Billy Graham’s Devotional 3 April 2018 – Not Just a Man

Topic: Not Just a Man [Billy Graham’s Devotional Tuesday April 3, 2018]

And he is before all things, and by him all things consist. — Colossians 1:17

Napoleon was right when he said, “I know men, and I tell you, Jesus is more than a man. Comparison is impossible between Him and any other human being who ever lived, because He was the Son of God.” Emerson was right when he replied to those who asked him why he did not include Jesus among his Representative Men, “Jesus was not just a man.” Arnold Toynbee was right when he said, “As we stand and gaze with our eyes fixed upon the farther shore, a simple figure rises from the flood and straightway fills the whole horizon of history. There is the Savior.”

Prayer for the day: My Savior, I worship and revere Your name for You are the risen Christ, beloved Son of God.

If you missed yesterday devotional, please click to read Billy Graham’s Daily Devotional HERE

Written by Billy Graham, Founder of Billy Graham Evangelistic Association(BGEA). BGEA exists to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ by every effective means and to equip the church and others to do the same.

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Andrew Wommack’s Devotional 3 April 2018 – To Whom Much Is Given

Topic: To Whom Much Is Given [Andrew Wommack Tuesday April 3, 2018]

Matthew 12:43, “When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none.”

Text: Matthew 12:43-45

Most often, verses 43-45 are used to teach about demon possession and deliverance from evil spirits. Jesus made it clear that getting rid of an unclean spirit is only a part of deliverance. You must also fill the place that was previously occupied by the demonic spirit with the presence and power of God as protection. If a person is cleansed from an evil spirit but left “empty,” the spirit will return with even more spirits and the individual will be much worse off. Simply being empty of the devil, but not full of God, is a very dangerous and short-lived condition. True deliverance is not only getting freed, but also staying free.

In context, these verses refer to Jesus’ rebuke of the scribes and Pharisees and His statement about the men of Nineveh and the queen of the south condemning them at the judgment. One of the laws of God concerning accountability is being dealt with here. As stated in Luke 12:48, “…For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required…” The people of Jesus’ day who rejected His message will be held more accountable at the judgment than the men of Nineveh or the Queen of Sheba, because Jesus’ witness and person was so much greater than either Jonah or Solomon. Just as a man who receives miraculous deliverance from an evil spirit becomes more accountable and will end up in even worse condition if he doesn’t walk in that accountability, so the people of Jesus’ generation were accountable for more than any other generation had ever been. A person would be better off to keep just one evil spirit than to be set free, not fill himself with God, and wind up with eight demonic spirits, seven of which were more wicked than the first. The scribes and Pharisees would have been better off to have never had Jesus bring the kingdom of God unto them than to reject such an offer. He has given you much, what will you do with it?

If you missed yesterday devotional, please click to read Andrew Wommack’s Daily Devotional HERE

This message was written by The Association of Related Ministries International (ARMI) is an extension of Andrew Wommack Ministries (AWM). ARMI is a unique partnership committed to providing resources to help like-minded ministers succeed in a spirit of excellence and to draw from the experience and expertise of both the AWM and Charis Bible College staff. (www.awmi.net).

The post Andrew Wommack’s Devotional 3 April 2018 – To Whom Much Is Given appeared first on Flatimes.

Winnie Mandela Is Dead – Urban Christian News

Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, prominent anti-apartheid activist and the ex-wife of Nelson Mandela, died in a hospital on Monday after a long illness. She was 81.

“She succumbed peacefully in the early hours of Monday afternoon surrounded by her family and loved ones,” Madikizela-Mandela’s family said in a statement.

Madikizela-Mandela was married to Mandela from 1958 to 1996. Mandela, who died in 2013, was imprisoned throughout most of their marriage and Madikizela-Mandela’s own activism against white minority rule led to her being imprisoned for months and placed under house arrest for years.

“She kept the memory of her imprisoned husband Nelson Mandela alive during his years on Robben Island and helped give the struggle for justice in South Africa one of its most recognizable faces,” the family said.

However, Madikizela-Mandela’s political activism was marred by her conviction in 1991 for kidnapping and assault, for which she was fined. She faced these allegations again during the 1997 hearings before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a panel that investigated apartheid-era crimes.

As a parliamentarian after South Africa’s first all-race elections, she was convicted of fraud.

Still, Madikizela-Mandela remained a venerated figure in the ruling African National Congress, which has led South Africa since the end of apartheid in 1994.

She was a veteran of the anti-apartheid struggle who continued to tell the party “exactly what is wrong and what is right at any time,” said senior ANC leader Gwede Mantashe.

The ANC, which was the main movement against…

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Easter is about Jesus, not a bunny

The 24-year-old made the comments on a social media account, accompanying them with pictures showing him holding a toy rabbit.

