Month: November 2013

Posted in foxe's book of martyrs, martyr, persecution, prayer

Sunday Martyr Moment: Seven soldiers in a cave

Posted on by elizabethprata

Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. According to this summary from Christian Book Summaries,

Writing in the mid-1500s, John Foxe was living in the midst of intense religious persecution at the hands of the dominant Roman Catholic Church. In graphic detail, he offers accounts of Christians being martyred for their belief in Jesus Christ, describing how God gave them extraordinary courage and stamina to endure unthinkable torture.

From the same link, the book’s purpose was fourfold:

  • Showcase the courage of true believers who have willingly taken a stand for Jesus Christ throughout the ages, even if it meant death,
  • Demonstrate the grace of God in the lives of those martyred for their faith,
  • Expose the ruthlessness of religious and political leaders as they sought to suppress those with differing beliefs,
  • Celebrate the courage of those who risked their lives to translate the Bible into the common language of the people.

Text from Foxe’s Book of Martyrs

The Seventh Persecution, Under Decius, A.D. 249, continued

In the year of our Lord 251, the emperor Decius having erected a pagan temple at Ephesus, he commanded all who were in that city to sacrifice to the idols. This order was nobly refused by seven of his own soldiers, viz. Maximianus, Martianus, Joannes, Malchus, Dionysius, Seraion, and Constantinus. The emperor wishing to win these soldiers to renounce their faith by his entreaties, gave them leniency and said that they would be allowed a considerable respite until he returned from an expedition. During the emperor’s absence, they escaped, and hid themselves in a cavern. The soldiers’ hiding place was discovered, and it was ordered sealed up, so that they would die of hunger and thirst.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Voice of the Martyrs blog posted a story recently about how difficult it is for Chinese missionaries who obey God to enter the Tibetan mission field. One of those difficulties is the deep spiritual darkness of the region. It is Buddhist, and idols are everywhere. Here is an excerpt of a wonderful short essay about those difficulties, and the grace of God which strengthens and enables the missionaries to persevere.

“The biggest obstacle faced by Chinese missionaries, however, is the intense spiritual warfare being waged in the region. Tibet is a Buddhist stronghold. The vast majority of the Tibetan people adhere to this religion. “The streets are full of idols,” says the Chinese missionary. “All of these people worship these idols.”

“A quick walk through the old part of Lhasa confirms this statement. Everywhere you walk and at all hours of the day, people are ceaselessly mumbling chants, rubbing their prayer beads in calloused fingers and spinning prayer wheels. According to the missionary, penetrating this spiritual darkness is extremely difficult – many of the Chinese Christians in the area, he says, are lazy and weak of faith as a result. Many more go home, disillusioned and discouraged.”

“As if these challenges weren’t enough, Chinese missionaries are often persecuted by the Chinese government, which maintains very strict control on religion in Tibet. Chinese missionaries have been thrown in prison and even kicked out of the province as a result of their efforts to evangelize the Tibetan. Evangelism in Tibet must be conducted very covertly and on a small scale level in order to avoid the wrath of the authorities.“

In Lhasa, everywhere Buddhists are ceaselessly mumbling chants,
rubbing prayer beads in calloused fingers and spinning prayer wheels.(source)

The fingers of the Buddhist are calloused because they pray and pray but no one is listening.

But your iniquities have separated you from your God; And your sins have hidden His face from you, So that He will not hear (Isaiah 59:2).

Now we know that God does not hear sinners; but if anyone is a worshiper of God and does His will, He hears him (John 9:31).

The seven soldiers that the Emperor sealed up in the cave died a horrible death. Though not as painful as some of the Christians who were being actively tortured, the soldiers took a long time to die, in agonizing thirst, alone in the dark. Except … they were not alone.

I am sure that they prayed to our Holy God for comfort and to supplicate to Him. They laid down their lives for His glory. Being a faithful God, would not leave them alone in their moment of truth but accept the sacrifice of their lives and their dying prayers as the glory He deserves and demands. I wonder if the LORD sent an angel to minister to them as they lay dying. I wonder if they heard His voice whisper comfort to them. I wonder if they gained supernatural strength to pray and sing even as their wasted bodies lay shriveled and dying.

