Singapore In-Laws Rage as Women Spurn Lee's Babies Plea

By Shamim Adam, Bloomberg, Jan 22, 2013
Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong is cranking up a national debate on babies this month, with proposals to Parliament that would attempt to stem the country’s slumping birthrate. Penelope Sim isn’t listening.

“My mother-in-law hates me and she says I’m selfish, but I don’t really care,” Sim, a human resources consultant who’s been married for six years, said as she shopped for lipstick and eye liner. “Everything’s crazy expensive and life’s already stressful enough here without kids. If there’s no one to carry on the family name, then so be it.”

Sim, 33, embodies Lee’s challenge to convince Singaporeans to wed younger and procreate more, four decades after concern about overcrowding prompted his father to urge citizens to delay nuptials and have smaller families. The younger Lee is caught between a rock and a hard place. While the birthrate was about 1.3 children per woman in 2012—barely enough to replace one parent—a backlash against soaring immigration forced the government to curb the influx of foreigners, leading to labor shortages and slower economic growth.

Measures since 1987 to reverse declining fertility, including handouts of as much as S$18,000 ($14,600) and extended maternity leave, haven’t worked. The nation’s birthrate in 2010 and 2011 were the lowest in 47 years of independence. About 36,000 babies were born to residents in 2011, compared with nearly 50,000 in 1990.

The failure to encourage more births means the country will have to contend with a shrinking pool of workers and consumers, a deterrent to future investment. It will also increase the burden on younger employees to pay for an aging population. Lee has said higher taxes will be needed in the next two decades as the government boosts social spending to support the elderly.

The city state isn’t alone in struggling with falling birthrates. The level in the U.S. hit a record low in 2011, while Japan’s population is forecast to drop by almost a third by 2060 from 128 million in 2010. China’s three-decade-old, one-child policy is accelerating declines in its workforce, and Germany’s birthrate is among the lowest in Europe even as it spends billions of euros to encourage women to have more children.

Singapore, smaller in size than New York City, has few natural resources, and the government relies on a skilled workforce to sustain growth. The economy has expanded for all but four years since independence in 1965, bringing million- dollar high-rise apartments and shopping malls in place of pig farms and fishing villages.

Singapore’s home ownership rate is about 89 percent and the Boston Consulting Group estimates there were 188,000 millionaire households in the city state in 2011. The Economist Intelligence Unit declared Singapore to be the best place in Asia to be born in 2013. Gross domestic product per capita climbed to $50,123 in 2011, from $516 in 1965.

Back then, the country boasted a fertility rate of 4.7 and so many women gave birth in the national maternity hospital in 1966 that it entered the Guinness Book of World Records.

The so-called birthquake raised concern that the fledgling economy would be overburdened, and Lee’s father, Lee Kuan Yew, promoted family planning, legalized abortion and encouraged sterilization. A “Stop at Two” campaign in the 1970s and the natural decline in childbirth as the economy developed brought the fertility rate down to 1.82 by the end of the decade.

Last August, Lee Kuan Yew lamented that the number of births in the city has halved since he came to power in 1959, even with twice as many people.

“If we go on like that, this place would fold up because there will be no original citizens left to form the majority,” Lee, 89, said in a speech published in the Straits Times newspaper. “We’ve got to persuade people to understand that getting married is important, having children is important.”

Singaporean men and women are delaying getting married in part because they want to “concentrate fully” on their jobs or studies, a government survey of 2,120 singles showed this month. The median age for grooms has risen to 30.1 in 2011, from 26.9 in 1970. For brides, it has climbed to 28, from 23.1.

“We have to find effective ways to encourage Singaporeans to have more babies,” the younger Lee said in his New Year message. “We are not impersonal, calculating robots, mindlessly pursuing economic growth and material wealth.”

Pursuit of possessions may be partly to blame. Singaporean women are more materialistic than their American counterparts, which could explain a smaller desire for children, according to a 2010 study by researchers at the Singapore Management University and the Northern Illinois University.

In the 1990s, success in Singapore was measured by the attainment of the so-called five Cs—cash, car, credit card, condominium and country club membership. Now, there are 9.3 million credit cards in circulation on the island, private property prices are at a record, and a Volkswagen Golf can cost more than the median price of an existing U.S. home.

The role of women in the economy may also have contributed to the falling birth rate. They made up 44 percent of the resident labor pool last year as the government encouraged greater participation and offered larger tax breaks to working mothers. In 2010, female graduates outnumbered males in three of the five most common fields, including business and administration.

A survey by I Love Children, an organization that promotes a “children-plenty” Singapore, showed couples cited money as the top factor for not having babies. It costs at least S$340,000 to raise a child in Singapore from infancy to the age of 21, the Asian Parent website estimated last year. A middle-income U.S. family may spend $234,900 to raise a child born in 2011 to the age of 18, a government report last year showed.

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US commandos boost numbers to train Mexican forces

By Kimberly Dozier, AP, Jan. 17, 2013
WASHINGTON—The Pentagon is stepping up aid for Mexico’s bloody drug war with a new U.S.-based special operations headquarters to teach Mexican security forces how to hunt drug cartels the same way special operations teams hunt al-Qaida, according to documents and interviews with multiple U.S. officials.

Such assistance could help newly elected Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto establish a military force to focus on drug criminal networks that have terrorized Mexico’s northern states and threatened the U.S. Southwest border. Mexican officials say warring drug gangs have killed at least 70,000 people between 2006 and 2012.

Based at the U.S. Northern Command in Colorado, Special Operations Command-North will build on a commando program that has brought Mexican military, intelligence and law enforcement officials to study U.S. counterterrorist operations, to show them how special operations troops built an interagency network to target al-Qaida mastermind Osama bin Laden and his followers.

The special operations team within Northcom will be turned into a new headquarters, led by a general instead of a colonel. It was established in a Dec. 31 memo signed by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. That move gives the group more autonomy and the number of people could eventually quintuple from 30 to 150, meaning the headquarters could expand its training missions with the Mexicans, even though no new money is being assigned to the mission.

The special operations program has already helped Mexican officials set up their own intelligence center in Mexico City to target criminal networks, patterned after similar centers in war zones built to target al-Qaida in Afghanistan and Iraq, two current U.S. officials said.

Mexican and U.S. military officials played down the change, and it’s unclear whether the Mexican government will agree to boost its training.

The creation of the new command marks another expansion of Adm. Bill McRaven’s special operations empire, as he seeks to migrate special operators from their decade of service in war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan to new missions, even as the rest of the military fights postwar contraction and multibillion-dollar budget cuts.

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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu´s Choice

By Justin Raimondo, Antiwar.com, January 22, 2013
The Israeli elections delivered a blow to the conventional wisdom, always a welcome development: although widely expected to lurch rightward, Israeli voters surprised everyone by moving toward the center—and even giving a bit of a boost to what passes for the Israeli “left.”

While returns are still coming in as of this writing, it looks like the rightist bloc in the Knesset is on track to win 61 seats, while the center-left garners 59. The big winner: television personality Yair Lapid, whose newly-founded centrist Yesh Atid party is projected to rack up some 19 seats, ahead of Labor, with 17. The biggest loser: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose Likud-Yisrael Beitenu merger won 31, eleven less than they had before. Another big loser: Naftali Bennett, leader of the pro-settler Jewish Home party, who was expected to come in second. Bennett and his homies look to be winning a mere 12 seats, instead of the 17 or so projected earlier. Also: the “Strong Israel” party, even further to the right than Bennett, lost its two Knesset seats—in spite (or, perhaps, because of) their explicitly racist anti-African refugee campaign in southern Tel Aviv. The religious Orthodox parties—Shas and United Torah Judaism—apparently showed little movement.

While Bibi trained his guns on the threat from the ultra-right—Bennett and the super-nationalists on the fringe, supposedly on the upswing—Yesh Atid campaigned mainly on economic issues, most significantly against the privileges accorded to ultra-Orthodox Jews in housing, military service, and government subsidies. Indeed, the party’s campaign ads sounded like what one might hear from our own Democratic party: pious pledges of fealty to the sacred Middle Class, an assertive secularism, and shameless demographic demagoguery (not “enough” women were at the top of Likud’s party list).

Bibi, for his part, emphasized national security issues, pointing to his record as the one who kept Israel “safe” and trying to appease the ultra-rightists around Bennett by declaring he would build yet more settlements. In response to anti-African riots in Tel Aviv and elsewhere, he also pledged to crack down on refugees coming from Africa, and deport those who had already arrived.

This rightist strategy failed spectacularly: the great right-wing surge widely predicted—including here, I might add—never materialized. Instead, what we have is a walk-back to the center—although, when it comes to Israeli politics, this description may be a bit misleading. Before anyone gets too excited about the exact meaning of this “walk to the center,” they should understand that Lapid’s “centrist” views on the Palestinians are, um, decidedly non-centrist. As Arutz Sheva reported:

“‘I do not think that the Arabs want peace,’ he wrote on his Facebook page. Lapid said that he does not care what the Arabs want. ‘What I want is not a new Middle East, but to be rid of them and put a tall fence between us and them.’ The important thing, he added, is ‘to maintain a Jewish majority in the Land of Israel.’

“Lapid has said recently that the Left ‘makes the same mistake again when it negotiates the division of Jerusalem. The Palestinians must be brought to an understanding that Jerusalem will always remain under Israeli sovereignty and that there is no point for them in opening negotiations about Jerusalem.’”

Such views are hardly a cause for celebration among those who hope for a more reasonable Israeli approach to the peace process: however, Yesh Atid did not emphasize these views in its election campaign, at least from what I can tell. Insofar as this election reflects the electorate’s evolving views on national security issues, one can look at what didn’t happen—Jewish Home’s expected rise to the nation’s second largest party—as the big take-away. Bennett campaigned, in part, on the strength of his plan to annex most of the West Bank—a proposal that would have isolated Israel even more than it already is, and which is now dead in the water.

This election, it turned out, wasn’t about national security but about the quality of life in Israel: the secular middle class had its revenge. The rise of Yesh Atid augurs a backlash against the privileges of the haredi—ultra-orthodox “scholars” who don’t get drafted and get preferential treatment in housing—and also against the ideological and religious concerns that were the focus of the rightists’ election campaign strategy.

