Dr Atheist and Dr Agnostic

There is Dr Atheist, now this man that I was speaking to in Derby that was his doctor, well he changed doctors while I was talking to him actually but to start with he was relying upon Dr Atheist, if you split the word up theist means God and the prefix A it means no, so it means that he believes that there is no God, the Atheist says there is no God and Psalm 14 says holding to that view categorises him as a fool,  

Look around you where do you think it all came from? Look at the stars in the sky where do you think it all came from? And I was just talking to this man and I asked him “do you think it just happened, do you think that something just came out of nothing, what do you think?” and of course then he was backed into a corner but the atheist is comfortable in part with 

2 Peter 3:4 all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation."  

He doesn’t like that bit about creation because he doesn’t believe in creation but he is very happy about, oh everything continues as it was its called uniformitarianism and you leave God out completely and they are very comfortable with that and Dr Atheist says there is no hereafter so you don’t have to worry about anything like that but then the anxious soul with a conscious awakened, you see this man must have his conscious awakened somehow to have engaged me in this conversation and folks we need to recognise this in people when they are talking to us. He must have had a conscious awakening otherwise he would not have engaged me in the conversation that he engaged me in and the awakened conscious says to this Dr Atheist 

“how do you know there is no God, do you have total knowledge, have you searched every corner of all the universe so that you can say that there is no God? You arrogant puny man you to say such a thing, worthless physician if ever there was one,"

and my friend changed his mind and he turned at that point to another one called Dr Agnostic.

The word agnostic is also split into two parts the prefix a at the beginning means no and the next part,  you may be familiar with the Gnostics the knowing ones, well agnostic means we don’t know, no knowing and all is uncertainty amongst the agnostics. Now let me personalise this, I’ll put myself in the position of an unsaved person for the sake of illustrating this because here I am in need of something folks I have just suddenly become conscious that I have got a problem in my conscience it is troubling me, I know there is something wrong, I know I am not right and I am conscious of something that the bible calls sin and I am trying to deal with this and I am trying to deal with it and this was the position that this friend of mine was in he wouldn’t admit it but that is where he is coming from and Dr Agnostic says 

“Well we can’t know, we can’t be sure, we can’t really know anything” 

and do you know you find out what a useless Dr he is and it is so tragic because so many people are listening to him 

“Don’t worry, never mind I’ll introduce you to another Dr he can help you his name is Dr False Peace."

To be continued

Dr False Peace and

Dr Good Enough

Pastor P Yendle

Useless Physicians Part one

I was speaking to a friend in Derby on Tuesday and he said he didn’t believe in God when I told him I was a pastor, and I thought about this, when you are speaking to people it comes home to you the awfulness of being lost and what it means to be lost and how lost people are, they’re just floundering, and wherever you go you can speak to anybody and in no time at all you start to discover that they’ve got problems. We all have problems don’t we it’s just that we have a wonderful helper but there are problems, problems wherever you go, I don’t know ifyou have ever read the book of Job but Job contains a revelation of what Satan can do to a person and really what is in the nature of Satan to do to a person if God permits him to act, there is a wonderful comfort there because when you read the book you realise that he can’t do anything unless God lets him but within that you see the nature of Satan. All the things that happened to Job to that extent that God permitted him, Job suffered dreadfully but the Lord wonderfully restored him. When you consider his before and after state the contrast is such a stark one before all this happened to him there he was he had children, riches, good health I suppose all the things that most of us would ever hope to have, he had them, in his day folks he had them all but when Satan had done his work Job lost his children, his wealth, and his health and here was a man stripped of everything that seemed to make life worth living for him. At the end of the book it says that the Lord restored everything,

Job 42:10 And the Lord restored Job's losses when he prayed for his friends. Indeed, the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before;

He had double the number of sheep, camels, oxen, donkeys all the hallmarks of being exceedingly affluent in the society in which he lived. But the same number of children as he had before, God said I will give you back double but he had the same number of children, now you may agree with me or not but my understanding is that he had double the children as well because he had the same number of children born again to replace on earth the ones that he had lost and in the hereafter the one’s that he’d lost as well, God doubled everything folks I so believe.

