Abundant Life: August/September 2010

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Various -isms: False Doctrines in our World Today

I once heard a joke about a young preacher being carefully admonished by a much older preacher. “Young man, the trouble with our world today is all the -isms. Calvinism, Darwinism, Humanism – if something ends in -ism you can just mark it down as unscriptural!” The young man thought long and hard and then asked, “Sir, what about baptism?” The old preacher never missed a beat. “That’s the trouble with this younger generation,” he opined. “They don’t know the difference in a -tism and an - ism!”

I hope and pray this issue of Abundant Life successfully differentiates between -tisms and -isms! More to the point, I hope we will all be interested in some of the most common false doctrines propagated in our world today. May this issue help you be even more ready to fulfill 1 Peter 3:15, and to stand strong yourself.

Darwinism: Why I can't believe in Evolution

Today Darwinism is another name for evolution and can be defined as “requiring life to evolve from a lower to a higher form.” In other words, life must have evolved from one cell to the many celled life forms on the earth today.

This quasi-scientific theory is not a truly scientific idea and conflicts with the Biblical account of creation from Genesis, and known laws of science. This article will deal first with Genesis 1 and then with some scientific facts that show that Darwinism or evolution cannot be true.

Why I Can't Believe In Materialism

One approach for addressing Materialism is to dive deeply into a philosophical discussion—throw- ing out definitions and using words like reductionism, physicalism, monist ontology and so on. But how many of us can really converse on that level without loading up our smartphone dictionary? Allow me to provide one simple description of materialism, and we will go from there. Materialism is based on the belief that matter is all that exists. If that be true, it is hard to imagine anything more miserable than humanity. We will never have what we want, and when life ends there is nothing better waiting for us. What a terrible existence!

Why I Can't Believe In Calvinism

Calvinism is back! (Can you believe it?)

Yes, you read it correctly. Calvinism is making a strong charge back into the religious spotlight. What is the cause? People are increasingly unhappy with the lack of substance coming from their preachers. They want something stronger; something that is challenging. I must admit, it is of some comfort to see that people are abandoning the soft, weak, and vanilla-flavored teaching that too often fills pulpits. But unfortunately, in seeking a more objective, rigid, and “tell-it-like-it-is” doctrine, much of the crowd has turned to Calvinistic theology.