Who is Satan? Who is Satan? Two Men and a Mic Podcast research this very question.
Comments: Riley Pearson
Hey Erik and Seany-Mac. Erik, I prefer my phone bible over the physical bible. It helps me to remember to read it because it has my notification. Therefore it puts that reminder in my head. I have all my highlights and can look them up easily. It is also a way people can see God and scripture. Think about it. It doesn’t matter how you learn about God as long as it happens. It could help some atheist or nonbeliever to see go. I do see your side altogether though. Rob Jonson
Erik I have had this conversation before I will call Sean whatever I want. Sean I’m very offended. I sexually identify as a porto rican telephone pole. And my pronoun is R. I am not a man so human is totally fine. How do you feel now? Erik’s Part of the Show
Lent: Failing at Lent: Unable to disconnect MARCH 7, 2018 BY CHRIS WILLIAMS Image via Pixa Bay I have never successfully completed Lent.
Usually I commit to walking away from social media for 40 days for Lent. I post a “goodbye for now” message, log out of Facebook and Twitter, and delete the apps from my phone. I settle in for several weeks of quiet and an escape from national turmoil — and, of course, start planning my return message, where I’ll talk about how beneficial this all was and how everyone should consider a social media sabbatical.
But almost instantly, restlessness sets in. Reflexively, my finger searches for the Twitter app or I type “F-A-C-E-B-” in my browser before remembering what time of year it is. My relief at escaping angry tirades becomes anxiousness about what I’m missing. I wonder if someone is trying to get a hold of me on Messenger. Perhaps I’ll just open it up and check…maybe I’ll just browse my news feed to make sure there’s not a comet about to slam into us…what if I lurk but don’t write? Before I know it, I’m back to posting “The Good Place” GIFs and retweeting snarky jokes. At best, I think I’ve made it a week through Lent.
To be fair, I don’t have a lifetime discipline of Lenten fasting like many Christians do. I grew up Baptist, and there’s nothing that terrifies a Baptist more than being mistaken for a Catholic. So while my school friends gave up chocolate or soda in the weeks before Easter, I happily devoured sugar and thanked my stars I was Protestant (even though Lent is observed by Anglicans, Lutherans, Methodists and other Protestant denominations).
It wasn’t until I met my wife, who grew up Methodist, that I reconsidered Lent. Kelly gives up coffee every year, and she’s found it to be a spiritually enriching experience. While I don’t think the world is ready for me to ditch the caffeine, I’ve tried do my own Lent, breaking from my social media obsession and replacing it with more intentional conversation and prayer (I connect only for blog and podcast updates).
As I’ve told you, it hasn’t gone well.
The necessary ache The thing about Lent that you don’t really understand until you do it is that it hurts. If you’re doing it correctly, you’re giving up a habit or item that means something to you, a regular — perhaps even sustaining — part of your day. It’s painful to give up caffeine when you depend on coffee to help you function each morning. It’s inconvenient to turn off the TV for over a month and remain unaware of what’s happening on your favorite shows. And it’s going to hurt to close social media and not have an outlet for your frustrations, a platform for your thoughts, or a window into other people’s lives.
What compounds the pain is that it’s totally voluntary. This isn’t coerced; especially among Protestants like myself, for whom Lent is completely optional. This is a decision made of our own volition and, in my case, done not out of pressure but as part of a denomination that has traditionally shunned this part of the Liturgical Calendar (actually, outside of Advent and Easter, Baptists tend to shun most parts of the Liturgical Calendar). And contrary to what I believed growing up, observing Lent isn’t about giving up a harmful or sinful practice; those are things I should be striving to put off every day. This is giving up something that, in its right place, isn’t harmful; it can even be good. It hurts to give it up, but it’s even harder realizing that I’m willingly taking on this pain.
And yet, if the purpose of Lent is to give us a glimpse into Christ’s sufferings, shouldn’t it hurt and shouldn’t it be volitional? Lent is the period leading up to Good Friday; it’s a time in which we keep his sufferings at the forefront and strive to remember the cost of his sacrifice. If I gave up something easy, like going to the gym or drinking pop (which I don’t do that often), would it even matter? And isn’t the voluntary nature of Lent in line with Christ’s willingness to come and die a horrible death? He had no sins to repent from; he gave up the very good gift of life willingly to suffer for us. As I reflect on the pain I willingly take on at Lent, I’m both touched by the small glimpse I get of Christ’s willingness to take to the cross and humbled by the fact that he completed his arduous task and I can’t even observe faithfully for a week.Then again, there’s also redemption in that failure.
The poetry in failure There’s a certain futility in Lent. Even if we make it through 40 days of fasting, we’re still at best left with a surface-level glimpse at Christ’s suffering. We might have received a taste of what it means to suffer, but let’s be honest: giving up social media, coffee or chocolate for a month and comparing it to crucifixion and the silence of God is like blinking and saying we know what it’s like to be blind. It’s a nice effort, but it never comes close to the level of sacrifice we remember on Good Friday.
