Monthly Archives: February 2022

Raised by Wolves

The Collective

Season 2 Episode 1

Editors Rating 4 stars ****

Photo: HBO

When we last traveled Kepler-22b with Mother (Amanda Collin), Father (Abubakar Salim), and their brood of problematically obtained children, it was the fall of 2020, which seems like a dozen lifetimes ago. Mother, a droid and necromancer reprogrammed to raise a new atheistic society of children, and Father, a service android tasked to protect their new colony, had completed their core task with little success and had plenty of Ridley Scotts trademark milk-seeping wounds to show for their efforts. Out of the six embryos they transported from a religious, war-ravaged Earth, only one survived, the others having died from eating toxic foods. And Mothers surprising pregnancy, which she idealized as being the love-child of her creator, Campion Sturges (Cosmo Jarvis), turned out to be a supercharged flying eel that was at one time native to Kepler-22b and brought back from extinction via a cosmic troll of epic proportions.

Mother and Fathers overall plan of a new atheist society free from the combative nature of being governed by a spiritual leader is in perfect opposition of the Mithraics, who worship the Roman god of supreme light, Sol. When the Mithraics made their way to Kepler-22b in season one, they were initially only interested in dipping into their resources, but when Mother abducted a number of their children, including Paul (Felix Jamieson), the son of faux Mithraics Marcus (Travis Fimmel) and Sue (Niamh Algar), atheist soldiers who went through a droid-conducted procedure to take on the appearances of Mithraics in order to gain entry to the ark fleeing Earth, the collective hope of a fresh start went up in flames. Going into season two, our own hope is that well learn more about the mysterious influence that is causing visual and auditory hallucinations in both the Mithraic and atheist camps and, most importantly, just how big Mothers baby has become, and who its gonna eat first.

With this new season, were given a new location, the tropical zone, where atheist colony 1 has set up camp surrounding a hijacked Mithraic ark. The atheists come across the zonked-out bodies of Mother, whose non-mother name is Lamia, and Father on opposite ends of the zone where they were flung from their crashed lander. The atheists have plenty of droids of their own, but haul these two into their ship anyway, primarily out of curiosity. They make an attempt to download their memories but while digging around in Mother to locate her processor, the atheist doing the digging blows up like a burnt marshmallow on the end of a campfire stick. Quick to bounce back, Mother is still not one to be fiddled around with. She surveys her new surroundings and sees that the atheists seem to be governed by a highly intelligent computerized force and asks to be taken to it. Standing before what looks like a dark smoky bong inside a lava lamp, Mother learns that the force governing the atheists is a quantum computer called The Trust made by Campion Sturges, which makes them siblings, in a sense. For as much as the atheists are repulsed by the Mithraic way of believing in what cannot be seen, the idea of them putting all their faith in a pushy machine seems pretty ironic. But the need to seek out a larger meaning to life, in one way or another, is almost impossible to avoid whether youre religious, an atheist, or even a droid.

Mother is having human-esque reactions to things now like love, desire, and shame. She lies to her son Campion, named after her creator, and the others about the fate of her baby, saying that it died immediately after being born. And she seems elated to be put to work by the new atheist colony as the caregiver for their youngest children. While watching over their classroom, she gives them eggs to color, and when one little boy starts coloring a bright green snake on his egg she tells him not to make it scary, clearly triggered by the idea of her slithering spawn out there somewhere wiggling its way towards their colony. Its not scary; its beautiful. All living things are beautiful, the child responds. Clearly hes never met this particular butthole-mouthed living thing.

The reunited family structure of Mother, Father, Campion, Paul, Hunter (Ethan Hazzard), Holly (Aasiya Shah), Vita (Ivy Wong), Tempest (Jordan Loughran), and Sue take pleasure in the pleasant air, bright sun, and fancy amenities of atheist colony 1, but we can already tell that they wont be able to enjoy it for very long. While theyre luxuriating in the working kitchen, cozy bedrooms, and congregational areas equipped with hologames called Necro Slayer!, Marcus, their one remaining Mithraic threat, is making his way toward them. After shooting down an atheist bomber, he hijacks it and has no trouble locating their new camp. The Trust spots him before he lands, and takes over control of the bomber, but a crash landing into acid water isnt even enough to slow him down. He uses a ray gun to anchor his ship and pull it close enough to land so he can jump out, and then rewards himself with cactus fruit. While navigating his way through the new zone, he comes in contact with a mother and her droid daughter who are fleeing the perimeter. Theyre wearing explosive vests set to detonate if they stray too far away, but Marcus uses a pin from the droids shoulder to pry them open. He learns that the mother is a Mithraic quantum gravity engineer named Decima (Kim Engelbrecht) who spent her lifes work making the ark that the atheists stole to get there, and was able to keep her droid daughter, Vrille (Morgan Santo), in exchange for working on the ark and keeping it in good running order. Marcus is quick to put all of this knowledge to use and makes plans to start a Mithraic congregation in the new tropical zone by converting the rest of the atheists one by one. So here, in one episode, we have the basis for enough conflict to easily fuel the season.

