Falling Backward or Falling Forward?
We've all taken a fall sometime in our lives, but there's a wrong way and a right way to fall, so it's important to know how to do it right.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
The wrong way to fall is to fall backward: "For concerning those who were once enlightened and tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the age to come, and then fell away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance; seeing they crucify the Son of God for themselves again, and put him to open shame" (Hebrews 6:4-6).
Here the author, most likely St. Paul, is telling about those who fall backward into denying Christ, which was not only a very real problem in the first century, but also today as conservative Christians face ridicule, banning, and "cancel culture" even from relatives and close friends. However, Paul shines a ray of hope: "But, beloved, we are persuaded of better things for you, and things that accompany salvation, even though we speak like this" (v. 9).
There are some Christians who believe that they could never fall away. They quote 1 Corinthians 10:13 – "No temptation has taken you but such as man can bear. God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted above what you are able, but will with the temptation also make the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it." But they fail to notice the preceding verse – "Therefore let him who thinks he stands be careful that he doesn't fall.
If this weren't enough, there are several other Scripture texts warning us not to fall backward, among them 1 Timothy 4:1 – "But the Spirit says expressly that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to seducing spirits and doctrines of demons." I could continue with such texts, but now let's consider the right way to fall. We certainly don't like the experience, but we can and should learn from it. In Isaiah 44:18-22 we read –
"They don't know, neither do they consider: for he has shut their eyes, that they can't see; and their hearts, that they can't understand. None calls to mind, neither is there knowledge nor understanding to say, I have burned part of it in the fire; yes, also I have baked bread on its coals; I have roasted meat and eaten it: and shall I make the residue of it an abomination? shall I fall down to the stock of a tree? He feeds on ashes; a deceived heart has turned him aside; and he can't deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand? Remember these things, Jacob, and Israel; for you are my servant: I have formed you; you are my servant: Israel, you shall not be forgotten by Me. I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, your transgressions, and, as a cloud, your sins: return to Me; for I have redeemed you."
Isaiah is describing how people slip and fall into worshipping a false god, something made by our own hands, in this case made out of wood. The nation of Israel often fell into idolatry, worshipping wooden or metal or stone images. Isaiah shows how foolish it is to fall into idolatry: you can use wood to heat, bake, and cook with, but to worship a chunk of wood, metal, or stone is foolish: these materials were created for us to use in our daily lives, not to worship them.
You might think, "Yes, that was back then, thousands of years ago: we're more civilized today!" Are we really? Many people worship their houses – a bunch of wooden boards fancied up with nails and paint. Other people worship their cars, TVs, or computers (how much time and money do they spend on them?), and still others worship the stone statue they imagine of themselves – how they will become rich or famous and make a mark in world history.
But in the last two sentences of the above quote, Isaiah says there is a solution to falling into such foolishness: the Lord formed us to serve Him, not wood or metal or stone. He is ready and willing to blot out our foolish transgressions and sins if we will simply return to Him. This is falling forward into the merciful and loving arms of the Lord.
The Lord Jesus also talked about stumbling and falling. He said it's impossible to avoid because we're human, prone to slip up and stumble –
"He said to the disciples, 'It is impossible that no occasions of stumbling should come, but woe to him through whom they come! It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were thrown into the sea, rather than that he should cause one of these little ones to stumble. Be careful. If your brother sins against you, rebuke him. If he repents, forgive him. If he sins against you seven times in the day, and seven times returns, saying, "I repent," you shall forgive him'" (Luke 17:1-4).
We must realize that when we stumble and slip, it has repurcussions on others, especially our children and those who are weak in the faith. Our getting angry, being greedy, falling into sexual sin, etc. sets an example for them. Even if we do something that for us is innocent, like eating meat offered to idols or drinking wine (Romans 14:20-22), it can cause others to fall into sin if their conscience is weak.
