Read New Column

Text Box: Graduation: Simple Words of Warning The floodgate of graduation opens every year and it makes one wonder where so many graduates go – year after year after year. Evidently each graduate is absorbed by society into the workforce or college life as the one time high-schoolers prance off into the dawn of real life and all of the uncertainties it offers. I’ve always dreamed of giving the commencement address at a public school graduation, but given my biblical worldview, I can’t realistically, anticipate that ever happening. If I had the chance, however, I would warn the graduating class of the many pitfalls awaiting them, because frankly, the most dangerous pitfalls are camouflaged in terms, that if not recognized, could lead to their eternal destruction. With this warning, I would challenge them to think long and hard about the following issues, because inevitably, they will encounter the same worldview they encountered in public high school but on a more advanced and militant level. First of all, please think long and hard about the plea for “neutrality” you will hear in the college setting. If you forget everything else I write here, do not forget that your teachers aren’t neutral on the most critical issues of life and you don’t have to be. Neutrality is a myth because everybody, even college professors, has preconceived ideas that either include or exclude one view or another. Where do you think most of them stand on God’s existence, creation, marriage, sexual orientation and numbers of other issues basic to life itself? Do you anticipate their neutrality on such issues? Don’t count on it. Second, think long and hard before you allow atheistic thinkers to redefine your worth as a human being. You see, from their evolutionary mindset, there is no God, not really; and it doesn’t take a genius to realize that if God isn't there in the grand scheme of things then human worth is relative at best. It is a view that, consistently held, reduces and then robs human beings of their inherent value. This is murder in the highest degree. It isn't the killing of one man or one woman as such, but the murder of an entire race – the human race. It is the reduction of humanity to mere chemical processes. If the imageness of God in each person is denied, whether through educational or modern scientific jargon, the result is the same - You will see yourself as infinitely less than God designed you to be. Finally, think long and hard before you allow them to enslave you with the shackles of a temporal world that robs you of the eternity for which you were made. As appalling as slavery was in young America, it did not bind the spirits of those who found their freedom in Christ. The great Negro Spirituals reveal a freedom of spirit and hopeful anticipation of a God who would judge righteously. If God did not free them in this world, the anticipation of freedom in the eternal Christ was ever before them. The slavery to which you could be subjected, however, is infinitely worse. It is the enslavement of the soul. Black or white, rich or poor, from an evolutionary perspective you are bound to a cruel and temporal world filled with suffering, injustice, disease, hatred, heartache, depression, fear, uncertainty and, finally, our ultimate nemesis, death. What manner of hope can there actually be if this life is all we have? I understand the autonomy of the human heart and its rebellion against Christ our Creator (John 1:3), but the cultural insistence on depriving you of your rightful knowledge of God is deprivation at its worst. If there is a greater sin than abortion – America’s holocaust – this is it! With abortion, only physical life is taken; but with the expulsion of God from the psyche of our teens, eternal souls are jeopardized. How serious is the heavenly indictment against those who perpetrate this evil upon you? "Suffer little children to come unto me," Jesus said, and for those who would deny them that privilege, “It would be better for a millstone to be hanged about his neck and cast into the bottom of the sea….” In other words, no one ever has the right to deprive a someone else of the true knowledge of God; and dressing that deprivation up in political, legal, or educational garb won’t curtail the coming judgment. This deprivation that now dominates our culture will be met with severe judgement and those who deny you your rightful knowledge of God will meet the very God they defy. Tony can be contacted at Tony@link2eternity.com

Home About Us Links Contact Us

Home About Us Contact Us Links

Newest Column

Salvation let us know what you think Why Apologetics Jesus vs Oprah

Link eternity

2Where Truth and love link to reach the world

Text Box: When Reality Hits I don’t know how we do it. If practice makes perfect then we’re pretty close to perfection as a culture and the goal is very simple – religious cleansing. In the mind of many, particularly in the political realm, the closer we are to the total secularization of our society the closer to perfection we find ourselves. In this “secularization” effort, organizations like the A.C.L.U. and Americans for the Separation of Church and State, with the “Reverend” Barry Lynn at the helm, work feverishly to expel religious ideas and symbols, particularly Judeo-Christian ones, from the public sector. They constantly vie for the removal of the Ten Commandments, crosses and prayer from the public view, and I am convinced that the battle will only intensify as atheistic organizations gain philosophical ground one generation at a time. If history teaches us anything, it teaches us that, eventually, most, if not all, Christian symbols will disappear from public view, and while the voices of Christianity’s skeptics will ring in triumph, there are some things that will never be eliminated from the cultural psyche. We may not have many “visible” reminders of God’s existence in our future, but we will never be without some vivid reminders about which man can do absolutely nothing, and there are two that stand out; namely, suffering and the ultimate hope of all who suffer, the resurrection of Jesus. No doubt, suffering isn't just one of the most undesirables of our existence but also one of the most unavoidable. Think about it. Does it ever end? It comes in all forms, you know, and it’s one of the very few constants of the human experience. As a sobering reminder of our fallenness, it shows no regard for age, innocence or popularity as it mockingly exploits our mortality like nothing else. Suffering is relevant in this context because while our modern culture does everything in its power to squelch the voice of God, pain cannot be silenced. While our politicians, educators and judiciaries reason God away and arrogantly lift themselves to the apex of the “evolutionary tree,” pain according to C. S. Lewis is “God’s megaphone to arouse a deaf world.” It is one of the realities that incessantly reminds us, in certain terms, that we really don’t have as tight a grip on life as we thought. Of course, the biblical answer points to sin. We can culturally deny the certainty of God’s existence if we will, and reason Him away with our self-proclaimed intellectualism, but pain will not succumb to such mental shenanigans. While the voice of God, in suffering, can't be stifled, neither can His voice in history. Such a pity for those bent on making this a secular world, wouldn’t you say? That is the significance of the resurrection. Its historicity, in fact, gives credence to the Christian message, and the Christian message alone gives hope in an otherwise hopeless world in which suffering seems to reign. You see, suffering, all kinds, is the result of a fallen world. It is one that God originally created in perfection, but because of the sin of Adam, was plunged into disarray. While suffering is the “megaphone” that reminds us that something is terribly wrong with our world, the resurrection declares, from the annals of history, the promise that God has not forsaken us, even in our rebellion. That is why the early church preached with such conviction. They knew the historical reality of the resurrection as the deafening voice of God in a world determined to silence Him. It is not a matter of blind “faith,” but rather, a matter of actual history. It is woven so tightly into human history that it becomes impossible to logically explain the empty tomb in any other terms than supernatural ones. That is exactly what you would expect of a God who claimed to love us, isn’t it? Despite our efforts to silence him, God breaks through the philosophical absurdities and religious confusion in ways that cannot be silenced, and these two voices will not let us erase His existence, no matter how hard we try. When reality hits, it hits very hard. Tony can be reached at Tony@link2eternity.com

