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Category: Things Christians Say

Christians Say the Darnedest Things: Your Place is in the Kitchen, Wives

Bruce Gerencser 2 Comments

john macarthur

And then, number five, and now we get down to the nitty-gritty. They [wives] are to be workers at home. We’ve dealt with the attitudes of a woman, love toward husband, love toward children, wisdom and purity. Now, we turn to the very important issue, the sphere of her responsibility, workers at home, oikourgos, literally a house worker. This is the sphere of a woman’s life. It is her domain. It is her kingdom. It is her realm.

The word is derived from the word “house” and the word “work.” A house worker. It doesn’t simply refer, by the way, to scrubbing floors and cleaning bathrooms and doing that. It simply connotes the idea that the home is the sphere of her labors, whatever they might be. It is not that a woman is to keep busy all the time at home. It doesn’t mean that she can never go out the door. It doesn’t mean that she’s always to be doing menial tasks. But what it does mean is that the home is the sphere of her divine assignment.

She is to be the home keeper, to take care of her husband, to provide for him and for the children, all that they need as they live in that home. Materially, she is to take the resources the husband brings home and translate them into a comfortable and blessed life for her children. She is to take the spiritual things that she knows and learns and to pass them on to her children. She is a keeper at home.

God’s standard is for the wife and mother to work inside the home and not outside. For a mother to get a job outside the home in order to send her children even to a Christian school is to misunderstand her husband’s role as a provider, as well as her own duty to the family. The good training her children receive in the Christian school may be counteracted by her lack of full commitment to the biblical standards for motherhood.

In addition to having less time to work at home and teach and care for her children, a wife working outside the home often has a boss to whom she is responsible for pleasing in the way she dresses and a lot of other matters, complicating the headship of her husband and compromising her own testimony. She is forced to submit to men other than her own husband, likely to become more independent, including financially in fragmenting the unity of the family. She is in the danger of becoming enamored by the business world or whatever world she’s in, and finding less and less satisfaction in her home responsibilities.

…

Now, when children are grown, there is an opportunity for some kind of endeavor outside the home. Certainly, that option is viable, if it doesn’t compromise her as a woman, it doesn’t compromise the headship of her husband, it doesn’t put her under undue temptation, it doesn’t put her in an environment where she is going to be subject to the actions and the words of ungodly men. It may be that when the children are grown she can work part-time; she can even work full-time in an environment which is salutatory to her and which increases her godliness and strengthens her as a wife.

— John MacArthur, Grace to You, God’s Pattern for Wives, February 18, 1996

Christians Say the Darnedest Things: Stop Shacking Up! Says Lori Alexander

Bruce Gerencser 6 Comments

lori-alexander

Many young, unmarried couples today live (have sex) together before marriage, including many Christian ones, and think nothing is wrong with it since it is so common. We live by the commands of God, not what is acceptable in our wicked generation. God wants you free from all sexual activity before marriage for very good reasons, so don’t move in with your boyfriend no matter how much he persuades you to do so!

Once you move in with your boyfriend, he has little reason to ask you to marry him. You are already there to provide all that he needs: cook, cleaner, maybe financial benefit, and someone to have sex with him at night. Why should he have to take on all the responsibilities of marriage (commitment, provider, protector) when he can easily get the benefits of marriage (sex and a woman who helps him) for free?

The longer you two cohabitate, the more things you will share: rent/mortgage, utilities, furniture, pets, and sadly, illegitimate children. It always leads to one of two paths: marriage or separation. When your highly inevitable break up occurs, you will need to decide who keeps what and who moves out. It is hard to decide who keeps what when you have been splitting everything 50/50 for years. You can’t exactly cut your table that you both paid materials and labor into in half, or make larger decisions like how much and when to sell the home you bought.

Hopefully, you haven’t already gone as far as having sex, making children together, and moving in with your boyfriend. Even though society, family, and friends may think you two should live together while dating, DON’T DO IT! All of this is foolish behavior and will reap unhappy results. Find a godly, older person who will keep you accountable with your boyfriend. Seek purity in everything! Don’t spend too much time alone together. It’s not wise to do so.

But women say, “It’s cheaper,” or “We want to see if we want to marry each other,” or “We need to ‘try’ each other out.” Living together while dating each other is very different than married couples living together. You aren’t wondering if you paid for the movie tickets last time, or if it’s your turn to drive and buy groceries. You’ll always have in your mind that you can leave at any time since there’s no commitment which is what true love is. Plus, if you have been unfaithful before marriage, it is much easier to be unfaithful once married. There are many good reasons God commands young women to be chaste!