A disgruntled atheist leaves a message for Mother, Father, and the rest of the new colony in the form of a blazing sun symbol on the ground, right outside of their ark. Paul, who was recently quarantined for believing that Sol is speaking to him and leaving him little gifts here and there, will take a great deal away from this, to be sure. Toward the end of season one, Paul and Marcus, who he says Sol revealed to not be his real dad, were on the outs after Marcuss violent outbursts, but when he hears of Marcuss plans to start a new church, that might change. If Marcus is able to lure Paul away from the atheists, thatll set him against his friend Campion who, as far as I can see, is just out here trying to hatch eggs to make pets and mind his business, so well see what happens there.

Its not very realistic, is it? Mother when she sees the Necro Slayer! game.

This side of the planet seems less intent on killing our children. Father, ever the optimist.

Campion needs some conditioner.

I have a feeling that the Dungeons & Dragons relic that Paul found and the egg that Campion brought back to the colony are both going to end up being terrifying things.

Keep up with all the drama of your favorite shows!

Continued here:

Raised by Wolves season 2, episode 1 recap: The Collective - Vulture

Atheist: Leaving Bryn Mawr for Hillsdale

I arrived on Bryn Mawrs campus . . . in the Fall of 2019, Jane Kitchen recalls at Common Sense. She loved it. Then came COVID: The next few months were the worst of my life. She stayed home for the entirety of my junior year Bryn Mawrs protocols didnt make coming to campus worth it. So she started looking to transfer, finding that almost every school that was operating even remotely normally was overtly religious. Though shes an atheist, these schools were far more aligned with my values like individual liberty, critical inquiry, and diversity of thought than the place that explicitly claimed to be those things. Shes now in her third week at Hillsdale, a small school of less than 1,500 students, founded by Baptists in Michigan, and life is blissfully normal.

Substacker Freddie de Boer sees huge similarities between the domestic US responses to 9/11 and COVID. Liberals doomsaying over Omicron (e.g., a tweet warning Americans to be ready for a life rendered unrecognizable by the variant) carry a mindset of mandatory panic, the insistence that anyone who does not allow the crisis to dominate their internal life is somehow guilty of causing it, which de Boer sees as much like overblown concerns on domestic terrorism post-9/11. Indeed, many on the left seek to turn disaster into opportunity. Even if its merely the opportunity to do the only thing that gets them out of bed these days, the opportunity to judge others.

Struggling Democratic parents have snapped because of school COVID policies, warns Bethany Mandel at The Daily Mail. A single case of COVID can lead to a closure of 10-14 days, with no routine or steady childcare for parents of small children. Jersey mom Ashley says shes about as lefty as they come but upset that kids are masked, have no field trips, no extracurriculars, no sports and fumes that Democrats should be paying attention instead of gaslighting me and telling me everything is fine. During 2021, the number of Americans self-identifying as Democrat or Democrat-leaning dropped from 49% to 42%, notes Mandel, with the most pronounced shift coming in the fall, as children returned to school.

The public is right to give Bidenomics a thumbs-down, Andy Puzder explains at Fox News. For starters, the 5.7% GDP growth in 2021 was no surprise as a bounceback from 2020s negative 3.4%: When states reopened, given the depths to which the economy sank, GDP was going to increase no matter what Biden did. And if Bidens massive $1.9 trillion spending spree, which the Democrats passed in March, contributed to 2021s GDP growth, it came with a costly trade-off. That spending fueled a surge in demand, overwhelming already strained supply chains and driving inflation to a four-decade high. On employment, were still 2.9 million jobs, or 30% [of the total lost in lockdowns], below pre-pandemic levels. And Republican-led states are doing the best on the jobs front.