Similarly, if we’re not careful, there’s a risk of self-righteousness that comes with Lent. We might think that our successful completion of the season gives us an extra dose of spirituality come Easter weekend, and that we’ve commemorated the season better than those who ignore it or stumble. We go into Easter feeling like we’ve accomplished something, that we’ve earned something from God, that we’re part of a spiritual elite. I know that’s not a teaching of the observance, but it’s a very human risk.
But the entire point of Good Friday and Easter is that we aren’t spiritually special or strong. Good Friday occurs because we’re not even spiritually alive. We’re enemies of God who need a savior. We celebrate that Christ did what we couldn’t; he finished the task we were unable to begin and paid a bill we’d never afford.
There’s a poetry in my failure to complete Lent that carries with it sweet whispers of grace. I’m reminded of my soul’s weakness and my proclivity to choose comfort and self over pain and sacrifice. My failure is a reminder that I’m not Christ on the road to Calvary; I’m the disciple who couldn’t even stay awake in the garden. It’s a brutal reminder that my own efforts to know Christ are bound to fail; I need him to do what I couldn’t. I fail at Lent and, in that failure, see a picture of my need and Christ’s gift. In my yearly striving to do better and make progress, I see a gentle reminder of sanctification and his commitment to helping me become a better person.
And so this year, the Facebook is off and Twitter is deleted from my phone. I pray for the strength to make it through; I’m thankful for the grace that will support me even if I don’t.
Follow-Up to the Movie Clip Discuss how Seany-Mac thought we should take out the “F” bomb and how I thought we needed to keep it real. I feel that we try to hide and mask the real life. I feel when we do that…it fuels the secular world. We need to expose the secular world. It was not us using it.
In The News: Coast to Coast shares a report with us!
Numerous Alexa Owners Report Creepy Laugh Coming from Device March 07, 2018
3.2K As Amazon’s wildly popular ‘intelligent personal assistant’ Alexa finds its way into more and more homes, reports of weird activity emanating from the device have begun to emerge.
A number of owners have expressed considerable unease on social media after hearing the always-listening gadget unleash a creepy laugh seemingly for no apparent reason.
One unnerved user who heard the haunting laugh while trying to fall asleep one night mused, perhaps only half-jokingly, on Twitter that “there’s a good chance I get murdered tonight.”
Another person on Reddit detailed how they were attempting to get the device to shut off some Alexa-enabled lights in their home when the device seemingly ‘refused to listen’ and then produced “an evil laugh.”
From there, the proverbial floodgates poured open as other, no doubt slightly relieved, users of the device also reported hearing unprompted laughter coming from their Alexa.
The weirdness has left some wondering if there could be an unheard voice lingering in their home in the form of a ghost or, perhaps even more worrisome, an unsavory character hacking into the device for a nefarious purpose we’d rather not even imagine.
Although some may simply dismiss these stories as a new kind of urban legend spreading across social media, Amazon has actually responded to recent news stories about the laugh, saying that the nightmarish phenomenon is real and that they are looking into fixing it.
Are you an Alexa owner who has experienced something out of the ordinary from the device? Let us know at the Coast to Coast AM Facebook page.
Source: Buzzfeed
Generation Z: Follow-Up (Patheos) Generation Z Is Less Religious Than Ever, and Evangelicals Don’t Know Why MARCH 13, 2018 BY HEMANT MEHTA Earlier this year, the Barna Group, a Christian polling organization, released a new survey finding that Generation Z (born after 1999) was the least Christian generation ever. One of the biggest findings was that nearly twice as many teenagers in Gen Z (13 percent) claimed to be atheists than Millennials (7 percent).
Read more at http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2018/03/13/generation-z-is-less-religious-than-ever-and-evangelicals-dont-know-why/#rs4X3uPlHkZrR7mo.99
It was a huge jump and evangelical Christianity has only taken a bigger hit since that survey was done thanks to white evangelicals’ overwhelming support for Donald Trump.
Jonathan Morrow of Fox News — and someone who worked on the survey — can’t believe these changes are happening. To him, they signal a problem with churches in that they’re not properly preparing children to enter the real world where their faith will inevitably be challenged.
So why is the fact that Gen Z is less Christian than ever good news again? Because we need to stop pretending and start living in reality.
We need to stop pretending that if we entertain teenagers then they will stick around after they graduate.
We need to stop pretending that if we protect them from everything they won’t question, doubt, or walk away.
And we need to stop pretending that a few minutes of a moralistic, watered down Bible lesson on a Sunday morning will prepare them to stand firm in their faith.
In short, teenagers need a grown-up worldview, not coloring book Jesus. We can do better.
There’s obvious irony in people who believe Jesus was magic telling fellow Christians they “need to stop pretending and start living in reality.”
Finally living in reality is why so many members of Generation Z aren’t returning to church.
More importantly, the idea that young evangelicals are simply not strong enough in their faith is missing the point. They leave Christianity for a number of reasons, including evangelicals’ warm embrace of the Republican Party, their opposition to LGBTQ rights, their ignorance on the subject of sex education and science literacy, their hypocrisy on opposing both abortion and contraception, their treatment of women, and because Gen Z realizes the myths they’ve been fed are just not true.