The second point in the above quote is if we're on the receiving end of someone's sin: speak gently but firmly to that person about it and be ready to forgive, don't harbor anger, resentment, or hurt in your heart – that will hurt you more than it hurts him!
Remember what Christ taught us in the Lord's Prayer – "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." God is ready and willing to forgive, but only if we also are ready to forgive.
Like the Apostle Paul, we haven't arrived yet but we must keep pressing forward – "Brothers, I don't regard myself as yet having taken hold, but one thing I do. Forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 3:13-14).
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Christ is among us! He is and ever shall be!
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NOW, THE NEWS:
DEEP IN HIDING FROM TALIBAN, AFGHAN CHRISTIANS CLING TO FAITH
from: Daily Signal
(17 Sep.) They take turns staying awake, praying and walking the floor while others sleep, blissfully unaware, at least for a few hours, that they are being hunted.
They have no passports, no visas, and very little of what they need most of all: hope. For these Christians, in a safe house deep in Afghanistan, time is running out. Together, they live in fear of a single knock on their hiding-place door – from the Taliban.
"It happened so fast," Sarah said. "We had many plans for preaching the Gospel with other brothers and sisters … ." Now, their plan is to just survive. Even that, they know, will be difficult.
To the despair of rescue groups and humanitarian workers, the small population of Christians in Afghanistan has seemed to vanish, almost overnight. Some have fled to the hills, others have retreated into the shadows—turning off their phones and hunkering down in whatever undisclosed locations they can find. Some have just gone missing completely.
For people like Jean Marie Thrower, those are the ones that haunt her. "People … are going missing and getting killed every day."
On the ground, her Afghan Rescue Crew hears the harrowing stories of desperate parents. "We have had people shot, beheaded. They’re taking the kids. If you’re on the run, and they find your family, they’ll hurt your family and put the word out in the neighborhood that 'we've got your brother or son or daughter.' They cut off the heads of two boys that were nine and ten."
The Taliban are executing Christians faster than her organization can find them. "We started out with 300 three weeks ago, and we're down to 55." [read more...]
COMMENTARY: You rarely if ever will see or hear in the MSM (main-stream media) these reports of persecuting and murdering Afghan Christians... because it contradicts the notion that Muslims are "mostly peace-loving" (like the BLM-led riots last year were "mostly peaceful" – although several people were killed and billions of property damage were incurred). Islam is not a "religion of peace" as its pundits claim, it is and always has been a religion of conquest by the sword: remember how North Africa, Spain, parts of France, the Balkans, and Constantinople fell to the Muslim armies.
KAZAKHSTAN: "IT IS NOT ALLOWED TO PRAY AT ANY LOCATION UNLESS IT'S APPROVED"
from: Forum 18 News Service
(16 Sep.) Courts and police have fined at least 15 people (one twice) and 3 organisations so far in 2021 for holding meetings for worship, hosting such meetings, maintaining places for such meetings, or holding other religious rituals without state permission. The fines were of between three weeks' and four months' average wage for those in formal work. A police officer told Forum 18: "It is not allowed to pray at any location unless it's approved." Challenged about open surveillance of Baptists meeting for worship, an official claimed: "This isn't spying, this is monitoring," adding "we go to mosques, churches."
The regime is preparing several sets of legal amendments that may affect the way the state's tight restrictions on who can hold meetings for worship, religious rituals or study - and where - are imposed and what will be subject to punishment. Secrecy surrounds the current status of the amendments. Officials of the lower house of Parliament, the Mazhilis, told Forum 18 that they have not yet arrived there.
The 20 known administrative cases between January and August 2021 to punish people and organisations for holding meetings for worship, hosting such meetings or maintaining places for such meetings without state permission were among 90 known administrative cases to punish the exercise of freedom of religion or belief. The other known cases were:
- Punishing offering religious literature, icons or other items for sale without state permission – 15 cases;
- Punishing offering religious items for sale online without state permission – 13 cases;
- Punishing offering free religious materials without state permission – 2 cases;
- Punishing posting religious materials online without state permission – 22 cases;
- Punishing sharing faith without state permission - 2 cases;
- Punishing violating mosques' internal rules – 8 cases;
- Punishing religious teaching without state permission – 7 cases;
- Punishing trying to import religious literature without state permission - 1 case.