In making race and sex the paramount considerations for his Supreme Court nomination, President Biden will deal another blow to the quality of our most important institutions, laments Heather Mac Donald at City Journal. With Justice Stephen Breyer retiring and Biden poised to fulfill his campaign pledge to nominate a black female, its worth revisiting the White Houses February 2021 little-noticed announcement: It would skip the American Bar Associations traditional nominee vetting because its incompatible with diversification of the judiciary. Its a measure of how far the Biden administration intended to stray from even a diversity-driven standard of competence that it saw identity-obsessed ABA members as a roadblock. Bottom line: The quality of our jurisprudence matters. The race, sex, and gender identity of judges do not.

Compiled by The Post Editorial Board

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Leaving Bryn Mawr for Hillsdale and other commentary - New York Post

The facts of Francis Bacons life are the ones that tend to envelop interpretations of his work: he was an alcoholic, atheist, gambler, and homosexual in an intolerant age.

This fraught personalization is not so surprising given his subject matter. Bacons paintings are full of personal torment, depicting solitary figures with their faces and bodies writhing or contorted beyond familiarity, seemingly trapped in the empty, airless spaces that define his work.

The Royal Academy of Arts just-opened exhibition, Francis Bacon: Man and Beast, aims to present the 20th-century artists work through a different prism: his fascination with the animal world.

While Bacon was very much a metropolitan louche in his adulthood, his childhood was immersed in nature. Born in Ireland to English parents, Bacon was raised on a horse farm (his father, a retired army officer, trained racehorses). The impressive exhibition brings together all of Bacons bullfighting paintings for the first time, as well as images of owls, a chimpanzee, and horse-like creatures.

Several works in the show, rather than depicting animals directly, hint at humankinds most primal nature. Among these is the seminal Head VI (1949), the first of Bacons paintings to reference Diego Velzquezs Portrait of Innocent X.(He would make close to 50 screaming pope paintings in his career.) The oil-on-canvas painting was the last of his 1949 Head series, and marked an important new chapter in the artists career.

On the occasion of the exhibition, weve unearthed three fascinating facts that might make you see the artists work in a new way.

Diego Velazquez, Portrait du pape Innocent X (1650).

While Francis Bacon was a devout atheist and an outspoken critic of the Catholic Church, his oeuvre is predicated on the iconography of Catholicism. This was the case from the very start of his career:the painting that defined Bacon as an enfant terrible of the art world wasThree Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion(1945). (A secondary version of this triptych, made in the 1980s, is on view in the RA exhibition.)

Why did he return to the image of the Pope, and Pope Innocent X, so frequently? The word Pope shares its etymological root with the word papa, and many have interpreted Bacons fixation with the Pope through the Oedipal lens of Bacons tumultuous relationship with his father, who scorned both his sons homosexuality and his desire to be an artist. In this vein, some have said that the Screaming Popes were a response to the Churchs teachings against homosexuality.

Others believe that Bacons fixation is rooted in his childhood, and his experiences living as a prosperous member of the English Protestant minority in Ireland.

Bacon was brought up during the Sinn Fin movement and once the Irish Republican Army was formed in 1919 guerrilla warfare broke out. During his boyhood, Bacons understanding of religion was marked by social and religious tension and isolation, writes art historian Rina Arya.

These formative experiences led to a conflation between violence and religion, and by extension, the Pope, as the incarnation of the Catholic Church, would have been viewed within this context of opposition and conflict.

Pope Innocent X, in particular, played a role in these historical tensions. During the English Civil War (164249), the pontiff acted is an important political player, offering significant arms and finances to support the Irish fight for independence in the hopes that it might establish itself as a Catholic-ruling nation. In such a way, the image so powerfully depicted by Velasquez embeds Bacons own experiences within a greater historical narrative.

Painter Francis Bacon in front of his paintings in Paris on September 29, 1987. (Photo by Raphael GAILLARDE/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)

One might wonder why a depiction of the Pope is featured in an exhibition focused on Bacons fascination with animals. A close examination of Head VI offers clues.

A clear box appears to surround the pope; such pictorial enclosures were a device Bacon adopted in 1949, and would reappear in his works for decades to follow. Many art historians have interpreted such enclosures as pens or cage-like structures, perhaps symbolic of societys norms.

His apes are usually caged, his dogs slink helpless and cringing from their broken leashes, and his humans are often segregated within small chambers or otherwise shielded from the ignored enemies of contemporary civilization, writes art historian James Thrall Soby.

Whatever its psychological implications Head VI announces with full vigor an abiding obsession of the artist: the enclosures within which animals and humans alike live out their lives, he added.

