By Elizabeth Prata
The week of August 21-28, 2026 was an incredible week. It was chock full. We had a death of a uniformly beloved, long-term celebrity, a ministry scandal and fall of leaders that shook the reformed world, and a horrifying natural disaster.
Since God is sovereignly in control, and allows or directly causes all things to happen, and for the Christians, for their good to those who love Him, let’s see what we can learn from these incredible events. We never want to just say “goodness that’s awful” move on without thinking of the heaven above, salvation of others, and our own lesson we can learn. Jesus above all.
Dolly
Southern singer, movie actress, and icon to drag queens Dolly Parton died this week. She was 80 years old. She often spoke of “my faith”, “God”, and ‘living out my beliefs’. To that end, she was consistently kind to all, generous to many, and loving as a state of being. She was gracious under fire, humble, and never put a foot wrong. Never said a wrong thing (in the world’s eyes), and did so while being witty and charming- all for over 60 years in the public eye.
But was she a Christian? It’s heartbreaking to even have to ask. We don’t want to know. We want to say ‘of course she was’ but the evidence of her lived-life says otherwise. Unless she had a change of heart in the end, of course, the evidence over her life in her words and actions, while kind and loving, were not based on the sacrificial death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, but of a God she made up in her heart and a spirituality that doesn’t match His.
It’s easy to say, “Sure, Hitler wasn’t saved” but it is very hard to look at a nice person and say “Well, maybe not.” Because there are only 2 camps, God’s, and satan’s, we shrink back to think Dolly maybe was in satan’s camp. But remember, only two roads.
Dolly was self-deceived that the God she clung to was the God of the Bible. People claiming her as a sister in Christ are deceived by substituting kindness and generosity for repentance and faith. Let’s take a look-
In 2005, Dolly wrote a song called “Travelin’ Thru” for the movie Transamerica (about a male who wants to change genders to a female, and his heretofore unknown son who turns into a gay porn star). She said her motivation for writing the song was to change minds, “Some people are blind or ignorant, and you can’t be that prejudiced and hateful and go through this world and still be happy. One thing about this movie is that I think art can change minds. It’s alright to be who you are.” (Source).
‘Who we are’ are sinners deserving of God’s wrath.
Al Mohler on Dolly and the movie Transamerica, The Duchess of Dollywood Speaks — The Very, Very Open Mind of Dolly Parton
Ken Ham: Where will I (and Dolly Parton) spend eternity?
Justin Peters: What is a Christian? (Was Dolly Parton a Christian?)
Pastor Grant: What did Dolly Parton believe about The Bible?
Dolly publicly stood as an ally for gay and transgender people, which is against God’s standards. She was also immodest, posing for the cover of Playboy Magazine, and wore revealing clothes often.
Do not be deceived and do not fall under the power of deception. Be clear-eyed about what faith is and isn’t. Measure a person’s words and actions against the Bible in God’s words, not against our fallible human standards of love, kindness, or generosity.
G3
Oh, G3 Ministries, you break my heart. I attended the G3 Conference twice and I loved both times. I met wonderful people, had great conversations, and was wowed by the quality of the teaching and preaching. I was thrilled at seeing 5000 the first time then nearly 8000 people the second time come from all over the nation to worship God. I was struck to tears when singing with thousands of others to Jesus. I was mainly happy to see what God can do, raising up so many for His name.
What I didn’t know was that at the center of it was sin. The edges were good, but the center was rotten. “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold” to quote the famous line from “The Second Coming,” a 1919 poem by Irish poet William Butler Yeats. And the center did not hold.
Last year the president of the conference and lead pastor of the church that organized it was outed as a hypocritical sinner. He was forced to step down. This was last year. But then last week, his peers at the church and the Conference were outed as maliciously divisive accusers and liars. The main people behind the church that put on the conference, were sinning unrepentantly and maliciously. Be careful, your sin will find you out. Sadly, when it’s a bunch of pastors who were on one side of their mouths speaking in Jesus’ name and for His glory, and on the other side of their mouths reviling & slandering a brother pastor in Christ anonymously, it’s worse when it’s found out. Titus 2:5, 1 Timothy 6:1, Romans 2:24, 1 Peter 2:15 all are warnings to do right, so the name of God will not be blasphemed or reviled.
Measure a person’s words and actions against the Bible. As we have seen with G3 leaders and their church pastors, sin is deceptive. And it’s everywhere, even where you least expect it.
Nepal flood
Far away across the world and atop the earth’s highest mountains, villagers dwell in vertical lives. Their mountainous buildings and constructions amid the heights with no horizontal ground are amazing achievements. Carving out lives and thriving where the air is thin and the borders are close takes human ingenuity.
And it was all washed away in seconds. A glacier collapsed high above them and its meltwater rushing down the unsuspecting villagers in its wrath and speed astounded those who survived and filmed the spectacle. We watched as it was happening, amazing in itself. Boulders the size of buildings tumbled down amid rushing waters with the speed of a jet as if they were a mere matchstick. Mountainsides were re-shaped in an instant. Solid buildings of concrete and sturdy structure collapsed like a house of cards.
People recorded the disaster and the commonest refrain on social media as we watched horror unfold with mouths agape was: “We are nothing before the power of nature.”
Imagine the global Flood. Imagine the coming Tribulation!
We are puny humans, worms in the dust. We are at the mercy of powers of ‘nature’ and ultimately the power of God which we cannot understand. We get a glimpse when building-sized boulders tumble down as a feather, with the rushing waters defying our comprehension, carving our new channels despite all the endeavors of man to have held it back.
To my mind this week was about power. It made me think of the power of God, the power of deception, and the power of sin.
In The Attributes of God by AW Pink, we read in chapter 9 about the Power of God
WE CANNOT have a right conception of God unless we think of Him as all-powerful, as well as all-wise. He who cannot do what he will and perform all his pleasure cannot be God. As God hath a will to resolve what He deems good, so has He power to execute His will.
“The power of God is that ability and strength whereby He can bring to pass whatsoever He pleases, whatsoever His infinite wisdom may direct, and whatsoever the infinite purity of His will may resolve…As holiness is the beauty of all God’s attributes, so power is that which gives life and action to all the perfections of the divine nature. How vain would be the eternal counsels, if power did not step in to execute them. Without power His mercy would be but feeble pity, His promises an empty sound, His threatenings a mere scarecrow. God’s power is like Himself: infinite, eternal, incomprehensible; it can neither be checked, restrained, nor frustrated by the creature.” (Stephen Charnock).
The only safe spot on earth is in the arms of Jesus, after repenting of our sin and believing in his death, burial, and resurrection.
the-end-time.org 