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AGAINST CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION

 

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(Click the pic!) Is Christianity really dying? The author of the article "Against Christian Civilization" paints a rather morose picture of Christianity on its last legs, but is it really Christianity that is dying? Or is it the mashup of "Judeo-Christian faith" and secular humanist democracy that is dying? The secularized, democratized version of Christianity that says you can reinterpret the faith to suit the latest liberal ideology certainly ought to die, and is. It has devolved into Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (MTD), defined in Wikipedia as follows:

  1. A God exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.
  2. God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.
  3. The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
  4. God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.
  5. Good people go to heaven when they die.

The idea of "religious freedom" has devolved into a vague belief that you should be nice to people because it's nice to be nice: it is a logical paradox, circular reasoning, It's like when a mother tells little child to be good and the child says – "Why?" So she answers – "Because I said so!" That appeal to mom's authority might hold until the child's teenage years, but then evaporates when the kids are introduced to "freedom of thought" and begin to feel their hormones and explore alternatives. The attraction of satisfying one's desires often wins out over the fuzzy moralism of "Because I said so!"

And then the next generation – the "fuzzies" – is taught that there's no moral authority, you can do whatever you choose, it has no moral compass at all other than the pleasure principle. If there is no resurrection from the dead, no eternal reward or punishment, as St. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15:32, "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die." They may theoretically believe that some sort of deity exists somewhere "out there in space," but deep down, their real belief system is the pleasure principle. What you really believe determins how you behave.

So now we've come to the logical conclusion of this Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (MTD) ideology – satisfying one's urges, feel good about oneself, try to be nice to others if it's convenient and doesn't interfere with one's selfish desires, the government can and should take care of all our problems, etc. – is unravelling. People are beginning to see it doesn't work, so they are returning to the ancient Christian faith that is based on eternal beliefs and behavior: the article "Believe it or not, Christianity is making a comeback" tells us how many leading figures in modern western society have realized the bankruptcy of MTD and have returned to the fixed, eternal truths of traditional, "orthodox" (and often big-O "Orthodox") Christianity.

We must pray that this trend among leading intellectuals and social media heros will spread to the masses!

A FIRST-CENTURY VIEW OF YESHUA, THE MESSIAH

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A FIRST-CENTURY VIEW OF YESHUA, THE MESSIAH
A Historical Account of Yesous Khristos, the Anointed One

 

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"How the Jewish mouse ate the Greco-Roman elephant"

How did we get here? Our understanding of Yeshua, the Messiah, is filtered through centuries of retelling, revising, and projecting our current worldview back twenty centuries ago, resulting in layers of anachronisms.

What went wrong? Why do we see so much animosity between Christians and Jews? Originally, the followers of Yeshua were just considered another sect of Judaism, along with Herodians, Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenes, and Zealots. It arose mainly in the fifth century C.E. in the writings of Jerome and Augustine, as you will see in the conclusion of this book. And where do we go from here?

INTRODUCTION

[This is a preview of my book published on Amazon earlier this year. See all the Print and Electronic Versions.]

The thesis of this book is not only to portray the Person of Yeshua, the Messiah, but also to explore in greater depth the swirling interplay of Jewish and Greco-Roman spiritual, religious, and cultural forces at work leading up to and including the first century A.D. Secondly, it is to illustrate the way in which this renewed and restored Jewish faith would be delivered from captivity and eventually expand to encompass the whole Greco-Roman Empire and beyond - see Gen. 12:1-3, Ex. 3:4-17, Dan. 2:44-45, and Rev. 19:11-16. Thirdly, it aims to point out the Messiah's three years of doing and training others to do diakonia - ministry to "the poor, the lame, the maimed, and the blind" who were the central focus of his earthly ministry, as this work will quote from this author's harmony of the Gospels, The Good News of Yeshua, the Messiah, to answer the question: What does it mean to be a diakon - a deacon?

