How can you NOT believe in God when octopuses dream and otters have a favorite rock they carry around in a little skin pocket and cows have best friends and bees are out there communicating the coordinates of flowers through dancing and they have regional dialects?
Cats are purring at frequencies associated with bone healing? Forests get absolutely incinerated and respond by growing flowers? Dolphins literally invent names for themselves and yell them across the ocean? Penguins are waddling around Antarctica looking for the perfect rock to give their partner?
CROWS REMEMBER YOUR FACE. THEY TELL OTHER CROWS ABOUT YOU. THEY TELL THEIR CHILDREN ABOUT YOU. YOU CAN HAVE GENERATIONAL BEEF WITH A BIRD. I NEED YOU TO UNDERSTAND THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THIS.
Goats have accents. Rats laugh when you tickle them. Elephants mourn their dead. Whales make songs and then OTHER WHALES LEARN THE SONG and suddenly everybody across the ocean is singing the new song.
Monarch butterflies are born knowing how to fly thousands of miles to a place they have never been.
Sea turtles hatch out of an egg, immediately sprint toward an ocean that they have never seen, disappear into it for like 3 decades and then somehow come back to the same beach they hatched on.
Birds can see colors that we humans can’t see. There are colors out there right now that we don’t even get to know about.
There are sea slugs that eat algae and use the chloroplast/chlorophyll and then are just like…photosynthesizing. And they’re super adorable.
There are mushrooms communicating underground. There are seeds sitting in the dirt for decades like “no actually I will wait. It’s fine.”
Squirrels plant trees because they forget where they put their snacks. Relatable.
A CATERPILLAR GOES INTO A LITTLE BAG THAT IT CREATES ITSELF AND DISSOLVES MOST OF ITS BODY INTO ORGANIC GOO AND REARRANGES ITSELF, GROWS WINGS AND THEN LEAVES. WHY IS THIS NOT MORE BEAUTIFULLY TERRIFYING TO PEOPLE??
And you’re telling me a tiny acorn knows how to become a huge tree? It just has a blueprint inside itself?
Your body started as ONE CELL.
ONE.
And that cell divided itself into a brain that can think about its own existence and eyes that can look at stars and hands that can hold somebody else’s hands and a heart that runs on electricity without you even asking it to?
The iron in our blood was made inside a star??
We are walking around on a wet rock covered in bioluminescent oceans and singing whales and laughing rats and birds holding lifelong grudges and flowers exploding out of fire and somehow we’re supposed to act like this is a normal place to live?
We’re supposed to act like this is all just a random, accidental sequence of events?
En el año 1865, San Juan Bosco soñó que había un hombre alto, de color negro y con cuernos, que tenía en su mano "una linterna mágica" con la cual entretenía a los jóvenes
A través de esa "linterna mágica", los jóvenes podían ver cosas divertidas, partidos de fútbol que se habían perdido, pueblos lejanos, libros, familiares, amigos, vacaciones que habían tenido, dinero que les debían, y hasta "escenas pecaminosas", entre otras cosas
Don Bosco relató que este dispositivo los entretenía tanto que alejaba a estos jóvenes de los sacramentos, especialmente de la comunión
Este texto se encuentra bien documentado y disponible para el que quiera leerlo, en G. B. Lemoyne, Memorie Biografiche di San Giovanni Bosco, vol. VIII, p. 110.
They skinned Matthew alive.
They crucified Peter upside down.
Boiled John in hot oil.
Beheaded James with a sword.
Hung Luke from an olive tree.
Stoned Philip to death.
None of the apostles died for a lie.
Reminder: the Crusades were a response to over 400 years of Islamic aggression against Christians and Europe.
632: Muhammad dies.
635: Muslims conquer the Christian city of Damascus.
636: Muslims conquer the Christian city of Antioch.
637: Muslims conquer the Holy Land.
639: Muslims conquer the first Christian country Armenia.
641: Muslims conquer the Coptic Christian country of Egypt.
650: Muslim armies reach southern Italy and Cyprus, taking thousands of captives as "slaves" and "concubines."
711: Muslims invade Spain, and by 715, they have overrun most of it.
