How to Minister in an Election Year

by Bruce Mills

My friend Phil Johnson, the Executive Director of Grace to You, conducted a seminar at one of the conferences he recently spoke at titled Politically Incorrect? The text of his message has been turned into an article and posted on the Grace to You website. It is an outstanding article addressed to pastors on how to shepherd their congregations in an election year. However, I believe it will benefit every believer to read this material. It is lengthy, but worth your time, because it presents an excellent summary of what Christians should focus on rather than spending time and energy on political activism.

The link to get to the article is: http://www.gty.org/Resources/Articles/10207

Is Barak Obama the Antichrist?

By Bruce Mills

I have been asked that question several times in the past month. In fact, just yesterday as I was walking across the parking lot at work, a Christian coworker flagged me down to pose that question. Last Friday, I was at a meeting of a Christian organization for which I serve on the board of directors, and another one of the men there told me that he also has been asked several times whether or not he believes Barak Obama is the Antichrist.

It isn’t hard to figure out why people are wondering such things. After all, the media has fawned over Senator Obama as if he is some sort of messiah who will save the nation, if not the entire world, from the economic and political woes which face it. Many Americans seem to think that, if elected, he will eliminate all of America’s troubles in short order. Late night comedians even joke about how the media speaks of him as if he is a god.

So then, is Barak Obama the Antichrist? In a word, no. From the prophecies of Daniel 2 and Daniel 7, we learn that the Antichrist will arise out of a revived Roman Empire. The Roman Empire was primarily composed of modern day western Europe, the Balkan States, Turkey, Israel, and Egypt. So, while I cannot be absolutely dogmatic, I believe the revived Roman Empire of the future will arise out of the European Union, and it is from that revived Roman Empire that the Antichrist will arise (Daniel 7:24). He will provide protection for Israel against her enemies for the first three-and-a-half years of the Tribulation, but will then turn against Israel and attempt to destroy her.

Barak Obama does not fit the biblical requirements for the Antichrist. Like all politicians in these last days, he has (and will) promise great things, but in the end, his solutions will not solve man’s problems. If anything, they will do only what the policies of all the world's politicians are doing, and that is to serve to help further “set up” the world to accept the reign of the real Antichrist, who will achieve worldwide domination, including a unified global economic system.

If you want to read further on these matters, I recommend several books, including John MacArthur’s book, Because the Time is Near, Dwight Pentecost’s book, Things to Come, and John Walvoord’s commentaries Daniel: The Key to Prophetic Revelation and The Revelation of Jesus Christ.

The Testing of Abraham Part 2

by Robert Fraire


In this post I will continue to set the stage for God's testing of Abraham that we find in Genesis chapter 22. In the first post on this topic we looked at God's covenant that he made with Abraham. In that post I stressed that God unilaterally put himself in a position of having to keep his promises to Abraham. Abraham didn't earn or deserve the promises, but God for his own purposes made them to Abraham. He had already promised that Abraham that his descendants would be as numerous as the dust of the earth:

Genesis 13:16"I will make your descendants as the dust of the earth, so that if anyone can number the dust of the earth, then your descendants can also be numbered."

So Abraham has this promise, but from his human perspective his reality isn't matching God's promises. He is already nearly 80 and has no children. When God speaks in promise to him again in chapter 15 the Bible records the following:

Genesis 15:2-4
Abram said, "O Lord GOD, what will You give me, since I am childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?"
3And Abram said, "Since You have given no offspring to me, one born in my house is my heir."

4Then behold, the word of the LORD came to him, saying, "This man will not be your heir; but one who will come forth from your own body, he shall be your heir."

I have bolded God's response to Abraham as this is the main point of this post. Abraham knows that he is getting older and without heirs, which would seemingly call into question God's promise. And here God tells Abraham that the son of promise will be his physical son. So what happens next? Incredibly many more years go by without an heir for Abraham. He is now 85 years old and Sarah is 75. It seems that her time to bear children is past, so she designates her maid Hagar as her surrogate, and pleads with Abraham to bear children through Hagar.

Genesis 16:2
So Sarai said to Abram, "Now behold, the LORD has prevented me from bearing children. Please go in to my maid; perhaps I will obtain children through her." And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai.

As a side point I want to say that God's truth on marriage has always been one man and one woman for life. As seen when God made Eve for Adam and said that the two would become one flesh, marriage would always be defined that way. Therefore Abraham sinned in having relations with Hagar, and the earthly consequences of this sin were many.

But in God's providence a son was born and named Ishmael. So Abraham now had a physical son to be his descendant. It had taken a sinful act, but now it seemed that God's promises could be fulfilled through Ishmael. But this was not to be!

