Petros Baptist Church

Someone once remarked “In life we don’t get what we want, we get in life what we are. If we want more we have to be able to be more, in order to be more you have to face rejection.”  This is especially true of the Christian, who overcomes the world not through might but through faith.  Christians today need especially to realize that being popular isn’t their goal- being faithful is.

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. — Emerson

Two Baptist churches were set on fire overnight in North Carolina and a third was broken into.   WCNC reports

Police and sheriff’s deputies rushed to check on churches throughout Pitt County early Sunday after fires struck two Baptist churches and a break-in was discovered at a third, authorities said.

Vigilance is necessary.

The anticipated completion of Friday was a bit optimistic but progress is moving along nicely.  When completed, the remodeled Sunday School classes are going to be quite nice.  When the present room is completed, only one remains.  This has been a long process but the final results will be well worth it.  We all appreciate very much David W. and Joey H. and their hard work, as well as the Building Committee’s commitment to maintain and beautify our facilities.  And we thank all of you for patience!

How can you be involved in the Revival God wishes to pour out in our town, our community, our land, and our world?  Easy.  Just do the following:

1- Humble yourself!  If you need to pray at the altar, pray at the altar.  If you need to confess a sin, confess a sin.  If you need to apologize to someone, apologize.  Humble yourself!

2- Pray!  Pray for revival.  Pray for your neighbors.  Pray for your children.  Pray for your friends.  Pray for your co-workers.  Pray for your town.  Not just about physical things but more importantly, about spiritual things.  Pray for an awakening.  Pray that people realize that they will stand before God one day.  Pray!

3- Turn from your wicked ways!  Stop doing things you know displease God!  Stop lying, cheating on your taxes, doing drugs, debasing yourself, looking at improper websites, and everything else that hinders you from being right with God!

When we show ourselves willing to do these things, God promises to send revival!  He promises the healing and restoration we need so desperately in our land.  Just read 2 Chronicles 7:14.

Soon became sooner.  The latest offering is available here.

If you are interested in acquiring recent publications by the Pastor, you can pick up the latest, Reformed Catechisms and Confessions of Faith: For the Person in the Pew. 

It is intended to be the companion volume of Baptist Confessions of Faith: For the Person in the Pew

For a full listing of publications, including the volumes presently available of the Commentary Series, visit here.  By the way, the latest commentary, on 2 Corinthians, is due out shortly.  In an effort to satisfy certain persons who think I should make wider announcement of these things, from hence when they appear I will mention them here.  [And you certain persons know who you are!]   

Life is a leaf of paper white

Whereon each one of us may write

His word or two, and then comes night.

Greatly begin! though thou have time

But for a line, be that sublime–

Not failure, but low aim, is crime.

Christians are leaving the Middle East, reports Assyrian International News. In part,

Christians have lived in the Arab world for the past 2,000 years. They were there before the Muslims. Their current predicament is not the first crisis they have faced and, compared to the massacres of the past, it is certainly not the most severe in Middle Eastern Christianity. But in some countries, it could be the last one. Even the pope, in his Christmas address, mentioned the “small flock” of the faithful in the Middle East, who he said are forced to live with “little light and too much shadow,” and demanded that they be given more rights. …

There are no reliable figures on the size of Christian minorities in the Middle East. This is partly attributable to an absence of statistics, and partly to the politically charged nature of producing such statistics in the first place. Lebanon’s last census was taken 74 years ago. Saddam Hussein, a Sunni who is himself part of a minority, was fundamentally opposed to compiling denominational statistics. In Egypt the number of Christians fluctuates between five and 12 million, depending on who is counting.

Given the lack of hard numbers, demographers must rely on estimates, whereby Christians make up about 40 percent of the population in Lebanon, less than 10 percent in Egypt and Syria, two to four percent in Jordan and Iraq and less than one percent in North Africa. But the major political changes that are currently affecting the Middle East have led to shrinking Christian minorities. In East Jerusalem, where half of the population was Christian until 1948, the year of the first Arab-Israeli war, less than five percent of residents are Christian today. In neighboring Jordan, the number of Christians was reduced by half between the 1967 Six Day War and the 1990s. There were only 500,000 Christians still living in Iraq until recently, compared to 750,000 after the 1991 Gulf War. Wassim, one of the seminary students now fleeing to Kurdistan, estimates that half of those remaining Christians have emigrated since the 2003 US invasion, most of them in the last six months.

Read the entire essay. Quite eye opening indeed.