Author: Frank Hubeny

I enjoy walking, poetry and short prose as well as taking pictures with my phone.

Positivity—Ovi Poetry Challenge

May blessings flow on all of those
especially where conflicts rose.
So, demons, note: I won’t compose
a loveless fantasy.

Unwelcome thoughts like seeds were sown.
Offenses grew. I will not own
what stifles joy to ever groan.
The weeding season’s come.

Now, deadly darkness can’t annoy.
Defeated demons can’t destroy.
The coming harvest laughs with joy,
with joy forever more.

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Ronovan Hester offers “positivity” as this week’s inspiration for the Ovi Poetry Challenge. Also posted on Poet’s Corner.

Nail—Six Sentence Story

Although Sam’s wife was ready with cough drops, apple cider vinegar and honey she was getting annoyed with his colds.  After they rebuked any spirits of infirmity, she opened an audio Bible on her phone, selected the Book of Psalms and set them to play continuously throughout the night.

Sam would pop out of dreams to hear a psalm he was familiar with and then seemingly moments later one he didn’t remember hearing before. The cooling perspiration on his chest in the morning made him realize: he was healed! 

The demons who tried to nail him down and make him useless couldn’t get a moment’s worth of peace with those psalms playing. However, considering their defeat at the battle of the Resurrection, those psalms were better than what they’d have to face when the end finally came.

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Denise offers the prompt word “nail” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.

Sunrise, Atlantic Ocean, Southern Florida

Star Formation vs Star Creation

SlimJim reviewed a book by R.J. Rushdoony, The Word of Flux, so I searched to see if Rushdoony believed in a six-day creation as reported in Genesis 1. Not only did he support it (see The Mythology of Science), but he clarified what was at stake. God performed a creative act in Genesis 1. What He did NOT do was participate in a creative process involving natural laws.

If God were merely guiding some natural processes, what were those processes? There is no point in claiming, as Alvin Plantinga has done, that God guided natural processes, if those natural processes do not exist.

In the video from Answers In Genesis below Dr. Terry Mortenson brings home the point that the problem with star formation is that there are no natural processes that permit star formation. In particular at (20:00), he quotes Neil deGrasse Tyson:

The scary part is that if none of us knew in advance that stars exist, frontline research would offer plenty of convincing reasons for why stars could never form. (Neil deGrasse Tyson, Death by Black Hole and Other Cosmic Quandaries, New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2007, p. 187)

On the other hand, the origins of stars as a creative act of God, as Rushdoony would put it, is not a problem. An act of creation (when God does it) does not require a natural process to explain it. All it requires, which is more than any atheist and even some Christians can tolerate, is accepting a Creator Who can do what He says He did in Genesis 1.

Some people I know are attracted to the creative process (rather than creative act) views of Hugh Ross. They like to think they are being “rational”. Dr. Mortenson puts a special focus on Ross (starting about 3:30) showing how he exaggerates what naturalists themselves claim they know to justify his own handwaving. If one takes being rational seriously, one would no longer trust anything someone had to say who is willing to exaggerate.

Bottom Line

If you want to accept the atheist fairy tales, the handwaving stories, that naturalists and Ross want you to believe, then you might as well give up on Christianity as many have already done as a result of such philosophical diversions.

Why? Because Jesus said “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female.” (Mark 10:6 and other verses).

If the fairy tales are right then Jesus got that wrong, because the beginning of Ross-style process creation happened a god-awful number of years prior to the appearance of men and women.

Now continue that deductive chain to see what else it entails.

  • If Jesus got something wrong, then He is not God.
  • If Jesus is not God, then the Trinity is false.
  • If the Trinity is false, then the death of Jesus could not have been the sacrifice that Christianity has made it out to be.

So, who are you going to believe?

If you are at all tempted to believe atheists because they like to portray themselves as “scientists” (more accurately, pseudo-scientists which is all one is when someone abandons operational science) consider that the earliest “historical date of any real certainty” goes back no further than 5000 years which falls in line with a global flood of about 5300 years ago.

If you are tempted to doubt that a global flood occurred, consider the signs of a global catastrophic water event: glaciers, continent wide sedimentary strata, catastrophic plate tectonics, planation surfaces.

If you are still tempted to think that naturalistic processes can pop a universe into existence, then which natural process gets us something from nothing? And which natural process takes us from pond scum to human beings before the observable natural process of genetic entropy drives humanity to extinction?

