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Xavier

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Everything posted by Xavier

  1. Well, Wow, this is good news. Do pray for millions more to come to know and love Jesus Christ by faith, and to daily grow and persevere in His Love forever. Your thoughts on the report? Taken from: https://www.christianheadlines.com/contributors/michael-foust/christianity-booming-atheism-declining-around-the-world-report-says.html "Christianity Booming, Atheism Declining around the World, Report Says The headlines might declare that Christianity is declining in the United States, but new research shows it’s growing faster than the population around the world – and atheism and agnosticism are on a gradual decline. The 2019 Status of Global Christianity report shows there were 2.5 billion Christians in the world as of mid-2019 – a major increase from the 1.98 billion Christians in 2000 and more than double the number of Christians (1.2 billion) in 1970. Christianity is growing worldwide at a rate of 1.27 percent each year and outpacing population growth (1.20 percent) – and is booming in Africa (2.37 percent), Asia (2.79 percent) and Latin America (2.29 percent). By comparison, there were 138 million atheists around the world in mid-2019 – slightly more than the 137 million in 2000 but less than the 165 million in 1970. Atheism’s annual growth (.04 percent) is less than that of the population, and the number of atheists worldwide is projected to decline to 132 million in 2025. Agnosticism and those affiliated with the “nonreligionists” category also are on the descent, according to the report. The Status of Global Christianity report is released by the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. A Pew Research Center study this month showed the percentage of American adults who call themselves Christian has declined the past decade, from 77 percent to 65 percent, while the percentage of U.S. adults who identify as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular” has risen from 17 percent to 26 percent in that same span. Globally, though, the data is opposite of the Pew data, according to the Status of Global Christianity report. There were 716 million agnostics in the world as of mid-2019, but by 2025 that is projected to fall to 707 million. Nonreligionists numbered 854 million this year but are expected to fall to 839 million by 2025. Much of Christianity’s growth is due to its surge in other continents. Africa (119 million) and Asia (160 million) each have more Christians than North America (100 million). Among Christian traditions, evangelicalism (2.19 percent) and Pentecostalism/charismatic Christianity (2.26 percent) are growing faster than Protestantism (1.61 percent) and Roman Catholicism (1.02 percent). Despite the positive data for Christianity, the report showed its growth in cities isn’t as dramatic. The global urban population is growing at a rate of 2.15 percent, more than the growth of Christianity in those cities (1.58 percent)."
  2. All who are saved are saved by Grace. All who are condemned are condemned justly. Predestination is gratuitous, purely from the Grace of God: Titus 3:5 "Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost;" Reprobation is deserved, owing to persistent rejection of Grace: 2 Thess 2:12 That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness." No one is lost except because of their free-willed rejection of the Truth and Grace that came through Jesus Christ. But free-will does not save us, the Grace of God, which transforms our free will, and enables us to do all our good works in God and His Grace, saves us.
  3. Here is a Creation Science Textbook (from about 1920) that exposed the Piltdown Fraud before evolutionists and secularists caught up some 33 years later. We know bad doctrine by its fruits. When ideas produce atheism, godless and hedonistic living, we know from those bad fruits that it is not True or Good. "So baneful has been the effect of teaching evolution as a proven hypothesis, that multitudes have been led into infidelity and atheism. Prof. James H. Leuba, of Bryn Mawr College, Pa. sent a questionnaire to 1000 of the most prominent scientists teaching sciences relating to evolution. The replies indicate that more than one-half do not believe in a personal God, nor the immortality of the soul--beliefs almost universal even in the heathen world. So pernicious is this doctrine of evolution that more than one-half of the professors who teach it and kindred subjects, are infidels and atheists and farther from God than the ignorant heathen. And while we are happy in the conviction that the great majority of professors and teachers of other subjects are Christians, yet one or two atheists or infidels are sufficient to make havoc of the faith of many, in a great college or university. A doctrine so abhorrent to the conscience, so contrary to the well nigh universal belief, and so fruitful of evil, certainly can not be true. Small wonder is it that students are fast becoming infidels and atheists, and we shudder as we think of the coming generation. A great responsibility rests upon the authorities who employ such teachers. The answers of the students in seven large representative colleges and universities to Prof. Leuba's questionnaire, show that while only 15% of the Freshmen have abandoned the Christian religion, 30% of the Juniors and over 40% of the Seniors have abandoned the Christian faith. Note