The Word for today
“The angel replied, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the baby to be born will be holy, and he will be called the Son of God” (Luke 1:35 NLT).
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Bringing the skies down to us
Bro. Clinton Willis is co-pastor of the Word of Life UPCI church in Lamar, MO. He is also an astrophotographer who loves panning the heavens and enjoying the beauty that God has displayed there. He sent me some pictures he had made with his far-reaching telescope, two of which I have included below. We thank him for sharing them with us.
The cratered moon. You can almost see the American flag still standing there. Thank God our atmosphere consumes most space rocks before they strike the earth!
This is the Orion constellation, a prominent set of stars in the winter in the northern celestial hemisphere. It is said to outline a hunter.
“The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handywork” (Psalm 19:1).
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What about that “private interpretation” verse?
I was recently discussing the Bible with a non-Apostolic minister. When the subject touched on the lifestyle of Christians and the verses that address that topic, he brought up that old standby verse that many call on to say that their interpretation of Scripture is as good as anyone else’s: “Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation” (II Peter 1:20 KJV). The way that verse was rendered gave rise to both Protestant and Catholic position in the late Middle Ages.
A basic element of the Protestant Reformation was the principle of “private interpretation.” Both Catholics and Protestants called upon this verse to support their view of Scripture interpretation. However, this was not aimed, as the Catholics suggested, at individual church members making personal application of the passage and its principles. They wanted the priestly class alone to make interpretation of Scripture and its application, not laymen—“We will tell you what it means…and you can depend on us.” This helped solidify their power and authority. Neither is it a proof-text against the denial of individual church members reading and interpreting the Word for themselves without clerical direction—a popular Protestant position.
However, the passage was not levelled at the private judgment of the readers as to how any particular Bible admonition or verse should be lived out. Peter is saying that the prophets were not bringing forth information for the present and the future from their own body of knowledge and understanding. That is what is meant here by “private”—their personal knowledge. Their message was not run through the colander of their personal understanding or experience. They were providing the words—the Lord provided the inspiration and would unfold the meaning and application in the right time and place.
The NET Bible renders the verse thusly: “Above all, you do well if you recognize this: No prophecy of scripture ever comes about by the prophet’s own imagination.”
Perhaps the NLT version expresses it best in context: “Because of that experience, we have even greater confidence in the message proclaimed by the prophets. You must pay close attention to what they wrote, for their words are like a lamp shining in a dark place—until the Day dawns, and Christ the Morning Star shines in your hearts. Above all, you must realize that no prophecy in Scripture ever came from the prophet’s own understanding or from human initiative [invention]. No, those prophets were moved by the Holy Spirit, and they spoke from God” (brackets mine].
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Words wrapped in wisdom
“Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.” – Winston Churchill
“You pray for rain, you gotta deal with the mud too.” – Denzel Washington
“The two most important days in your life are the day you’re born and the day you find out why.” – Mark Twain
[Certainly, Mark, you always gave us food for thought. Let’s add that the two most important decisions one makes in life is 1) the decision to be saved and live for God, and 2) the person you decide to marry and spend the rest of your life with.]
“If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito in the room.” – Dalai Lama
“Fear is the most contagious disease you can imagine. It makes the virus look like a piker.” – Warren Buffett
“A lie doesn’t become truth, wrong doesn’t become right, and evil doesn’t become good just because it is accepted by a majority.” – Booker T. Washington
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Foiled again
I recently ran across Sir John Cheke’s 1550 translation of the Book of Matthew and part of Mark. Cheke (1514-1557) was the first Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge, playing a great part in the revival of Greek learning in England.
The English language of that day was fascinating, and perhaps a mite frustrating. He used many unusual abbreviations that evoke a little stutter step in the reading. If you are interested, check out the archived copy here: https://archive.org/details/MN40275ucmf_7/page/n114/mode/1up
One of the most engaging aspects of the translation was that it lacked the last few verses of Matthew 28. Surprise, surprise. He explained that his exemplar didn’t have those verses. I was excited about finding the translation in hopes it might lead to an early manuscript source. As you know, mysteriously, all pre-A.D. 325 Greek MSS of Matthew are missing 28:19, either purposely torn away or damaged in some way that removed it.
So we are still looking for the original biblical source of the phrase in v. 19 that says, “of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” If anyone out there runs across a pre-325 Greek manuscript of Matthew with 28:19 in it, please inform me.