A police officer told Forum 18: "It is not allowed to pray at any location unless it's approved." A Baptist Church in Oral which does not seek state permission to meet was fined after a police raid. Officials regularly visit it during meetings for worship, an official telling Forum 18: "We go to mosques, churches." One Baptist told Forum 18: "They send an official who sits at the back and conducts what they call 'monitoring' of what we are doing." He added that "she doesn't intervene, but counts how many people are there, watches who is there and records with a device."
Church members have told the official not to film or record the meeting for worship. "Let her come and hear the word of God," the Baptist continued. "We don't allow her to record, but she still does it." [read more...]
COMMENTARY: This is the same kind of religious persecution as happened in the "bad old days" of the USSR, of which Kazakhstan was a part. Only churches and other religious organizations that were registered and controlled by the state were allowed to exist for publicity purposes.
"EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANS" (PENTECOSTALS) CELEBRATE THE 100TH ANNIVERSARY OF THEIR MISSION IN UKRAINE
from: Religious Information Service of Ukraine
(18 Sep.) The first Pentecostal community was founded in 1920 in the Ternopil region by Ukrainians who emigrated from the United States, Building 500 Pentecostal communities over the course of ten years. According to Religiyna Pravda, the solemn meeting was attended by pastors of Pentecostal communities from all over Ukraine, believers, and representatives of other Christian denominations.
Archpriest Oleksa Petriv came to congratulate the Pentecostals on behalf of the chairman of the UGCC (who heads the All-Ukrainian Council of Churches). Welcoming "Christians of the Evangelical Faith," he recalled that 100 years ago this movement was founded, as well as statehood, Ukrainian autocephaly, the Greek Catholic Church were revived, and in Transcarpathia, Voloshyn revived the Ukrainian language and alphabet. The priest said that this seed did not disappear during 70 years of totalitarianism and gave excellent shoots. Congratulating his brothers on their anniversary, he urged them to thank God for such a revival and not stop sowing the seed of Christ's faith.
Representatives of other Protestant churches, in particular, Oleksandr Turchynov, also came to congratulate the believers of the "Ukrainian Church of Christians of the Evangelical Faith" – "The last hundred years are an era in which there are two World Wars, totalitarianism, and independence. But we are lucky to belong to a 2,000-year-old church. And this is important because the feast of Pentecost is the birthday of the church," he said. Oleksandr Turchynov said that all Christians together should build a country that does not tolerate lies, poverty, arbitrariness, sin and where Christians will serve, work and win together.
State Secretary of the Cabinet of Ministers Oleksandr Yarema read congratulations from Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmyhal. In particular, the prime minister's congratulatory message honored the vitality of the Pentecostals of Ukraine, their service to the ideals of good, which contributed to the disappearance of borders and the acquisition of common high interests of people, the peacemaking and educational work of "Christians of the Evangelical Faith" in the development of a sovereign Ukraine.
Mykhailo Panochko, senior bishop of the Ukrainian "Church of Christians of the Evangelical Faith," welcoming the faithful, noted: "the church has been under construction for 2000 years God created man as a spiritual being, he is in search, and the choice is small: either the road of Truth or untruth. Jesus said, 'I am the way, the truth, and the life.'" [read more...]
COMMENTARY: The name "Church of Christians of the Evangelical Faith" in both Ukraine and Russia is more than a little misleading – it is Pentecostal, not what we in the West call "Evangelical." Many congregations in the Pentecostal "Church of Christians of the Evangelical Faith" in both countries deny the eternal existence of the Holy Trinity: they teach "one God" (like Jews and Muslims) and "modalism," that is, first God the Father existed, then he morphed into the Son (Jesus Christ), and at Pentecost he morphed into the Holy Spirit, which is the god that most Pentecostals worship today.