the steady and rapid growth of infidelity and atheism as a result of this pernicious theory. Will Christian parents patronize or support or endow institutions that give an education that is worse than worthless? What the colleges teach today the world will believe tomorrow. It is the privilege and duty of parents to send their children to institutions that are safe. Atheism, under its own name, has never had many to embrace it. Its only hope is to be tolerated and believed under some other name. In Russia, no man is allowed to belong to the ruling (Communist) party unless he is an atheist. It will be a sorry world when "scientific" atheism wins, under the name of evolution.No one has a moral right to believe what is false, much less to teach it, under the specious plea of freedom of thought ... Most of the writers who advocated evolution became atheists or infidels; most of the professors who teach it, believe neither in God nor the immortality of the soul; and the number of students discarding Christianity rose from 15% in the Freshman year to 40% in the Senior. What more proof is needed?" http://ldolphin.org/wmwilliams.html
  4. I'm afraid that's not true, though it's often repeated: "reckoning by the sacred writings, we find that not 6000 years have yet passed (City of God, XII, 10).[18]" we can calculate from Sacred Scripture that not 6,000 years have passed since the creation of man.”4 See: https://answersingenesis.org/days-of-creation/augustine-on-the-days-of-creation/ and http://kolbecenter.org/st-augustine-rediscovered-a-defense-of-the-literal-interpretation-of-st-augustines-writings-on-the-sacred-history-of-genesis/ God Himself, the Light of the world (Jn 8:12) gave the Light on the First Day. In the Book of Revelation, we read, in Heaven, He will Himself be Light again. Rev 21:23 "And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof." I'm reminded of that famous song, "That fair City so Bright, where the Lamb is the Light." etc. I want to point out one universally known Evolutionist Hoax, Piltdown man, very likely a deliberate fraud on unsuspecting Christians, first attacked by Creation Scientists, now universally admitted to be fraudulent: ""Piltdown man was extremely influential in shaping evolutionary thinking and early research on human evolutionary theory. For the four decades before it was exposed, Piltdown man was considered the ‘missing link’. It was used as one of the key evidences against creation in the Scopes trial. It altered the education in the United States for a whole generation and found its way into major science textbooks and encyclopedias—and it was a hoax. There were over 250 publications on Piltdown man alone!1 The implications for evolutionary theory were tremendous. Entire evolutionary-developmental theories about hominid evolution were based on Piltdown and many of those were demolished when the fraud was exposed. 250 publications! It would be nothing short of historical revisionism to downplay its significance." https://creation.com/evolution-fraud One.Opinion, sources? The ones for A-DNA (Ancient DNA, a total contradiction in terms; if DNA still exists in "ancient organisms", that is an incontrovertible scientific proof that millions of years simply never passed) were given there in the Wiki link, and are widely admitted today. Here are some on soft tissue, from mainstream publications: "Science Mag: "One study, led by Mary Schweitzer, a paleontologist from North Carolina State University in Raleigh who has chased dinosaur proteins for de­cades, confirms her highly controversial claim to have recovered 80-million-year-old dinosaur collagen. The other paper suggests that protein may even have sur­vived in a 195-million-year-old dino fossil." http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/01/scientists-retrieve-80-million-year-old-dinosaur-protein-milestone-paper Science Daily: "Utilizing the most rigorous testing methods to date, researchers from North Carolina State University have isolated additional collagen peptides from an 80-million-year-old Brachylophosaurus."https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/01/170123145210.htm Soft tissue, collagen, protein, haemoglobin, blood cells etc, will hardly survive tens of thousands of years. Therefore, those specimens are not millions of years old. Peace and Grace. In Our Lord Jesus.
  5. God created Man and Woman different, but equal. That's why he made Eve from Adam's side, not from his heel to be his slave, nor from his head to be his lord, but from his heart, to be a beloved and treasured companion. And all of holy Scripture says that the husband is the head of the wife and of the household. And every Christian wife, with godly love, who accepts this God-ordained order, will be blessed. Every Christian husband must know it is his responsibility to lead in love, just as Christ leads and loves His Church. Modern feminism was designed by those who hate men and whose thinking is foreign to the Gospel, not by those who see everyone, both men and women, through God's eyes. A Christian society or household respects man's headship. Every husband should love his wife as his own body, his own flesh and heart, as the Word of God teaches. A Christian society always respects woman and is chivalrous. A gentleman is he who treats women with respect, remembering the Mother of God was a Woman, and seeing in every woman her image. Modern feminism is all about denying or overthrowing man's headship and is not of God.
