Signs & Wonders Blog

The Bible tells us many times to sing to the Lord a new song. However, we should be cautious of hymns with unscriptural lyrics. Last year, I briefly visited a church where the praise and worship band promoted sin consciousness instead of who we are in Christ. When one of their songs repeated the line “our sins are many”, I quietly slipped out of the sanctuary. Last week while watching a minister’s conference streamed from The River, Rodney Howard-Browne talked about green activism invading the church. He read the lyrics to “The Climate is Changing.” This “hymn-prayer” uses music from a traditional Welsh hymn. New lyrics written by Presbyterian pastor Carolyn Winfrey Gillette are “to support efforts to counter climate change.” Let's examine some of these lyrics and compare them with Scripture... We pray for the animals here in our midst who cannot defend their own right to exist. Immediately, I thought of Romans 1:25, which warns of people worshipping the creature rather than...

Some people think being a Christian is defined by doing certain things. Two weeks ago, my hometown newspaper published an article about a former USDA employee who’s also the lay leader of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Phyllis Johnson claimed that addressing climate change is the “Christian thing to do.” I feel a need to respond to that exhortation. Jesus said in John 14:15, “If you love Me, keep My commandments.” That would include feeding the hungry and looking out for our neighbors as Johnson pointed out. I also agree we should be good stewards of this planet’s resources. However, the fear-mongering over climate change can be disputed both logically and biblically.  Over 40 years ago there were news reports of a coming ice age. Then there were worries about global warming. Some environmentalists talk about rising sea levels. If the latter is happening, then why aren’t masses of people moving away from coastal cities like New York, Miami, Los Angeles, an...

English preacher John Scotland often says at his meetings, “For those of you taking notes…save the trees.” This is meant to be a humorous jab at people who jot down too many notes during church services.  Sadly there are environmentalists who do ridiculous things like chain themselves to trees they don’t want chopped down. In this creepy YouTube clip , members of a radical advocacy group are hysterically bawling over dead trees…   Tree huggers who really want to take their cause to the extreme shouldn’t read books, live in wooden houses with wooden furniture or use paper money, Kleenex and toilet paper. If God valued trees as much as humans, He wouldn’t have told Noah to built an ark out of gopher wood ( Genesis 6:14) or instructed His people to use wood for various sacrifices. God is certainly not worried about earthly shortages. One time I was driving through Yellowstone National Park and saw a mountain range with a huge amount of trees. At that moment, the...

Last night I watched the second half of Super Bowl XLIV on TV. Originally I wasn’t interested in viewing it at all because the Minnesota Vikings (my favorite team) just missed advancing to the big game. But I changed my mind partially because I wanted to watch the Tim Tebow commercials that promoted a pro-life message. I didn’t see the commercials live because they aired during the pregame show and the first quarter. However, another memorable commercial came on near the end of the game. It was an Audi ad featured the “Green Police” (with background music by Cheap Trick which parodies their old song “Dream Police”). This ad could be a sign of things to come. Laws are constantly being passed to appease environmentalists. Two months ago in Washington, DC, a new law went into effect requiring businesses to charge customers an extra 5 cents for giving out plastic bags. I found out about this just before I stopped into a Subway restaurant in the nation’s capital o...