Speaker: Alvin Plantinga – The Heidelberg Catechism: “Providence is the almighty and ever present power of God by which he upholds, as with his hand, heaven and earth and all creatures, and so rules them that leaf and blade, rain and drought, fruitful and lean years, food and drink, health and sickness, prosperity and poverty–all things, in fact, come to us not by chance but from his fatherly hand.”
Classical Christian idea here: Regularity, dependability; but also special action. Miracles in scripture: the parting of the Red Sea, Jesus’s walking on water and changing water into wine, miraculous healings, rising from the dead. But not just in Bible times: according to classical Christians, also now responds to prayers; healings; works in the hearts and minds of his children (internal testimony of the Holy Spirit; sanctification). God constantly causes events in the world. (photo via www.veritas-ucsb.org)
Alvin Carl Plantinga is an American analytic philosopher, the John A. O’Brien Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at the University of Notre Dame and the inaugural holder of the Jellema Chair in Philosophy at Calvin College.
Born: November 15, 1932 (age 80), Ann Arbor
Education: Yale University, Jamestown College, Harvard University,University of Michigan, Calvin College
Piper: Everything in your life, everything you say, everything you think, everything you feel, everything you do, all the relationships you have, have to do with God. One of the great things about preaching in the same church for 27 years (this was in 2007) is that the mission of the church and the mission of the preacher tend to merge. And the mission goes like this: I exist to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things, for the joy of all peoples, through Jesus Christ.
So, when I say, “Everything you say, everything you do, everything you think, everything you feel, all the relationships you have have to do with God, I have something way more specific in mind than just ‘have to do with God’. I believe that God has ordained your existence, and everything you do, and say, and think and feel, and all the relationships you have, have ordained those so they would make God look good.
You’re on the planet in order to say things, do things, think things, feel things, be in relationships in such a way as to make Jesus Christ look like He really is, namely SUPREMELY VALUABLE. That is the mission statement of my life, I would like it to be the mission statement of everybody’s life
And, you should ask, “Do I devote my life, and I mean, down to the details. Do I devote the way I study, what I eat, what I drink, what I wear, how I do my hair, what movies I watch, what websites I go to and how long I stay there, what car I drive, where I live, how I do my work, where I work, what jokes I tell and like to hear, what kind of language I use, who my friends are, why, how I spent all my leisure time.” Are you asking how all those things do that, how all those things spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things, for the joy of all peoples?
How do I do all those things so that I make Christ look really great? So that I do them in a way that communicates ‘He is more valuable to me than all those things, than anything else?
Piper: Most Americans don’t know what love is. I’ll state a definition that they might agree with and then I’ll give it a biblical translation. Maybe you would find people who would agree with the definition: Love is doing whatever you’ve got to do, at whatever cost to yourself, to make people as happy as they can be forever. It cost Jesus His life to do this, to make people as happy as they can be forever.
The biblical translation for that is this: Love is whatever you have to do, at whatever cost to yourself to help people have an all satisfying passion for Jesus forever. Those are synonymous definitions because Christ is the only source of everlasting joy. If you reject Christ, you don’t have joy- forever.
Therefore, the definition of love is eating, drinking, and doing whatever you do, in order to help people cherish Christ above all things. Seeing Him and savoring Him above all things. And that becomes massively helpful in what movies you watch, what you eat, what you drink, where you go, how you spend your time. Are people seeing in you and in your values- Christ as supremely important? Are you doing things that will cause them to read off of your life that you seem to be drawing your life from another place? That’s what love is gonna prompt you to show.
VIDEO by DGJohnPiper from the message “Don’t Waste Your Life” September 19, 2007
Jesus is doing, on every continent, what He said, “I will build My church”. He orchestrates history, He is God and there’s no one like Him. If you signed Jesus up to help you build YOUR church, you’re in trouble. But if you are having Jesus order you around to build His church, you are on to something.
We do not have tiny power, we have the same power that God used to raise the crucified Lord from the dead. The kind of power that can change cities and crack history, that is the kind of power we have.
Ephesians 3:20
20 Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us,
I’d like to talk about a Trinitarian revolution of the heart. God is always at work and is wanting to do more (not just in the sense of the measurable increments) …but in what we can do. He is always wanting to show up in a way, to move in a way that makes it clear to everyone that these people did not do this on their own and when that happens, glory comes to God. God gets the glory in the church.
