The Remnant is Like a Fuse
As we grow in union with him, if the Lord wills, he might decide to set the broader culture on fire through the Holy Spirit as he has done in the past. However, even if he does not, the remnant will experience revival and be the bright and shining light to the culture around us we are called to be, and the fuse will be ready to ignite any powder the Lord has been preparing.
Throughout history, we see the church expand and contract not only in size but also in terms of its faithfulness to Jesus Christ and his word. Today, in North America, the visible church as a whole seems to be in a time of decline. Many churches are shrinking or closing, and many others are giving into the spirit of the age. They are salt that is losing its saltiness.
A time of decline is never the time for the faithful follower of Jesus Christ to grow fainthearted. Elijah once lamented that the enemies of God had killed the priests and the prophets and that he was the only follower of God remaining. God’s response to him was that there were still 7000 men who had not bowed their knees to Baal. So too, at this time, there is a remnant chosen by grace (Romans 11:2-5).
Now is not the time for us to throw up our hands. It is the time for us to get down on our knees and pray for revival.
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In Ur, the New World Religion Was Launched On March 6, 2021
The Pope is calling for an International Pluralistic religion, centered around himself. It is not difficult to see where this is all going, since he himself makes that clear; “It is up to us, today’s humanity, especially those of us, believers of all religions, to turn instruments of hatred into instruments of peace.”
On 6 March, 2021 the Pope officially launched his new religion. Well, its his same religion, come out of the closet.
It is clearly Universal in scope, calls for a single Congregation of religions, and places himself as the universal Roman head of it. It was held at great risk in war-torn Iraq, in the ancient city of Ur of the Chaldeans. The Vatican has been repairing the Ziggurat at the cite of the ancient city since 1999 just for this event. It hosted the leaders of most of the world’s religions.
The speech is in line with The New Catechism of the Catholic Church, which embraces all the world’s religions as paths to the same end; paths to the same god. The only religion specifically to be excluded is one which does not recognize that the Pope is the Head of the Church, and the Russian Orthodox.
The Pope is calling for an International Pluralistic religion, centered around himself. It is not difficult to see where this is all going, since he himself makes that clear; “It is up to us, today’s humanity, especially those of us, believers of all religions, to turn instruments of hatred into instruments of peace.” The Roman Catholic doctrine of economic Distributism is clearly the end he proposes. What is Distributism? According to their website, it is a lot like Communism, Socialism and Marxism.
The question Bible-believing Christians face is this; how can one who speaks like the Pope does in this speech, at the same time believe even the most basic teachings of the Bible? Can such a person still be said to believe in the doctrine of the Trinity, or the Apostle’s Creed and give a speech like this?
Dear brothers and sisters,
This blessed place brings us back to our origins, to the sources of God’s work, to the birth of our religions.
Here, where Abraham our father lived, we seem to have returned home. It was here that Abraham heard God’s call; it was from here that he set out on a journey that would change history.
We are the fruits of that call and that journey. God asked Abraham to raise his eyes to heaven and to count its stars.
In those stars, he saw the promise of his descendants; he saw us.
Today we, Jews, Christians and Muslims, together with our brothers and sisters of other religions, honour our father Abraham by doing as he did: we look up to heaven and we journey on earth.
We look up to heaven.
Thousands of years later, as we look up to the same sky, those same stars appear. They illumine the darkest nights because they shine together.
Heaven thus imparts a message of unity: the Almighty above invites us never to separate ourselves from our neighbours.
The otherness of God points us towards others, towards our brothers and sisters.
Yet if we want to preserve fraternity, we must not lose sight of heaven.
May we – the descendants of Abraham and the representatives of different religions – sense that, above all, we have this role: to help our brothers and sisters to raise their eyes and prayers to heaven.
We all need this because we are not self-sufficient.
Man is not omnipotent; we cannot make it on our own.
If we exclude God, we end up worshipping the things of this earth.
Worldly goods, which lead so many people to be unconcerned with God and others, are not the reason why we journey on earth.
We raise our eyes to heaven in order to raise ourselves from the depths of our vanity; we serve God in order to be set free from enslavement to our egos, because God urges us to love.
This is true religiosity: to worship God and to love our neighbour.
In today’s world, which often forgets or presents distorted images of the Most High, believers are called to bear witness to his goodness, to show his paternity through our fraternity.
From this place, where faith was born, from the land of our father Abraham, let us affirm that God is merciful and that the greatest blasphemy is to profane his name by hating our brothers and sisters.
Hostility, extremism and violence are not born of a religious heart: they are betrayals of religion.
We believers cannot be silent when terrorism abuses religion; indeed, we are called unambiguously to dispel all misunderstandings.