Bieber said: “Easter is not about a bunny, it’s a reminder that my Jesus died on the cross for my sins and then rose from the dead defeating death!”

 

The Canadian has become increasingly vocal about his faith since last summer – around the time he pulled out of his Purpose World Tour.

Bieber is known to have established a deep friendship with the pastor of Hillsong Church New York, Carl Lentz, who once said the music icon had a “really deep, mature relationship with Jesus”.

 

In his Easter-themed message, the singer-songwriter also said Jesus had “changed his life”, adding that the death and resurrection of Christ “changes everything”.

Writing on his Instagram account to 98 million subscribers, Bieber went on to say: “I am set free from bondage and shame.

“I am a child of the Most High God and he loves me exactly where I am, how I am, for who I am.”

Stay up to date with the latest news stories from a Christian perspective. Sign up to our daily newsletter and receive more stories like this straight to your inbox every morning.

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Songs of Praise presenter JB Gill expecting second child with wife Chloe

The couple are already parents to son Ace, three.

The former X Factor star, 31, who joined the presenter team of Songs of Praise in August last year, said the baby is due in August 2018 but they delayed making an announcement.

 

He told Hello! magazine: “Because we know people who have had complications, we were cautious to say anything before now.

“In our line of work, you never have the job until you’re on that stage and I guess we’ve approached this the same way – we wanted to make sure we were firmly on that stage.”

Chloe added they have only recently felt ready to have a second child after her difficult first delivery, when the umbilical cord was wrapped twice around the baby’s neck.

She said: “I always said I wanted to wait until Ace was a bit more independent before we tried for another one.

Hello! Magazine/PA Wire

 

“But I will admit that, after what I went through having him, I was also really nervous about getting pregnant again. I knew I needed to wait until, mentally, I was sure I was ready. Even today, the fears are there.”

She added that Ace was the first to predict that she was pregnant, telling the magazine: “We were out shopping and I was pushing Ace around in his pushchair when he suddenly looked up at me and said, ‘Mummy, we need to get some clothes for my sister.’

“I said to him, ‘But you don’t have a sister’. His face went all…

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Video of Billy Graham Preaching on Easter Goes Viral; Gets 1.4 Million Views in 3 Days

(Screenshot: Facebook/Franklin Graham)The Reverend Billy Graham preaching on the message of Easter for a broadcast of his Hour of Decision program.

A video of the Rev. Billy Graham preaching on Easter decades ago posted on social media has garnered massive attention online.

His son, the Rev. Franklin, president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, posted a short video on Saturday of his late father preaching an “Hour of Decision” message.

By Monday morning, the video had garnered more than 1.4 million views, as well as approximately 56,000 shares, and around 68,000 likes.

“My father Billy Graham shares that the greatest news ever heard by mortal ears is—’He is not here, He is risen!’ Here’s a 2-minute clip of his Easter message for Hour of Decision,” stated Franklin Graham in the video description.

“There’s only one way to salvation, and that’s through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.”

The Hour of Decision video clip featured a passionate Billy Graham preaching the Gospel, speaking about the events of Easter and the Saturday before.

“Ladies and gentlemen, there is nothing you can do to save your soul. You can live a good life, you can work all the rest of your life in a church, but that doesn’t save your soul,” stated Graham.

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Click Read More to read the rest of the story from our content source/partners – The Christian Post.

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Open Heavens Devotional 3rd April 2018 Tuesday — Bringing Down His Glory

Topic: Bringing Down His Glory [Open Heavens 3 April 2018, Tuesday]

Memorise: “And at midnight Paul and Silas prayed, and sang praises unto God: and the prisoners heard them.” Acts 16:25 (Scroll down for Open Heavens Hymn)

Read: 2 Chronicles 5:1-14 (KJV)

1 Thus all the work that Solomon made for the house of the LORD was finished: and Solomon brought in all the things that David his father had dedicated; and the silver, and the gold, and all the instruments, put he among the treasures of the house of God.

2 Then Solomon assembled the elders of Israel, and all the heads of the tribes, the chief of the fathers of the children of Israel, unto Jerusalem, to bring up the ark of the covenant of the LORD out of the city of David, which is Zion.

3 Wherefore all the men of Israel assembled themselves unto the king in the feast which was in the seventh month.

4 And all the elders of Israel came; and the Levites took up the ark.

5 And they brought up the ark, and the tabernacle of the congregation, and all the holy vessels that were in the tabernacle, these did the priests and the Levites bring up.

6 Also king Solomon, and all the congregation of Israel that were assembled unto him before the ark, sacrificed sheep and oxen, which could not be told nor numbered for multitude.

7 And the priests brought in the ark of the covenant of the LORD unto his place, to the oracle of the house, into the most holy place, even under the wings of the cherubims:

8 For the cherubims spread forth their wings over the place of the ark, and the cherubims covered the ark and the staves thereof above.