This election was also about Barack Obama, and Israel’s increasingly strained relationship with the US. In the last days of the campaign the White House “leak,” via Jeffrey Goldberg—that the President thinks Bibi hasn’t a clue as to what’s best for Israel—apparently really hit home: the Israelis know, even if Bibi often seems to have forgotten, how dependent the Jewish state is on America’s patronage. Goldberg’s reportage was seen as payback for Bibi’s brazen interference in the American election, during which the Israeli Prime Minister allowed himself to be weaponized by the Republicans (albeit not to any discernible GOP advantage). The lesson here: the Americans have more electoral clout in Israel than vice versa—that is, if the White House chooses to exercise it.

Netanyahu will form the next government, but clearly he is in a much weaker position, particularly vis-à-vis the US. If Lapid joins the governing coalition, the Israelis will be more open to re-starting negotiations with the Palestinians, and more amenable to American pressure—this in spite of Netanyahu’s implicitly anti-American campaign rhetoric. For Likud, and Bibi, this election is a slap in the face, and the sting is not likely to wear off any time soon.

The humiliation of the Israeli right is conditional good news—conditional, that is, on the assumption that Netanyahu will seek a coalition with the centrists, as in this scenario, rather than with Bennett and the religious bloc. While this would seem to make the most sense—there is reportedly a lot of bad blood between Netanyahu and Bennett—when it comes to Israel’s fractious politics, you never know. It is perfectly possible Bibi could put together a right-wing coalition with a one-vote majority in the Knesset, in which case all bets are off.

The new government, whatever its composition, will face the bleak prospect of Israel’s increasing international isolation—and stepped up pressure from the US to re-start the peace process and let Obama earn his Nobel peace prize.

It’s Bibi’s choice. As he struggles to put together a government, the longest serving Prime Minister in Israel’s history stands at a crossroads: he can build a coalition committed to putting the two-state solution back on the agenda—and take the nutty notion of a unilateral Israeli attack on Iran completely off the table—or he can march off the ideological cliff with Bennett and the rest of the crazies.

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Evidence grows for narcolepsy link to GSK swine flu shot

By Kate Kelland, Reuters, Jan. 21, 2013
STOCKHOLM (Reuters)—Emelie Olsson is plagued by hallucinations and nightmares. When she wakes up, she’s often paralyzed, unable to breathe properly or call for help. During the day she can barely stay awake, and often misses school or having fun with friends. She is only 14, but at times she has wondered if her life is worth living.

Emelie is one of around 800 children in Sweden and elsewhere in Europe who developed narcolepsy, an incurable sleep disorder, after being immunized with the Pandemrix H1N1 swine flu vaccine made by British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline in 2009.

Finland, Norway, Ireland and France have seen spikes in narcolepsy cases, too, and people familiar with the results of a soon-to-be-published study in Britain have told Reuters it will show a similar pattern in children there.

Their fate, coping with an illness that all but destroys normal life, is developing into what the health official who coordinated Sweden’s vaccination campaign calls a “medical tragedy” that will demand rising scientific and medical attention.

Europe’s drugs regulator has ruled Pandemrix should no longer be used in people aged under 20. The chief medical officer at GSK’s vaccines division, Norman Begg, says his firm views the issue extremely seriously and is “absolutely committed to getting to the bottom of this”, but adds there is not yet enough data or evidence to suggest a causal link.

Others—including Emmanuel Mignot, one of the world’s leading experts on narcolepsy, who is being funded by GSK to investigate further—agree more research is needed but say the evidence is already clearly pointing in one direction.

“There’s no doubt in my mind whatsoever that Pandemrix increased the occurrence of narcolepsy onset in children in some countries—and probably in most countries,” says Mignot, a specialist in the sleep disorder at Stanford University in the United States.

In total, the GSK shot was given to more than 30 million people in 47 countries during the 2009-2010 H1N1 swine flu pandemic. Because it contains an adjuvant, or booster, it was not used in the United States because drug regulators there are wary of adjuvanted vaccines.

GSK says 795 people across Europe have reported developing narcolepsy since the vaccine’s use began in 2009.

In his glass-topped office building overlooking the Maria Magdalena church in Stockholm, Goran Stiernstedt, a doctor turned public health official, has spent many difficult hours going over what happened in his country during the swine flu pandemic, wondering if things should have been different.

“The big question is was it worth it? And retrospectively I have to say it was not,” he told Reuters in an interview.

Being a wealthy country, Sweden was at the front of the queue for pandemic vaccines. It got Pandemrix from GSK almost as soon as it was available, and a nationwide campaign got uptake of the vaccine to 59 percent, meaning around 5 million people got the shot.

Stiernstedt, director for health and social care at the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions, helped coordinate the vaccination campaign across Sweden’s 21 regions.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) says the 2009-2010 pandemic killed 18,500 people, although a study last year said that total might be up to 15 times higher.

While estimates vary, Stiernstedt says Sweden’s mass vaccination saved between 30 and 60 people from swine flu death. Yet since the pandemic ended, more than 200 cases of narcolepsy have been reported in Sweden.

With hindsight, this risk-benefit balance is unacceptable. “This is a medical tragedy,” he said. “Hundreds of young people have had their lives almost destroyed.”

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Change or Die! EVG Research Team

EVG Research Team <News@TheElevationGroup.com>

Adapt to the Changes
Life Brings, Or Be Replaced

Hi, Did you know humans have a natural resistance to change?That tendency can often protect you from harm. But sometimes it can be deadly.

EVG Research Team here. We understand the reluctance to change (we're human too).

But as entrepreneurs we've learned to embrace change. To adapt. Switch gears when necessary. Keep things fresh.

All great individual investors and companies possess these traits.

One of our goals with The Elevation Group is to help our members develop the traits and habits that will propel them to personal success.

If you'd like a solid foundation for your financial success and growth, be sure to check out how EVG's Wealth Blueprint can help you. Click here for details

We also believe our blueprint is a "living document." Which means that we'll be making changes along the way as economic conditions and the wealth cycle changes.

Because...
If You Are Unwilling to Change,
Bad Things Can Happen

Take Kodak, for instance.



You probably heard that Kodak filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last year.

It's a shame too.

Kodak was one of the first "social media" companies ... long before that term was a buzz phrase.

Kodak connected people. They brought us closer together.

They were "Facebook" long before Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook founder) was born.

You could capture a moment in your life, save it for later use, and send it to a friend.

And Kodak made it easy enough for a kid to use (check out the ad for the Brownie camera above).

As founder George Eastman once said ...


You push the button, we do the rest.

Seeing a company like Kodak fail is sad.

Especially for the generation that captured their growing years on Kodak film with Instamatic cameras...

...and sang along with Paul Simon's 1973 hit, "Mama, don't take my Kodachrome away..."
The Culture of Complacency

How could a giant in the industry like Kodak fail?

How do you go from dominating 90% of the film market and 85% of camera sales in America (like it did in the 1970's and 80's) to bankrupt in 2012?

Well, that's what happens when you refuse to change. When you're too stubborn to let go of the old before you embrace the new.

You see, until the 1990s, analysts consistently rated Kodak as one of the world's five most valuable brands.

Kodak had built that reputation on the back of their film business and their consumer-level cameras.

And here's the crazy thing. Kodak knew (before almost anyone else) that film-based cameras would soon be obsolete.

An internal memo passed around the Kodak front offices in 1979 predicted that digital imaging would fully replace traditional film by the year 2010! Wow!

So why didn't they change?

Well, they tried. But a culture of the "complacent monopolist" permeated the company.

In other words, they were making money and that was good enough for much of the upper management.

Why change when you're making money?

As late as 1999, the company was still making $16 billion in revenues and $2.5 billion in annual profits.

The demand for film was still strong. Digital photography had not yet reached the masses.

Kodak executives didn't want to abandon their flagship film business at the expense of their digital research. They resisted the change.

And it cost them. Big time.

During the first decade of the new millennium, Kodak watched helplessly as digital photography swiftly replaced film, and as smartphones rapidly took the place of cameras.

Without a solid foot in the door on either of those industries, Kodak also watched their profits plummet ... and their net worth drop off a cliff.

In 2009, Kodak stopped manufacturing their last remaining film product, Kodachrome64.

At the time they filed for bankruptcy in early 2012, they were upside down by nearly $2 billion.
How You Can Learn
From Kodak's Mistake

Companies and individuals are different ... but there are important take-aways from Kodak's demise that can help you.

First, recognize that change is already here. The old (comfortable) ways are gone.

Think about it...
The global economy is still on life support.


Unemployment is sky-high.


Reliance on government subsidy and handouts is at epidemic levels.


Inflation is sneakily sucking the sails out of your net worth ... and it's getting worse by the day.



So, to keep from just scraping by... or postponing retirement ... or facing a jobless future...

YOU need to change with the times.

It might mean learning a new (more valuable) skill.

It might mean moving to a different part of the country or the world.

It might mean starting a business.

It might mean learning a new way of investing (and ditching the old, outdated ways).

Whatever it means to you ... recognize that change isn't always easy.

It will require you to move outside of your comfort zone (exactly what Kodak failed to do).

But it can be the only way to survive in changing times.

And the times... oh, they are a changing.

The Elevation Group equips you for the changes going on in our world and in the economy.

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From Saudi Arabia to North Korea, Modern Persecution of Christians Spans Globe

By Dietrich Alexander, Die Welt, Jan. 21, 2013
BERLIN—Asir’s life was preprogrammed. The North African Muslim was to be trained to be a jihadist in a Palestinian terrorist camp. There he would learn how to build bombs and kill non-believers. But just before he was due to leave, he started to have doubts.

“I realized that there were several versions of the Koran, and that some texts contradict each other,” he says now, four years later. His imam was unable to explain these contradictions satisfactorily. Questioning the dogma underlying his Salafist affinities and the religious fanaticism environment around him, he ended up tearing up his passport—thus making the trip to the camp impossible.

It was during this period of religious confusion that Asir met a Christian, who told him about Jesus. He looked for more information on Christianity on the Internet, called a Christian hotline, came across a Christian TV station, and started reading the Bible. He ended up converting to Christianity—which means that his life is at constant risk in his country.

Azni from Chechnya is also a Christian, and she’s paying a high price for her beliefs. Her brothers want to kill her. Her husband says she has put a curse on the family. The 40-year-old woman prays fervently for her survival. “I’m tired and I’m scared,” she says.