— Lori Alexander, The Transformed Wife, STOP Living With Your Boyfriend!, September 18, 2018

Christians Say the Darnedest Things: Obesity is a Sin Against God Says Lori Alexander

Bruce Gerencser 8 Comments

tess holliday

The more wicked our culture becomes, the more they will celebrate sin and hate what is good. “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight!” (Isaiah 4:20-21).

On a cover of a popular magazine [Cosmo] recently was a picture of an immodestly dressed obese woman [Tess Holliday]. Our culture is trying to normalize obesity and even celebrate it. You can see this happening with other sins as well. We must never fall into their trap, dear women. We must never try to normalize something that God clearly calls sin.

Many cultures have few obese people because the portions they eat are much smaller than in America plus they are a lot more active. Supersize Cokes, fries, and all-you-can-eat buffets may look attractive to the budget but the diseases caused by carrying an extra 50-100 pounds and eating junk food will rob us of a full life. Hence, God tells us not to be gluttons and overeat. All of His commands are for our good!

Our bodies are the temples of the Holy Spirit and as such, we are called to discipline our bodies and make them our slaves. I know it’s difficult in this day where there is an abundance of food but we must still never give up the struggle. I have four close friends around my age who have struggled with their weight their entire lives until a few years ago or so. How did they finally manage to not overeat and be overweight? They all joined Weight Watchers or had some other type of accountability group because having accountability and learning the value of portion control are extremely important in the battle over weight. Without these two things, it will likely be impossible for most of you to ever achieve the weight you desire.

Gluttony means “excess in eating; extravagant indulgence of the appetite for food.” If you are overeating on a regular basis, you are sinning the sin of gluttony and need to confess it to someone and ask for accountability. The ideal accountability partner can be your spouse who is with you the most or consider Weight Watchers and go on a regular basis. Learn to eat in moderation nutritious and healthy foods.

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All sins that we struggle with need to be confessed and we must ask others to keep us accountable if we are unable to do it on our own. Other sins like drinking excess alcohol, sexual sins, and bitterness are just as destructive or worse than gluttony and are often hidden but need the same approach of making our body our slave, repentance, and accountability, instead of being a slave to our flesh.

— Lori Alexander, The Transformed Life, Celebrating Obesity, September 6, 2018

Christians Say the Darnedest Things: God’s Cure for Depression: The BIBLE

Bruce Gerencser 3 Comments

john piper

As Christian Hedonists, we’re not unfamiliar with the pain of depression. And we get a lot of questions in the inbox about how to work through those unavoidable times in life when depression hits. There’s often a physical and medical side to depression, but also a spiritual side to these seasons, too. In that vein, a question comes in an email from one female listener.

“Pastor John, what Scripture passages do you return to when you are suffering from depression? I am suffering from depression pretty bad at the moment, and I need some help from Scripture. Can you help me?”

This is the central question for her to ask — namely, “Where shall I turn in Scripture, in God’s word?” This is what God said we should listen to: his word.

Now, I don’t want to be naïve here. To be sure, there are many dimensions to depression — from genetic, to dietary, to exercise, to trauma, to demonic harassment, to relational stress, to financial burdens, to weather conditions, to sinful entanglements, to sleeplessness, and on and on. I don’t want to give the impression that I am oversimplifying the complexities of what might trigger a season of darkness, or depression.

Nevertheless, I’ll say it again: under and over and through all these issues that may need to be addressed — and I would encourage her to address all of them that are relevant — the key question is “What has God said to me?” That is, “What does the Scripture say?”

The reason this is so key is that the Bible says, “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17). Depression regularly involves a weakening of our faith and our hope, and God is clear that reawakening of faith, reawakening of hope, will not come if we’re not hearing the word of God.

The Scriptures do not present themselves as an automatic guarantee of emotional turnaround, because the Scriptures themselves describe people who hear the word of God and do not emotionally turn around — like the parable of the soils, or 1 Corinthians 15:2 (“You believed in vain”), and so on.

The Scriptures aren’t naïve, as if they are the quick and easy panacea for every emotional blankness [Depression is emotional blankness? Really?]. But the point is that, without the Scriptures, there’s no hope of a Christ-exalting turnaround of our emotions.

