Category: Uncategorized

Posted in encouragement, Uncategorized

Brown University, depraved minds, & biological impossibilities

Posted on by elizabethprata

I’m from Rhode Island. I was born in Providence, I lived there a while, and it’s where my grandparents lived their entire lives. I’m very familiar with Providence.

Brown University is an Ivy League school located on what is locally known as the “East Side”.The Boston Globe describes this area as,

communities unto themselves, such as Providence’s East Side. The area is college-centric, with Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design figuring prominently in life here. But even if you largely avoid the two college campuses, visitors still find the East Side rich in history, unique architecture, culture, and culinary flavor.

With Ivy League and Art college ‘culture’ usually comes liberalism. And so we see this headline below,

It’s enough to make me simultaneously sigh, say ‘gross’, and laugh at the absurdity of a man trying to use a tampon because he think’s he’s a woman who gets a period. SMH at biological impossibilities. Headlines like this also sadden me at the state of affairs in the world.

However I also smile in joy because Jesus never leaves us without a witness. Therefore, meanwhile…on the other side of the city, at the same time…

…at Grace Community Baptist Church, we have this-

I’m so grateful for the Lord who is the Head of His church. He is always working, raising up teachers like Dr Lawson, who teach men to preach well, who raise up solid congregations, who in turn identify more men for seminary or local leadership, who nurture youth as they grow, the next generation…

Yes these men will have their work cut out for them. Providence is a liberal city. But then again, Rome, Ephesus, and Corinth were liberal cities at the beginning. They were pagan through and through, without one believer…until the Apostles showed up. Until the women raised their boys in the Lord. Until the churches nurtured believers.

And so it goes. The Lord always leaves a witness. Elijah said to the LORD,

“He replied, “I have been very zealous for the LORD God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.” (1 Kings 19:14 NIV).

The LORD answered

Yet I reserve seven thousand in Israel–all whose knees have not bowed down to Baal and whose mouths have not kissed him.” (1 Kings 19:18 NIV)

By the way, you see the first photo of Brown University’s official crest & the University’s Motto? It’s “In Deo Speramus”, which means, “In God We Hope”.
Posted in discernment, Uncategorized

Strange Fire Q&A: ?

Posted on by elizabethprata

Can you believe it has been three years since the Strange Fire Conference? Its impact continues, with men and women still using the wonderful resources at the website to confirm truth to their hearts. Many have been led out of the Charismatic chaos as a result.

For those of us who are in solid churches but sadly see it beginning to creep in, here is a Strange Fire Q&A which addresses the practicalities of being a bulwark against Charismatic practices.  How do we combat this? But first, a short backgrounder: Continue reading “Strange Fire Q&A: ?” →

Posted in encouragement, Uncategorized

Etiquette of meeting the monarch

Posted on by elizabethprata

There is an HBO series called John Adams which I believe to be one of the best historical treatments of one of our Founding Fathers, John Adams. That’s the title, and there is a scene I believe to be fraught with just as much tension as any thriller, and just as much import as any broadcast news flash. The moment was Adams’ torment at how to behave at his upcoming meeting with King George, whom the newly formed United States had vanquished in the Revolutionary War. Now Adams, no longer a royal subject, as a diplomat was was preparing to meet the King.

Wrapped into the wrinkle of defining their new relationship, was also the knowledge that Adams, originally a farmer from Quincy Massachusetts, was about to meet royalty, He lacked the proper etiquette. How does one show deep respect to someone in high authority? Meeting royalty was a minefield of rules and prescribed behaviors, of which Adams knew nothing. Quick lessons ensued. Continue reading “Etiquette of meeting the monarch” →

Posted in potpourri, Uncategorized

Prata Potpourri: Sin of the verbose, the problem of beauty, hermit crab insights, Sinkhole Syndrome, more

Posted on by elizabethprata

meliI’m sensitive to too much noise, especially talking. Which is funny since I make my living talking, being an ex-teacher and now a teacher’s aide teaching students in small groups. But speaking for my work is different than talking too much. I remember one of the first vocabulary words I looked up in a book I was reading in high school, The Great Gatsby. The word was was garrulous. I loved the word and I still do, though not so much the people who embody it. Garrulous means-

excessively talkative, especially on trivial matters.