Talks about people who are afraid of the third part of the trinity- the Holy Spirit. He makes 2 points – People don’t speak or celebrate Pentecost (even though around the world people count the 50 days from Easter and praise God for the day when the Holy Spirit came and blew the church away. You remember that it is a trinitarian thing that empowers the church’s ministry. The Holy Spirit leads us to truth (John 14) And, He will testify to Jesus. And, by the way, the Holy Spirit is a Person. He is not an “it”. When the Holy Spirit comes, he doesn’t make much about the Holy Spirit, he’s gonna make it all about Jesus. The Holy Spirit loves to testify about Jesus. In a Spirit filled church you are talking all about Jesus. And when the city hears Jesus’ name and not your (church) name big things are going to happen.
As a writer, Brooks scatters stars with both his hands: he hath dust of gold; in his storehouse are all manner of precious stones. So wrote C.H. Spurgeon in his Preface to this book. He counted Thomas Brooks among his favourite Puritan authors, and it is not hard to see why. Brooks’ popularity lies both in his subjects – practical truths, central to the Christian life – and in the manner of his presentation. He is ever direct, urgent, fervent, full of Scripture, and able to choose words which make his sentences stick in one’s mind.
This book is a collection of sentences, illustrations, and quaint sayings from this renowned Puritan. Gathered by Spurgeon out of the 6 volume set of Brooks’ Works, it remains an excellent introduction to both the man and his writings.
Daniel, as he stood before Nebuchadnezzar and the nation of Babylon, as the challenge was given to them to be remolded and reshaped. Take a notice of what happened. These men were in exile, and all of a sudden, the highest man in the land is asking for the best of these young men to be selected: strong in their countenance, impressive in their personality, and what was it that was going to take place? They were to be reprogrammed and a new set of values planted within them. They were to be taught the philosophy, the literature, and the language of the babylonians. Philosophy- the way they reason, literature through the back door of the imagination, and the entire change of culture could begin, once that language was handed to them. Philosophy, literature and language to help these men rethink all that there was to be challenging them within this new culture, so that a new set of values would be born into them, and then transferred through them to the next generation.
Daniel 1:8-10; 17
But Daniel resolved not to defile himself with the royal food and wine, and he asked the chief official for permission not to defile himself this way. 9 Now God had caused the official to show favor and compassion to Daniel, 10 but the official told Daniel, “I am afraid of my lord the king, who has assigned your food and drink. Why should he see you looking worse than the other young men your age? The king would then have my head because of you.”
17 To these four young men God gave knowledge and understanding of all kinds of literature and learning. And Daniel could understand visions and dreams of all kinds. 18 At the end of the time set by the king to bring them into his service, the chief official presented them to Nebuchadnezzar. 19 The king talked with them, and he found none equal to Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah; so they entered the king’s service. 20 In every matter of wisdom and understanding about which the king questioned them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and enchanters in his whole kingdom. 21 And Daniel remained there until the first year of King Cyrus.
We move towards the direction of our comfort. We do. But the important thing is how God reminds us never to get so comfortable with comforts, that it is the comfort principle that ends up driving all that you do. Here is a man who trained his appetite, training his longings, training his hunger. And the marvelous thing is this: how he reminded himself again, and again, that he did not want to get spoiled by all that the king would afford to him and give to him. Instead, he disciplined himself and backed away from even that which could have been alright for him to enjoy, but he resisted it for a greater and a higher call.
(1) Daniel drew his line of resistance by training his hunger & appetite
I wanna talk to you a little bit about training your hunger. The truth of the matter is that we make small decisions in the early days of our lives that often can put some deep desired within us that are not good for the long run. Can we put paper cuts to our soul, early in life (which is all it takes for someone to contract a termini virus from someone else), can we entertain a habit, can we begin a relationship, can we make a choice, could it be one evening that lacerates you in such a way, that puts a different kind of hunger into you, and the destruction process can set in? To you, young men especially I want to give you this challenge. There are people out there, with businesses, and productions, and ideas, whose soul purpose is to cut you in your soul, and get you hooked and reprogrammed so that you will then have hungers and passions and desires that no one human being on the face of the earth can ever fulfill. All they end up doing is framing your mind and creating within you a kind of imagination that is ultimately insatiable- never, ever satisfying. In this day of mass communicating with computers, we’re living with a great deal of danger for our young people. I remember talking about this at a seminary in midwestern Canada, I just mentioned this whole scourge of the pornographic empire, and at the end, when the invitation for prayer was given, every aisle was filled with kneeling men, tears running down their faces, wanting to retrain their hungers.