Medication might turn us around emotionally, but by itself, without the word of God, it won’t put us on a right footing with Jesus Christ. It may feel good, but without the word of God, it may not have done you any long-term good.

— John Piper, Desiring God, What Hope Does God Offer in My Depression?, September 8, 2018

Christians Say the Darnedest Things: Americans Embracing Satanism at an Alarming Rate

Bruce Gerencser 5 Comments

church of satan

As attendance declines at Christian churches all over America, many Satanic groups are experiencing tremendous growth. For some, embracing Satanism is the ultimate form of rebellion, for others it is about making an anti-Trump political statement, and yet others claim that they are attracted by the very real power that they discover in Satanism.

Every week, bizarre rituals are conducted in basements, meeting halls and public facilities all over the country, and most Americans have absolutely no idea what is going on. Of course, most mainstream news articles about Satanists attempt to portray them as ordinary people who have simply been “misunderstood.” And ultimately that is what the Satanists are trying to do for Satan—they are trying to get all the rest of us to view Satan or Lucifer as a “misunderstood” being that only has humanity’s best interests at heart. And since the values of Satanism line up more accurately with the values of modern society than Christian values do, Satanists are finding increasing success in bringing in new recruits.

Today, there are Satanic churches just about everywhere.

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Well, there is not a single national organization, but all major Satanic groups have claimed large increases in membership since the election of Donald Trump.

In particular, the Satanic Temple reported gaining “thousands” of new members within the first 36 hours of Trump’s victory…

The Satanic Temple attracted “thousands” of new members in just the first 36 hours after the election of Donald Trump, according to co-founder Lucien Greaves. The 4-year-old temple, which had a pre-Trump membership of around 50,000, has never before seen a spike in registration nearly this big.

“It’s crazy,” Greaves said after a speech in front of some adoring fans at CU-Boulder. The emails, registrations, donations and social media posts are pouring in faster than the temple can respond. “People have a desperate need for something to rally to right now.”

Right now, membership in the Satanic Temple is somewhere around 100,000, and it has become a hub for the anti-Trump resistance.

Of course most have joined various Satanic groups for spiritual reasons. Today there is a tremendous spiritual hunger in America, but Americans are also leaving traditional churches at a staggering pace. People are looking for authenticity, but they aren’t finding it in the traditional places, and so many are seeking out new options.

Unfortunately, an increasing number of Americans are deciding that Satanism is the answer, and that is a very, very troubling sign.

— Michael Snyder, Charisma News, Our Country Is Embracing Satanism at an Alarming Rate; Here’s Proof, September 10, 2018

Christians Say the Darnedest Things: Why Christianity is the Right Religion

Bruce Gerencser 10 Comments

peter guirguis

I remember many years ago when I was an atheist; there was a time when I was researching all the other religions.

I wanted to search if any of the claims that any of these religions made were correct.

As I was doing my research, I found that the supporters of some of these religions would give different reasons for why they thought a particular religion was true.

But the problem was that each religious supporter had a different reason for why they thought that religion was the right religion.

So I ended up researching each religion and looking at it to see if it made any claims about why it was the right religion out of all the other ones.

Now, I can tell you that through my research, not all religions claim that they are right even though its supporters may make that claim themselves.

So that’s what you’re going to discover today.

What is the standard that the Bible claims you should use to find out why it is the right religion out of all the other religions out there?

The Bible Has The Amazing Ability to Predict The Future

And to answer that question, you have to go to the book of Isaiah in the Bible, verses 9 and 10.

This is what it says, and this is God speaking in these two verses:

“For I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like Me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose.”

Now whether you’ve heard of this Bible passage before or whether this is your first time, it’s easy to miss what is being said here.

This Christian God in the Bible is saying that He is the only God that can declare the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done.

This is just another way of saying that the measure of a real God would be His ability to predict the future with 100% accuracy.

Therefore, the standard that we are going to use to see if the claim of Christianity is the one true religion out of all the other religions is to use its own claim that it can predict the future with 100% accuracy.

So what I’m going to do in this blog post is share with you three predictions in the past that the Bible got right.

Now mind you, these are three out of several hundred predictions that the Bible got right and it didn’t get any wrong.

But for time sake, I’m not going to be able to share all hundreds of predictions with you.

