Mysterious Death of JFK
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Syria After the Fall
By Vali Nasr, NY Times, July 28, 2012
THE conflict in Syria has reached a tipping point, but not one that promises a quick end to the fighting. With or without Bashar al-Assad as its leader, Syria now has all the makings of a grim and drawn-out civil war: evenly matched protagonists who are not ready for a cease-fire, and outside powers preoccupied with their own agendas and unable to find common ground.
There is no easy way out of such a stalemated struggle, and this one threatens the stability of the whole Middle East. If the Syrian conflict explodes outward, everyone will lose: it will spill into neighboring Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Turkey. Lebanon and Iraq in particular are vulnerable; they, too, have sectarian and communal rivalries tied to the Sunni-Alawite struggle for power next door.
In the past week, Mr. Assad has lost control of important parts of the country, and the opposition, buoyed by outside sympathy and support, has built on the momentum of a bombing in Damascus that killed key security aides to the president. The shift in balance is significant, but it is not decisive. Rather, it sets the stage for a protracted conflict that would divide Syria into warring opposition and pro-Assad enclaves. For now, the Assad government has enough support and firepower to keep fighting, and it shows no sign of giving up. Most members of Syria’s Alawite, Christian and Kurdish minorities, along with a slice of its Sunni Arab population, still prefer Mr. Assad to what they fear will follow his fall; together, those groups make up perhaps half of Syria’s population, the rest of which is largely Sunni Muslim.
The opposition, meanwhile, is winning territory, but its ranks are divided among some 100 groups with no clear political leadership. Even if Mr. Assad were to step down voluntarily, his Alawite military machine and its sectarian allies are likely to fight on, holding large chunks of territory.
Syria would then fracture, with the fighting deciding who controls what area—a larger version of Lebanon in the 1970s. There would be ethnic cleansing, refugee floods, humanitarian disasters and opportunities for Al Qaeda.
In Lebanon, a decade and a half of carnage was stopped only with the assistance of Syria and its army as peacemakers. A similar sectarian conflagration plunged Iraq into violence after the American invasion. There, a surge of American troops in 2007 helped stop the fighting. In Syria, there are no foreign troops to play such a role, and little prospect that any will come while the war lasts.
How did a blind archer set a world record at the Olympics?
The Week, July 27, 2012
On Friday, South Korea’s Im Dong Hyun, who is legally blind, set the first world record of the London Olympics, notching a score of 699 out of a possible 720 in the first round of the men’s archery contest. It’s no fluke—the record he broke was his own and, at previous Olympics in Beijing and Athens, Im helped South Korea’s archery team capture gold medals. He’s now the favorite to win the individual gold in London, as he progresses to one-on-one knockout rounds. Here, a guide to Im’s seemingly impossible feat:
How bad is his sight? Pretty bad. The 26-year-old has 20/200 vision in his left eye, which means “he needs to be 10 times closer to see an object than someone with perfect 20/20 vision,” says Nick Reeves at Agence France Presse. “His right eye, with 20/100 vision, is not a whole lot better.”
Does he wear glasses? No. Im claims glasses only make him uncomfortable, says The Associated Press. Instead, he “relies on distinguishing between the bright colors on the target,” with its rings of yellow, red, blue, and black. “With my vision, when I look at the target, it looks as if different color paints have been dropped in water,” Im says. “When I look down the range at the target all I can do is try to distinguish between the different colors. If I couldn’t see the colors, now that would be a problem.”
I’m having trouble believing this. Believe it. “Im would be hard pushed to read a newspaper at arm’s length,” says Reeves, “yet has no problem in hitting a target the size of a supermarket grapefruit from a distance of 70 meters.” That’s about three-quarters the length of a football field.
“In a sport that demands incredible focus and sight more than anything else, Im has overcome the strongest of obstacles to throw down archery’s finest Olympic effort,” says Patrick Clarke at Bleacher Report. Before the opening ceremonies even unfolded, what will surely be one of the games’ most “memorable” moments is history.
Sources: Agence France Presse, The Associated Press, Bleacher Report, The Guardian, Newser
Serviço Excepcional
Jesus falando em profecia
A vida na terra sem dúvida é dura e difícil. Eu bem entendo, porque vivi isso. Não importa a idade, carreira profissional, ou onde se vive, todos enfrentam dificuldades e batalhas.
Sei que é difícil entender por que permito dificuldades e provações. Por que não facilito a vida das pessoas? Por que tantas dificuldades e problemas para resolver? Podem ser situações relacionadas à família, carreira, finanças, saúde ou à luta diária para ser um cristão verdadeiro -- batalhas fazem parte da jornada. Mas você aprende e melhora por ter que solucionar problemas. Torna-se uma melhor esposa ou marido, um melhor pai ouprofissional, e um melhor reflexo do Meu Espírito.
Pode não sentir que está melhorando, mas você adquire uma experiência muito valiosa com tudo o que vivencia e com cada batalha que trava e resulta em aprendizagem. Contribui para enfrentar o desafio seguinte com mais entendimento. Um dos elementos mais fortes é justamente o fato de continuar enfrentando as dificuldades da vida e recorrer a Mim para as soluções.
A meta não é evitar todos os problemas. Não é realista achar que nunca vai precisar fazer algo difícil ou que exija muito de você. Meus filhos, todos têm batalhas e dificuldades, mas é importante lembrar que também possuem treinamento espiritual e prático para enfrentar as provas da vida com graça, paciência e perseverança. Podem contar Comigo e a Minha Palavra, e com toda a ajuda espiritual que posso lhes dar – e é bastante ajuda! Não precisam tentar calcular e prever tudo, porque estou aqui para ajudá-los. Estou ao seu lado os acompanhando na árdua tarefa de alcançar suas metas, sempre disponível para lhes dar conselhos e orientações.
Podem contar com a orientação e o encorajamento da Minha Palavra para enfrentarem qualquer batalha e conservarem sua saúde mental e paz de espírito, por mais que demore para ganharem a vitória. Sem dúvida algumas batalhas são bastante estressantes e talvez não vejam como vão conseguir “chegar lá” e intactos física e mentalmente. Mas podem sempre contar com paz de espírito. Eu conservarei em perfeita paz todos os que confiam em Mim, que mantém a mente firme em Mim![1]
Muitos que não Me conhecem pessoalmente sentem-se perdidos e num beco sem saída, sem força mental para perseverar. Falta-lhes o alicerce rochoso da Minha Palavra onde se firmarem. Vocês têm e sempre terão isso. Portanto, no grosso da batalha, lembrem-se que vão conseguir vencer e Eu os ajudarei. Por mais intensas que sejam as batalhas ou pressões da vida, Eu sou forte e os segurarei, portanto jamais precisam ter medo e achar que vão se perder ou cair no esquecimento.
Precisam lutar com força para superar as provas da vida; trabalhar arduamente para alcançar êxito, pois esses elementos sempre existirão. Se pensam, “Logo logo tudo vai ficar mais fácil, não vou precisar mais me esforçar tanto”, vão ter uma desilusão. Sempre vai ser preciso lutar para ficar perto de Mim e continuar tendo êxito no serviço a Mim, mas se fortificarão nesse processo.
Vocês nem imaginam como estão habilitados para a batalha espiritual! Precisam ficar fervorosos para receber a unção para seguirem com a sua carreira e outras responsabilidades, além de viverem como cristãos e darem testemunho. É preciso muita fé, perseverança e amor por Mim e pelos outros, muita dedicação e compromisso, sem falar de convicção desmedida. Mesmo que a pessoa não se dedique a tempo integral, se for trabalho de qualidade, então é excepcional, porque vem do coração. E eu usarei o que Me entregarem. Multiplicarei seus esforços e os usarei onde serão mais produtivos e efetivos. Estou orgulhoso de vocês; parabéns pelo papel valioso que desempenham no Meu reino.
Sei que as circunstâncias dificultam, mas mesmo com a continuidade das batalhas, estou aqui para ajudá-los. Prometo lhes dar graça e unção para cada uma; não posso impedi-las, porque são inerentes à vida e necessárias no processo de aprendizagem e fortalecimento pessoal, mas posso ajudá-los a aprender rápido e lutarem eficazmente. É o que farei, porque os amo e preciso de vocês.
Quando se esforçam ao máximo para viver a sua fé cada dia, vocês se fortalecem. São preciosos para Mim e para os perdidos no mundo. Talvez não percebam completamente a importância e o valor do seu papel como testemunhas, mas é muito importante.
*
Eu os escolhi do mundo.[2] Foi o que disse aos Meus primeiros discípulos há tantos anos, e repito para vocês. Reflitam nessas palavras. Um dos significados é que os escolhi para saírem do mundo no espírito, para se tornarem pessoas que não vivem pelos valores do mundo, mas sim do plano espiritual.
O seu legado permanecerá por toda a eternidade. É o legado de um discípulo de Jesus, de alguém que acredita no invisível. Um dia tudo será revelado. O que agora é invisível se tornará aparente. Então, os que acreditaram por fé serão verdadeiramente bem-aventurados.[3] Os que preferirem não acreditar ou seguir o que não conseguem discernir com a mente natural vão se arrepender, mas os que optarem por Me seguir por fé, para viverem uma vida baseada na fé, receberão recompensas que compensarão por todas as provações.
*
Aprenda com os célebres personagens do passado que lutaram por uma grande causa, dedicaram-se pela melhoria do ser humano, e extrapolaram seus próprios limites. Os testemunhos dessas pessoas vão inspirá-lo. Lembre-se que a decisão de dar mais um passo, de ajudar mais uma pessoa, de suprir uma necessidade mais uma vez, são os tijolos que constroem uma vida temente a Deus no dia a dia. O seu caráter se formará pouco a pouco e o seu temperamento será moldado. As pequenas decisões de fazer o bem que às vezes passam despercebidas vão moldar o seu caráter e ajudá-lo a alcançar o seu potencial como mulher ou homem de Deus.
Publicado originalmente em março de 2009. Atualizado e republicado em junho de 2012. Tradução Hebe Rondon Flandoli. Revisão Denise Oliveira.
[1] Isaias 26:3.
[2] João 15:19.
[3] João 20:29.
The Heart of It All: Humanity
By Peter Amsterdam
July 31, 2012
Made in the Image and Likeness of God (Part One)
God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” … So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him.[1]
As the verses quoted above state, human beings (male and female) are created in the image and likeness of God. In saying this, God was saying that He was going to create beings that were like Him. He wasn’t saying that humans would be exactly like Him or that those He was about to create would be divine like He is, but rather that human beings would possess some similarities to God.
The Hebrew word used for image is tselem, which means a likeness, semblance, or image. Another meaning of image would be something that represents something. The Hebrew word translated as likeness, dĕmuwth, means similar, in the likeness of, like as. These two Hebrew words are virtually synonymous. So in speaking about the kind of creature He was going to make, God said He would make humans similar to Himself, in the way that an image is like the original, but is neither the original nor exactly the same as it. The words dĕmuwth (likeness) and tselem (image) are both used in the following verse:
When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth.[2]
The meaning here is that Seth, while not exactly like his father, was like him in many ways. This is often the case between a parent and child. This verse helps give a good understanding of what image and likeness to God means.