My daughter, Naomi, works in the rescue of trafficked women and children from the prostitution industry. She’s been pleasing for me to write a book with her on pornography. She said, “Dad, if I could only tell you the devastation this thing wreaks. And I have fought it off, because I hate to even get into the research of something like this. Draw the line in the right places, so that you can train your hungers. (17:00)
(2) Daniel’s line of dependance on God for wisdom
But he also drew his line of dependence. What is dependence? To go beyond the reading, to go beyond the learning- to seek wisdom. Nebuchadnezzar did an extraordinary thing dream and it was a culture in which dreams meant an awful lot. And this repeated dream of a statue with a head and shoulders of gold, the breastplate of silver, the girth made of bronze, the legs made of iron and the feet made of a mixture of iron and clay. And a stone, cut out of no man’s hand smashes that statue. And he wants to know what this means. So the magicians and the enchanters asked Nebuchadnezzar of his dream, but he said, “You tell me the dream if you’re that capable, and then you interpret it.” So, Daniel comes on the scene and God reveals the dream to him. Daniel goes to Nebuchadnezzar and tells him, “That which I am about to tell you has nothing to do with my learning, or my education. It has nothing to do with my intellect. It has everything to do with God’s wisdom. And now I will unfold to you your dream.”You can only learn so much from books and education. Ultimately, that which will carry you through will be the wisdom of God in the toughest situations of life.
The line of dependence. Outside of the cross of Jesus Christ there is no hope in this world. That cross and resurrection, at the core of the Gospel is the only hope for humanity. Wherever you go, ask God for wisdom on how to get that Gospel in, even in the toughest situations of life.
(3) Daniel’s line of confidence
His line of resistance, his line of dependence, his line of confidence. Daniel knew that ultimately the truth would triumph and 3 monarchs in a row crossed over to his side, he never crossed over to theirs. That’s remarkable. That’s a reflection of a soul that God intends for you and me: To draw the line in the right places, to be shaped for his purpose, to be able to stand before the toughest adversaries and to see that the difference will ultimately count.
I’m a Christian apologist. Apologetics is a discipline that does two things:
It clarifies truth claims
It gives answers to the hard and the soft questions that people ask
So, we are surrounded, all around us in our ministry with questions. A few weeks ago I was doing an open forum at Princeton University, a gentleman stood up and he asked a very interesting question. And he said this, “What is the difference in the milieu, in the idea, in the original creation in the garden, over and against now?” I said, “Oh boy, that’s a long question, let me keep the answer brief.” I said 2 things:
The presence of God
If you remember, in the legal framework there was just one prohibition, and one temptation. Think about that. “You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Just one caution, one warning, one law to bear in mind. What happens? The enemy of our souls comes and what does he say? “Did God really say that?” Is this a propositional statement from God? And then the seduction, “In the day that you eat from it you shall be as God, knowing good and evil.”
I take that to mean: In the day that you define the one mandate of God- not to defy good and evil- everything wrong will ensue. So, all that happened in that garden was simply the denial of God’s prerogative to be the definer of good and evil. And when you look at the world now, I said to the student, you tell me, “What does the world look like now, with thousands of laws, thousands of footnotes, and even when you get on to the plane, they don’t just tell you ‘don’t mess with the smoke detector’, they have to tell you not to tamper, touch, disable or destroy.” Because you can have each word dying the death of a thousand qualifications. What’s really happened, ladies and gentlemen, we are living in a time in cultural history where our definitions have gone.
Malcolm Muckridge talked about this years ago, in the seventies. He said, “It is difficult to resist the conclusion that 20th century man has decided to abolish himself. Tired of the struggle to be himself, he has created boredom out of his own affluence, impotence out of his own erotomania, and vulnerability out of his own strength. He himself blows the trumpet, that brings the walls of his own cities crashing down. Until at last, having educated himself into imbecility, having drugged and polluted himself into stupefaction, he keels over a weary old brontosaurus and becomes extinct.
You know, the truth of the matter is, that when our definitions are gone, the minefield and the quicksand through which we walk is horrendous. Now you may say that Muckridge was on the verge of his own spiritual journey beginning. He was a humanist like Aldous Huxley: We are living today, not in the delicious intoxication of the early successes of science, rather in the grizzly morning after, where it has become quite apparent that what science may have actually done is to introduce us to improved means, in order to obtain hither to unimproved, or rather, deteriorated ends.
