Earth Blackout for 3 Days!

NASA has confirmed that the three days of darkness will take place this year on days 21, 22 and 23 December. The land will remain during these three days without sun, night ie in total darkness due to a solar storm ....
This is the head of NASA Charles Bolden who made the announcement and asked everyone to remain calm. This will be the product of a solar storm, the largest in the last 50 years for a period of 72 hours. Note that in the responses of Light Beings to questions Monique Mathieu by his members "From Heaven to Earth," she wrote: "The three days of darkness will actually take place. This will be an extremely difficult time for humanity. source : science.nasa.gov
Dedan C.G.Jn Baptiste

Five common Obstacles that hinder Church growth by Jack Wellman

Church growth can be hindered in many ways. What are five common obstacles to church growth?

 
Lack of Evangelism:
There is no doubt that until a church has a heart for the lost, the lost will see the church as having no heart for them. As I have written before, a church can never grow until it is willing to go. When the lost are not coming to the church the church must be going to the lost and this is the model we see Jesus using when He was speaking about leaving the 99 to seek the one that was lost in Luke 15:4-7 "What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it?

And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.' Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance." That one sinner who repents must be told that they have offended a holy God and must repent and trust in the Savior but they'll never be able to do that unless they are told.

Paul may have been the greatest missionary to have ever lived and he didn't sit and wait and expect the lost to come to the churches. He wrote "For "everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent" (Rom 10:13-15a). They will never hear unless someone goes and tells them because as Paul wrote "faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ" (Rom 10:17)? Charles Spurgeon once said that "Everyone is either a missionary or an imposter." Pew potatoes that never leave the church but are only interested in getting into holy huddles are sinning the sin of omission; the great omission, instead of obeying the Great Commission of going into all the world to make disciples (Matt 28:18-20; Acts 1:8). This commission is given to all believers and it's an imperative command but the sad fact is that only 1 in 10 believers will ever actively share their faith with at least one other person in their entire lives.

 
Church Growth is the Church's Responsibility?

Wrong! There is so much frustration at times in churches because they are not growing. Perhaps they are preaching the gospel that is directly from the Word of God and maybe they're evangelizing the lost and have an active Outreach program. Maybe they are also highly visible in the community where they're being the hands, mouth and feet of Jesus Christ. Even if a church is doing all of this and they are increasingly becoming frustrated because they are not growing, the church leadership thinks that they're failing, but there's something that they're missing. It is not their responsibility to grow the church it is people's response to God's ability, even though it is the church's responsibility to seek the lost and share the gospel.

 
Jesus clearly shows this in many Scriptures in the Gospel of John like in John 6:44 "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day." Let's break this down to see what Jesus is actually saying. "No man can" means that it is not humanly possible for any man at any time to "come to [Jesus]" which means that it's not possible that any man or woman can come to Jesus at all unless this happens; "the Father who sent me draws him." 

To put this verse in another way; No one can ever possibly come to Jesus without the Father first drawing him but the word used for "draw" is a bad translation because it is the Greek word "helkō" which means "to drag." This Greek word is the same word used when Paul and Silas were dragged to jail so if we used the same translation that was used in John 6:44 we would see that "Paul and Silas were drawn to jail" or "wooed" to jail or "enticed, coaxed" or whatever else you might want to use. Can you see how ridiculous that is?

 
When churches take the pressure off of themselves, get out into the community perhaps they can relax and leave the results up to God because God is the one Who draws men and women to Christ because the Word of God says that: "the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved" (Acts 2:47) and "the word of God spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly, and a large number of priests became obedient to the faith" (Acts 6:7) while "more and more men and women believed in the Lord and were added to their number" (Acts 5:14) and "Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day" (Acts2:41) and there were still yet "many who heard the message believed; so the number of men who believed grew to about five thousand" (Acts 4:4).
Every one of these verses about the explosive church growth in the Book of Acts proves that God is the causative factor is saving men, women, and children so we must preach the gospel, seek the lost, and then trust God and leave the results up to Him.

You cannot force the hand of God any more that you could save yourself (Eph 2:8-9). 

