Become Idols in our lives. So please find below some comments already made about idolatry, followed by helpful comments made by Dr. Ravi Zacharias in his recent book, Cries of the Heart.

LIE #1: I’m in charge

LIE #2: this is going to help or rescue me

Spring and Summer Festivals
Passover
Unleavened Bread 
First Fruits
Pentecost(Feast of Weeks /Shavuot)

Fall and Winter Festivals
Trumpets (Rosh Hashanah)
Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur )
Tabernacles(Sukkot)

Later Festivals
Purim and Hanukkah

Festivals were part of Jesus’ life. In fact, they were focal points in his ministry. He proclaimed that he was the light of the world during the Feast of Tabernacles, gave his life for the sins of the world on Passover and fulfilled his promise as God sent the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. Jesus celebrated these traditions each year and left them as a legacy for the early church.

Paul also celebrated the festivals. He delayed an important trip to Ephesus to reach Jerusalem in time for the festival of Pentecost. At Passover, his enthusiasm spilled over as he proclaimed, "let us keep the Festival". Paul’s message of grace and freedom, and his intention to imitate Christ were fulfilled with rejoicing at these events.

The festivals are part of our New Testament living. They were God’s chief means of communicating who He was, how to know Him, and what to expect of life. They teach us about faith, cultural history, purpose in life, and our value as children of God. 

A young Jewish nobleman has won a dream ticket to stardom in his adoptive country. He has been made provincial ruler of Babylon with special responsibility for the stargazers and sages.

And they have every reason to welcome the foreign upstart. He has just saved them from execution through his astute insight into the nocturnal ramblings of King Nebuchadnezzar’s mind.

The nobleman, named Belteshazzar by the king but know to his fellow Jews as Daniel, was among those deported from Jerusalem last year as part of Nebuchadnezzar’s attempt to subdue the rebellious western city. He was chosen for his good

looks, bright intellect and high birth.

Nebuchadnezzar had presented his astrologers with the impossible task of telling him both the content and meaning of a dream which was troubling him, or else face execution. He believed that only someone who divined the content could be trusted to give an unbiased interpretation. Daniel claimed to have received both from Yahweh.

He suggested that a statue made of mixed materials and partially destroyed by a rock represented a succession of kingdoms which will ultimately replace Babylon. All will be smashed by the everlasting kingdom of Yahweh will establish, he said.

Following his meteoric rise to power, Daniel requested that three other Jewish exiles, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego be appointed as assistant administrators so that he could remain at the royal court. In his elation, Nebuchadnezzar probably would have granted a lot more.

But the modest young man is characterized by abstemiousness. He and his companions have consistently refused the rich royal food, perhaps of its association with religious acts of which they disapprove, but they have outshone their Babylonian counterparts in growth and intellect.

(Daniel 1,2)

Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.

(Samuel Johnson)

Once an organization loses its spirit of pioneering and rests on its early work, its progress stops.

(Thomas J. Watson)

If you are beginning to encounter some hard bumps, be glad. At least you are out of the rut. (Construction Digest)

Progress may have been all right once, but it’s gone on too long. (Ogden Nash)

Don’t be afraid to take a big step if one is indicated. You can’t cross a chasm in two small jumps.

(David Lloyd George)

The greatest enemy of progress is not stagnation, but false progress.

(Sydney Harris)

Our boasted progress has landed us, not in paradise, but in pandemonium.

(Vance Havner)

Arminius was born in the Netherlands during the Spanish occupation, at Oudewater near Utrecht. His father, an armorer or smith, dies around the time of the boy’s birth, so Arminius was educated under the direction and at the expense of family friends who recognized his abilities as a student. He had just entered Marburg University (Germany) when news came of the infamous Oudewater massacre by the Spanish. Arminius returned home to learn that his mother and several brothers and sisters had been among the victims.

When the new University of Leiden opened nearby in 1576, Arminius was the twelfth student enrolled. That seems to have been the first public recording of his Latinized name (Jacobus Arminius; had been born Jacob Harmenszoon). At Leiden he adopted the controversial theology of the French scholar Peter Ramus (1515-1572), and later went on to study at the Geneva Academy (1582), which was then headed by Theodore Beza, Calvin’s successor. Because Arminius’s defense of Ramus angered the Genevan authorities, he left briefly for Basel (1583). There he was offered a doctorate but declined, convinced he would not bring honor to the title.

