Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Community Thanksgiving Service

The Cottondale Community Thanksgiving Service was a tremendous blessing.  The event took place at Benville Baptist Church in Cottondale, AL.  Churches and pastors from the community partcipated in a special time of worship and giving of thanks.  Bishop Simon Hunter brought the Word of God with great anointing.  The service concluded with a wonderful fellowship dinner.  To God be the glory for His bountiful blessings of love.

Food Pantry

The Care Package set distribution records this past week-end.  We served 187 families from our food pantry.  We would like to acknowledge the outstanding effort of our director, Teresa Crawford, and everyone who volunteered their time to participate in this ministry.  There were 37 new families served on Saturday.  The next distribution date will be December 18th.  If you would like to serve in some capacity during this month's activity please let us know.  There is plenty of work to be done.

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Carnality vs Spirituality

Paul reminds us that the carnal mind is at war with God and eventually will lead us to death.  The spiritual mind experiences life and peace. Hell, it would seem, has fallen on rather lean times. It used to be that the vast majority of Christians, regardless of denominational affiliation, believed that Hell was a real place where the wicked and the impenitent go when they died. The very thought of the pains and torments of Hell was enough to scare sinners straight. It used to be that ministers of the Gospel would preach on the horrors of Hell to persuade reprobates to repentance. But not anymore. Most American mainline and so-called Evangelical churches stopped preaching about Hell years ago. Most mainline ministers stopped believing in Hell years before that. Hell made people uncomfortable. Hell was too “old-fashioned.” The topic of Hell was bad for the bottom line—attendance and income. Hell damaged people’s self-esteem. We have neatly wall- papered over Hell to the detriment and peril of our souls. I can assure you, the Devil believes in a Hell. That’s why he is working so tirelessly in our world before he is dumped there. The demons Jesus exorcised from people believed in Hell and pleaded with Him not to send them there. Jesus certainly believed in a Hell. The top three topics our Lord spent most of His time speaking about in His earthly teaching ministry were money and material possessions, Hell, and the Kingdom of Heaven. And the Master’s words about Hell are sober, dire, and serious. His constant admonition to His hearers was this: Do whatever you must to avoid Hell.


You may not believe in hell, you may think that it is just a state of mind, but as the old revival preacher said to the skeptic, “You not believing in Hell don’t lower the temperature there one degree.”

Special thanks to the youth drama team for helping in this series of messages to bring to life the reality that hell exists.