Nothing Just Happens: by TD Jakes (Excellent)

"Three women - Naomi, who is the older woman, and Ruth, who was her daughter-in-law, and Orpah, who was her other daughter-in-law. Three women who's commonality was pain. Pain is a strange company keeper. It brings the oddest people together. There is a secret fraternity that exists amongst those who have been in pain that is mind-boggling. It transcends the color of your skin. It transcends your background. When you have been through certain things, you feel for other people who have been through those things, because you relate to them. I personally don't like to have a whole lot to do with people who have not been through pain. It's nothing against them, I'm not jealous of them, I just can't relate to them. I can't relate to them and I am sure that they will not be able to relate to me. The parts of me that I need to have known, that I need to have touched, that I need to have fellowship, are tied up not in the successes of my life, but in the struggles of my life. For God has done more through my struggles. He's done more through my struggles then he's ever done through my successes. And if you look carefully at my successes, my successes are made out of the ingredients of my struggles. And you can never know my successes until you understand my struggles, because my struggles are the pathway that led me into my success. Are you hearing what I'm saying?


And so if you are going to have fellowship with somebody, you have to choose your friends and make sure that they have had something to die in their life. If you've never had anything to die in your life, you have the kind of optimism that is annoying. If you've never had anything to go wrong in your life, I don't like to hear you preach, it aggravates me, it gets on my nerves because your preaching has not been balanced by failure. If you've never had anything to die in your life don't counsel me, because you really don't understand me because you don't know why I am like I am until you've been where I've been. If you've never had anything to die in your life don't sit there and tell me be a man, take it, don't cry. You don't know what I'm taking, you don't know what I'm enduring, you don't understand. Just because you read some books and took a psych class doesn't mean that you are ready to deal with the issues of my life. There is something about going through death and loss and pain and misfortune and adversity. There is something about going through things that don't seem fair to you. That once you go through them you need to make sense of the madness in your life since you can't change what happened and you can't alter what you've been through, at least you need to be able to think that there's some greater good that's going to come out of it.


It's what they call bringing closure. To bring closure to it; to justify that I didn't go through this kind of pain for nothing. I need to be able to feel like something good is going to come out of this. If I can't do that then I feel like I'm a victim. I feel like I've been victimized and I forever feel sorry for myself and I'm not free to go on with my life, and I'm not safe to remarry again, and I'm not safe to get another job again, and I'm not safe in another church again, because I have unresolved issues out of my past; and I'm not ready to go forward with my life because I'm still tied up with where I came from. I need to know if I'm going to continue to worship God, I need to know that some demon didn't get loose in my life and wreck my life. It's not a mistake, it's not an accident, God didn't fall asleep on the job and the devil came in and wrecked the car. No, God never sleeps and he never slumbers. He's in complete control and he knows where you are, and he knows how old you are, and he knows how much time you spent, and he knows what happened to you, and he knows who walked out and left you, and he knows who betrayed you, and he knows who molested you, and he knows who raped you, and he knows who rejected you, and he knows where you are in life, and he knows about your bills, and he knows about your degree, and he knows you dropped out of school, and he knows about what you didn't get, and he knows about the health of your child, and he knows about the condition of your neighborhood. Understand that and tell yourself nothing just happens.


And so Orpah walks away. She walks away. I might have to turn this into a series because I can't get out of this. Orpah walks away, and she cries and she goes back. There are people who can walk away from you. And hear me when I tell you this - when people can walk away from you: let them walk. When people can walk away from you: let them walk. I can sit down now; I've preached. I can sit down. I don't need to make an altar call or nothing. I don't have to hoop, I don't have to make you shout, I have just preached right now. When people can walk away from you: let them walk. I don't want you to try to talk another person into staying with you, loving you, calling you, caring about you, coming to see you, staying attached to you. I mean hang up the phone. When people can walk away from you let them walk. Your destiny is never tied to anybody that left. The bible said that, they came out from us that it might be made manifest that they were not of us. For had they been of us, no doubt they would have continued with us. [1Jo 2:19]


