From The President's Desk
Thank You For Standing With Us As Our Partners And Friends
In Ministry!Proverbs 17:17 tells us that "A friend loveth
at all times and a brother is born for adversity." My
heart is full of gratitude for those who have stood by us
in our hour of pain and trial. You have truly been friends
and family in Christ. All of the reports of dramatic prayer
and communion with our Lord, loving words of encouragement,
hugs and the financial help have been tremendous!
KATIE UPDATE
For those who don't know, our only daughter, Katie (Kathryn
Elizabeth), had a two and a half pound cancerous tumor removed,
along with her left kidney, in November. She went through
two surgeries in eight days where she was cut from side to
side above her navel. She was 23 pounds at the start of the
surgery and only 20 pounds afterwards. Katie has subsequently
gone through six days of radiation and is completing 24 weeks
of chemo therapy. She is handling the treatment well and is
now at 22 pounds thanks to prayer and her mother's persistent
love in breast feeding her, even when it's very painful to
do so.
Her prognosis is guardedly good. If she doesn't have the
original cancer matasticize and go to her lungs, or elsewhere,
during the next two to three years, and if her other kidney's
"nephrogenic rests" don't erupt into wilms tumor
in the next 12 years, and if her kidney grows with her body
through her future growth spurts in 5 and then 12 years, she
won't need a transplant. Our insurancedoesn't cover that and
the kidney would most likely have to come from one of her
five brothers!
She loves her brothers and teases them. She puts her little
finger up to her lips and shushes when she sees a baby sleeping,
She throws kisses, waves goodbye, claps and dances to music,
knows how to say "buppies" (we have just had a litter
of twelve chocolate labs!), "Barbie", "baby",
"Bye Bye!", "Nigh-Night!" "I-lol-lou"
(I love you) and"Ah-low" (hello). She also loves
to "talk" to her "Ahma" (grandma) on the
phone.
She is going in for a chest X-Ray, ultra -sound of her abdomen,
and cardio-echo in the second week of April. Please pray that
these turn out well. She hates to beconfined and will have
to be sedated.
Financial Update
The insurance company has yet to pay on her nearly $50,000.00
worth of hospital bills. We have a thousand dollar deductible
with 80/20% up to $5,000.00 policy and then 100% up to a million
dollars. The hospital wrote us a note saying that the company
may be trying to prove her cancer to be a "previously
existing condition." Her oncologist just laughed and
said, "Don't lose any sleep over it." However, I
would still like prayer for this. The company has also refused
to pay $1,500.00 of Katie's Intensive Care Unit doctor bills.
Our CPA/Treasurer, Don Clark, urged us to start an account
for Katie at Amcore Bank in Rockford, IL. Don and I went there
together and decided to start a Treasury Bill account because
it will earn more interest that way. You can contribute to
Katie's medical costs by going to any Amcore bank branch.
Make your check out to Vintage Fund, Mount Carmel Outreach,
and "Katie Benefit" in the memo section. Again,
thank you so much for all the love and prayer!
Special Project Underway Needs Help
Last Thanksgiving Julie and I ate dinner with my mother Theda,
and her husband of 27 years, John Day. For awhile we were
the only people in the hospital cafeteria. Katie was in her
room still recovering from surgery. Little did I know that
it would be the last meal I would ever share with my step-father.
He went home to be with the Lord on December, 3rd at age 67.
He died peacefully in his sleep as his heart just stopped
beating.
My mother is 79 and suffers from a 40% loss of bone calcium
in her feet. She has a painful hip condition and is not that
steady walking alone. Consequently, she is going to move in
with us in the parsonage of Apple Canyon Christian Center.
Earlier this year we had a meeting with the leaders of the
volunteers, who have worked out here in the past, and discussed
with them the need for a fulfillment/mailing area. We need
this in order to offer tapes and books on the radio program
and the internet, they suggested we could "kill two birds
with one stone" by building an addition onto the house
that would allow us to have a sufficient work/warehouse space
and also provide a 650 square foot apartment above it for
my widowed mother to live in. One of the men had a lumber
yard do a cost analysis and two of the men have worked on
blueprints. The total amount for the material costs is around
$34,000.00 and the labor would be about the same. We believe
the labor will be covered and we have $13,000.00 alreadypledged
toward the project. We need Christian volunteer roofers and
around $21,000.00 more. Would you consider helping with this?
(James 1:27)
Other Financial Needs
1. We have been told that a Christian man, who sells wood
and wood burning furnaces, will supply us with wood if we
buy a furnace from him. It would heat the auditorium, chapel,
studio and bookstore. This would allow the auditorium to be
used in the winter and facilitate much needed repairs to the
walls inside the bathrooms that have been warped due to the
lack of heat. The cost for the furnace is around six thousand
dollars.
2. We have been offered airtime for our radio program on
five stations in major markets for $120.00 per station per
week. This is roughly half price.
We don't have the money for these things but they represent
a fleece of sorts before the Lord as we do all things. If
God wants us to move on something He supplies the need.
3. We would like to mail on a monthly, bi-monthly or quarterly
basis to the thousands of people in over 30 states who have
signed up to receive our journal The Contender. It is already
available to those on E-Mail but we would like to mail via
regular post (snail mail) to some if not all of them. A mail
out to just 5,000 of them (not the entire list) costs around
$1,100.00 for printing and mailing. If you would be interested
in underwrtting this we would be most grateful.
