Posted on 01/23/2014 5:10:18 PM PST by restornu
Evangelist and author Dr. Ravi Zacharias addressed the topics of faith, family and freedom in a gathering at the Tabernacle on Temple Square on Saturday, 18 January 2014. “We must build our lives on things that are eternal,” Zacharias told more than 3,000 gathered in the Tabernacle in his message titled “Lessons From History, Building a Nation Under God.” During his speech, he related lessons learned from the Bible and compared them to modern-day events.
This is the second time Zacharias has spoken in the Tabernacle and his third visit to Utah since 1994. Zacharias is founder and president of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, with offices in Canada, India, Singapore, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates and Hong Kong. The event was presented by Standing Together, a network of evangelical congregations in Utah, and hosted by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to promote religious freedom.
Elder Jeffrey R. Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles greeted the large audience of religious leaders and “friends of all faiths” in the historic Tabernacle, which has been the setting of worship and inspiring music for 150 years. “World leaders and men and women of many faiths have spoken here, including Dr. Zacharias in 2004,” said Elder Holland. “We’re very, very happy to have him back.”
“I say that, in part, to assure many who may be wondering whether tonight’s gathering of evangelicals and Latter-day Saints under the same roof is being interpreted as clear evidence that the apocalypse is upon us,” he quipped. “Who knows, it may be.”
Elder Holland said those in attendance had a “shared love of Jesus Christ.” “But in an increasingly secular world and facing the attack on religious faith and religious freedom that we see all around us, it is imperative for the extended Christian community to acknowledge that what we have in common is so far-reaching and so potentially powerful in addressing the ills of society and of the soul that the very least we can do is know and understand each other better than we do,” he added.
Zacharias said we have a common cause in trying to create a good moral soil in this culture. “Moral soil is very critical in which reasoning and art can flourish,” he said during an interview at the Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Sandy. Zacharias expressed concern about what happens “when the nation is led in a rabid, secularistic way of thinking.”
He voiced disappointment in the way academics are treating religious thought around the world. “The key is what we ultimately do with our children,” Zacharias said. He urged parents to guide their children through the “mine field” they encounter in the media, even at a younger age than ever before.
“Before we can clean house in a nation, we actually have to do some soul searching of our own house — what is going on in the house of the Lord, what do we believe, why we believe it and the centrality of God’s purpose for our life,” he said during the interview.
“We have lost our moorings,” Zacharias told the diverse audience in the Tabernacle, as “we live beyond our moral means and our fiscal means and spiritual means.”
“There is only one angle at which you can stand straight and many, many different angles at which you can fall,” he said.
Zacharias travels 200 days a year sharing his message of the gospel of Jesus Christ as a Christian apologist. During an interview earlier in the week, he shared one of his favorite scriptures, which states, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ” (Romans 1:16).
“The gospel gives purpose,” he told the Tabernacle audience. “We don’t change people’s lives. Only God is big enough to do that.”
“We talk so much about one’s rights that we talk so little about what is actually right,” Zacharias stressed to the crowd.
He encouraged the audience to read the scriptures. “Open the scriptures and make a commitment to read the Gospel of John,” Zacharias said. One of his favorite scriptures found in John was instrumental in his conversion to Christianity at the age of 17 while he was growing up in India. He was given a Bible while hospitalized following a suicide attempt. It reads, “Because I live, ye shall live also” (John 14:19).
“Most people cannot think for themselves anymore,” he said. “The world out there is caught in this vortex of relativism.”
“We will never change the outside until we change from within,” Zacharias concluded. “Redemption is prior to righteousness.”
Gospel singer and songwriter Fernando Ortega of Albuquerque, New Mexico, performed during the program. Temple Square organist Bonnie Goodliffe provided the prelude music.
During his visit to Utah, Zacharias also spoke to students at Brigham Young University in Provo.
Be of Good Cheer!:)
Ravi gives a great speech.
Ravi Zacharias was the editor of the updated version of Kingdom of the Cults by Walter Martin.
I'm sure a good time was had by all.
bingo
Thanks for the post.
Thanx Resty ....
“Zacharias said we have a common cause”
We certainly do. We just don’t have a common Jesus, a common Gospel or a common God.
Ravi Zacharias at the Mormon Tabernacle
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3h3aVs4imQI
>>>Elder Holland said those in attendance had a “shared love of Jesus Christ.” >>>
No, “Elder,” they use the same name for an entirely different god.
