1990 Issue 3
Bearing fruit is central to redemption and salvation. Jesus said, "I chose you, and appointed you, that you should go and bear fruit,"vs. 16. In 15:2, He said, "Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away," is cast into to fire and burned up, vs. 6. The issue of bearing fruit, therefore, is not optional; it is the evidence and the product of being in Christ, the vine. Does this mean that a person can be "in Christ," be saved, and later be cut off because he does not bear fruit, be lost? What is the fruit that we are to bear? How can I bear fruit for Christ?
It must be the most unmodern doctor's office in the United States," John Eustace Denmark, 90, says of the 125-year-old farmhouse where his wife, the pediatrician Dr. Leila Denmark, 91, has her practice. The floors are bare dark wood (rugs would be too germ-ridden). The equipment is astonishingly simple: a scale for weighing infants, her original 1928 stethoscope, a few basics. On the desk and tacked to a screen are three generations of children's photographs.
If you blinked, you probably missed press coverage of the elections in Namibia. The Wall Street Journal did carry 1" to 2" updates on the situation and a couple of longer articles. I even found short summaries in my local paper in mid-November.
The press was quick to report that the elections were over and the Communist-backed SW APO did not get the two-thirds majority it needed to write the constitution for independent Namibia. Having reported that, interest in Namibia was quickly replaced by interest in other parts of the world - Europe, Russia, Romania.
But Namibia has not ceased to exist because the elections are over. And the threat of Communism has not dissipated because SW APO did not win the election with a two-thirds majority.
The Christian life begins when we hear and respond to the inner call of the living Jesus Christ in the gospel, Rom. 10:14; John 10:27. This calling of God defines the entirety of the Christian's life. The Christian is to live, believing that God in Christ has called him to be what he is and where he is, using the gifts God's Spirit has given him to their fullest extent. "It is not an accident that a person is where he is, and like he is, when he is converted, and provided that he is not engaged in a course of life which is intrinsically sinful, he is to regard that situation as God's calling to him." - Paul Helm
We have already said that so-called Modernists or Liberals have no consistent stopping place. They must either go clear over to rationalism and barren negation, or they must turn back again to an authoritative Scripture. The history of Protestant Liberalism shows us very clearly that it has had extreme difficulty in maintaining itself even on the platform of theism, to say nothing of that of Christianity. Its tendency has been to constantly downgrade, a progressive repudiation of all the fundamentals of the Christian faith. The Modernist, if he proceeds logically in the direction which his premises carry him, denies, first, the inspiration of the Scriptures, then the miracles, then the deity of Christ, then the atonement, then the resurrection, and finally, if he goes to the end of his road, he ends up in absolute skepticism. New England Unitarianism affords an example of this very thing. Strange as the words may sound in our ears, it is not uncommon in some places in America today to hear the "atheistic shade" of modern theology spoken of. There is, unfortunately for some, a happy consistency in the processes of reason which drives the various philosophical and religious systems to their logical conclusions.
DRIVING MISS DAISY is a great character study which will not only fill you with joy and love, but also encourage you to follow Jesus Christ more closely. In a subtle way, this film asks and answers some of the most important questions of our age. Miss Daisy Werthan is a highly-independent Southern Jewish matron who has known poverty and prejudice - facts which she is not going to let anyone forget; although now she's rich and her son is accepted by Atlanta society. The tough, yet loving old woman insists upon doing everything herself, until she backs her new car into a gully.
Inspired in part by his own autobiography, BORN ON THE 4TH OF JULY spans two decades of Vietnam veteran Ron Kovic's life. Opening on July 4th, 1956, Ron is watching a patriotic parade as he celebrates his tenth birthday in his hometown of Massapequa, N.Y. Raised in a patriotic, Catholic family, young Ron sees the military as the road to glory.
