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Compass Church meets in a movie theater, has no live worship, and keeps its Sunday service meeting to 45 minutes. But the somewhat nontraditional Assemblies of God congregation is making an eternal impact in Winona, Minnesota. Pastored by Aaron Lindholm, Compass "exists to reach the 9,000 people in Winona that are far from God by creating a loving, giving, growing community, where it is safe to belong until you believe," according to the church's website. Lindholm, 38, moved to Winona from Claremore, Oklahoma, in 2009 when around 40 people attended the church regularly. Last year, Compass Church had more salvation...

I have been traveling and have not posted in a bit, so let me bring up another question that came from the Grand Rapids PCRT: "What is the root issue that would allow "Christian" denominations to ordain homosexuals and perform homosexual marriages?" The simple answer to this question is that such denominations have stopped granting ultimate authority to the clear teaching of the Word of God. In almost every case, they no longer regard the Scriptures as inerrant and therefore they find it easy to disregard teachings they consider offensive and antiquated. Having removed their confidence in the Bible, they...

Within Roman Catholicism (and within some other churches as well) there are prayers that are made for, through, and to the dead. We, as Reformed believers, reject all three of these categories but on different grounds. In discussing these issues with Roman Catholics it may be useful to be able to understand the different categories and to explain why it is that we reject each. We should pray for the living, to the living and true God, through the merits and intercession of Christ alone. 1. Prayers For the Dead In Roman Catholicism, there is a belief in Purgatory. Although...

As Christianity Today acknowledges, prayers for and to the Saints date back to the early Church (in fact, these practices date back far earlier, even to Old Testament Judaism, but I'll talk more about that tomorrow). Nevertheless, these practices are controversial within Protestantism. Today, I want to look at just one of them -- prayer to the Saints -- and show why the opposition to it is grounded in a faulty view of life after death. Tomorrow, I'll look at the Biblical support for both prayer to the Saints and prayer for the Saints. First, a word on why...

Across Christian denominations, the debate over gay marriage has fundamentally pitted the views of socially progressive - if not radical - congregants and church leaders who are in favor of gay marriage against that of the conservative, evangelical sector that subscribes to a traditional and biblical definition of marriage. For the most part, proponents of gay marriage have been on the outs - at times waging tough battles that tear churches apart and put their ordination on the line. In the Presbyterian Church (USA), the tables seemed to have turned. Increasingly, the conservative, evangelical members of the 1.8-million-member mainline Protestant...

Well, at least the Dallas Morning News was kinda nice to Liberty University. In the lede to its story on Ted Cruz in New Hampshire, the newspaper called it a "huge evangelical Christian college." Once upon a time, many mainstream media routinely slapped Liberty with the "F" word: "Fundamentalist." But the paper doesn't prove its claim that Cruz sounded less evangelical, more secular in his New Hampshire visit to sound more presidential. It therefore pushes a related stereotype: that Americans don’t particularly like evangelicals. DMN paints Cruz as a conservative's conservative as well as an evangelical's evangelical. It says the...

Have you ever really believed in Jesus Christ? I was talking to my five-year old son. He replied quickly, "Of course, dad." "But have you ever really been saved? How do you really know you are saved?" He replied, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved,." He ripped off the words as fast as his little mouth could phrase them. It was a verse he had memorized, and he had heard it explained so many times. Perhaps you would have answered just as he did. "Of course I am saved. Of course I believe in Jesus...

This is what he (Tony Campolo) has to say about Hillary Clinton and why Christians should vote for her: “Some of my Evangelical friends raise questions about her views on abortion. But Hillary Clinton is one of the few candidates on the political stage who has a plan for cutting the abortion rate in America by at least 50 percent. I know Hillary Clinton to be a committed Christian. As a teenager, Hillary’s religious beliefs were heavily impacted by hearing a sermon by Martin Luther King, Jr. The youth pastor of her Methodist church mentored her through her teenage years...

TEN EVIDENCES (PROOFS) OF SALVATION Notes by Dr. Fred Wittman 1. The Witness of the Holy Spirit . . A. Within the child of God (Romans 8:9-16; 1 John 3:24); . . B. With another child of God (Romans 8:16); . . C. By fellowship with God (Romans 8: 14; 1 John 1 :7) 2. The Witness of God (Chastening) (Heb. 12:5-11) 3. The Witness of Love (John 13:34,35; 1 John 3:14-19; 5:1-3; 4:7,8,11) 4. The Witness of Your Life (2 Corinthians 5:17; 1 John 3:7-10). 5. The Witness of God's Word . . A. Your reaction to it...