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The new religion of “climate crisis”
The new high priests of climate change, now including pope Francis, and self-proclaimed “scientists” are positioned at the same rank as those who declared that wearing from one to three face masks would curb the spread of Covid-19. What curbed the spread of that virus was uncovering the truth about it and telling the faux scientists and sold-out doctors to take a long walk off of a short pier. Isn’t it amazing how the flu during the last season was hardly mentioned and anyone who came to the ER or visited a doctor about “not feeling too well” was diagnosed with Covid so they could tap the government purse for that particular “pandemic”? Sure, people got sick of what they dubbed Covid and many died. But when the proper medicines and treatments are denied to those with flu-like symptoms, that can happen. Millions worldwide discovered the hard way that is exactly what happened. Big pharma got fat and sinecure during the virus era.
Now we are confronted daily with the news that the world is collapsing from “climate change.” Pul-eezzze! Who is buying this propaganda except those of us who live 
in the U.S. and Europe? The most populous nations of the world are largely ignoring Greta Thunberg and those of her ilk, continuing to be the major polluters of the world. India and China are paying little attention to the climate criers. China is building coal plants faster than Usain Bolt can run. They are spewing pollution in far greater amounts than the U.S. So why doesn’t Greta go to those countries and stop traffic there with her signs? Because that is not where she wants change…it’s here in the West! Remember, it’s really not climate change they are after, it is political change in the U.S. and the West.
Let’s help quell this fear-mongering that the world will end in the next puff of smoke or an unheard bit of flatulence from a cat’s behind. The world has been hit by huge meteors that blacked out the sun in many countries for long periods and still survived. God’s not through with earth yet. When He gets through managing “seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter” (Genesis 8:22), then march with signs and stop the traffic. Until then people have enough to worry about besides the leftist political narrative regarding climate change. Da nobis intermissum!
Want more info on the climate change hype? Check this out: Experts Speak: There is No “Climate Crisis” (substack).
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Idolatry in our schools
A former Christian student at a Chicago public school won a $150K lawsuit after she alleged that while on campus she was forced into participating in Hindu rituals.
“I’m a very strong Christian,” Mariyah Green said in an interview with Fox News Digital. She said a woman who was teaching meditation in mandated “Quiet Time” 
asked her to bow to an image of a foreign deity she did not recognize. The woman teaching the meditation said it would help her internalize the mantras and bring her to “Zen.” Green believes that she was being forced into idol worship.
Have you checked on the schools in your area that might be offering “meditation” classes? They might be teaching the kids in your community a mantra that involves false gods. Are you aware of Yoga classes being offered to your students or church members? Staying informed is part of our parental responsibility.
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Views from the news:
Where men are on Christmas Eve:
Shop if you must, but don’t forget Christmas For Christ! Missionaries in N. America are depending on you!
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Last Words
• I wonder…if the attacks by the pro-Hamas protestors on the nation’s capitol a couple of weeks ago, injuring several police, will be called an “insurrection” by the media? Nah, they were just peacefully demonstrating for a good cause. Already we are seeing that they will not be accused as were conservatives on January 6. Truth, like beauty, is often in the eye of the beholder.
• I am limiting my visits to Fox News online. Inching left, Fox continues to put material on their news pages that feature near pornographic photos that they assume will serve as click bait. They advertise sleazy materials and pitiful personalities, publicizing sites, events, and places to indulge every sin and licentious desire. There is no cause for this other than to make money by publishing the pics and ads that appeal only to prurient interests. Does Fox really need that extra income, or would the space be better utilized to promote a more informed and patriotic generation of drug-free youth? When money means more than morality, it is time to reevaluate your time spent on their “news” site. I have switched to check the Newsmax pages and one or two others at times on my computer. While one cannot escape all of it, I tire of the promotion of new ways and places to sin publicized on a news site. Anyone else feel the way I do?
• How can leftist ideals and socialism be gaining so many adherents? Because they are not passive. They are active. They are not afraid of offending the sensibilities of anyone. Too many Christians are passive about their faith. Don’t call sin, sin. Don’t identify Islam as an idolatrous religion that propagates hate and violence. Say “God is in control” so why worry about it?” Stay home and don’t vote. Who will stand up and be counted for God and truth and America? Somebody say “ME!”
• Don’t let Christmas die in Walmart or the mall. Make sure it is alive in your heart and your home. Have a wonder-filled season! MERRY CHRISTMAS!
be baptized and serve as godparents. Critics say the move is not consistent with traditional Catholic teaching which sees transgender activities as a sin, making baptism allowable only after confession.
destroy that nation.
Threats could could become actions. Christians have a target on their backs. We could taste of the kind of persecution Christians and Jews on the other side of the world have known for years. When it comes, we will fight it with the sword of truth and the battle garments of Ephesians 6. With those, we cannot lose, whatever happens. Stephen, Paul, and Peter were not losers but winners—winning over hate. The testimony of the new Speaker of the House of Representative has invited slurs like “extremist.” Christianity could become a political enemy in the eyes of some, not just another religion. That might be sought as a “cover” for their angry actions. Tough times will produce tough decisions on how we respond to future challenges.