The Royal Academy alludes to this synthesizing of man and animal in an exhibition text, saying: Whether chimpanzees, bulls, dogs, or birds of prey, Bacon felt he could get closer to understanding the true nature of humankind by watching the uninhibited behavior of animals.

Moreover, Bacon believed the mouth to be the most primal part of the human body. You know how the mouth changes shape. Ive always been very moved by the movements of the mouth and the shape of the mouth and the teeth. People say that these have all sorts of sexual implications, and I was always very obsessed by the actual appearance of the mouth and teeth, the artist wrote.

If the Pope is traditionally believed to be called by the divine, here Bacon pictures him as though called by the wild.

Still from Sergei M. Eisensteins film Battleship Potemkin.

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him, cried out the madman.

While Frederic Nietzsche wrote those words aboutthe death of Christian civilization in the 1880s, the experience of World War II had heightened belief in the proverbial death of God. It is here, in the immediate aftermath of war, into which Head VIs scream is best understood. Bacons interpretation is diametrically opposed to sanctifications: it is, rather, located within the context of death, Arya said ofHead VI.

Bacon was a self-taught art historian and an avid cinephile, and his scream is one that exists on a continuum of cultural history. Bacon himself acknowledged that his image alluded to a scene in Sergei Eisensteins film Battleship Potemkin (1925), in which a nurse silently screams after being shot through her glasses. (Bacons Pope similarly cannot be heard). While Bacon often tried to rebuff affinities between his work and that of Edvard Munch, The Scream is a self-evident influence.

Bacon takes Munchs kitsch Nordic universal scream, critiques it, and refines it. He gives it teeth They express pain, the agony of orgasm, pity and terror, rage, appetite, fear, pleasure, Craig Raine wrote in a 2016 article. (In the context of war, one also thinks also of Picassos Guernica of 1937, which was deeply influential to a young Bacon.)

Edvard Munch, The Scream (1893). Courtesy of the National Gallery of Norway.

Its important to note that Bacons interest in the Pope came soon after he completed his 1946 Painting, a work laden with allusions to Nazism. A tassel (as though from a curtain) that appears in Painting returns in HeadVI,creating a strange conversation between the two.

The Popes head is bisected by the Hitlerian tassel his mouth is agape in a scream like in one of Goebbelss more frenzied exultation, notes Thrall Soby.

As the Screaming Popes continued, Bacon would insert increasingly direct references to contemporaneous pontiff Pope Pius XII, who some believe appeased the Nazis and who did not openly speak out against the Holocaust.

Considering Bacons Head VIin this context, Thrall Soby wrote: In his paintings, an inexplicable sense of opulence prevails, and [curator] David Sylvester is right in saying that Bacon prefers settings which are luxurious and simple lush velvet curtains and a gilded armchair like prison cells for high-born traitors.

See the article here:

Francis Bacons Screaming Pope Embodied Postwar AnguishHere Are 3 Surprising Facts About the Influential Painting - artnet News

The militant atheist, Richard Dawkins, could be forgiven for coming to the conclusion that the events of the Exodus are myth, if he took into account the conclusions of many Egyptologists such as the Israeli archaeologist, Israel Finkelstein, and the American archaeologist, Neil Asher Silberman.[i] They co-wrote a book entitled The Bible Unearthed, in which they claim that the evidence showing that the Exodus did not happen at the time and in the manner described in the Bible is irrefutable.[ii] Some claim that the people of Israel didnt even exist at that time.

However, the American Old Testament scholar and an Egyptologist, Professor James Hoffmeier, disagrees.[iii] He makes the following points:

The first reference to Israel

The professor makes the point that a people group called Israel did exist at that time in history. He makes reference to the existence of an engraved stone pillar (a stele), on which Ramesses II (Ramesses the Great) boasted of his conquest of the surrounding nations, including Israel. This stone is called the Merneptah stele. It was discovered in 1896 by Flinders Petrie, and it is now located in the Cairo Museum.

Is there evidence of Semites living in Egypt?

There were three periods when Egypt was powerful. These have been called the Old, Middle and New Kingdoms. Between these periods, Egypt was weak and unable to police its borders. This allowed the Semitic group, the Hyksos, to live in the Nile delta.