Wayne Grudem expresses it this way:
It is evident that every way in which Seth was like Adam would be a part of his likeness to Adam and thus part of his being “in the image” of Adam. Similarly, every way in which man is like God is part of his being in the image and likeness of God.[3]
Human beings were made to have similarities to God. Even though Adam and Eve sinned and were separated from God, and through sin all of humanity is separated from God, this hasn’t caused the image and likeness to be completely lost. After destroying all humanity, except for Noah and his family, in the flood, God reiterated that humans are made in His image. In the New Testament, reference is also made to people being in God’s image.
Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in His own image.[4]
With it [the tongue] we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God.[5]
While humans are still in the image and likeness of God, it’s not exactly the same as it was before the fall. Prior to the fall Adam and Eve were pure and were posse non peccare, a theological term meaning able not to sin. While they could choose to sin, they could also choose not to sin, and thus to remain sinless. After the fall they were different. Their moral purity was gone, and the desire and ability to stay aligned with God’s will was distorted. Their ability to not sin and thus remain sinless was no longer there, as from that point on they, and all of subsequent humanity, were non posse non peccare, meaning not able not to sin. From that point on, humans were sinners by nature, and while they can refrain from sinning sometimes, by nature they sin and don’t have the ability to not sin. Though we are still in the image of God, that image has become altered due to sin.
The original human nature was that of prefallen man, but human nature ever since the fall has been corrupted by the effects of sin. Thankfully, as Christians, we can counter some of the effects of our fallen nature through believing, abiding in, absorbing, and applying God’s Word; and at the time of the resurrection of the dead, when Christians are raised in glory and reunited with their bodies, we will be freed from the effects of our fallen human nature. More on this later.
Are “Image” and “Likeness” the Same?
Throughout Christian history there have been different points of view as to what the image and likeness of God mean. Some of the early Church Fathers felt that image (tselem) and likeness (dĕmuwth) represented two distinct things. Some felt that image had to do with bodily traits, and likeness was found in the spiritual nature of man. Others taught that image had to do with the characteristics of man as man, and likeness had to do with qualities which are not essential to man. Others felt image was the ability to reason and likeness was original righteousness.[6] Some felt that image was the rational mind and free will, which humans retained after the fall, while the likeness was a special gift of righteousness which was lost because of sin.
Roman Catholics today make a distinction between image and likeness, with the image being reason and free will, and the likeness the added endowment of righteousness.[7] They believe the image, the rational mind, and free will, were untarnished by the fall, but the likeness, the additional righteousness, was lost; yet is restored by baptism.
Martin Luther took a different view, teaching that both the image and likeness were lost when man sinned. He taught that intellect and will remained, but are impaired. John Calvin felt that the prefallen Adam was righteous and had true holiness, that it wasn’t an additional gift, and that image mainly referred to the mind and heart. He claimed that the image was destroyed and obliterated by the fall, though there were remaining traces of it in humankind. But in his view, even this remnant was maimed and completely polluted.[8]
Later theologians, and the majority of theologians today, believe that the image and likeness don’t refer to separate things but are synonymous and can be used interchangeably; that the use of both words is an instance of synonymous Hebrew parallelism.[9] This is a literary technique of using synonyms to strengthen the point being made, which is used many times throughout the Old Testament.
While over the centuries different theories regarding the image and likeness and exactly what they mean have been put forth, there is no place in Scripture where God specifically states in which exact ways humans are made in His image and likeness. It seems that, as Wayne Grudem expressed above, it’s best to consider that every way in which man is like God is part of his being in the image and likeness of God.
Humanity’s Unique Features
As humans are the only creatures that God states are made in His image and likeness, this makes humans significantly different from all of the animal creation. While animals might have some elements of these features, or have them to some degree, man has them in a qualitatively greater fashion. Following are some of the ways we can see that humans have similarities with God which His other earthly creations don’t have or don’t have to the same degree.
As God is a plural being in the Trinity, in a similar fashion, human beings reflect some of that plurality in that man and woman are two which become one flesh in marriage. (See The Heart of It All: Humanity--The Creation of Man as Male and Female.)
Humans are personal beings. We interact and establish deep and complex relationships with others.
God is spirit; human beings have a spirit.
We have self-awareness; we are conscious of ourselves, of our own existence. We can know, examine, and judge ourselves.[10]
We possess free will and self-determination. We have the ability to choose among options, and having decided on an option, we can move toward achieving that goal.
We are moral beings and have an inner sense of right and wrong.
Our immaterial invisible spirits are immortal. God has always existed and immortality is part of His essence, and being in His likeness (though not exactly like Him), the spirits of human beings are immortal in that they live forever after their separation from the body at death.
We are rational creatures with the ability to think logically, to reason, to be aware of the past, present, and future.
We are creative. While we don’t create to the degree that God does, we possess creativity of ideas and thought and thus can “create” new music, art, or literature. We can think of new ideas and possibilities and bring them into being.
We use complex language to communicate.
We experience a wide range of emotions. Some ‘soulish’ animals show a few emotions, but the variety of emotions in humans far surpasses them.
J. I. Packer offers the following:
God’s image in man at Creation, then, consisted (a) in man’s being a “soul” or “spirit” (Genesis 2:7, where the NIV correctly says, “living being”; Ecclesiastes 12:7), that is, a personal, self-conscious, Godlike creature with a Godlike capacity for knowledge, thought, and action; (b) in man’s being morally upright, a quality lost at the Fall that is now being progressively restored in Christ (Ephesians 4:24; Colossians 3:10); (c) in man’s environmental dominion. Usually, and reasonably, it is added that (d) man’s God-given immortality and (e) the human body, through which we experience reality, express ourselves, and exercise our dominion, belong to the image too. The body belongs to the image, not directly, since God … does not have one, but indirectly inasmuch as the Godlike activities of exercising dominion over the material creation and demonstrating affection to other rational beings make our embodiment necessary.[11]
There are other ways in which God’s image and likeness are manifest within humankind, but these are some of the most significant.
Original Goodness
The Bible says that when God completed creation He stated that everything He made was very good. This included Adam and Eve. It also says that man was made upright.
God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.[12]
God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes.[13]
The New Testament makes reference to God’s image and likeness as having to do with knowledge, righteousness, and holiness. This would indicate that part of the nature of the first two humans, before the fall, would include some elements of “knowledge, true righteousness, and holiness.”[14]
Now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.[15]
To put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.[16]
Having been created very good, with elements of knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, would mean that Adam and Eve were not created in a state of innocence with moral neutrality, but rather were created morally upright.
From the time they were created until the time they sinned, Adam and Eve were morally upright and were capable of not committing sin. It’s not possible to know how long they were in this state before sinning. What is known is that their firstborn Cain and their second son Abel were born after they sinned. Their third son, Seth, was born after Cain slew Abel, which means he was born a while after Cain and Abel. According to the genealogies in Genesis chapter 5, Seth was born when Adam was 130 years old, so it is conceivable that the time before the fall could have been decades long.
When Adam and Eve sinned, they continued to be in the image and likeness of God; however, they were not as fully like God as they had been. They were no longer morally upright as they once had been, because they had chosen to disobey God’s command. It corrupted the original human nature.
It also changed their relationship with God, as they were sent away from Eden and blocked from returning “lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” Along with this, physical death entered into humanity. God telling them that if they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil they would surely die, implies that if they didn’t eat of it, they wouldn’t have died. Exactly how that would have happened, Scripture doesn’t tell us, but it does express that death entered humanity due to sin.
Out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.[17]
The Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”[18]
By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.[19]
Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever––” therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken.[20]
Louis Berkhof expressed it this way:
Man, as he was created by God, did not bear within him the seeds of death and would not have died necessarily in virtue of the original constitution of his nature.[21]
J. Rodman Williams explains:
Let us be quite clear. Physical death is by no means portrayed as the “natural” issue of man’s existence. “Returning to dust” is not the result of man’s being human and finite, rather it is the result of finite man’s failure to partake of God’s own self-offering and instead to seek his own prideful ends.[22]
God’s Plan of Salvation
Adam and Eve sinning brought changes in humanity of epic proportions. The consequences of their sin brought a separation between God and humankind. It caused a distortion and degradation within the image of God in man so that man was no longer morally pure, causing them to live in a state of sinfulness, no longer having the ability to not sin. Thus God’s Word says that all men have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.[23]
While the human spirit lives beyond the death of the physical body, the body returns to dust, in accordance with God’s judgment for sin.
The consequences of sin among humanity are deeply connected to God’s plan of salvation. In Jesus’ incarnation, death, resurrection, and return, these consequences are overcome. His death and resurrection has brought about the salvation of our souls, meaning that the sins of humanity have been atoned for by Christ and that atonement is available to all who accept Him. The separation between God and the believer is no longer there, as Jesus’ death has brought reconciliation between God and those who have received His Son.
If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to Himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.[24]
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.[25]
For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by His life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.[26]
While all the bodies of believers die, at Jesus’ return their bodies will rise from the dead (the bodies of those believers who are alive at that time will be immediately changed), and their spirits will be joined with their resurrection bodies, and their rejoined bodies and spirits will live forever.
Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.”[27]
For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.[28]
Through God’s love, grace, and mercy, manifest in Jesus’ death and resurrection, humans have been given the opportunity to overcome all of the effects of their sins and fallen nature. Physical death will be defeated as we rise from the dead and receive resurrected, imperishable bodies. The spiritual separation caused by sin will be gone and fellowship with God will be fully restored. Instead of being like the first man, the man of dust, Adam, we will be like the man from heaven, Jesus, and will bear His image.
The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven.[29]
We shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.[30]
[1] Genesis 1:26–27.
[2] Genesis 5:3.
[3] Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology, An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (Grand Rapids: InterVarsity Press, 2000), p. 444.
[4] Genesis 9:6.
[5] James 3:9.
[6] Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1996), p. 202.
[7]Gordon R. Lewis, and Bruce A. Demarest, Integrative Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), Vol. 2, p. 124–125.
[8]James Leo Garrett, Jr., Systematic Theology, Biblical, Historical, and Evangelical, Vol. 1 (N. Richland Hills: BIBAL Press, 2000), p. 459.
[9] James Leo Garrett, Jr., Systematic Theology, Biblical, Historical, and Evangelical, Vol. 1 (N. Richland Hills: BIBAL Press, 2000), p. 153.
[10] Gordon R. Lewis and Bruce A. Demarest, Vol. 2 Integrative Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), p. 150.
[11] J. I. Packer, Concise Theology, Chapter; Humanness (Tyndale House Publishers, 1993), p. 72.
[12] Genesis 1:31.
[13] Ecclesiastes 7:29.
[14] Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1996), p. 204.
[15] Colossians 3:8–10.
[16] Ephesians 4:22–24.
[17] Genesis 2:9.
[18] Genesis 2:16–17.
[19] Genesis 3:19.
[20] Genesis 3:22–23.
[21] Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1996), p. 209.
[22] J. Rodman Williams, Renewal Theology, Systematic Theology from a Charismatic Perspective, Vol. 1 (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), p. 259.
[23] Romans 3:23.
[24] 2 Corinthians 5:17–19.
[25] Colossians 1:21–22.
[26] Romans 5:10–11.
[27] 1 Corinthians 15:51–54.
[28] 1 Thessalonians 4:15–17.
[29] 1 Corinthians 15:47.
[30] 1 Corinthians 15:49.
Copyright © 2012 The Family International.
July 31, 2012
Made in the Image and Likeness of God (Part One)
God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” … So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him.[1]
As the verses quoted above state, human beings (male and female) are created in the image and likeness of God. In saying this, God was saying that He was going to create beings that were like Him. He wasn’t saying that humans would be exactly like Him or that those He was about to create would be divine like He is, but rather that human beings would possess some similarities to God.
