<< Previous 3. Domination by a few strong members. The process by which a man (it’s almost always a man) becomes a church “boss” is subtle and rarely, if ever, the result of a hostile takeover. Say the pastor of a small church leaves for another town. The pastorless congregation looks within its membership for leaders to rise up and "take care of things" until a new pastor arrives. So two or three faithful and mature (we assume) members are…
<< Previous 7. Bad health. Anyone who has spent time in more than a few churches can see that some are just unhealthy. And by that, we do not mean they are small—they are sick. You can be small and healthy; behold the hummingbird. An unhealthy church is known more by what it does than by a list of characteristics and attributes. A church that runs its preachers off every year or two is unhealthy. A church that is constantly…
THE WELLS OF CONTENTION AND HATRED No sooner had Isaac’s herdsman dug out one of the wells than the people of the land began to strive with them saying the water was theirs. “And the herdmen of Gerar did strive with Isaac’s herdmen, saying, The water is ours: and he called the name of the well Esek; because they strove with him” (Genesis 26:20). Isaac named the well Esek, which means strife or contention. In the life of the Christian the…
THE INVALUABLE LESSONS FROM ABRAHAM “And Abraham journeyed from thence toward the south country, and dwelled between Kadesh and Shur, and sojourned in Gerar”(Genesis 20:1). Isaac in his own walk with God was living in the same place where his father had dwelt years earlier. God was about to show Himself mighty on Isaac’s behalf. In this place where Abraham had faced tremendous trials and had overcome, so Isaac would experience the same victories with God’s help. When Abraham lived…
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His rejection of biblical creation by God Charles Darwin was a man of his times. The 19th century saw many major social upheavals—political, philosophical, economic and religious—and Darwin was deeply shaped by them. His grandfather Erasmus Darwin, a non-believer who had written on evolution, and his father Robert, also a nonbeliever, had great influence on him. The death of his beloved daughter Annie at the age of 10 greatly diminished any faith he had in God. Some 11 years after…
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His theory of the tree of life The only drawing Darwin had in his book The Origin of Species is that of the supposed "tree of life." It pictures the imaginary transformation of a common ancestor (at the root level) into the different species we see today (at the twig level). Yet the drawing is actually based on slight variations within a species after many generations, and then he adds some suppositions. Again Darwin went well beyond the evidence. He…
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His theory of human beings evolving from apes In his second-most famous book, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, Darwin proposed that human beings evolved from some type of ape closely related to a chimpanzee. But when you look closely, you see an enormous amount of difference between chimpanzees and man. The idea, so commonly thought, that we share 99 percent of our DNA with chimps has been refuted with the deciphering of the chimpanzee genome….
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His theory of homology In his studies, Darwin noticed that different types of creatures shared some common features, such as the five fingers of a human hand and the five digits of a bat’s wing or of a dolphin’s fin. He postulated that this similarity in different species, which he called "homology," was evidence for a common ancestry. Yet this argument is based on an analogy that’s quite weak since the fossil record shows no gradual evolution of these limbs…
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His discounting of the Cambrian explosion Darwin was aware of what is called the "Cambrian explosion"—fossils of a bewildering variety of complex life-forms appearing suddenly, without predecessors, in the same low level of the fossil record. This obviously did not fit his evolutionary model of simple-to-complex life. Instead of a few related organisms appearing early in the fossil record as he hoped, there was an explosion of life—where the various main body types (called phyla) of living creatures seem to…
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His failure to see the limits of variation of species Darwin got the idea about natural selection in part from observing artificial selection. For instance, he noted the way pigeon breeders came up with a great variety of pigeons. Yet we should remember, they are still all classified as pigeons! He thought that from this variety, given enough time, pigeons could eventually evolve into some other type of birds, such as eagles or vultures, and gradually, even to other creatures…