Its worth noting that the Bible has something to say about the date of the Jewish exodus from Egypt. It mentions that the exodus occurred 480 years prior to the laying ofthe foundations of Solomons temple in 966 BC (1 Kings 6:1). If the dating of the laying the foundation is correct, it would suggest that the Pharaoh at that time of the Exodus lived just before Amenhotep II, a pharaoh who lived well before Ramesses.

There can be little doubt that Hebrew people were enslaved in Egypt. An Egyptian list of domestic slaves (probably written in the 17thcentury BCE) contains not only Semitic names, but several specifically Hebrew names.

Children of the Nursery and the story of Joseph

The Pharaohs used to take foreign captive princes, if children, and train them up to serve Pharaohs purposes. A boy trained in this way was called A Child of the Nursery, and to be trained in such a way was considered to be a great honour. The training of Moses by the royal family is entirely consistent with this practice.

It is also significant that in 1980, the limestone tomb of Aper-El was discovered in Saqqara, the necropolis of Memphis. Aper-El, (El meaning God) was a Semitic man who became the prime minister (vizier) of Amenophis III in the 14thcentury BC.

Is the Exodus story a fiction?

Is the Exodus story a fiction written to help the Jews navigate their return from captivity at the time of the Persian Empire?

Possibly not, because some of the names mentioned in the Exodus story, e.g. Miriam and Hur (which literally means of Horus the Egyptian god), are Egyptian names. It is unlikely that a writer writing a fictional account in the Persian period would have given Egyptian names to his characters.

Enslavement

There can be little doubt that Hebrew people were enslaved in Egypt. An Egyptian list of domestic slaves (probably written in the 17thcentury BCE) contains not only Semitic names, but several specifically Hebrew names. This document is known as Papyrus Brooklyn 35.1446.

There is also a wall painting of Nubian and Semites (distinguished by their scruffy beards) working as slaves under the goading of the Egyptian overlords.

Plagues

Plagues of the type mentioned in Exodus chapters 7-11 happened from time to time in Egyptian history. Plague pits of hastily buried bodies have been found.

The parting of the sea

The identity of the Red Sea (or the Sea of Reeds) is uncertain. It could easily be a series of three large lakes that flooded in the rainy season to become one lake. For some periods of the year, it was possible to thread your way round the three large lakes if you knew the path.

Why is there no record of a mass exodus of Jews from Egypt?

Papyrus records dont survive. The oldest extant papyri come from Roman times. As such, there is 2,000 years of silence regarding old Egyptian written records. The number of Jews recorded leaving Egypt was 600,000 men, according to Exodus 12:37. However, in Hebrew, the number is written with three words: six (shishshah), hundred (meyah), thousand (eleph). The tricky thing is eleph not only means a thousand, but also a clan or family unit (literally: people yoked together). If this is so, then the number of people involved in the Exodus could only be as few as 3,500 men, or 10,000 people overall.

The city of Ramesses

Ramesses father began to build the city, but then Ramesses II developed it into one of the biggest cities in the world. The city flourished between 1275 1130 BC. Unfortunately, the tributary of the Nile that fed the city and facilitated transport silted up, and so the city was abandoned, dismantled and moved to Tanis. This is why Ramesses is referred to as Tanis (biblical Zoan) in Psalm 78:12,43. It would be unlikely to have this detail if the Exodus story was fictional.

So, what do you think?

[i] Richard Dawkins Foundation No Exodus no Judeo-Christian faiths? Sept 5, 2013, see: https://richarddawkins.net/2013/09/no-exodus-no-judeo-christian-faiths/

[ii] Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, The Bible Unearthed, (Simon and Schuster, 2002), p.63.

[iii] James Hoffmeier, interviewed by John Dickson in Undeceptions, The Exodus, Season 4, see: https://undeceptions.com/podcast/the-exodus

DrNickHawkesis a scientist, pastor, apologist, writer and broadcaster. He also describes himself as an absent-minded, slightly obsessive man who is pathetically weak due to cancer and chemo, who has experienced, and needs to experience, the grace of God each day.

This article is part of a series, Things I have been asked

Nick has written a book Soar above the Storm in which he draws on his experience of cancer to encourage anyone walking through a storm in life to find rest and hope in God. It offers a 40-day retreat to be refreshed and strengthened and find deep peace in God. Order it at Koorong.

He blogs and records podcasts at nickhawkes.net

Nick told his life story to Eternity here: Deadly storms, heroin addicts, cancer and my faith.

Some prayer points to help

What does the story of Scripture mean to you? If God can guide the children of Israel, what can you as his help with in your life?