Let us not allow the light of heaven to be overshadowed by the clouds of hatred!
Dark clouds of terrorism, war and violence have gathered over this country. All its ethnic and religious communities have suffered.
In particular, I would like to mention the Yazidi community, which has mourned the deaths of many men and witnessed thousands of women, girls and children kidnapped, sold as slaves, subjected to physical violence and forced conversions.
Today, let us pray for those who have endured these sufferings, for those who are still dispersed and abducted, that they may soon return home.
And let us pray that freedom of conscience and freedom of religion will everywhere be recognised and respected; these are fundamental rights, because they make us free to contemplate the heaven for which we were created.
When terrorism invaded the north of this beloved country, it wantonly destroyed part of its magnificent religious heritage, including the churches, monasteries and places of worship of various communities.
Yet, even at that dark time, some stars kept shining.
I think of the young Muslim volunteers of Mosul, who helped to repair churches and monasteries, building fraternal friendships on the rubble of hatred, and those Christians and Muslims who today are restoring mosques and churches together.
Professor Ali Thajeel spoke too of the return of pilgrims to this city.
It is important to make pilgrimages to holy places, for it is the most beautiful sign on earth of our yearning for heaven.
To love and protect holy places, therefore, is an existential necessity, in memory of our father Abraham, who in various places raised to heaven altars of the Lord.
May the great Patriarch help us to make our respective sacred places oases of peace and encounter for all!
By his fidelity to God, Abraham became a blessing for all peoples; may our presence here today, in his footsteps, be a sign of blessing and hope for Iraq, for the Middle East and for the whole world.
Heaven has not grown weary of the earth: God loves every people, every one of his daughters and sons!
Let us never tire of looking up to heaven, of looking up to those same stars that, in his day, our father Abraham contemplated.
We journey on earth.
For Abraham, looking up to heaven, rather than being a distraction, was an incentive to journey on earth, to set out on a path that, through his descendants, would lead to every time and place.
It all started from here, with the Lord who brought him forth from Ur.
His was a journey outward, one that involved sacrifices.
Abraham had to leave his land, home and family.
Yet by giving up his own family, he became the father of a family of peoples.
Something similar also happens to us: on our own journey, we are called to leave behind those ties and attachments that, by keeping us enclosed in our own groups, prevent us from welcoming God’s boundless love and from seeing others as our brothers and sisters.
We need to move beyond ourselves, because we need one another.
The pandemic has made us realise that “no one is saved alone”.
Still, the temptation to withdraw from others is never-ending, yet at the same time we know that “the notion of ‘every man for himself’ will rapidly degenerate into a free-for-all that would prove worse than any pandemic”.
Amid the tempests we are currently experiencing, such isolation will not save us.
Nor will an arms race or the erection of walls that will only make us all the more distant and aggressive.
Nor the idolatry of money, for it closes us in on ourselves and creates chasms of inequality that engulf humanity.
Nor can we be saved by consumerism, which numbs the mind and deadens the heart.
The way that heaven points out for our journey is another: the way of peace.
It demands, especially amid the tempest, that we row together on the same side.
It is shameful that, while all of us have suffered from the crisis of the pandemic, especially here, where conflicts have caused so much suffering, anyone should be concerned simply for his own affairs.
There will be no peace without sharing and acceptance, without a justice that ensures equity and advancement for all, beginning with those most vulnerable.
There will be no peace unless peoples extend a hand to other peoples.
There will be no peace as long as we see others as them and not us.
There will be no peace as long as our alliances are against others, for alliances of some against others only increase divisions.
Peace does not demand winners or losers, but rather brothers and sisters who, for all the misunderstandings and hurts of the past, are journeying from conflict to unity.
Let us ask for this in praying for the whole Middle East. Here I think especially of neighbouring war-torn Syria.
The Patriarch Abraham, who today brings us together in unity, was a prophet of the Most High.
An ancient prophecy says that the peoples “shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks”.
This prophecy has not been fulfilled; on the contrary, swords and spears have turned into missiles and bombs.
From where, then, can the journey of peace begin?
From the decision not to have enemies.
Anyone with the courage to look at the stars, anyone who believes in God, has no enemies to fight.
He or she has only one enemy to face, an enemy that stands at the door of the heart and knocks to enter.
That enemy is hatred.
While some try to have enemies more than to be friends, while many seek their own profit at the expense of others, those who look at the stars of the promise, those who follow the ways of God, cannot be against someone, but for everyone.
They cannot justify any form of imposition, oppression and abuse of power; they cannot adopt an attitude of belligerence.
Dear friends, is all this possible?
Father Abraham, who was able to hope against all hope, encourages us.
