Rob Bell should try to save people from hell, not from the fear of it

Rob Bell calls it loving to tell those lost in sin they need not fear hell. But real love for God and people preaches the truth, so that they might escape hell.

God of the Nations – Sunday @5 video devotional/greeting

This week the Dallas “Sunday at Five” monthly worship gathering celebrates its first anniversary. This video devotional, which was filmed Wednesday and aired at the event Feb. 27th, looks at the God of the Nations, and how He created the peoples of the world, so that all might find and worship Him.


Our daughter Briana makes a few cameo appearances in the background, as she played in the snow while we filmed it.

Atheist or “militant atheist”

An atheist is like someone who has never seen the ocean denying it is there; a militant atheist is like someone who hasn’t seen the ocean demanding that the billions of people who HAVE seen it stop making the ridiculous claim that it is there.

Sexual Purity and Love

Tonight’s Bible study from 1 Thessalonians 4 looked at the touchy issue of God’s standards for our sex lives when we become followers of Christ. The audio recording of the study, which was taught to 16 single young adults who were in our home this evening, is available for your listening here, in English and Romanian.

New Full Audio Sermon Archive

Now there is an indexed archive of the 145+ recordings of my sermons and Bible teachings online. Lord-willing, the archive will continue to grow as I do more messages in the future. You can see the list and listen online to streaming audio messages here.

Resurrection & Ascension

Today’s message at the church was the conclusion of a study through the gospel of Luke, looking at Christ’s resurrection from the dead and His ascension into heaven, and why we can find hope and joy for the future in these events, and what God teaches us through them. The audio recording of the study, in English and Romanian, is available for your listening here.

A Growing, Persevering Faith – 1 Thessalonians 3

Tonight’s home fellowship study, part 3 of our study through 1 Thessalonians, looked at what Paul did in ministry, and the attitude he had, resulting in a growing, persevering faith, in the young believers of Thessalonica. We learned how to trust God to continue His work in our lives, even when things go wrong, as we look forward to the soon return of the Lord. The audio recording can be heard here, in English and Romanian.

Life is a self-evident right


The right to life is indeed self-evident–meaning that it is simply not possible for anyone to fail to understand that abortion is wrong. Abortion must be stopped, and America must cease to listen to all the voices that defend this indefensible act.

Church online?

An ad showing up on my facebook page lately offers the chance to “experience church online” at their site “without ever having to leave your home.” I know there are some things about church that can be experienced via technology, and readers of this blog know I seek to take advantage of those things. But actually experience church online? Are you kidding? To “forsake the gathering of ourselves together, as some are in the habit are doing,” is something Christians are biblically exhorted against, even more now in this techno-world we find ourselves in, as we see the day of the Lord approaching. You may hear a sermon online, but you can’t experience the move of God’s Spirit in the body of His people from your home. You may pray simultaneously with someone who is on your computer screen, but you can’t grow close to them and love them with the love of the Lord (or receive that love in return). You may sing along with a band on your computer, but you will not experience the Lord’s presence as He inhabits the praises of His people along with those present. And when the service is over, you will neither receive, nor pass on to others, the encouragement, exhortation, building up, bearing one another’s burdens, and joining together to fulfill the Great Commission that requires you to be present with the assembly. And you will be missing a lot by missing these things, as well as failing to play your role in the body of Christ. You will have no evangelistic outreach and no church to take people to if you limit your worship to online activity.
I know how draining spiritually not having a church to join with can be. Our first 8 months on the mission field, we were only evangelists, sowing new seed in new territory, and having no fellow believers present to fellowship with and worship the Lord with during that time. It was the most difficult time of our ministry, with nothing like it before or since. And we were watching and participating as much as possible with American churches online at the time. I’m thankful that for people in that situation, and for shut-ins that can’t go out, that churches put their services on tv or the web, even though it doesn’t fill the whole gap for those people. But this ad is kind of annoying me, because they are not even marketing their online church experience to those people in need. They are falsely advertising something that they cannot provide: real church assembly without actually having to be there. And the people who believe their ad will be spiritually harmed by it more than they suppose.