“Amos answered Amaziah, ‘I was neither a prophet nor a prophet’s son, but I was a shepherd, and I also took care of sycamore-fig trees. But the Lord took me from tending the flock and said to me, “Go, prophesy to my people Israel” ‘ ” (Amos 7:14-15).

Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani of Iran is in prison for his faith in Christ. Judges demanded that Pastor Youcef, 34, recant his faith in Christ and repent. He stated: “Repent means to return. What should I return to? To the blasphemy that I had before my faith in Christ?” The judge responded: “To the religion of your ancestors, Islam.” “I cannot,” Nadarkhani said. It was the fourth time that he has been asked to renounce his faith and the fourth time that he has refused.

“When we see Jesus as he is, we must turn away or else shamelessly adore him.” Dallas Willard in “The Divine Conspiracy,” p. 19.

Faith is not trying to carry out what Christ said to do. No, faith is having “The real Son of God . . . at your side. He is beginning to turn you into the same kind of thing as Himself. He is beginning . . . to ‘inject’ His kind of life and thought . . . into you; beginning to turn the tin soldier into a live man. The part of you that does not like it is the part that is still tin.” C.S. Lewis in “Mere Christianity,” p. 148-149.

Can we really doubt the problem of sin and the fall of human kind? History and the ten o’clock news leave no doubt.

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