From The Mailbag
Kevin-
The one time I attended your class at First Free with my
friend, Bob B. last year may not stand out in your memory,
but it left an impact on me. Recently, Bob told me of your
website, and I found a wealth of information there to answer
some of the unasked questions that had bubbled and churned
in the back of my mind since I became serious about learning
about Christianity in the last 18 months, and other things
I was not expecting (after reading what you wrote on pornography,
I saw the subject in a whole new light. The next day I went
and burned up most of my collection of books and catalogs....what
the hey, I haven't looked at them in months.).
(Name Withheld)
P.S. One more quick thing: I was going to attend a six week
class on reading the Bible at the library, hosted by a group
called the Christadelphians. I asked at church, but no one's
heard of this group. Have you heard of them?
(I responded to his PS by telling him that the Christadelphians
were an "Arian" cult that denies the deity of Christ
as does another more famous Arian group: -The Jehovah's Witnesses.
He wrote back saying that he wouldn't attend.)
In His Service Gladly,
Kevin
A man identifying himself as a "Mr. Warden"
wrote us the following:
<< The Christian gospel seems to center around the
claim that those who are saved are saved by faith (or by grace
"though" faith--whatever that means) rather than
by works. But then the gospels of the New Testament again
and again imply that the "righteous" will be saved,
while the unrighteous will be lost. This seems a clear contradiction--and
no wonder, when one considers just how ludicrous the notion
of salvation by faith really is! >>
Dear Mr. Warden,
You simply don't have spiritual discernment -yet! All of
us Christians have been where you are at some point. Your
statement is based on pride -one of the seven deadly sins
(Proverbs 6:16). You seem to think man, on his own, can measure
up to God's perfect judicial standard and doesn't need a propitiatory
sacrifice for sin that only He can provide. Therefore, you
must think you can boast before God! Apostle Paul in Ephesians
2:8,9 tells us "You are saved by grace through faith
and that not of yourselves it is the gift of God, not of works
lest any man should boast." A faulty chair will not hold
you up no matter how much faith you have in it. Faith is only
as good as its object. God through Jesus' gospel is the object
that doesn't fail! Righteousness that saves is a free gift
(see Romans 5:17,18) our own righteousness is as "a filthy
rag" before God (see Isaiah 64:6 and Matt. 7:23). A person
could live a perfectly righteous life and offend in one sin
and still not be saved because God's punishment for even one
sin is death or separation from God (see James 1:15 and Romans
6:16 and ). If you have broken His law in one place you have
broken them all. "For whosoever shall keep the whole
law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all"
James 2:10. This is because all sin is rebellion against God.
Jesus, being God, was the offended party when the whole human
race in the Garden of Eden and each of us in particular (as
described in the first three hapters of the book of Romans)
that followed sinned against Him. As God, He was valuable
enough in His person, and by virtue of His having kept the
law without sin, to be our substitute in taking our punishment
at the cross. Since He was the offended party He could determine
what would satisfy His just claims against us. He only asks
that we reverse the unbelieving insult to Him we displayed
in the Garden, and that each of us has repeated whenever we
sin, by trusting or having faith in what He alone could do
for us at the cross. Again, God through Jesus is a very reliable
object of faith, much more so than our puny and failed efforts
at righteousness.
In His Service Gladly,
Rev. Kevin S. Johnson
The Above Exchange Was Forwarded. Here Are Some
Responses:
Dear Kevin,
Wow. I had no idea that God was reading my thoughts and asked
you to send this to me. That's pretty neat. Because I had
been wondering about the "faith vs. works" debate
myself. I am hovering around that point.
Personally, I don't think the Bible contradicts itself, as
the person whose e-mail you were replynig to does, but I am
quite confused by seeing verses that say we are saved by faith
not works, and then other verses that seem to imply that works
play an important role in deciding our spiritual destiny (maybe
it was my Catholic upbringing messing with my head). And please
forgive me...I am not as read up on the Bible as you (but
I'm getting better), but a few of the verses that I can find
that are causing me confusion are in the Sermon on the Mount,
and a few verses at the end of revalation...OH! Here it is:
Rev. 20:12, about people being judged according to what they
have done.
But wait....now that I think about it, I believe it could
referring to those that chose Christ vs. those that didn't.
Maybe that's it. The "choosing to believe" could
be considered a "work", and maybe this is what the
Bible means. Don't mind me...I'm just typing out loud, I guess;
trying to figure this out.
I've been reading "More Than A Carpenter" by Josh
McDowell, and I think that I can now happily report that the
last shred of doubt in my faith is pretty much gone. Woo Hoo!
Fun stuff to talk about. I got the impression from people
growing up that the Bible is hard to read and makes no sense
and contradicts itself. But I've been finding it to be no
problem. Makes me wonder how many of these people have actually
opened the book. In the last 16 -18 months that Ihave started
reading, I'm finding that the more I learn, the more I want
to learn. Neat!
Keith
Hi Kevin--
Thanks for cc of your response to Mr. Warden. Your response
is well written. I rejoice in seeing how you use your gifts
for Christ. It seems to me that Mr. Warden was sincerely searching
for some answers and it was no coincidence that he was led
to your website. God Bless you!
Sharon Schuldt
Kevin:
Excellent answer.
Dan Harting
(Dan heads up Families Against Cults and his wife was a former
Branch Director for MCO)
Mount Carmel Outreach
All donations to The Institute For Christian
Apologetics are
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Make your checks out to:
The Institute For Christian Apologetics
Send them to P.O. Box 5761 Rockford, IL 61125
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