We as humans tend to perceive what we expect or would prefer to see and hear, and filter out those data that do not conform to our stored experiences. This "confirmation bias" is what all four Evangelists and Paul referred to when quoting Is. 6:9-10 - "By hearing you will hear, And will in no way understand; Seeing you will see, And will in no way perceive: For this people's heart has grown callous, Their ears are dull of hearing, They have closed their eyes; Or else perhaps they might perceive with their eyes, Hear with their ears, Understand with their heart, And should turn again; And I would heal them." We tend to focus on the Lord's Incarnation, Crucifixion, and Resurrection because they promise us salvation, but we filter out the parts that tell us about doing hands-on ministry: they do not match up with today's worldview of state-funded social work, welfare and medical care. Let the government pay for it!

The source that has inspired the thesis for this book is "The Old Testament Basis for Christian Worship" - a section in the seminal book on the relation of the Jewish temple and synagogue worship to Orthodox Christian worship: Orthodox Worship: A Living Continuity with the Synagogue, the Temple, and the Early Church¹. That book's explanation of early Christianity and its current manifestation in Orthodox worship as being to a great extent a continuation or extension of synagogue worship spurred my interest in the topic. In addition, our home at that time was in a condo/townhouse community built for Jewish people of Pittsburgh: three of our community's residents were victims of the Tree of Life Synagogue massacre on October 27, 2018, heightening my sympathies for the Jewish people and my disgust for the unfair way in which they have been mistreated, maligned, and massacred over the centuries.

This book is also intended to help the reader overcome the anachronistic way of thinking that projects our current mindset back into the mental framework of the first century, thinking that Christians have always been antisemitic, or that Christianity is opposed to Judaism. This work uses alternatively the Hebrew "Yeshua, the Messiah" and the Greek "Yesous, the Khristos, the Anointed One" to illustrate the bilingual ability of the Gospel writers and the tension between the Jewish and Greco-Roman worldviews. "Yesous" or "Iesous" is simply placing a Greek ending on "Yeshua," and "Messiah" translates into Greek as "the Khristos" which means "the Anointed One." But today, many people tend to think of "Jesus Christ" as a man whose given name is "Jesus" and his surname is "Christ." So we must try to uncover the foundations of our present unconscious biases and restructure our distorted worldview. This work aims to point out clearly the historicity, ministry, and most importantly, the deity of Yeshua, the Messiah, not as we might think of it anachronistically today in the nice, sanitized statements of the Nicene Creed, in our services, and in our prayers, but in the rough-and-tumble of confrontations with the first-century Jewish and Roman authorities.

Other examples of anachronistic thinking are Christ and the Apostles being depicted on the iconostases of Orthodox churches with bound books in their hands, but the bound book, the codex, was not invented until the fifth century A.D.; or the way modern preachers speak - "God says in Deuteronomy 10 verse 5..." as if God gave his revelation already divided up into chapters and verses, but these artificial divisions of scripture were not added until the Middle Ages. This versification leads us to think of God's revelation as a random collection of verses, little sound-bites, rather than a vast panorama, a narrative of human history and destiny. The full canon of the books of the Bible was only ratified at the Council of Hippo (A.D. 393), so for 360 years the Church relied largely on oral teaching being handed down ("traditioned") for the most part orally from one generation to the next: see 2 Thes. 2:15.

Even up into the Middle Ages, Bibles were laboriously copied by hand, each one requiring a year or more of painstaking labor, making each Bible a rare and precious item. Only in the mid-1400s did Gutenberg invent the metal movable-type printing press and Bibles began to be widely circulated. So a century later, when Martin Luther proclaimed his doctrine of "sola scriptura" and said that every cowherd and milkmaid could read and understand the Bible, he was thinking anachronistically, assuming that everyone from the first century onward could obtain a printed, bound Bible. But the doctrine of "sola scriptura" would have been simply impossible to apply in the first 15 centuries. We all see the world through the filters of our individual and societal experiences, so in that sense nobody can be completely objective, but at the very least we should strive to be aware of our filters in order to try to see the first-century world as it was then, not as if it were our world of today.

