Born To Win Podcast - With Ronald L. Dart

When all is said and done; when the Millennium is passed; when the Great White Throne Judgment is finished, and the last of all the loose ends are tied up; when the earth has been melted down with fervent heat; when there's a new heavens and a new earth, and the heavenly city New Jerusalem has descended upon it...who will you be?

When I lived in England some years ago, it seemed that every spring, one or another bishop of the Church of England would publish some new, outrageous doctrinal idea about God. I began to suspect that they drew straws every year to see whose turn it was to create a storm in the news before Easter.One year, it seemed that N.T. Wright (Bishop of Durham) drew the short straw and published a book titled Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church. To boil down his most provocative idea: Christians do not go to heaven when they die.Reading the New Testament, I find there’s really is not much room for misunderstanding here about the fundamentals, and I assume that is what motivated the Bishop to write his book. Traditional Christian assumptions often don’t match Scripture, as comforting as they may seem to be. But if you take a second look, you’ll find that what lies ahead is much more exciting.

Do you believe there’s a spirit world out there? There is, you know, although it’s not exactly out there—it’s right here. It’s in the same room as you. You can’t see it, can’t taste it, can’t touch it. The science fiction writers might call it another dimension, and they may be the closest to explaining it in terms that modern man might understand. Once in a while, there’s a tear in the membrane that separates our world from the spirit world and we become aware of it—and, hopefully, not a part of it.But the Bible doesn’t tell us much about that world; and what it does tell us is almost in throwaway lines. The Bible is more concerned with how we live our lives in the here-and-now than it is with the spirit world, and the advice from the Bible is—for the most part—Leave that world alone. It’s not your business. But it does make reference to it from time to time. There’s an incident with one of the prophets that illustrates

Would it be easier for you to believe in God if he showed you a sign? Maybe if he did some miracle for you? What would you like him to do? Cause you to speak in tongues, maybe, or while you’re in church sometime have you keel over backwards and lay immobile on the ground with your hands up in the air for three hours? Or maybe if God would do something a little more practical—if he would suddenly heal you or someone you love of some sickness or disability, would that help you believe in God? You know, I would have thought so, but an incident found in the New Testament leads me to doubt whether this would be the case.In Matthew 12, Jesus heals a man with a withered hand. If you were standing there and saw that man extend his withered hand and watch it become whole like the other one, you would be impressed wouldn’t you? You can’t fake that or explain it away. If someone who was dying of cancer is healed, I might say, Well, maybe the doctors were wrong. But we could see that hand before a

When people start speaking in unrecognizable languages, how do you know this is the spirit of God and not some other spirit? I don’t mean to put down anyone religious experience, but I think I am asking a fair question: How do you know? I know that the gift of tongues was given to the apostles when they were empowered. We talked about the example found in Acts 2, but found that they spoke recognizable languages and had a clear and understandable message to share. Members of the crowd, who hailed from across the Empire, were astonished that their dialects were being spoken by these simple Galileans.Now, here is my problem. If the language people are speaking when they speak in tongues is a heavenly language, a prayer language, the language of angels: Why? What is the purpose? What is the point? Why would God do that? It surely is not because God does not understand English or French, is it? God does not need to give me his language in order for us to communicate. And it would be very strange, indeed, if

How would you like to see God—to actually hear his voice? Yeah, I would too. At least, I think I would. Some people got close once. You remember the story from Exodus where Israel gathered around the bottom of Mount Sinai and God came down on the mountain and spoke to them? Boy, when he came down the whole thing began to smoke. When God spoke from the mountain, we’re told that the rocks broke at the sound of his voice. It’s no small wonder that the people were frightened. They packed up their things, moved a distance away, and begged Moses to go speak to God in their place. So, yeah, I would like to see God and hear his voice, but I have a feeling I’d be better off waiting until I’m a spirit being.There is in man a profound desire to see something;if not God, then at least a manifestation of God; and if not a manifestation of God, at least a manifestation of the spirit world. People pursue the spirit world is any of its forms: they consult fortune-tellers and mediums, play with O

One of the most exciting discoveries in my life was when I learned that the festivals of the Bible actually contained an outline of God’s plan—an outline much more complex than I had at first imagined. They are loaded with illustrations, with analogies, with symbols and types of the plan of salvation, the life and work of Jesus Christ, of end-time events culminating in the Kingdom of God...and even events beyond the end of this world.But there is a curious anomaly in this festival that we observe here today, and at least a couple of different angles on trying to understand it. There are theories that have been advanced through the years that we have observed it, and we need to talk about it.

An old friend of mine used to say that if the Devil cannot get at you any other way, he will waste your time. I got a letter recently asking me to do a radio program on the question of the pre-tribulation rapture of the saints.So, when the mandatory internet search on the phrase rapture theory returned nearly 1.5 million web pages, including exhaustive arguments being raised on all sides, it struck me that a massive amount of time had been wasted on this issue.Actually, it turns out that there are at least four theories on the rapture, and they have managed to create schism across a wide range of believers. Reason and common sense should say something to us when we encounter something like this. If the Bible were all that clear on the issue, do you suppose we would have this breadth of disagreement?

