Dear Church

My brave colleagues in the Middle East and North Africa are risking everything to offer the Scriptures to people around them. They work in the toughest places, but they serve with faith and joy.

When I met with these colleagues recently, they reported killings, threats and persecution. They say it's becoming harder and harder to work in safety.

The culture is lawless and violent. Extremists roam unchecked. Christians are targeted in the most brutal of ways, just to provoke a reaction.

£40 could ensure our staff continue the Bible mission across the Middle East and North Africa.

Please consider giving a gift .

If you want to invest in the frontline of Bible work, you don't get any closer than here.

Thank you.
With every blessing

James Catford
Bible Society Group Chief Executive

Q: Can you do science without God?

A: Science comes out of a Christian worldview. Only the God described in the Bible can account for a logical and orderly universe. God upholds the universe in a particular way, such that we can study it by observational and repeatable experimentation. Because God upholds the universe in a consistent manner, we have a valid reason to expect that we can study the world we live in and describe the laws that God uses to sustain the universe.

In the secular view, where all matter originated by chance from nothing, there is no ultimate cause or reason for anything that happens, and explanations are constantly changing, so there is no basis for science. Though many non-Christians do science, like inventing new technologies or improving medical science, they are doing it in a manner that is inconsistent with their professed worldview.

Continue reading to see how true science is based in a Christian worldview.

Psalm 62: 1-2; 5-6

My soul finds rest in God alone; my salvation comes from him. He alone is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I will never be shaken. Find rest, O my soul, in God alone; my hope comes from him. He alone is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I will not be shaken. NIV

There is one very important word that occurs four times in succession in those verses that I've just read. The word is “alone.”

My soul finds rest in God alone. He alone is my rock and salvation. My hope comes from God alone and He alone is my rock.”

You see, there's a certain sense in which the only ultimate source of salvation and of hope is God Himself.

The prophet Isaiah cried out, “God has become my salvation.”

Salvation is not to be found in religion, even in a creed or a doctrine or in church membership.

There's only one ultimate source of salvation and its very important that each one of us comes at some time in our lives to that place where we use that word “alone,” where we say “God alone is my hope, my rock, my fortress, and the source of my salvation.”

And true enough when we say that, it becomes true in our experience.

Derek Prince

Dear Prayer Partner

Greetings in Jesus' Name! I am sending this brief email prayer letter reminding you of things which need urgent prayer. I am leaving for an evangelistic mission in Chita, Siberia today.

Please pray for the following:

* We have a stand at the CRE in Esher this week - pray that many Christians who are not aware of our ministry needs will visit our stand in the main hall.

* Pray that God will bring a great harvest of souls in Siberia this week. It will be my first evangelism in Russia for some years - officially evangelism is forbidden - but the organising church are believing God for a miracle.

* Pray that in our present economic crisis in Eurovision, God will provide the finance for this evangelism. I tried to cancel it because we have no money to pay for Israel, but could not - the Russian Church will pay all the costs of the 5-day mission, but the air fares for our team are over £6,000, plus our hotel costs.

* The situation in Israel is critical as Israel is preparing for war. Again I tried to cancel this mission in June because, although the Israelis are paying 20% 0f the cost, we have to find the remaining £500,000. It is too late to cancel - the local pastors are standing as guarantors for the costs.

* Pray for me, because to be out of the office for 8 days at this critical time of trying to raise the money for Israel is difficult.

* Pray that some Christian organisations which will not support evangelism will help to pay for the humanitarian aid to the holocaust survivors - which is more than 50% of the cost. This aid is the only way we can continue, otherwise the Israeli Government will stop us. We have a very big project this week to raise money for the aid to the Russian Jews; the Israeli Government had a budget to help them, but have spent all the money on other projects, they are now dependent on us - more than 144,000 of them.

We desperately need miracles at the moment - thank you for praying. But we are also mindful of your needs - we thank God for you and pray that God will deliver and help you.

Thank you
David

Everyone of us who considers themselves to be the Lord's disciple must recognise the unbelief and hardness that assails our heart in each new situation, each new difficulty, and must ask God for a renewing and growth of our faith. Our circumstances CAN be changed, the Word of God CANNOT fail. The Bible says that we live by faith and not by sight. The circumstance we face may be impossible to us, but with God ALL things are possible! God's Word works; it will accomplish what God pleases, and it will prosper in the thing God sent it to do! (Isaiah 55:11, NKJV)

Watch the meetings LIVE and on-demand from Chita by clicking here

Psalm 56:8

Thou hast taken account of my wanderings; put my tears in Thy bottle; are they not in Thy book? NAS

There's a cry of a desperate soul, someone who knows what it is to be a wanderer, a fugitive, an exile. Someone who knows what it is to shed many, many tears.