Think of the Jewish influence on Greek culture even before the first century: the Hebrew alphabet begins with the letters aleph, beth, gimel, and daleth - the same sounds and order as in the later Greek alphabet alpha, beta, gamma, and delta. And when this author explained to a Russian Evangelical pastor that the mostly-Greek-based Cyrillic alphabet which Russian uses contains a few Hebrew letters - tsadhe, sin, and shin - for sounds that do not exist in the Greek alphabet, the Russian pastor was shocked, because, as he joked: "We Russians aren't antisemitic, we just hate Jews!" Such an antipathy toward the race and culture that gave birth to Christianity is most certainly out of place, especially for Christian ministers. In contrast, the Orthodox Church retains to this day many features of Jewish synagogue worship: the directional orientation of the building, the menorah on the altar, the chanting of the Psalms, incense, candles, no instrumental music, the bema (ambon) where the scriptures are chanted, and the conciliar form of organization with a structured priestly hierarchy...

[To read the rest of this book, see all the Print and Electronic Versions.]

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BOOMERS' NEW RETIREMENT PROBLEM

 

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The recent Newsweek e-magazine article Boomers Have a New Retirement Problem tells us that both the "Boomers" and younger generations have a big problem: the "Baby Boomers" – post-WW2 people born from 1946 through 1964 – have lived through a peak in the U.S. economy and many have bought big houses with 3 or 4 bedrooms, a 2-car garage, nice landscaping, etc. Their home equity has increased tremendously, often over half a million dollars. But now they're "empty nesters" – their children are grown up, have children of their own, and maybe even grandkids. So what's the problem?

As the above article states, "But now, thanks to ... unfavorable conditions in the U.S. housing market, boomers face a new retirement problem: affordable and accessible homes in which to age. As a result, boomers are now 'aging in place' in their current homes – a trend likely to induce a knock-on effect for younger generations." What are these "unfavorable conditions" and the "knock-on effect"?

First, property taxes: as the (inflation-induced) dollar value of their homes has increased, so have their property taxes. And these Boomers are living on fixed incomes – a retired couple's median income is around $65,000, so property taxes and likely remaining mortgage payments can take a huge chunk of that.

The second problem is that many are "aging in place" – two people rattling around using only a fraction of the living space, not able to go upstairs to the bedrooms or go down to the basement, having difficulty even climbing the front steps, not able to care for the lawn, do home maintenance, etc. – simply because there's not enough accessible housing on the market today.

Third, the younger generation is facing a "knock-on effect" because the Boomers often can't sell their houses due to that lack of accessible housing for the elderly, creating a shortage of available houses for younger families, which drives up prices along with higher interest rates and higher property taxes. Also, there are many young families who should be investing in their own homes instead of paying rent but can't afford to buy one. What must be done about this catch-22 dilemma?

It's very expensive or flat-out impossible to retrofit an existing house with a ramp to all floors or an elevator: this is something that should be incorporated into the design of homes when they're first being built. We've carefully developed plans for multi-family accessible housing both for retirees who often have mobility issues and for families with a child or adult who has a mobility issue.

It's important to include able-bodied people of all age groups in these ARCs to check in with those residents who might need help. The fast-growing number of Boomers is about to overwhelm the government-provided services such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, which are strained to the limits right now and are projected to be insolvent in just a few years.

The cost for a ramp and/or an elevator can be shared among all families who live in a multiple-living-unit building, as well as sharing the cost for land, parking, outside walls, plumbing, roof, and maintenance. There should be a combination of one-bedroom, two-bedroom, and three-bedroom living units in order to accomodate singles, young married couples, larger families, and retired people. And most of all, they should have a common space for community gatherings including worship. Our 12-to-14-living-unit "ARC" (Agape Restoration Community) plans have been designed to meet all these requirements at a very reasonable cost.

You may feel when you're a young adult that it's too far in the future to begin thinking about such matters: it's hard enough getting started in adult life, so here's an idea that will give you a jumpstart: see "The Magic of Compound Interest." Don't rent! Start out small by buying a one-bedroom home in an ARC, or a "fixer-upper" or pre-fab two-bedroom home for $30,000 (yes, they're available!). Pay it off in six years and move up, do it again, and semi-retire when you're 40!