In Moscow, last week, I told them the story of Natan Sharansky, who was a political prisoner there for many years, and went on to his homeland in Israel and became the Justice Minister. When he returned to Rusisia for the first time, he asked if he could go back to the prison where they kept him for so long. As he was about to enter that little cell, he asked his wife if she would please allow him the privilege of being there alone for a few minutes. He went back alone and he came back with tears running down his face. He said, “It was here that I really found myself.” And he asked for the privilege to go and lay a wreath at the tomb, at the grave of Andrei Sakharov, the great Russian physicist, who gave to the Soviet Union the atomic bomb. And he quoted Sakharov, and he said this, “Sakharov told me before he died, ‘I always thought the most powerful weapon in the world is the bomb.’ He said, “It is not. The most powerful weapon in the world is the truth.’” Winston Churchill said the truth is the most valuable thing in the world. So valuable, that it is often protected by a bodyguard of lies.
Where do we go from here? What do we do, when those in their punditry have told us years ago where we were headed? Where is America now? Listen to Chesterton: Under the smooth, legal surface of our time, there are already moving very lawless things. We are always near the breaking point when we care only for what is legal, and nothing for what is lawful. Unless we have a moral principle about such delicate matters as marriage and murder, the whole world will become a welter of exceptions, with no rules, and there will be so many hard cases, that everything will go soft, unless we know the difference between what is lawful and what is legal. Where do we go?
I close with this thought: It was about 3 years ago, the first time I was given the awesome privilege of speaking at the opening day of the United Nations, on the day of prayer. They asked me to speak on a very difficult subject: The finding of absolutes in a relativistic world. That’s tough on any given day. Even tougher for about 20 minutes at 7 o clock in the morning. What could you do when there is a plurality of worldviews sitting in front of you? So, I did this.I said, “We’re looking for absolutes in four areas.
Evil, how to define evil.
Justice, how do you define what is just.
Love, how do you find the source of love and the absoluteness of love.
and when we blow it, we look for the grounds of forgiveness.
These are the areas that govern our lives, for which we want definitions: evil, justice, love, and forgiveness. I said, “Ladies and Gentlemen, can I ask you this: Do you know of the one place in history where these 4 converge? The one place in history, where evil, justice, love and forgiveness come down to the end of that funnel – there is in the Christian worldview, it happened on a hill called Calvary. The evil that is in the heart of man, the justice that God has, the love that He portrayed to the very end- ‘Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they’re doing’, the forgiveness that we found.” At the age of 17, I was on a bed of suicide in New Delhi, India, having lost all hope. Total failure. When a man brought me a Bible in my hospital room, something I had never opened in my own life, and he opened it to John chapter 14, I won’t go into details. He gave it to my mother, whose English was not that good, reading from the King James version cause he had to leave. Jesus said to Thomas, “Because I live, you also shall live.I committed my life to Jesus Christ, and the Grand Weaver has drawn a great pattern in the life of somebody who had lost all hope, lost meaning, lost purpose.
You see, when you find your definitions in God, you find the very purpose for which you were created. “You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless, until they find their rest in Him.” Can I close with this quote? In 1939, the world was on the brink of a lot of darkness. King George VI went to speak to the world, and he said, “I said to the man at the gate of the year”Give me a light, that I may walk into the unknown.” He said to me, “Go out into the darkness, and put your hand into the hand of God. It shall be to you better than the light, and safer than the known.” Graduates, you’re going out into a pretty dark world. Put your hand into God’s hand. Know His absolutes, demonstrate His love, present His truth and the message of redemption, and transformation will take hold. The story is to be told to many. And the experience and joy of transformation is unique. The Gospel alone has that story.
In February, a Muslim mob, brandishing machetes murdered Pastor Matheo Kachila, who was also a father of 12 children.
For many years Christians in Tanzania have felt safe worshipping, given the country’s Christian majorities. Now, their security is quickly evaporating following a wave of persecution threatening churches and targeting pastors. Tanzanian churches are growing and witnessing a new unity, but Christians have paid a painful price.
From Christian World News – VIDEO by Voice Of the Martyrs See links below for the most recent attack on Christians in Tanzania:
We live in a day when it means almost nothing to be a Christian. According to research almost 4 out of every 5 Americans identify themselves as Christians. 4 out of 5? But in this group of self proclaimed Christians, less than half of them are involved in church on a weekly basis, less than half of them actually believe the Bible is true. An overwhelming majority of them don’t have a biblical view of the world around them. So, researchers went even deeper then, to distinguish men and women who are born again Christians, as if there’s any other kind of ‘Christian’. But, these are people who say they’ve made a personal commitment to Jesus. They believe they will go to heaven because they’ve accepted Jesus as their Savior. And according to research, almost half of Americans, so half of Americans are born again Christians.
