A recent study found that 72% of American adults believed in heaven, while about 58% believed in hell. These numbers are down from past decades. The concepts of eternal rewards and punishments are just not as accepted as the once were – but why? In particular, the reality of hell is something that many people in the 21st Century are just not willing to believe.  Again we might ask why.  After doing a good deal of reading and research on the opinions of those who do not believe in hell, the following seem to represent their most cited opinions: ·         An eternal place of punishment seems like an unjust consequence for…

Most of us are familiar with the little hand exercise that begins with: here is the church; here is the steeple. Depending on whether or not we have our fingers interlocked, it may end with: open the door; where’s all the people – or –  open the door; there’s all the people. If only it were that simple. If only the church and the people were two different things, life might be so much more simple. “Church problems” could be fixed with hammers, saws, paint, etc. if the church really was only a building.  I fully understand that, when many people think of the word “church,” they think of a building. To be sure,…

[Editor’s Note: Today’s article is a guest post from Jonathan Medley from the Pippen church of Christ. We are grateful for his willingness to share this article with our readers.] At one time, society considered the admission of being homosexual extremely taboo, and it ruined the reputation and careers of many high-profile individuals. More importantly, society considered it sinful. However, society has changed. Today, it almost seems “fashionable” to some to be homosexual, and there are many who unashamedly proclaim it to the world. Along with the change in society has come the concept of thinking that someone is “born this way.” By that, they claim that being homosexual is encoded into the person’s genetic…

Satan is good. He is horribly, terribly good. Oh, he’s not good in the sense that he is free from malice or evil. But he is good at his work. What exactly is the work of Satan? From the beginning, he has been a master deceiver seeking to disrupt the peace and harmony between God and man. In the book of Job, when questioned about his activity Satan said he had been “…going to and fro on the earth, and … walking up and down on it.” He conveniently left out what Peter reveals about those earthly wanderings in 1 Peter 5:8: “Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring…

In the old King James Version, it was called “whispering” (Romans 1:29; 2 Corinthians 12:20). Today, we call it gossip. More than that, though, we often laugh at it, treating it as something harmless that people just do. In reality, gossip is a hideous sin, and it will destroy lives…and can even destroy a congregation. So…What is “Gossip?” To understand why gossip is so dangerous, though, we must understand what gossip is. The King James Version uses the word “whispering” or “whisperers” to translate the word that we usually think of as “gossip.” The reason why they chose that word was actually very good. There was another Greek term that…

Adam recently posted an article on A Legacy of Faith sharing his thoughts about what people are looking for in preachers. The title was What Too Many People Want in a Preacher. If you did not read that post, I encourage you to do that. As I read his thoughts, a statement came to mind that I heard an older preacher say years ago. At that time, I was in my early years of attempting to preach the gospel. The man who was older than me at that time was probably about the age I am now.  Although I wasn’t around this man a great deal, I still considered him to be sort…

It’s a song we don’t sing very often anymore. Written in 1911 by William P. Merrill, this song has a command we don’t often hear from those in leadership positions today. The first verse reads: “Rise up, O men of God! Have done with lesser things; give heart and mind and soul and strength to serve the King of Kings.” As I have been studying the book of Nehemiah lately, this song kept coming to my mind. The strength of Nehemiah’s leadership in the face of so much opposition has invaluable lessons for us today. Six Traits that Made Nehemiah a Great Leader Nehemiah was a man of passion. When he learned about the remnant…