And when you're an older adult, you need to begin right away thinking about what happens as you age. The "young old" who are "empty-nesters" in their 50s and 60s can become trained in home healthcare through our one-year online "Social Ministry of the Church" program. It takes just a couple of hours per week to prepare for this oncoming "grey tsunami." And you need to get into accessible housing before your 70s: most older people will experience a few years of disability before they pass away. My wife and I moved into a second-floor condo when I was 70, but climbing 14 steps became too much for us, so when I was 80 we moved into a first-floor condo with no stairs, not even one step up into the building. I definitely do not recommend moving like this when you're 80! It took a big toll on our health. You can likely help care for others in your 50s and 60s, but later you likely won't be able to, so get prepared!

These three stages of adult life can all be combined in our ARC plans, where we can all live together in a Christian community and build each other up in the faith and physical well-being. To get our *free* series of 24 articles that explain the "why" and "how" of this whole process, please subscribe here: www.Agape-Restoration-Society.org/ARC/ – thanks in advance!

You can read this article in our newsletter at https://agape-restoration-society.org/ARC-News/a-n_2024-12-14.htm, and share it!

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THE PITFALLS OF MODERNITY

 

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(Click the photo.) A pitfall means falling off a cliff into a pit. As the article THE IDEOLOGY OF MODERNITY IS PULLING US OVER A DEMOGRAPHIC ABYSS explains, we're chasing after modernity's built-in goals of career success, financial security, conveniences and comforts, but we're failing to meet the 2.1 fertility rate required for any society to endure.

Birth control and abortion are the two biggest culprits. This means that the average woman needs to give birth to at least two or more babies, or else the population begins to fall. No society in human history has ever survived if its fertility rate remains below 1.6 for an extended period. And that "fatal pitfall" fertility rate now includes virtually all of the modern "industrialized" countries in the world.

The above article mentions another: Modernity's Self-Destruct Button. This button is built into modern society. We need to turn back to forms of society that have endured for thousands and thousands of years: living in harmony with nature, having large families, and preserving earth's resources instead of plundering them. This is called "permaculture" that tells us how one person can permanently live off 1/2 acre of land, or a community of 30 people can live off 15 acres of land: see How Much Land Does it Take to Feed One Person?

The recent U.S. political campaigning was full of anti-immigrant talk. But the simple fact is that we need immigrants, we need a new influx of willing workers, because we're not producing enough children. And we need to treat immigrants fairly:

"You shall not oppress a hired servant who is poor and needy, whether he be of your brothers, or of your foreigners who are in your land within your gates: that same day you shall give him his hire, neither shall the sun go down on it; for he is poor, and sets his heart on it: lest he cry against you to the Lord, and it be sin to you. The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin.

You shall not withhold the justice due to the foreigner, or to the fatherless, nor take the widow's clothing to pledge; but you shall remember that you were a bondservant in Egypt, and the Lord your God redeemed you there: therefore I command you to do this thing. When you reap your harvest in your field, and have forgot a sheaf in the field, you shall not go again to get it: it shall be for the foreigner, for the orphan and the widow; that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands.

When you beat your olive tree, you shall not go over the boughs again: it shall be for the foreigner, for the fatherless, and for the widow. When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, you shall not glean it after you: it shall be for the foreigner, for the orphan and the widow.You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt: therefore I command you to do this thing." (Deuteronomy 24:14-22)

This and similar Bible texts are often referred to by the pro-"undocumented immigrant" Christian left folks, encouraging immigration. That phrase "every man shall be put to death for his own sin" may seem a bit puzzling: why is it included with all these commands about caring for the poor and immigrants? Perhaps it's because the anti-"illegal aliens" Christian right folks spread the blame for the sins and offenses of a minority of those immigrants onto all of them, calling them all a bunch of thieves, rapists, murderers, and drug smugglers. However, the "golden mean" – the proper response to this – is that foreigners coming to live among us are welcome but also must obey our laws, including our laws about immigration:

“And if a stranger sojourns among you and would keep the Passover to the LORD, according to the statute of the Passover and according to its rule, so shall he do. You shall have one statute, both for the sojourner and for the native.” (Numbers 9:14)

“And if a stranger is sojourning with you, or anyone is living permanently among you, and he wishes to offer a food offering, with a pleasing aroma to the LORD, he shall do as you do. For the assembly, there shall be one statute for you and for the stranger who sojourns with you, a statute forever throughout your generations. You and the sojourner shall be alike before the LORD. One law and one rule shall be for you and for the stranger who sojourns with you.” (Num. 15:14-16)

(See "How to Relate to Foreigners Among Us" for the rest of my article that I wrote in January 2017 when we in the U.S. were facing a similar situation concerning immigration.)