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And if you are still tempted after that, remind the devil (for me) that he’s a doofus and soon it will all be over.

Sunset at Lido Key Beach, Florida

Pass—Six Sentence Story

One of two things happens as they pass by. Either they start rationalizing or they start crying.

We try to reason with those who start rationalizing. When that doesn’t work, we get rough. When that doesn’t work, our hearts break.

All we do for those who cry is let God wipe away their tears.

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Denise offers the prompt word “pass” for this week’s Six Sentence Stories.

The River School of Healing

I just finished attending a two-week long session in February of the River School of Healing made available by Revival Ministries International (RMI) centered at Tampa Bay, Florida. If you are looking for a never-the-same-again transformation experience I highly recommend this.

I don’t have any life-threatening issue affecting me, but I know people who do. I wanted to know what healing meant in a biblical context. That is, I wanted to experience healing as a Christian. And I wanted to be confident I was doing the right thing should I recommend this school to my relatives and friends.

About the School

Although pre-registration is required, the sessions are free. They do accept donations to RMI during the last hour of the last day of the session, but only if the Holy Spirit tells you to do so. Participants themselves are responsible for transportation, food and lodging. A new two-week session starts every two weeks.

Being near the RMI campus there are opportunities to participate in other events such as The Stand every evening except Saturday from 7 pm to about 10:30 pm and Sunday services at The River Church. The instructors, PJ and DNA, of the healing school, led Night 1334 of The Stand.

Finally, this school of healing is NOT a medical school. If you are seeking that kind of training you will need to look elsewhere. The Bible is the only focus in the teaching and even that is from a believing, Holy Spirit led, Christian perspective.

The Two Bookends of the Session

In the classroom many Bible verses appeared on the monitors. The aim of the instructors was to revive us by getting us to receive those verses into our hearts so we could respond with our own words. This blog post is an example of such a response.

There were two verses that acted as bookends. Here is the first one:

Proverbs 17:22
A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones.

That verse should make sense to everyone even to those reading this who aren’t smiling. So, receive it. Don’t take offense. Don’t just think, but receive. Then respond with joy coming out of your mouth. Be that person people want to be around because they know, whatever comes out of your mouth, that you don’t hate them. You might even, and probably do, love them.

The alternative is dry bones. The alternative is death.

Everyone knows this. So, why isn’t everyone merry and healthy? I don’t know of any meaningful justification for such deep rejoicing that does not involve the death and resurrection of Jesus, but no one is going to smile based merely on a theological justification for doing so. Every Christian with a frown on his face, or even a dumb stare, proves that point. They have the doctrine, that is, they have the logical propositions, but they clearly don’t have the heartfelt joy.

Nor do I know of any power whether that comes from some New Age meditation technique or some mind over matter gymnastics that opens the floodgates of rejoicing except what comes from the Holy Spirit. Without the death and resurrection of Jesus which makes you a child of God, a child of the Father, and without the power of the Holy Spirit within you there is only fake rejoicing.

We fake a merry heart through our various addictions and ideologies, but they lead to broken spirits which dry our bones. If you’re smiling right now with true joy that you can feel from your heart, treasure it as a supernatural miracle. Many have no clue what I’m talking about nor what you’re experiencing. It is the pearl without price.

Mark 16:18
…they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.

This second bookend relates healing specifically to believers in Jesus. Believing Christians have the authority to lay hands on the sick in the name of Jesus with the expectation that the sick will recover.

It is important to keep in mind that this assumes those who are sick want to recover. This healing is not a magic trick nor is it a mechanical procedure. It does not go against the wills of those who are sick.

There are many people who feel so unloved that they want to die. They need to know that they are loved. There are some who don’t want to lose their disability benefits. They need to lose their fears. And there are some who just plain enjoy what they’re addicted to (sugar, porn, anger, dubious “highs”). They need to grow up.

Let’s exclude those classes of people who want to be sick (unless they choose to repent). The rest shall recover.

Testimony

When we think of healing in terms of having the authority to lay hands on someone and of recovery as a sign, testimonies become the way those signs are made known to others. So, if we’re sick and we honestly want to recover, we should be ready to give our testimonies. It is our joyful response to what we have received in our hearts.

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And that’s it!

That’s my testimony of how my view of the world changed in two weeks at The River School of Healing. I had a sick view going in without even knowing it, but I am seeing more clearly today. Thank you, Jesus! Hallelujah!