The Hebrew word used for image is tselem, which means a likeness, semblance, or image. Another meaning of image would be something that represents something. The Hebrew word translated as likeness, dĕmuwth, means similar, in the likeness of, like as. These two Hebrew words are virtually synonymous. So in speaking about the kind of creature He was going to make, God said He would make humans similar to Himself, in the way that an image is like the original, but is neither the original nor exactly the same as it. The words dĕmuwth (likeness) and tselem (image) are both used in the following verse:
When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth.[2]
The meaning here is that Seth, while not exactly like his father, was like him in many ways. This is often the case between a parent and child. This verse helps give a good understanding of what image and likeness to God means.
Wayne Grudem expresses it this way:
It is evident that every way in which Seth was like Adam would be a part of his likeness to Adam and thus part of his being “in the image” of Adam. Similarly, every way in which man is like God is part of his being in the image and likeness of God.[3]
Human beings were made to have similarities to God. Even though Adam and Eve sinned and were separated from God, and through sin all of humanity is separated from God, this hasn’t caused the image and likeness to be completely lost. After destroying all humanity, except for Noah and his family, in the flood, God reiterated that humans are made in His image. In the New Testament, reference is also made to people being in God’s image.
Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in His own image.[4]
With it [the tongue] we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God.[5]
While humans are still in the image and likeness of God, it’s not exactly the same as it was before the fall. Prior to the fall Adam and Eve were pure and were posse non peccare, a theological term meaning able not to sin. While they could choose to sin, they could also choose not to sin, and thus to remain sinless. After the fall they were different. Their moral purity was gone, and the desire and ability to stay aligned with God’s will was distorted. Their ability to not sin and thus remain sinless was no longer there, as from that point on they, and all of subsequent humanity, were non posse non peccare, meaning not able not to sin. From that point on, humans were sinners by nature, and while they can refrain from sinning sometimes, by nature they sin and don’t have the ability to not sin. Though we are still in the image of God, that image has become altered due to sin.
The original human nature was that of prefallen man, but human nature ever since the fall has been corrupted by the effects of sin. Thankfully, as Christians, we can counter some of the effects of our fallen nature through believing, abiding in, absorbing, and applying God’s Word; and at the time of the resurrection of the dead, when Christians are raised in glory and reunited with their bodies, we will be freed from the effects of our fallen human nature. More on this later.
Are “Image” and “Likeness” the Same?
Throughout Christian history there have been different points of view as to what the image and likeness of God mean. Some of the early Church Fathers felt that image (tselem) and likeness (dĕmuwth) represented two distinct things. Some felt that image had to do with bodily traits, and likeness was found in the spiritual nature of man. Others taught that image had to do with the characteristics of man as man, and likeness had to do with qualities which are not essential to man. Others felt image was the ability to reason and likeness was original righteousness.[6] Some felt that image was the rational mind and free will, which humans retained after the fall, while the likeness was a special gift of righteousness which was lost because of sin.
Roman Catholics today make a distinction between image and likeness, with the image being reason and free will, and the likeness the added endowment of righteousness.[7] They believe the image, the rational mind, and free will, were untarnished by the fall, but the likeness, the additional righteousness, was lost; yet is restored by baptism.
Martin Luther took a different view, teaching that both the image and likeness were lost when man sinned. He taught that intellect and will remained, but are impaired. John Calvin felt that the prefallen Adam was righteous and had true holiness, that it wasn’t an additional gift, and that image mainly referred to the mind and heart. He claimed that the image was destroyed and obliterated by the fall, though there were remaining traces of it in humankind. But in his view, even this remnant was maimed and completely polluted.[8]
Later theologians, and the majority of theologians today, believe that the image and likeness don’t refer to separate things but are synonymous and can be used interchangeably; that the use of both words is an instance of synonymous Hebrew parallelism.[9] This is a literary technique of using synonyms to strengthen the point being made, which is used many times throughout the Old Testament.
While over the centuries different theories regarding the image and likeness and exactly what they mean have been put forth, there is no place in Scripture where God specifically states in which exact ways humans are made in His image and likeness. It seems that, as Wayne Grudem expressed above, it’s best to consider that every way in which man is like God is part of his being in the image and likeness of God.
Humanity’s Unique Features
As humans are the only creatures that God states are made in His image and likeness, this makes humans significantly different from all of the animal creation. While animals might have some elements of these features, or have them to some degree, man has them in a qualitatively greater fashion. Following are some of the ways we can see that humans have similarities with God which His other earthly creations don’t have or don’t have to the same degree.
As God is a plural being in the Trinity, in a similar fashion, human beings reflect some of that plurality in that man and woman are two which become one flesh in marriage. (See The Heart of It All: Humanity--The Creation of Man as Male and Female.)
Humans are personal beings. We interact and establish deep and complex relationships with others.
God is spirit; human beings have a spirit.
We have self-awareness; we are conscious of ourselves, of our own existence. We can know, examine, and judge ourselves.[10]
We possess free will and self-determination. We have the ability to choose among options, and having decided on an option, we can move toward achieving that goal.
We are moral beings and have an inner sense of right and wrong.
Our immaterial invisible spirits are immortal. God has always existed and immortality is part of His essence, and being in His likeness (though not exactly like Him), the spirits of human beings are immortal in that they live forever after their separation from the body at death.
We are rational creatures with the ability to think logically, to reason, to be aware of the past, present, and future.
We are creative. While we don’t create to the degree that God does, we possess creativity of ideas and thought and thus can “create” new music, art, or literature. We can think of new ideas and possibilities and bring them into being.
We use complex language to communicate.
We experience a wide range of emotions. Some ‘soulish’ animals show a few emotions, but the variety of emotions in humans far surpasses them.
J. I. Packer offers the following:
God’s image in man at Creation, then, consisted (a) in man’s being a “soul” or “spirit” (Genesis 2:7, where the NIV correctly says, “living being”; Ecclesiastes 12:7), that is, a personal, self-conscious, Godlike creature with a Godlike capacity for knowledge, thought, and action; (b) in man’s being morally upright, a quality lost at the Fall that is now being progressively restored in Christ (Ephesians 4:24; Colossians 3:10); (c) in man’s environmental dominion. Usually, and reasonably, it is added that (d) man’s God-given immortality and (e) the human body, through which we experience reality, express ourselves, and exercise our dominion, belong to the image too. The body belongs to the image, not directly, since God … does not have one, but indirectly inasmuch as the Godlike activities of exercising dominion over the material creation and demonstrating affection to other rational beings make our embodiment necessary.[11]
There are other ways in which God’s image and likeness are manifest within humankind, but these are some of the most significant.
Original Goodness
The Bible says that when God completed creation He stated that everything He made was very good. This included Adam and Eve. It also says that man was made upright.
God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.[12]
God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes.[13]
The New Testament makes reference to God’s image and likeness as having to do with knowledge, righteousness, and holiness. This would indicate that part of the nature of the first two humans, before the fall, would include some elements of “knowledge, true righteousness, and holiness.”[14]
Now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.[15]
To put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.[16]
Having been created very good, with elements of knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, would mean that Adam and Eve were not created in a state of innocence with moral neutrality, but rather were created morally upright.
From the time they were created until the time they sinned, Adam and Eve were morally upright and were capable of not committing sin. It’s not possible to know how long they were in this state before sinning. What is known is that their firstborn Cain and their second son Abel were born after they sinned. Their third son, Seth, was born after Cain slew Abel, which means he was born a while after Cain and Abel. According to the genealogies in Genesis chapter 5, Seth was born when Adam was 130 years old, so it is conceivable that the time before the fall could have been decades long.
When Adam and Eve sinned, they continued to be in the image and likeness of God; however, they were not as fully like God as they had been. They were no longer morally upright as they once had been, because they had chosen to disobey God’s command. It corrupted the original human nature.
It also changed their relationship with God, as they were sent away from Eden and blocked from returning “lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” Along with this, physical death entered into humanity. God telling them that if they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil they would surely die, implies that if they didn’t eat of it, they wouldn’t have died. Exactly how that would have happened, Scripture doesn’t tell us, but it does express that death entered humanity due to sin.
Out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.[17]
The Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”[18]
By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.[19]
Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever––” therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken.[20]
Louis Berkhof expressed it this way:
Man, as he was created by God, did not bear within him the seeds of death and would not have died necessarily in virtue of the original constitution of his nature.[21]
J. Rodman Williams explains:
Let us be quite clear. Physical death is by no means portrayed as the “natural” issue of man’s existence. “Returning to dust” is not the result of man’s being human and finite, rather it is the result of finite man’s failure to partake of God’s own self-offering and instead to seek his own prideful ends.[22]
God’s Plan of Salvation
Adam and Eve sinning brought changes in humanity of epic proportions. The consequences of their sin brought a separation between God and humankind. It caused a distortion and degradation within the image of God in man so that man was no longer morally pure, causing them to live in a state of sinfulness, no longer having the ability to not sin. Thus God’s Word says that all men have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.[23]
While the human spirit lives beyond the death of the physical body, the body returns to dust, in accordance with God’s judgment for sin.
The consequences of sin among humanity are deeply connected to God’s plan of salvation. In Jesus’ incarnation, death, resurrection, and return, these consequences are overcome. His death and resurrection has brought about the salvation of our souls, meaning that the sins of humanity have been atoned for by Christ and that atonement is available to all who accept Him. The separation between God and the believer is no longer there, as Jesus’ death has brought reconciliation between God and those who have received His Son.
If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to Himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.[24]
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.[25]
For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by His life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.[26]
While all the bodies of believers die, at Jesus’ return their bodies will rise from the dead (the bodies of those believers who are alive at that time will be immediately changed), and their spirits will be joined with their resurrection bodies, and their rejoined bodies and spirits will live forever.
Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.”[27]
For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.[28]
Through God’s love, grace, and mercy, manifest in Jesus’ death and resurrection, humans have been given the opportunity to overcome all of the effects of their sins and fallen nature. Physical death will be defeated as we rise from the dead and receive resurrected, imperishable bodies. The spiritual separation caused by sin will be gone and fellowship with God will be fully restored. Instead of being like the first man, the man of dust, Adam, we will be like the man from heaven, Jesus, and will bear His image.
The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven.[29]
We shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.[30]
[1] Genesis 1:26–27.
[2] Genesis 5:3.
[3] Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology, An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (Grand Rapids: InterVarsity Press, 2000), p. 444.
[4] Genesis 9:6.
[5] James 3:9.
[6] Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1996), p. 202.
[7]Gordon R. Lewis, and Bruce A. Demarest, Integrative Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), Vol. 2, p. 124–125.
[8]James Leo Garrett, Jr., Systematic Theology, Biblical, Historical, and Evangelical, Vol. 1 (N. Richland Hills: BIBAL Press, 2000), p. 459.
[9] James Leo Garrett, Jr., Systematic Theology, Biblical, Historical, and Evangelical, Vol. 1 (N. Richland Hills: BIBAL Press, 2000), p. 153.
[10] Gordon R. Lewis and Bruce A. Demarest, Vol. 2 Integrative Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), p. 150.
[11] J. I. Packer, Concise Theology, Chapter; Humanness (Tyndale House Publishers, 1993), p. 72.
[12] Genesis 1:31.
[13] Ecclesiastes 7:29.
[14] Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1996), p. 204.
[15] Colossians 3:8–10.
[16] Ephesians 4:22–24.
[17] Genesis 2:9.