You can also read this and more in our newsletter at https://agape-restoration-society.org/ARC-News/a-n_2024-11-30.htm, and share it!

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TWO LOADS OF ROCKS

 

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(Click the photos to watch the two videos!) In the two weeks since our last newsletter, Vision Complex's ARC (Agape Restoration Community) project in Tanzania has bought 16 hens and 4 roosters, so they'll not only have more eggs to sell, but also more chicks. They've already sold enough eggs to buy two loads of rocks for the foundation. Now they need $200 to feed the workers to carry the rocks and gravel to the trenches they've dug for the foundation, and mix and pour the cement... all by hand. And of course, the chickens need to be fed as well! We need your help! Can you donate for some people-food and chickenfeed? Please go to https://Agape-Restoration-Society.org/Vision-Complex and do what you can!

Sub-Saharan Africa is the only part of the world with sufficient human population to rely on manual labor. Why? It may be precisely because it is the "non-industrialized world." Did you notice the phrase "all by hand"? Think of all the back-breaking work involved: manually digging trenches for the foundation, carrying gravel and huge rocks by hand, mixing cement by hand, and making bricks by stomping in mud and putting it into forms: these people also grow their own food – they are in touch with nature, the real world. This all requires human strength and hard effort, whereas in the "industrialized world" of North America, Europe, and Asia we rely on machines and technology to do the hard physical labor so we can enjoy a "modern life" of ease and comfort. But this has led population decline by worshipping the things and careers that industrialization has produced and requires, rather than caring for people, especially for one's own family and neighbors.

As you will read in our newsletter articles below, the result of chasing after things instead of caring for people, namely raising our own families in the right way, is leading us to a demographic implosion: not enough babies are being born, so that within 20 years if not sooner, there won't be enough workers to support the ever-expanding proportion of elderly people. Thus, abortion and childlessness will inevitably lead to an unspoken policy of euthanasia of the elderly.

We have swallowed the line of (pseudo-)science and technology – "knowledge so-called" as in the KJV. We've bitten the bait, believed a false report, gone along with the crowd, and now we're hooked on a life of ease and comfort... and extinction:

1 "You shall not spread a false report. Do not join your hand with the wicked to be a malicious witness.
2 You shall not follow a crowd to do evil; neither shall you testify in court to side with a multitude to pervert justice;
3 neither shall you favor a poor man in his cause.
4 If you meet your enemy's ox or his donkey going astray, you shall surely bring it back to him again.
5 If you see the donkey of him who hates you fallen down under his burden, do not leave him, you shall surely help him with it.
6 You shall not deny justice to your poor people in their lawsuits.
7 Keep far from a false charge, and do not kill the innocent and righteous: for I will not justify the wicked.
8 You shall take no bribe, for a bribe blinds those who have sight and perverts the words of the righteous.
9 You shall not oppress an alien, for you know the heart of an alien, seeing you were aliens in the land of Egypt.
10 For six years you shall sow your land, and shall gather in its increase,
11 but the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow, that the poor of your people may eat; and what they leave the animal of the field shall eat. In like manner you shall deal with your vineyard and with your olive grove.
12 Six days you shall do your work, and on the seventh day you shall rest, that your ox and your donkey may have rest, and the son of your handmaid, and the alien may be refreshed.
13 Be careful to do all things that I have said to you; and do not invoke the name of other gods, neither let them be heard out of your mouth." (Exodus 23:1-13)

You can read the rest in our newsletter at https://agape-restoration-society.org/ARC-News/a-n_2024-11-16.htm, and share it!