Well, even in his tears and in his exile, he finds comfort. He realizes that the eye of God is upon him, that God is taking note of everything that he goes through, that a record is being kept in God's book of all that he suffers for righteousness' sake. And he even says, “God put my tears in thy bottle.”

Why would you want your tears stored up with God? You see one day those tears are going to look very different to you than the way you see them now.

Now you see them as suffering, now you see them as a cause for wondering what's gone wrong. But you see in this life we only see the reverse side of the tapestry. We see colours that don't seem to blend and patterns that don't make much sense.

But remember in eternity we'll see the tapestry the right way up and things that made no sense and caused us to wonder if God really knew what He was doing will work out into a most beautiful pattern that will give us joy throughout eternity.

So remember when you are suffering for righteousness' sake and maybe shedding bitter tears, don't turn away from God, don't give up hope, just do as the psalmist did. Cry out to God, “Put my tears in thy bottle.”

Derek Prince

Psalm 56:3-4

When I am afraid, I will trust in you. In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I will not be afraid. What can mortal man do to me? NIV

One thing I've always loved about the Bible since I came to know it is its honesty. It faces facts, it pictures life as it is, it knows us in our weakness.

The psalmist does not say boldly, I'll never be afraid. He says, sure there will come times when I may be afraid, but when I'm afraid, I know what to do. I'll trust in God. I'll trust in the word of God, the unfailing word of God, the sure promises of God.

You see, in the spiritual life often there is a conflict between two areas of our being. In our emotions we go through all the feelings of fear, maybe of panic, it grips us.

But there's another area of our being – the spirit – that will not yield to panic, that does not accept the dictates of the emotions. It says, “I'll not accept the verdict of my emotions about this situation. I'll turn to God; I'll remember what the word of God says. I'll find the promise of God that meets my need. And though in my emotions I may feel fear, in my spirit I trust and that trust brings me into a security, a peace, a confidence that's much deeper than my emotions.

The emotions are just like the waves on the surface, but deep down in the spirit, in the depths of our being there is settled peace and confidence.

Derek Prince

Psalm 51:16-17

You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. NIV

What is David the psalmist telling us there?

Surely he's telling us that first and foremost God is not interested in externals.

Sacrifice and offerings there are not necessarily things that God does not want but they are things that He does not want first and foremost and if that's all there is in our lives, the external practices of religion, then God takes no pleasure in them. He looks below the surface, He looks to the heart, He looks to the motives, He looks to the attitude.

And it says that the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit – “A broken and contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.” Those are strange words to our ears today. What does it mean that God desires a broken spirit? Does He want to crush us? Does He want to beat us down? Does He want to humiliate us? No, I'm sure that's not it.

What is a broken spirit? I think it's a spirit that's come totally to the end of itself. All independence, all self-will and all self-righteousness have been purged up. We've come to the place where we have no hope but in God; we've come to the end of our own resources.

We have no claims upon God, we simply turn to Him for His mercy and His faithfulness, not trusting our own merits, but clinging only to God.

Derek Prince

Psalm 51:6

Surely you desire truth in the inner parts; you teach me wisdom in the inmost place. NIV

Those words are addressed by the psalmist David to the Lord Himself.

What is it that God really looks for in our lives? First and foremost it is not the external practices of religion, not necessarily church going or other religious acts. God looks much deeper than those. He looks right down into the innermost depths of our hearts and our lives.

Elsewhere the Bible tells us that God does not see as man sees, because man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart. So David says, “Surely you desire truth in the inner parts.”

What does God want? What is truth in the inner parts? I believe it's absolute sincerity. The opposite of religious externalism, hypocrisy, those things do not appeal to God. In fact, He does not approve of them. He detests them.

He looks below all that. He wants to see – are we sincere, are we open, are we transparent in our relationship with Him? Do we say the same thing with our mouths that we are thinking in our minds?