And I’m also going to share with you one prediction about the future that has not come true yet, but it looks like it’s going to come true very soon.

By the way, you’re going to want to prepare yourself for what’s coming ahead because there is a disaster coming very soon.

If you’re not ready, then you and you’re family will not be able to survive.

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Prediction #1 By The Bible

The first prediction is that Jesus, the Savior of the world, would be born.

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Prediction #2 By the Bible

The second prediction that the Bible got 100% correct has to do with King Cyrus rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem.

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Prediction #3 By The Bible

The third prediction that I want to share with you has to do with the birth of Israel as a nation.

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— Peter Guirguis, Not Ashamed of the Gospel, Why is Christianity the Right Religion Out of 4,200?, September 10, 2018

Why Peter Guirguis became an atheist (and why it is doubtful he actually was an atheist in the typical sense of the word)

Video Link

Christians Say the Darnedest Things: People Who Have Premarital Sex Act Like Animals

Bruce Gerencser 4 Comments

lori-alexander

“‘We are sliding backward’; STDs hit record high in US as resistant gonorrhea emerges. The US saw a record number of cases of sexually transmitted diseases in 2017, marking the fourth straight year of sharp increases in gonorrhea, syphilis and chlamydia, according to preliminary data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

Sixty percent of teens have had sex by graduation. The average “American loses his or her virginity at age 17. Virgins make up 12.3 percent of females and 14.3 percent of males aged 20-24.” Yet, don’t try to teach young people to be virgins until marriage or you will be blasted even by other Christians! Ridiculous. I aim to obey God rather than man (or woman).

God’s ways are perfect. He made sex to be between one woman and one man in the covenant of marriage. It’s not to be tried out before marriage to make sure the parts fit. The parts will fit! It’s not to be played around with before marriage. No, we are called to be chaste before marriage meaning no sex whatsoever before marriage; for the marriage bed is to be undefiled.

The consequences of not obeying God in this area are deadly. STDs can cause “infertility, stillbirth and an increased risk of HIV.” Besides the physical consequences, there are emotional consequences, too. We weren’t created to have sex like animals. No, we are made in the image of God and God calls us to take care of the temples (our bodies that He has given to us).

Did you notice that more males are virgins between 20 – 24 than females! While only 40 percent of high schoolers are virgins, only 12.3 percent of females are virgins after college. College is a breeding ground of sexual immorality with the drugs, alcohol, and hormone levels at an all time high and it’s only going to get worse. We live in a highly sexualized culture and we are not to see the things that most young people are seeing. We are to dwell on the lovely and the pure for a very good reason and take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.

— Lori Alexander, The Transformed Wife, Only 12.3 Percent of Females are Virgins After College. September 5, 2018

Christians Say the Darnedest Things: Satan’s Hidden Signature in Evolution

Bruce Gerencser 6 Comments

satan evolution

The Big Bang Theory says that before the universe with stars and galaxies existed, there was a very hot and dense superforce. This superforce is called “interactions” which consist of gravity, electromagnetism, the weak force, and the strong force.

Personally, it sounds like they got their theory from George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars “the force is with you” which the movie taught that through meditation, one can tap into that force and achieve the impossible.

According to the science community consisting of atheists, creation started from a “superforce” components which came from nowhere and from no one.

This “superforce” components is Satan’s signature and reveals that he wants to put himself in the seat of The Creator.

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The community of Evolution and Atheism has made up a belief that came directly from Satan himself. Its true meaning is to make people abandon God completely and worship him. How are they worshipping the devil you may ask? Good question…the more I read about evolution, the more it sounds like New Age philosophy and the occult.

To worship Satan, one is not required to acknowledge him or even join a Satanic Temple, The Occult, or even any type of spiritualism. What we must understand is that Satan doesn’t care if you believe in him or not because regardless of what you may think of him, he will use you for his demonic purposes. Anyone devoid of the Holy Spirit is in Satan’s hands.

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When a person is not worshipping the true living God, Satan uses them for the sole purpose to attack the Bible to make people doubt it so that they cannot get saved.

— Spaniard VIII, Spiritual Minefield, Satan’s Hidden Signature In Evolution (Part 1), August 30, 2018

Christians Say the Darnedest Things: Atheism is Impossible

Bruce Gerencser 3 Comments

atheists dont exist

A scam, yep! That’s a nice way of putting it. A swindle! A bamboozle! A flimflam rook! An irrational squawking farce!