[18] Genesis 2:16–17.
[19] Genesis 3:19.
[20] Genesis 3:22–23.
[21] Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1996), p. 209.
[22] J. Rodman Williams, Renewal Theology, Systematic Theology from a Charismatic Perspective, Vol. 1 (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), p. 259.
[23] Romans 3:23.
[24] 2 Corinthians 5:17–19.
[25] Colossians 1:21–22.
[26] Romans 5:10–11.
[27] 1 Corinthians 15:51–54.
[28] 1 Thessalonians 4:15–17.
[29] 1 Corinthians 15:47.
[30] 1 Corinthians 15:49.
Copyright © 2012 The Family International.
The Liberty of Forgiveness
By Jesus, speaking in prophecy
Steps to forgiveness, for those who feel they have messed up badly
Download Audio (8.15MB)
I want to teach you a simple truth, My friend: You can never be too bad for Me. No matter how much wrong you have done, no matter how wicked you feel, you are not too bad to receive My love and forgiveness, if you will just ask Me in sincerity to forgive you.
No one else is too bad to receive My love and forgiveness either. Maybe others have wronged you and you want to blame them. Maybe there has been injustice in your life and you’re suffering as a result. There is a fire in your bosom as you cry out for revenge. You might feel determined, no matter how long you have to wait, to make those who hurt you pay for their crime.
Those feelings, thoughts, and plans come from the dark world where evil reigns and there is no peace. To continue in this way will only bring you pain. You will never find the satisfaction or feeling of closure that you seek. The desire for revenge, for payback, is a prison of the spirit. There is only one way to find freedom from such bondage, and that is through forgiveness.
To embrace the liberty of forgiveness in its totality, there are three steps:
1. You must forgive those who have wronged you. If you don’t forgive those who have hurt you, I can’t forgive you for the wrongs you have done.
2. You must ask for My forgiveness. No matter how horrible you see yourself, even if you feel you are cursed and despised by God, you must move past this and reach out as a little child for this gift of forgiveness that I want to give you. A child doesn’t ask questions and examine the gift before determining if he will receive it. He simply reaches out, accepts, and feels the joy that is his as a recipient of something wonderful. That is how I wish for you to be, dear one, like a child who doesn’t question, but who simply receives My forgiveness, given freely as you ask, believe, and receive.1
3. You must forgive yourself. Carrying the burden of your guilt after you have forgiven and been forgiven is not a burden that you must bear. You can find freedom through forgiveness.
Know, My friend, that I died for you and I love you. You can never be too bad for Me. I will never turn you away. Find the peace that forgiveness brings, and let Me lead you to a new and better day.
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I’m often more welcomed by those who are sinners and by those whom the world looks down on than I am by those who think they’re good and doing okay.2 When some of the so-called righteous folks of My day were complaining about this, I explained how I felt about things when I told them that I’d come to help those who are sick, not those who are whole. I didn’t come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.3
With everything I did and said during My life on earth, I tried to make it clear over and over that there was no one so bad that I couldn’t forgive them and love them if they would just let Me. Even when I was dying on the cross and there was nothing more that I could do, My Father allowed Me one last opportunity to prove this once and for all, for all eternity.
Next to Me there, dying on the cross, were two common criminals. They were being punished, put to death, for the sins that they’d committed. One guy was hard and unrepentant. But the other was obviously sorry for what he’d done and acknowledged his guilt. He asked Me to forgive him and to remember him when I arrived in My kingdom, and I did. I forgave him right then and there, in spite of everything he’d done, and I took him with Me that day to Paradise.4
I was totally innocent of the things I’d been accused of, but I gave My life willingly—for his sins, and for yours. All you’ve got to do is believe Me, like that man did there on the cross. Ask Me to forgive you, and I will. It’s just that simple. Nothing you could have possibly done is so bad that it will keep Me from loving you and forgiving you, if you’ll just take it and believe.
Those you’ve hurt might not be able to forgive you in this life. Even your heart and mind will struggle with the concept of My mercy and forgiveness, telling you that you’re just too bad and that you don’t deserve to be forgiven. But whenever your heart condemns you with those thoughts, always remember this: I’m greater than your heart.5 I died for your sins. So just let them go. Let Me wash them all away and give you a new start today. I took the condemnation for your sins years ago and nailed it to the cross. Everything I went through—the suffering, the torture, the death on the cross—was for you personally, to free you from the weight of your sins. You’ve got to believe it and accept it. I forgive you.
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My love is not for sale. My love cannot be bought or earned. There is only one way to possess My love, and that is to accept it as a gift. Nobody is good enough to deserve My forgiveness and be worthy of My love, but that is the beauty of this gift.6 The most wonderful thing about My love is that it is unconditional.
I don’t look at your past and judge you as man does. Instead, I look inside you, through you, and I see your deepest wishes and darkest fears. I see your sadness and I long to comfort you. I feel your loneliness and I long for you to turn to Me. I’m sitting beside you in the darkness and the emotional solitude and I want you to call Me your friend.
I know of your desire to change and to be a better person, and I long to help you fulfill that wish, to give you the key to transformation. I look at your remorse for your sins of the past, and I long to set you free from condemnation so that you can begin to live again. I look at your spirit and I see not the bad that you’ve done, but the good that you are capable of doing.
When you cannot find true friendship, acceptance and love around you, look to Me. You will find My arms open to you, offering forgiveness and unwavering love. All you need to do is reach out and accept it.
Originally published 2006. Updated and republished July 2012.
Read by Bethany Kelly. Music by Daniel Sozzi.
1 “Come now, and let us reason together,” says the Lord. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool” (Isaiah 1:18).
2 “The common people heard him gladly” (Mark 12:37).
3 When Jesus heard that, He said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice.’ For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance” (Matthew 9:12–13).
4 Then one of the criminals who were hanged blasphemed Him, saying, “If You are the Christ, save Yourself and us.” But the other, answering, rebuked him, saying, “Do you not even fear God, seeing you are under the same condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds; but this Man has done nothing wrong.” Then he said to Jesus, “Lord, remember me when You come into Your kingdom.” And Jesus said to him, “Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise” (Luke 23:39–43).
5 For if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and knows all things (1 John 3:20).
6 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God (Ephesians 2:8).
Monday, July 30, 2012
A Champion for the Displaced in Israel
By Jodi Rudoren, NY Times, July 27, 2012
TEL AVIV—UP two steaming, dingy flights in an aging Bauhaus building here, Michael Sfard imagines that his is one of the few law firms with no parking spaces. The young lawyers and interns who toil inside dressed in T-shirts and shorts always walk or bike to work, and visitors are rare.
“Our clients either aren’t allowed to come or they’re behind bars,” Mr. Sfard explained.
Mr. Sfard’s clients are mostly Palestinians who live in the West Bank and need permits to come into Israel. Suing the state generally does not ease the path to getting such a permit, which is often a big problem.
One recent afternoon, Mr. Sfard was dealing with just that reality: The mother and cousin of a protester killed by Israeli soldiers were denied a permit, although they were the key witnesses in a Supreme Court hearing scheduled the next day demanding an investigation. The government considers relatives of those killed by Israeli forces high security risks for seeking revenge.
“I have many cases where I’m alone there without my clients,” he sighed.
At 40, Mr. Sfard, the son of Polish dissidents who came to Israel in the late 1960s, has emerged as the left’s leading lawyer in Israel. He has brought scores of human rights and land-use cases challenging Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories it acquired in 1967, and represented hundreds of soldiers refusing to serve.
He sees his work as a mission to save the prospect of a two-state solution and preserve Israeli democracy. But he has at times unwittingly undermined his own agenda, when his microvictories in court prompt the right-leaning government to produce political macrovictories for his adversaries—leading to the legalization and expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
This summer, for example, 30 homes in an outpost known as Ulpana were evacuated after a Sfard petition claimed they were on private Palestinian land; Israel pledged to build 800 settler homes in exchange.
This week, Mr. Sfard’s chief adversary, the settler movement, bestowed on him honorary citizenship in “Judea and Samaria,” the biblical names for the West Bank, with a mock certificate noting that he “may have come to curse and cause damage” but had ended up “raising the morale and gladdening the hearts of those who love the Land.”
Most of his work is financed by Israel’s premier left-wing nonprofit organizations, which in turn are financed in part by European governments.
“He sees the courts as the way to force the changes that he perceives as necessary for Israel,” said Gerald Steinberg, who runs NGO Monitor, a right-leaning group that examines organizations like those that support Mr. Sfard. “But he doesn’t convince the Israeli public.”
Mr. Sfard makes no apologies for his dual role as legal advocate and political activist. His representation of conscientious objectors came after he served 21 days in a military jail in 1998 for refusing to do reserve duty in the disputed city of Hebron. His office shelves are lined with the works and likenesses of Mohandas K. Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. His parents met during the student uprisings at the University of Warsaw in 1968.
Mr. Sfard’s maternal grandfather, the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, was kicked out of the university and labeled a traitor for supporting the students. His father, Leon, spent three months in a Polish prison, and avoided trial only by leaving the country.
THIS legacy is ever-present for the younger Mr. Sfard: in his firm’s conference room hangs a large photograph he took of four Soviet-era Polish police cars that were on display in Warsaw when he went there on a trip to explore his roots two years ago. The police cars were much like the ones in which his father was taken from his home in the middle of the night.
“It reminds me time and again what am I doing, and what are the dangers of being a dissident,” Mr. Sfard said. “For him, I should be a bit more thankful that this is a democracy and I have freedom of speech and I can do what I do. For me, this is the starting point, not something that I have to appreciate every day.”
Once in Israel, his father became a high-tech consultant, his mother an education professor. They raised Michael and his younger sister in a Jerusalem neighborhood filled with journalists, who debated the issues of the day in their salon. In high school, he rallied for movie theaters to be open on the Sabbath, and for peace with the Palestinians.
He served in the army as a combat medic, mostly in Lebanon, and chose law because “I don’t have what it takes to be a politician.”
Mr. Sfard and his high school sweetheart have 7-year-old and 15-month-old sons, whom they adopted for social-consciousness reasons. He spent a year studying in London, a self-imposed exile from the land with which he has a love-hate relationship, but could not stay away.
“This is my place: this culture is my culture, this language is my language,” he explained. “I don’t see emigration as something that can be happy, only a tragedy. But if I stay here, I have to fight against things being done in my name.”
HIS signature is on many of the major cases decided in recent years by the Supreme Court: successes include the rerouting of the separation barrier around the village of Bilin, the 2005 demolition of nine settler homes in Amona, the impending move of the outpost called Migron and the recent evacuations in Ulpana.
These and others have made him an enemy of the right: last year, a settler from Kiryat Arba was indicted in connection with an Internet posting that called for his assassination and included his address. But Mr. Sfard’s court statements and legal wisdom are respected by judges and adversaries. And clients praise him for adopting their causes as his own.
“He didn’t treat me as a customer,” said Bassam Aramin, the father of a 10-year-old girl killed in a 2007 protest, whose petition forced an investigation, though not an indictment. “He treats this like his own daughter.”
His office walls are at once a chronicle of the movement and his personal history. There is a framed 1958 map of Israel he found at the Jaffa flea market, “the only map you can find today where there are no settlements and the Palestinian villages are all marked,” he said. There is also a framed search warrant for his files in a case concerning interviews with dissident soldiers.