Weak Leadership

When I came to the church I am pastor of now, I came to help them create an Outreach program. They had no evangelism going on, they had no curriculum to speak of in Sunday school, they had no structure for supporting the shut-ins, the widows, visiting the sick, and keeping in touch with members who were now residents in the local nursing home. The deacons were not doing what their office called for them to do. There was no Outreach coordinator. There was no discipling of one another. There were no mentoring programs and in fact, there was no true leadership at all. What was sorely needed was to train members in leadership skills and make assessments on what each of the leaders strengths were. We needed to find out what each member had skills and desires in and match them to the positions of leadership that fit them the best. One book that I highly recommend for pastors is Strengths Based Leadership by Tom Rath and Barry Conchie. I went through this book and used three powerful sections called Investing in Your Strengths, Maximizing Your Team, and Understanding Why People Follow. There are sections that help leaders plug into their heart's desires and then match those natural skills and abilities, and talents to what they had strengths in and then assign them to whatever positions that seemed to be the best fit for each of them. We found out who was the best youth leader, who was a natural Outreach coordinator and so on. They were reluctant at first but after a time, they began to catch a vision and a church with no leadership skills and no vision is destined to bump around in the dark aimlessly.

 
Mentoring and Discipleship

 
I believe that every Paul needs a Timothy and every Timothy needs a Paul. That is, everyone needs to be a mentor to someone and everyone needs to be mentored. I had a mentor when going through seminary and this retired pastor is still my mentor. Every mentor needs to pour into a man or woman the experience and knowledge that they have acquired in their life, often through the school of hard knocks but without their pouring into someone's life, they only accumulated knowledge for themselves and the Body of Christ is to grow up together into the fullness of Christ. It's like the Dead Sea. There is no outlet from the Dead Sea, therefore it is dead but on the other hand the Sea of Galilee has an outlet and a resource. It takes in water from the Jordan River but is also fed by fresh underground springs and the lake is the largest freshwater lake in Israel and has been called a sapphire in an emerald setting. The Dead Sea is also fed by the Jordan River but has no outlet so it continually builds up sediments and huge deposits of salt make it void of life. One has sufficient and consistent intake (the Sea of Galilee) but the other has no outlet and is not fit for fish or drinking (the Dead Sea). In reality, the Sea of Galilee is not really a sea but a large lake; a rich source for life having a continual source of fresh water and the Dead Sea is stagnant and lifeless because it has no outlet. The same principle applies for Christians who only take in rich resources but don't have an outlet. The object lesson here is that every Sea of Galilee needs a source (a mentor) and an outflow (someone to mentor); otherwise it ends up dead and stagnant (like the Dead Sea) and is of little use for others.

 
Self-Focused

 
A church that is self-focused does not have an outward focus; therefore it's all about them! I know that as a pastor, they will never lead until I take the first step in leading. We had some of our church members go into the nursing home because they reached a point where they couldn't take care of themselves so I thought, if they can't go to the church, I'll take the church to them. That's what I did. We went outside of the church to bring the church to them and in the process we had the chance to expand our Outreach program by witnessing to the residents,
the residents family members, and the staff. We also began collecting clothing and school supplies and talked to the local schools about this (prior to the end of the school year) and set up a school supply giveaway just before the start of school for those who were unable to afford school supplies. We also had the chance to tell them a little about ourselves and our children's ministry and youth programs. If your church went out of existence, would anyone notice? If the answer to that is no, then you have not made yourself visible and an aid to the community in which your church is located. Focus on others and you'll take the focus off of yourselves.

 
Conclusion

 
Prayer is vital, of course, to church growth but we must understand that God is really the true evangelist and the church is not responsible for saving the souls of men, women, and children. The church must also have a vision and be developing leadership skills. Also, the church should be actively involved in growing one another through a vital mentoring program where mentors and mentee's are matched and then take these growing believers outside of the church and get their eyes off self and onto the needs of others. We are called the Body of Christ for good reason and since Jesus is the Head of the Church, He expects us to be His hands, mouth, and feet here on earth. If you are missing
any or all of these elements, then you are inhibiting church growth and the expansion of the kingdom of God and also failing to fully glorify God and God is always interested in bringing glory to His Great Name. Amen?

The return of Jesus and the Blood-Red Moon of 2015!

Blood-red moon Aug. 5, 2014

Gaining in popularity today is the teaching that a series of blood-red moons in the next two
years will be a portent of Jesus' second coming and
a fulfillment of biblical prophecy. Astronomical
charts show four lunar eclipses will occur from
2014 to 2015.
Because a full lunar eclipse often
makes the moon look red or orange, it is sometimes referred to as a "blood moon" or
"blood-red moon." Some teachers of prophecy say
that this tetrad of blood moons will fulfill end-times
prophecies in Joel and Revelation.
What has interested prophecy teachers is not just
the number of lunar eclipses in the next two years
but the timing of the eclipses. In both 2014 and
2015, a full lunar eclipse will occur on the first day
of Passover and the first day of Sukkot (the Feast of
Tabernacles). In addition to the two lunar eclipses of 2015, two solar eclipses will also occur.
Similar
lunar eclipses in back-to-back years have
happened seven times since the time of Christ.
Some of those have occurred in years of
significance for the Jewish people, such as 1948
(when Israel was granted statehood) and 1967 (when the Six-Day War was fought). References to a moon like "blood" are found in two
passages of the Bible. Joel 2:30–31 says, "I will show wonders in the heavens and on the earth,
blood and fire and billows of smoke. The sun will
be turned to darkness and the moon to blood
before the coming of the great and dreadful day of
the Lord."