Telling the same lies louder and more confidently won’t fix the problem. Whenever those teenagers learn to ask tough questions and think critically, the faith is bound to topple. And there are more resources available now than ever before to help them break the spell.
Read more at http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2018/03/13/generation-z-is-less-religious-than-ever-and-evangelicals-dont-know-why/#rs4X3uPlHkZrR7mo.99
Survey Finds That Generation Z is More Atheistic Than Any Other Age Group According to The Barna Group, a Christian polling organization, Generation Z (born from 1999-2015) is the least Christian generation we’ve ever seen.
The study indicates that 35 percent of Generation Z teens considered themselves to be atheist, agnostic or not affiliated with any religion. By comparison, only 30 percent of millenials, 30 percent of Generation X and 26 percent of Baby Boomers said the same.
The study shows that almost twice as many teens in Generation Z (13 percent) claimed to be atheist than millenials (7 percent).
And keep in mind we got to those numbers long before Donald Trump entered office and began exposing the rampant hypocrisy of white evangelical Christians. They were already losing numbers and respect, and Trump will inevitably make their problem even worse before he’s booted from the White House. They know this. They don’t care, though, considering how many Christian leaders continue standing by Trump no matter what horrible things he says and does.
Another reason Gen Z wants nothing to do with Christianity? 69% of them accept the notion of a transgender identity while a third know somebody who’s trans. Just as we saw with gays and lesbians, it’s hard to demonize somebody you know, and what is evangelical Christianity these days if not the largest anti-LGBTQ club in the country?
If you want to hate people, their doors are wide open. If you want to fight for civil rights, you won’t be able to do it from within the church walls.
Christianity Today, a publication that believes committed gay and lesbian couples are “destructive to society,” has some advice for youth pastors and Christian parents:
Who is Satan? What is his plan for the world In the middle of the ugliness, Satan is a person.
By definition, Satan means adversary. In the Bible, Satan goes by many names. There are many names for Satan, in the Bible. The following are just a few:
Ruler of the Kingdom of the air (Eph.2:2)
Prince of this world (John 12:31)
god of this age (2 Cor. 4:4)
Father of lies (John 8:44)
The one who leads the whole world astray (Rev. 12:9)
The evil one (Matt. 13:19)
Your enemy (1 Peter 5:8)
This describes Him, but who is he really?
In Ezekiel 28:11-19, it states he was created by God. In addition, he is also called the seal of perfection, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty. Therefore, he is not a red dude with a tail and horns carrying a pitchfork. Lucifer was adorned with every kind of precious stone you can think of. Finally, he was a guardian cherub on the holy mountain of God.
Satan’s Play Satan became filled with pride. In return, Lucifer turned to violence. Therefore, he attempted to take over God’s thrown.
Isaiah 14:12-15 New International Version (NIV)
12 How you have fallen from heaven, morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations! You said in your heart, “I will ascend to the heavens; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of Mount Zaphon. I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.” But you are brought down to the realm of the dead, to the depths of the pit. He was so powerful and so cunning that he was able to convince one third of the angels in heaven to turn against God, but his efforts were futile and he was kicked out of heaven.
Satan’s New Plan In his attempt to overthrow God, Satan lost and came up with a new plan. Satan’s new plan was to simply try and defeat God. First of all, Lucifer would counterfeit God and destroy His kingdom.
In 2 Corinthians 11:13-15 New International Version (NIV), Paul wrote a great Scripture. “For such people are false apostles, deceitful workers, masquerading as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising, then, that his servants also masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will be what their actions deserve.
To take the place of God, this has always been the plan of Lucifer. At the very thrown of God, Mr. Deceitful used to live in Heaven. Therefore, the Master of Deceit knows God on a very personal level. Planning to take over God’s beautiful Kingdom, he has taken what he knows and tries to copy God’s plan. In the book of Revelation, it talks about the final result of Satan’s quest for world domination.
Lucifer has created his own religion. By creating his own religion, he is able to use the secular world which does not like consequences. that the whole world willing follows, complete with an Anti-Christ who suffers a fatal wound and comes back to life.
God’s Pronouncement God’s pronouncement was a show of Authoritative declaration. God declared he defeated Satan. In Genesis 3:15, the Scripture states, “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers. He will crush your head, and you will strike his heel. After Satan caused man to sin, God informed him a child of a woman will destroy you. You will give a good fight; however, you will lose. Through God’s will, Satan was defeated by Christ’s death on the Cross.
In Hebrews 2:14-15, it discusses the devil. Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity. By doing this, He might break the power of him who holds the power of death. That is, the devil and free those who all their lives were held in slavery, by their fear of death.
He has Defeated Death In 1 Corinthians. 15:58, it states, “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?”
God Gave Us the Power to Defeat Satan In order to fight the spiritual warfare, He gave us weapons. In Ephesians, Paul discusses the armor of God. In the book of James, James informed us to submit and resist the enemy. By submitting yourself to God, we can resist the devil. The devil will run from the power of God.
Christ’s Blood and Our Testimony Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say, “Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Messiah.” For the accuser of our brothers and sisters, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down. They triumphed over him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death.
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