Saliha’s home is in northern Nigeria, where sharia law prevails. The 20-year-old grew up a Christian. Then one day her father converted to Islam. Her mother refused to do so, so the man threw her and his then eight-year-old daughter out of the house. But he later came after Saliha and forced her to wear the veil and attend an Islamic school.

She ultimately fled, and today lives in a Christian institution where she is considered an excellent student. She must continue to be careful though, because her father is still after her and if he finds her, she faces forced marriage to a Muslim.

Three Christians, three fates. They represent 100 million people that are persecuted around the world for their Christian beliefs, according to the Christian aid organization Open Doors. In the 2013 edition of their World Watch List the organization puts North Korea—for the 11th time—at the head of 50 countries where the persecution of Christians is strongest.

In North Korea, between 50,000 and 70,000 Christians are interned in labor camps, Open Doors reports. Under the dictatorship, just owning a Bible can mean the death penalty or internment of the whole family. An estimated 200,000 to 400,000 Christians have to live their faith in secret, but despite the persecution the government has yet to eradicate what is in fact a growing network of believers who worship at services in each others’ homes.

Also topping the Open Doors list are Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, the Maldives, Mali, Iran, Yemen and Eritrea. The Arab revolts against dictatorial regimes have apparently done little to change the persecution of Christians. Indications so far point to one autocracy having replaced another.

“Islamic groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists used revolutions and democratic elections such as Egypt’s as a stepping stone to power,” says Markus Rode, head of Open Doors in Germany. “Unfortunately we see no end to Islamic extremism spreading across country and massive persecution and displacement of Christian minorities.”

In Syria, Christians are mostly targeted by foreign Islamists who have joined the Free Syrian Army. The result is that on the 2013 list Syria has moved up from number 36 to 11th place. Libya moved from 26 to 17th place, Tunisia from 35 to 30. Egypt occupies the 25th place.

For the first time, the annual list includes Sub-Saharan countries—Mali, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and Niger—because the situation of Christian minorities in those countries has worsened dramatically. Violent attacks on Christians have also been tracked by Open Doors in Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Niger and Nigeria.

China has moved down to 37th place from 21st because those conducting services in their homes—as long as they obey set limitations—are generally not persecuted although the regime is ramping up measures to keep home churches under control and at least 100 Christians are in prison because of their beliefs or religious activities.

According to Open Doors, there has been clear improvement in the position of Christians in Chechnya, Cuba, Turkey, Belarus and Bangladesh, which no longer figure on the 2013 list. This by no means that Christians aren’t persecuted in these countries, just that the countries aren’t among the top 50 worst offenders.

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Reaction to Dr. Tyson´s History of Science

By Dennis Edwards:

Ronald Jackson Boyd:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti3mtDC2fQo

Neil Tyson presentation about intelligent design

Dennis : This is interesting Ron, but as you see, he believes in evolution. That is his unquestioned foundation assumption, that evolution is true. He is making a straw-man argument by presenting the intelligent design position incorrectly, to make it seem that his logic is correct. However, creation scientists are doing real science in the classroom, just as many great creation scientists in the past have done, like Kepler, Newton, Mendel, Pasteur, Carver, etc. They use their creationist assumptions and do their science, just as evolutionists use their evolution assumptions and do their science. Because of their foundation assumptions both come to different conclusions. 

The question we need to ask is which conclusions are more closely consistent with the evidence and need fewer saving or supporting assumptions or hypothetical devices along the way. 

There are so many good creation science books, dealing with real empirical science and not just philosophy or historical science, that I am at wonder to how and why this speaker does not seem to understand the creation position correctly. He is either ignorant of the real position, and has not done his homework, or he is purposely presenting a straw-man argument for the sake of winning his argument. He comes across quite sincere, so it seems for some reason he has not studied the creation science/intelligent design question fully, to understand it correctly, however sincere he may be.

Ronald Jackson Boyd: If he hasn't studied the creation science/intelligent design argument fully, it may be because of the likes of Kent Hovind and Ray Comfort and others, which are living straw-men. When these people's assumptions coincide with a set of religious tenants which cannot be questioned, then what other conclusions can they come to? 

Many of the same arguments brought up by creationists are simply the same ones argued in the 19th century. Some creationists actually duplicate Darwin's theories deriving their own terminology for the same ideas. 

Maybe this is Tyson's synopsis of the creationist movement, but he looked at Newton and others not with the assumption that they were wrong in their observations but in a positive light. Our educational system does not go into that much detail about the thinking of people like Pythagoras, Darwin, Kepler, Pascal, and other scientists but just uses their theories which have been pretty well distilled throughout a long history which is covered in distinctly separate courses. 

Most people don't do their homework on issues because of the sheer volume of repetitive information, so stereotypes based on a few examples are convenient. Not to say that I am not guilty of doing this kind of thing also, but I appreciate my high school an college education and it will always have an influence on the kinds of assumptions I would accept or reject. I regret that I did not study harder, but I think I can spot propaganda to some extent. When political agendas and fraudulent behaviors permeate a science, it casts doubt on whether it can be trusted.

Dennis´reply:

How anyone can believe that our highly and finely tuned for life on planet earth solar system/ universe is a result of an explosive "Big Bang" with all the laws of physics and chemistry, math and logic resulting from it, is beyond my comprehension.

However, I did believe those things during the time of my life when I was rejecting God, because of my experiences with the hypocritical religious system. My accepting the assumption that there was no spiritual plane and my belief in naturalism, led me to accept evolutionary doctrine.

We need to remember that naturalism, which denies the supernatural and metaphysical, denies the existence of a supreme being. The philosophy of science for many hundreds of years was the "search for truth." Today´s evolutionists have been trying to change that definition so that "naturalism" becomes the guiding principle of science. Science is defined as the human activity of seeking natural explanations for what we observe in the world around us. By removing the possibility of God as a possible assumption from the scientific equation, they push God out of the scientific debate.

The intelligent design movement has been trying to show in the laboratory that the scientific assumptions in the evolutionary paradigm do not add up to the facts of empirical science. Evolution is based on the false assumption that there is no supernatural. A theory based on a false assumption will lead to a false conclusion. The theory of evolution is based on the false assumption of naturalism, there is no supernatural, and therefore, leads to the false conclusion that evolution is true.

But naturalism is not a scientific fact, but only a philosophical assumption. Philosophical assumptions can be wrong and can lead to wrong conclusions. The philosophical assumption that evolution was true led to the idea that the white races were the privileged and fittest race. Other more primitive races were considered lower on the evolutionary scale and closer to the ape. The search for missing links, led to the murder of thousands of Australian aborigines, who were not considered human. Their skulls were then sold to Natural History Museums in England and the USA as proof that evolution had occurred and that this lower race of homo-sapiens was a link between modern man and his primitive evolutionary ancestors. Of course, modern empirical genetic science shows us there is only one race of people on the planet descending from one original couple. Had we started with Biblical assumptions, we would have arrived at this correctly proven scientific fact. The false evolutionary assumptions led scientific investigation astray and led to the cruel deaths of thousands of innocent people.

Both Hitler and Stalin used their evolutionary beliefs to justify the murder of thousands of people. Hitler said the Jews were more closely related to the ape than to man. He considered the German people to be the fittest race and therefore had the right to dominate and rule over those other weaker peoples. His ideas of military/politics had been adopted from the false paradigm of the evolution theory. Stalin, likewise, was a student of Darwin and felt liberated after reading the Origins. He, too, accepted this so-called scientific theory and applied it to the political/military realm resulting in the deaths of thousands.

Evolution is based on the assumption of naturalism, or the belief that there is no supernatural. However, naturalism is only a philosophy, an assumption or belief system and is not based on the facts of the world around us. I have had a supernatural or spiritual experience which changed me from an agnostic to a real believer. Millions of other people around the world have had similar experiences or know someone who has had one. My mother and father both shared their spiritual experiences with us, their children. As a missionary, many people have shared with me their spiritual experiences. Research has been done and books have been written about such experiences by qualified medical doctors. Life after death experiences have been studied. Therefore, we can conclude the the supernatural does exist.

Those with an evolutionary/naturalistic paradigm will come to a totally different conclusion because of their belief system. No scientist comes to the scientific table without assumptions. Like in the CSI and forensic science, usually different police investigators start with different assumptions of how the murder happened. However, the facts of the scientific investigation begin to eliminate the false assumptions. As the case goes on, the police reach a more probable conclusion. Usually they try to get the murderer to somehow confess, because they are never really sure unless he does. All they have is circumstantial evidence, however strong it may be.

Dr. Tyson´s comment about the 15% of the scientists who do not believe in evolution should be looked at more closely. Maybe the scientific community should be more open to their voice and viewpoints. If we study the history of science we see that usually what turned out to be the correct scientific truth was often in the minority and persecuted for years until finally the weight of scientific and factual proof defeated its adversaries.

The creation/intelligent design movement is advocating that the problems with the evolutionary paradigm be openly addressed and covered in the classroom. Students should be taught factual empirical science. However, philosophical/historical science needs to be presented as such so that contrary ideas/philosophies can be presented. Neither creation nor evolution can be proven in the laboratory. Neither can be tested. A valid scientific hypothesis must be capable of being tested. Neither evolution or creation can be either confirmed or falsified scientifically. They are both really outside the realm of empirical science and the scientific method of observation, hypothesis, testing and retesting to reach a conclusion which can be retested by others who reach the same conclusion. It would be better to think of them in terms of two scientific models or frameworks as that is a more accurate way to look at them. By doing this then maybe they can be debated more objectionably, scientifically and logically, to then be able to discern which is more aligned to observable facts and science.

One evolutionary scientist made the following comment after the conclusion of his life´s work in scientific investigation. Dr. N. Herribert-Nilson, Director of the Botanical Institute at Lund University in Sweden said "My attempt to demonstrate evolution by experiment carried on for more than 40 years of my life has completely failed......The idea of an evolution rests on pure belief." (1953)(References: "The Assumptions Behind the Theory of Evolution" by Dave Schoch, 2008, and "Scientific Creationism" by Dr. Henry Morris, 1974.

It is interesting how Dr.Tyson does praise Newton so much, yet denies the God that Newton loved. Newton said "There are more sure proofs of the authenticity in the Bible than in any secular history.All my discoveries have been made in answer to prayer. I can take my telescope and look millions of miles into space; but I can go away to my room and in prayer get nearer to God and Heaven than I can when assisted by all the telescopes of Earth."

