Follow the Fire

Why do the nations rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? – Ps 2:1

In Gen 3:15, the LORD prophesied that an offspring of Eve (the Messiah) shall destroy the Serpent. But how can one identify this “seed of the woman” out of the millions and billions of people that eventually descended from Eve? One way of identifying Him is through a method I call, “Following the Fire”.

Using this method, all one needs to do is observe the people group, or family that are suffering the most vicious, recurring attack on their existence.

From the inexplicable barrenness of the biologically unrelated wives of the Patriarchs; to the ordered killing of all Hebrew infant males in Egypt; to the enforced mixed breeding of the Northern Kingdom of Israel with other races by the Assyrians; down to King Herod’s massacre of all boys two years and below in an attempt to get just one child… it’s easy to follow the fire of the attacks of the Serpent to identify where the Messiah will likely emerge from.

This method is also very useful when you want to identify key, most vital doctrines of the Bible. All you have to do is “Follow the Fire” of attacks on scripture. Wherever the attack is focused on, the more likely it contains something fundamental to faith.  

When it comes to the doctrine of the Trinity, for example, the attack is always focused on the Son (how many books against the Holy Spirit have you seen?). When it’s the life of Jesus, the cannonade is generally trained on the Crucifixion. (The Secularists love His parables and the Muslims adore His miraculous life… but say He died and rose again, and the smiles disappear).

“Following the Fire” can be a very fulfilling exercise; because it means the Devil has done all the thematic background study of the Bible for you and has highlighted the “Essential Areas” for you to focus your time on.

So from now, whenever you see a particular verse, Bible character or doctrine attracting an unusual amount of press among people who are clearly not Believers, you know you really need to pause and look at it/them more closely again. Chances are, you’ll discover a treasure trove of revelation that the Enemy is trying to discredit long before you stumbled on it.

AMEN.

More Blessings await you today; you’ll not miss them in Jesus’ Name.
GREG ELKAN

The Devolution of Adam

In the day that you eat thereof you shall surely die. – Gen 2:17

The Bible teaches the truth of Evolution – negative evolution that is. Contrary to what our biology textbooks tout as irrefutable “fact”, Man and chimpanzees do NOT have a common ancestor. In Genesis 1, when God was creating the animals, He spoke to the waters to bring up the fish and the birds (1:20); He spoke to the ground to bring up all kinds of land animals and creatures (1:24); but when He wanted to create Man, He spoke to HIMSELF! (1:26).

Evolution tells us that we were once oafish cave men who are only now getting better. The Bible teaches that we were made in God’s image and are getting worse!

Even after the Fall, Man was still so intellectually advanced that he excelled in math, science and art. The Egyptian pyramids were composed of enormous 20-tonne limestone blocks that were cut to an incredible precision of plus or minus 1/16^th of an inch!

Ancient languages were much more complicated than modern ones! Any person today who can fluently read Sanskrit (the language of ancient India) would be considered a genius; yet that was their normal language. Some ancient languages would alternately write backward and forward: one line from left to right, and the next line from right to left, all the while using no paragraphs, and not even spaces between word and sentences! Try asking a schoolboy to write and read like that today.

Even our bodies are degenerating. A birthday of 200 years today will set a world record, yet Adam lived up to 930 and was alive to see the great-grandson of his great-grandson (Enoch)!

From the moment Adam sinned, our spirits became dead, our mental faculties began spiralling downwards and our bodies began to deteriorate. That’s why we need the Last Adam, Jesus. In Christ our spirits are recreated, are minds are renewed and at His return, we’ll inherit new bodies that will live forever.

For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. (1Co 15:22) Halleluyah!

AMEN.

More Blessings await you today; you’ll not miss them in Jesus’ Name.

GREG ELKAN

Logical Fallacies: PERSONAL INCREDULITY

With God all things are possible. – Mat 19:26

Logical fallacies are flaws in reasoning. They’re used, not necessarily out of ignorance, but out of a devious attempt to sidestep truth and win an argument.

The final sample fallacy charged against us by secular/liberal scholars, but for which they’re guilty of, is Personal Incredulity. This is saying that because one finds something difficult to understand, it’s therefore not true.