717: Muslims besiege Constantinople but are repelled.
730: Muslims invade France, only to be stopped by Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours.
792: The ruler of Al-Andalus calls for the invasion of France, and Muslim armies are assembled to attack it again, but they are repelled.
827: Muslims invade Sicily and Italy, persecuting monks. Sicily remains under Islamic rule until 1092.
846: Muslims invade Rome and force the Pope to pay tribute.
848: A third invasion of France occurs, and they are repelled for the third time.
909: Muslims occupy Sardinia.
937: The Church of the Holy Sepulcher is burned down by Muslims, and more churches in Jerusalem are attacked.
1009: Destruction of the Church of the Resurrection in Jerusalem.
1012: Beginning of al-Hakim’s oppressive decrees against Christians.
1071: Muslim Turks attack the Byzantines and occupy much of Anatolia.
1094: Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos asks Western Christendom for help against Muslim Turkish invasions.
1095: Pope Urban II finally declared the First Crusade.
Demons are not afraid of yoga.
Demons are not afraid of sage.
Demons are not afraid of crystals.
Demons are not afraid of the universe.
Demons are only afraid of Jesus Christ.
The biggest threat to Christianity isn't atheism. It's fake Christianity.
A gospel with no repentance.
A faith with no obedience.
A church with no truth.
people say Jesus isn't real…
Yet His name is the only name governments ban, cultures mock, demons fear, and persecuted believers cling to with their lives.
You don't silence a name unless it carries power.
Joseph of Arimathea pulled a corpse off a cross with his bare hands.
Blood under his fingernails. The weight of a dead man sagging into his arms.
He wrapped God in linen, pressed the fabric into wounds that were still wet.
Nicodemus brought seventy-five pounds of burial spice. A king's funeral for a man the world just murdered.
They carried Him into a hole in the rock and rolled the stone shut.
And everything you've ever done went in with Him.
Every night you can't sleep because of what you did. Every morning, you can't look in the mirror. The thing you did to her. The thing you did to them. The
lie you've been carrying so long it feels like bone.
The version of you that drinks alone and pretends tomorrow will be different.
That man was buried with Christ.
Stone sealed. Done.
Not managed. Not in therapy. Not on a payment plan with God where you slowly earn your way back. Buried. In a tomb. Under rock. Gone.
Three days of silence. Three days of a cold body in the dark.
Then the stone moved.
And when He walked out, the grave clothes were folded on the slab. He didn't stumble out tangled in death. He left it sitting there like a man who's done
with the clothes he used to wear.
Lazarus needed someone to unwrap him. Death still clung to him even after he was breathing.
Jesus folded His own burial linen and walked out clean.
That's the difference between religion and resurrection. Religion unwraps you slowly. Asks you to manage your sin. Attend the class. Read the book. Try harder next week.
Resurrection says the man who walked into that tomb is dead. The man who walked out doesn't know him.
You're not fixing the old you. The old you is in a sealed tomb in Jerusalem, and he's not coming back.
The man reading this, the one who thinks he's too far gone, you're not too far. You're already buried. The funeral happened two thousand years
ago.
Now get up. The stone's already moved. The linen's already folded.
Walk out.
Karl Marx's body is in his grave, London.
Nietzsche's body is in his grave, Lützen
Muhammad's body is in his grave, Medina
Buddha's body is in his grave, Pingliang
But, if you travel to Christ's grave in Jerusalem, it's empty, & has been for 2,000 years.
An atheist once complained that it was unfair for Christians and Jews to have recognized holy days while atheists had none. Determined to fight this “discrimination,” he hired a lawyer and took the case to court.
The lawyer passionately argued, “Your Honor, Christians have Christmas and Easter, Jews have Passover and Yom Kippur, but my client and other atheists have no such holidays. This is unjust!”
The judge listened carefully, then leaned forward and said, “But atheists do have a day of recognition.”
Surprised, the lawyer asked, “We do? What day is that?”
The judge smiled and said, “April 1st—April Fools’ Day. As Psalm 14:1 says, ‘The fool says in his heart, there is no God.’ Case dismissed!”
Happy April 1st!