Newton, however, was no friend of traditional religion of his time and remained on the outskirts of religiosity. Nevertheless, he had a firm faith in the Bible as the word of God, believed in a 6-day creation and a young earth/universe, and spent more time reading the Bible than doing science. He predicted that man in the future would be able to travel at a speed of more than 50 miles an hour. When the skeptic Voltaire heard of this prediction he said Newton had gone mad from reading the Bible so much. Now, today, we know better. 

At one point, Newton made a mechanical model of our solar system with the sun and planets. By turning a crank all the planets would travel in their course around the sun. An atheist friend of Newton's came for a visit and was admiring Newton´s model and asked, "Who made it?" Newton replied, "Nobody made it, it made itself." The obvious point he was trying to show his atheistic friend was that just as it would be stupid to think that no one had made the model solar system, so, too, it would be stupid to think that no one had made the actual solar system.

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The Atlantic: “The Pill: Contraceptive or Abortifacient?””

Semantics matter: what does “the pill” do?

With legislation set to go into effect requiring private employers to provide abortifacients as an insurance benefit, Liberty University English professor Karen Swallow Prior has called attention to the increasingly sloppy usage of relevant terms in the controversy. Unclear and confusing language in this instance is not inconsequential but actually muddies the moral waters. And an important aspect of this problem, Dr. Prior writes, is the need “for some political, scientific, and moral clarity on the birth control pill.” What does “the pill” do, and what does it not do?


Oral contraceptive pills (OCPs), a familiar daily sight to millions of American women since acquiring FDA approval as a contraceptive in the 1960s, typically contain low doses of two hormones. OCPs fool a woman’s hormonal regulatory mechanisms in order to inhibit ovulation. But what happens if ovulation and then fertilization do occur? Image credit: motorolka/Shutterstock through www.theatlantic.com

What is the difference between contraception and abortion? Historically, until pro-abortion activists began to push for a change of definition,5 conception was synonymous with fertilization—the union of a sperm and an egg. A human life begins at fertilization. Therefore, contraception has traditionally meant prevention of fertilization. In practical terms, this requires preventing contact between sperm and ova (eggs). Oral contraceptives (OCPs) accomplish this with reasonable success primarily by preventing ovulation. OCPs fool a woman’s hormonal regulatory systems with low daily doses of hormones. But if an accidental ovulation occurs and an egg is produced and fertilized, do OCPs prevent implantation of an embryo in the uterus?

This question, in the past, was primarily discussed among conservative pro-life professionals. As our knowledge has increased, it has become clear to most of us that OCPs neither prevent implantation nor damage the unborn child exposed to them. Lately, this question is attracting much more attention. Why?

As most of our readers are aware, the new health care law—aka Obamacare—opens the door for non-elected bureaucrats to demand “morning after pills”—often called “emergency contraceptives”—be routinely covered as an employee health benefit. These medications are abortifacients intended to prevent or disrupt the implantation of an embryo, thereby leading to the death of the child.6 Many Christians believe their duty to God requires that they not pay for abortions, even those accomplished invisibly and quietly using medications. Therefore, many Christian colleges and Christian-owned businesses have filed lawsuits begging our courts to protect several constitutional freedoms that Obamacare violates. (See News to Note, December 1, 2012 to learn more.)

As public debate has heated up, Dr. Prior notes there has been increasingly sloppy use of terminology. Of course, these semantic games didn’t just begin. When various medical organizations agreed to change the definition of conception to make it synonymous with implantation, deceptive words entered our language. Since several days elapse between fertilization and implantation, this change allowed health care providers to administer abortifacients under the guise of contraception. Ethically, this is killing a human being with impunity on the basis of a semantic technicality.

Since Obamacare has been on the firing line, the media and scientists are now paying more attention to how ordinary oral contraceptives (OCPs) work. Dr. Prior writes, “Some pro-lifers, this one included, find it at least a little bit suspect that now, in the midst of controversy around this issue . . . scientists are suddenly backtracking on long-held views about how the birth control pill works.”

OCPs, in addition to preventing ovulation, thin the lining of the uterus. Does OCP-induced thinning of the uterine lining render it unreceptive to an embryo? If so, then OCPs would be abortifacients also. If people can be convinced that oral contraceptives—which enjoy wide acceptance—have been doing the same thing as the “morning after pill” all along, then support for mandated medical coverage for abortifacients may well slide in to favor on the slippery slope of morality by public consensus.

Though some pro-lifers err on the side of caution, most physicians—including myself and the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists—are convinced that OCPs do not cause embryo loss. Why would this be? It turns out that the lining of the uterus is never prepared for the implantation of an embryo—whether a woman is “taking the pill” or not—prior to ovulation. OCPs prevent ovulation, but when a “breakthrough ovulation” occurs it is possible to get pregnant. Once fertilization occurs—whether the woman is “on the pill” or not—the post-ovulation ovary continues producing the hormones needed to prepare the lining of the uterus for implantation. God’s design is such that while the fertilized egg is traveling down the fallopian tube, the uterus is preparing to receive it. Ordinary OCPs do not disrupt this process, but “emergency contraceptives” do.

The author of The Atlantic article mentions that the “morning after pill” delays ovulation and implies there is thus little moral difference between it and conventional OCPs. We disagree. When a “morning after pill” is taken before ovulation and succeeds in delaying ovulation until all living sperm scattered through the woman's reproductive tract have died, then it prevents fertilization. If this were the only mechanism by which “morning after pills” worked then—insofar as the risk of destroying a human life is concerned—they would be morally indistinguishable from conventional OCPs.7

Yet inhibition of ovulation is only one of the ways “emergency contraceptives” work. If ovulation has already occurred and the ovum has gotten or gets fertilized, then the only way for “emergency contraceptives” to prevent the continuation of the pregnancy is to prevent or disrupt the implantation. Some people claim that “emergency contraceptives” merely thin the lining of the uterus the same way ordinary OCPs do and that they therefore work in the same way. If that were the case, however, then “emergency contraceptives” would be quite unreliable. Drugs used as “emergency contraceptives” are effective because they do not simply thin the uterine lining the way ordinary OCPs do, but actively interfere with the embryo's implantation.

It is important to have our terminology straight as the public debate on this topic continues, lest semantics be used to distort truth.

“Reproductive freedom” is a concept that has received a great deal of attention since the advent of pharmacological contraceptives. Men and women make many choices in life, including whether to obey God’s moral law that reserves sexual activity to marriage. But when an inconvenient or unwanted pregnancy occurs, regardless of life circumstances, that “freedom” should not include the right to murder another human being. The embryonic human life produced has a right to live, and killing him or her by either dismembering the body (one common method of conventional abortion) or by using powerful drugs to deny him or her the opportunity to grow in the mother’s uterus is reprehensible, and “reproductive freedom” should never include those options. And if the law of the land for forty years since Roe v. Wade has allowed women to abort their babies in the name of “reproductive freedom,” our constitutionally protected freedoms should at least prevent private citizens and the businesses and institutions in their care from having to pay for women to kill their unborn children

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Around the World with Ken Ham

Hobby Lobby and Obamacare


Posted: 19 Jan 2013 06:39 AM PST


Many of you have been following the lawsuit that the Hobby Lobby corporation has filed against the Obama administration. Under the new health care mandate, Hobby Lobby, a retail chain of arts/crafts stores, is required to offer health insurance that provides abortion-inducing drugs (abortifacients) to its employees. (For a detailed discussion of how so-called “emergency contraceptives” work, in contrast to ordinary contraceptive pills, read this News to Note article by Dr. Elizabeth Mitchell: www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2013/01/12/news-to-note-01122013#five).

Now, the owners of Hobby Lobby are standing their ground and have sued the federal government. Hobby Lobby founder and CEO David Green and his family have said that by being forced to offer insurance that provides abortifacients, their religious beliefs are being violated. The fines for not complying with the Obamacare mandate are about $1.3 million per day. Hobby Lobby asked that any fines be delayed until the court proceedings were over, but Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor denied the request.

A recent news report (www.foxnews.com/on-air/special-report-bret-baier/blog/2013/01/11/hobby-lobby-vs-health-care-law) said that Hobby Lobby has found a way to delay by a few months the January 1 requirement to comply with the health care mandate. This is good news for Hobby Lobby—but it still doesn’t solve the issue of what’s at stake with regard to religious freedom in the US.

Sadly, what is happening to Hobby Lobby doesn’t bode well for Christians in general. Joel Belz in World magazine (www.worldmag.com/mobile/article.php?id=24863) recently wrote, “If all this is not a blatant denial of an American citizen’s freedom to exercise his or her deeply help religious beliefs, it’s hard to imagine what the federal government might do to be offensive.” And that’s a legitimate concern to have.

You see, if Hobby Lobby is forced by the federal government to act in ways that violate the owners’ convictions concerning the authority of Scripture, what will stop the government from forcing churches and individual believers to act against what God’s Word says?

Scripture tells us that we’ll experience persecution for the sake of Christ:


If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, “A servant is not greater than his master.” If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you. If they kept My word, they will keep yours also. But all these things they will do to you for My name’s sake, because they do not know Him who sent Me. (John 15:18–21)

I applaud the Green family’s bold stand for the truth of God’s Word when it comes to the lives of unborn babies, and their stand for God’s Word will likely come at great cost to their organization. Please pray for them as they publicly stand for their biblical convictions. I pray that other Christians will be prepared to stand as they have done.

Actually, all companies and organizations are affected by this Obamacare mandate. Answers in Genesis is also working with our legal representatives to do what needs to be done legally in regard to this vital issue.

Please pray for AiG and other organizations as we also have to confront this sad issue head on.

For our eye-opening commentary on the abortion decision handed down 40 years ago by the U.S. Supreme Court (called Roe v. Wade), read: www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2013/01/18/roe-v-wade-40-years-later.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,

Ken

Note: Steve Golden assisted in the preparation of this blog item.

