(December 23, 2010) If you are a Christian how would you answer the following question: What is the most important element in the Bible? Many, if not most, would say God’s plan of salvation. From a human perspective that indeed is the most critical part of God’s revelation to humanity. God created humans to fellowship with Him and love Him. It was so important to God that He sent His Son Jesus Christ to die for us so that we could fellowship with Him for eternity instead of being separated from Him forever. Thus, the Gospels and the New Testament are very important in revealing God’s plan of salvation to us. Still, others may say the most critical element of the Bible is the revelation to God’s creation of His nature such as His love, His mercy, His grace, and His compassion. This indeed is important and helps us as humans to understand the purpose of our existence. Some may have other answers to this question. However, I believe the most important element from God’s perspective is prophecy.
Other religions declare that their founders or gods have the answers to life’s existence. How do we know they are not right in their beliefs? A biography of Buddha or Muhammad or other religious leaders can help us to know their nature and attributes just as the Bible does concerning God and His Son Jesus (although as a Christian I believe the Holy Spirit confirms with our spirits the truths about God). Their holy writings may contain some miraculous stories or some truths about human existence just like the Bible. So what separates the Bible from the other religious writings that have arisen throughout human history? How do we know the Bible is true (apart from the spiritual confirmation in our spirits)? God Himself answered this question.
“5 ‘To whom will you liken Me, and make Me equal And compare Me, that we should be alike? 6 They lavish gold out of the bag, And weigh silver on the scales; They hire a goldsmith, and he makes it a god; They prostrate themselves, yes, they worship. 7 They bear it on the shoulder, they carry it And set it in its place, and it stands; From its place it shall not move. Though one cries out to it, yet it cannot answer Nor save him out of his trouble. 8 Remember this, and show yourselves men; Recall to mind, O you transgressors. 9 Remember the former things of old, For I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like Me, 10 Declaring the end from the beginning, And from ancient times things that are not yet done, Saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, And I will do all My pleasure.’” (Isaiah 46:5-10)
God says that He alone is God and there is no other God. He alone declares the end from the beginning. God is stating here that the proof that He is God are the prophecies He revealed declaring what was going to happen in the future. By doing this He is proving that He is God. God’s word is full of thousands of prophecies that have come true and others that will come true. All the prophecies in the Old Testament concerning the coming of the suffering Messiah came true with the first coming of Jesus Christ to earth and thus proving that Jesus is the Anointed One or Messiah. There are all kinds of prophecies in the Bible. Jesus prophesied of His approaching crucifixion, death, and resurrection to His disciples. He also prophesied that Christians will suffer persecution because of Him and will be hated for His name’s sake. Old Testament prophets under the inspiration of God’s Holy Spirit spoke of judgments that would come against Israel because of their rebellion against God. A New Testament prophet told the apostle Paul that he would be arrested and bound when he visited Jerusalem for the last time. And of course both the Old and New Testaments prophesy of the End-Times.
Since God declares that He uses prophecy to prove that He is God and that there is no other god means that prophecy is of the utmost importance in proving that the Bible is true and thereby proving that God’s plan of salvation is true and all the other aspects of His nature and His purpose for human existence are true. Therefore, biblical prophecy should be of the utmost importance to Christians and should be studied. You can rely on what God’s Word says is going to happen in the future and the End-Times because He alone is God, “declaring the end from the beginning” .