But, you look at this group of born again Christians and researchers have found that their beliefs and lifestyles are virtually indistinguishable from the world around them. Many born again Christians believe that their works will earn them a place in heaven. Others think that Christians and Muslims worship the same God. Some believe that Jesus sinned while He was on earth. And an ever increasing number of born again Christians just describe themselves as marginally committed to Jesus.
So, people have used data like this to conclude that Christians are not really that different form the rest of the world. But I don’t think that interpretation of that research is accurate. I think that the one thing that’s abundantly clear from those statistics is there are a whole lot of people in our country who think that they are Christians, but they are not. There’s scores of people, here and around the world, who culturally identify themselves as Christians and biblically are not followers of Christ.
Lecture Friday March 26, 2004 (just recently uploaded) In this brilliant and compelling defense of the Christian faith, Ravi Zacharias shows how affirming the reality of God’s existence matters urgently in our everyday lives. According to Zacharias, how you answer the questions of God’s existence will impact your relationship with others, your commitment to integrity, your attitude toward morality, and your perception of truth. (Video via EnimVeritas)
This topic is from Ravi’s book ‘Can Man Live Wihtout God’, a subject he spoke on at Harvard University Law School. The book treats this subject more exhaustively than his lecture here, and at other venues where Zacharias has lectured on this topic.
Trace Jesus Passion Week Google Maps Isus- Saptamina Patimilor cu harta Google
Filmul Isus (vizionati in limba Romana / choose any language to watch the ‘Jesus’ film)
RICHARD WURMBRAND – English/Romanian
Global Persecution Watch
Christian movies & Beautiful nature shots – Filme crestine si Filmari din natura pe Youtube Channel
PREDICI – Florin Ianovici
PREDICI – Vladimir Pustan
PREDICI – Nelu Brie
Cristian Barbosu Arad – PREDICI
Biserica Gloria Arad Bujac Transmisie Live
Pagina – Predici
Faceti click pe poza pt. site – Administrat In Romania
PREDICI de la A 44-a Conventie USA/CANADA la Seattle, Washington 2012
Predici de la Congresul Bisericilor Baptiste USA si Canada 2012 Cleveland Ohio
Biserica Baptista Speranta Oradea
Vasile Oprea Interviu, Cintari – Nou: Serviciul de Florii 2012
NEW PAGE – All family related articles and videos – on being single, marriage, intimate relations, on raising kids…
Jesus said, “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?” Matthew 16:26. Isus a zis: “Si ce ar folosi unui om sa cistige toata lumea daca si-ar pierde sufletul?”
Speaker: Alvin Plantinga – The Heidelberg Catechism: “Providence is the almighty and ever present power of God by which he upholds, as with his hand, heaven and earth and all creatures, and so rules them that leaf and blade, rain and drought, fruitful and lean years, food and drink, health and sickness, prosperity and poverty–all things, in fact, come to us not by chance but from his fatherly hand.”
Piper: Everything in your life, everything you say, everything you think, everything you feel, everything you do, all the relationships you have, have to do with God. One of the great things about preaching in the same church for 27 years (this was in 2007) is that the mission of the church and the mission of the preacher tend to merge. And the mission goes like this: I exist to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things, for the joy of all peoples, through Jesus Christ.
The biblical translation for that is this: Love is whatever you have to do, at whatever cost to yourself to help people have an all satisfying passion for Jesus forever. Those are synonymous definitions because Christ is the only source of everlasting joy. If you reject Christ, you don’t have joy- forever.
Daniel, as he stood before Nebuchadnezzar and the nation of Babylon, as the challenge was given to them to be remolded and reshaped. Take a notice of what happened. These men were in exile, and all of a sudden, the highest man in the land is asking for the best of these young men to be selected: strong in their countenance, impressive in their personality, and what was it that was going to take place? They were to be reprogrammed and a new set of values planted within them. They were to be taught the philosophy, the literature, and the language of the babylonians. Philosophy- the way they reason, literature through the back door of the imagination, and the entire change of culture could begin, once that language was handed to them. Philosophy, literature and language to help these men rethink all that there was to be challenging them within this new culture, so that a new set of values would be born into them, and then transferred through them to the next generation.
I’m a Christian apologist. Apologetics is a discipline that does two things:
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