2021-02-17
2 Corinthians 5:17 NLT
Mickey Mantle is one of the true legends of baseball history. He played two thousand four hundred and one games for the New York Yankees from 1951 until 1968, hit a record eighteen homers in twelve World Series, and was placed in baseball’s Hall of Fame in 1974. The crowd loved him. He was famous. He was rich. But he still felt empty inside, so he turned to alcohol. In a Sports Illustrated interview, he once described his long battle with liquor and his heartbreaking problems with his family. The interviewer then asked, “So how are things going with you today, Mickey?” He replied, “I haven’t had a drink in eight months. I’m starting to get my life back together, but I just feel like there’s something missing.”
Do you feel that way today? Have all the things you’ve achieved or acquired failed to satisfy you? Mickey Mantle finally discovered how to fill the hole in his soul. Near the end of his life he found what he had always been looking for – Jesus Christ.
Another famous former baseball player, Bobby Richardson, led him to Christ. At Mantle’s funeral, Richardson told of helping Mantle receive the Lord Jesus as his personal Saviour. On his deathbed Mickey Mantle said, “I am trusting in Christ’s death for me to take me to heaven.” Home run!
And what Jesus did for Mickey Mantle, He wants to do for you too. “Anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!”
Soul food: Gen 1-3; Matt 15:15-28; Ps 28; Prov 5:3-6
2021-02-16
Genesis 1:24 NKJV
The theory of evolution is incompatible with the Bible. God said in creation, “Let the earth bring forth the living creature according to its kind.” And “when God created mankind, he made them in the likeness of God…. When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness” (Genesis 5:1,3 NIV). In other words, man isn’t just another animal in the evolutionary chain. “Microevolution” teaches variations within species. For example, there are different types of dogs, etc. But there is no scientific evidence to support “macroevolution” – one species evolving into another species.
In reference to creation, Dr. Derek Prince wrote: “I am simple-minded enough to believe that it happened the way the Bible described it. I have been a professor at Britain’s largest university [Cambridge] for nine years. I hold various degrees and academic distinctions, and I feel in many ways I am quite sophisticated intellectually, but I don’t feel in any way intellectually inferior when I say that I believe the Bible record of creation. Prior to believing the Bible I have studied many other attempts to explain man’s origin and found them all unsatisfying and in many cases self-contradictory. I turned to study the Bible as a professional philosopher – not as a believer – and I commented to myself, ‘At least it can’t be any sillier than some of the other things I’ve heard,’ and to my astonishment, I discovered it had the answer.”
Are you looking for answers to your life’s problems? Or direction for your future? Read your Bible and live by its precepts!
Soul food: Ecc 9-12; Matt 15:1-14; Ps 5; Prov 5:1-2
2021-02-15
1 Corinthians 15:39 NKJV
The Bible says, “All flesh is not the same…there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of animals, another of fish, and another of birds.”
One author writes: “The Bible tells us that animals are created ‘without understanding’ (Psalm 49:20 ESV). We are made in God’s ‘image.’ We aren’t merely a higher form of species on the evolutionary scale. As human beings, we are aware of our ‘being.’ God is ‘I AM,’ and we know that ‘we are.’ We have understanding that we exist. Among other unique characteristics, we have an innate ability to appreciate God’s creation. What animal gazes with awe at…the magnificence of the Grand Canyon? What animal obtains joy from the sounds of music or takes the time to form itself into an orchestra to create and harmonize music? What animal among the beasts sets up court systems and apportions justice to its fellow creatures? We are moral beings. While birds and other creatures have instincts to create (nests, etc.), we have the ability to uncover the hidden laws of electricity. We can utilize the law of aerodynamics to transport ourselves around the globe. We also have the God-given ability to appreciate the value of creation. We unearth the hidden treasures of gold, silver, diamonds and oil to make use of them for our own benefit. Only humans have the unique capability to appreciate God for this incredible creation and to respond to His love.”
Yes, God created us, redeemed us, has a special purpose for us, and loves us so much that when we die, He wants to take us to heaven to live with Him forever.