FDA WANTS COURT TO RECONSIDER BAN ON SHOCK DEVICES FOR THOSE WITH IDD
from: Disability Scoop
(21 Sep.) The Food and Drug Administration is fighting back after a federal court overturned its ban on devices used to administer electric shocks on people with developmental disabilities.
The federal agency filed a petition with the court this month in an effort to reinstate a regulation issued last year barring what are known as electrical stimulation devices. The devices send electrical shocks through electrodes attached to the skin in order to condition people not to engage in self-injurious or aggressive behaviors.
Only one place in the country is known to use the devices — the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center in Canton, Mass., which serves children and adults with developmental disabilities as well as those with behavioral and emotional problems.
Disability advocates have pushed for years to end use of the skin shock devices arguing that that the practice is akin to torture, but those who support the Rotenberg Center say that the approach is needed for some people with severe behaviors who have tried other treatment options without success. The FDA ban was the culmination of years of deliberation on the issue.
Ultimately, the agency determined that the devices posed an “unreasonable and substantial risk of illness or injury,” pointing to evidence of psychological and physical risks from the devices including burns, tissue damage, worsening underlying symptoms, depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. [read more...]
COMMENTARY: Using electric shock devices to control people is inhumane and brutal. Such devices – electric cattle prods and electric fences – are only to be used on cattle. This indicates that humans with IDD are sometimes considered as less-than-human and treated like cattle. It is reminiscent of the old USSR or today's Communist China.
THE HIDDEN THREAT OF COMMUNISM IN AMERICA
from: The Stream
(17 Sep.) Americans don’t know enough about communism to see it when it starts here. Writing in the Tablet, Mary Mycio notes that we have "a certain herd immunity to Nazism and fascism." But not to communism.
The Soviet Union fell a long time ago, as people's memories go. It fell almost 30 years ago. That means that no one under 45 or 50 will have any real memory of communism as a living force in the world. They know about Cuba because it's close to us and about weird little places like North Korea. They don't seem to think of China as a communist country. A few people try to say this, pointing to the state's genocidal wars on its people, like the Uygurs. But few seem to care.
"After a generation of forgetting," Mycio writes, "we have few cultural T-cells left to recognize coercive unanimity, punitive group think, and other warning signs when they appear in the body politic." She lived in communist Ukraine and watched the Soviet Union fall after 70 years of tyranny. She wrote a book about the Chernobyl disaster, which exemplified the Soviet system. "Americans and others across the West," she writes, "have simply forgotten about it all, or never learned about it in the first place."
As far as I can tell, most people who think about communism at all don't worry about it. They worry more about other people worrying about it. I know what she means. I've seen Soviet communism face to face. In a campground outside Moscow, in the summer of 1978, I and some friends huddled in our cabin with a Russian violinist. He risked losing everything he had to talk with westerners. As westerners, we were being watched.
If caught, the young man would have been sent to the gulag, where he would have suffered and could have died. If he survived, he would never get his musical career back. I told the story in Americans Romanticizing Communism. [read more...]
COMMENTARY: Some of the other "warning signs" that "appear in the body politic" are using terminology that dehumanizes opponents, such as "Nazi" or "bigot" or "extremist" or "right-wing" or "parasite." Such terminology is usually reserved for conservatives. Do you ever hear BLM rioters described as "extremists" or certain leaders described as "left-wing" in the liberal media? Even "Evangelical" has become a pejorative term in recent years – an Evangelical non-profit organization had applied for tax-exempt status but the IRS denied the application: the reason the IRS gave was that Evangelicals usually identify as Republicans. The act of dehumanizing is the prelude before rounding up such "non-people," placing them in camps, and executing them. This is how it worked in the USSR and Nazi Germany, as I learned during my university major "Central and Eastern European Studies." It's heading it that direction here, today.