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O Céu em uma Flor do Campo- devocional

Compilação

Os céus manifestam a glória de Deus e o firmamento anuncia a obra das suas mãos.—Salmo 19:1 (RA)

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Porque as suas coisas invisíveis, desde a criação do mundo, tanto o seu eterno poder, como a sua divindade, se entendem, e claramente se vêem pelas coisas que estão criadas, para que eles fiquem inescusáveis.—Romanos 1:20 (NVI)

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O celestial lota a terra,
E a presença de Deus este em todo arbusto em chamas.
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning

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Muitas vezes me perguntam se não me sinto só no meu trabalho. Fica difícil responder, pois parece-me óbvio que não é possível se sentir só quando existe tanto trabalho a fazer, tudo é lindo, livre, e repleto da presença de Deus!—John Muir

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A criação de Deus é a maior prova da Sua existência.—David Brandt Berg

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Indaguei à terra, “O que é Deus?”, e ela respondeu, “Eu não sou Deus”. – E tudo na terra fez a mesma afirmação. Indaguei aos mares e oceanos, e às criaturas rastejantes, e a resposta foi igual, “Nós não somos Deus; procure mais no alto.” Indaguei aos céus, ao sol, à lua, e às estrelas, e todos responderam, “Nós também não somos o Deus que você busca”. Pedi então a todos os sentidos humanos, “Digam-me algo sobre Ele.” E a resposta retumbante foi: “Ele criou a todos nós.” A minha indagação se deu em momentos de contemplação de tanta beleza, e a resposta veio por meio de seu resplendor. Indaguei sobre o meu Deus ao universo inteiro, e a resposta foi, “Eu não sou Deus, mas Ele me criou”.—Santo Agostinho

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Perceber o mundo em um grão de areia
E o Céu em uma flor do campo
Ter o infinito na palma da mão,
E a Eternidade em um instante!
―William Blake

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Todo mundo de luz e de trevas é um milagre. ―Walt Whitman

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Maravilhar-se é um elemento básico da adoração.—Thomas Carlyle

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Certa vez ouvi um indiano na televisão dizer que Deus estava no vento e na água. Fiquei maravilhado com tão bela declaração, contemplando a possibilidade de mergulhar em Deus ou senti-lO tocar o meu rosto por meio de uma brisa.—Donald Miller

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Ele faz coisas grandes e inescrutáveis, e maravilhas sem número. -- Jó 5:9 (NVI)

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Ficamos tão impressionados com todo o estardalhaço no mundo científico que nem nos sentimos no direito de dizer que o girassol vira na direção do sol. É praticamente automático preferirmos explicações… bem prolongadas e com termos complicados. Agrada-nos muito mais quando nos é confirmado que o girassol gira porque é heliotrópico. O problema com esse tipo de discurso é que ficamos tentados a achar que entendemos de girassóis, sendo que não sabemos nada sobre essa planta. O girassol é um mistério, assim como cada coisinha no universo. —Robert Farrer Capon

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Todo ser humano e seu espírito é criado com o toque divino, o toque da mão de Deus.—David Brandt Berg

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A melhor maneira de ler e entender a Bíblia é ao ar livre, e quanto mais junto à natureza, melhor. -- Pelo menos essa tem sido a minha experiência. Passagens relatadas na Bíblia aparentemente improváveis ou inacreditáveis quando estamos em um local fechado, no exterior parecem totalmente naturais. Isso ocorre porque na natureza contemplamos maravilhas o tempo todo; percebemos que o milagroso não é extraordinário, mas sim a maneira normal e natural de tudo. É o nosso pão de cada dia; qualquer pessoa que tenha realmente observado os lírios do campo ou as aves no céu e pensado na improbabilidade de existirem neste mundo cálido situado na fria expansão dos céus, não vai ter muita dificuldade em aceitar que água foi transformada em vinho -- em comparação, um milagre bem pequeno. Nós nos esquecemos do milagre muito maior e contínuo produzido pela água (junto com solo e a luz do sol), que é o fato de ela se transformar em uvas.—Wendell Berry

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Existem duas coisas nas quais quanto mais reflito mais admiração e assombro me causam: o céu estrelado na dimensão física, e a lei moral na dimensão interior.—Immanuel Kant

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Deus criou as florestas, as pequenas estrelas, e os ventos – e eu acho que fez tudo para compensar pelo tipo de civilização que tentaria sufocar o espírito da alegria no nosso íntimo. Ele criou as grandes expansões para as pessoas que querem ficar a sós e conversar com Ele longe da multidão que amortece qualquer reverência. E acho que Ele fica feliz por, às vezes, deixarmos de lado preocupações e responsabilidades para ficarmos pertinho dEle, assim como Jesus saiu de mansinho para ir orar a sós no deserto.—Margaret Elizabeth Sangster

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O ser humano deveria ouvir um pouco de música, ler um pouco de poesia e observar uma gravura bonita cada dia da sua vida, para que os cuidados do mundo não sufoquem o senso de beleza embutido na alma humana pelo seu criador. —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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Imprima no seu coração que cada dia é o melhor dia do ano. ―Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Se a pessoa perder o respeito por algum aspecto da sua vida, perderá o respeito pela vida em geral.—Albert Schweitzer

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Senhor, eu lhe agradeço por este dia surpreendente, pelo espírito animado das árvores verdejantes, pelo céu azul e por tudo o que é natural, que é infinito, que é .—E. E. Cummings

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Aquele que não contempla apenas a aparência, mas consegue vislumbrar a alma fazendo contato com ele e se revelando por meio da aparência vai parar mais de um momento e contemplar – e não encontrar palavras para se expressar -- com o mesmo sentimento de quando as estrelas da alva se uniram em canção.—George MacDonald

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Deus é como a luz. Maravilhar-se é como a sombra. Se espantar a sombra, jamais conseguirá alcançá-la. Ela pode até desaparecer por completo. Se caminhar em direção à luz, a sombra sempre irá atrás de você. Isso acontece quando o coração está alegre. “Certamente que a bondade e a misericórdia me seguirão todos os dias da minha vida”.—Ravi Zacharias

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Eu diria que o agradecimento é o tipo de pensamento supremo, e a gratidão é a felicidade junto com o deslumbre.—G. K. Chesterton

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Bendize, ó minha alma, ao Senhor!
Senhor Deus meu, tu és magnificentíssimo;
estás vestido de glória e de majestade.
Ele se cobre de luz como de um vestido,
estende os céus como uma cortina.
Põe nas águas as vigas das suas câmaras;
faz das nuvens o seu carro,
anda sobre as asas do vento.
Faz dos seus anjos espíritos, dos
seus ministros um fogo abrasador.

Lançou os fundamentos da terra;
ela não vacilará em tempo algum.
Tu a cobriste com o abismo, como com um vestido;
as águas estavam sobre os montes.
À tua repreensão fugiram;
à voz do teu trovão se apressaram.
Subiram aos montes,
desceram aos vales,
até ao lugar que para elas fundaste.
Termo lhes puseste, que não ultrapassarão,
para que não tornem mais a cobrir a terra.

Tu, que fazes sair as fontes nos vales,
as quais correm entre os montes.
Dão de beber a todo o animal do campo;
os jumentos monteses matam a sua sede.

Junto delas as aves do céu terão a sua habitação,
cantando entre os ramos.
Ele rega os montes desde as suas câmaras;
a terra farta-se do fruto das suas obras.
Faz crescer a erva para o gado,
e a verdura para o serviço do homem,
para fazer sair da terra o pão,
E o vinho que alegra o coração do homem,
e o azeite que faz reluzir o seu rosto,
e o pão que fortalece o coração do homem.
As árvores do Senhor fartam-se de seiva,
os cedros do Líbano que ele plantou,
Onde as aves se aninham;
quanto à cegonha, a sua casa é nas faias.
Os altos montes são para as cabras monteses,
e os rochedos são refúgio para os coelhos.

Designou a lua para as estações;
o sol conhece o seu ocaso.
Ordenas a escuridão, e faz-se noite,
na qual saem todos os animais da selva.
Os leõezinhos bramam pela presa,
e de Deus buscam o seu sustento.
Nasce o sol e logo se acolhem,
e se deitam nos seus covis.
Então sai o homem à sua obra
e ao seu trabalho, até à tarde.

Oh Senhor, quão variadas são as tuas obras!
Todas as coisas fizeste com sabedoria;
cheia está a terra das tuas riquezas.
Assim é este mar grande e muito espaçoso,
onde há seres sem número,
animais pequenos e grandes.
Ali andam os navios;
e o leviatã que formaste para nele folgar.

Todos esperam de ti,
que lhes dês o seu sustento em tempo oportuno.
Dando-lhe tu, eles o recolhem;
abres a tua mão,
e se enchem de bens.
Escondes o teu rosto,
e ficam perturbados;
se lhes tiras o fôlego,
morrem, e voltam para o seu pó.
Envias o teu Espírito,
e são criados,
e assim renovas a face da terra.

A glória do Senhor durará para sempre;
o Senhor se alegrará nas suas obras.
Olhando ele para a terra, ela treme;
tocando nos montes, logo fumegam.

Cantarei ao Senhor enquanto eu viver;
cantarei louvores ao meu Deus,
enquanto eu tiver existência.
A minha meditação acerca dele será suave;
eu me alegrarei no Senhor.
-- Salmo 104:1-34 (NVI)

Publicado no Âncora em janeiro de 2013.
Tradução Hebe Rondon Flandoli. Revisão Tiago Sant’Ana.



Postado em: Bíblia, Criação, Reflexão

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It’s Just Like the Plan

By James McConkey

Download Audio (8.9MB)

You remember the story of the engineer of the Brooklyn Bridge. During its building he was injured. For many long months he was shut up in his room. His gifted wife shared his toils and carried his plans to the workmen. At last the great bridge was completed. Then the invalid architect asked to see it. They put him upon a cot and carried him to the bridge. They placed him where he could see the magnificent structure in all its beauty. There he lay, in his helplessness, intently scanning the work of his genius. He marked the great cables, the massive piers, the mighty anchorages which fettered it to the earth. His critical eye ran over every beam, every girder, every chord, every rod. He noted every detail carried out precisely as he had dreamed it in his dreams and wrought it out in his plans and specifications. Then as the joy of achievement filled his soul, as he saw and realized that it was finished exactly as he had designed it, in an ecstasy of delight he cried out, “It’s just like the plan! It’s just like the plan!”