Throughout history, we have frequently pursued goals that are overly worldly and journeyed on our own, but with the help of God, we can change for the better.
It is up to us, today’s humanity, especially those of us, believers of all religions, to turn instruments of hatred into instruments of peace.
It is up to us to appeal firmly to the leaders of nations to make the increasing proliferation of arms give way to the distribution of food for all.
It is up to us to silence mutual accusations in order to make heard the cry of the oppressed and discarded in our world: all too many people lack food, medicine, education, rights and dignity!
It is up to us to shed light on the shady maneuvers that revolve around money and to demand that money not end up always and only reinforcing the unbridled luxury of a few.
It is up to us preserve our common home from our predatory aims.
It is up to us to remind the world that human life has value for what it is and not for what it has.
That the lives of the unborn, the elderly, migrants and men and women, whatever the colour of their skin or their nationality, are always sacred and count as much as the lives of everyone else!
It is up to us to have the courage to lift up our eyes and look at the stars, the stars that our father Abraham saw, the stars of the promise.
The journey of Abraham was a blessing of peace.
Yet it was not easy: he had to face struggles and unforeseen events.
We too have a rough journey ahead, but like the great Patriarch, we need to take concrete steps, to set out and seek the face of others, to share memories, gazes and silences, stories and experiences.
I was struck by the testimony of Dawood and Hasan, a Christian and a Muslim who, undaunted by the differences between them, studied and worked together.
Together they built the future and realised that they are brothers. In order to move forward, we too need to achieve something good and concrete together.
This is the way, especially for young people, who must not see their dreams cut short by the conflicts of the past!
It is urgent to teach them fraternity, to teach them to look at the stars.
This is a real emergency; it will be the most effective vaccine for a future of peace. For you, dear young people, are our present and our future!
Only with others can the wounds of the past be healed.
Rafah told us of the heroic example of Najy, from the Sabean Mandean community, who lost his life in an attempt to save the family of his Muslim neighbour.
How many people here, amid the silence and indifference of the world, have embarked upon journeys of fraternity!
Rafah also told us of the unspeakable sufferings of the war that forced many to abandon home and country in search of a future for their children.
Thank you, Rafah, for having shared with us your firm determination to stay here, in the land of your fathers.
May those who were unable to do so, and had to flee, find a kindly welcome, befitting those who are vulnerable and suffering.
It was precisely through hospitality, a distinctive feature of these lands, that Abraham was visited by God and given the gift of a son, when it seemed that all hope was past.
Brothers and sisters of different religions, here we find ourselves at home, and from here, together, we wish to commit ourselves to fulfilling God’s dream that the human family may become hospitable and welcoming to all his children; that looking up to the same heaven, it will journey in peace on the same earth.
Charles d’Espeville is a Minister in the Reformed Church in America. -
The Safest Man for Women
Of course, raising up godly men is about far more than sexual purity. A man of God is more than his self-control in dating relationships. He’s more than his last Internet accountability report — far more. When grace grips a man, it more than curbs his lust for porn; it lights fires for good under every area of his life. And so, young men need strong, dynamic, ambitious pictures of what they might become in Christ.
I can remember exactly where I was sitting, wrestling with guilt and shame and regret over failed relationships and sexual sin, wondering if I would ever overcome my broken history, when a friend recited Micah 7:8–9 from memory:
Rejoice not over me, O my enemy;when I fall, I shall rise;when I sit in darkness,the Lord will be a light to me.I will bear the indignation of the Lordbecause I have sinned against him,until he pleads my causeand executes judgment for me.He will bring me out to the light;I shall look upon his vindication.
God pleads my cause. The one I betrayed kneeled down to appeal for me. His gavel landed, not on me, but on his Son. Having lived and hidden in darkness, I found a home in the light. The purity I thought I had lost was now suddenly and undeservedly possible.
As we raise up younger men in the church, and encourage them toward becoming men of God, how can we call them into the kind of freedom and purity God gave me in Christ?
Set an Example in Purity
Of course, raising up godly men is about far more than sexual purity. A man of God is more than his self-control in dating relationships. He’s more than his last Internet accountability report — far more. When grace grips a man, it more than curbs his lust for porn; it lights fires for good under every area of his life. And so, young men need strong, dynamic, ambitious pictures of what they might become in Christ.
Fortunately, God gives us plenty of great lessons on manhood in his word. First Timothy 4:12 has become one especially concise and compelling picture for me:
Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.