If we come to that place, then we can say also like the psalmist, “You teach me wisdom in the inmost place.” There is a secret place in our innermost being where we can begin to hear the voice of God and learn from Him and He teaches us wisdom there.

Derek Prince

Psalm 50:14-15

Sacrifice thank offerings to God, fulfil your vows to the Most High, and call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you will honour Me. NIV

At some time or other in our lives we all face trouble.

The psalmist speaks about the day of trouble. Not one of us that does not, at sometime or other, pass through the day of trouble. But here the psalmist tells us the way out of trouble, the way of deliverance. And let me tell you I've had to prove this many times in my own experience.

What is the way out of trouble? Sacrifice thank offerings to God. In the very midst of your trouble, exercise your faith and begin to thank God.

Offer Him that sacrifice of thanking Him and praising Him and then call upon Him in the day of trouble and His promise is, “I will deliver you,” and not merely that, “You will honour Me.” God's deliverance will work out to His glory, it will become a testimony in our lives how God has delivered us in the day of trouble.

And then further on in that psalm, the psalmist says, “He who sacrifices thank offerings, honours Me and he prepares the way so that I may show him the salvation of God.”

So when we're in trouble and we make that sacrifice of beginning to thank God although we may see no way out we prepare a way that God shows us His salvation.

God opens the way for those who offer Him the sacrifice of thank offerings. So when you're in the midst of trouble remember, that's the way out.

Derek Prince

Q: Did Jesus fake His own death?

A: In his popular book, The Passover Plot, radical New Testament scholar Hugh J. Schonfield proposed that Jesus set out to fulfill the Old Testament’s messianic prophecies. According to Schonfield’s theory, Jesus enlisted the aid of men like Joseph of Arimathea and Lazarus of Bethany to help Him accomplish an elaborate hoax. Joseph arranged for an unidentified person to give Jesus a drink on the Cross that would cause Him to lose consciousness and appear to be dead. However, no one involved in the scheme anticipated the spear wound, which gravely injured Jesus. He was removed from the tomb the next day, briefly regaining consciousness before dying and being reburied elsewhere.

This idea requires that Jesus not only survived the Crucifixion somehow, but He also must have recovered, at least for a long enough time to make a few appearances, from the brutal torture leading up to the Crucifixion and from the Crucifixion itself.

Ingenious conspiracy theories often convince those who are ignorant of history, particularly of the details of flogging and crucifixion. But simply put, the Romans were experts at executing people, and to think that someone could survive the horrors Jesus endured displays either the critics’ willful ignorance or their desperate attempt to deny the obvious.

Continue reading to discover how the crucifixion of Jesus utterly demolishes the swoon theory and Passover plot ideas.

Q: "What About All The Ice Ages?"

Most youngsters will probably agree that there was an ice age and maybe that there was more than one. Of course, if you listen much longer, they will tell you that they saw all of them in the cinema.

What's An Ice Age?
In general terms, an "ice age" is a time of extensive glacial activity that covers a relatively large area of the globe with ice. During the Ice Age, which ended a few thousand years ago, 30% of the land surface of the earth was covered by ice.

You may have heard that over the past 2.5 million years there were thirty different ice ages. Creation scientists who trust the Bible believe that there was only one ice age. By starting with the Bible's history of the Flood and then looking at the evidence from this biblical perspective, we can readily understand both how the Ice Age started and how long it lasted.

How To Start An Ice Age
The Flood of Noah's day was the greatest catastrophe in earth history. It involved much more than rain. It reshaped the surface of the earth, spawning massive volcanoes and earthquakes that dwarf anything observed in modern times. Such a tremendous catastrophe would have radically altered the earth's climate, resulting in an Ice Age.

The opening of the "fountains of the great deep" (Genesis 7:11) and the resulting worldwide Flood would have caused upheavals and tremendous volcanic activity. This was unlike anything that we can even imagine! This breaking up of the earth caused the oceans to heat up and caused ash and dust to fill the air, blocking out sunlight, making the temperatures on earth cooler. As the warm water from the oceans evaporated into the air, forming clouds, the colder air over the earth caused wintry conditions, lots of snow, and ice glaciers. This could have very easily caused an Ice Age, lasting hundreds of years.