In back, a small room is filled with a rainbow of three-ring binders, files of the roughly 500 cases the firm has fought over its eight years. They are, often, not legal genius, more a matter of spending the money and time to find, say, Palestinians with landownership claims. But even the victories are often bittersweet. In Bilin, the separation barrier took over half the village’s land; a fight lasting years returned about a quarter of the land.
“The process is no less important than the result,” he said. “I am addicted. It’s not a question of whether it’s depressing or not, but whether I can live without it.”
London 2012 Olympics: The Staging Ground for the Coming Police State?
By John W. Whitehead, The Rutherford Institute, July 27, 2012
“As London prepares to throw the world a $14 billion party, it seems fair to ask the question: What does it get out of the bargain?” asks the Christian Science Monitor in a recent story on the 2012 Summer Olympics. “Salt Lake got to show that its Mormon community was open to the world,” observes journalist Mark Sappenfield. “Turin got to show that it was not the Detroit of Europe. China got to give the world a glimpse of the superpower-to-be. And Vancouver got to show the world that Canadians are not, in fact, Americans.”
And what is London showing the world? Sappenfield suggests that London is showing off its new ultramodern and efficient infrastructure, but if the security for the 2012 Olympics is anything to go by, it would seem that London is really showing the world how easy it is to make the move to a police state without much opposition from the populace.
It’s what the Romans used to refer to as “bread and circuses”—the idea that the key to controlling the masses is by satiating their carnal appetites and entertaining them with mindless distraction. Thus, while the world loses itself in the pomp and circumstance of a thoroughly British Olympics, complete with Sir Paul McCartney rocking the opening ceremony, celebrity sightings galore and a fair share of athletic feats and inspirational victories to keep us glued to our TV sets, a more sinister drama will be unfolding.
Welcome to the 2012 Summer Olympics, the staging ground for the coming police state.
Under cover of the glitz and glamour of these time-honored Games, a chilling military operation is underway, masterminded by a merger of the corporate, military and security industrial complexes and staffed by more than 40,000 civilian police, British military and security personnel, as well as FBI, CIA, and TSA agents, and private security contractors. Appropriately enough, this year’s Olympic mascot, Wenlock—a strange, futuristic blob with an all-seeing eye to “record everything” in the games—is being sold in Olympic stores dressed in a policeman’s uniform. “As a metaphor for the London Olympics, it could hardly be more stark,” writes Stephen Graham for the Guardian. “For £10.25 you, too, can own the ultimate symbol of the Games: a member of by far the biggest and most expensive security operation in recent British history packaged as tourist commodity.”
In addition to the usual tourist sights such as Buckingham Palace, the Tower of London and Big Ben, visitors to London may find themselves goggling at the military aircraft carrier floating in the Thames, the Typhoon fighter jets taking to the skies, ready to shoot down unauthorized aircraft, aerial drones hovering overhead to track residents and tourists, snipers perched in helicopters, an 18-km high, 11-mile long, 5,000-volt electric stun fence surrounding Olympic Park, and 55 dog teams patrolling the perimeter. Several locations throughout London will also feature surface-to-air missiles, including some residential areas in East London that will have them perched on top of apartment buildings. All these and more are supposedly part of the new security apparatus required to maintain security in an age of terror.
Roughly 13,000 private security guards provided by G4S, the world’s second largest private employer, will be patrolling the streets of London, under a $439 million contract with the British government. Due to some last minute trouble recruiting and training guards, 3,500 additional British military troops will be called in, making a total of 17,000 troops scheduled to police the Olympics.
More than 500 American federal agents will be on hand to assist Britain’s security forces. In fact, the CIA, State Department, and FBI have all been working closely with British authorities for well over a year in preparation for the Olympic games. TSA agents—infamous for stealing money from passengers’ luggage, patting down children and the elderly and handicapped, and, among other things, breaking diabetic passengers’ insulin pumps—will also be on loan to the British to assist with airport passenger screening during the Games, which will include fast-track fingerprinting for Olympic athletes.
There’s even a security patrol tasked with making sure that local businesses observe the government ban on symbols and words relating to the Olympics lest they cause economic harm to the “official” corporate sponsors, including Adidas, McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, and BP. These purple-capped government officials are authorized to enter businesses to look for violations, and can impose fines up to 20,000 pounds ($31,000). Included on the banned list are such words as games, 2012, gold, silver, bronze, summer, sponsors, and London. As Slate reports, “So far a London café has been forced to remove five offending bagels from its windows, as has a butcher who had the temerity to do the same with sausage links. Spectators have been warned that to risk wearing a garment adorned with the Pepsi logo may result in being banished from game venues and that nobody but McDonald’s can sell French fries at any Olympic concession stand. An old lady got tagged for sewing the five rings onto a mini doll sweater.”
Unwilling to risk anything taking the shine off London’s Olympic games, government officials have also clamped down on protesters and journalists, two groups whose existence largely depends on their ability to exercise their free speech rights, as well as anyone voicing an opinion about the games publicly. The British police have even gone so far as to ban certain graffiti artists from “creating any graffiti (even sanctioned work) affiliated with the Olympics, traveling within a mile of any Olympic venue, associate with any individual also on bail or using any train, subway or other rail service for leisure purposes.”
And then there’s the surveillance. With one government-operated outdoor surveillance camera for every 14 citizens in the UK, Great Britain is already widely recognized as a surveillance society. However, in preparation for the Olympics, London has also been “wired up with a new range of scanners, biometric ID cards, number-plate and facial-recognition CCTV systems, disease tracking systems, new police control centres and checkpoints. These will intensify the sense of lockdown in a city which is already a byword across the world for remarkably intensive surveillance,” reports journalist Stephen Graham. Even neighborhoods beyond Olympic park have been embedded with biometric scanners and surveillance cameras with automatic facial and behavior recognition technologies.
Keep in mind, these surveillance tools will remain in place long after the Olympic torch moves on. As Graham points out:
Many such systems, deliberately installed to exploit unparalleled security budgets and relatively little scrutiny or protest, have been designed to linger long after the athletes and VIPs have left. Already, the Dorset police are proudly boasting that their new number-plate recognition cameras, built for sailing events, are allowing them to catch criminals more effectively.
Unfortunately for the people of London and beyond, the UK’s willingness to host the 2012 Summer Olympics has turned this exercise in solidarity, teamwork and nationalism into a $17 billion exercise in militarism, corporatism, surveillance and oppression. As Graham concludes:
Looking at these various points together shows one thing: contemporary Olympics are society on steroids. They exaggerate wider trends. Far removed from their notional or founding ideals, these events dramatically embody changes in the wider world: fast-increasing inequality, growing corporate power, the rise of the homeland security complex, and the shift toward much more authoritarian styles of governance utterly obsessed by the global gaze and prestige of media spectacles.
Once Told He'd Never Walk Again, Irish Gymnast Is Now Olympian
By Juliet Macur, NY Times, July 26, 2012
LONDON—Before life threw more adversity at him than one person ought to bear, Kieran Behan told his mother that he would be an Olympic gymnast someday.
He was just a boy, maybe 6 years old, when he fell in love with gymnastics, drawn to the thrill of it while watching the Summer Games, enamored by the possibility that he too could defy gravity and flip through the air as if he could fly.
But that was before a series of injuries, two so severe that doctors told him he would never walk again: a botched leg operation that caused nerve damage and a brain injury that kept him from doing even the simplest things, like sitting or eating.
Yet Behan, a 5-foot-4-inch plucky phoenix, pushed on.
“Doctors told me, stop thinking about your crazy dreams because you’ll never walk again and you must accept that it’s over for you,” Behan said. “But I just kept saying: ‘No, no, no—this is not the rest of my life. This is not how it’s going to play out.’ And look at me now, an Olympian. They said it was impossible, but I did it.”
Behan, 23, barely clinched an Olympic berth in January, qualifying second to last at the Olympic test event to become the first Irish gymnast to make it to the Games by his own talent, not by wild card. He benefited from a new Olympic rule that limits each team to five gymnasts instead of six, to make more spots available to individuals whose country does not field a full team.
Many of the powerhouse squads, including the United States’, criticized the rule change, saying it watered down the competition and forced some teams to leave a world-class gymnast at home. But the rule has an upside: it allows athletes like Behan to compete on the sport’s highest stage.
“Kieran has gone through so much,” his mother, Bernie Behan, said through tears. “He deserves this.”
Kieran Behan started gymnastics when he was 8, showing a talent for the tumbling. But soon came the first of many obstacles: when he was 10, he found a lump the size of a golf ball on his left leg.
During surgery to remove what turned out to be a benign tumor, doctors kept a tourniquet on him too tight for too long, causing nerve damage that left Behan with limited feeling in his left foot. It also caused such pain that even a slight brush against his leg would cause him to scream. He could not walk, heading to school at one point to the taunts of other youngsters who already had it out for him.
“They’d say, ‘Oh, look at the cripple,’ and that was so hard for me because, already, I was doing gymnastics and I was short, and I was doing a girls’ sport,” he said. “So a lot of times, I would sit at the kitchen window and watch all the kids running around the park and playing football, and I’d get pretty emotional. All I wanted to do was be an ordinary kid again.”
Doctors warned him that the damaged nerves might never regenerate. A psychiatrist told him to prepare him for life in a wheelchair. They were wrong.
Although it took 15 months, Behan did become an ordinary kid again. And he went back to gymnastics.
But about eight months after he returned from his leg injury, disaster hit again. In what he calls a freakish accident, he smacked the back of his head on the metal horizontal bar during a routine and tumbled to the ground in a lump.
The accident caused a traumatic brain injury and severe damage to the vestibular canal of his inner ear, which affected his balance so much that even the slightest movement could cause Behan to black out. And black out he did, hundreds of times, maybe thousands of times, his mother said, as Behan struggled to turn his head, feed himself and walk without stumbling and looking as if he were dead drunk.
Frustrated by his slow progress after two months in the hospital, Bernie Behan went home with her son in her arms because doctors would not discharge him. She quit her job as an aerobics instructor to care for him.
“He kept telling the doctors, ‘I can walk—tell them, Mom, that I can walk,’ and my heart was breaking,” she said. “I’d go to the car park and cry my eyes out, then walk back and say: ‘Yes, Kieran, you can do this. We can do this. I believe you, son.’ “
Nearly two years after his accident and after unrelenting physical therapy, Kieran Behan—the miracle boy, doctors said—regained his hand-eye coordination and got back onto his feet again.
And back to gymnastics he went. He swept the floors of his gym to finance his training and jumped subway turnstiles to get to practice because there was no cash to spare. His parents held bake sales, candy sales and carwashes to raise money for him.
But, again, there were rough patches. He broke his arm. He fractured his wrist. He visited the hospital so often as a teenager, officials there suspected he was being abused. In 2009, he tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee, requiring six months of rehabilitation.
Yet he did not quit the sport.
But in 2010, six weeks before his senior debut at the European championships, he tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his other knee. After all he had endured, the injury nearly derailed him.
“He made it back from all of those other setbacks, but that one was the hardest for him because the championships were just around the corner, and he was ready,” said Simon Gale, one of his coaches. “He couldn’t handle it. I wouldn’t say he was suicidal, but I’m just glad that his girlfriend was there to watch him at night.”
Behan, though, did what he innately did best: he picked himself up again. And he returned to gymnastics.
Finally, in 2011, he reaped the benefits of his persistence. He won three World Cup medals, including Ireland’s first World Cup gold medal, in the floor exercise, setting himself up for 2012—his best year yet.
