I heard someone once say that from a philosophical perspective, the atheist has a greater challenge than the theist. He went to describe how the theist only needs to prove the existence of his god, but that the atheist has to disprove every possible god, of which there are multitude. But to be honest, I don’t believe there are really more than two gods: 1) a God Who is truly almighty and all-knowing and 2) the god of our own choosing. The god of our own choosing may be a collection of numerous gods that mutually rule over all reality or it may be the belief in a single ruler higher than all other beings. But wait… how does this differ from option 1? If the god of our choosing is a single, omnipotent ruler, isn’t that the same as the God of Judeo-Christian religion? Not necessarily. A person could chose to believe in a single, omnipotent being that is different in nature from the God Who Lives. Meanwhile, the atheist would argue that there is no god who is truly real and ...
I’ve been thinking a lot recently… okay, I think a lot normally… but my mind has been troubled by the growing hatred in America. I’m not sure when it started, but somewhere in the past 30 years we’ve reached a point where we are a very polarized country where we just can’t seem to talk about issues. I see symptoms everywhere: generation gaps, workplace feuds, political firepots, divorce trends, suicidal bullying, and the list goes on and on. Related to the upcoming presidential election, I typically see one of two actions on social media sites: attack or avoid. Anyone and everyone who sides with the views of the opposing camp is treated like an enemy, a subverter who cannot be trusted. Or maybe we like the person but just can discuss certain issues with them so we can keep everything at a “nice” level. The problem with avoiding the issues is that they never get resolved, and going into fight or flight mode distances us from others. I imagine that prior to America...
Part 4 – Marriage of the Administrative and Prophetic Continued from Parts 1, 2, and 3 http://mitchellmalloy.blogspot.com/2012/06/signs-in-end-times-church.html So looking back at the preceding sections, the church represented by Ephesus has a strong administrative gifting yet suffers with a love problem. Meanwhile the sister church in Thyatira tolerates misleading doctrine as a result of its desire for greater prophetic understanding. (Revelation 2) The prophetic and administrative gifts of the Spirit… passion and wisdom… find their union under Christ with difficulty. Yet somehow, these need to be woven together in love (see http://mitchellmalloy.blogspot.com/2011/01/extraordinary-gifts.html ). I’ve seen this play out as a struggle for dominance within church bodies, where some administrative authorities earnestly squash the practice of any extraordinary spiritual gift. At the other extreme, the prophetic rebels against the ordinary gifts (e.g. – leadership, wisdom and knowl...