I had a friend once who allowed that human beings were, to God, like fish eggs. We were sitting in the sun on a bass boat trying unsuccessfully to catch something and he was trying to make sense of the world. A fishing boat is a great place for philosophizing. I know, he said, that there is only one way of salvation, and that is by the name of Jesus Christ. But I also know that the vast majority of the people who have ever lived have never heard that name.My friend speculated that God, in order to bring a few sons to his kingdom, had to put billions of us here on the earth to allow for wastage. I had to admit that the idea had a perverse logic to it. But what did it say about the kind of being who would create a system like that for man? For we are not fish, we are human. We suffer. We hope, we love, we create.Is the God we read about in the Bible the sort of person who would waste people in their billions to achieve his objectives? It is one thing for God to give man the freedom to accept or reject life with

Many years ago, before I learned better about arguing religion, I was engaged in a discussion focused on people who never even heard the name of Jesus anytime in their lives. How could it be right for God to torture these people forever? Tell me he is just going to leave them dead and we have one picture. Tell me he has arranged for their eternal torment and we have another altogether.And then, there are the children. Are all these people, including countless children, who had never had a chance to be saved going to burn for all eternity?Perhaps you say, Well, I believe that God will make a way. Well, then you and I would be in agreement. But I think it would be strange indeed if in all the pages of the Bible, we couldn’t find so much as a hint as to what that way is.

The third psalm has a striking subheading: A Psalm of David, when he fled from Absalom his son. No one is certain as to when the subheadings found in the Psalms were created or whether they are authentic or not. But sometimes, if you know some of the history of the time, you can get very strong clues as to whether they fit or not. The incident in question dates from when David had quite a few wives, and no shortage of sons. They are outlined in 2 Samuel. While he was in Hebron, he had six sons of six different women. One of these sons was Absalom, his mother a princess, daughter of a king of a neighboring city. And being the son of a king and a princess may have contributed to the final outcome of this tragic man's life.Navigation<< Thinking About the Psalms #1

I've been doing some writing recently on the Psalms, and there are some profound lessons that just keep growing on me. I can't help thinking that there's something quite special about this book of the Bible, but it's hard to put my finger on it. It may be the musical style of the psalms; but it's hard to figure how that would quite come through, because they had a different musical scale, their style of poetry was different from ours. The poetry does survive, though, because Hebrew poetry is a poetry of ideas, of thoughts; not so much words and rhymes. Nevertheless, the power of music still hovers over this book.I know years ago, when I was having some hard times, I took the Bible with me to my place of prayer one day, I opened it up to the first psalm, I laid it out there in front of me, and I began to talk to God about the psalm. It was a change in my approach to prayer. I'm no longer asking God, Give me this, or Give me that, or Heal that person's sickness, and all that type of thing. It's just a talk, a c

What kind of people are we coming to be? And What kind of Christians might we be when we no longer govern our lives by the words of Jesus? The road ahead is long and dangerous. And our educational system has given us a generation who are governed by what?What informs us about right and wrong? Experience? It is a hard teacher, but effective. Philosophy? It is too often wrong, by its own admission. In a way, when we read the Bible, we are learning from the experiences of generations past, so we don’t have to repeat their mistakes.My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children.Hosea 4:6 KJV

Science has very little to say about origins. We can theorize about the origins of life, but no one has been able to demonstrate that it’s possible to create life—either purposely or on accident. I don’t mind scientists concluding that God’s existence (or non-existence) is outside their purview. The problem arises when we are told with certainty that nature is all there is, was, and ever shall be. Do they tell us that? Oh, yeah; they tell our children that. That sentence comes straight from a children’s book about nature. American scientist Will Provine said this:Modern science directly implies that the world is organized strictly in accordance with deterministic principles or chance. There are no purposive principles whatsoever in nature. There are no gods and no designing forces rationally detectable.Will Provine - Evolutionary ProgressCardinal Christoph Schönborn, writing in First Things, made an important point on this issue—more than one point, actually, but one that m

Navigation << In the Last Days #1 

I bought a CD course on the Old Testament once, because I was considering teaching an online course myself. I hadn’t got very deep into the first disc before the teacher said flatly that King David did not actually exist. She was assuming that the stories about David were a Hebrew myth. I went no further. The teacher was revealing a radical position on the Old Testament that was of no value to me.Even from a non-believer’s point of view, David is one of most real characters in the Bible. He is larger than life, but that makes him no less real. He is a flawed human being, but that makes him still more real. He doted on a useless son, but that made him a real parent. Now, if you read through the books of Samuel, you encounter real people. They are just living in a different culture and speaking a different language, but they are just as real as you are.The Books of Samuel, though, are not in strict chronological order, which tends to confuse some readers. The Ryrie Study Bible suggests that the sect