PATRIARCH KIRILL DOUBTS LEGITIMACY OF AUTHORITY OF PATRIARCH BARTHOLOMEW OF CONSTANTINOPLE
from: Interfax-Religion
(16 Sep.) Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia has questioned the legitimacy of a church authority which enters into concelebration with schismatics.
"It's important to think again what church schism means, how local Churches should react to it, whether prayer and eucharistic communion with schismatics is acceptable, and what canonical consequences such communion has, whether a church authority that has breached the church system by serving with schismatics and self-ordained clergy, who have no canonical ordination, can be considered legitimate," the patriarch said while opening a theological conference on the situation in world Orthodoxy caused by the interference of Constantinople in the church affairs of Ukraine, held in Moscow on Thursday.
Saying that church canons give exhaustive answers to all these questions, the patriarch called on the forum's participants to think about how to use these canons in practical life, what precisely they mean in this situation.
Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople founded a new Ukrainian church (the Orthodox Church of Ukraine) on the basis of two non-canonical organizations and despite the protests of the Russian Church, of which Ukraine is a canonical part, with support from the administration of Ukraine in late 2018. That led to the severance of eucharistic communion between the Russian Orthodox Church and Constantinople. [read more...]
COMMENTARY: "Non-canonical organizations" such as the churches of Serbia and Bulgaria became "canonical" centuries ago when the Ecumenical Patriarch granted them a Tomos of Autocephaly. But today, Russia protests when the independent country of Ukraine petitions the Ecumenical Patriarch to grant them a Tomos of Autocephaly. Why? Because Russia holds to the delusion of grandeur that it is the "third Rome, and a fourth there shall never be" according to old legends in Russian Orthodoxy, which has become the ideological foundation for pan-Slavic Russian imperialism that seeks to become a world-wide theocracy and make Patriarch Kirill its Ecumenical Patriarch. That is the reason behind Patriarch Kirill creating the schism in Eastern Orthodoxy.
OTHER NEWS HEADLINES:
CHINA: CCP POLICE ARREST STAFF AND STUDENTS AT MAIZI CHRISTIAN MUSIC HIGH SCHOOL
from Christian Persecution
CHANGES WROUGHT BY PANDEMIC HELPED PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES. THEY'RE NOT READY TO GIVE THEM UP
from Disability Scoop
RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH TO ORGANIZE “PAN-ORTHODOX TRIAL” OF PATRIARCH BARTHOLOMEW - EXPERT OPINION
from Religious Information Service of Ukraine
GOSPEL WORKERS CALLED TO POLAND
from Mission Network News
RUSSIAN COURT DISMISSES APPEAL AGAINST FORCIBLE TREATMENT OF DISSIDENT YAKUTIA SHAMAN GABYSHEV
from Interfax-Religion
METROPOLITAN HILARION: THE PATRIARCH OF CONSTANTINOPLE CLAIMS SPECIAL PRIVILEGES AKIN TO THOSE OF THE POPE
from Russian Orthodox Church - Moscow Patriarchate
THE CHURCH IS HELPING THE NEEDY IN ROMANIA, BULGARIA, AND RUSSIA
from Orthodox Christianity
UZBEKISTAN: 115 VICTIMS OF SOVIET REPRESSION, INCLUDING BELIEVERS, REHABILITATED
from Eurasianet
ABORTION ACTIVISTS SAY ROMANIA HAS BEEN QUIETLY PHASING OUT ABORTION
from NPR
NOW, OUR VIEWS:
How Many Disabled People Attend Your Church?
(Maybe you've read this before and you're wondering, "Why am I seeing this again?" But millions of other Christians haven't seen it! So please help us by clicking on the title above, then use the "share" buttons to share it with your social media friends. Thanks!!)
