Born To Win Podcast - With Ronald L. Dart

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, self-control: against such there is no law.And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.Galatians 5:22–25 KJ2000Referenced articles:Why Do We Use the Hebrew Calendar?The Hebrew Calendar (chapter from The Thread)

Once upon a time, there was a people who had returned to their homeland after a generation in exile. They had been tasked by God with repairing the Temple and restoring worship. It wasn’t that God dwelt in houses made with hands; the Temple was symbolic, a center of worship, a reminder of who God is—really—and of what is really important about life.But life wasn’t working very well for them. They were in the middle of an economic failure—a position not unlike where we often find ourselves. They had been told by the prophets, from Isaiah to Jeremiah to Ezekiel, why they were going into exile before it actually happened; so they just might listen to a prophet this time. Well, God sent one.Then the word of the Lord came through the prophet Haggai: Is it a time for you yourselves to be living in your paneled houses, while this house remains a ruin? Now this is what the Lord Almighty says: Give careful thought to your ways: You have planted much, but have harvested little. You eat, bu

After some recent reading, I now think we are standing closer to the Abyss than I thought we were, and that the tipping point is not what I thought it was. Let me explain. I have long been aware of the closing verses of the Old Testament (you may know them):Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord: And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.Malachi 4:5–6 KJVFor some reason, most of commentators I’ve heard focus on the coming of Elijah (and more than one prophecy nut has claimed to be a reincarnation of that prophet). But the last verse is where I am today: And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.I’ve heard various explanations of this, but none of them seemed to draw out the truly shocking statement that is ther

4 [Jesus], being assembled together with them, commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which, said he, you have heard of me.5 For John truly baptized with water; but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.6 When they therefore were come together, they asked of him, saying, Lord, will you at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?7 And he said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father has put in his own power.8 But you shall receive power, after the Holy Spirit has come upon you: and you shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.9 And when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight.10 And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel;11 Who also said, You men of Galilee, why stand

The whole Christian world believes in the resurrection of Jesus. They believe it because of the testimony of the witnesses. But did you know that no one saw Jesus rise from the tomb? Oh, they saw him alive afterward, so they knew that he was risen, but no one actually witnessed the event. They knew there was an earthquake that opened the tomb, but they could only assume that Jesus rose at that moment.There is another interesting fact about the resurrection of Jesus that you don’t seem to hear about that often. You would have to be a serious student of the Bible to even notice the distinction, but when the Bible says that the women came to the tomb early on the first day of the week, the expression first day of the week—as normal as it is to us—was a rather unusual expression at that time.What do I mean by that? Well, normally, if you are going to talk about Sunday, you would have said. on the day after the Sabbath. But not one of the gospel writers do. They all use the expression, on the fir

And as they led him away, they laid hold upon one Simon, a Cyrenian, coming in from the country, and on him they laid the cross, that he might bear it after Jesus. And there followed him a great company of people, and of women, who also bewailed and lamented him. But Jesus turning unto them said, Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children. For, behold, the days are coming, in the which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts which never nursed. Then shall they begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us; and to the hills, Cover us. For if they do these things with a green tree, what shall be done with the dry?And there were also two others, malefactors, led with him to be put to death. And when they were come to the place, which is called Calvary, there they crucified him, and the malefactors, one on the right hand, and the other on the left. Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. And they

There have been some truly great men who held the office of pope down through the centuries, and some men who were…well, not great. Some have been venal. Some have been violent. Some were put in office by imperial authority. Some were murdered in their beds. There have been times in history when schism found leaders and left the church with more than one pope, believe it or not.The word anti-pope is unfamiliar because there hasn’t been one for 500 years. What’s that? Well, an anti-pope is a claimant of the papacy in opposition to a pope elected according to canon law. To give you an idea of some of the ferment that existed in the past—in the 11th century alone there were 5 anti-popes, and 8 of them in the 12th century. That’s 13 anti-popes in 200 years. (Excommunications, naturally, flew back and forth.)It’s ironic that since the Protestant Reformation there have been no anti-popes—almost as though we flushed out all the dissidents and went forward. The Reformation, though, was a schism within the Roman Churc