9 And they drew out the staves of the ark, that the ends of the staves were seen from the ark before the oracle; but they were not seen without. And there it is unto this day.

10 There was nothing in the ark save the two tables which Moses put therein at Horeb, when the LORD made a covenant with the children of Israel, when they came out of Egypt.

11 And it came to pass, when the priests were come out of the holy place: (for all the priests that were present were sanctified, and did not then wait by course:

12 Also the Levites which were the singers, all of them of Asaph, of Heman, of Jeduthun, with their sons and their brethren, being arrayed in white linen, having cymbals and psalteries and harps, stood at the east end of the altar, and with them an hundred and twenty priests sounding with trumpets:)

13 It came even to pass, as the trumpeters and singers were as one, to make one sound to be heard in praising and thanking the LORD; and when they lifted up their voice with the trumpets and cymbals and instruments of musick, and praised the LORD, saying, For he is good; for his mercy endureth for ever: that then the house was filled with a cloud, even the house of the LORD;

14 So that the priests could not stand to minister by reason of the cloud: for the glory of the LORD had filled the house of God.

Bible in One Year: Deuteronomy 33-34, Colossians 1:1-23

MESSAGE:

Do you know that the glory of the Lord makes the impossible possible? Indeed, the glory of God breaks Satan’s bars of iron and demolishes anything that represents the walls of Jericho in the life of a believer in Christ. One way to attract God’s glory is through worship. If you need any form of breakthrough in life, spend time worshipping God. However, you must learn how to worship God correctly. Before you can worship God, you need to know Him. In today’s memory verse, we read about how God’s glory came down in the prison yard through intense worship rendered by Paul and Silas, two men who knew their God. Instead of being engrossed in self-pity, they sand high praises to God, worshipping Him for counting them worthy to experience the fellowship of Christ’s suffering. No wonder Paul wrote in Philippians 3:10:

“That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death;”

The result was God’s glory coming down into the prison yard, shaking the prison to its very foundations and loosing the chains with which they were bound. When a man or woman carries the glory of God, there is absolutely nothing that will be impossible to him or her, because God’s glory is synonymous with His power.

In today’s Bible reading, it is amazing that in spite of the meticulous setting of all the liturgical materials, and the orderly procession of the Levites and priests, God’s glory did not come down until the Levites who were singers led the congregation of God’s people in intense worship. 2 Chronicles 5:13 says,

“It came even to pass, as the trumpeters and singers were as one, to make one sound to be heard in praising and thanking the LORD; and when they lifted up their voice with the trumpets and cymbals and instruments of musick, and praised the LORD, saying, For he is good; for his mercy endureth for ever: that then the house was filled with a cloud, even the house of the LORD;”

Beloved, I want to encourage you to be an ardent worshipper of God because it is good and blessed to do so. However, I want you to know that when a sinner brings a sacrifice of worship to God, God does not receive it because the sacrifice of a sinner is an abomination to Him (Proverbs 15:8). So if you are not yet born again, surrender your life to Jesus today, and this will qualify you to be an acceptable worshiper of the Almighty Father.

Action Point: Devote quality time to personally worship God today, and the results will be amazing.

If you missed yesterday devotional, please click to read “Open Heavens Devotional 2nd April 2018 Monday — Enemy Within The Household’’

Hymn 6: A New Thing
(Tune: There shall be showers of Blessing)

1. We will soon shout Halleluyah
Because GOD will do new things
Sinners will soon be forgiven
Prodigals will come home soon.

Chorus:
Shout Halleluyah
Because God will do new things
Rivers in desert now flowing
Halleluyah to our king.

2. We will soon shout Halleluyah
Because God will do new things
Sickness and sorrow will be gone
Bondage will be forgotten.

3. We will soon shout Halleluyah
Because God will do new things
The barren will be fruitful soon
Failure will be forgotten

4. We will soon shout Halleluyah
Because God will do new things
Poverty will be forgotten
Stagnancy will soon be gone.

5. We will soon shout Hallelujah
Because God will do new things
To all miracles are given
There shall be celebrations

6. We will soon shout Halleluyah
Because God will do new things
Many will have testimonies
Of prayers answered fully

7. We will soon shout Halleluyah
Because God will do new things
One of us will chase a thousand
Two will conquer ten thousand.

8. We will soon shout Halleluyah
Because God will do new things
Songs of praises we will sing
Halleluyah to our King.

Open Heavens Daily Devotional guide was written by Pastor E.A. Adeboye, the General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, one of the largest evangelical church in the world and also the President of Christ the Redeemer’s Ministries. The Open Heavens devotional application is available across all mobile platforms and operating systems: iOS, Android, Blackberry, Nokia, Windows Mobile and PC.