This essay discusses the sin of talking too much. It is a sin to chatter incessantly. I’d already focused on the sin of gossip last week. Now we learn why just talking too much is also a sin. That old tongue, an enemy of holiness. A fool can be be recognized by his many words (Ecclesiastes 5:3). This essay delves into the sin of the verbose.

The Sin of Talking Too Much

The hard road is the application of wisdom in the restraint of the most powerful muscle in our body. That got me thinking about the dangers of talking too much. There are many and include the following

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Stephen J. Melniszyn muses on the appointment of death for all of us in his essay It Is Appointed.

Two gates. Two roads. One is described as being narrow and the way hard. The other way is wide and easy, and those that enter by it are many. There are no other roads that lead to God, it is through Jesus Christ and Him alone (John 14:6). Man will do all in his sinful nature to avoid such a truth but in the end, it can not be ignored.

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The problem of beauty is one that set me on the narrow road, to salvation. I traveling widely throughout my thirties, I saw the world in its most beautiful. From Everglades spoonbills roosting along the shoreline to Bahamian coral waving in azure sea to moonrise over the desert to towering mountains bouncing the sun of their glittering rough edges to wild waves of the north Atlantic, all slate grey foam and whirling ice…the obvious comes to mind. This didn’t all just happen. It isn’t all just an accident. No ‘Bang’ threw this into existence.

Here, Prof. Stuart Burgess muses on the witness of nature in its design, particularly, beauty. Evolution might be explained to the irrational mind through function. But it didn’t have to be beautiful, too.

Beauty—The Undeniable Witness

How did all this come to be? Understanding creation isn’t just about explaining matter or the complex moving parts of living things, but “added beauty.” Experience tells us that beauty doesn’t come by accident—it offers no obvious survival benefit, and many existing natural laws promote deterioration and decay. So what created and sustains the earth’s beauty?

And here is an example of that beauty, function, delicacy, and mystery. In this exciting 2-minute excerpt from the third season of Jonathan Bird’s Blue World, Jonathan films a hermit crab changing shells and then also transferring its anemones from one shell to the other. This is extremely rare footage of a seldom-seen behavior! It is also fascinating and thrilling to see such handiwork from God!

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Melissa Kruger writes A Back To School Prayer, from a mom, for her kids, … “I pray that their teachers would be wise and gentle.”

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Here from Ligonier, we learn the danger of the mature Christian’s erosion of spiritual disciplines, and the sinkhole that awaits him. A cautionary tale well worth reading. Spiritual Disciplines and the Sinkhole Syndrome

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I love fire and brimstone preaching. I do some fire and brimstone writing here at The End Time. Here is the story of a congregation that called for a fire-and-brimstone preacher again, and again, and again. The first two didn’t work out, like, immediately. The third lasted thirty years. Why? What made the difference?

Without skipping a beat the man said, “You are right in saying that all three were fire and brimstone preachers, but the third was the only one who actually sounded like he didn’t want us to go there.”

Find out more in the story of The Fire and Brimstone Preacher Who Succeeded

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With Labor Day behind us and a shorter week ahead of us, and (hopefully) cooler temperatures on the way, it’s a refreshing time of year. Autumn leaves, school buses on their routes, pumpkins. The Lord is in control of the seasons, and the progression of them is a mark of His hand upholding all. The march of seasons, the migration of the geese, the constellations changing position. He created it for His good pleasure. And it is beautiful.

Posted in Uncategorized

“Singing is a holy practice”

Posted on by elizabethprata

I praise the Lord deeply for my church. Our elders are thoughtful and caring about every aspect of how we conduct worship. We are a new church plant, less than a year old, and the thought that went into the plant took months prior to the first service last January, and years of preparation, and an eternity before that, as the Lord sovereignly raised up the men who begot the men who begot the men and who begot…and so on… who planted this church.

