mallisle's blog

The Bible says there will be terrible times in the last days before Jesus returns. People will be selfish, lovers of money, arrogant, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God and children will be disobedient to their parents. 2Timothy 3:1-5. Many people feel that there has been a moral decline in our society during our lifetime. Fifty years ago children didn't attack teachers. Fifty years ago drugs were something that happened in a small sub...

What is faith? Faith is trust in things hoped for and belief in things unseen. We live in a physical world but there is also an invisible realm. To have faith in God is to believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. Hebrews 11:1-6. God is an ever present help in times of trouble. Therefore we will not fear, even if the waters roar and foam and the mountains slip into the sea. There is a river that makes glad the city...

God keeps his promises. God is not a man that he should lie or a son of man that he should change his mind. If he says something he will do it. Numbers 23:19. God's word is settled forever in Heaven. Psalm 119:89. The grass withers and the flower fades but the word of God stands forever. Isaiah 40:6-8. Jesus said, 'Heaven and Earth will pass away, my words will never pass away.' Matthew 24:35. But we need to be receptive listeners. The Bible is...

For most people, their level of happiness will depend on the things happening to them. As Christians, we have an inner happiness and peace which is there all the time, independent of our circumstances. Many Christians endured years of suffering in communist prisons. They forgot what bright colours looked like. One of them said Dante's poems and all the medieval paintings about Hell could not compare to the horrors of a communist prison...

Is forgiveness an excuse for sin? If we continue to sin deliberately after coming to a knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sin is left but only a terrifying fire that will devour the enemies of God. We are insulting the sacrifice that Christ made for us on the cross and insulting the Spirit of God. The Bible warns strongly against this. It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of God. Hebrews 10:26-31. Forgiveness requires a...

The economy in Britain is doing quite well. We have spent the last few years at a growth rate of about 1 per cent. That's not excellent but it's not a recession. There is no shortage of people who can afford a car. Most of the problems that we have with parking restrictions or with traffic jams come with having too many cars on the road. I am 59 and can remember clearly back to 1971. When I was a child, half the people we knew had a phone and...

We might try to get right with God by obeying his commands. This would prove difficult. No human being has ever gone through the whole of their lives without breaking any of God's commands. If you break only one of them, you have become a law breaker. If you don't commit murder but do commit adultery, you have broken God's laws. James 2:9,10. We think that God's laws are right in our minds but putting them into practice is another matter. We...

Many people believe in a Heaven but not in a Hell. This would require God to have a trivial attitude to sin. One writer said that he thought that God viewed our mischievous acts as he viewed the antics of his young kitten. Jesus said we would have to give an account for every careless word we had ever spoken. Matthew 12:36. God doesn't see our bullying, our gossip or our racist insults as being amusing. These are all very serious to him. Some...

Ever since I was a young Christian I have been taught that there are no alien planets mentioned in the Bible and therefore they don't exist. It would be strange for the Bible to omit something that was of such huge importance. We are told to evangelise all nations of the world but not to evangelise other planets. Neither would Christians simply accept that aliens have their own religion. Salvation is found not in religion but in personal faith...

Does God have a plan for our lives? What about times of disaster? If there is a God and he has a perfect plan for our lives, why do things sometimes go horribly wrong? God is still there pulling the threads together into what will eventually be a beautiful pattern, even though everything is entangled and it may seem like a complete mess. God looked after Elijah during a famine. Elijah declared to King Ahab that there would be no rain for 3 years...