One of the most important but underreported stories in today’s news is Turkey’s disturing move toward hardcore Islam, as indicated in major political shifts of recent weeks.

For years, Turkey has been one of the more “moderate” Islamic nations, thanks to its military, which has staunchly maintained a secular, democratic approach to politics as was instituted by the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Now the military has fallen, and hardcore Islamists may begin phasing in a new Islamic fundamentalism. Turkey is a member of NATO, is strategic to the Middle East conflict, and has the seventh largest economy in Europe.

This could well be another of the dominos falling as we get ready to usher in the events described in the book of Revelation. It’s not hard to see the pieces fitting together.

PS – For more on this story, read today’s article in the New York Times. For more study into the book of Revelation, join us Sunday night at TDF at 6 for KALEO.

Liberal scholars and minimalist archaeologists are standing on their heads today, trying to figure out the latest headlines from Israel.  Even the left-leaning National Geographic is admitting the sensational nature of the discovery and announcement by Dr. Eliat Mazar regarding the wall Solomon built around Jerusalem according to 1 Kings 3.  Verse 1 of that passage says:

Solomon made an alliance with Pharaoh King of Egypt and married his daughter.  He brought her to the City of David until he finished building his palace and the temple of the Lord, and the wall around Jerusalem.

The National Geographic headline is: King Solomon’s Wall Found—Proof of Bible Tale?

The second sentence of the article says: “The discovery appears to validate a Bible passage….”  This story is all over the news.  Here are some links if you want to read more about it here and here and here.

Listen to my radio interview with former TDF member Andy Farmer on Missouri station KNEO on Thursday and Friday (February 25 and 26) at 1 pm central time.

A thankful, cheerful spirit can be cultivated by considering what might have been, and then rejoicing that it wasn’t.  There’s an article on CNN today about the emotions of the passengers aboard Northwest Flight 253, now that some time has passed since they were nearly killed by the Christmas Day Underwear Bomber.  One of the passengers, Roey Rosenblith, 25, had a great thing to say.  This is very preach-able (except maybe for the beer reference).

Though this might sound strange, for me personally almost getting killed 30,000 feet above the earth by an al Qaeda terrorist has been one of the best things that’s ever happened to me.  Now being alive, seeing the blue sky, hearing the rain fall, eating a delicious meal, drinking a beer with a friend – everyday stuff just feels like an amazing gift…  I feel as though I’ve somehow cheated death and against all odds been given this gift of continuing my life.

I actually have my boarding pass framed now, and it’s sitting on my desk, right next to a little prayer book I keep with its page turned to Psalm 23.  I keep it there simply to remind myself that whatever happens to me, things could always be far worse.

It reminds me of an incident from the life of St. Francis of Assisi, a quote from Winston Churchill, and from a story from a Dale Carnegie book.  I’ll post those over the next few day.  It’ll make a good multi-part series on the joys of not being killed.

Speaking of the weekend, I’m leaving today to speak at a Pigeon Forge retreat sponsored by my friends, Jerry and Linda Scarborough, of Columbus, Georgia.  It’s a beautiful weekend with lots of sunshine, and I’m looking forward to the trip.  Thanks to all who hold us up in prayer.

There’s a fascinating article in today’s New York Times that has tremendous significance from a spiritual perspective.  It’s about that fact that people die in the Philippines whenever they hear Frank Sinatra’s song, “I Did It My Way.”

 I’m a minor Sinatra fan and sometimes play one of his albums on my iPod while cooking or cleaning around the house.  But I’ve never liked “My Way.”  It’s my least-favorite Sinatra tune – morbid, fatalistic, sad, openly arrogant, humanistic, and defiant.  It’s about a man who is dying and, looking back over his life, feels good about the fact that he has done things his own way.

 Yes, there were times, I’m sure you knew

When I bit off more than I could chew;

But through it all, when there was doubt

I ate it up and spit it out.

I faced it all and I stood tall and did it my way.

 Well, there’s something about this song that releases an unhealthy, self-assertive energy in bars and karaoke restaurants in the Philippines. People get into fights and literally start killing others while the music’s going. This song has now been stricken from many nightclubs there because it fuels deadly fights.  No one knows how many people have been killed during the singing of “My Way,” but the police have a subcategory of crime dubbed “My Way Killings.”

 I don’t need to add that the “My Way” philosophy is the very essence of anti-Christian thinking.  As believers, our aim is to please Christ in every way.  We don’t come to the point of death and look back over our lives with fatalistic defiance.  We want to be able to say, “I have finished the work You gave me to do.”

 Our attitude is: “I did it His Way.”

The Christian Post is reporting that the latest discovery of fossilized footprints by four-legged vertebrates overthrows the model for how land animals emerged.  These footprints were found in Poland, and the journal Nature carried an article about them in the January issue.  Per Ahlberg, a Swedish paleontologist who lead the new research, told CNN, “In the course of a single afternoon I found myself revising the entire understanding I had of my own research.”

Dr. Fuz Rana, a biochemist who is following the story, said, “This is a huge discovery… another example of supposedly a well-established evolutionary story, that has presumable fossil evidence to support it, that is now blown out of the water by a single find.”

He continued, “People who are skeptics of the evolutionary paradigm are even more justifiable in their skepticism today than they were yesterday because of this particular discovery.”

You can read the whole article here.

I’m still working day and night on a book based on our Ten-Square sermon series at TDF, and covet your prayers for that.  I’d hoped to have it finished by year’s end, but I’m going to need a couple of extra weeks.  But pray for skill in writing and success in impact.