People leave you because they are not joined to you. And if they are not joined to you, you can get super glue and you can't make them stay. Let them go. And it doesn't mean that Orpah was a bad person it just means that Orpah's part in the story is over. And you've got to know when people's part in your story is over so that you don't' keep trying to raise the dead. You've got to know when it's dead, David. When your boy is dead, wash your face and have another baby. You've got to know when it's over. Let me tell you something. I've got the gift of goodbye. I mean I've got the gift of goodbye. It's the tenth spiritual gift, I believe in goodbye. It's not that I'm hateful, it's that I'm faithful, and I know whatever God means for me to have he'll give it to me. And if it takes too much sweat I don't need it. Stop begging people to stay. Let them go!! Ruth, on the other hand, coming to the crossroads, she looks at Orpah who left. Ruth turns to Naomi and says, as the Lord liveth I shall not leave thee. She makes a statement to this woman that sounds somewhere in between poetry, intimacy and borders on lesbianism.


People don't even know how to explain what Ruth said to Naomi. It makes them uncomfortable, they are afraid to talk about it, they don't want to teach on it. The same thing with David and Jonathan. Whenever same sex relationships get too close people don't even know what to say because people are so carnal they think the only thing that can tie you to somebody is flesh to flesh. Understand that Naomi was an older woman. She was old enough to be Ruth's mama. She's not attracted to Naomi's flesh. Some kind of way Naomi's spirit has gotten in her spirit. There is something that happens to you occasionally where you can meet somebody and you sense, you sense, you sense that your destiny… oh God, oh God… your destiny is tied to that person. Do you understand? Do you understand what's happening to us? Do you understand that we are spending our lives together? Has it ever crossed your mind that we are spending our lives together? That we will die after this, and that we have been joined together and we are spending our life together? Have you ever realized you can spend your life anywhere with anybody doing anything, but something happens inside of you where you sense that your destiny is tied to a ministry or to a vision and you decide to spend your life…


People keep talking about spending their money. That ain't nothing. I can spend my money and live in Chicago. But when I spend my life with you, that's all I have. I don't think that hits you. We are spending our lives together. You will not be able to write your story and leave me out. We are spending our lives together. There is no greater bond possible. Occasionally in scriptures in the whole bible you see it happening with people who are not even blood related spend their lives together in the most intimate connection possible. And theologians and scholars and preachers stumble about it because they don't know how to talk about it because they don't understand the power being joined together. How can we explain what made Elisha leave his natural mother and father and run after Elijah to wait on him? To clean his clothes, to pour water on his hair, to set up his tent, but some kind of way Elisha sensed that his destiny was tied to Elijah. How can we explain Timothy, who walks away from everything that he owns to hang out at the outside window of a jail cell as an old man prepares to be beheaded? He peeks in the window handing him books and blankets ministering to him. The young man understood, I'll never be who I was meant to be without you in my life. Do you hear what I'm saying?


There is something, there is something about the way you talk it feeds me. It's something about the way you speak that changes me. There is something about your spirit that motivates me and I'll never be completed without you and I didn't meet you by accident. I didn't stumble up and meet you. This didn't just happen. There is a reason that I'm in this place. I'm so sick of talking to people who think that everything just happens. I guess I'll go to church. I guess I'll get saved. I guess I'll move to Chicago. I guess I'll move to Dallas. That's not how it is. The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord. Your steps were ordered. If you hadn't got the phone call that you got when you got like you got it, you wouldn't even be here right now. If you hadn't made the turn that you made yesterday you wouldn't experience what you are experiencing today. God has been behind the curtain like a puppet master pulling strings in your life. It's not that you're smart, it's not that you're great; it's not that you're holy; it's not that you're perfect; it's not that you're good; but God winded you up; pointed you in the right direction; released you into your destiny; and you are here and you can't get away. Slap somebody and tell them nothing just happens. Can I talk to you a few more minutes?


This means, this means, this means that I'm up under the banner of his will. I'm up under the banner of his will. Even in the midst of death, I'm up under the banner of his will. Even in the midst of pain, I'm up under the banner of his will. Even in the midst of separation and disappointment I'm up under the banner of his will. Can I take you to the next level? Jonah was sent to Nineveh, went to Tarsus, headed for Tarsus not obeying God, got thrown off the boat into the belly of the fish, swallowed up for three days. Even though God told him to go to Nineveh, and he didn't go, he was still in the will. I'm not sure you can handle this. He went the wrong way and he was still in the will. They threw him off the boat he was still in the will. I'll prove to you he was in the will. It just happened to be a big fish. See it just happened to be a big fish swimming beside the big boat so that when men dumped him over, the fish just happened to… this is too strong. You can't take this. The fish carried him down to the bottom of the mountains with seaweed wrapped around its neck. He's thousands of feet below sea level and God sustained him. Sustained him not one day, not two days, not four days, but three days. Nothing just happens.