A good area where Believers have been lambasted for using this fallacy is in Biological Evolution. When we say we find it hard to believe how, just through random things happening over time, a fish somehow turned into a human being, we’re usually looked upon with some sort of snobbish pity. Like we’re some morons who lack the intricate and special knowledge needed to even begin to grasp how nature works.

However, these same Atheists will tell you that they find it INCREDULOUS that a God somewhere somehow SPOKE this World into existence!

To take it further, they claim we’re expecting too much of them when we ask them to believe that a virgin conceived, that Jesus walked on water, or that He rose from the dead.

However, this is the very “Personal Incredulity” they accuse us of; because that they don’t know HOW these things could happen doesn’t automatically mean these things CANNOT happen.

Here’s the hypocrisy. Millions of dollars are being spent today on research into human Parthenogenesis (female conception without a male); yet when we say it happened in Mary, they say, “Well, we KNOW that’s impossible!”

“Personal Incredulity” – when properly analysed – isn’t really saying, “I can’t believe” but actually “I DON’T want to believe”. It’s a sign of spiritual blindness.

All the fallacies mentioned this week are simply Fallen Man’s attempt to avoid the Truth. Like typical school bullies, they use them to attack Believers in order to hide their own insecurities.

That is why we need to, prayerfully, approach them in love and with understanding; hoping that their eyes be opened to see their need for God: the very same God that loved them and gave His Son to die for their sins.

AMEN.

More Blessings await you today; you’ll not miss them in Jesus’ Name.

GREG ELKAN 

Logical Fallacies: APPEAL TO EMOTION

 “Argue your case. Get together and decide what to say... For there is no other God but me, a Righteous God and Saviour” – Is 45:21 (NLTse)

An “Appeal to Emotion” fallacy occurs when the speaker is Manipulating an emotional response in place of a valid or compelling argument.

Appeals-to-Emotion include appeals to fear, envy, pity, guilt, etc. However, a valid and reasoned argument may sometimes have an emotional aspect. The fallacy only occurs when emotion is used to obscure or replace REASON.

A good example of this is the Doctrine of Hell.

The core of our evangelism message is an emotional appeal to sinners warning them of  Hell. Yet, there are several ‘Christian’ organisations today that either preach that Hell does not exist, or that Hell is not everlasting. When stripped to its bare essentials, their argument can be reduced to one premise: “How can a loving God punish His creation for eternity?”

While this is nice emotional logic, it ignores the REALITY, both of Man’s wilful rebellion and the deliverance from that Hell provided for in the Cross.

It also ignores the implication of a Sin-infested Universe and presumes to wish away Divine Justice by pulling at God’s ‘heartstrings’. However, reality tells us that any society that bases its justice system on Emotion will collapse.

The Appeal-to-Emotion argument against Hell is nothing more than the world’s effort to stay in sin and snub God’s continued outstretched arm to it.

We, on the other hand, use emotion rightly, by basing it on FACT: ALL have sinned; God took the just punishment of our sins on Himself at the Cross; those who still reject this solution have nothing left but eternal separation from Him.

 “Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men;” (2Co 5:11).

AMEN.

More Blessings await you today; you’ll not miss them in Jesus’ Name.

GREG ELKAN

Logical Fallacies: FALSE CAUSE

Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools; – Rom 1:22

A “False Cause” fallacy is presuming that a real or perceived relationship between things means that one is the cause of the other. It’s the confusing of Correlation (things happening together or in sequence) with Causation (that one thing actually causes the other to happen).

False Cause fallacies is typically what we should expect from illiterate persons and backward cultures. But incredulously, this fallacy is the basis of a theory that has been thrust to the centre of modern science: Evolution.

Absolutely Everything – from the creation of the Universe, to the formation of the elements, to biodiversity, to even culture and religion – is today explained and viewed through an Evolutionary lens.

In ZOOLOGY, we observe the striking similarity between the chimpanzee and Man; and therefore conclude that they both share a common ancestor.

In CHEMISTRY, we see that Hydrogen and Helium are the lightest elements with 1 and 2 protons per atom respectively. We then notice that lithium, which is slightly heavier, has 3 protons. This goes on and on until we reach the heaviest, Uranium, with 92 protons. Conclusion? All the heavy elements were formed billions of years ago FROM the lighter ones!