I’ve mentioned that Roman Catholicism is so onerous because it puts its hooks in you at various times in your life – from baptism as a child, to “first confession” and “first holy communion”, then Confirmation as an early teen, then marriage, baptism of your own children, etc. It’s a programmatic cycle. There is another point at which Rome is prominent, and that is at death. As the “Baby Boom” generation continues to age and die, people will continue to be focused on this phase of life, either as people focused on the end of their own lives, or that...

A number of decades ago at the Ligonier Valley Study Center, we sent out a Thanksgiving card with this simple statement: “The essence of theology is grace; the essence of Christian ethics is gratitude.” In all the debates about our role versus God’s role in sanctification—our growth in holiness—we’d stay on the right track if we’d remember this grace-gratitude dynamic. The more we understand how kind God has been to us and the more we are overcome by His mercy, the more we are inclined to love Him and to serve Him.Yet we can’t get the grace-gratitude dynamic right if...

Total Absorption and Breakthrough I am drawing you deeper into My Spirit then ever before for I AM your Wellspring of Life and so now as I call and you answer I will feed you from The Tree of Life great and mighty things. First you will delve into and devour My very Virtue for without this nothing exists so you must come into and completely walk in My Worthiness for "HOLY" is My Name "Yeah" even the angels cry out unrelentingly My Truth . Second I will cause you to drink in My love and this door opens to...

Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him, That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand. Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;( 2 Thess 2:1-3)When I read that the President of the United States, Barak Hussein Obama ordered...

If you want to choose in the US, you'd better praise God. The Americans do not seem to care much what church leaders pray; just want to kneel .. It was built in the 1920s in the style of the Spanish missions, topped off with one of those thatched roofs of red clay so popular in southern Florida by then. Catholics put their foundation a few steps from the famed Biltmore Hotel (inspired by the Giralda, the tower of the Cathedral of Seville in Spain) and named their church in honor of St. Therese of Lisieux, also known as the...

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz chose a conservative, evangelical Christian university as the setting for his announcement that he was running for president. This underscored his apparent strategic decision to focus relentlessly on the conservative, highly religious segment of his party, both in terms of attempting to become their candidate of preference, and also in terms of maximizing their turnout in the 2016 primary elections. The Republican Party in general has a disproportionate percentage of conservative and highly religious Americans in its ranks, so Cruz's strategy would appear to make numerical sense -- as it would for other conservative politicians, like...

The Resurrection & The Eucharist by Fr. Rodney Kissinger S.J. (Former Missouri Synod Lutheran) http://www.frksj.org/homily_ressurection_and_the_eucharist.htm There is an important connection between the Resurrection and the Eucharist. The Eucharist IS the Risen Jesus. Therefore, the Eucharist makes the Resurrection present and active in our lives and enables us to experience the joy and the power of the Resurrection.

The Resurrection is the reason for the observance of Sunday instead of the Sabbath. According to the Gospel it was early in the morning on the first day of the week that the Risen Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene. It was also on the...

The last time I posted here I examined Bryan Cross’s claim for unity in the Roman Catholic Church.  It was my intention to apply Bryan’s guidelines to a specific case that he mentioned – i.e. abortion – to show that his claim, in at least that instance, did not meet the “visibility” standard he required for unity to exist.  I hope to have been fair in my examination and believe that said examination disproved Bryan’s thesis on his own grounds.But that exercise caused me to reflect more broadly on the Roman claim to unity as it might apply to other...

Biblical Conspiracies 3 of 4 Secrets of the Crucifixion

You are not alone look beside you and find me filling your Wellspring with hope even now as the enemy flees with his lies and " T "rue hope becomes your warmth and understanding, that My light is upon you to shed all darkness and though things now seem out of reach "Truly " (( ( I AM ) )) and this is all you Truly need to know for I have already laid out your steps before Me and nothing can alter your path in Me alone . So come closer and completely dissolve all your worries into Me...

Here it is, the first television ad of the 2016 presidential campaign, courtesy of the first official presidential candidate, Ted Cruz. No beating around the bush here—we get a mention of Jesus in the very first sentence:(VIDEO-AT-LINK) "Were it not for the transformative love of Jesus Christ, I would have been raised by a single mom without my father in the house. God's blessing has been on America from the very beginning of this nation. Over and over again when we faced impossible odds, the American people rose to the challenge. This is our fight, and that is why I'm...