Some day we shall stand in the glory and, looking up into His face, cry out, “O God, I thank Thee that Thou didst turn me aside from my willful and perverse way to Thy loving and perfect one. I thank Thee that Thou didst ever lead me to yield my life to Thee. I thank Thee that as I day by day walked the simple pathway of service, Thou didst let me gather up one by one the golden threads of Thy great purpose for my life. I thank Thee, as, like a tiny trail creeping its way up some great mountainside, that pathway of life has gone on in darkness and light, storm and shadow, weakness and tears, failures and falterings, Thou hast at last brought me to its destined end. And now that I see my finished life, no longer ‘through a glass darkly’ but in the face-to-face splendor of Thine own glory, I thank Thee, O God, I thank Thee that it’s just like the plan; it’s just like the plan.”

Then, too, while we do need to walk carefully and earnestly that we miss not God’s great will for us, yet let us not be anxious lest, because we are so human, so frail, so fallible, we may make some mistakes in the details and specifications of that plan. We will do well to remember this. God has a beautiful way of overruling mistakes when the heart is right with Him. That is the supreme essential. The one attitude of ours which can mar His purpose of love for our lives is the refusal to yield that life and will to His own great will of love for it. But when that life is honestly yielded, then the mistakes in the pathway which spring from our own human infirmities and fallibleness will be sweetly and blessedly corrected by God, as we move along that path. It is like guiding a ship. Our trembling hand upon the wheel may cause trifling wanderings from her course. But they seem greater to us than they are in reality. And if we but hold our craft steadily to the polestar of God’s will as best we know it, she will reach her destined port with certainty, notwithstanding the swervings that have befallen her in the progress of her voyage.

But now we come face to face with a question of supreme importance, and that is this: “How shall I ascertain God’s plan for my life? How shall I be safeguarded from error? How shall I discern the guidance of God from the misguidance of my own fleshly desires and ambitions? How shall I find the path in which He is calling me to walk?” We answer first: Believe!

The trouble with most of us is that we do not believe God has such a life plan for us. We take our own way; we lay our own plans; we choose our own profession; we decide upon our own business without taking God into account at all. According to our faith is it unto us. And if we have no faith in God’s Word in this regard, what else can we expect but to miss God’s way for our lives, and only come back to it after long and costly wanderings from His blessed, chosen pathway for us? Ephesians 2:10 (For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them) is as surely inspired as Ephesians 2:8 (For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God). The promise of a life plan is as explicit in the one as the promise of salvation is in the other. Brood over this Ephesians verse. Is it plain? Is it God’s Word? Does it not say clearly that God has a life plan for you in Christ Jesus? Then settle down upon it. Believe it with your whole soul. Do not be shaken from it.

Again—pray!

Dr. Henry Foster, founder of the Clifton Springs sanitarium, was a man of marvelous power with God. A man, too, of great insight into the mind and ways of God in the matter of guidance in the affairs of life. What was the secret of that wondrous power and wisdom? Visitors were wont to ask this question of one of the older physicians on the staff of that great institution. And this was his response. He took the visitor by the arm. He led him upstairs to the door of Dr. Foster’s office. He led him into this little chamber, across to the corner of the room. There, kneeling, he lifted up the border of a rug and showed to the visitor two ragged holes in the carpet, worn by the knees of God’s saint in his life of prayer. “That, sir, was the secret of Henry Foster’s power and wisdom in the things of God and men.”

Friend, when your bedroom carpet begins to wear out after that fashion, the man who lives in that room need not have any fear about missing God’s life plan. For that is the open secret of wisdom and guidance in the life of every man who knows anything about walking with God. Does any man lack wisdom? “Let him ask of God.”1 Are you one of the men who lack wisdom concerning God’s plan for their lives? Then ask of God. Pray! Pray trustfully, pray steadily, pray expectantly, and God will certainly guide you into that blessed place where you will be as sure you are in His chosen pathway as you are of your salvation.

Do not launch out upon the sea of life headed for a port of your own choosing, guided by a chart of your own drafting, driven by the power of your own selfish pleasures or ambitions. Come to God. Yield your life to Him by one act of trustful, irrevocable surrender. And then begin to choose to do His will for your life instead of your own. So shall you come steadily to know and see God’s will for that life. Our Lord Jesus clearly said this: “If any man will do my will, he shall know.”2 Without a shadow of doubt, we will begin to know God’s will as soon as we begin to choose His will for our lives instead of our own.

Thus the spiritual field-glasses through which we come to see God’s will for our lives are double-barreled. Side by side are two lenses. The one—“I trust.” The other—“I will.” When a man can hold both of these to his eyes, he will see God’s will with unclouded clearness.

Listen. Begin to believe in God’s plan for your life. For no man can see the will of God save through these two crystal lenses—the trustful heart and the yielded will.

Originally published in Life Talks: A Series of Bible Talks on the Christian Life, 1911.Published on Anchor January 2013. Read by Simon Peterson.


1 James 1:5.

2 John 7:17.

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Heaven in a Wildflower- Anchor Devotional

A compilation

Download Audio (11.3MB)

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.—Psalm 19:1 (NIV)

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For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature.—Romans 1:20 (NLT)

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Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God.
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning

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I am often asked if I am not lonely on my solitary excursions. It seems so self-evident that one cannot be lonesome where everything is wild and beautiful and busy and steeped with God that the question is hard to answer.—John Muir

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God’s creation is the greatest proof of His existence.—David Brandt Berg

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“What is this God?” I asked the earth, and it answered, “I am not He,” and all things that are in the earth made the same confession. I asked the sea and the deeps and the creeping things, and they answered, “We are not your God; seek higher.” I asked the heavens, the sun, the moon, the stars, and they answered, “Neither are we the God whom you seek.” And I said to all the things that throng about the gateways of the senses, “Tell me something of Him.” And they cried out in a great voice, “He made us.” My questions were my gazing upon them, and their answer was their beauty. I asked the whole frame of the universe about my God and it answered me, “I am not He, but He made me.”—Saint Augustine

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To See a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
―William Blake

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Every moment of light and dark is a miracle.―Walt Whitman

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Wonder is the basis of worship.—Thomas Carlyle

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I once listened to an Indian on television say that God was in the wind and the water, and I wondered at how beautiful that was, because it meant you could swim in Him or have Him brush your face in a breeze.—Donald Miller

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He performs wonders that cannot be fathomed, miracles that cannot be counted.—Job 5:9 (NIV)

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We are so impressed by scientific clank that we feel we ought not to say that the sunflower turns because it knows where the sun is. It is almost second nature to us to prefer explanations … with a large vocabulary. We are much more comfortable when we are assured that the sunflower turns because it is heliotropic. The trouble with that kind of talk is that it tempts us to think that we know what the sunflower is up to. But we don't. The sunflower is a mystery, just as every single thing in the universe is.—Robert Farrer Capon

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No human being, no human spirit is created without the touch of the divine, the touch of the hand of God.—David Brandt Berg

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The Bible is best read and understood outdoors, and the farther outdoors the better. Or that has been my experience of it. Passages that within walls seem improbable or incredible, outdoors seem merely natural. That is because outdoors we are confronted everywhere with wonders; we see that the miraculous is not extraordinary, but the common mode of existence. It is our daily bread. Whoever really has considered the lilies of the field or the birds of the air, and pondered the improbability of their existence in this warm world within the cold and empty stellar distances, will hardly balk at the turning of water into wine—which was, after all, a very small miracle. We forget the greater and still continuing miracle by which water (with soil and sunlight) is turned into grapes.—Wendell Berry

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Two things fill me with constantly increasing admiration and awe, the longer and more earnestly I reflect on them: the starry heavens without and the moral law within.—Immanuel Kant

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God made the forests, the tiny stars, and the wild winds—and I think that he made them partly as a balance for that kind of civilization that would choke the spirit of joy out of our hearts. He made the great open places for the people who want to be alone with him and talk to him, away from the crowds that kill all reverence. And I think that he is glad at times to have us forget our cares and responsibilities that we may be nearer him—as Jesus was when he crept away into the wilderness to pray.—Margaret Elizabeth Sangster

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A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.―Ralph Waldo Emerson

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If a man loses his reverence for any part of life, he will lose his reverence for all of life.—Albert Schweitzer

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I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes.—E. E. Cummings

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One who not merely beholds the outward shows of things, but catches a glimpse of the soul that looks out of them, whose garment and revelation they are—if he be such, I say, he will stand, for more than a moment, speechless with something akin to that which made the morning stars sing together.—George MacDonald

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God is like the light. Wonder is like the shadow. If you chase the shadow, you will never catch up to it. It might even disappear. If you walk toward the light, the shadow will always pursue you. That is when the heart sings with gladness. “Surely goodness and mercy will follow all the days of my life.”—Ravi Zacharias

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I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.—G. K. Chesterton

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Praise the Lord, O my soul.
O Lord my God, you are very great;
you are clothed with splendor and majesty.
He wraps himself in light as with a garment;
he stretches out the heavens like a tent
and lays the beams of his upper chambers on their waters.
He makes the clouds his chariot
and rides on the wings of the wind.
He makes winds his messengers,
flames of fire his servants.

He set the earth on its foundations;
it can never be moved.
You covered it with the deep as with a garment;
the waters stood above the mountains.
But at your rebuke the waters fled,
at the sound of your thunder they took to flight;
they flowed over the mountains,
they went down into the valleys,
to the place you assigned for them.
You set a boundary they cannot cross;
never again will they cover the earth.

He makes springs pour water into the ravines;
it flows between the mountains.
They give water to all the beasts of the field;
the wild donkeys quench their thirst.

The birds of the air nest by the waters;
they sing among the branches.
He waters the mountains from his upper chambers;
the earth is satisfied by the fruit of his work.
He makes grass grow for the cattle,
and plants for man to cultivate—
bringing forth food from the earth:
wine that gladdens the heart of man,
oil to make his face shine,
and bread that sustains his heart.
The trees of the Lord are well watered,
the cedars of Lebanon that he planted.
There the birds make their nests;
the stork has its home in the pine trees.
The high mountains belong to the wild goats;
the crags are a refuge for the coneys.

The moon marks off the seasons,
and the sun knows when to go down.
You bring darkness, it becomes night,
and all the beasts of the forest prowl.
The lions roar for their prey
and seek their food from God.
The sun rises, and they steal away;
they return and lie down in their dens.
Then man goes out to his work,
to his labor until evening.

How many are your works, O Lord!
In wisdom you made them all;
the earth is full of your creatures.
There is the sea, vast and spacious,
teeming with creatures beyond number—
living things both large and small.
There the ships go to and fro,
and the leviathan, which you formed to frolic there.