(Proverbs 13:13 NKJV).
that Man of synne be opened, euen the sonne of perdicion,
Since they have been sleuthing us earthlings for eight decades or more, why aren’t they picking more exciting places to visit since coming so far? Did the UFO pilots miss a training class, causing them to crash in places like near playgrounds in Zimbabwe, the Roswell desert, or backyards in Nevada? Or did they just run out of Kryptonite over those particular sites? Or were they too old to maneuver sufficiently by the time they arrived on earth since their home star, Zeta Reticuli, is almost 50 light years from us?
smart watch, but can’t get better pictures of UFOs than the halftones of Wyatt Earp published in the October 1881 edition of the Tombstone, AZ Gazette? The photos of distant rock outcroppings on Mars coming from the Rover are much clearer. Beware! Any photos of UFOs that are sharp and show detail are likely generated in Hollywood or on someone’s computer. Anyone out there familiar with Photoshop?
they can track and shoot down such alien spacecrafts that can travel at incredible unearthly speeds but can’t track down the person who had the cocaine in the White House? Where are the Hardy Boys when we need them?
the Bible says about these alien crafts and their visits to earth in the past, as well as biblical predictions about them in the last days. Here are all the scriptural references: ________________.
who want to shout their opinion about gun laws through a bullhorn?
are suggesting that owners of pets like dogs and cats should kill them in order to save the planet. Their diets and gases are a “huge” contributor to climate change. They even suggest eating them following euthanization. For those who need pets, they suggest snakes and other reptiles. Can you imagine what is behind such input? Turtles and reptiles can never show the love and warmth of a devoted pup or kitten.
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his life. As Pastor Trachsell baptized him in the powerful name of Jesus Christ and brought him out of the water, his blinded eyes were opened and this man could see with perfect vision! God is still in the miracle working business! He is still reaching for the lost, restoring hope to the hopeless, and showing us all over again that he truly is the miracle working God! – Report submitted by Jeremy Allen
salting or broiling.
a recent post on X (formerly Twitter), Gates claimed that the open source digital ID platform developed in India could “dismantle barriers worldwide” and allow all people to “fully participate in the economy.”
heartsurgisphere-covid-19-scandal
• Why did a couple of 10-feet tall space aliens hang out for two hours in someone’s backyard in Las Vegas recently after their craft crashed there? Waiting for the crowd to disperse around the slots? Or did they hear on their way to earth that Elvis was alive and still doing shows at the Golden Nugget? Somehow it never occurred to the owners of the backyard to use their phone and take a picture of the aliens.
After wonderful things were said about him, Billy stepped to the podium, looked at the crowd and said: “I’m reminded today of Albert Einstein, the great physicist who this month has been honored by Time Magazine as the Man of the Century. Einstein was once traveling from Princeton on a train, when the conductor came down the aisle, punching the tickets of every passenger. When he came to Einstein, Einstein reached in his vest pocket. He couldn’t find his ticket, so he reached in his trouser pockets.
my old age. I used to be a bit more fastidious. So I went out and bought a new suit for this luncheon and one more occasion. You know what that occasion is? This is the suit in which I’ll be buried. But when you hear I’m dead, I don’t want you to immediately remember the suit I’m wearing. I want you to remember this: I not only know who I am I also know where I’m going. Life without God is like an unsharpened pencil—it has no point.”
Jews but would also be open to “all men everywhere” (Acts 17:30), i.e., the Gentiles who would become a part of the body of Christ (Acts 10:9-28). He would embrace them in due time but He spoke of them as though they were (Romans 4:17). The Lord was also speaking prophetically in a similar fashion when He said to Paul, “I have much people in this city [Corinth]” (Acts 18:10) when the work in Corinth among the Gentiles was only just beginning to get its legs.
As archaeologist Ada Yardeni explains, “These inscribed ostraca provide us with a window into the agricultural, economic and social life in the Hebron hills.”
violated, by no certain remedies, society fails of all its value; and men may as well return to a state of savage and barbarous independence.” — Joseph Story (1833)
power of the one God. Socinianism became rooted in Poland among the Polish Brethren Movement and established a university near Kraków.
unfurl it and encourage others to do the same. “In God we trust!”
multiple sources for less than $5.00.
be their covering. Preserving Judah at this juncture was ultimately “God’s battle.”