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Did the Exodus really happen? - Eternity News

By Brian Blackwell, Baptist Message staff writer

BATON ROUGE, La. (LBM) A diverse lineup of ECON 2022 speakers, ranging from an atheist-turned-best selling author to state leaders to national personalities, exhorted Louisiana Baptists gathered in the First Baptist Church, Covington, January 24-25, to join the fight to share the Gospel.

KEITH MANUEL

Louisiana Baptist Evangelism and Church Growth Team Director Keith Manuel encouraged the crowd to share the Gospel with their families, co-workers and community.

Lets go do it because people need Jesus, Manuel said. Do it because we can and we get to and because we really got to because weve got a Lord that loved us.

Lets pray that God will help us to see those varied people in our neighborhood, he continued. Lets tell them about Jesus.

STEVE BECKHAM

Steve Beckham opened ECON by proclaiming Christ followers not only need to confess their sins but also find restoration of joy.

Drawing his message from Psalm 51:1-12, Beckham, pastor of First Community Antioch Baptist Church, Baton Rouge, said David was confronted by Nathan the prophet about his sin of adultery with Bathsheba and his subsequent murder of her husband.

Much like David, Louisiana Baptists must examine their hearts and have a sense of brokenness, Beckham said. By doing so, they will come to a place where they can ask God for restoration of joy.

How often do we find ourselves in a place, in a space, where something is missing and we dont know exactly what it is, said Beckham, who also is a missions strategist for the Baptist Association of Greater Baton Rouge. There is a void in us and we come here with a void, something only God can fill. So often when we find ourselves in a place and space of emptiness. We need to be renewed all over again, something that only God can give and only God can do it because He is the master creator.

SHANE PRUITT

Shane Pruitt said in his message, based on Acts 1:3-11, that now is the time of the Gospel, to be the church and to go share Jesus with others.

Pruitt, national Next Gen Director for the North American Mission Board, said the world needs for the church to make Jesus known, including what he considers the largest unreached people group in the United States Generation Z (those born from 1997-2012). Therefore, he said, they must be reached and discipled.

I believe in the sovereignty of God, but if we dont reach people with the Gospel by the time they are 18 or 30, we lose a whole generation, he said. Now is the time. Young people are not looking for cool leaders. They are looking for real, authentic ones.

Now is the time to be the Church and we have the greatest power that is inside of us, he continued. You dont have to dumb the Gospel down for this generation. Disciple them up.

WILLIE MCLAURIN

Willie McLaurin, vice president for Great Commission Relations and Mobilization for the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee, reminded the crowd they are called to be a witness for Jesus and must be intentional about sharing Him.

Sharing from Acts 1:8, McLaurin said believers must be committed, concerned, consistent and confident in sharing their faith.

We must speak to sinners about the Savior, he said. Once we speak to sinners about the savior, we will see sinners come to the Savior.

He encouraged the crowd to embrace a Great Commission mindset and look for ways to share their testimony of how Jesus changed their lives.

Jesus is calling for laborers and He is calling for laborers to be consistent, he said. Every believer has a testimony of what God has done in their lives. And we ought to be able to share our story everywhere we go.

RICHARD ROSS

Richard Ross, professor of student ministry at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and co-founder of True Love Waits ministry that promotes sexual abstinence, said todays youth are reachable for Christ but churches must make changes for that to come to fruition.

Referencing Joshua 23, Ross said the church today faces a critical time in student ministry. Some decisions must be made, including having Gospel conversations outside the church building, tasking parents with the role of discipleship in their home, involving other adults with the role of discipling teens and involving youth in the life of the church.

Ross said embracing the changes could very well result in the next great Jesus Movement, a spirit of revival that spread throughout the United States in the 1960s and 1970s.

Do you believe that almost exactly 50 years after the Jesus Movement we could have a King Jesus movement in our day? Ross said. What if our people really began to see him not as a doctrine but as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. I honestly believe I could see another revival among the young that would affect the entire church. And I want to be right in the middle of it.

MICHAEL WOOD

Understanding Gods grace towards His children produces Christ-centered boasting, said Michael Wood, pastor of First Baptist Church, West Monroe.

Citing 1 Corinthians 1:26-31, Wood said Christ-followers must remember God is a much bigger deal than them.

Paul, in the passage, said His followers must remember they have brought nothing to the table but rather it is God allows them to be used for His glory, in spite of their downfalls.

Its not about what weve done, Wood said. Its about what Hes done.