Do not use that nickname for the poster. It is a pejorative meaning “sluggish.”
Will the Mormons have to replace the carpet now?
“Before we can clean house in a nation, we actually have to do some soul searching of our own house — what is going on in the house of the Lord, what do we believe, why we believe it and the centrality of God’s purpose for our life,” he said during the interview.
“We have lost our moorings,” Zacharias told the diverse audience in the Tabernacle, as “we live beyond our moral means and our fiscal means and spiritual means.”
“There is only one angle at which you can stand straight and many, many different angles at which you can fall,” he said
The gospel gives purpose,” he told the Tabernacle audience. “We don’t change people’s lives. Only God is big enough to do that.”
“We talk so much about one’s rights that we talk so little about what is actually right,” Zacharias stressed to the crowd.
“Most people cannot think for themselves anymore,” he said. “The world out there is caught in this vortex of relativism.”
“We will never change the outside until we change from within,” Zacharias concluded. “Redemption is prior to righteousness.”
He encouraged the audience to read the scriptures. “Open the scriptures and make a commitment to read the Gospel of John,” Zacharias said. One of his favorite scriptures found in John was instrumental in his conversion to Christianity at the age of 17 while he was growing up in India. He was given a Bible while hospitalized following a suicide attempt. It reads, “Because I live, ye shall live also” (John 14:19). John 14
15 ¶If ye love me, keep my commandments.
16 And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever;
17 Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.
18 I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you.
19 Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye see me: because I live, ye shall live also.
20 At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you.
21 He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.
...Now were these words said vein as I read the replies here About We must build our lives on things that are eternal,” common Moral soil, and Religious Freedom; when some are being divisive it is impossible to do!...
“Zacharias expressed concern about what happens “when the nation is led in a rabid, secularistic way of thinking.”
Zacharias doesn’t realize that he himself is engaging in a “rabid, secularistic way of thinking” by joining hands with the LDS contrary to scripture. The truth is not relative, nor does it concede anything or give honor to those who believe that God has an eternal wang which he uses to impregnate his harem of goddess wives.
“And what I am doing I will continue to do, in order to undermine the claim of those who would like to claim that in their boasted mission they work on the same terms as we do. For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ.”
(2Co 11:12-13)
By the way, this is what the LDS really thinks about the feeble minded Zacharias and his religion:
“What is it that inspires professors of Christianity generally with a hope of salvation? It is that smooth, sophisticated influence of the devil, by which he deceives the whole world”
- Prophet Joseph Smith, Jr., Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 270
“...all the priests who adhere to the sectarian religions of the day with all their followers, without one exception, receive their portion with the devil and his angels.”
- Prophet Joseph Smith, Jr. , The Elders Journal, v. 1, no. 4, p. 60
“With a regard to true theology, a more ignorant people never lived than the present so-called Christian world.”
- Prophet Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, v. 8, p.
“Christians—those poor, miserable priests brother Brigham was speaking about—some of them are the biggest whoremasters there are on the earth, and at the same time preaching righteousness to the children of men. The poor devils, they could not get up here and preach an oral discourse, to save themselves from hell; they are preaching their fathers’ sermons —preaching sermons that were written a hundred years before they were born. ...You may get a Methodist priest to pour water on you, or sprinkle it on you, and baptize you face foremost, or lay you down the other way, and whatever mode you please, and you will be damned with your priest.
- Apostle Heber C. Kimball, Journal of Discourses, v. 5, p. 89
“What! Are Christians ignorant? Yes, as ignorant of the things of God as the brute beast.”
- Prophet John Taylor, Journal of Discourses, v. 13, p. 225
“Both Catholics and Protestants are nothing less than the ‘whore of Babylon’ whom the Lord denounces by the mouth of John the Revelator as having corrupted all the earth by their fornications and wickedness. Any person who shall be so corrupt as to receive a holy ordinance of the Gospel from the ministers of any of these apostate churches will be sent down to hell with them, unless they repent.”
- Apostle Orson Pratt, The Seer, p. 255
“After the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was organized, there were only two churches upon the earth. They were known respectively as the Church of the Lamb of God and Babylon. The various organizations which are called churches throughout Christendom, though differing in their creeds and organizations, have one common origin. They all belong to Babylon.”
