of maintaining harmony within the home and familial structure. To deviate from the norms or traditions of any Asian society requires a bold willingness to try to demonstrate to one’s fellow citizens what is and is not working in their culture. As a Christian living or ministering in an Asian context, how can one manage these complex situations?The contributors to Asian Christian Ethics, an anthology published in 2022, grapple with the challenges Asian Christians face in their particular social contexts, often characterized by strictly defined societal ranking and hierarchy, religious violence against Christians, or suffering among marginalized groups. The theologians, pastors, and missiologists who authored this volume come from the Philippines, Malaysia, China/Hong Kong, Singapore, Sri Lanka, and Korea, plus one perspective from Palestine. The writers, many of whom studied in the West and are familiar with Western ways of thinking, provide valuable insight into Asian mindsets.Each chapter begins by examining what Scripture teaches on a particular social issue. Then the writers draw on their expertise to address the ethical challenges surrounding that issue within a specific cultural context.Marriage and divorceIn “Water Is Thicker Than Blood,” Bernard Wong offers insights on the changing views of traditional marriage. He notes that divorce has become more prevalent in Asian society (though not yet as normalized as in Western cultures) and that young adults are waiting longer to get married, with over 90 percent of 20-to-24-year-olds still single in Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and ...Continue reading...

Aaron Renn outlines individual, institutional, and missional strategies for adapting to a hostile culture.Rarely does an essay cause such a stir as Aaron Renn’s “The Three Worlds of Evangelicalism.” Published in First Things in 2022, Renn’s framework for describing Christianity’s fall into cultural disfavor since the 1960s elicited a wide range of responses, from wholehearted agreement to sympathetic skepticism to vociferous disagreement, and seemingly everything in between.Renn’s essay categorizes the recent history of evangelicalism in the United States into three periods, or worlds. In the positive world, Christianity was in a position of cultural dominance; most Americans, even those who were not particularly religious, recognized the importance of Christianity to the country’s collective moral fabric. In the neutral world, the broader culture came to see Christianity not as uniquely good, but still as a belief system and worldview doing more good than harm.Since the early 2010s—the dates themselves, Renn admits, are not binding—evangelicalism has been in the negative world. Here, culture and its elites are inherently suspicious of evangelical Christianity, especially when it challenges or conflicts with emerging, more attractive ideologies. Christians in the negative world, according to Renn, will encounter resistance to previously acceptable beliefs and behaviors. This resistance could take many forms, from simple yet pronounced disagreement all the way to the dreaded C-word: cancellation.Less than two years after his essay, Renn’s book, Life in the Negative World: Confronting Challenges in an Anti-Christian Culture, updates and elaborates on his framework and provides tangible resources for Christians concerned about this cultural transformation. Renn’s ...Continue reading...

Four Israeli academics at US universities tell Ynet about physical and emotional challenges of confronting campus demonstrations; 'Jews are simply not allowed to enter the buildings, and It's only getting worse'

Holocaust Remembrance Day, which will be observed next week, serves as a poignant reminder of the daily struggle many Holocaust survivors endure, and since October 7 the challenges have only become more complex