Blood-red moon calender

   In Revelation 6:12, John describes one of the seal judgments of the Tribulation: "I watched as
he opened the sixth seal. There was a great
earthquake. The sun turned black like sackcloth
made of goat hair, the whole moon turned blood
red, and the stars in the sky fell to earth, as figs
drop from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind. The heavens receded like a scroll being rolled up,
and every mountain and island was removed from
its place." Other passages refer to the moon being
"darkened" (Matthew 24:29; Joel 2:10). A tetrad of lunar eclipses—and the timing of those
eclipses in the Jewish calendar—is fairly unusual,
but not unprecedented. So the fact of the eclipses,
while interesting, is no proof that Jesus will return
by 2015. Furthermore, John's and Joel's
descriptions of the signs of the Day of the Lord could refer to solar and lunar eclipses, but there are
other possible explanations for those phenomena,
such as changes in the atmosphere (mentioned in Revelation 6:12). The blood-red moon theory is just that—a theory.
Even as a theory, it comes close to doing what the
Bible warns against: setting dates for the coming of
the Lord. "About that day or hour no one
knows" (Mark 13:32).
Dedan C G Jn Baptiste

4 Christian Thoughts on the Ebola Outbreak

The new, deadly strain of Ebola has everyone anxious but why should Christians think about this differently from the way the world does?
Here are 4 reasons:

1. Shadows are not the Reality
Psalm 23:4 "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me."
Imagine a father trying to comfort his children after the loss of their mother. He was at a loss for words when suddenly a bus pulled next to them in traffic and the shadow came over their car. The father thought and then said "Children, do you see that bus? Would you rather have the shadow hit us or the bus hit us?" The children looked curiously at their father but then said, "The shadow." Their father said, "Yes, me too. You see, the shadow is not the reality. Your mother is not really dead. She's more alive now than ever and can't ever die again. This life is not the end. It's just a shadow compared the reality of eternal life. Because your mommy believed in Jesus, she is not dead at all. She is with Jesus right now. Death is just a shadow but the reality is that when we trust in Jesus, we never die again. Jesus is with us now just like He's with your mommy and she has never been happier. And we get to see her again someday. I can't wait, can you?"

2. Freedom from the Fear of Death
Romans 8:38-39 "For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." What is the worst thing that could happen to a believer? It's not death because Jesus conquered the grave and so we can say with assurance "Death is swallowed up in victory." "O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting" (1 Cor 15:55)? That will be "When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality" (1 Cor 14:54) because "as in Adam
all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive" (1 Cor 15:22) forevermore.

3. Our Future Glory
Romans 8:18-19 "For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God." Really, what can compare with the glorious eternity that believers will inherit someday? Nothing can separate us from Christ, not death, not even the deadly disease of Ebola. This is a fallen world that will be put back on its feet someday even though for a time, the whole of creation is groaning. We groan too sometimes but we also wait in eager expectation for the revealing of the sons and daughters of God in the glory that "is to be revealed" to us. Paul says that it's not even worthy to compare the two because one side of the scale sits a feather (our suffering or death) while on the other side, the entire weight of the universe rests (our eternal bodies). No contest. Someday it will all be so much worth it all.

4. Living with the end in Mind
Revelation 21:3-4 "Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away." Living in the present fallen world is easier if we understand that we are simply pilgrims on a journey and this world is not our home. Someday God will dwell with us and He Himself "will wipe away ever tear" and "death shall be no more" and this means no more crying, pain, mourning…and yes, no more diseases because then "the former things [will] have passed away."

May God richly bless you,

Pastor Jack Wellman

Why so many people struggle with a lack of Faith?