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BUILDING BIGGER BARNS

 

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When a man came to Jesus complaining that his brother wasn't giving him the correct share of their inheritance, the Lord told this parable – "The ground of a certain rich man brought forth abundantly...." Go ahead and click on the barn to read the rest of it! The point isn't that we should not have any "barns" – savings for the future – but that it must not be the focus of our lives. Look at verse 21 – "So is he who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God." We should be laying up our riches in heaven, not just on the earth. The second greatest commandment – "Love your neighbor as yourself" assumes that we love and take care of ourselves, but too often we focus exclusively on ourselves and forget our neighbor, ignoring the whole world of hurt all around us!

Imagine that you woke up one morning and learned you had just won the Megabucks lottery: you have $200,000,000 in your account. What would you do with it? In Ecclesiastes 5:10-11, King Solomon wrote – "He who loves silver shall not be satisfied with silver; nor he who loves abundance, with increase: this also is vanity. When goods increase, those who eat them are increased; and what advantage is there to its owner, except to feast on them with his eyes?" To sum it up:
    1. Those who love money will never have enough.
    2. How meaningless to think that wealth brings true happiness!
    3. The more you have, the more people come to help you spend it.
    4. So what good is wealth – except to see it slip through your fingers!

So now that you've done it all and had it all... what's next? "As he came forth naked from his mother's womb, he shall go again as he came, and shall take nothing for his labor, which he may carry away in his hand" (verse 15). I've never seen a U-Haul being buried along with a coffin at the cemetery! So...

"Whoever wants to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it; and whoever will lose his life for My sake and the gospel's will save it. For what does it profit a man, to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul? For what will a man give in exchange for his soul?" (Mark 8:34-37).

The Apostles and leaders of the Early Church laid heavy emphasis on not striving after riches. St. James, step-brother of the Lord, wrote in his Epistle (ch. 2:1-20 and ch. 5:1-5) decrying those who profess Christ but live in luxury while neglecting the poor, as St. Clement (2nd cent.) echos this in his essay "Who is the Rich Man That Shall Be Saved?" (See www.Agape-Biblia.org/literatura/#rich-man-saved). The title of Clement's essay refers to the incident in Matthew 19:16-22 where a certain rich man came to Jesus asking "What must I do to be saved?" He was a religious Jew who kept all ten commandments, but not the second greatest one – "Love your neighbor as yourself" So Jesus told him – "Go and sell what you have, and give to the poor, and come follow Me!" This story is so important that it's repeated in Mark and Luke as well.

St. Basil the Great (4th cent.) composed his famous sermon "To the Rich" on this same scripture from Matthew, quoting the passage in full in the start of his sermon (See www.Agape-Biblia.org/literatura/#to-the-rich). St. Gregory the Theologian (4th cent.), considered by the Early Church as the greatest theologian since the Apostle John, wrote his essay "Love of Poverty" (See www.Agape-Biblia.org/literatura/#love-of-poverty). And St. John Chrysostom (4th cent.), called "The Golden Tongue" because of his many eloquent and compelling sermons, penned his "Sermon on Almsgiving" on this same subject (See www.Agape-Biblia.org/literatura/#almsgiving). These are considered to be the Three Greatest Church Fathers, whose writings are some of the most powerful expository sermons on the Scriptures.

In more recent times, the eminent theologian Protopresbyter Georges Florovsky, a Russian emigre' who fled to Paris after the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, wrote "St. John Chrysostom: the Prophet of Charity" (See www.Agape-Biblia.org/literatura/#chrysostom-charity). Chrysostom wrote often about freedom: man is created in God's image with a free will to choose and rationality to choose freely what is best, not merely to satisfy one's own desires. To conclude:

"To the angel of the church in Laodicea write: 'The Amen, the Faithful and True Witness, the Head of God's creation, says these things: "I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will vomit you out of my mouth. Because you say, 'I am rich, and have gotten riches, and have need of nothing,' and don't know that you are the wretched one, miserable, poor, blind, and naked.

I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, that you may become rich; and white garments, that you may clothe yourself, and that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed; and eye salve to anoint your eyes, that you may see. As many as I love, I reprove and chasten. Be zealous therefore, and repent.

Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, then I will come in to him, and will dine with him, and he with me. He who overcomes, I will give to him to sit down with me on my throne, as I also overcame, and sat down with my Father on his throne.' He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches" (Revelation 2:14-22).

"You can do something. You can't do everything, but that's not an excuse to do nothing!" So far, people have given almost nothing for Vision Complex's ARC (Agape Restoration Community) project in Tanzania. Our small non-profit has given over $10,000 to start laying the foundation for the ARC. So we sent another $250 for 16 chickens, 2 roosters, and a chicken coop to raise and sell chickens and eggs (watch the video!), but now we're almost broke. We need your help! Can you donate some chicken feed? Please go to https://Agape-Restoration-Society.org/Vision-Complex and do what you can!

 

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DON'T THROW OUT THE BABY WITH THE BATHWATER!

 

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"You can do something. You can't do everything, but that's not an excuse to do nothing!" We see so many pleas in the media to support this or that cause and often our eyes glaze over, or we receive so many pieces of junk mail asking for donations, etc., that often we just throw them in the wastebasket... especially during election season: it's too much for us to handle! But here's a really worthy cause that deserves your full attention and response:

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The volunteers at Vision Complex Orphanage and School in Tanzania have made this huge pile of bricks to build the ARC. They have plenty of good clay soil to mix with water, place in forms, and bake them into bricks.

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Here's some of the cement, reinforcing rods, and boards we've provided to use for the foundation. They will need more, but these are a start so you can see that they're pushing ahead with this project.

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After starting to clear the land for the foundation, they realized that this pile of huge rocks was too big to break up by hand, so they moved the staked-out ground and cleared some more land.

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(video:) Here they are, after clearing more land and marking where the foundation will be laid.

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(video:) The volunteers are working for free: after all, it's the children of this town, Bunda, who are going to school and being cared for at Vision Complex. But digging, carrying rocks, gravel, sand, cement, and water is hard work, so the men have to be fed!

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(video:) It's painful for me to imagine carrying such huge rocks, because I injured my back 46 years ago doing the same thing while building a retaining wall for our garden. So pray for the safety of these volunteers!

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(video:) They're filling in the forms with cement to hold the rocks, gravel, and sand together. They have enough of these materials to build a part of the foundation to show you that this is the real deal, not a just pipe dream or a scam.

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The 23rd chapter of Jeremiah is full of warnings to and judgement of false shepherds and false prophets. Frequently I come across such self-appointed "prophets" - people on the Internet who "command and declare" this or that as the word of the Lord. Here's what the real Prophet Jeremiah wrote about this:

"I haven't sent these prophets, yet they ran: I didn't speak to them, yet they prophesied. But if they had stood in my council, then they would have caused my people to hear my words, and would have turned them from their evil way, and from the evil of their doings. Am I a God at hand, says the Lord, and not a God afar off? Can any hide himself in secret places so that I shall not see him? says the Lord. Don't I fill heaven and earth? says the Lord. I have heard what the prophets have said, who prophesy lies in my name, saying, 'I have dreamed, I have dreamed.' How long shall this be in the heart of the prophets who prophesy lies, even the prophets of the deceit of their own heart" (Jer. 23:22-26).

The problem today, however, is there are so many of these false pastors and false bishops that we tend to generalize that they're all rotten apples, and thus discredit the good and genuine bishops, priests, pastors, and helpers. I have examined closely and tested Simon John's work at Vision Complex: as you see here, he's the real deal!

Simon and his volunteer workers have been working hard during the last few weeks, but now they're out of rocks... and funds. They have the cement, sand, gravel, and reinforcing rods, but need more rocks, and 20-liter and 80-liter water containers to carry water from the 1,000-liter tanks that we already provided to the construction site. Right now they need $5,000 to finish the foundation. Then they can use the bricks to start building the walls. Our small non-profit organization has provided much more than that, but now we don't have even that much in our account. So...

"You can do something. You can't do everything, but that's not an excuse to do nothing!" Now is the time to DO SOMETHING! Go to our →Vision Complex← page and donate what you can: whether it's $5 or $50 or $500: every buck and brick help Build the ARC!