Our music minister introduced a new hymn to us yesterday. He said for us to remain seated, and to look at the lyrics as he and the other musicians sang and played it for us. The hymn is a new song by Matt Boswell. Continue reading ““Singing is a holy practice”” →

Posted in encouragement, Uncategorized

TV, Movies, the Conscience, and Entertainment

Posted on by elizabethprata

I just wanted to watch a nice movie. It had been a long and stressful week. I’d worked all of Saturday writing and by Saturday night I wanted simply to turn my brain off and watch something enjoyable without having to think to much.

I searched for a nice movie like Up. Despicable Me. Babe, Lassie 1997. Eddie the Eagle. Something nice. Children’s movies from this summer didn’t interest me. I am over Nemo, so Finding Dory wasn’t in the cards. She can stay lost as far as I’m concerned. I don’t like Rudyard Kipling so Jungle Book was out. Already saw Secret Life of Pets.

I looked up “faith based movies” and was depressed at the list. There were so many false doctrinal movies on it, and I’d seen the one or two that were good. After having resisted it all this time I tried Mom’s Night Out. Nope, terrible. I was soooo right to resist it. I tried Risen. Nope, terrible. Platitudes and mushy love talk but no Jesus as risen God and no Gospel. Also, it was agonizingly slow.

Sinking Sand seems to have emerged for a nanosecond and disappeared from every radar known to man. I spent a good half hour looking for it online or on any streaming video service. Nope.

Sigh. Continue reading “TV, Movies, the Conscience, and Entertainment” →

Posted in discernment, Uncategorized

Some hard truths about Mother Teresa

Posted on by elizabethprata

On, Sunday, September 4, 2016, Pope Francis canonized Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu AKA “Mother” Teresa of Albania, the Catholic Church officially from then on recognizing her as a “saint.”

ROME — This Sunday, Pope Francis will canonize Mother Teresa as a saint, one of the highest honors in the Roman Catholic Church. Tens of thousands of people are expected to fill St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican for the ceremony to a woman who lived her life dedicated to the poorest of the poor. (CBS News)

The scene will be quite the spectacle, and since world attention will once again be on Rome, the Vatican, the Pope, and Catholicism, it seems to be a good time to remind folks that Catholicism is not Christianity. All born-again believers in Jesus Christ are saints already (1 Corinthians 1:2, Ephesians 2:19), because Jesus declares us so and not because a Church declared us so. Finally, Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu AKA “Mother” Teresa, who died in 1997, is almost certainly in hell. Continue reading “Some hard truths about Mother Teresa” →

Posted in encouragement, Uncategorized

God’s Providence is like a Pointillist painting

Posted on by elizabethprata

This essay was first published at The End Time in February, 2014

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We know that the church is a body, a united body of believers.

For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. (1 Corinthians 12:12)

The Holy Spirit ordains where each believer is to be and what gifts he is to have. He ordains where we are in the body so as to contribute to the good of the whole.

All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills (1 Corinthians 12:11)

It could be said that the Lord is painting a picture.

If you’re familiar with the Impressionist movement of art that emerged in the late 1800s in Paris, then you’re familiar with the works of Monet, Manet, Sisley, Renoir, & etc. These artists used short brush strokes to convey movement and impression, rather than precision. There was a sub-culture of the Impressionists called the Pointillists. Here is Georges Seurat’s famous pointillist painting, “Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte“.

As the website IncredibleArt.org states,

Strictly speaking, Pointillism refers to the technique of using dots of pure color in such a way that, seen at the appropriate distance, they achieve maximum luminosity.” (source). Georges-Pierre Seurat made this technique famous. His painting,

Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884-1888) is one of the most famous paintings in the world. … At left you see a closeup of Seurat’s painting. It is a closeup of the the man laying down on the lower left. Even thought he appears to be wearing white pants, as you can see, the part of the pants in the shadow just above the grass has no white in it. It’s only when you look at it from a distance that the colors blend in. Seurat spent two years on this painting. He carefully planned it out with several sketches first.“

It could be said, that the earth is the canvas and the people are the points of paint God daubs precisely here and there, working toward an end.