The apostle Paul exhorts Christians to "walk by faith and not by sight" ( 2 Corinthians 5:7). What we see here is a contrast between truth and perception—what we know and believe to be true and what we perceive to be true. This is where the Christian struggle with a lack of faith finds its basis. The main reason why so many Christians struggle with a lack of faith is that we follow our perceptions of what is true rather than what we know to be true by faith.
Perhaps before going any further it may be helpful to come up with a working definition offaith. Faith, contrary to popular opinion, is not "belief without proof." This is the definition that many skeptics give forfaith. This definition reduces faith to mere fideism—i.e., "I believe despite what the evidence tells me." Skeptics are right to reject this concept of faith, and Christians should reject it, too. Faith is not belief without proof or belief despite the evidence; rather, faith is a complete trust or confidence in someone or something. That trust or confidence we have in someone is built up over time as he proves himself faithful time and time again.
Christianity is a faith-based religion. It is based on faith in God and in His Son, Jesus Christ. God has provided us with His Word, the Holy Bible, as a testimony of His faithfulness to His people all throughout history. In its bare essentials, Christianity is faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ claimed to be the promised Messiah and the Son of God. His life was one of perfect righteousness according to the revealed Law of God, His death was an atoning sacrifice for the sins of His people, and He was raised to life three days after His death. When we place our faith and trust in Christ alone for our salvation, God takes our sin and places it on the cross of Christ and awards us, by grace, with the perfect righteousness of Christ. That, in a nutshell, is the Christian message. As Christians, we are called to believe this message and live in light of it.
Despite this, Christians still struggle with believing the biblical account because it doesn't match up with our perception of reality. We may believe that Jesus was a real person, we may believe that He died by crucifixion at the hand of the Romans, we may even believe that He led a perfect life according to God's Law, but we don't "see" how faith in Christ makes us righteous before God. We can't "see" Jesus atoning for our sins. We can't "see" or "perceive" any of the great truths of Christianity, and, therefore, we struggle with lack of faith. As a result of this lack of perception, our lives often do not reflect the fact that we really believe what we claim to believe.
There are many reasons for this phenomenon among Christians. The main reason we struggle with faith is that we don't truly know the God in whom we profess to have faith. In our daily lives, we don't trust complete strangers. The more intimately we know someone and the more time we have had to see him "in action," the more likely we are to believe what he says. But, if God is essentially a stranger to us, we are less likely to believe what He has said in His Word. The only cure for this is to spend more time in God's Word getting to know Him.
The world, the flesh, and the devil often distract us. By "the world" is meant the accepted "wisdom" of the unbelieving world and the culture in which we find ourselves. For those of us living in Europe and North America, that dominant worldview is naturalism, materialism, skepticism, and atheism. "The flesh," refers to our sinful nature that still clings to Christians and with which we struggle on a daily basis. "The devil" refers to Satan and his horde of evil spirits who excite and entice us through the world and our senses. These things all afflict us and cause us to struggle with faith.
That is why Christians need to be constantly reminded of what Christ has done for us and what our response should be. The apostle Paul says, "Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ" ( Romans 10:17). Our faith is built up as we have the gospel continually preached to us. Our churches need to be built on the solid preaching of the Word and the regular observance of the ordinances. Instead, too many churches spend their time, energy, and resources on the creation of "programs" that neither feed the sheep nor draw a clear distinction between godliness and ungodliness.
Consider the example of the Israelites in the Old Testament. God had performed great miracles in rescuing His chosen people from slavery in Egypt—the Ten Plagues, the pillar of smoke and fire, and the crossing of the Red Sea. God brings His people to the foot of Mount Sinai, gives them the Law and makes a covenant with them. No sooner does He do this than the people begin to grumble and lose faith. With Moses gone up on the mountain, the people convince Aaron, Moses' brother, to construct an idol (against God's clear prohibition) for them to worship ( Exodus 32:1–6). They were no longer walking by faith, but by sight. Despite all the clear miracles God did in their redemption, they lost faith and began to go on their perception.
That is why God instructed the new generation of Israelites before going into the Promised Land to continually remind themselves of what God had done for them: "And these words that I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise" ( Deuteronomy 6:6–7). God knows that the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak ( Mark 14:38), and so He commands His people to be in constant remembrance of these things.
In conclusion, we need to heed the example of the disciple Thomas. When Thomas heard the stories of the resurrection, he wouldn't believe them until he saw Jesus with his own two eyes. Jesus accommodated Thomas' lack of faith by making an appearance to him and allowing him to see and touch Him. Thomas responds in worship, and Jesus says to him, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." Many skeptics today echo Thomas' sentiment: "Unless I see Jesus face to face, I will not believe!" We must not behave as the unbelievers do. We need to continually keep in mind Paul's exhortation to walk by faith rather than sight. We learn in the book of Hebrews that without faith it is impossible to please God ( Hebrews 11:6) because faith is believing the Word of God and acting upon it, not responding to our perceptions.

Source: www.gotquestions.org