By this time, you have heard about the overexcited anti-Christian campaign that is New Atheism. At the present, the New Atheists have maliciously attacked the Bible, God, and Jesus Christ. It is the nastiest anti-theistic movement in recent history with a lot of putrid attacks against the most sacred truths of Christianity; the New Atheists have presented no proof but rely on anger, invectives, and worn-out insults.

It is really hard to win public opinion merely with unhinged anger and odium. Case in point: The charge made with rage, preferably screamed with intense shrill: “There is no proof for the existence of God!!” Now, look through a microscope or a telescope and see the amazing design of God’s creation. Or open the Bible and note all the hundreds of prophecies that predicted the birth, life, ministry, and death of Christ and the odds tell you that those fulfilled events would take a divine hand to prearrange. Then gaze into the dancing eyes of your youngest child or feel the warmth of your beloved’s hand while walking on the soft sands of your favorite beach. I am fairly sure you will see that evidence for God is found everywhere.

Actually: I know that atheists will have a tough time guarding their eyes from all the proof, but some of them are very talented at overlooking the obvious, the intuitive, and prima facie evidence. Moreover, atheism is logically impossible.

Indeed: It is hard to beckon even a twinge of sympathy for the failure of the New Atheists. Atheism is, by design and principle, full of deceit and malignity. It places autonomous man at the center of the universe; they talk like humans evolved from savage apes; they behave as if life is merely about insuring one’s own genes survive into the future. Their dominant ideology is fueled rancor and self-interest, followed by a disregard of true truth, moral absolutes, and anything transcendent.

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Logically, there cannot be any true atheists. For one to propose that God does not exist, anywhere at any time, one would have to know all things, and be omnipresent, eternal, and infinite. That would make you God.

So, the only person in the universe who could possibly not believe in God, everywhere, and always, would be God. One would have to be God to be a true atheist and that is theoretically, logically, and rationally absurd.

— Mike Robinson, God Exists: Proof and Evidence, Atheism is Impossible, August 28, 2018

Christians Say the Darnedest Things: Feminists Want a World Where Women Rule and Men Drool

Bruce Gerencser 10 Comments

michelle lesley

You want to know where this notion of toxic masculinity came from? It sprang from the loins of toxic feminism. Zoom out and look at the big picture. This is a manufactured concept, baptized in the (assumed) credibility of academia, designed to help women leverage power and control over men. How? By denigrating them at every turn, thereby convincing the world that men are intrinsically bad and women are good and must be elevated to prominence. Call me crazy if you want to, but it doesn’t take a prophet or the son of a prophet to look down the road and see that the feminist end game here is a matriarchal world where women rule and men drool. And there are plenty of brazen females out there who would openly and unashamedly admit this.

That, however, is not my concern. Sinners gonna sin, and God’s going to deal with them in His own way and in His own good time.

My concern is the way this attitude is fleshing (pun intended) itself out in Christian families and the visible church, and creeping into evangelical women’s (and men’s) hearts. Because, whether or not we’d like to admit it, this worldliness is advancing upon us, and we need to be aware of – and biblically approach – the facets of this issue that are already at our doorstep.

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Unfortunately, I also see the exact opposite. I see (ostensibly) Christian women who scream like banshees any time their pastor preaches on the passages of Scripture dealing with women’s roles in marriage or the church. I’ve seen women who claim to believe and follow the Bible throw an everloving fit when someone points out – from Scripture – that their favorite women’s “Bible” study author is a false teacher. I see women formulating their beliefs and practices about God, worship, the Bible, their own behavior, their families, and their churches based on their own personal opinions, experiences, and feelings rather than on rightly handled Scripture.

And, just like secular feminists demand domination over men because they feel oppressed, have experienced sexism, or resent the world’s history of male dominion, I see Christian women letting their emotions rule the day as they demand unbiblical solutions to their real or perceived personal experiences with men and male leadership.

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Toxic femininity is worldly and fleshly. It has no place in Christian homes and churches. How do we combat it? We take up the sword. We submit to the authority and sufficiency of Scripture. We recognize that God is the authority in our lives, not self, and that we are to obey Him at any cost – even at the cost of our convenience and pleasure. We trade our desires for His.

— Michelle Lesley, Toxic (Evangelical) Femininity, August 24, 2018

Bruce Gerencser