First Baptist Church of Perryville Archives: featured
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21 February 2012
Four Legs Good, Two Legs Better—The Tyranny of “Equality”
In 1945, George Orwell published Animal Farm, one of the best aimed and most cutting satires of modern times. In it he parodies the Russian revolution of 1917 and launches a devastating attack on totalitarianism. Those outside could see the accuracy of Orwell’s critique of Soviet Communism. History would suggest that those living behind the “Iron Curtain” found it considerably harder to do so. Perhaps not least because their thinking was subject to state control, and books like Animal Farm were banned.1 (more…)
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19 February 2012
A Culture without Christianity? Imagine.
In 1971, John Lennon wrote a hymn for the secularist faith. The song, “Imagine,” fantasized about the state of world affairs if everyone were stripped of all beliefs and prejudices—with the notable exception, of course, of the former Beatle’s favorites. “Imagine there’s no heaven,” sang Lennon,
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today . . .Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace . . . (more…)
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17 February 2012
From Misery to Hope; Through the Church!—Rodney Stark (1934 – )
Leading sociologist of religion and professor at both the University of Washington and Baylor University, Rodney Stark, has written a number of important books on Christianity and culture. In The Rise of Christianity (1997), Stark describes how, in the first few centuries A.D., Christianity grew from being an obscure Jewish sect, to becoming the dominant ideology in the West. One major reason was the impact of the church’s life. Amid the chaos of cities like Antioch, in what is now Turkey, the Church was a glorious force for urban renewal. Acts 11:26 reports that it was at Antioch that believers were first called Christians, which literally means “little Christs.” Stark’s research shows that long after that first designation the Christians continued to live up to their name by letting their good works speak for themselves. (more…)
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15 February 2012
The Gospel Breaks Through Hypocrisy
The Quaker pastor approached William Hone (1780-1842), the skeptic, and asked him if he had ever “attentively” read the New Testament. Hone’s answer, and the subsequent conversation recorded by the pastor’s son, uncovered a problem rampant in nineteenth-century England and today, hypocrisy: (more…)
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13 February 2012
The Requirement of Repentance
1 This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: 2 “Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will give you my message.” 3 So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel. 4 But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him. 5 Then the word of the LORD came to me: 6 “O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter does?” declares the LORD. “Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. 7 If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, 8 and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned. 9 And if at another time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be built up and planted, 10 and if it does evil in my sight and does not obey me, then I will reconsider the good I had intended to do for it.”
Jeremiah 18:1-10 (NIV) (more…)
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11 February 2012
Are There Benefits to “Friends with Benefits”?
“Ahhh…” I sighed in anticipation, sinking down into the overstuffed reading chair in a tucked away corner of Barnes and Noble. Coffee in one hand, book in the other, I was mere seconds away from two hours of pure book store bliss. Then it happened. (more…)
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9 February 2012
Easy-Divorce Enablers Grasping at Straws
1 When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, and she departs out of his house, 2 and if she goes and becomes another man’s wife, 3 and the latter man hates her and writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, or if the latter man dies, who took her to be his wife, 4 then her former husband, who sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife, after she has been defiled, for that is an abomination before the LORD. And you shall not bring sin upon the land that the LORD your God is giving you for an inheritance.
Deuteronomy 24:1-4 (ESV) (more…)
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7 February 2012
Saint Alban: The First British Christian Martyr (c. 305)
St. Alban had voluntarily declared himself a Christian to the Roman persecutors of the faith and was undaunted by the princely threats. Instead he put on the armor of spiritual warfare, publicly declaring that he would disobey any command to sacrifice to the Roman gods: “I am a Christian, and carry out Christian rites . . . and I worship and adore the living and true God, who created all things.”1 In these words, England’s earliest great historian, a Northumbrian monk called the Venerable Bede, recorded the courageous witness of Britain’s first known Christian martyr, one of the many victims in the last wave of Roman persecution launched against the Church at the beginning of the fourth century.2 (more…)
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5 February 2012
The Importance of Manners in Ministry—Charles H. Spurgeon (1834 - 1892)
Among the most celebrated preachers of the nineteenth century, Charles Spurgeon was famous for his powerful sermons at London’s Metropolitan Tabernacle, which won droves to faith in Christ. But in the following words from a lecture to young ministers, he notes that sermons alone do not determine the effectiveness of a pastor’s ministry. Indeed, gracious deportment, pleasant manners, and warm hospitality outside the pulpit help buttress his proclamation and lend credibility to the gospel. (more…)
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3 February 2012
How’s Your Wife’s Heart?
by Cindy B.
My husband has been walking in freedom from his pornography addiction for going on 10 years.
(C’mon now. That’s deserves a shout out.) (more…)
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