(September 8, 2010) Tomorrow the Jews will celebrate Rosh Hashanah as the beginning of the New Year on the Jewish civil calendar. Rosh Hashanah begins on the first day of the Jewish month of Tishri (which occurs during September-October of the solar calendar). The Jews celebrate Rosh Hashanah with the blowing of shofars or trumpets. That is because this holy day is actually the biblically ordained Yom Teru’ah or Day of Shouting or Raising a Noise. God commanded the Jews to blow trumpets (shofars) on this day:
(August 29, 2010) In 1965 Intel co-founder Gordon E. Moore wrote of a technological trend in a paper. The paper noted that the number of components in integrated circuits had doubled every year from the invention of the integrated circuit in 1958 until 1965 and predicted that the trend would continue “for at least ten years”. His idea that technology capabilities doubles every two years (another Intel colleague declared that computer performance doubles every eighteen months) became known as Moore’s Law. As one who was born in 1958 I have seen Moore’s Law come to pass in my lifetime. Personal computers, smartphones, digital video and audio, space exploration, electronic financial transactions, global communication, and many other technological innovations have been developed over the last few decades. This could be the fulfillment of a prophecy spoken in the Book of Daniel, 
(August 12, 2010) In the 1989 Civil War film Glory there is a poignant moment towards the end of the movie. The Union black troops are in a formation of readiness to charge up the parapet of a Confederate fort in what will be a futile attack and lead to their slaughter. The Colonel is addressing them for the last time before the battle. He finally points to the soldier holding the unit’s American flag and asks, “If this man should fall, who will lift the flag and carry on?” One of the other soldiers steps forward and declares “I will.”
point on the top of a hill in south-east London has been recognised as the centre of world time and the official starting point of each new day. But now the supremacy of Greenwich Mean Time is being challenged by a gargantuan new clock being built in Mecca, by which the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims could soon be setting their watches. Due to start ticking on Thursday as the faithful begin fasting during the month of Ramadan, the timepiece sits atop the Royal Mecca Clock Tower which dominates Islam’s holiest city…But Islamic scholars hope the clock’s influence will stretch far further than the sands of Saudi Arabia, as part of a plan for Mecca to eclipse the Greenwich Observatory as the “true centre of the earth”. For the past 125 years, the international community has accepted that the start of each day should be measured from the prime meridian, representing 0 degrees longitude, which passes through the Greenwich Observatory. A standard time by which other clocks were set was needed to organise global travel and communications, but in the Islamic world the idea that it should be centred on a part of London is seen as a colonial anachronism. As Mohammed al-Arkubi, manager of one of the hotels in the complex, put it: “Putting Mecca time in the face of Greenwich Mean Time. This is the goal.”
(June 20, 2010) 
(June 18, 2010) The subtitle of my blog is What in the world is going on? Looking at news events occurring around the world I think an even more appropriate question is, Is it all falling apart? In my lifetime (52 years) I have seen dramatic changes in socioeconomic, cultural, and technological spheres of human existence. Although the modern era may have begun during the European Renaissance, culturally in the areas of intellectual and artistic pursuits and politically through revolutions, I believe current modernity grew out of the Industrial Revolution of the 19th Century. Prior to that time human life moved at a much slower pace. Travel was powered by horse or sailing ship. Although the printing press had been around since the 15th Century communication still traveled only as fast as the horse or ship could carry it. With the advent of the 20th Century human innovation had made great strides in improving the human condition. The breadth of human existence had been dramatically changed in the areas of medicine and health, working and manufacturing, travel, education, and communication. Of course technological advancement also led to greater destruction in warfare. In the Nuclear Age humanity is capable of destroying the earth for the first time in human history. The prophet Daniel may have spoken of this development, 
(June 13, 2010) My last post dealt with increased solar activity and attempts by some to link it to Mayan Prophecy. There seems to be a diverse opinion on the meaning and nature of the Mayan Prophecy. The Mayans observed several calendrical cycles for their various social, agricultural, commercial and administrative endeavors and each of which had a religious element in or religious aspect to them. One of the calendars, the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, is the one that pertains to the Mayan Prophecy. This Long Count calendar constitutes a period of time consisting of 5125 years. The current Great Cycle of the Long Count will conclude on December 21, 2012. What happens after that seems to be open to conjecture. Beginning in the 1960s some Mayan researchers suggested that some type of apocalyptic event would occur at that time. Since then others have stated their belief that a new age of enlightenment will come upon mankind and the earth. Some believe that there will be some form of Milky Way galactic alignment on the Winter solstice (December 21) of 2012. As I pointed out in my last post, Hollywood has taken the Armageddon approach to 2012 and this is the idea which seems to have taken root in popular American culture. Therefore, I am interested in seeing how the months and weeks leading up to December 21, 2012 play out. The media hype may surpass that which occurred prior to the Y2k scare of 1999. I have read that modern-day Mayans themselves attach no import to the Mayan Prophecy. I believe they have the correct approach to this “event”.