But Behan, who has a slightly torn rotator cuff and was frightened of further injury, could barely make it through his last practice before heading to the Olympics last week. When he reached the end of it, he laughed. Then, he cried.
“I felt like I was in a fairy tale when I got here,” he said of the London Games. “All I could think about was: ‘Is this a dream? Tell me this really happening.’ “
Behan is competing in the vault, the horizontal bar and his specialty, the floor exercise, but is not fooling himself into thinking he could win a medal—or even make the finals. He just hopes his tale might inspire others to overcome hardship, whether it is in sports, at work or at home.
US Church in 'Coma,' Says Watchdog
Alex Murashko, Christian Post, Jul. 26, 2012
The church in America is no longer simply in a slumber when it comes to its lack of awareness about the persecuted church in the Middle East; it is in a “diabetic coma,” says the leader of a persecution watchdog group in the U.S.
“For years we’ve said wake up and strengthen what remains,” Open Doors USA President and CEO Dr. Carl Moeller told The Christian Post in an exclusive interview. “We would think of the American church as a napping church and that we would elbow it and it would wake up and rouse itself and do something.
“In my mind today, the picture I have is a church in a diabetic coma that has gorged itself on the sweets of affluence, materialism, and the idolatry of worshipping the materialistic world. That diabetic coma is now life threatening. We as a church are at the point of death—not the church in the Middle East. We are the ones who can no longer rouse ourselves to even pray for an hour on behalf of things that God would have us pray for.”
Moeller said he has been working with Open Doors for almost 10 years to bring an awareness of “the suffering church to the American church conscience.”
“Revelation 3:4 says, ‘Wake up, and strengthen what remains about to die.’ For 50-plus years Open Doors has taken that verse as a motive to wake the church in the West up and to motivate them to go and strengthen what remains in the Body of Christ that is about to die in those places where the church is suffering,” he explained. “It’s always been a case where we talked about waking the church up in the West, but also serving the church that is in utter persecution.”
Moeller believes Open Doors has a unique perspective as it has ministry workers on the ground in many Middle Eastern countries in efforts to support Christians who are persecuted for their faith by governments and other faith groups.
“I’m utterly amazed at the inability of Americans to put two and two together at times. This is what has challenged me,” he said. “We’ve been working in those places where Christians are persecuted for decades. We’ve seen what real, true fire-tested Christianity looks like and the faith that it produces. We’ve also seen unfortunately a slumbering church in the West move deeper and deeper into sleep.”
He believes that one of the most telling signs that Jesus will soon return to the world is “this great apostasy in our church today of people who claim to be Christians and yet have neither the guts nor the hands to live out the Christian life the way our brothers and sisters in the persecuted church have.”
“The American church is now on a death spiral to final unconsciousness,” he said. “If we were to say what is the insulin that the church needs desperately to wake up from its diabetic coma, it’s to understand that the lies of a materialistic culture are not true. We need a dose of truth and the truth is found in the persecuted Christians’ experience with Christ. They are the ones that know that despite all the attempts of the enemy to destroy the church, persecution only serves to strengthen the true faith of believers. That’s the message the American church needs to know and learn.”
“One of the greatest tools of the enemy is to make the church in America and the Western world numb to the cries and suffering to people around the world,” he explained.
Moeller said he hopes and prays that the current state of the church in the U.S. does not become a permanent disability.
“I want nothing more of a church that is simply entertaining,” he said. “I want a church that is prepping people for the inevitable battle that is raging all around us spiritually.”
Beware of Those Who Want the Church to Compromise
Around the World with Ken Ham
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Over the years, I have noticed that more and more churches and Christian colleges are compromising on Genesis with evolution/millions of years. Recently, I blogged about an article in Christianity Todaywhere the author discussed Dr. Darrel Falk’s life and how he attempts to reconcile evolutionary ideas with the Bible. Dr. Falk is a professor of biology at Point Loma Nazarene University in California—a Christian college.
In my previous blog post, I discussed the impact of evolutionary ideas on Dr. Falk’s beliefs and how he now influences students toward evolutionary thinking in his role as a professor in a Christian college. Well, now I want to look at how Dr. Falk is attempting to influence the church.
Dr. Falk became the president of BioLogos in December of 2009. BioLogos is known for promoting “evolutionary creation,” which as I said before is really just another name for theistic evolution. BioLogos has tried to convince the church that evolution/millions of years can and should be mixed with Scripture. In the Christianity Today article, Dr. Falk gives readers his perspective on finding truth in Scripture:
We must be patient with each other and allow each other to follow truth as we see it in Scripture. . . . We must recognize that we will never reach the point where we all see Scripture the same way. When there is division in the church, it will be difficult for the thirsty to find their way to Jesus.
Now, there are some things in the Bible that Christians legitimately disagree on, but Genesis should not be one of them. The creation account is not ambiguous or hard to understand. It is perfectly clear that God created the universe by speaking and that He did it all in six literal days. That doesn’t mean that we should not be gracious toward one another, but we have to expose error when we see it.
What Dr. Falk and BioLogos are arguing is that Scripture is not trustworthy enough to communicate our origins accurately—at least not without the addition of evolution/millions of years—and that any claim to a single interpretation of Genesis will negatively impact those trying “to find their way to Jesus.” And yet I’ve received countless testimonies over the years from people who doubted they could trust the Bible because of what they’d been taught about evolution/millions of years, but have come to faith in Christ after hearing our speakers explain how Genesis is a literal account of creation and having their faith in the trustworthiness of God’s Word restored.
Of course, believing in six literal days of creation and a young earth are not essential for salvation. But it is an authority issue! In other words, can we trust the authority of God’s Word, and can man’s fallible word be used in authority over the Word of God! Professors like Dr. Falk may preach the gospel, but sadly, they are undermining the authority of the Word of God and this is having a devastating effect on the current and former generations they influence.
Over the last few months, BioLogos has featured essays from outside writers that call into question some of BioLogos’s views:
Falk has held to his plea for Christians to love and respect each other while advocating different points of view. In bearing this out, BioLogos recently invited a number of Southern Baptist biblical scholars to publish essays critical of the BioLogos perspective on the BioLogos website, in order to foster mutual understanding.
So far, the scholars who have contributed essays are Kenneth Keathley, William Dembski, James Dew, John Hammet, and Bruce Little. In regard to this series, Kenneth Keahtley said, “They [BioLogos] need to hear from us on the nature of Scripture, the nature of the fall and of salvation. And we need to hear from them on the nature of modern science,” (Travis Loller, “Scientists, seminarians debate evolution online,” Kansas City Star, www.kansascity.com/2012/07/18/3711292/evangelical-scientists-debate.html).
But I’m not so sure that the positions the contributors hold are all that different from BioLogos’s beliefs,because not one of the contributors has come out in strong support of a young earth or a literal reading of the creation account in Genesis. In fact, Kenneth Keathley, professor of theology at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and William Dembski, professor in culture and science at Southern Evangelical Seminary, both hold to an old-earth. Not only does Dembski believe in millions of years, and death and suffering before the Fall, he proposes a theodicy to show how those who believe in millions of years—and death and suffering happening before sin—could fit that with the Bible’s teaching that death came after sin. In that theodicy, he suggests that the first people could have had a sort of amnesia about their alleged ancestry from ape-like creatures: “Moreover, once God breathes the breath of life into them, we may assume that the first humans experienced an amnesia of their former animal life” (The End of Christianity, p. 155).
Another one of the contributors, John Hammet, professor of Systematic Theology at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, wrote in his essay (biologos.org/blog/evolutionary-creationism-and-the-imago-dei), “In the area of science, to call me a novice would be a kindness, so to question their [BioLogos’s] evaluation of the scientific evidence for the evolutionary process would be inappropriate for me.” Hammet’s statement is problematic because it assumes that only a scientist can make a judgment about evolution, even though God’s Word in Genesis is a true record of origins, and any Christian can use what it clearly teaches to judge man’s evolutionary beliefs.
James Dew, assistant professor of the history of ideas and philosophy at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary wrote, “While we admit that there is some evidence that points in this direction [toward evolution], we are not convinced that evolution is the best explanation of all the evidence that needs to be considered.” That’s not very convincing support at all for a young earth or a literal Genesis.
What’s really happening here is that BioLogos is willing to tolerate any view except a dogmatic literal 6-day young earth creation view. Dr. Falk said of the Southern Baptist Voices series, “I don’t think our differences are anywhere near as great as people might have thought.” (www.kansascity.com/2012/07/18/3711292/evangelical-scientists-debate.html) And in the case of a number of the contributors, their differences aren’t that great—because they, like the people at BioLogos, have compromised on Genesis—or at least leave the door open to differing views to allow for evolution and/or millions of years.
Despite attempts to minimize the differences between biblical creationists and old-earth creationists or theistic evolutionists, the theological problems created by such attempts to harmonize the Bible with billions of years are indeed significant. The order of events in Genesis 1 often have to be rearranged to accommodate such views, and those who wish to mesh evolution with the Bible must accept that there was death, suffering, diseases like cancer, and even thorns before the Fall—but all those things are a result of sin! The Scripture is explicit that thorns came after the Curse. How could God call cancer “very good”?
Dr. Falk and the other members at BioLogos have continued to try to reconcile these differences, with programs designed to help pastors teach their congregations about evolution/millions of years and courses for any Christian who wants to mesh these ideas with Scripture.
While we should be gracious toward one another in these matters, we cannot sacrifice truth in the name of unity. As Christians, we must teach authoritatively what Genesis says—that God created in six literal days—and that Scripture can be trusted to teach us the truth about our origins.
We must “contend for the faith” (Jude 1:3) and actively oppose those who propose views that directly undermine the authority of the Word of God and place man’s fallible ideas in authority over God’s infallible Word.
Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,
Ken Ham
(I wish to acknowledge the research assistance of Steve Golden in the writing of this blog item.)
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When the Sun Goes Down
A compilation
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I have seen the sun stand still. I stand by it. I’ve seen God answer plenty of prayers with a miracle. I’ve seen people physically healed in a way that left doctors speechless. I’ve seen couples who had been labeled infertile give birth to healthy boys and girls. I’ve seen people lose their job, pray, and quickly land a new job that paid twice as much and required a fraction of the travel as the last job.
Sometimes—a lot of times—it goes that way. Faith works. Prayers produce. Praise God. There’s nothing better.
But sometimes—a lot of times, honestly—it goes the other way. Sometimes the sun doesn’t stand still. Sometimes the sun goes down.
Sometimes you pray your best, most honest, heartfelt prayers—and there is no answer. Or the answer is no. Sometimes, even though your motives are pure, your desire is good, and your need is urgent, the breakthrough doesn’t come. The turnaround moment doesn’t occur. The cancer spreads. The finances get tighter. The marriage feels more lonely. The kids grow more distant.
Sometimes the sun keeps sinking down, down, down … and no amount of hoping, fasting, or right living can stop it.
Remember, before Joshua ever saw the sun stand still, he had to watch in agony as the sun set slowly on an entire generation. Yes, God gave him the privilege to lead the charge into the Promised Land. But not before he was forced to endure forty years of wilderness wandering because of someone else’s hesitancy. It wasn’t his fault or his lack of faith. He believed. He wanted to obey. Joshua even did everything he could to persuade Moses to see the situation through eyes of faith. But that generation couldn’t see through the doubts and dangers. So Joshua didn’t get to inherit the promise for a long, long time. Joshua spent a large part of his life living in the shadow of a setback. And I imagine there were days when he wondered whether the sun would ever shine again.