  6. Please read the Council of Chalcedon and the Tome of Pope St. Leo sent to the Council: it was all about declaring the Hypostatic Union and the Two Natures of Christ, in His One Person, as God-Man. The Council's Acts: http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3811.htm "For, as we must often be saying, he is one and the same, truly Son of God, and truly Son of Man. God, inasmuch as in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Man, inasmuch as the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us. God, inasmuch as all things were made by him, and without him nothing was made. Man, inasmuch as he was made of a woman, made under the law. The nativity of the flesh is a manifestation of human nature; the Virgin's child-bearing is an indication of Divine power. The infancy of the Babe is exhibited by the humiliation of swaddling clothes: the greatness of the Highest is declared by the voices of angels. He whom Herod impiously designs to slay is like humanity in its beginnings; but he whom the Magi rejoice to adore on their knees is Lord of all. Now when he came to the baptism of John his forerunner, lest the fact that the Godhead was covered with a veil of flesh should be concealed, the voice of the Father spoke in thunder from heaven, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased See also: http://www.biblicalcatholic.com/apologetics/a35.htm "Thereafter, Pope Leo succeeded in getting both Emperors to call the Council of Chalcedon in 451. At this Council, attended by about 600 bishops (almost all of the Eastern Church), Pope Leo's Tome against Monophysitism and for the orthodox teaching of the two natures of Christ was embraced with the pronouncement: "This is the faith of the fathers! This is the faith of the Apostles! So we all believe! thus the orthodox believe! Anathema to him who does not thus believe! Peter has spoken thus through Leo! . . . This is the true faith!'" (Acts of the Council, session 2 [A.D. 451])." Just like in Acts 15, the early Church called Councils to settle doctrinal disputes. And the Pope held a prominent role there.
  7. The Bible clearly teaches this world that God created solely by His Supreme Fiat ("Let there be Light") etc is less than 10,000 years old. The Old and New Testament genealogies establish this beyond doubt. Until about 200 years ago, all Christians unanimously believed it. We don't have to retreat from the falsely so-called "science" of evolution, but must, Scientifically and Scripturally, challenge and refute it. As certainly as we can know Our Lord Jesus Christ became Incarnate in the Flesh about 2000 years ago, we can know the Prophet Moses lived about 1500 years before His birth, the Patriarch Abraham about 500 years before that, and that Adam himself lived most certainly within 10,000 years ago. Before about 25 years ago, when DNA (whose half-life Nature calculates at about 521 years) was demonstrably and repeatedly found in several of planet Earth's most ancient fossils, it was almost universally agreed (and still is largely agreed) that DNA could not survive for more than about 10,000 years. Like soft tissues in ancient fossils, C14 in rocks, minerals, living organisms and all the places it shouldn't be, Helium still being in radioactive rocks (all of which would have diffused out long ago, Helium being the second lightest element in the periodic table), this aDNA (antediluvian or ancient DNA) as it is now called, presents a serious challenge for long-agers and for evolutionists. See Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_DNA "1990s The post-PCR era heralded a wave of publications as numerous research groups tried their hands at aDNA. Soon a series of incredible findings had been published, claiming authentic DNA could be extracted from specimens that were millions of years old, into the realms of what Lindahl (1993b) has labelled Antediluvian DNA.[9] The majority of such claims were based on the retrieval of DNA from organisms preserved in amber. Insects such as stingless bees,[10] termites,[11] and wood gnats,[12] as well as plant[13] and bacterial[14] sequences were extracted from Dominican amber dating to the Oligocene epoch. Still older sources of Lebanese amber-encased weevils, dating to within the Cretaceous epoch, reportedly also yielded authentic DNA.[15] DNA retrieval was not limited to amber. See also: "https://www.icr.org/article/squid-fossils-ancient-dna-young-earth "The field of biology has provided much support for a recent creation, and physical evidence of very young-looking biological materials from supposedly ancient fossils continues to accrue from around the world, and from various depths under the earth. In August of this year, paleontologists in Trowbridge, Wiltshire, England, made a discovery that astounded the evolutionary community. A "150 million-year-old" squid was discovered with an intact ink sac. "It is difficult to imagine how you can have something as soft and sloppy as an ink sac…inside a rock that is 150 million years old," said Dr. Phil Wilby of the British Geological Survey.1 Creationists agree and see this as physical evidence that clearly points to its recent burial and preservation."
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