I want us to consider that huge aspect that he was stripped of everything and it just made me think talking to this friend of mine last Tuesday so many people with problems of one sort or another and every single one of us we all have this in common, we all have needs like this when we suffer some loss of some kind it is a wonderful help if we can find the comfort of some good words from somebody now unfortunately in Job’s case his comforters were miserable comforters and they weren’t really up to the mark, they weren’t the comforters that Job hoped they would have been. Properly understood his comforters comforted from, now it wasn’t their fault they did the best that they could it was just that they lacked knowledge, they didn’t know and there is a revelation at the end of the book but that doesn’t answer all the questions as a matter of fact but they answered from three different stand points so closely related, they answered from the stand point of human experience, human tradition, and human merit. It is so easy to look at something from the stand point of human merit and to think to yourself well I know what he deserves and what he doesn’t deserve because look at what sort of person he is and when you look at the sort of comments that his comforters made they dealt with everything from the point of what we experience as people, the tradition that we pick up along the way and what we think we might merit or not merit because of the way that we have lived and all of those things fell short really to explain the situation that this man was in. Here was a man for a time that experienced every human comfort and every hope just absolutely cut off he lost everything folks, there isn’t a person in this room who has experienced the sort of trauma that this man Job went through now some of us I know have had dreadful experiences and I am not making light of that but this man folks, experiences multiplied on multiplied and I don’t know anybody who has had quite his experiences.

Just imagine being that utterly destitute, utterly helpless, utterly in need and not knowing really where to turn for help, when I was thinking about this in some small measure every single one of us, all the people that we meet they have all got problems and you listen to them and one of the things is the lack of help and comfort, there is a remarkable little verse in Job when he is describing these comforters, these friends that have come to him 

Job 13:4 But you forgers of lies, You are all worthless physicians, lousy doctors all of you and this is what I started thinking about, you know the world is full of worthless physicians, useless doctors and we have all met them every single one of us and I felt it would be useful and instructive to identify some of the useless physicians that there are and you are familiar with them you have met some of them yourself.

To be continued

Dr Atheist and Dr Agnostic......

 Pastor Philip Yendle

I am Not Ashamed, are You?

I recently attended the funeral of a sister in Christ. She was a godly woman, and very gracious, who loved to speak of Jesus at every opportunity. People testified to how the Lord had used her for His glory, and to how His Light and truth manifest in her life. when she had to go into a residential care home, she continued to testify to the love and grace of Jesus, and she spoke to the other people there be they staff or residents.

She sang, read the Word, and prayed. In the evenings as the staff got her ready for bed she would pray, especially for them.

And when it came to the point where she could no longer speak, the staff would kneel at the side of her bed and pray. Such was the influence of this Christian lady, in this non-Christian home.

At the same time of this funeral, I read on the internet of the imprisonment of Pastor in China. He asked for prayer, what did he ask for? Ease and comfort, pleasant guards, decent food, his release? No, none of these requests came from his lips. He asked that we would pray for him to be a light in that dark place, and that he would be able to share the gospel, and show to the prisoners and the guards the love and mercy of God and His Son, Jesus.

Neither of these wanted to be in the position and place they were in, but they didn’t grumble and complain, rather they rejoiced and praised God in their circumstances and prayed in humility of heart that God would use them where they were. No matter what our circumstances, no matter where we are, God can, and does use us if we are willing to be led by His Holy Spirit, and not seek our own ease and comfort.

We should all be one of the same mind in Christ, our lives should show His love, our lips should sing His praise. And we should not be ashamed of the gospel.

I am not ashamed
Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir

Luke 9:26

For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, of him the Son of Man will be ashamed when He comes in His own glory, and in His Father’s, and of the holy angels.

True Teasure

Old Humphrey's Gems Taken from Gleaning for the Young 1882, 

page 2

We all love to pluck the fairest fruit, and to gather the sweetest flowers; but put this down as a truth worthy to be graven on a pillar of brass that more enjoyable fruits and flowers grow by the wayside of the path of duty than in all the wilderness of wilful inclination.

We all set a value on riches; but Mexico is a long way off, and it’s gold is hard to gain. The Bible which has a far richer source of real wealth, is at hand. I will point out two texts that are worth a hundred Mexico’s:

“God is love”

1 John 4:8

He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.

“Christ died for the ungodly”

Romans 5:6

For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.

The Word of God is full of treasure, and it is as relevant today in 2020 for the young (the old and the in between)  as it was in 1882. There is not a person on the planet that has not sinned, and is therefore a sinner. And all sinners need the saving grace of God, who is willing to be your Father when you repent of your sins, and leave your old life behind to follow and believe in the Lord Jesus. Oh, the joy of knowing your sins are forgiven and that you are a child of God, and all the treasures of God's Word are there for you to discover for your own life. And to know that all the treasure of heaven is yours for now and eternity. Don’t wait, today is the day of salvation.

Repent

Believe

Receive