Maybe you’re living in a similar shadow right now. You thought you’d be a lot closer to completing your life goals by now. And you’re pretty sure that you’ve done your part to make it happen. But someone else let you down. Something snuck up from behind and knocked you out cold. A crisis came along and crippled your ambition to do great things for God … or even expect anything good from him at all.
These seasons of setback can be fatal to your faith. It’s easy to lose your way when the sun goes down. You can easily slip into a deep spiritual sleep in an attempt to escape the pain.
Or you can choose to convert your times of crisis into the greatest opportunities of your life. It all depends on how you see your crisis—and whether you seize the chance that lies before you.
I can’t in good conscience promise that God will make the sun stand still every time you walk in audacious faith. Your faith does not control God—in fact, human faith on any scale can never put divine providence in your back pocket. That means that, sometimes, people you love will get sick and they won’t recover. You won’t achieve everything you attempt. You’ll have to absorb and manage some pain you didn’t create or invite or deserve. You’ll have days filled with frustration and misery.
Audacious faith does not guarantee a crisis-free life. But audacious faith does enable you to seize the opportunity to see God’s glory in the midst of every crisis in your life.
Even when—and maybe especially when—the sun goes down.—Pastor Steven Furtick
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Faith isn’t a matter of trusting when things go right; it’s when it looks like things have gone wrong that faith comes into play. And our reaction should be one of trust when things go differently than we had hoped or asked. Our trust in the Lord that He knows better than we do will show people that we serve a magnificent God—one who is worthy of our trust and our service. Thank God He knows better than we do, and thank God He does what He knows is best!—Maria Fontaine1
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For every hill I've had to climb,
For every stone that bruised my feet,
For all the blood and sweat and grime,
For blinding storms and burning heat
My heart sings but a grateful song—
These were the things that made me strong!
For all the heartaches and the tears,
For all the anguish and the pain,
For gloomy days and fruitless years,
And for the hopes that lived in vain,
I do give thanks, for now I know
These were the things that helped me grow!
'Tis not the softer things of life
Which stimulate man's will to strive;
But bleak adversity and strife
Do most to keep man's will alive.
O'er rose-strewn paths the weaklings creep,
But brave hearts dare to climb the steep.—Author unknown
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Life is not a straight line leading from one blessing to the next and then finally to heaven. Life is a winding and troubled road. Switchback after switchback. And the point of biblical stories like Joseph and Job and Esther and Ruth is to help us feel in our bones (not just know in our heads) that God is for us in all these strange turns. God is not just showing up after the trouble and cleaning it up. He is plotting the course and managing the troubles with far-reaching purposes for our good and for the glory of Jesus Christ.—John Piper2
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Very few people ask for trouble. We certainly don’t ask God to give us problems. But maybe we should.
I received an interesting note from Thomas Wylie of Westminster, Maryland, who visited the Biosphere Two, a man-made living habitat in Arizona. During the tour the guide explained that one oversight of the designers was their failure to create wind within the structure. No wind to blow the trees back and forth created a problem: The trees would grow to a certain height and then topple over from their own weight. Lack of wind resulted in the trees not having a deeply extended root system.
Mr. Wylie explained that this thought made him realize that without the winds of adversity we cannot grow and become the people God designed us to be without toppling over. I agree. You cannot raise champions on a feather bed. The percentage of people who overcome adversity to go to great heights is legendary.
From time to time when the weather doesn’t suit us, all of us are inclined to say things like we wish we could make it rain or stop raining, the wind to blow more or less, that it would get cooler or warmer, etc. The biosphere clearly demonstrates to us that man is far more likely to “forget” some things or doesn’t have the wisdom to know things, as they forgot to let the wind blow to give the trees those roots. It really causes us to be grateful that God is in control of the total picture, and while we might not understand His head, we can certainly trust His heart.—Zig Ziglar
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What we call adversity, God calls opportunity. What we call tribulation, God calls growth.—Author unknown
Published on Anchor July 2012. Read by Simon Peterson. Music by X.
1 Originally published March 2011.
2 A Sweet and Bitter Providence (Crossway Books & Bibles, 2010), pp. 101–102.
Sunday, July 29, 2012
Is Your Basket Missing? Some Advice for Marriages!
By Michael Webb, July 26
A guy sees a cute girl and has a goal of meeting her. They become friends and after a while the girl has a goal of becoming more than friends. Then their goal might be for an exclusive relationship. Soon they have a goal to be engaged, then married. Sadly, that is when most couples stop making relationship goals and perhaps one of the chief reasons why so many marriages fail.
What are your relationship goals? What plans have you made to achieve those goals?
I’m not talking about physical accumulations like vacation homes, trips abroad or having x number of children. Those are material goals and don’t have any indication on the state of your relationship.
Even though I’ve been married for over 20 years I still have relationship goals. Here are some of them.
1. Have a blissful relationship
2. Never fight
3. Always forgive
4. Say a loving endearment to Athena at least once a day
5. Go on a retreat at least twice a year
6. Discuss our long-term goals at least every six months
7. Grow closer by serving our church and community together
There are others but I think those will give you some sort of idea of the type of goals I mean.
The importance of goal setting in your relationship is that if you don’t have a goal, you are unlikely to reach it. As you have probably heard, “if you fail to plan, then plan to fail.” If a couple never had a goal of getting married, it is unlikely they would ever plan a wedding and actually tie the knot. Likewise, it is unlikely that someone will have a blissful relationship unless they actually state it is a goal of theirs and take the steps necessary to make that happen.
For my goals like going on retreats or discussing our long-term goals semi-annually, Athena and I can mark them in the calendar to help us fulfill them. For our goal of a fight-free marriage we instituted certain guidelines for discussing our differences.
Once you set a goal you can create a plan for making it happen. It is important for you and your mate to sit down and discuss your mutual goals. Then ask each other “what steps do we need to take to reach each goal?”
For example, a couple might have a goal of excellent communication. They might then write down certain steps that each of them will take to make it a reality. Like:
1. Call each other from work at least once a day.
2. Spend 30 minutes uninterrupted time each day conversing at home.
3. Go on a date night at least every two weeks that encourages communication (movies don’t count for obvious reasons).
4. If one person wants to talk, the other will not go to sleep until the issue is resolved.
5. On January 1 of each year we will write letters to each other summarizing the past year and stating our hopes and dreams for the coming year.
You can both put your list in writing and refer back to it from time to time for a progress report or sometimes just discussing the list is all that is necessary for simple goals.
A marriage without goals is like a basketball court without a basket. It might be fun running around for a little bit but you’ll get a bit frustrated after a while without something to aim for, not to mention a purpose for being on the court in the first place.
Qaddafi's Spawn
Yahia H. Zoubir, Foreign Policy, July 24, 2012
YAHIA H. ZOUBIR is Professor of International Studies and Director of Research at Euromed Management at the Marseille School of Management.
The military campaign against Muammar al-Qaddafi’s regime has been hailed a success. In March, Permanent U.S. Representative to NATO Ivo Daalder and NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe James Stavridis wrote in Foreign Affairs that, faced with the humanitarian disaster in Libya, NATO “succeeded in protecting those civilians and, ultimately, in providing the time and space necessary for local forces to overthrow Muammar al-Qaddafi.” But all the celebration has covered up a worrying trend. The unrest surrounding Qaddafi’s last months is now reverberating throughout North Africa and the Sahel—a phenomenon that might be called Qaddafi’s spawn.
First, there are the weapons: The neighborhood, especially Algeria, Mauritania, and Niger, was always uneasy about Libya’s civil war. Many feared that it would pry the lid off Tripoli’s sizeable weapons cache and lead to the dispersal of arms across the region. It turns out that they were right to be worried. Then, there is the money: Locating Libya’s financial assets after the war has been another complicated matter. Members of Qaddafi’s inner circle who know where the money is stashed are missing or unidentifiable. Basically, billions of dollars might wind up in the hands of individuals who could use the cash to sponsor terrorism or otherwise destabilize Libya. And finally, there are the refugees: Tens of thousands of Africans, no longer welcome in Libya, returned home this year. Besides the fact that many of them are ripe for jihadi infiltration, they will further strain the region’s weak economies. Already, food security is becoming a major issue and famine looms.
The weapons bonanza, disappearing money, and wave of refugees have played out differently across the country. In Libya, militias, which amassed vast quantities of weapons during the war, are refusing to relinquish them to the interim government. Some groups, including the one that conquered Tripoli, are comprised of jihadists. Meanwhile, other groups—tribes and private citizens—are building their own arsenals against a background of resurgent tribalism and regionalism. The Misratans and the Zintanis, for example, have established domination over resource-rich areas. Some in Cyrenaica, which boasts most of the country’s oil reserves, are threatening to secede from Libya. Meanwhile, the Toubou tribe is fighting the Zwei in Kufra and Sebha, near the borders with Niger and Chad; the Toubou have also threatened to secede. The Amazigh tribe is taking on the Arabs in the west, near the Tunisian border. And Libyan Tuaregs are locked in battle with Zintans in Ghat, near the Algerian border. Any of these conflicts could spill over soon.
Additionally, whether Libya will ever be able to recover the estimated $150 billion that the Qaddafi government hoarded or deposited in the West ($37 billion alone is thought to be in the United States), the Middle East, and Africa is doubtful. For example, with the mysterious death of Shukri Ghanem, a close ally of Saif al-Islam Qaddafi who served as prime minister and later as head of the national oil company, finding and unfreezing those assets becomes uncertain.
For its part, the U.S. Treasury promised in October 2011 to return to Libya the $37 billion that Qaddafi and his loyalists stashed in the United States, although a few congressional leaders suggested that some of it be used as payment for the NATO operations that toppled Qaddafi. Without that money, Libya’s fragile economy could shatter. The International Monetary Fund is already reporting that Libya’s deficit is unsustainable in the long run: “The present value of financial assets and future oil extraction indicates that from 2012, public spending will exceed the sustainable, long-term level by over 10 percent of GDP.” If Qaddafi’s gold is not recovered, Libya’s outlook will look even worse.
Turning to Algeria, since the fall of Tripoli in August 2011, Libyan man-portable air-defense systems (or, Manpads), rocket-propelled grenades, SAM-7 missiles, and other sophisticated weaponry have made their way into the hands of al Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQIM), which is based on the Algerian border in northern Mali. In February 2012, Algerian authorities unearthed 15 Libyan Manpads and 28 SAM-7s in the southern city of In Amenas. Suspicions fell on three groups: weapons traffickers, AQIM, and the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, a new jihadist group that has launched numerous attacks against Algerian military targets and kidnapped European aid workers in Sahrawi refugee camps in southwestern Algeria. In September 2011, terrorists launched rocket attacks against military helicopters parked in the airfield of Jijel, in eastern Algeria. So far, no one has claimed responsibility, and it is unclear whether the weapons came from Libya, but the incident might be part of a broader AQIM campaign to destabilize the country and the region.
Qaddafi’s fall also shook the (until recently) fairly steady democracy in Mali. When it became apparent last year that the Libyan rebels were winning the war against Qaddafi loyalists, armed nomadic Tuareg detachments that had served alongside Qaddafi’s troops began leaving Libya for homes in Mali and Niger. Niger disarmed the returning Tuaregs, but Mali failed to do so. As a result, by October 2011, 3,000 heavily armed men with 600 all-terrain vehicles had amassed in Mali’s northern Azawad region. In November, they founded the separatist National Liberation Movement for the Azawad (MNLA). And on January 17, 2012, the MNLA began its conquest of Azawad.