Even in death, the loss of the breath in the body is nothing, as long as there exists a blessed supernatural highway of communication between ourselves and our precious Savior. For the Buddhist, spinning wheels and counting beads, there is only blackness, emptiness, and darkness. They have the high altitude sunlight but have hearts of stone and dwell in the dark, while the 7 soldiers had the darkness of a cave, but the Light of glory at the end. No matter your situation today, whether you are in a real cave-like dark prison for the faith, or you are in a metaphorical dark cave of bad circumstances, you always know that you can pray. We are confident in Him.

“And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.” (1 John 5:14-15)

Posted in earthquakes, eruption, supervolcano, volcano, yellowstone

Earthquake and volcano news: OK swarm continues, volcano discovered in ME, Yellowstone magma lake larger than thought

Posted on by elizabethprata

I’ve chronicled that earthquakes (up until this year) had been been on the rise. For a steady number of years, using the United States Geological Survey’s own benchmark, the number of quakes had been increasing.

As far as 2013 data, we still have 8 weeks to go, but this is the running tally of number of quakes in the world in each of the four magnitudes I track. Data as always from USGS. The red means the number of quakes have met or exceeded USGS averages.

5.0-5.9 – 1169
6.0-6.9 – 110
7.0-7.9 – 15
8.0-9.9 – 2

The type and location of the quakes had also been diverse from times in the past. There were earthquakes at a deeper level than ever, or large quakes in places there had never been one (Svalbard, Norway).

USGS reported last week,

Earthquake Swarm Continues in Central Oklahoma
“Since January 2009, more than 200 magnitude 3.0 or greater earthquakes have rattled Central Oklahoma, marking a significant rise in the frequency of these seismic events. “We’ve statistically analyzed the recent earthquake rate changes and found that they do not seem to be due to typical, random fluctuations in natural seismicity rates,” said Bill Leith, USGS seismologist. “These results suggest that significant changes in both the background rate of events and earthquake triggering properties needed to have occurred in order to explain the increases in seismicity. This is in contrast to what is typically observed when modeling natural earthquake swarms.”

What they are saying there, is that there was a sudden and inexplicable change in at least two variables, presenting an unaccountable statistical anomaly, and that they dunno why.

As far as volcanic eruptions go, the Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program counts them. I searched the database from January 1, 1930 to December 31, 1939, and did the same for each decade through December 31, 2010. The plain number of eruptions is up. Click to enlarge.

Raw data here
1930s – 312
1940s – 269
1950s – 467
1960s – 537
1970s – 562
1980s – 703
1990s – 574
00-10 -950

In some volcano news, KURL8 out of Montana reports today that the lava pool under the supervolcano at Yellowstone is much bigger than thought.

“The lava pool beneath Yellowstone National Park is more than twice as big as scientists previously believed, that’s according to new research from the Geological Society of America. Scientists from the University of Utah say the lake of molten lava is nearly 50 miles long and 12 miles wide.”

For all that, scientists say that the real danger in that area is not from an eruption, since the geysers let off steam and pressure. It’s from the earthquakes.

“Researchers analyzed, get this, 4,500 earthquakes in and around Yellowstone from 1985 to 2013. … The last major earthquake in the area measured 7.3 and was in 1959. It was the most destructive earthquake ever recorded in the Rocky Mountains.”

In other interesting volcano news, it was reported at a geology conference this week that remnants of a supervolcano have been found in Maine.

Maine’s volcanoes (yes, Maine) among world’s biggest
“Maine has supervolcanoes. Wait, Maine has volcanoes? Yes, and their eruptions could have been among the biggest ever on Earth, geoscientist Sheila Seaman reported here Tuesday (Oct. 29) at the Geological Society of America’s annual meeting. … Since they formed, the ancient volcanic layers have been tilted up by tectonic forces, providing a top-to-bottom slice through a supervolcano. For example, Isle au Haut, part of Acadia National Park, exposes the heart of a volcano. “The whole magma chamber is lying on its side,” Seaman said.”