Thirteen long years pass, Abraham is 99 years old, Sarah 89 and Ishmael is 13. At this time God speaks to Abraham again and gives him the covenant of circumcision, then God says an amazing thing concerning Sarah:

Genesis 17:16
"I will bless her, and indeed I will give you a son by her Then I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations; kings of peoples will come from her."

This seemed absolutely absurd to Abraham. His response to God called for God to use Ishmael, since it seemed impossible for Sarah to have a child.

17Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and said in his heart, "Will a child be born to a man one hundred years old? And will Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?"

18And Abraham said to God, "Oh that Ishmael might live before You!"

These responses by Abraham were reasonable. I will paraphrase Abraham's words like this: Since it is impossible for Sarah and I to conceive children, I believe you can bring about your promises through Ishmael. And even though reasonable, Abraham's words didn't take into account a miracle working God!

19But God said, "No, but Sarah your wife will bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac; and I will establish My covenant with him for an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him.

God declared that the humanly impossible would be his will for them. And just as God had declared; Isaac was born when Abraham was 100 and Sarah 90. All the conniving and rationalization that Abraham and Sarah had undertaken was for not. God made laughter of all their concerns. The name Isaac means laughter, and it is a timely reminder for us not to put the miraculous past God. Since he brought a child to parents after they were physically too old, what will God bring about in your life?

So now Abraham, the friend of God, has the son through his beloved wife Sarah as a testimony of God's faithfulness. He sees that son Isaac grow stronger and get older, and Abraham may have thought that God was done working in his life and that he would live out his years just watching his children and grandchildren grow.

But God had a big test set for Abraham. And in my next post we will look at this test of Abraham's faith.

The Wretched Character of Sin

By Bruce Mills

How wretched of a sinner are you? I am convinced that if you asked that question to most people, they would immediately say, “Well, actually, I’m not that bad. I try to treat others nicely; I don’t lie, cheat, or steal. I’m not that bad of a sinner.” I am convinced that is the answer people will give because I have asked numerous people that question (or one similar to it), and the answer I get is virtually always the same. People simply don’t feel that badly about their sin.

I was once presenting the gospel to a lady and commented that we are all sinners and that we all sin multiple times per day. She looked at me with an indignant expression and said, “Not me! I haven’t sinned today. All I’ve done today is mow the lawn and wash the dog. So I haven’t sinned today.” She obviously viewed sin as a matter of external deeds rather than internal attitudes. I responded, “Jesus said the greatest commandment is ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength’ (Mark 12:30). Since that is the greatest commandment, if we don’t do that, it is sin. Can you say that you have done that perfectly today?” She looked at me with even greater indignation and said, “Well, if that’s going to be your definition, then I guess I have sinned today.”

The problem is that her perspective on sin, as well as that of all of unregenerate humanity, is that it is in direct and gross contradiction to what God’s Word says about sin. According to the Bible, man is corrupt and depraved to the very core of his being; a creature who goes about continually lying and deceiving, who hates God and rebels against everything He stands for; and who follows after his own desires and plea-sures rather than that which pleases God. In Romans 3: 10-18, the apostle Paul describes man’s condition in these words:

“There is none righteous, not even one; there is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God; all have turned aside, together they have become useless; there is none who does good, there is not even one. Their throat is an open grave, with their tongues they keep deceiving, the poison of asps is under their lips; whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness; their feet are swift to shed blood, destruction and misery are in their paths, and the path of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

But I expect those who are not Christians to see their sin that way. It is not until they are confronted by the Law of God and His standards that they are even willing to admit that they are unrighteous sinners. What bothers me are those Christians who don’t seem to view their sinfulness as being all that bad. When they talk about their sin, it is often in the forensic sense in which sin becomes some kind of abstract concept which they know infects us, but which they feel capable of controlling most of the time—at least externally when they are around people other than their family. They fail to appreciate the fact that apart from the saving grace of God and the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit, they would be just as enslaved to sin as their unregenerate family, friends, and neighbors.

Sin is not something which any human is capable of controlling within himself. Sin is the master, not the human will. Sin enslaves, controls, and destroys. No person, in and of himself, has any ability whatsoever to subdue the sin that runs rampant through their fallen flesh and wages war against their mind (cf. Romans 7:23). That includes believers. Yes, Christians are new creations in Christ, but their newly created soul is trapped in a fallen fleshly body which continues to be enslaved to sin. So the Christian walk is a continual war against the desires of the flesh.

If you ever get to the point that you think you have achieved mastery over the sin in your life, just look at your response when someone breaks a promise they made to you, or someone challenges your integrity. You will find that immediately a war breaks out within you. You will begin to seethe with anger and bitterness; perhaps it will even burst forth in verbal outrage.