DAVID EVANS

Not enough Christ followers share the Gospel, but David Evans has a simple solution to alleviate the problem.

Evans, pastor of Springfield Baptist Church, Springfield, Tennessee, said the account of Zacchaeuss conversion to Christianity (Luke 19), provides a blueprint for evangelism: be passionate about telling others of Jesus, seek every opportunity to practice sharing the Gospel and make disciples.

Evans reiterated the need to share Christ with those in search of the hope that only Jesus can give.

This whole world is shackled to hopelessness, he said. He needs us, He wants us, He has commanded us to reach out to those kind of people.

LEE STROBEL

Lee Strobel, a best-selling author and former atheist and investigative journalist, urged the crowd to show Christs love with those who have doubts about the faith.

Strobel originally went on a search to disprove Christianity but instead found a relationship with Jesus on Nov. 8, 1981. Just as others never stopped praying for Him to accept Jesus during that time, Strobel encouraged Christ followers never to give up on those who they want to see come to a relationship with the Lord. He later wrote about his journey in the best-selling book The Case of Christ.

Jesus prayer for spiritually lost people continued right up until His final gasps on the cross, Strobel said. Jesus didnt just say it once, He kept praying all through the torture of cross. In light of that, how do we not justify praying fervently for lost friends in our life? Im nave to believe the prayers of righteous people make a difference. Against all odds, I have seen it.

Strobel encouraged the crowd to invite questions, but be respectful when fielding questions from those who may doubt Christianity.

We can love them into the Kingdom of God, Strobel said. If we are committed to doing that, God will take us on a series of unexpected adventures that will be one of the joys of our lives.

Strobel closed ECON by sharing four proofs of the resurrection that brought him to faith in Jesus: proof of His execution, early accounts of His resurrection, evidence of an empty tomb and testimony from eyewitnesses. He said apologetics is an important evangelism approach Christ followers can use.

Evangelism in the 21stcentury is spelled apologetics, Strobel said. They want answers. They want truth. And the good news is we have truth on our side.

All messages from ECON 2022 are available on the Louisiana Baptists website by clicking here.

Waylon Bailey, pastor of First Baptist Church, Covington, opened ECON in prayer.

Steve Beckham opened ECON by proclaiming Christ followers not only need to confess their sins but also find restoration of joy. Beckham is pastor of First Community Antioch Baptist Church, Baton Rouge and missions strategist for the Baptist Association of Greater Baton Rouge.

Louisiana Baptist Evangelism and Church Growth Team Director Keith Manuel closed ECON with a prayer to share the Gospel with their families, co-workers and community.

Shane Pruitt said in his message, based on Acts 1:3-11, that now is the time of the Gospel, to be the church and to go share Jesus with others. Pruitt is national Next Gen Director for the North American Mission Board.

Willie McLaurin, vice president for Great Commission Relations and Mobilization for the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee, reminded the crowd they are called to be a witness for Jesus and must be intentional about sharing Him.

The Jason Lovins Band led times of worship at ECON.

Richard Ross, professor of student ministry at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and co-founder of True Love Waits ministry that promotes sexual abstinence, said todays youth are reachable for Christ but churches must make changes for that to come to fruition.

David Evans, pastor of Springfield Baptist Church, Springfield, Tennessee, said the account of Zacchaeus's conversion to Christianity (Luke 19), provides a blueprint for evangelism: be passionate about telling others of Jesus, seek every opportunity to practice sharing the Gospel and make disciples.

The award-winning Christian group Point of Grace encouraged the ECON crowd with a concert of their most loved hit songs.

Russ Lee, lead vocalist for Newsong, encouraged the ECON crowd with a concert.

Understanding Gods grace towards His children produces Christ-centered boasting, said Michael Wood, pastor of First Baptist Church, West Monroe.

Continued here:

ECON 2022 speakers rally Louisiana Baptists to share the Gospel - The Baptist Message

Editors Note:SpokaneFVS is publishing a series of columns on the subject of life after death.This long fascination with the afterlife crosses centuries, cultures, geography, religions, philosophy and science. What does life after death mean?Is it a subjective existence, a continuation of our consciousness or personhood as we knew it on earth? Is it a bodily existence, or a disembodied/spiritual existence?Who or what decides the character of the afterlife ?Is it possible to believe in God and deny life after death? If there is no afterlife, does that mean religion has lost its purpose? Does it mean our lives on earth are meaningless? These and other questions will be addressed over the next few weeks.