The Most Active Volcano You’ve Never Heard Of
“In the extreme northeast region of Russia is the Kamchatka Peninsula. Familiar to people who play the board game Risk, Kamchatka is a huge mass of land sticking out into the north Pacific, and sitting on the peninsula is a cluster of volcanoes, some of them among the most active on the planet. The biggest of these is Klyuchevskaya Sopka, a monster stratovolcano towering over 4750 meters (15,500 feet) high. It’s also the most active, having been more-or-less erupting continuously since the late 1600s. It’s erupted a dozen times just since 2000! On Oct. 20, 2013, the Landsat 8 Earth-observing satellite flew over Klyuchevskaya, capturing a tremendously long plume of ash as well as two separate lava flows moving down the volcano’s flanks:

Isn’t earth so interesting!!
I can’t wait until we see it from that vantage point!

Ever since the fall of man and the curse that was given by God over man, beast, and earth, the creation has been groaning. Though the dates in this scientific article are no doubt off, it is interesting to see that man has been living with a restless earth since the beginning of the curse

9,000-year-old painting of volcano linked to a  real eruption
“A 9,000-year-old painting of an exploding volcano, the oldest ever found, can now be linked to a real-life eruption in Turkey. The towering Hasan Dag volcano erupted 8,970 years ago, plus or minus 640 years, according to a new dating technique that analyzes zircon crystals in volcanic rock, geochemist Axel Schmitt of the University of California, Los Angeles, reported here Wednesday at the Geological Society of America’s annual meeting. Turkish scientists long suspected Hasan Dag was the source of the painting’s dramatic scene, but never had a precise date for its volcanic rocks, Schmitt told LiveScience. The volcano is about 80 miles (130 kilometers) from the ancient village of Çatalhöyük, where the painting was discovered in 1964 during an archaeological dig.”

(FMI on the painting itself, here is the article from Daily Mail)

Daily Mail Caption: “A mural, pictured, found on a wall in the Turkish settlement of Catalhoyuk depicts a village in front of a volcano. The painting is thought to be a warning about the danger of nearby stratovolcano Mount Hasan, located 70 miles northeast from where the mural was found.“

Turkey is interesting. The world’s most mysterious and stunning archaeological site is there, Gobekli Tepe. I wrote about it in 2011 here.

I’d posted from the article, “The elegant bas-reliefs of vultures, scorpions, and other creatures found on the T-shaped pillars had to have been created by skilled artisans, evidence that hunter-gatherers were capable of a complex social structure. Pillars at the temple of Göbekli Tepe—11,600 years old and up to 18 feet tall—may represent priestly dancers at a gathering. Note the hands above the loincloth-draped belt on the figure in the foreground.”

Some believe that the area of the Garden of Eden was in southern Turkey. Here is a map showing the nearby village of Catalhoyuk  to the Turkish volcano Mount Hasan, and Gobekli Tepe’s location. They are about 250 km apart or about 158 miles.

Horatio said, 
O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!

Hamlet replied,
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Volcanoes being discovered, restless earth, unknown paintings of long ago eruptions, and mysterious monoliths by disappeared rivers…there is so much we do not know but even as we partially know now, later we will fully know, by His grace. (1 Corinthians 13:12).

“How great is God–beyond our understanding! The number of his years is past finding out.” (Job 36:26)

Posted in berean, charismatic, scripture

Why were the Bereans noble? First, they received the word with eagerness

Posted on by elizabethprata

Paul and Silas in Berea. (Acts 17:10-12)

“The brothers immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea, and when they arrived they went into the Jewish synagogue. Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so. Many of them therefore believed, with not a few Greek women of high standing as well as men.”

I am currently in a sad mood because friends are following the false teachings of a growing Charismatic church in my area. I had a conversation with someone, who answered with emotional arguments and completely rejected all scripture I’d offered. Though I’d tried hard in showing the biblical stance through scripture, I’ve been thinking long and hard about why and how a professed Christian can reject the bible as authoritative and refuse to submit to its teachings.

The classic reference as to the nobility of those who search the scriptures is well-known. The Bereans relied on scripture to check what Paul was saying, as quoted above. I usually focus on the latter part of the key verse, “searched the scriptures daily”. But today I’d like to focus on the former part, “received the word with all eagerness.”

We think, ‘of course they received the word with eagerness! Who wouldn’t want to check what you are learning against the word?’ But it goes a bit deeper than that. Paul and Silas ministered in Berea in about 54 AD. We have the advantage of 2000 years of history, culture, and theology and a completed canon of a revealed word of God on which to stand while making that statement. The Jews & Greeks in Berea hadn’t. They had about 20 years.