You may try to justify your anger by calling it “righteous anger” over the sin which that other individual committed against you, but the reality is that in your heart, you have determined that you are so important that no one should dare to violate your trust or to challenge your honesty. You have allowed pride to swell, and the respect and honor of others to become an idol of your heart. And when you set up an idol in your heart, you forget that it is a subversion of the eternal God’s righteous reign over your life. Instead you become more concerned with another person’s offense against you than the gravity of their sin against God.

But sin doesn’t only involve and affect other people and your relationship to them. David committed the sin of adultery with Bathsheba, then covered it up by murdering her husband Uriah. Yet when he came to God, pleading for forgiveness, he recognized that ultimately his sin was against God. He cried out, “Against You, You only, I have sinned and done what is evil in Your sight” (Psalm 51:4). He wasn’t denying the offense against Bathsheba and Uriah; he was simply acknowledging how great and awful sin really is. It isn’t merely an offense against other people; it is an offense against an infinitely holy God who is absolutely just in inflicting upon us an infinitely eternal punishment.

Don’t ever minimize the gravity of your sin. You and I are wretched, depraved sinners. Every area of our life is tainted by the poison of sin: our thought processes, our attitudes, our motives, our actions, and our inactions. Without Christ, the human heart pursues sin like a starving lion pursues a wounded deer. With Christ, you can for the first time in your life, overcome sin, even though you will find it to be a continual, lifelong battle, fraught with both victories and defeats.

So if you are a believer, acknowledge and grieve over the depths of your sin, confess it, turn from it, and by the power of the Holy Spirit who is at work in your life, pursue righteousness. If you are not a believer, recognize that so long as you cling to your sin, you will never see God except on judgment day, and then it will be too late. Admit you are a sinner, turn to Christ who paid the death penalty for the sins of unworthy sinners, and receive His forgiveness. Only He can give you the ability to defeat the sin which presently controls your life.

A Biblical Response to the Stock Market Crash

by Bruce Mills

I just returned from a much needed vacation in the mountains of north Georgia.  My wife and I got to spend a week with some good friends at their beautiful mountain lodge home.  We went hiking, sightseeing, and strolled around the Georgia Mountain Fall Festival at the fairgrounds in Hiawassee. The leaves were changing and the mountainsides were filled with gorgeous red, yellow, and orange leaves. It was wonderful.  But my vacation is not what I want to write about.

While we were there, the world's stock markets and financial systems crashed.  We watched as our government's best effort to bailout the financial institutions of our nation in order to prevent their failure proved itself to be a failure.  People saw their retirement savings take a beating which may take years to recover.

My friend with whom we were staying offers financial counsel to his friends and family as to how to best invest in the market in order to save sufficiently for retirement.  His phone began to ring off the hook, as person after person called him looking for advice on what they should do.  He spent many hours of his own time, staying up late into the night and then getting up early in the morning, working on their portfolios in an attempt to reduce the damage to each person's savings.

What was particularly distressing is to hear Christians calling in a panicked state of mind.  I would expect such from unbelievers.  After all, they have no promise from God that He will provide for their needs, but Christians have the unbreakable promise of Scripture that their eternal Father will supply all their needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus (Philippians 4:19).  The psalmist David observed, "I have been young and now I am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or his descendants begging bread" (Psalm 37:25).  And in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gave extensive instruction on how Christians are to deal with financial issues and the daily concerns about the necessities of life (cf. Matthew 6:19-34). 

Yet despite these, and many more Scriptural assurances of God's care and provision for His children in difficult circumstances, my friend's phone kept ringing, and his email inbox filled up with messages from Christians who were afraid that they were about to lose everything they have invested. Admittedly, many of them were being prudent and seeking wise counsel as to how to approach these perplexing and difficult financial times.  But others were absolutely hysterical and panicked.

Such a response is a worldly and ungodly response.  There has been no other opportunity in our lifetime in which believers have had as great an opportunity to verbally and visibly demonstrate their reliance and trust on their God to take care of them.  While the world around them panics, Christians need to be resting in the promises of God and trusting Him to carry them through these dark times.  After all, even if these difficulties last the rest of our lives, that is incomparable to the eternal glory that awaits those who trust in Christ.  Scripture instructs us, "Be anxious for nothing (that includes job losses, stock market crashes, and the loss of all your retirement savings), but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.  And the peace of God which surpasses all comprehension will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 4:6-7).

So stop trusting in accumulated wealth. You cannot serve both money and God, so choose to trust in God and serve Him (cf. Matthew 6:24).  Be a testimony to your friends and family by visibly demonstrating your reliance on your heavenly Father to provide your present and future needs.  Our Lord is in control, and He is sovereignly bringing about His eternal purposes in our current circumstances.  So rest in His perfect plans.