In the meantime, there were a couple of encouraging articles in the news today, and as the old year ends we need every encouraging article we can find.

University of Tennessee quarterback Jonathan Crompton has become a Christian.  In today’s Baptist Press, we learn that the UT team chaplain led Crompton to Christ on August 25.  He baptized him at Sevier Heights Baptist Church in November, and meets with him each week for discipleship training.  Crompton said:

I’m more fulfilled.  It’s made it a lot easier for me on and off the field.  I don’t have to do all the work.  It’s all on Him.  This season has been different in a good way….

It’s amazing.  Jesus has given His life.  He was kind enough to forgive us of our sins.  No one is perfect.  I want to keep moving forward and to get stronger every day in my walk with Him.

The whole article is here.

The other great story is in the Christian Post.  Two million people in Tanzania now have access for the first time to the story of Christ’s birth in their own language.  Wycliffe Bible Translators finished their work on the Christmas story from Luke’s Gospel for nine language groups in the Mara region of northwest Tanzania.  For more on this story, click here.

May 2010 bring many more stories of advance for the Kingdom, one by one, tribe by tribe.

Happy New Year

I’ve visited Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, and it’s a beautiful spot with quaint chapels, prayer gardens, and the fabulous painting of the crucifixion of Christ displayed in a churchlike theater on the crest of the hill (it’s the largest oil painting in the world, and worth a visit).  But I’m amazed at the excess that would spend a million dollars for a funeral there.  That’s more than the net worth of most Americans.  According to TMZ, to slide Michael Jackson into his slot in the mausoleum, it cost, in dollars:

• 175,000 – Police support
• 590,000 – Internment
• 88,500 – Mausoleum upkeep
• 176,000 – Private security, lighting, and to rent a baby grand piano
• 3,600 – Framing a photo of Michael to place beside the casket
• 1,975 – Wardrobe for the family
• 125 – The flower van.

Personally, I think the flower van people undercharged for their services, but the framing people made up for it.  But the overlooked fact is that Michael was just as dead after the million dollars was spent as he was before.  It’s not the cost of our funerals but the quality of our lives that counts.  It’s not the fame of our name but the name of our Lord that makes the difference in eternity.  Better to die in Christ and be buried in Potter’s Field than to tumble into eternity without Him and be buried in a shrine.

There’s an article today in an Australian newspaper about the growing presence of born-again Christians in France.  Seems the evangelical population is having a resurgence, and that sends some pundits into spasms.  Secularists fear these Christians might have views on moral issues, which would translate at some point into political opinions.  Here are some excerpts from ”Rise of French Evangelicals Puts Secularism in a Spin.”

From a postwar population of about 50,000, French evangelicals are now estimated to number 450,000 to 500,000. According to the Evangelical Federation of France, the number of churches has risen from 800 in 1970 to more than 2200 today.

Last week, the boom made headlines when thousands of evangelicals descended on Strasbourg to turn the 500th anniversary of Calvin’s birth into a huge media-covered event.

On paper, France would seem one of the least likely places for this branch of Christianity to gain a foothold. For centuries, Protestantism was the embattled minority in a country Catholics liked to call the ”eldest daughter of the church” because of its strong ties to Rome. That minority still makes up just 3 per cent of the population.

More importantly, ever since France wrote a separation of church and state into the constitution, the country has worshipped at the altar of laicite – the concept of a secular state.

So the emergence of evangelicals as a force has raised eyebrows, with some critics questioning whether their beliefs are compatible with the values of a secular republic.

There’s a story in today’s news about the “Lord of the Rings” star, Sir Ian McKellen, who has started a fad of ripping Leviticus 18:22 from Gideon Bibles, or from whatever Bible one has.  That verse says, “Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable.”

“I’m not proudly defacing the book,” he explained to an interviewer, “but it’s a choice between removing that page and throwing away the whole Bible.” McKellen, an openly avowed homosexual, is encouraging others to do the same, and the fad is catching on.

It seems to me that what McKellen is really saying is this:  “God may be right most of the time, but He’s mistaken here; He’s got this wrong.  Since I’m better informed on this, I’m going to override God’s judgment, correct His mistake, and amend His law to my liking.”

In Jeremiah 36, King Jehoiakim didn’t like the writings of the prophet Jeremiah, so he ripped them out one page at a time and burned them in the firepot.  It didn’t do him any good.  He learned that the Word of God is as indestructible as God Himself. 

Even if Leviticus 18:22 is missing from the Gideon Bible, there are six other pages in the Bible that condemn homosexuality.

Plus there are countless pages in the Bible about holiness, about morality and immorality, and about the propriety of sex within a one-man-one woman marriage. 

McKellen would have to tear out all those pages.  Plus he would have to rip out all the passages about the holiness of God, all the passages about purity, all the passages about obedience, and all the passages about morality.

I’m in a hotel room right now, and Leviticus 18:22 is still safely in place in the Gideon Bible.  But I noticed there are 1291 pages in all from Genesis to Revelation.  It’d take McKellen awhile to rip out all those pages.  And even after he done so, nothing would be changed about the holiness of God, the sinfulness of man, the sanctity of marriage, the reality of the Law, the morality of the universe, the death of Christ, the need for salvation, and the mercy of the Lord.

Heaven and earth will pass away, but His Word is established forever.  Not a “jot or a tittle” will pass away.

But before we jump all over Sir Ian, we might pause to see if there are any truths of Scripture that we ourselves are disregarding.