By Steven A. Smith

It all goes by so quickly.

We are a blink of an eye in the endless passage of time. We come, we go and even the greatest of us will become the faintest of memories.

How fervently we wish that were not the case. How can our lives matter so little? There must be more. There must be some continuation, some version of our life that continues after our earthly body dies.

I imagine most of us wish that were true. Many of us believe it to be true as a matter of faith.

My mother died in April 2020 at the beginning of the COVID pandemic. She was in a Medford, Oregon, rehab hospital recovering from a fall. I had been able to visit over Valentines weekend. It was a good visit. She was frail but mentally sharp.

One evening I asked her questions about her childhood while my brother videotaped her responses. We knew there was little time left to record those stories for her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. It was a good evening.

Shortly after, the hospital went into COVID lockdown. She was not able to return to her senior home. And no more visitors. So, when my mother took a sudden turn for the worse, we were not able to visit. And as she quickly slipped away even phone conversations became impossible. My brother, who lives nearby, was allowed in at the end. Just an hour or so before she died, he held the phone to her ear so I could say my goodbyes, to tell her how much I loved her and how her life had been a good one for which she should be proud.

She may have heard. But I will never know.

Through her life, even when living across the country, I would talk to my mother once a week. On the phone and during our visits, I exchanged the usual declarations of love and devotion. Routine, almost.

But when it mattered most, given one last meaningful opportunity, I was not able to say goodbye.

Of course, I wish that on my death I would be reunited with my mother, my father, my sister, and my brothers. That I could say the things I was unable to say in life, to enjoy an eternity in the company of those I love most. To be with my dear Carla.

A person of faith believes that would happen. Of course, in some faith traditions, those happy reunions depend on some form of judgment that makes us worthy. In some faith traditions, our worthiness can be assured even after a life of misspent evil if we repent even mere moments before death.

None of that has ever made sense to me. Fairy tales rooted in the dawn of humankind.

Anthropologists and historians are uncertain at what point in pre-history humankind began to believe in life after death. Animals that die are simply left in the wild to rot, to return to the earth. That was likely the case with the earliest humans. But there is ample evidence that at some distant point early humans, cave dwellers as we think of them, began to bury their dead, often with trinkets from their lives. What may have begun as simple hygienic acts morphed into some sort of presumption of life after death, of some continuation.

To this day we are fascinated by the religious beliefs of the earliest civilizations. Who is not astonished by the funerary rites of the ancient Egyptians who stocked their burial chambers with all manner of goods needed in the afterlife? Burial mounds around the world, from indigenous populations in North America, to northern Viking mounds, to burial chambers in South America, Africa, and Asia, reflect similar beliefs.

The worlds great religions have incorporated some version of the life-after-death mythology. Fairy tales.

As an atheist, any belief in the afterlife that I might have must be separated from religion. If I do not believe in a god then I cannot believe in heaven or hell or judgment or divine redemption.

For me, a belief in an afterlife would have to be rooted in something other than faith, in science, in physics, in the complex workings of the universe. So, for me, lacking any scientific evidence of any kind, I cannot believe in any form of life after death.

It is not as if science has not tried to find that evidence. There have been experiments over time to find out what happens to the human soul on death. There have been experiments to determine what happens to the electric energy that helps fuel our bodies. Does it just evaporate into the ether?

And there is a considerable body of literature dealing with near-death experiences and even with notions of reincarnation. And out of all that, nothing.

In being asked to consider this topic for a series of Faith and Values columns, one question was posed that some might think most troubles people like me. If there is nothing to come next, are our lives somehow rendered meaningless?

On the contrary, I believe our lives have greater meaning. We have only one chance one chance to hope, to strive, to learn, to love, and to mourn. If this is it, every moment is that much more precious. Every decision we make all the more important. There is no do-over. Ever.

My mother believed in an afterlife, though her conception was elusive. My father believed. Many of my friends believe. My wife believes.

One of my closest friends, a one-time Mormon, still believes that she will be greeting me in some sort of after existence. She will give me a big hug and we will both laugh at the folly of my disbelief.

If she is right, I will laugh with her and apologize for ever disputing her. And then I will go find Mom, and Dad, and when the time comes, dear Carla.

But if I am right, there will be no hugs from friends, no reunions with loving family. We will never know, of course, and it will not matter.

Time will move toward eternity without us as it always has and always will.

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The Afterlife: This Is It. - SpokaneFVS - spokanefavs.com