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Pope Francis has appointed Thomas Daly as the new Catholic Bishop of Spokane. The announcement was made early Thursday. Details will be released during a 9 a.m. press conference. Daly, 54, succeeds Chicago Archbishop Blase Cupich, who left Spokane last fall to lead the nation’s third largest diocese. Daly comes to Spokane from San Jose, where he served as auxiliary bishop. He was born in San Francisco and was ordained as a priest in 1987.

How Reliable Is Roman Catholic History?An Example in a Recent Edition of This Rock Magazine   By James White Roman Catholic apologists are going about the land presenting seminars and talks in parish halls and church buildings, all designed to 1) confirm the faithful in their allegiance to Rome and the Papacy, and 2) invite the "separated brethren home to Mother Church." While the number of RC apologists has grown exponentially over the past decade, the one gentleman who has been out-front, or maybe better, in light of the article we will be reviewing, "up-front," the longest, is Karl Keating,...

Evolution of a Creation Scientist by Jeffrey Tomkins, Ph.D. * Unlike many researchers working in the field of creation science, I was not raised in a strong Christian background. The occasional trip to some nominal church with my parents—my father, a successful research chemist for a large corporation, and my mother, a school teacher—was simply something we did to round out our social experience. For the most part, my secular upbringing was steeped in evolutionary science and philosophy. During high school in Vancouver, Washington, I became very interested in biology and especially plant science. My school had an excellent two-year...

Full Title: My Funeral is Back On. For reason of sin, I wanted no funeral. I didn’t want people standing up to testify to what a great guy I was ___________________________________________________ I am painfully aware of the inclinations of my heart. I know how the word of God I preach has beamed a spotlight into my soul, exposing my sin, making me wonder, who am I to be calling others to account? Paul writes my biography in Romans 7. I find great solace in his summation: “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?...

March 12, 2015Thursday of the Third Week of Lent Reading 1 Jer 7:23-28 Thus says the LORD: This is what I commanded my people:Listen to my voice;then I will be your God and you shall be my people.Walk in all the ways that I command you,so that you may prosper. But they obeyed not, nor did they pay heed.They walked in the hardness of their evil heartsand turned their backs, not their faces, to me.From the day that your fathers left the land of Egypt even to this day,I have sent you untiringly all my servants the prophets.Yet they...

GOD BEING WHO HE is must always be sought for Himself, never as a means toward something else. Whoever seeks other objects and not God is on his own; he may obtain those objects if he is able, but he will never have God. God is never found accidentally. "Ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart" (Jer. 29:13) . Whoever seeks God as a means toward desired ends will not find God. The mighty God, the maker of heaven and earth, will not be one of many treasures, not even...

In Jesus’ high priestly prayer in John 17, He says: “And now, Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was” (v. 5). Here Jesus alludes to a position He held before creation. It is a tacit claim to His participation in the eternal glory of God. In the fourth century, the church faced a serious crisis with respect to the deity of Christ. The Arian heretics denied the deity of Christ, claiming that Jesus was a creature who was adopted into a special relationship with God. In their controversy with...

March 11, 2015Wednesday of the Third Week of Lent Reading 1 Dt 4:1, 5-9 Moses spoke to the people and said:“Now, Israel, hear the statutes and decreeswhich I am teaching you to observe,that you may live, and may enter in and take possession of the land which the LORD, the God of your fathers, is giving you. Therefore, I teach you the statutes and decreesas the LORD, my God, has commanded me,that you may observe them in the land you are entering to occupy.Observe them carefully,for thus will you give evidenceof your wisdom and intelligence to the nations,who will...

Lord, how great is our dilemma! In Thy Presence silence best becomes us, but love inflames our hearts and constrains us to speak. Were we to hold our peace the stones would cry out; yet if we speak, what shall we say? Teach us to know that we cannot know, for the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Let faith support us where reason fails, and we shall think because we believe, not in order that we may believe. In Jesus’ name. Amen. The child, the philosopher, and the religionist have all one question: ”What...

One of the most common objections to biblical authority is that the God of the Bible is guilty of committing immoral acts. God appears to advocate, endorse, and even commit acts that are normally seen as morally questionable. The classic example is the command to the Israelites to wipe out the Canaanites as they enter into the promised land.In fact, it is the question of whether God endorses genocide that features heavily in the objections of atheist Richard Dawkins in his book The God Delusion (Mariner Books, 2008). It is also a prominent theme in Peter Enns’ book, The Bible...

Live at your full potential. Become a better you. Be happier. It’s your time. Live an extraordinary life. Achieve your dreams. Go beyond your barriers. You can, you will. This is the therapeutic message of Joel Osteen, lifted right from his dust jackets. In contrast with the more classical and philosophically grounded evangelicalism of a Billy Graham or a C.S. Lewis, Ross Douthat termed Osteen’s brand of TV preaching “the gospel of self-help.” But notice it’s not the self-help of the Gospel; self-help is the gospel. The Gospel is the cask to deliver it, shucked and cast out as soon...