How Long Did This Ice Age Last?
Based on what we know about atmospheric science, we can estimate where the warm water would evaporate, how deep the ice would become, and even how long the Ice Age would last. To answer these questions, we need to know how long the major volcanic activity lasted and how much time passed before the oceans cooled. Once the volcanoes waned and the oceans cooled, the ice sheets would have stopped growing and begun to melt. Creation Scientists have estimated the total time for the Ice Age is a maximum of about 700 years (500 years to accumulate, 200 years to melt).

"By the breath of God ice is given, and the broad waters are frozen."
(Job 37:10).

FURTHER READING: Where Does the Ice Age Fit? ; Was the Ice Age in Biblical History? ; Setting the Stage for an Ice Age ; Lot's of Ice, Too Much Age ; Those Enigmatic Neanderthals ; The Woolly Mammoth, the Ice Age, and the Bible , Possible Explanations for Disharmonious Associations ; Mysteries of Our Frozen Past ; Prehistoric? ; The Mammoth and the Ice Age ; Wild, Wild Weather: The Genesis Flood & the Ice Age .

Jesus then told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. (Luke 18:1, NIV)
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Thank you for supporting David's ministry. The recent services from Israel are now available to watch on-demand by clicking here. We apologise for those who tried to watch the meeting on Thursday, we experienced a computer problem which prevented the live webcast from being broadcast.

We would encourage you to watch the 23rd March, Tel Aviv service. At the end of the meeting Anton, who had experienced a dramatic miracle ten years ago in Perm, Russia, gave his amazing testimony.

During the final prayers of the service, David asked Anton to come forward and speak to the congregation. He came, climbed up the side of the stage where there were no steps but a high barrier, he swung his legs over - and there he was! So well! Two legs, so healthy, eyes shining. He told his story. How he knew God, how he backslid, fell into crime and ended up in prison. How he was beaten up, was put in a freezing isolation punishment cell, and finally thrown into an overcrowded cell. How through all of this he got septicaemia. How his leg went black with gangrene up to the knee. How they put him in a prison hospital. How his mother and grandmother paid money to get him put in a 'normal' hospital. How they heard David was coming to evangelise in their city; and how his grandmother arranged for Anton to be carried into the meeting on a stretcher. She grabbed David and made him pray for Anton - but he was not healed.

Disappointed, he was carried out of the meeting back to the hospital in agony. By this point he was almost at the point of death. But his mother and grandmother did not give up believing for a miracle: they were determined that Anton wouldn't die! As David was leaving Perm for the airport to fly to Moscow, in order to fly straight on to meetings in Israel, Anton's mother and grandmother made one last attempt to get David to pray. David agreed and went to the hospital on the way to the airport. We did not know, but Anton already had the consent papers to allow the doctors to amputate his leg; he was prepared to do it because he was going to die anyway. David prayed and, not knowing about these papers, said, "Do not let them cut your leg off. In six months I will be back in Perm and you will stand on the platform with me, with two legs, and you will give glory to God." In that moment, Anton received a gift of faith. He did not sign the consent form. Within one week he was able to stand and walk on crutches, and within six months he was indeed on the platform in Perm with David giving glory to God for healing his gangrene and his liver (hepatitis).

Afterwards Anton went to Bible School, got married, and now has two beautiful girls. But the strange and amazing thing is, he did not hear what David actually said, the Holy Spirit must have mixed the conversation up on purpose, so that he and his family heard David say, "I will be in Israel, and you will stand with me on the platform and give glory to God for your healing!" At that time they could not figure out why David had said, "You will stand with me on the platform in Israel and give glory to God for your healing." But this is a Jewish family, and they emigrated from Russia to Israel 15 months ago. Today was the fulfilment of what the Holy Spirit said to him ten years ago in that filthy hospital, "You will stand on the platform in Israel and give glory to God for your healing!" Anton turned to all the Jewish people crowded in the auditorium and said, "Yeshua, Jesus, is the Son of the Living God, believe in Him!"

Psalm 33: 6; 9

By the word of the LORD were the heavens made, their starry host by the breath of his mouth. For he spoke and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm. NIV

Ever since human history began men have speculated as to the origin of the universe in which we live.

What is the first cause? How did it all come into being? And endless different theories have been offered and are still being offered today, but the Bible reveals the real supreme first cause of the universe: it's the Word of the Lord and the breath of His mouth.

Everything that was ever created came into being when the Lord spoke the word and the breath or the spirit of His mouth went out together with that word.