Flatimes’ Notice Board: Please do not prolong your salvation if you have not repented. Many are going home daily and tomorrow maybe too late…There is still hope, JESUS LOVES YOU!

The post Open Heavens Devotional 3rd April 2018 Tuesday — Bringing Down His Glory appeared first on Flatimes.

Chinese space station has met its “fiery doom”

Lottie Williams is still the only person known to have been hit by falling space debris. She was struck but not injured by a falling piece of a US Delta II rocket while exercising in an Oklahoma park in 1997.

More famously, America’s seventy-seven-ton Skylab crashed to Earth in 1979. It spread wreckage near the Australian city of Perth, which fined the US $400 for littering.

Now we can add China’s Tiangong-1 space station to the growing list of spacecraft that have returned unceremoniously to our planet.

As Space.com headlines, it met its “fiery doom” last night, breaking apart and burning up in our atmosphere at 8:16 p.m. EDT. Some pieces of the school-bus-size craft “almost certainly survived the fall,” but they landed harmlessly in the South Pacific.

The Chinese space station’s demise points to the fact of mortality–ours and everything we make. No matter how sophisticated our technology, it has an expiration date. How many cell phones have you owned in your life?

Nothing on our fallen planet lasts forever. But the good news is that the worst thing is never the last thing: “The world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever” (1 John 2:17).

We know this to be true because of Easter Monday.

“A European revival has started”

Easter Monday is an official holiday in 115 countries around the world. In Guyana, people are flying kites they made last Saturday. In Italy, they are having picnics in the countryside.
Most Easter Monday celebrations are secular holidays with little or no reference to the resurrection of Jesus.

However, the reality is that every day is Easter. The Christ who rose from the grave never returned to it. He is just as risen today as he was on the first Monday after the first Easter Sunday.

And his Spirit is just as active today as he was then.

Nearly two million people watched Billy Graham’s memorial service livestreamed on Facebook. In the last month, more than…

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Costa Rica Votes in Runoff Fought Over Homosexual Rights

Presidential candidate Fabricio Alvarado Munoz of the National Restoration Party (PRN) participates in a rally with supporters in San Jose, Costa Rica, March 31, 2018. REUTERS/Jose Cabezas

Polls opened on Easter Sunday for a vote on whether conservative Christian singer Fabricio Alvarado Munoz can capture Costa Rica’s presidency, a result that would mark a sharp turn from the current government’s embrace of gay rights.

Best known for religious dance songs and ballads, the 43-year-old former TV journalist faces the center-left ruling party candidate Carlos Alvarado Quesada, 38, in a tight race fought over a court ruling ordering the country to allow same-sex marriage.

The two Alvarados, who are not related, took opposing positions on the January decision by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, an influential regional body based in the Costa Rican capital of San Jose.

Polls opened at 6 a.m. local time, with results expected Sunday evening.

Fabricio, as supporters call him, called it an affront to traditional values and sovereignty in the Central American nation. Threatening to remove the country from the court’s jurisdiction, he shot from the margins to the top of a 13-candidate field, and won the first round of voting in February.

“We’re united… in defending life and family, but also to defend ethics and transparency and the battle against corruption,” the singer, who is a member of the Protestant Pentecostal movement, said on the eve of Sunday’s vote in a video appeal to Catholics, who account for more than six out 10 people in the country, seeking to forge…

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Strident Secularism of Recent Years is Giving Way to Renewed Sense of Faith’s Importance to Life and Society

Architectural masterpiece Ely Cathedral, in the English fenlands © Peter Marlow/Magnum Photo

“Whatever its cause,” Richard Dawkins wrote in The God Delusion, perhaps the best-known recent literary assault on faith and religion, “Zeitgeist progression is more than enough to undermine the claim that we need God in order to be good.”

Indeed, the progressive trend being followed by an improbably large number of human beings is “unmistakable and it will continue”. Dawkins also argued that the God worshipped by Christians, Jews and Muslims is the worst kind of moral exemplar: jealous, murderous and unjust. He urged people to put their trust in humanity, impelled towards good by a “selfish gene” that can also engender altruism, while self-replicating cultural traits called “memes” leap from person to person in a similar, evolutionary way.

Dawkins was writing in 2006. That was before the economic crash, the migration crisis and a new wave of Islamist terrorism hatched a singularly un-progressive Zeitgeist that scorns the idea that humanity, though modernising in technological terms, is moving in any hopeful moral or social direction. That the quandaries of a disordered world and the alienation caused by displacement are forcing a reassessment of faith and religion is a reality trickling into the marrow of our secularised bones. Islamic and Hindu revivalisms have become titanic forces. Even Anglicanism, a strain of Christianity so unassuming it was said to have inoculated the English against religion, has a new lease of life. “Congregations are up in London,”…

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Click Read More to read the rest of the story from our content source/partners – Urban Christian News

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