Soul food: Ecc 5-8; Matt 14:22-36; Ps 149; Prov 4:25-27
2021-02-14
Genesis 1:2 KJV
Science defines the universe as being made up of five components: time, space, matter, power, and motion. With that clearly in mind, read this: “In the beginning [time] God created [power] the heaven [space] and the earth [matter]. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved [motion] upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be…and there was” (vv. 1-3).
The first thing God tells us in the Bible is that He created all things and that He controls all things. Now consider these quotes from three leading magazines and newspapers:
(1) “Most cosmologists (scientists who study the structures and evolution of the universe) agree that the Genesis account of creation, in imagining an initial void, may be uncannily close to the truth” (Time magazine).
(2) “The universe suddenly exploded into being…The big bang bears an uncanny resemblance to the Genesis command” (Jim Holt, science writer: The Wall Street Journal).
(3) “New scientific revelations about supernovas, black holes, quarks, and the big bang even suggest to some scientists that there is a ‘grand design’ in the universe” (U.S. News & World Report).
The retina in your eye contains 137 million light-sensitive cells, while the focusing muscles in your eye move approximately 100,000 times a day. Well guess what? Charles Darwin wrote in On the Origin of the Species by Means of Natural Selection, “To suppose that the eye…could have been formed by natural selection [evolution], seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.”
The truth is this: God made you, and He has a plan for your life.
Soul food: Eph 5:21-33; Song of Sol 2:1-7; Ps 45; Prov 5:15-19
2021-02-13
Matthew 19:4 NKJV
A fascinating quote from a 1995 issue of U.S. News & World Report reads: “Researchers suggest that virtually all modern men – 99 percent of them, says one scientist – are closely related genetically and share genes with one male ancestor dubbed ‘Y-chromosome Adam.’ We are finding that humans have very, very shallow genetic roots which go back very recently to one ancestor…That indicates that there was an origin in a specific location on the globe, and then it spread out from there.”
Furthermore, we know that the male needs the female to reproduce, and vice versa. Neither can carry on life separate from the other. Jesus pointed this out, saying, “He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female.'” So which one of them came first, according to the evolutionary theory: male or female? As one author writes: “If a male came into being before a female, how did the male of each species reproduce without females? How is it possible that a male and female each spontaneously came into being, yet they have complex, complementary reproductive systems? If each gender was able to reproduce without the other, why (and how) would they have developed a reproductive system that requires both genders in order for the species to survive?”
Just because an academic says something, doesn’t make it so! Christians need to speak up and demand answers from those who offer unproven theories in the name of higher learning? Jesus said we would know the truth, and the truth would set us free (See John 8:32). Free from what? Free from error!
Soul food: Ecc 1-4; Matt 14:13-21; Ps 145:14-21; Prov 4:23-24
2021-02-12
Genesis 1:1 NKJV
A growing number of educators and scientists around the world believe the Bible account of creation and are pointing us back to the truth of these words: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” The question “evolution or creation?” becomes clearer when you rephrase it as “accident or design?”
Sir Fred Hoyle, professor of astronomy at Cambridge University, said: “The chance that higher life forms might have emerged in this way [through evolution] is comparable to the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein.” He continues: “The likelihood of the formation of life from inanimate matter is one out of 1040,000…It is big enough to bury Darwin and the whole theory of evolution. There was no primeval soup, neither on this planet nor on any other, and if the beginnings of life were not random, they must therefore have been the product of purposeful intelligence.”
Even evolutionist Stephen Hawking, one of the most respected scientists since Albert Einstein, acknowledges: “The universe and the laws of physics seem to have been specifically designed for us. If any one of about 40 physical qualities had more than slightly different values, life as we know it could not exist: Either atoms would not be stable, or they wouldn’t combine into molecules, or the stars wouldn’t form the heavier elements, or the universe would collapse before life could develop.”
As a Bible believer, never apologize or compromise when it comes to the truth that says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
Soul food: Rom 15-16; Matt 14:1-12; Ps 145:1-13; Prov 4:20-22