The apostle Paul gives Timothy, his son in the faith, five cues for spiritual growth and development. The areas are not exclusive to men, but they are each critical for godly men. Each of those five words is a battlefield to be won, and each can become its own stronghold for holiness. Do this man’s conversations consistently say he belongs to God? Does his lifestyle set him apart from the unbelieving? Is he a man of surprising and sacrificial love? Does he fight for faith in the trenches of temptation and doubt? Is he pure?
In previous articles, we looked more closely at the first four — speech, conduct, love, and faith. Here we turn to purity, the area that may receive the most attention in young men’s discipleship (often for good reason), and yet often in ways that miss the heart of Christian purity.
In All Purity
First, what kind of purity did the apostle have in mind? The only other use of this Greek word in the New Testament — agneia — comes just one chapter later in the same letter:
Encourage [an older man] as you would a father, younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, in all purity. (1 Timothy 5:1–2)
This suggests the purity Paul had in mind was sexual purity — a broad and consistent holiness that marks all of Timothy’s relationships with his sisters in Christ. Purity is bigger and wider than personal sexual morality, but sex and sexuality (then and certainly now) play a major role in setting followers of Christ apart from the world. Man of God, as you encourage younger women in the church, do so with purity. Don’t talk, behave, or daydream in ways that make them vulnerable to serve your lusts. Put to death sexual immorality within you (Colossians 3:5). Flee from sexual temptation (1 Corinthians 6:18). Treat young women with the respect and concern with which you would treat your own sisters — because they are (Matthew 12:50).
And not just purity, Timothy, but all purity. Don’t treat women just slightly better than men in the world do, but wholly differently. When other men flirt with ambiguous messages and signals, be surprisingly clear and honest. When other men secretly gratify their lusts, make moments alone a training ground for self-control. When other men dishonor themselves and others through sexual sin, be a man who loves to honor and protect women. Don’t look for the lowest bar to crawl over, but be ambitiously pure — love any women God has put in your life with all purity. Be the safest man on earth for a young woman to meet.
“Husband of One Wife”
Earlier in his letter to the younger Timothy, the apostle gives at least one other glimpse into how godly men relate to sex and sexuality.
When he names qualifications for pastor-elders, the majority of the list simply pictures a normal godly man, whether he ever serves in church office or not. He must be “sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, . . . not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money” (1 Timothy 3:2–3). These qualities mark every mature man who follows Jesus. And according to that same list, such a man is also “the husband of one wife” (1 Timothy 3:2).
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Paths to Patience
We are called to love the church, but also the specific people in the church that he has given us to enjoy closer relationship with. When that gets hard, we need to remember the God dwells among us. We were each saved by the blood of Christ, given faith by the Father, and have been indwelled by the Spirit. This means that even in the darkest of times, even when separation or distance might be called for, that we do so prayerfully and patiently considering God’s call upon our lives to love his people.
Dear Tim,
Thank you so much for your gracious letter, it will come as no shock that your reminder of Jesus’ example of faithful suffering struck my heart. This exhortation has stayed with me ever since I read your letter, “[Jesus] gave us an example of how to suffer, so let’s apprentice ourselves to him in this too.”
Thank you for challenging me to imitate him again.
Here is our passage for today:
“I exhort you all, therefore, to yield obedience to the word of righteousness, and to exercise all patience, such as you have seen before your eyes, not only in the case of the blessed Ignatius, and Zosimus, and Rufus, but also in others among yourselves, and in Paul himself, and the rest of the apostles. [Do this] in the assurance that all these have not run in vain, but in faith and righteousness, and that they are [now] in their due place in the presence of the Lord, with whom also they suffered. For they loved not this present world, but Him who died for us, and for our sakes was raised again by God from the dead.”
“I exhort you all, therefore, to yield obedience to theword of righteousness, and to exercise all patience”
The title in the translator gave to this passage was “Patience Inculcated.” Inculcated isn’t a word that we hear used very much in common parlance, but I think in this case it’s a very poignant one. The has a kind of dual meaning; it evokes a sense of a parent instilling virtues in their children that they’ll indwell for life, but it also has an element of repetition. Patience is a fruit of the Spirit, and is therefore something that believers, both young and old, should expect to possess in some measure, however in order for that fruit to grow it needs to be constantly fed and watered.
I have gotten in the habit, when people have come to me for advice during times of particular personal or relational stress, of asking whether they have recently asked God to give them more patience. I have about a 90% hit rate. One of the best ways for us to grow in patience isn’t simply by being told, but rather to have regular “system updates” by meeting difficult people and situations. This inculcates the kind of patience fitting of those obedient to the word of righteousness.
It’s no wonder then that Polycarp’s passage on patience is written within the context of relation, both to the broader family of the saints, but also more specifically to those in our personal spheres. This gives us people to be patient with, and people to patiently imitate.
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