Home About Us Links Contact Us

Text Box: Humorous Ad Hominem Never underestimate the influence of Barney Fife on the debate process, because as a back woods country deputy, he simply called a spade a spade when the situation called for it. Like Barney’s response in one of the classic Andy Griffith episodes starring the unforgettable Ernest T. Bass, calling someone a good ole derogatory name is sometimes the only sensible thing to do. In this particular episode, as Andy and Helen watched Ernest T run off into the wild, they seemed reserved in their reference to the back woods visitor while Barney used the no-holds-barred vocabulary for which he is known. “He’s a nut,” he said, as Ernest T ran hysterically down the Mayberry street. It was Barney’s response to Ernest T that, despite my desire to argue fairly, helped me realize that there are some people who, for one reason or another, deserve a good-ole-fashioned ad hominem whipping. These kinds of people are the ones who refuse to consider the evidence presented in an argument, and in such cases, the only logical thing to do is call a spade a spade. That means using expressions like “nut, fruitcake, ‘ig-nert’ (southern slang for ignorant), or crazy” are the only words that actually fit. Before you move on to find a less boring column to read over your cup of coffee, just read on a bit and I will try to explain the title and the direction of this idea. “Ad hominem” is a fancy way of saying that someone has digressed from the argument or issue at hand into an attack upon the individual that usually ends up in “name-calling.” Sometimes, however, reason fails in a debate and the only verbal vehicle with which to express the ignorance on display is a good ole derogatory name. I don’t normally resort to name-calling, but I think it’s time to let the adjectives roles as I enjoy a little ad hominem humor for once. Take the blogger with whom I have had more than a few “electronic” conversations for example. His constant bombardment of Christians comes amidst the belief that his “intellect has evolved enough in 2010” to reject what he believes to be the supernatural nonsense of the Bible. His reasons for rejecting the Jesus of the Bible is an obvious a priori rejection of the supernatural. He balks at the slightest mention of the resurrection, particularly when equated with an actual historical event. He calls the gospel itself, of which the physical resurrection is central, a man-made story, a “story fraught with zombies coming back to life,” and he does it with the hardheaded refusal to consider the evidence. So, this “genius” doesn’t reject Christ after looking at the evidence and finding it wanting, but rather, refuses to seriously consider the evidence at all. That is nutty. His logic, or lack thereof, is just as preposterous as he rejects the supernatural based on a preconceived anti-supernatural view of the world. This homegrown Darwinian nut claims to believe in God, at least one of some sort, but contradictorily rejects the miraculous as if the God in whom he believes is power challenged. Of course, his God is of the subjective kind, the kind conjured-up by human imagination over eons of human evolution rather than the wholly other God of the Bible who left his mark on the physical universe. He prefers a generic God incapable of working in space and time or one who refuses to intervene in human affairs in any real discernable way. His god is the god of the evolutionary mindset, one conjured-up and believed in the absence of evidence, a totally blind faith undergirded by mere wishful thinking. He believes in the kind of God who tolerates everything except the intolerant and gives his stamp of approval on one’s personal view of everything. If he can believe in an imaginary divine weakling who has no power over the created order, well, that is his prerogative as a self-proclaimed “thinking” human being, but don’t come to me and in a debate and refuse to consider evidence. Evidently, this knucklehead, for lack of a more fitting term, would rather chase an imaginary god while ignoring the evidence of the one true God and Father of our risen Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Now that’s just plain nutty. Yea, I know I digress into name-calling a bit here, and I know that name-calling violates the laws of good argument, but sometimes nothing says it better than a good ole-fashioned derogatory name. Some people are nothing more than anti-supernatural nuts as their refusal to consider the evidence for God’s existence leads them down the road of contradiction. Claiming to follow the evidence where it leads and then refusing to consider the evidence is about as nutty as it gets. Yep, Barney, He IS a nut!

Home About Us Links Contact Us