Welcome to our May blog! Grab a cup of coffee and let’s visit. Your input and feedback are appreciated. 
door of a room where a prayer meeting was taking place? Ans: Because it gives sensationalists a handle.
portion of Matthew 28. The only MSS we have of that complete chapter before A.D. 325 are missing verse 19, due mostly to damage. Is that coincidental? Perhaps, and perhaps not. Let’s keep watching for a clue as to when verse 19 first included the words “of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” in manuscript copies. Is the phrase original or was it added subsequent to Matthew’s composition as many scholars now believe?
and its 18,000 pastors see what Hitler and his Nazis were up to, although with little success. The German Protestants, particularly, were rocked to sleep by a popular nationalism driven by Nazi ideology and somehow could not grasp the courage to speak up even when it became clear what was really going on. The great majority of the pastors and lay leaders never found their voice, their silence greasing the slide of that nation into genocide, dooming them to an eternal shame.
blatant unscientific folly being poured into the minds of our children in schools. But such action would be an intrusion of the political realm, some say. So? Condemn Nathan, Daniel, Obadiah, Jesus, John the Baptist, the apostles Peter and Paul. Condemn William Wilberforce, and M. L. King if we will. And Rosa Parks, Lech Walesa, and Ronald Reagan while we are at it. They spoke and acted even when there were laws preventing such speech and when there were none.
assumed power. They voluntarily turned up the volume of organ music when trains passed to override the cries of the Jewish prisoners on their way to the death camps. We must not intrude into the political realm, they opined. Their respectability among the ruling class was a higher priority.
churches, the nation itself depended on it. The large majority of pastors, however, opted for silence. That silence doomed the nation to virtual destruction. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of churches ended up as rubble, millions dead, families scattered, women violated by the Russian victors, the stench of burning flesh from the Auschwitz ovens forever in their memory. With tongue and pen, Bonhoffer had pleaded for their eyes to be opened before it was too late. Few were willing to listen. “We must not be political,” was the mantra.
He will see that everything turns out right.” Pray, certainly; but none I have named in paragraph four above stopped at that. Pray but don’t act is the easy way, the comfortable way, the broad way. Poland would still be under the grinding heel of Marxism if it were not for a Walesa. Please don’t call Rosa Parks a loser for refusing to go to the back of the bus. She multiplied herself a thousand times over when she acted. The Berlin wall might still be standing unless a Ronald Reagan had loosed a forceful challenge at the Brandenburg Gate, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” Would slavery still be in the West were it not for a William Wilberforce who breathed hope to millions of slaves: “Surely the principles of Christianity lead to action as well as meditation,” he said.
we, as the German church did, fail to connect the dots in time?
“So what exactly did the German church fail to see? In a word: the future. …They did not connect the dots.”
some parts of its inner strength held on. Enough of it stayed together to feed the sizeable trunk and remaining limbs.
all the way to heaven where Jesus lives, which is our destination.
translations, expressed doubt that the words “of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” came from the mouth of Jesus?
children communicate rarely. “God created man upright, but he hath sought out many inventions” (Ecclesiastes 7:29). It is sad that we seem virtually enslaved to them, but those inventions have indeed made idiots out of lots of folks.
church leaders have caved to the demands of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion crowd, backed by BLM and LGBTQ+ organizations. Every religious group in the West, and particularly in America, is being pressured to embrace their agenda or be ostrasized…or worse.
and buy some more tunnel. – John Quinton
Wuhan as did the dollars.
Speaks first, thinks later
justification, then clarity and truth will come through, untainted by the idols of the carnal heart. The presence of idols caused the prophet Jeremiah to say, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). Is it wicked by nature only, or has wickedness been augmented by some idols we have set up there?
words and deliver them to God. This is an unfortunate rendering of the Hebrew since it can easily evoke a misinterpretation…and has indeed. I read it in a book just a few days ago. But it is highly unlikely that the team of KJV translators were attempting to convey that angels possessed that ministry.
Epistles? “Do we not already possess,” it may be said, “in the Authorized Version the most beautiful rendering which any language can boast?” Some people whom I have met go even further and feel that a modem translation is not only unnecessary but even offensive. They cannot bear to see the time honored words altered; it seems to them irreverent.
words because Greek words are not the words they spoke when they were children. It is a sort of “basic” Greek; a language without roots in the soil, a utilitarian, commercial and administrative language. Does this shock us?
blessing.” – Graham Goldsworthy in Gospel and Kingdom
pedophilia, all of which are declared normal in their life. They are forcing their clergy and priests to bless same-sex marriages. Bless their hearts, let them do as they please. Here is what I would like to say in this regard: Adult people can do as they please. We in Russia have always seen it that way and always will: no one is going to intrude into other people’s private lives, and we are not going to do it, either.
by J. R. Ensey
issues were debated and passed in conferences. It is easier in today’s cultural climate to give up the fight than to take the time to find out why Pentecostals believe what we do. Here are 224 pages of some common sense, Word-based answers for our apostolic positions.
by J. R. Ensey
JREnsey Blog 