March 10, 2015Tuesday of the Third Week of Lent    Reading 1 Dn 3:25, 34-43 Azariah stood up in the fire and prayed aloud: “For your name’s sake, O Lord, do not deliver us up forever,or make void your covenant.Do not take away your mercy from us,for the sake of Abraham, your beloved,Isaac your servant, and Israel your holy one,To whom you promised to multiply their offspringlike the stars of heaven,or the sand on the shore of the sea.For we are reduced, O Lord, beyond any other nation,brought low everywhere in the world this daybecause of our sins.We have...

We have said that you must preach the gospel every week–to edify and grow Christians and to convert non-Christians. But if that is the case, you cannot simply ‘instruct in Biblical principles.’ You have to ‘get to Jesus’ every week.For example, look at the story of David and Goliath. What is the meaning of that narrative for us? Without reference to Christ, the story may be (usually is!) preached as: “The bigger they come, the harder they’ll fall, if you just go into your battles with faith in the Lord. You may not be real big and powerful in yourself,...

Not many people get the opportunity to attend seminary. In an amazing way I have attended two. The first was training for the Roman Catholic priestÂhood in Ireland and the second at a conservative Evangelical seminary in England. Raised a Catholic . . . but not knowing God Like most boys in the Republic of Ireland in the 1980s, I was brought up a Roman Catholic. My parents taught me to live a good life, say my prayers, and attend mass every Sunday. I believed there was a God, but I didn’t know him personally. I prayed as my mother...

Martin Luther wasn’t prone to compromise. He famously said in his sermon “Knowledge of God’s Will and Its Fruit”: The world at the present time is sagaciously discussing how to quell the controversy and strife over doctrine and faith, and how to effect a compromise between the Church and the Papacy. Let the learned, the wise, it is said, bishops, emperor and princes, arbitrate. Each side can easily yield something, and it is better to concede some things which can be construed according to individual interpretation, than that so much persecution, bloodshed, war, and terrible, endless dissension and destruction be...

On a recent Oprah Winfrey show, Kristen and Rob Bell make a lavish use of “values language,” in an attempt to justify same sex marriage. Kristen stated: “Marriage, gay and straight, is a gift to the world because the world needs more not less love, fidelity, commitment, devotion and sacrifice.” Who does not want to see more love in the world, but do the terms like “love,” “commitment” and sacrifice” need a lot more definition? Do the millions watching Oprah deserve a better defense of biblical sexuality? Indeed, the “made-for-TV” superficiality of these arguments is staggering and is part of...

March 9, 2015Monday of the Third Week of Lent    Reading 1 2 Kgs 5:1-15ab Naaman, the army commander of the king of Aram,was highly esteemed and respected by his master,for through him the LORD had brought victory to Aram.But valiant as he was, the man was a leper.Now the Arameans had captured in a raid on the land of Israela little girl, who became the servant of Naaman’s wife.“If only my master would present himself to the prophet in Samaria,”she said to her mistress, “he would cure him of his leprosy.”Naaman went and told his lordjust what the...

THE NEW TESTAMENT TEACHES that all things are pure to the pure, and I think we may assume that to the evil man all things are evil. The thing itself is not good or bad; goodness or badness belongs to human personality. Everything depends upon the state of our interior lives and our heart's relation to God. The man that walks with God will see and know that for him there is no strict line separating the sacred from the secular. He will acknowledge that there lies around him a world of created things that are innocent in themselves; and...

A recent Wall Street Journal story profiling twin brothers who followed separate spiritual paths — one to become an Anglican bishop, the other a Catholic priest — represents failure by the Southern Baptist church in which they were raised, according to Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Albert Mohler. Mohler, who posts a daily podcast commenting on current events on his personal website, said March 6 he has no firsthand knowledge of First Baptist Church in Elkin, N.C., home church of the men now in their 40s featured in a March 3 article headlined “When We Leave One Religion for Another:...

The Word of God says... “I will destroy the archers of Elam [Persia]— the best of their forces. I will bring enemies from all directions, and I will scatter the people of Elam to the four winds.. I will destroy its king and officials," Jeremiah 49:35,36,38. For more than two decades, this ministry has joined others in warning of a U.S. led coalition against the Islamic nations of Iraq, followed by Iran--the Goat vs. the two-horned Ram in Daniel 8:1-8. Iraq’s defeat by the American-led coalition commenced on March 19, 2003, at Shushan Purim—the day Purim is celebrated in Jerusalem....