After returning to Geneva, Arminius must have been more prudent, for in 1585 Beza wrote to the Amsterdam city rulers (who were sponsoring the young man’s education), commending his ability and diligence highly and encouraging a continuance of their "kindness and liberality." Perhaps significantly, Beza made on mention of Arminius’s theology. After a short visit to Italy, Arminius returned home, was ordained, and in 1588 became one of the ministers of Amsterdam. His 1590 marriage to a merchant’s daughter game him influential links.

From the outset Arminius’s sermons on Romans 7 drew the fire "high" Calvinists who disliked his views on grace and predestination. (Grace is the unmerited favor of God toward sinners. Predestination is the biblical doctrine that God determines beforehand who will be saved.) High Calvinists held that although God’s saving grace is completely unmerited, he extends it only to those whom he predestines to salvation. Arminius disagreed. In 1592 a colleague formally accused him of Pelagianism (an emphasis on free will, among other things, that took form in the fifth century), over-dependence on the early church fathers, deviation from the Belgic Confession and the Heidelberg Catechism (two early Calvinist standards), and erroneous views on predestination. When challenged, however, his critics proved reluctant to substantiate the charges – and the city authorities were on his side. The question of predestination was not systematically raised until Arminius became professor of theology at Leiden (1603-1609), where he spent the last six years of his life in controversy.

In his 1606 rectorial address "On Reconciling Religious Dissensions among Christians," Arminius argued that such dissension damages people intellectually and emotionally and creates doubt about religion that leads to despair, atheism, and Epicureanism (hedonistic withdrawal from responsibility). He proposed as remedy the calling of a national synod, "an orderly and free convention of the parties that differ from each other." Further, Arminius believed that the natural arbiter between feuding churchmen was the "godly magistrate," a view called Erastianism. The dispute with Arminius, led by Franciscus Gomarus ant Leiden, centered around the Calvinist interpretation of the divine decree about election and reprobation. When a synod finally met at Dort (1618) to resolve the dispute, Arminius had been dead nine years.

In his attempt to give the human will a more active role in salvation than orthodox Calvinism conceded, Arminius came to teach a conditional election in which a person’s free will might or might not affect the divine offer of salvation. Nevertheless, it is important to distinguish between Arminius’s teaching and what later become known as Arminianism, which was more liberal in its view of free will and of related doctrines than was its founder. Arminius’s views were never systematically worked out until the year after his death, when his followers issued a declaration called the Remonstrance (1610), which dissented in several points from orthodox Calvinism. It held, among other things, that God’s predestination was conditioned by human choice, that he gospel could be freely accepted or rejected, and that a person who had become a Christian could "fall from grace" or lose salvation.

A mild-tempered man, Arminius nonetheless spoke his mind in controversy and characteristically defended his position from Scripture. His friend Peter Bertius paid tribute to the oft-misunderstood scholar when he declared at his funeral that those who truly knew Arminius could not

sufficiently esteem him.

"There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man."

The word "temptation" has come down in the world; we are apt to use it wrongly. Temptation is not sin, it is the thing we are bound to meet if we are men. Not to be tempted would be to be beneath contempt. Many of us, however, suffer from temptations from which we have no business to suffer, simply because we have refused to let God lift us to a higher plane where we would face temptations of another order.

A man’s disposition on the inside, i.e., what he possesses in his personality, determines what he is tempted by on the outside. The temptation fits the nature of the one tempted, and reveals the possibilities of the nature. Every man has the setting of his own temptation, and the temptation will come along the line of ruling disposition.

Temptation is a suggested short-cut to the realization of the highest at which I aim – not towards what I understand as evil, but towards what I understand as good. Temptation yielded to is lust defied, and is a proof that it was timidity that prevented the sin before.

Temptation is not something we may escape, it is essential to the full-orbed life of a man. Beware lest you think you are tempted as no one else is tempted; what you go through is the common inheritance of the race, not something no one ever went through before. God does not save us from temptations; He succors us in the midst of them (Heb. 2:18).

Some of you may recall Dr. Larson a former Pastor of Clinton Hill Baptist Church and he was also the last Pastor in Newark before CHBC moved its location to Union in the 1960’s. His daughter Jane, has asked for notes of encouragement to be sent to her 90 year old mother, Iceil Larson (Dr. Larson’s wife)who has Alzheimer’s.

Jane says "She prays with great inspiration. I always sing an old gospel hymn and pray with her on the phone and when she is here with me…before she goes to sleep at night she prays gloriously."