These all look to you
to give them their food at the proper time.
When you give it to them,
they gather it up;
when you open your hand,
they are satisfied with good things.
When you hide your face,
they are terrified;
when you take away their breath,
they die and return to the dust.
When you send your Spirit,
they are created,
and you renew the face of the earth.

May the glory of the Lord endure forever;
may the Lord rejoice in his works—
he who looks at the earth, and it trembles,
who touches the mountains, and they smoke.

I will sing to the Lord all my life;
I will sing praise to my God as long as I live.
May my meditation be pleasing to him,
as I rejoice in the Lord.
—Psalm 104:1–34 (NIV)

Published on Anchor January 2013. Read by Bethany Kelly. Music by Michael Dooley.

Posted in: Audio, Bible, Creation, Reflection

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Doctor Returns to Congo and Is Hailed as a Hero

By Jeffrey Gettleman, NY Times, January 14, 2013
BUKAVU, Democratic Republic of Congo—It was as if someone extraordinarily famous had come to town. Thousands of people craned their necks as the motorcade roared by, cellphones out to grab a snap, an air of expectation and excitement eclipsing all the street noise of clanging Coke bottles and beeping motorcycles.

“There he is!” someone yelled. “Le docteur!”

In the back of a white truck—zooming past so fast it spewed clouds of dust—sat a kind-faced man staring out at the crowds: Denis Mukwege, a gynecological surgeon renowned for treating thousands of brutally raped women. He returned home triumphantly on Monday after more than two months in exile after nearly being assassinated, possibly for speaking out on behalf of the countless women who have been gang-raped by armed groups that stalk the hills of eastern Congo.

Congo, torn by war for years and traumatized by dictators for decades, is desperate for heroes. So perhaps it is no surprise that Dr. Mukwege carries such an enormous amount of pride—and hope—on his rounded shoulders, which are most often covered by a white lab coat. For around 15 years now, he has kept a major hospital running in one of the most turbulent parts of the country, sometimes performing as many as 10 operations a day, on women who have been raped so viciously that they stumble in with death trudging just a few steps behind.

For his work, Dr. Mukwege has won many human rights awards and is often mentioned as a contender for the Nobel Peace Prize. The American playwright Eve Ensler, who works closely with Dr. Mukwege, called him a “spiritual force.”

Banners with messages like “We are behind you” flew all across Bukavu on Monday. One man wore a shirt that said, “Welcome our Superman.”

The obvious love and support for Dr. Mukwege among the people here make it all the more difficult to discern who was behind the assassination attempt on a night last October, when four armed men slipped into his house in Bukavu and waylaid him as he drove in. When his trusted guard jumped out to confront the attackers, the gunmen shot him in the head. With bullets flying, Dr. Mukwege, 57, threw himself to the ground, and the attackers fled. Less than a week later, he escaped to Belgium with his wife and two daughters.

The local authorities say they do not know who tried to kill him. But many of his supporters have their suspicions. A month earlier, Dr. Mukwege had delivered a powerful speech at the United Nations in which he denounced mass rape in Congo and railed against his own government—which has a record of silencing critics—for allowing it to occur with impunity, to the point that the United Nations has called Congo “the rape capital of the world.”

He has also criticized Rwanda for fomenting chaos in Congo. Bukavu, though, is relatively safe. A sprawling, disheveled city hunched over Lake Kivu, one of the most beautiful bodies of water in Africa, it has a thin blue haze from thousands of cooking fires. But around the city, in just about every direction, lurk men with guns.

As Dr. Mukwege’s truck pulled into Panzi Hospital on Monday, a crowd of women—many of them rape victims—burst into song. People yelled “Hallelujah!” One delegation of women from an island in Lake Kivu presented Dr. Mukwege with all he needed to survive for a few days—a bucket of charcoal, several cabbages, pineapples, onions and a gigantic pumpkin.

“We don’t need the military or Monusco,” said one woman, referring to the United Nations mission in Congo. “We women will protect you.”

Some people who had stood for hours under the sun were now huddled in the rain, waiting to hear him speak.

Overwhelmed by the outpouring of emotion, Dr. Mukwege mopped his face with his sleeve and stepped to the podium.

“The power of darkness will be defeated,” he called out to wild cheers. But he also asked people to forgive, saying, “We must respond to violence with love.”

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Doomsday Clock Holds at 5 'Til Midnight

LiveScience.com, Jan. 15, 2013
The hands of the infamous “Doomsday Clock” will remain firmly in their place at five minutes to midnight—symbolizing humans’ destruction—for the year 2013, scientists announced today (Jan. 14).

Keeping their outlook for the future of humanity quite dim, the group of scientists also wrote an open letter to President Barack Obama, urging him to partner with other global leaders to act on climate change.

The clock is a symbol of the threat of humanity’s imminent destruction from nuclear or biological weapons, climate change and other human-caused disasters. In making their deliberations about how to update the clock’s time this year, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists considered the current state of nuclear arsenals around the globe, the slow and costly recovery from events like Fukushima nuclear meltdown, and extreme weather events that fit in with a pattern of global warming.

“2012 was the hottest year on record in the contiguous United States, marked by devastating drought and brutal storms,” the letter says. “These extreme events are exactly what climate models predict for an atmosphere laden with greenhouse gases.”

The Doomsday Clock came into being in 1947 as a way for atomic scientists to warn the world of the dangers of nuclear weapons. That year, the Bulletin set the time at seven minutes to midnight, with midnight symbolizing humanity’s destruction. By 1949, it was at three minutes to midnight as the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union deteriorated. In 1953, after the first test of the hydrogen bomb, the doomsday clock ticked to two minutes until midnight.

The Bulletin was at its most optimistic in 1991, when the Cold War thawed and the United States and Russia began cutting their arsenals. That year, the clock was set at 17 minutes to midnight.

From then until 2010, however, it was a gradual creep back toward destruction, as hopes of total nuclear disarmament vanished and threats of nuclear terrorism and climate change reared their heads. In 2010, the Bulletin found some hope in arms reduction treaties and international climate talks and bumped the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock back to six minutes from midnight from its previous post at five to midnight. But by 2012, the clock was pushed forward another minute.

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The Heart of It All: Salvation- Eternal Salvation?

By Peter Amsterdam

January 10, 2013

While all Christians believe that Jesus died for our sins and we are saved through the sacrifice of His death on the cross, there are some differences in belief among different denominations as to whether that salvation is permanent or whether it can be lost.

It is a fact that there are Christians who lose faith, who stop believing in Jesus and salvation, and who turn from living a Christian life. The question arises in such instances: Did that person lose his or her salvation? Having once been saved, can you lose your salvation?

The Roman Catholic position on salvation differs significantly from the Protestant view and won’t be covered in detail in this article, though I’ll mention a few general things in brief. (This is by no means a complete explanation of Roman Catholic beliefs on salvation.)

The Roman Catholic Church teaches that by the sacrament of baptism God infuses justifying grace into the soul, which cancels original sin and imparts the habit of righteousness. This initial justification is strengthened through other sacraments, love-inspired works, and special merit from Mary and the saints.[1] The belief is that when Catholics die, if they have committed venial (minor) sins which haven’t already been forgiven through the sacrament of confession, their souls will go to purgatory, a place where they will be fully cleansed. Having gone through the cleansing work of purgatory, they are then justified before God. Believers who commit mortal (serious) sin and die without receiving forgiveness through confession fall from grace and lose their salvation. Salvation in Catholic theology depends on continued obedience and can therefore be lost.

The two primary Protestant views are presented in general terms in this article. Beyond the main basic premises, various denominations on both sides of the issue also have further nuances within their belief systems, which aren’t necessary to delve into here.

Let’s look at the two general positions, beginning with those who believe that salvation can be lost if certain conditions are not met throughout a Christian’s life.
Conditions

Those who believe that it is possible for salvation to be lost believe that once one is saved, there are certain conditions that must be maintained in order to keep salvation. The belief is that God has reconciled us to Himself and we will have eternal life, provided these conditions are met. Some Pentecostal denominations, such as the Assemblies of God, as well as Wesleyan-based ones, such as the Methodists, believe this.

These conditions mainly have to do with maintaining one’s spiritual life and living a Christian life. Those who believe that salvation cannot be lost also believe that it’s important to maintain one’s spiritual life, but don’t believe salvation will be lost if one fails in this duty.

The conditions, as seen by those who believe salvation can be lost, are based on five general principles that must be fulfilled: abiding, continuing, enduring, firmness, and faithfulness. The position is that these conditions must be fulfilled throughout one’s life to maintain salvation.[2] In the footnotes, I've included some of the verses which those who take this position base their understanding on.

Abiding

The first condition in this belief system is that one must abide in what they have heard concerning the Gospel. They must stay close to the source, God’s Word and Christ. [3]

Continuing

Continuing means remaining steadfast. While God has begun the work of salvation, one must continue steadfast, to hold fast and continue in the faith. If one moves away from the faith and hope that is in the Gospel, then salvation will be lost.[4]

Enduring

Enduring in the faith to the end of our lives is seen as one of the conditions of the final salvation of a believer. Life is filled with ups and downs, and the expectation is that individuals will hold on to their faith and live it through life’s trials. If there is a failure to endure in the faith until the end of one’s life, eternal life will not be obtained.[5]

Firmness

Those who don’t confirm—or make firm—their faith by supplementing it with virtue, knowledge, self-control, steadfastness, godliness, brotherly affection, and love are in danger of losing their salvation. By spiritually growing in these—and presumably other—virtues, they confirm their salvation.[6]

Faithfulness

It is necessary to remain faithful to the end. The believer must remain in faith and belief. If that faith weakens and turns to unbelief, then there is a loss of salvation and eternal life, unless there is repentance and return.[7]
Eternal Security

Other Christians disagree with the idea that salvation can be lost. They see God’s work in salvation through Jesus’ death as bringing eternal life, and consider that Christians have assurance of that eternal life due to Christ’s sacrifice.

Among those who believe in eternal security, sometimes referred to as “the perseverance of the saints,” there are differences of opinion as to why salvation can’t be lost. Nevertheless, they are in agreement that it cannot be lost.