First, many were Jews, and Paul was teaching in the synagogue. Jews had a nearly two thousand year tradition of intimacy with God since Abraham. Judaism was the world’s only monotheistic religion. The Jewish temple, rituals, holidays and laws were literally embedded in the Jews via DNA and having become a peculiar race of people.

“For thou art an holy people unto the LORD thy God, and the LORD hath chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto himself, above all the nations that are upon the earth.” (Deuteronomy 14:2)

Second, Paul and Silas were teaching the opposite of everything every Jew had ever learned. They had to hear hard sayings. They heard Paul preach that the Messiah had come, and His peculiar people had rejected Him. They listened to teaching that His salvific gaze was no longer on the Jews but on the pagans until the time of the Gentiles was fulfilled. That He died and rose again- without having established the promised kingdom (yet). That pagans (Greeks) were now included in the bosom of the Lord as peculiar people- people a Jew had been taught to revile. That the Messiah had fulfilled all the law and there no longer needed to be feasts and Jewish holy days. That salvation only required belief in these hard sayings- faith in the dead and resurrected Jesus. And more.

How would you react if you heard hard sayings? Many who had just seen Jesus feed the five thousand rejected Him when they heard him speak hard things. And those were pagans with no history of a relationship with God. (John 6:53-56). I know that I get irritated when people email me to say that a certain interpretation I’d labored over was wrong. Or a pet teacher or preacher is no good. But I look into these things as a dutiful Christian to confirm what I am hearing, or to confidently reject it on the basis of revealed truth.

But the Bereans “received the word with all eagerness“. They listened, and then they checked. But the first part is that they listened and received the word. Their love for the Holy God of Israel was above any personal interpretation they held. It was higher than any value they laid upon the word. They wanted to know the truth, and it was obvious that these men were of God. Something was happening in the religious arena, exciting, troublesome, wondrous.

The only way they could begin to examine the scriptures was to compare what Paul and Silas were saying against it. So they listened.

Many Charismatics do not love Jesus more than their own experience. They do not love the word more than their own pet theory. They do not examine the scriptures to see if it is so. They reject the best this world has to offer, the sterling and true word of God.

Do they get angry,
or do they receive with eagerness?

If you are engaged in a discussion with someone who answers emotionally and refuses to listen to the scriptures you are sharing, they are not a Berean. They do not receive the word with all eagerness. And as long as they do not listen to hard sayings and verses from the bible, they can’t see if it is true. WHich is exactly satan’s point.

Then they can and do go on their way, experiencing and encountering and lifting ‘holy hands’ and singing and falling down in tongues and having a happy ‘worship time’ until the Lord returns and says “I never knew you.”

Third, what was the result of the Bereans receiving the word with eagerness, and then searching to see if it was so? Belief. It stands to reason that the opposite will be true also. Refusing to listen and search and confirm results in unbelief.

You see, He has revealed Himself in the word. Paul saw Him personally, all the apostles did. But we in the new millennium cannot see him, “for we walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7)

Do we rely on tongues and miracles and signs? No. We rely on the word.

 “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4:18)

And why do we rely on the word and not on signs and sight and earthly works as ‘manifestations of the Spirit?’

“Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” (Mark 3:31)

The Bereans knew that when God speaks, you listen, and do so eagerly.

 “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.” (Hebrews 1:1-2)

God spoke to us! He speaks! The holy God who dwells in heaven, parted the veil, and took over a thousand years to put together a holy book by His Spirit for our benefit. Who are we to ignore it? Who are we to place a higher value on our supposed experience than His Son, the Word?

To conclude, remember that the verse regarding the noble Bereans has two parts, receiving the word eagerly and checking for themselves to see if what they hear is true. A sign you are dealing with someone who is seriously adrift is if that person refuses to address the scriptures you share. A sign you are dealing with someone who loves the Lord, even if they are getting irritated, is if they hang in there and stick to a scriptural talk.

I said to the person I was speaking with about Charismatic manifestations, that I cannot do any better than offer the word of God. There is nothing higher, more true, or more absolute to place on the table as common ground in any discussion. All else is just opinion. And we know what Proverbs 18:2 says about opinions,

“A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion.”