Research has shown that 11 million American adults cannot read. That means they cannot pick up the word of God and study it. They cannot pick up a tract and read to find out how to know Jesus Christ. This reminds us of a phrase found in Romans 10:14, which says, "how shall they hear without a preacher". Should these people go unreached because they are not able to read? I think not. Perhaps God's people need to be looking at training others to read. In the mean time, we ought to be thinking of ways to get good tracts, books and other items available in audio format. It wouldn't take much to take good tracts and produce audio files to distribute to those who cannot read. Maybe God will stir some hearts to reach these with the word of God.
Here is the evolutionary formula for making a universe: Nothing + nothing = two elements + time = 92 natural elements + time = all physical laws and a completely structured universe of galaxies, systems, stars, planets, and moons orbiting in perfect balance and order.
Evangelist Sam Gipp and his wife recently took a missions trip to Papua New Guinea. While at the airport in Port Moresby waiting to fly out, Kathy Gipp saw an elderly lady sitting alone in a wheelchair and went over to meet her. It turned out that she had flown to PNG by herself. Her name is Mary Weisner and her story is amazing. "She had married a marine who had served in New Guinea during WWII. They lived an ungodly life. At 36 years old they got saved and Bro. Weisner felt called back to PNG to be a missionary. When they arrived in 1965, the village they went to was a 'refuge' village. That meant it was a stronghold for murderers and criminals where police would never enter. In they went.
Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, keeps pushing back the boundaries of its claimed evangelical stance. In an article in the July 1, 2006, edition of "World," Joel Belz reports that the seminary claims that homosexuality is a sin in one breath and bends over backward to accommodate it in the next. In a class on "Gender and Sexuality" taught by the husband-and-wife team of Jack and Judith Balswick, practicing sodomites are invited to lecture. One recent such lecturer "derided heterosexualism as a social contract rather than a historical or biblical norm." In the Balswicks' book, "Authentic Human Sexuality," they state: "We acknowledge that some gay Christians may choose to commit themselves to a lifelong, monogamous homosexual union, believing this is God's best for them." They seem to have forgotten that Paul wrote the Corinthians (1Corinthians 6:9-11) and said of those who had been "effeminate" or "abusers of themselves with mankind" (phrases referring to homosexuals), "And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God." Evidently, salvation puts such practices in the past tense. He does not say that they could never fall into the old sins, but he does say that salvation lifts them out of these categories. A sodomite who is comfortable in his or her sodomy is certainly not a Christian.
The Lord is clearly interested in beauty. Some form of the word is used 76 times in the Bible. We are told that God "hath made every thing beautiful in his time" (Ecclesiastes 3:11). He so highly exalts the proper concept of beauty that He often associates it with holiness (Psalm 29:2; 96:9; 110:3). Unfortunately, men tend to pervert beauty as they do all that they touch. God reminds us that outward "beauty is vain" (Proverbs 31:30) and human "beauty is a fading flower' (Isaiah 28:1). Men corrupt beauty and make the "beauty of a man" a focus for idolatry (Isaiah 44:13). Eventually, man's perverseness causes his "beauty to be abhorred" (Ezekiel 16:25). The very concept of what is beautiful is no longer recognizable.