Notice how the likelihood of disability increases with age, as shown in this graphic. How Many Disabled People Attend Your Church? How does your church compare to society at large? Does your church welcome and accommodate people with disabilities, or are there psychological and architectural barriers? How can we more effectively minister to these people in our church and society at large?
The 75 million "Baby Boomers" born in the twenty years from 1946 through 1965 are now retiring, and nearly half of them need serious health care. They've worked and saved for 50 years during the "boom" years of the U.S. economy, and now they're spending those 18.8 trillion dollars they've saved up: 75,000,000 people x $250,000 of average savings. But that average includes the wealthy who may have millions in retirement funds: the median (mid-point) of retirees have less than $50,000 - litle or nothing - saved up. Will you have enough in savings to move to an Assisted Living center or Nursing Home at $3,000 to $8,000 per month? Don't count on Social Security and Medicare - they're going broke: there will be too many retired and disabled people, and not enough younger people paying into the system.
As this photo shows, 45% of these retired "Baby Boomers" are disabled. And statistics tell us about 70% of us will spend two or three years on average (some longer!) needing care by others before we pass on. 70% of 75,000,000 Baby-Boomers = over Fifty Million disabled elderly people! For a married couple, it's over 90% probability that one or the other will be disabled. (70% for one, plus 70% of the remaining 30% for the other = 91%.) You may hope that you go quickly via a sudden heart attack or stroke, but more often than not, those events or a bad back, bad hips, bad knees, foot amputations due to diabetes, etc. all bring on long-term disability rather than sudden death.
Be honest with yourself: are you going to hand over your retirement savings to a secular nursing home, or will you use it "to minister to the building up of the Body of Christ" (Eph. 4:12) and at the same time provide a home for yourself where you can eventually age-in-place? Our planned Agape Restoration Communities will be wheelchair-accessible for Independent Living and have a community room/chapel, 1-bedroom & 2-bedroom "accessible living units." [This is not a medical facility which requires a nursing staff on site 24/7, but if people need occasional help, they can call one of our trained "Social Ministry" volunteers to help them, or an outside home health aide.]
Check out the six courses in our ""Social Ministry of the Church" one-year program. And please download our brochure in PDF format for all our courses to print and distribute: SMC-brochure.pdf. This is how we can restore the Early Church's social ministry to "the poor, the lame, the maimed and the blind, to widows and orphans." You may become that person who responds to the call for a home health aide!
On the "Welcome" page to our courses you'll see a "LOGIN" link. As it explains, you can login as "guest" to ENROLL, or try out our lessons and send in your answers to see how our interactive courses work, or you can browse the lessons without logging in as a "guest".
When you enroll, however, you can participate in a structured class according to a syllabus, taking part in group discussions, getting graded replies for your answers to each lesson, and hopefully receiving a certificate upon completion of all six courses. Our 20+ years of experience teaching online has proven that people who study with a group of other students tend to stick with it much more than those who simply study our lessons solo. Enroll in our free courses to see how YOU can do diakonia-ministry!
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(You can also use our software to create your own courses.)"
Our third news headline RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH TO ORGANIZE “PAN-ORTHODOX TRIAL” OF PATRIARCH BARTHOLOMEW - EXPERT OPINION and our sixth METROPOLITAN HILARION: THE PATRIARCH OF CONSTANTINOPLE CLAIMS SPECIAL PRIVILEGES AKIN TO THOSE OF THE POPE both illustrate the ongoing effort by the Russian Orthodox Church to belittle and cast aspersions on the Ecumenical Patriarch. These are prime examples of guilt projection, saying he is the one who has caused a schism in the Orthodox Church, trying to blame the latter on the acts of the former.
Don't let your eyeballs simply roll over the following announcement: children with disabilities need the loving care of Christians, not of the state. Don't think – "Let the government do it!" The government is running out of money, after promising too much it is performing too little:
Please remember to pray for Christians in Secularized Countries, and for...
Your fellow-servants,
Bob & Cheryl
p.s. God wants spiritual fruit, not religious nuts.