In the opening chapter of Genesis it says that the Spirit of God moved on the face of the waters and then it says, “the Lord spoke [the Lord said] let there be light” and the union of the word and the Spirit of God brought forth that which God spoke.” And here the psalmist says, “He spoke and it came to be. He commanded and it stood firm.”

The Lord spoke the universe into being. His word and His Spirit together brought about creation. The important and exciting thing to realize is that when God's Word and God's Spirit are united in our hearts and in our lives, through them there is made available to us the entire, creative power of God. It's there in His Word and His Spirit.

Derek Prince

Psalm 47:1, 5-6

Clap your hands, all you nations; shout to God with cries of joy. God has ascended amid shouts of joy, the LORD amid the sounding of trumpets. Sing praises to God; sing praises; sing praises to our King, sing praises. NIV

That's the Bible's picture of the response that's appropriate to God in His power and in His glory.

The one specific word that sums up that which God's greatness, grandeur should provoke from you and me is the word praise, but a very all-inclusive kind of praise, a praise that occupies every part of our physical body, a praise that occupies all our faculties.

“Clap your hands all you nations. shout to God with cries of joy.” That's something more than just religious respectability. That's a total response of our redeemed being to the Lord in His greatness. Clap our hands shout to God.

Then it says God has ascended amid shouts of joy, amid the sounding of trumpets. Shouts and clapping of hands and musical instruments are all required to sound forth the praise of God.

And then it goes on, “sing praises to God, sing praises to God, sing praises to our King; sing praises.” You know it's a theme, “Sing praises, sing praises, sing praises.” That's how we have to respond to God.

Derek Prince

Help us to help the Holocaust survivors in Israel

For the last two years I have been holding special services to reach the Russian Holocaust survivors and WWII veterans in Israel with the ‘Good News’ introducing them to Yeshua. We reach them, supplying them with humanitarian aid as well as paying for buses to bring them from all over Israel.

Due to the overwhelming demand to attend these gatherings, I have been asked to hold more than three such services in Israel this year. The cost of holding so many of these events in 2013 is too great for our budget. We need financial help. The cost of holding the first in March is £625,000; of this, £244,000 is for food packages, medical provision, and humanitarian aid.

We started in 2011 and 2012 with two events a year for the Holocaust survivors. We not only bring them by bus from all over Israel to these events – a huge expense in itself – but provide their secular organisations with financial and humanitarian aid on an on-going basis. Russian Holocaust survivors have no pension from Russia, very little in Israel and no compensation from Germany.

They are one of the poorest groups in Israel. Rejected by many in Israel and the West for not being ‘proper Jews’ because of their Soviet heritage, but yet Jewish enough to go through the Holocaust; they need our help. Jesus said in Matthew 25:40, that when we assist ‘one of the least of these My brothers and sisters, you were doing it to Me’.

We need your help to fund our work in Israel. This is a God given opportunity to meet the spiritual and physical needs of these Holocaust survivors, but we can only do it with your help.

Thank you,
David Hathaway

Write to:
Eurovision Mission to Europe
41 Healds Road
Dewsbury
WF13 4HU
Tel: 01924 453693

Bible teaching to transform your life

In effect, Jesus is warning us against trying to separate these two phases from one another.

The only entrance into the narrow way is by the strait gate. Without being born again we cannot even begin to lead the Christian life. On the other hand, the purpose of entering through the gate is to walk in the way.

The fullness of life to which Jesus invites us comes not merely by entering the gate, but by walking thereafter in the way to which the gate gives access.

Psalm 31:15

My times are in your hands...  NIV

What a profound and blessed revelation that God has absolute control over all the times in our lives. God is the only one in the universe that totally controls time.

This is beautifully demonstrated in the heavenly bodies. Countless millions and millions of stars move around in the universe with absolute precision. Isaiah the prophet says that the Lord calls every one of them forth by name and they are all present, not one is wanting. The sun never rises late or sets early. Astronomers can calculate the exact place of every heavenly body in the remote past, in the distant future.

God has absolute control over time and what David realized when he uttered those words is this, that God has absolute control over the times in our lives. He's never late, He's never premature, He has a time for every situation, every circumstance. If we will just commit our lives totally into His hands, we'll find that our times are in His hands.

What a relief from pressure, from strain, to know that God has control over the time element in our lives. Our times are in God's hands.

Derek Prince

If so visit the website today to find out more:

www.lookingforgod.com

www.therealstory.org.uk