My heart goes out to Simon Peter. It is impossible to feel what Simon and the others felt on the night Jesus was arrested. They had followed this good and gentle man up and down the hills of Judea and Galilee for 3 1⁄2 long years. Not only did they love him like a brother, they were convinced of the rightness of his cause—their cause. When you have done nothing but good, when you have been nothing but kind, when you are absolutely convinced that your cause is just and your conduct righteous and blameless, it must come as a terrible shock to have your leader betrayed, arrested, and dragged away in chains.But that was not the worst of it. When Jesus was arrested, Simon Peter and all the rest of them had fled into the darkness in abject fear. There is no ease for the shame that comes on a man when he has run away. No one needs to convict him of cowardice, for his own heart is judge and jury. I suspect that it was that sense of shame that brought Peter back to follow Jesus and his captors back to the

Love is no defense against fear. Neither is faith. And if you are afraid, you are no different from any other man, not even those great pillars of faith that formed the foundation of the Christian church. It may shock you, but in this very human trait, you are not very different from Christ himself. After the last supper, Jesus completed a rather long discourse with his disciples and they were totally enthusiastic. They gave him rave reviews. They said:[…] Lo, now speak you plainly, and speak no proverb. Now are we sure that you know all things, and need not that any man should ask you: but this we believe that you came forth from God. Jesus answered them, Do you now believe? Behold, the hour comes, yea, is now come, that you shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone: and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me. These things I have spoken unto you, that in me you might have peace. In the world you shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world

Where is God? Where does he live? Can you point in the direction where one might find him? There are those who believe that God is in every blade of grass, every leaf of a tree. But they may believe in an amorphous God that is everywhere in general but nowhere specifically. They may believe in a God who puts in appearances from time to time, but usually is somewhere else—especially when you need Him. One of Jesus’ disciples may have been thinking in these terms when Jesus told him:He that hath my commandments, and keeps them, he it is that loves me: and he that loves me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will show myself to him. One of the disciples said, Lord, how is it that thou wilt show thyself unto us, and not unto the world? Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.John 14:21–23We are not going to put in an appearance from time to time. We will live a

We all know that God loves the world. But I’m afraid that we think of it as God loving us as one big gaggle down here, without any particular love for the individual. But when I say that Jesus loved his disciples, I am going way beyond the idea of a collective love. Jesus had spent 3 1⁄2 years with these 12 men. They had laughed together, cried together, slept on the ground around a campfire together. They had faced hardship and fear together. They had eaten together and been hungry together. He had taken them places and showed them things they had never seen before—never even imagined before. He loved them so much that he was prepared to die for them. He loved all of them, individually, even Judas.Here we are at the Last Supper and Jesus tells them, I have really wanted to share this last Passover with you before I suffer.21 […] Verily, verily, I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me.22 Then the disciples looked one on another, doubting of whom he spake.23 Now there was leani

Sheep, grain, bread, salt, seeds. In the Gospels, Jesus uses many metaphors when describing both the harvest that is before us and our own roles as workers, bringing in that harvest.Hello everyone, and welcome to the Christian Educational Ministries Weekend Bible Study. It is good to be with you and we thank you for being there and allowing us to make this weekly service possible.Over the past few weeks, we've followed Ron Dart in taking a closer look at the Passover, the resurrection of Christ, and the beginning of the countdown to the Feast of Weeks or Pentecost. As we find commanded in Leviticus 23:From the day after the Sabbath, the day you brought the sheaf of the wave offering, count off seven full weeks. Count off fifty days up to the day after the seventh Sabbath, and then present an offering of new grain […] a wave offering of firstfruits to the Lord.Leviticus 23:15–17 NIVThis weekend concludes the third of those seven weeks, so tonight we'll join Mr. Dart in examining this time of year and its accom

What did the First Christians believe about the Bible? It is an interesting question for several reasons, not least because the Bible, as we know it, had yet to exist. The components of what we call the New Testament were being written in the years between about AD 55 and 70. To the First Christians, these were written testimonies and letters of the apostles.However, the First Christians were not without a Bible. But they referred to it by a different name. I won’t bore you with the details right now, but the collection the First Christians called The Holy Scriptures was what we call the Old Testament.For the First Christians, the Scriptures were authoritative. We should think a little further about what that means. When we speak of the authority of Scripture, we are using a shorthand phrase for something a little more complicated that I’d like to talk about.