In COSMOLOGY, we observe that the material from the Moon’s surface is similar to those found in Hawaii and Iceland; Conclusion? The Moon and Earth were once ONE planet billions of years ago!

These are just three out of numerous False Causes – logical fallacies – that though sound childish, are religiously held on to by eminent scholars. Why? Because the alternative explanation – a Designer – is unacceptable.

When Believers insist that God directly and intelligently created this Universe, we are often scorned and ridiculed as being scientifically illiterate and culturally backward; but few people are aware of the crass fairy-tale nature of the current theories explaining the realty around us.

Let’s not acquiesce to intellectual bullying. Rather than postulate that EVERYTHING came from NOTHING, it’s more intellectually gratifying to hold that “In the beginning Someone (God) created the heaven and the earth”.

AMEN.

More Blessings await you today; you’ll not miss them in Jesus’ Name.

GREG ELKAN 

Logical Fallacies: BANDWAGON

God forbid: yea, let God be true, but every man a liar; – Rom 3:4

In the study of Logical Fallacy, the term BANDWAGON is used for any Appeal to popularity or the fact that many people do something as an attempted form of validation.

Liberal scholars say the flaw in this argument is that the popularity of an idea has absolutely no bearing on its validity. According to them, if it did, then the Earth would have made itself FLAT for most of history to accommodate this popular belief.

First of all, the Earth has not been considered “flat for most of history”. The prophet Isaiah,  2,700 years ago (and 300 years before their revered Aristotle even though of it), declared that the Earth was round (Is 40:22).

Secondly, they are guilty of Bandwagon themselves.

Christians are accused of arrogant bigotry because we insist Jesus is the ONLY way to be saved. They retort that it’s silly of us to presume that the majority of the human population is flat out wrong.

But when Peter warns that if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear? (1Pe 4:18); he doesn’t seem to shrink from the reality that majority of humanity are in peril of damnation.

TRUTH is not relative to the consensus of the majority. Indeed, when it comes to godliness, history has shown that the majority have rarely chosen God. That’s why our Lord says in Mat 7:13 that we should “Enter in at the narrow gate: for Wide Is The Gate, and Broad Is The Way, that leads to destruction, and MANY there be who go in there.”

John is most categorical about this, he says “We know that we are of God, and The Whole World lies in wickedness;” (1Jn 5:19).

Therefore, let’s not allow the Enemy’s BANDWAGON fallacy deflate our missionary and evangelical drive to reach out to the ‘majority’ around us who are living in Darkness.

AMEN.

More Blessings await you today; you’ll not miss them in Jesus’ Name.

GREG ELKAN

Confronting the Duplicity of Intellectual Attacks on Christianity

Pilate said unto him, What is truth? – John 18:38

From the very first days after Pentecost, Christianity has always been under attack. Whether it is the full frontal persecution of the Sanhedrin or the subtle corrupting infiltration of Gnostics teachers, the Church has always had to confront contrary forces.

Today, while Christianity confronts militant Islam and communist government policies in Africa and Asia, it’s facing probably its greatest assault ever in the West from a liberal/secular agenda that aims to diminish its influence through academic and legislative persecution and intellectual ridicule. One way they do this is through the alleged “Logical Fallacies” of Christians and the Bible.

A logical fallacy is a flaw in reasoning. It’s usually used in weak or tenuous arguments to deceive the listener. Logical fallacies that have been alleged of Christians, the Church and the Bible include terms like Black or White, Anecdotal,  Appeal to Authority, Strawman, False Cause, Appeal to Emotion, Ambiguity, Burden Of Proof, Special Pleading, Ad Hominem, Personal Incredulity, Slippery Slope, etc.

Christians have over the years tried to refute these allegations. However, it’s sometimes expedient to confront the challengers head on and to point out the duplicities and hypocrisy in their own logic.

Peter tells us in 1Pe 3:14,15 that we should not be afraid when we’re persecuted for righteousness’ sake; instead he says to “sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be READY always to give an answer to every man that asks you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear”.

When we do this, we realise that it’s not Christianity that is antithetical to reason or logic, but the fake and false Lie of sinful, godless men. There’re no relative truths, just one TRUTH; and that holds for whoever has it, regardless of his or her education, belief system or social standing.

AMEN.

More Blessings await you today; you’ll not miss them in Jesus’ Name.

GREG ELKAN