Eternity

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The Hardest Sermons You’ll Ever Have To Preach
Reviewed by Hans Kristensen
Little Black Books: Science and God
Reviewed by Andrew Laird
Making the Most of the Cross
Reviewed by Lesley Hicks
Higher Ground
Reviewed by Andrew Laird

Top ten reasons Australians DON’T become Christians

New research into the reasons why Australians don’t accept Christian faith has just been released by Olive Tree Media.

“We decided a few months ago that we wanted to address some of the ‘blocker’ issues that stop people in the Australian community from coming to faith,” said Olive Tree Media’s CEO, Karl Faase. “Whilst there are many guesses about what these might be, we realised we didn’t actually know,” he said. “Once we discovered these ‘blockers’, we plan to produce a television series that addresses them,” said Karl.

Top ten reasons Australians DON’T become Christians

New research into the reasons why Australians don’t accept Christian faith has just been released by Olive Tree Media.

How God lifted me out of the sex-trade ‘rat hole’

Joshua Maule

A former prostitute who has run a shelter for recovering sex workers in Western Australia for more than a decade, is looking to relocate to a farmhouse. Linda Watson and the Perth Catholic Archdiocese recently sold Linda’s House of Hope, a Christian outreach which has operated since 1999. As Watson searches for a new location, she continues to run an adjoining assessment centre in Perth.
“My dream is a farm,” says Watson. “The girls could stay as long as they needed to.”
Featured in Philip Yancey’s most recent book What Good Is God?, Linda’s House of Hope has had varied responses. Watson says some have had the attitude of “serves them right, they put themselves there so they deserve to be there”.
But she knows that is not the case. Having been both a prostitute and a madam for 20 years, she knows first hand how hard it is to break out of prostitution. “These people are being lured to the slaughterhouse.”

We have all been left behind

Given we're all still around, the October 21 rapture date clearly missed the mark. Of course it didn't stop the prediction causing a great deal of grief for some. While Harold Camping has offered comments such as "we have to be very careful that we don't dictate to God what He should do", he stopped short of repenting of his fallacious prophecy claims. But Michael Jensen considers what the Christian position on certainty is.

A Bible Aborigines have been asking for

Karen Mudge

A new Bible for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders will be launched on Sunday November 6 in Gladstone Square in Port Augusta South Australia

The Bible is called the Easy Reading Family Bible and has been developed by Bible Society Australia in partnership with the national Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Ministry (ATSIM) team. The Bible is the Contemporary English Version and is in large print, which was asked for by the Aboriginal community. It features dynamic colour illustrations, with artwork produced by the Seventh-day Adventist Church. ATSIM is a part of the Seventh Day Adventist church, and the Bible was dedicated at its mid-year Australian Union Conference Board of Directors meeting.

Prostitution Bill hits WA parliament (plus the story of a WA ministry to prostitutes)

The Australian Christian Lobby is urging West Australian politicians not to pass the Prostitution Bill 2011, which was introduced in state parliament on Nov 2.
ACL spokeswoman Michelle Pearse said that keeping prostitution out of the suburbs but allowing it to be legal in “tolerated zones” won’t stop the expansion of the illegal industry, as has been seen in other parts of Australia which legalised prostitution.
“The Queensland Government legalised brothel prostitution in 1999 and research from the University of Queensland estimates that 90 per cent of prostitution in Queensland is still illegal, even after the government set up the Prostitution Licensing Authority to regulate the industry,” Ms Pearse said.

ALSO from WA a story of a positive ministry to prostitutes: Ex-madam dreams of a farm

The Bible beats Angry Birds in downloads

Karen Mudge

A Publishers Weekly report has shown that Bible Apps are more frequently downloaded than the popular game Angry Birds, leading them to conclude that we are in the midst of a “Digital Bible Explosion.”

The New Yorker also reports that, “numerous religious publishing and software companies were developing digital platforms well before the advent of the iPad; some have been at it for more than twenty years. And some of their apps are extremely sophisticated: QR codes embedded throughout the Life Essentials Study Bible link to video and audio sermons.”

The popular Bible App, YouVersion, contains over a hundred and fifty different Bible translations in forty-five languages. It’s free and has been downloaded more than thirty million times.

Facing a Muslim crowd

Bernie Power has been engaged in a series of debates and lectures with Muslims in Melbourne. Here is his report from the frontline.

Several young Muslim men I met at a mosque invited me to speak at an Islamic conference sponsored by the Islamic Research and Education Academy (IREA). I was invited to speak for half an hour on “The Christian Concept of God”. Other topics during the day focused on Dawah (the propagation of Islam) in Australia and also “Answering Christian Missionaries”.
After a welcome, I began my talk to the 150 Muslims gathered. My teaching compared and contrasted Islam to Christianity. Among the topics I raised was that Jesus clearly claimed to be the Son of God, and personally accepted worship which was due to God alone. He became a man but was completely sinless. One advantage of the Christian concept of the Trinity is that God can become a man. It was around this point that the chairman calculated my 25 minutes was up and he switched off the connection to the data projector.

Mine eyes do fail with tears-Roy Williams on the answers in the Bible to the problem of evil

Roy Williams on the answers in the Bible to the problem of evil
Bad things happen in the world. Ghastly, terrible things, like genocide, paedophilia and the carnage of war. There are shocking natural calamities and the countless daily travails of individual human beings.
Perhaps worst of all is the creeping evil of apathy. According to the World Hunger Education Service, the human race produces enough food to feed everyone on the planet, but 925 million people are undernourished. Poor nutrition causes 5-6 million child deaths each year.
For many affluent people in the West today such stark facts are sufficient proof of the non-existence of God. Any God who allows such suffering, so the argument goes, must be malevolent, or at best indifferent; it’s preferable to believe that there is no God at all.

Stop selling Playboy products women tell Diva

A group of parents, psychologists, women, and teens delivered more than 6,000 signatures from an online petition campaign on Change.org to Diva Accessories’ Sydney store today. The group is demanding that the fashion jewelery store stop selling and marketing pornography brand Playboy’s products to pre-teens and little girls.

The petition was handed over to the company by child and adolescent psychotherapist Collett Smart.

“Playboy is now a billion dollar global brand profiting from the exploitation and subordination of women,” Smart said. “Now it has craftily adapted products to suit a younger clientele – but the message is the same. ‘Playmate’ pendants and even pencil cases emblazoned with the infamous bunny reinforce the damaging idea that girls are simply sexual objects.

Pilgrim Hill launch with a taste of what’s coming

Emma Wilkins

Imagine raising more than $2 million, using it to build a hostel on a hill in the Tasmanian bush, moving in with your family while you are young, and sharing the gospel with travellers there until you are old.

Peirce and Christina Baehr admit it's "a crazy vision", but it's one they are, God-willing, determined to carry out.

Campaign to change the constitution

Adelaide Anglicans have set up an official campaign to delete two parts of the Australian constitution that discriminate against Aborigines. The Adelaide Synod (church parliament) also voted last week to support recognition of Aboriginal peoples as the first people in the constitution.

The new campaign has been launched as an Expert Panel on constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians, set up by the Federal Government nears its deadline. It is expected to report in December this year.

Adelaide Archbishop Dr Jeffrey Driver told the Advertiser newspaper it was "surprising and shocking" that the Constitution still recognised the differing treatment of people on the basis of race. "Many people would be surprised to know that not all citizens are treated equally under the Constitution," he said.