Last Sunday, a young preacher named Nickson Ngwira stood in front of his small congregation in the village of Mpamba, Malawi, and taught the people a song in their Chichewa language. Nobody knew the words because they were all new converts to Christianity.
National Suicide Prevention week is this week. Jim Denison, co-founder of Denison Forum, pastor, author and digital-ministry leader, offers helpful insight on what the Bible says about suicide.
I’ve never prayed that God would kill anybody. I know the Lord is compassionate, even toward His enemies. Second Peter 3:9 (NASB) says God is patient, “not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.”
This week I did a video call with a gifted young man named Billy who serves on the staff of a growing church in South Africa. He has a big heart of compassion for people. He knows how to make disciples. And he’s a great communicator. I told him I would love it if he were my pastor—even though he’s only 32.
We live in a free country where certain rights are guaranteed—freedom of religion, the right to assemble and freedom of speech, for example. But a storm is brewing today that threatens to blow away those rights. We are experiencing “cancel culture.”
This has been the most spiritually intense season I’ve ever lived through. We’ve only reached the midpoint of this year, yet many of us are ready for 2020 to be over. First there was the coronavirus lockdown in March, then George Floyd was killed in Minnesota in May—and riots erupted amid peaceful protests. Now, medical experts say a second surge of the virus is heading our way, just in time for the presidential election.
Put on your seat belts, my friends. I don’t expect the second half of this year to be any easier.
Back in the 1940s, people believed Adolf Hitler was the Antichrist because he murdered more than 6 million Jews. A couple of decades later, Americans spread the rumor that Communist leader Leonid Brezhnev was the true Antichrist. Then in 1976, the popular movie The Omen fueled the idea that the Antichrist might emerge from the United States.
It was in the fall of 1987. I had moved to Mesquite, Texas, to take a position with Church on the Rock in Rockwall. My life had been turned upside down; everything was falling apart.
More than 400 police officers were injured defending Americans from violent rioters. Now the defended are demanding the police be defunded.
