Three Words To Help You Understand The Christian Life

A message from Billy Graham

Some people doubt that they are actually Christians. They want to be, but feel like they are missing the joy of the Christian faith. The dreadful uncertainty that haunts many people grows out of misunderstanding what the Christian experience is. Some people don’t seem to know the nature of Christian conversion, while others have been misinformed concerning conversion and seek an experience that is not Biblical. Many confuse faith with feeling.

Faith always implies an object—that is, when we believe, we must believe something. That something I call the “fact.” Now let me give you three Words that will help you understand the Christian life: fact, faith, and feeling. They come in this order, and the order is essential. In this order, you will have the joy and confidence of one who can say, “I know whom I have believed” (2 Timothy 1:12, NIV).

First, you are saved through a personal faith in the Gospel of Jesus Christ as defined in the Scriptures. The Gospel refers to the news of Christ’s death and resurrection in order to pay the penalty for our sins and provide a way to eternal life. 

The Growing Divide

Americans increasingly see the country as more divided than at any time since the Civil War. Pew Research Center polling reveals a sharp rise in partisan hostility: in 2022, 72% of Republicans and 63% of Democrats viewed the opposing party as more immoral than other Americans—up dramatically from 47% and 35% in 2016.

Johanna Dunaway, research director at the University’s Institute for Democracy, Journalism and Citizenship and professor of political science at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, says her interpretations of the research on this issue “is that media effects exist, but they don’t work the way people often assume—with media doing all the persuading. Media in all forms respond to audience preferences and behaviors as much as the other way around. Unfortunately, the patterns of information we end up being exposed to still exacerbate divisions.”

She says the blame is tied to the economic model of today’s media landscape. “Underlying media emphasis on the extreme and outrageous is that most digital media relies on attention metrics like clicks and because competition for the public’s attention is so intense. Media outlets face strong economic incentives to publish and promote the most attention-grabbing content,” she says.

Turning our attention back to the 2022 Pew Research study, it is clear that there has been a rise in the shares in both parties who describe their co-partisans in positive terms – saying they are more moral, open-minded and honest than other Americans.

Leaders Tell The Truth

Leaders are involved in one of the most morally significant callings on earth, and nothing the leader touches is without moral meaning and importance. While the leader shares the same basic moral requirements as everyone else, there are certain virtues that the leader simply cannot do without.

In making us in his image, God created human beings as moral creatures. Our minds are constantly in a moral mode of thinking and reasoning. Our consciences demand attention, and we are continually observing others around us for moral signals.

Our Creator gave us laws, principles, precepts, and commandments that guide us, convict us, and protect us. Christian leaders know to be thankful for the common morality that is revealed in nature and has been recognized in some form in virtually every civilization and culture. We are also thankful for the specific moral instruction given to us in the Bible through the commandments and statutes and laws that frame our Christian moral knowledge.

Furthermore, we must recognize the importance of the moral order represented by the government, which, after all, was also given to us by our Creator in order that we might live in societies of order and peace. If these structures of law and morality did not exist, leadership would be impossible.

What Is Dispensationalism? | by Keith Mathison

Dispensationalism is a popular and widespread way of reading the Bible. It originated in the nineteenth century in the teaching of John Nelson Darby and was popularized in the United States through the Bible Conference movement. Its growth was spurred on even more through the publication of the Scofield Reference Bible, which was published in 1909. Scofield’s Bible contributed to the spread of dispensationalism because it included study notes written from a distinctively dispensationalist perspective. The founding of Dallas Theological Seminary in 1924 by Lewis Sperry Chafer provided an academic institution for the training of pastors and missionaries in the dispensationalist tradition. Some of the most notable dispensationalist authors of the twentieth century, including John F. Walvoord, Charles C. Ryrie, and J. Dwight Pentecost, taught at Dallas Seminary.

Dispensationalist theology is perhaps best known for its distinctive eschatological doctrines, particularly the doctrine of the pre-tribulation rapture of the church. According to this doctrine, this present church age will be followed by a seven-year period of tribulation. Before the tribulation begins (thus “pre-tribulation”), the church will be caught up to heaven where believers will be with Christ until the second coming, which occurs at the end of the tribulation. At that time, they will return with Christ, who will then inaugurate His millennial kingdom (dispensationalists are thus also premillennialists).