- Apostle George Q. Cannon, Gospel Truth, p. 324
“Believers in the doctrines of modern Christendom will reap damnation to their souls.”
- Apostle Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, see pp. 45-46
“I was answered that I must join none of them (Christian Churches), for they were all wrong...that all their creeds were an abomination in His sight” (Joseph Smith History 1:19).
“...orthodox Christian views of God are Pagan rather than Christian.”
(Mormon Doctrine of Deity by B.H. Roberts, p.116)
“...the God whom the ‘Christians’ worship is a being of their own creation...”
(Apostle Charles W. Penrose, JD 23:243)
“The Christian world, so called, are heathens as to their knowledge of the salvation of God.”
(Brigham Young, JD 8:171)
“What! Are Christians ignorant? Yes, as ignorant of the things of God as the brute best.”
(John Taylor, JD 13:225)
“What does the Christian world know about God? Nothing...Why so far as the things of God are concerned, they are the veriest fools; they know neither God nor the things of God.”
(John Taylor, JI) 13:225)
“Believers in the doctrines of modern Christendom will reap damnation to their souls
(Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, p.177)
“...brother Joseph B. Nobles once told a Methodist priest, after hearing him describe his god, that the god they worshiped was the “Mormon’s” Devil-a being without a body, whereas our God has a body, parts and passions.”
(Brigham Young, JD 5:331)
“...the great apostate church as the anti-christ...This great antichrist...is the church of the devil.”
Apostle Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine p.40)
“Both Catholics and Protestants are nothing less than the “whore of Babylon” whom the lord denounces by the mouth of John the Revelator as having corrupted all the earth by their fornications and wickedness.”
(Pratt, The Seer, p.255)
“God is not at its head, making that church [i.e., Christianity] – following the appearance in it of Satan – no longer the church of God. To say that Satan sits in the place of God in Christianity after the time of the apostles is not to say that all that is in it is Satanic.”
- Kent P. Jackson, “Early Signs of Apostasy,” Ensign, December 1984, p. 9
1 Nephi 14:10 “Behold there are save two churches only; the one is the church of the Lamb of god, and the other is the church of the devil; wherefore, whoso belongeth not to the church of the Lamb of God belongeth to that great church, which is the mother of abominations; and she is the whore of all the earth.”
“Orthodox Christian views of God are pagan rather than Christian”
(Mormon Doctrine of Deity, B. H. Roberts [General Authority], 116).
Brigham Young: “…and he that confesseth not that Jesus has come in the flesh and sent Joseph Smith with the fullness of the Gospel to this generation, is not of God, but is Antichrist.”
(Journal of Discourses, Vol 9 pg 312).
Mormon Apostle Hyrum M. Smith,- “In fact, my brethren and sisters, if the falsity of a religion can be measured in any degree by the amount of trouble and turmoil and strife and bitterness and hatred that it has engendered in the hearts of men, if it can be judged by the number of wars it has carried on and the rivers of blood it has shed, the amount of misery and sorrow, it has caused, or the extremes of impurity, found among its adherents, then Christianity, that which is known as Christianity, is the falsest of all religions in the world… The trouble is, as God declared to Joseph the Prophet, mankind have gone astray. Their religions are an abomination in his sight, and their professors are corrupt because they have turned away from the truth and have turned unto fables.”
(Conference Report, October 1916, p.43).
It was a wonderful presentation, Resty. Thanks for posting the thread pointing to Ravi’s gift.
BTW, have you watched the video of Ravi’s talk at BYU? It was a wonderful presentation.
BTW, restornu, when I use ‘Resty’ I mean no disrespect. I am quite capable of showing that with sentences rather than a nickname.
She does not mind the nickname but I do. RF guidelines must be applied even-handedly. Pejorative nicknames are not allowed and therefore cannot be used even when they are intended as a term of endearment.
***
Of course he knows he did the follow-up in Martins "Kingdom of the Cult".
Yes I did watch it just finished and he did what he set out to do, the talk was suppose to be on respecting Religious Freedom, good moral soil in this culture, instead it was subtle or double entendre all very cute stuff.
There was nothing Love One Another about it. I really did enjoy the person who provided the music he was not hostile he seem sincere.
I am sure many enjoy the performance and how he was able to weave his fiery darts!
I am sure in the future he would like to have access to the the new Conference Center to do it even on a bigger scale.
This is the Jesus I worship and learn about in the Bible...
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