I’ve seen pointillist paintings at museums. You look very closely and all you can see are daubs of color. Dots. If you back away to a distance, you can see the scene clearly. It’s amazing how the colors blend to make a seamless and beautiful picture.

We can think of ourselves as dots. We can’t see the whole picture, we don’t have the right perspective. God does. He puts a pink next to a blue and though all we can see is the blue next to us, we have to trust that the Great Artist is making something beautiful. Even if you don’t like the color pink, you know and trust that the Artist’s purposeful placement of it next to you will make the picture as a whole perfect when it is complete.

Just like heaven.

Posted in prophecy, Uncategorized

There is only one way to heaven and it’s exclusive

Posted on by elizabethprata

Exclusive

Christianity is the way to heaven. It is the only way. More specifically, the way to heaven is belief in the Son.

But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, (John 1:12)

John wrote the Book of John so that we may believe. You might be surprised to know that the word faith is not discussed in the book of John. But the word belief is all over that book.

1. The Christianity of the Bible is exclusive in that the faith will not accept sinners into it. You cannot have Jesus and your sin, too. Repentance is key, and obedience to Him who gives the spirit of repentance. Unrepentant homosexuals will not enter heaven. (1 Corinthians 6:9). Nor will idolaters, nor adulterers nor any other unrepentant sinner, no matter what their flavor of sin. Religious diversity is a lie. (Isaiah 45:5). Tolerance of sin is death. (Revelation 2:20-23).

2. Christianity is exclusive of people who come another way, except through the Son. Those who try to come in another way are a thief and a robber. (John 10:1). The following “inclusive” doctrines or religions are false.

Universalism, the belief that eventually all persons are saved, or,

Inclusivism, which assumes that all world religions point to a common truth that at the end of the day will be discovered to have been Christ. (source)

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6). underline mine.

If you believe you can reach the Father in heaven through Buddha or Ganesh or Allah or Thor or by any other god, then what Jesus said above is a lie. If Jesus lied, then that means Bible can’t be trusted, because Jesus said all scripture points to Himself. (John 5:39).

Inclusive

1. Christianity is inclusive in that there exists a way to reach the Father. God’s perfect fellowship, perfect harmony, and perfect delight within His three persons was all sufficient for eons. In eternity after some time had passed, (an oxymoron, I know), God created man. However, in His timing and for His reasons, He chose to create man so as include man within His loving circle.

1a. After the Fall, man was excluded from heaven. No one could see the Father at any time. Ever. The inclusiveness of Christianity means that God sent His Son to make a way to include Humans within their intra-Trinitarian fellowship once more. Humans; men, women, old, and child, can be included in His righteousness once again.

2. Christianity is inclusive in that any person from any tribe, nation, or tongue who has believed on the Son and is continually obedient to Him is saved. People from the north, south, east, and west are going to be represented at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. (Revelation 7:9).

Christianity includes both genders, male and female. Greek and Jew. Slave and free. Old and young. Rich or poor. (Galatians 3:8, Titus 2:1-6, James 2:3). Those who would repent and believe will be included, no matter their station in life. The only boundary to the inclusivity of Jesus is the person’s response to Him.

Don’t apologize that Jesus is the only way to heaven. It is truth. And if a person really, truly understood sin, they would be grateful that there exists a way to heaven at all! And how many ways do we need? We can only travel on one road at a time. I much prefer the narrow path that Jesus gave us than some broad path that man made.

Jesus Christ is the exclusive way to heaven. I’m glad, because He is perfect, He is righteous, and He is wonderful. His way never changes. We never get lost on His way, once we’re found, we’re found. Best of all, His way takes care of sin once and for all. No other way does that, can do that, or ever will do that.

Jesus is the only way. He is both exclusive and inclusive. If you believe this message, you’re probably included. If you do not believe this message, you’re excluded. You see, belief in the Son means His way, or no way. Jesus not only taught he is both inclusive and exclusive at the same time, but He is the dividing line between the two.

blue sky with branches verse