We have an incurable fascination with the future, don’t we. We want to know what is going to happen, when it is going to happen, why it is going to happen. Small wonder that when Jesus foretold the coming destruction of the temple, his disciples wanted to know. Enquiring minds always want to know. When will these things be, they asked, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?Jesus’ answer has a lot of information about the end time, but I can summarize it in two points: It is not for you to know the time. Get on with life and the work you have been given to do. When you see Jerusalem being surrounded, flee into the mountains, but between now and then, he said, you have things to be doing. What are those things?As a Bible teacher for many years, I have often had occasion to look over the prophetic studies of a lot of students and teachers. Almost all of them have been consumed with questions of timing and events. They try to correlate the events and the number of days. Th

The idea of the End of the World has a kind of morbid fascination for us. We are conditioned to think in terms of beginnings and ends of things, so it becomes not so much a question of whether, but of when. It is not a happy topic. I suppose it is a lot like a sore tooth—we have to keep exploring to see if it still hurts.I can’t pass up those old disaster movies that have us colliding with an asteroid or comet and facing up to the temporary nature of things. There have been some really huge meteor strikes in the past—the one that caused meteor crater in Arizona is one of the smaller ones. Now they believe that just such a collision accounts for the extinction of some species in the past and even the onset of the ice age. And they believe it can happen again. It is only a matter of time. I have heard this kind of collision called an extinction event. The question is whether or not man will be made extinct, either by such a collision or by our own devices.Jesus Christ spoke of such an event in

How would you like to know—step-by-step—all the events leading up to the end of the world? Maybe you’d rather not know. We really have a morbid fascination with the end of the world, don’t we? We fantasize about how to escape it, how to prevent it. We make movies about blowing up asteroids and extinction-level events. It was chilling, several years ago, to actually watch as a comet slammed into a neighboring planet—piece by piece—and knowing that, if that ever happened here, it would be all over.The question of the end of the world was raised 2,000 years ago by the disciples of Jesus, and they got an answer from Jesus himself. Actually, it was only a couple of days before Jesus was crucified that there were standing among the magnificent buildings of the Temple and said, Master, look at the kinds of stones and what buildings they built here! Jesus replied, Do you see these things? I tell you the truth: there shall not be left here one stone upon another that shall not be th

Power corrupts. Absolute Power corrupts absolutely. It is one of the reasons why men have rejected absolute monarchy and the divine right of kings. But forget about absolute power for a moment and think about power—power in small amounts. It is a little spooky to realize how little power it takes to start the process of corruption.When Jesus walked the streets of Jerusalem, Rome was the absolute power, and Rome was corrupt. What was less obvious was that there was also power in the hands of religious leaders, and that power had done its work in all of the sects of the prevailing Judaism. But nowhere was it more apparent than among those who formed the religious establishment.Then spake Jesus to the multitude, and to his disciples, Saying, The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat: All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not.Matthew 23:1–3There is nothing more frustrating than a double standard in religio

It was just at the crack of dawn. First light of the new day was just starting to show over the top of the Golan Heights. Still too dark to see anything. The men in the boat fumbled around because they knew where their tackle was, they knew what the boat was like, they knew where everything was by hand, by touch. They had fished a lot at night, so they didn't have any problem with that.But on the shore, off to one side, they could see a little fire burning. They had fished all night long, and they were frustrated because they hadn't caught a thing. And, you know, fishing the way they fished was fairly hard work. And nighttime for them was the time—with daylight coming, hope for catching a lot of fish was beginning to diminish. But that little fire was burning over there. Someone was moving around the fire, and a voice came out across the sea there, about some hundred yards or so away where they were."Boys, have you caught anything?"And one of them put his hand to his mouth and says, "No!"He said back, "You're

When you consider the mess the world is in right now, you might wonder if God has written us off as a bad investment. But if you read the Bible, you know that the world—at least man’s world—has been in a mess from the very beginning and yet God has taken an interest in it, and seems to be making sense out of it all. He has plan and is working the plan. The challenge for is for us to make sense of it and go along with his plan.God has not only taken an special interest in the world, but has acted in history and has related to people in the world—sometimes to a community of people. The most obvious illustration is the most-favored nation status that God afforded Israel during much of their existence as a people.God was Israel’s king, and they were his Kingdom. The first manifestation, as it were, of the Kingdom of God. It is odd, in a way, the confusion that surrounds the expression, The Kingdom of God. It simply refers to that entity which God rules. It is a Kingdom in the past wh