Reformed churches (Calvinists) believe that God predestined people to be saved, and since they are predestined by God for salvation, they can’t possibly lose their salvation. While they don’t believe predestined Christians can lose their salvation, they do believe that some who profess to be Christians aren’t truly saved, that they aren’t predestined to salvation, and that those who lose their faith or turn their back on God were never truly saved in the first place. From their point of view, no truly saved Christian will ever turn against God. While there are undoubtedly people who profess to be Christians who aren’t actually saved, or who have said a salvation prayer but didn’t really mean what they were saying and thus weren’t born again, it doesn’t seem within the realm of possibility that no saved Christian ever turns away from faith in Jesus. Most Christians probably know of, or have heard of, saved Christians who abandoned the faith.

Many Protestant and evangelical churches base their belief in eternal security on specific promises in the Bible, without linking them to belief in predestination. Reformed churches also use scriptures which speak of eternal life as the basis for their understanding and belief in the perseverance of the saints.

Those who believe “once saved, always saved” believe this way due to a number of key verses which are very specific regarding having salvation permanently.

This is the will of Him who sent Me, that I should lose nothing of all that He has given Me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in Him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.[8]

My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.[9]

These verses have no caveats. They explicitly say that those who believe have eternal life, and no one or nothing can take it away. They will never perish. I should lose nothing of all that He has given Me. The next passage strengthens that understanding.

I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.[10]



Scripture states that those who believe in Jesus have eternal life.

Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life … [11]



For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.[12]
Eternal Life

Some who believe that Christians can lose their salvation don’t look at eternal life as meaning forever, but rather see it as a quality of life, a type of life in relationship with God, which one can have for a time and then lose. However, this concept doesn’t match the meaning of the Greek word aiōnios which is most often used in the Scripture for everlasting or eternal. The definition of aiōnios is without end, never to cease, eternal, everlasting.[13]

Eternal life stands in contrast to judgment, condemnation, and separation from God. Those who receive Jesus, who are born again, are not condemned—they have been redeemed by Christ’s death on the cross.

God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him. Whoever believes in Him is not condemned … [14]

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.[15]

Salvation doesn’t bring an end to sin in our lives. As Christians we are to continually strive to overcome sin, but humans have sinful natures and therefore we sin, and when we do, we should ask God for forgiveness.[16] While our sins have ramifications in our spiritual lives, in that they affect our personal relationship with God, they aren’t a cause for the loss of our salvation. We may suffer the consequences of our sins and be chastised for them, since God, as a good parent, lovingly tries to teach and train us; but we don’t lose our place as a child of God, one adopted into God’s family.

For the Lord disciplines the one He loves, and chastises every son whom He receives … If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons … He disciplines us for our good, that we may share His holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.[17]



To all who did receive Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God.[18]



As children of God, we are heirs of eternal life. It is our promised inheritance through salvation.

You are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.[19]



When the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to His own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.[20]



Being justified by grace, which means being saved through Jesus’ sacrifice, we are heirs of an imperishable inheritance which is kept in heaven for us and which is guarded by God’s power.



Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to His great mercy, He has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.[21]


The Holy Spirit, the Guarantee

As believers, we are sealed by the Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance.

In Him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the Gospel of your salvation, and believed in Him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of His glory.[22]

Theologian Wayne Grudem explains the seal of the Holy Spirit as a guarantee of our eternal inheritance like this:

The Greek word translated “guarantee” in this passage (arrabon) is a legal and commercial term that means “first installment, deposit, down payment, pledge” and represents “a payment which obligates the contracting party to make further payments.” When God gave us the Holy Spirit within, He committed Himself to give all the further blessing of eternal life and a great reward in heaven with Him. This is why Paul can say that the Holy Spirit is the “guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it.” All who have the Holy Spirit within them, all who are truly born again, have God’s unchanging promise and guarantee that the inheritance of eternal life in heaven will certainly be theirs. God’s own faithfulness is pledged to bring it about.[23]

God has promised salvation; through His death and resurrection Jesus has secured it; the Holy Spirit guarantees it. Our salvation is secure, is permanent, and is eternal. Once you have it, you don’t lose it.

We may have temporary lapses in faith, but these lapses in faith and obedience do not change our legal standing as heirs, as those justified by the blood of Jesus.[24] Those who are saved, who have received Jesus, who are born again, do not lose their salvation.

One verse which is used by those who believe a Christian’s salvation can be lost is:

For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding Him up to contempt.[25]

This is a much debated scripture passage, and depending on one’s theology it is looked at differently.

Those who believe one can lose their salvation use this verse to show that it can be lost. According to this view, those who have been enlightened, who have received the heavenly gift of salvation and have shared in the Holy Spirit, if they fall away, lose their salvation.

From the Reformed point of view, Wayne Grudem argues in a lengthy explanation that the author of the book of Hebrews is not talking about born-again believers, but rather about those who were associated with the early church, who were enlightened by the Gospel but had not come to full belief and salvation. They knew something of God’s Word, they had seen the Holy Spirit work in different situations, and had seen the power of God manifest in others. They were connected with Christians, with the Holy Spirit, and had been influenced by them, but had not made the decision to believe. They had become “associated with” the work of the Holy Spirit, they had been exposed to the true preaching of the Word and had appreciated much of its teachings, but in spite of all this, they willfully rejected all of these blessings and turned decidedly against them.

In this view, the author of Hebrews was saying that it’s impossible to restore these particular people, as their familiarity with the things of God and their experiences of the influences of the Holy Spirit had served to harden them against conversion.[26] This interpretation fits the Reformed belief that those who are truly saved won’t stop believing, but will persevere to the end due to their being predestined to salvation.

From the non-Reformed position, Baptist professor Dr. Andrew Hudson explains these verses in the larger context of what the book of Hebrews is teaching. Within the context of the complete book, he argues that while this verse is speaking about saved Christians, it is not speaking about them losing their salvation. He begins by making the case that “those who were once enlightened” does mean saved Christians. He goes on to point out that “falling away” in this context is not fully rejecting Christ, and that the judgment for the Christian who falls away isn’t a loss of salvation.

Hudson makes the point that the book of Hebrews was written to Jewish Christians who were facing persecution and who were faced with either trusting God for help (through Jesus) or refusing to trust Him. If they were to turn away from Christ and return to the Mosaic worship system, they would be saying that Jesus’ sacrifice was not sufficient for their daily faith needs. In taking that stand, they would be saying that Christ’s work on the cross was defective. In doing so they would be criticizing His public ministry and thus “putting Him to open shame.” In such an instance, these Christians would lose God’s blessing and experience His discipline. If they repented, they would be forgiven, but they would still face discipline from God’s hand. The believer would not escape the consequences of his sinful action by simply repenting. He’d be forgiven, but would face the repercussions.

Hudson suggests that the verse could be paraphrased like this:

For it is impossible for true believers who have been once enlightened, and have accepted the heavenly gift, and have been indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and have experienced the good word of the Gospel and the power of the coming kingdom; and then they fail to live their daily life by faith in Christ, to return by means of repentance to a place where they can escape God’s temporal chastisement because they have openly claimed that Christ’s sacrifice was insufficient to maintain fellowship with God and they have publicly embarrassed and dishonored Christ, their patron.

I see Hudson’s explanation as the proper interpretation of the verse. It shows that Hebrews 6:4–6 isn’t speaking of Christians losing their salvation and being unable to regain it. (For Dr. Hudson’s full paper, click here.)

Christians who have accepted Jesus as their Savior, who have been born again, are saved permanently. We have received eternal salvation, God’s gift of love. We have everlasting life, we are reconciled to God, and we will live forever.—All because God loves us and Jesus died for us, so that we might receive the wonderful gift of salvation.

There will probably always be some theological debate among Christians as to who is saved and who isn’t, or whether some are predestined and others aren’t, as the scriptures on these matters and the interpretation of them will probably always generate some controversy. Let’s remember that these things are truly in God’s hands and it’s not our place to be judgmental. There may well be those whom we will be surprised to see in heaven, as we may not have thought they were believers, or that they sincerely meant it when they prayed for salvation. But we must remember that God is the true and righteous judge; He is the one who knows each person’s heart and motives, who understands everything about each of us. He longs for people to be saved. He loves us all and freely extends His gift of salvation to all who will receive it.

I am sure of this, that He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.[27]



[1] Gordon R. Lewis and Bruce A. Demarest, Integrative Theology, Volume 3 (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 175–176.


[2] These are summarized from J. Rodman Williams’ book Renewal Theology, Systematic Theology from a Charismatic Perspective (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 122–127.


[3] Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it … how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? (Hebrews 2:1,3).

Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you too will abide in the Son and in the Father. And this is the promise that He made to us—eternal life (1 John 2:24–25).

If anyone does not abide in Me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned (John 15:6).


[4] You, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, He has now reconciled in His body of flesh by His death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before Him, if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard … (Colossians 1:21–23).


[5] Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory. The saying is trustworthy, for: If we have died with Him, we will also live with Him; if we endure, we will also reign with Him; if we deny Him, He also will deny us (2 Timothy 2:10–12).

Do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised (Hebrews 10:35–36).


[6] We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end (Hebrews 3:14).

Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to make your calling and election sure, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall. For in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (2 Peter 1:10–11).


[7] Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life (Revelation 2:10).

I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent (Revelation 2:4–5).

The one who conquers, I will make him a pillar in the temple of My God. Never shall he go out of it, and I will write on him the name of My God, and the name of the city of My God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down from My God out of heaven, and My own new name (Revelation 3:12).


[8] John 6:39–40.


[9] John 10:27–29.


[10] Romans 8:38–39.


[11] John 3:36.


[12] John 3:16.


[13] Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology, An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (Grand Rapids: InterVarsity Press. 2000), 790.


[14] John 3:17–18.


[15] Romans 8:1.


[16] For more on the subject of the connection between sin and salvation, see The Heart of It All, Sin: Humanity’s Sinful Nature, and Sin: Are There Degrees of Sin?



[17] Hebrews 12:6, 8,10–11.


[18] John 1:12.


[19] Galatians 4:7.


[20] Titus 3:4–7.


[21] 1 Peter 1:3–5.


[22] Ephesians 1:13–14.


[23] Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology, An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (Grand Rapids: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 791.


[24] Since, therefore, we have now been justified by His blood, much more shall we be saved by Him from the wrath of God (Romans 5:9).


[25] Hebrews 6:4–6.


[26] Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology, An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (Grand Rapids: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 794–803.


[27] Philippians 1:6.



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