Mali’s ill-equipped, poorly trained government soldiers were no match for the battle-hardened Tuareg. A mutiny within the armed forces, and the subsequent military coup on March 22, weakened Mali further. The MNLA quickly seized three major cities in northern Mali—Gao, Kidal, and historic Timbuktu—and then proclaimed the independence of the Azawad on April 6. (It reversed that decision in July 2012, demanding autonomy instead.) Of course, the MNLA is not the only militarized group in town: The Ansar al-Din, a Tuareg jihadist faction led by the Salafi Iyad Ag Ghaly, Mali’s former consul in Saudi Arabia, is intent on imposing sharia in several northern cities, including Timbuktu, which he conquered with the assistance of AQIM and newly acquired weapons from Libya. His troops defeated the MNLA in June, and Ansar al-Din and the jihadists established control over MNLA-held territories.
For its part, Niger is particularly worried that it will face a repeat of what happened in Mali. Its own Taureg population is large and restive. Now, it has been joined by thousands fleeing Libya. What is more, the country has had to cope with refugees fleeing Mali as well. By May of this year, 284,000 Malians had fled northern Mali: 56,664 found refuge in Burkina Faso, 61,000 in Mauritania, 39,388 in Niger, and about 15,000 in Algeria. The new refugees are a heavy burden on countries that can barely sustain their own populations, which are suffering from drought and hunger.
Qaddafi’s fall has had particularly troubling repercussions on post-revolutionary Tunisia. Before the war in Libya, Tunisia and Libya had the highest volume of trade between any two North African countries, and the total was growing at an average of nine percent every year between 2000 and 2009. For its part, Libya absorbed 6.9 percent of Tunisia’s exports, making it Tunisia’s second-biggest export market after the European Union.
With the uprising in Libya, all that stopped. In the first quarter of 2011, Tunisia’s exports to Libya dropped by 34 percent and imports fell by an amazing 95 percent; according to the African Development Bank, the downturns were direct consequences of the civil war in Libya. In addition, more than half of the 100,000 Tunisian workers who had been in Libya returned home. The remittances they sent to their families, an estimated 125 million Tunisian dinars ($76 million) before the war, virtually disappeared. Meanwhile, Tunisia’s unemployment skyrocketed from 15 percent in 2010 to 18.9 percent by the end of 2011, undoubtedly thanks in part to the returning expatriates. Libyans, who had previously come to Tunisia in droves, stayed at home. After an annual average of 1.5 million tourists, Tunisia saw only 815,000 Libyan guests in the year ending May 2012—all bad news for an economy that depends on visitors. (Tourism makes up 11 percent of GDP and 14 percent of employment.)
The major challenge for the region will be preserving the territorial integrity of every country and the safeguarding of its borders. The major challenge for Libya and Mali, meanwhile, is avoiding partition, as happened in Sudan—or worse, “Somalization,” where the state cannot control the various militias that impose their own laws on their respective territories. Regional and international actors will also have to address the socioeconomic and political grievances of their populations and undermine the appeal of extremist forces now holding sophisticated weapons. Compelling studies have demonstrated that nonviolent uprisings, such as the one in Tunisia, are more likely to succeed in making a transition to a democratic polity than violent ones. It is therefore doubtful that NATO’s celebrated “successful operation” will bring prosperity to the new Libya and stability to the region.
YAHIA H. ZOUBIR is Professor of International Studies and Director of Research at Euromed Management at the Marseille School of Management.
The military campaign against Muammar al-Qaddafi’s regime has been hailed a success. In March, Permanent U.S. Representative to NATO Ivo Daalder and NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe James Stavridis wrote in Foreign Affairs that, faced with the humanitarian disaster in Libya, NATO “succeeded in protecting those civilians and, ultimately, in providing the time and space necessary for local forces to overthrow Muammar al-Qaddafi.” But all the celebration has covered up a worrying trend. The unrest surrounding Qaddafi’s last months is now reverberating throughout North Africa and the Sahel—a phenomenon that might be called Qaddafi’s spawn.
First, there are the weapons: The neighborhood, especially Algeria, Mauritania, and Niger, was always uneasy about Libya’s civil war. Many feared that it would pry the lid off Tripoli’s sizeable weapons cache and lead to the dispersal of arms across the region. It turns out that they were right to be worried. Then, there is the money: Locating Libya’s financial assets after the war has been another complicated matter. Members of Qaddafi’s inner circle who know where the money is stashed are missing or unidentifiable. Basically, billions of dollars might wind up in the hands of individuals who could use the cash to sponsor terrorism or otherwise destabilize Libya. And finally, there are the refugees: Tens of thousands of Africans, no longer welcome in Libya, returned home this year. Besides the fact that many of them are ripe for jihadi infiltration, they will further strain the region’s weak economies. Already, food security is becoming a major issue and famine looms.
The weapons bonanza, disappearing money, and wave of refugees have played out differently across the country. In Libya, militias, which amassed vast quantities of weapons during the war, are refusing to relinquish them to the interim government. Some groups, including the one that conquered Tripoli, are comprised of jihadists. Meanwhile, other groups—tribes and private citizens—are building their own arsenals against a background of resurgent tribalism and regionalism. The Misratans and the Zintanis, for example, have established domination over resource-rich areas. Some in Cyrenaica, which boasts most of the country’s oil reserves, are threatening to secede from Libya. Meanwhile, the Toubou tribe is fighting the Zwei in Kufra and Sebha, near the borders with Niger and Chad; the Toubou have also threatened to secede. The Amazigh tribe is taking on the Arabs in the west, near the Tunisian border. And Libyan Tuaregs are locked in battle with Zintans in Ghat, near the Algerian border. Any of these conflicts could spill over soon.
Additionally, whether Libya will ever be able to recover the estimated $150 billion that the Qaddafi government hoarded or deposited in the West ($37 billion alone is thought to be in the United States), the Middle East, and Africa is doubtful. For example, with the mysterious death of Shukri Ghanem, a close ally of Saif al-Islam Qaddafi who served as prime minister and later as head of the national oil company, finding and unfreezing those assets becomes uncertain.
For its part, the U.S. Treasury promised in October 2011 to return to Libya the $37 billion that Qaddafi and his loyalists stashed in the United States, although a few congressional leaders suggested that some of it be used as payment for the NATO operations that toppled Qaddafi. Without that money, Libya’s fragile economy could shatter. The International Monetary Fund is already reporting that Libya’s deficit is unsustainable in the long run: “The present value of financial assets and future oil extraction indicates that from 2012, public spending will exceed the sustainable, long-term level by over 10 percent of GDP.” If Qaddafi’s gold is not recovered, Libya’s outlook will look even worse.
Turning to Algeria, since the fall of Tripoli in August 2011, Libyan man-portable air-defense systems (or, Manpads), rocket-propelled grenades, SAM-7 missiles, and other sophisticated weaponry have made their way into the hands of al Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQIM), which is based on the Algerian border in northern Mali. In February 2012, Algerian authorities unearthed 15 Libyan Manpads and 28 SAM-7s in the southern city of In Amenas. Suspicions fell on three groups: weapons traffickers, AQIM, and the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, a new jihadist group that has launched numerous attacks against Algerian military targets and kidnapped European aid workers in Sahrawi refugee camps in southwestern Algeria. In September 2011, terrorists launched rocket attacks against military helicopters parked in the airfield of Jijel, in eastern Algeria. So far, no one has claimed responsibility, and it is unclear whether the weapons came from Libya, but the incident might be part of a broader AQIM campaign to destabilize the country and the region.
Qaddafi’s fall also shook the (until recently) fairly steady democracy in Mali. When it became apparent last year that the Libyan rebels were winning the war against Qaddafi loyalists, armed nomadic Tuareg detachments that had served alongside Qaddafi’s troops began leaving Libya for homes in Mali and Niger. Niger disarmed the returning Tuaregs, but Mali failed to do so. As a result, by October 2011, 3,000 heavily armed men with 600 all-terrain vehicles had amassed in Mali’s northern Azawad region. In November, they founded the separatist National Liberation Movement for the Azawad (MNLA). And on January 17, 2012, the MNLA began its conquest of Azawad.
Mali’s ill-equipped, poorly trained government soldiers were no match for the battle-hardened Tuareg. A mutiny within the armed forces, and the subsequent military coup on March 22, weakened Mali further. The MNLA quickly seized three major cities in northern Mali—Gao, Kidal, and historic Timbuktu—and then proclaimed the independence of the Azawad on April 6. (It reversed that decision in July 2012, demanding autonomy instead.) Of course, the MNLA is not the only militarized group in town: The Ansar al-Din, a Tuareg jihadist faction led by the Salafi Iyad Ag Ghaly, Mali’s former consul in Saudi Arabia, is intent on imposing sharia in several northern cities, including Timbuktu, which he conquered with the assistance of AQIM and newly acquired weapons from Libya. His troops defeated the MNLA in June, and Ansar al-Din and the jihadists established control over MNLA-held territories.
For its part, Niger is particularly worried that it will face a repeat of what happened in Mali. Its own Taureg population is large and restive. Now, it has been joined by thousands fleeing Libya. What is more, the country has had to cope with refugees fleeing Mali as well. By May of this year, 284,000 Malians had fled northern Mali: 56,664 found refuge in Burkina Faso, 61,000 in Mauritania, 39,388 in Niger, and about 15,000 in Algeria. The new refugees are a heavy burden on countries that can barely sustain their own populations, which are suffering from drought and hunger.
Qaddafi’s fall has had particularly troubling repercussions on post-revolutionary Tunisia. Before the war in Libya, Tunisia and Libya had the highest volume of trade between any two North African countries, and the total was growing at an average of nine percent every year between 2000 and 2009. For its part, Libya absorbed 6.9 percent of Tunisia’s exports, making it Tunisia’s second-biggest export market after the European Union.
With the uprising in Libya, all that stopped. In the first quarter of 2011, Tunisia’s exports to Libya dropped by 34 percent and imports fell by an amazing 95 percent; according to the African Development Bank, the downturns were direct consequences of the civil war in Libya. In addition, more than half of the 100,000 Tunisian workers who had been in Libya returned home. The remittances they sent to their families, an estimated 125 million Tunisian dinars ($76 million) before the war, virtually disappeared. Meanwhile, Tunisia’s unemployment skyrocketed from 15 percent in 2010 to 18.9 percent by the end of 2011, undoubtedly thanks in part to the returning expatriates. Libyans, who had previously come to Tunisia in droves, stayed at home. After an annual average of 1.5 million tourists, Tunisia saw only 815,000 Libyan guests in the year ending May 2012—all bad news for an economy that depends on visitors. (Tourism makes up 11 percent of GDP and 14 percent of employment.)
The major challenge for the region will be preserving the territorial integrity of every country and the safeguarding of its borders. The major challenge for Libya and Mali, meanwhile, is avoiding partition, as happened in Sudan—or worse, “Somalization,” where the state cannot control the various militias that impose their own laws on their respective territories. Regional and international actors will also have to address the socioeconomic and political grievances of their populations and undermine the appeal of extremist forces now holding sophisticated weapons. Compelling studies have demonstrated that nonviolent uprisings, such as the one in Tunisia, are more likely to succeed in making a transition to a democratic polity than violent ones. It is therefore doubtful that NATO’s celebrated “successful operation” will bring prosperity to the new Libya and stability to the region.