On the third day… on the third day the backslidden, rebellious, reprobate, disconnected, disjointed preacher comes up out of the water, and thousands of years later Christ says even as Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days so shall the son of man be in the grave. He had to get up when he got up, and he had to go down when he went down because nothing just happens. Oh God. Your mistakes were in his will. Your trouble was in his will. Your pain was in his will. I don't care what you went through. David said if I make my bed in hell, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning and ascend unto the uttermost parts of the earth God is still there. He was with you in the middle of your trouble. He was with you in the middle of your pain. That's why Paul said, I've learned whatever state I'm in, therewith to be content. I know how to be rich. I know how to be poor. I know how to be free. I know how to be bound. You ought to shout. I don't care where you are because nothing just happens! And no devil in hell has ever been able to abort the purpose of God not once. And yes, God gave you a human will, and you are a free moral agent; but if you think that your human will is strong enough to change his divine will you are tripping. You are out of your mind. God is God.


The reason we worship him as God is because he is the CEO. He is in charge. He runs the universe. And when God gets ready to make you, and when God gets ready to break you, and when God gets ready to take you, he has never been without the power to make you yield to his will. He's never, not one moment or time, not been able to orchestrate your affairs and anointing in your life. Think about the most damnable thing that ever happened and shout 'nothing'! Think about the most embarrassing thing that ever happened in your life and shout 'nothing'! Think about the most impoverished, financially depleting thing that ever happened in your life and shout 'nothing'! Think about the worse scandal that you ever went through in your life and shout 'nothing'! Think about people who loved you and walked out and left you and shout 'nothing'! Think about betrayal on the highest level of your life and shout 'nothing'! Think about the struggle going on on your job right now and shout 'nothing'! Think about the attitude of your kinfolks and your family members and shout 'nothing'! Think about how your boss is treating you on your job and shout 'nothing'! Think about that disagreement between you and your children and shout 'nothing'! Think about your past life of sin, your whoremongering, your inappropriateness, your attitude, your dysfunction and shout 'nothing'! Shout 'nothing'!


Let the devil hear you say nothing. That devil will think he won if you don't shout nothing. The devil will think he's in charge if you don't shout nothing. He'll think he's going to win but you've got to shout 'Nothing'!"

Grace and Truth, not Fire and Brimstone

Darwin was an opportunistic Creationist. He says it here & let's look at the truth about New Species :) Get ready! 

Here’s the excerpt from p.92-93 of Charles Darwin’s autobiography:

"Another source of conviction in the existence of God, connected with the reason and not with the feelings, impresses me as having much more weight. This follows from the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capacity of looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity. When thus reflecting I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a Theist." -Charles Darwin

Dismantling Darwin's Theory

DNA is not the blueprint for life but is rather similar to a parts list. Developmental biologists know there is much more than DNA which subsequently smashes the Darwinian evolutionary species theory before it can be intelligently uttered for in reality evolution isn't an intelligent postulate which merits ratiocination-wrought intelligent discussion. The DNA does not dictate the form of the animal. For example, one could provide ten people with the exact same housing supplies without instructions as to go about building a house, and no two houses would be built the same. With these same supplies one can build all kinds of structures. The DNA thus provides the parts list, however the cell determines the floor plan. A purposeful sequence is required to build a home genitive to other like homes or speciesism. We've known all along that mutations are either harmful or neutral. Beneficial mutations which are reasonably the only kind evolution could use anyway are biochemical in nature. A mutation can lead to antibiotic resistance, for example. The bacteria that still survive do not change the organism and make minor changes [within] the species but cannot create a new species. This information has long been known and thus never controversial. The evidence for mutation clearly already evidences this. 

For example, I can take a Fruit-fly embryo and the DNA can be mutated in every way as it has been done, and nonetheless there are only three possible outcomes. Period. A normal Fruit-fly, a defective Fruit-fly, or a dead Fruit-fly. That's it, as it is impossible to even change the species, much less get a Horsefly or a horse or something like that. So, we've certainly found a lot of evidence but for what? Darwin's theory is that all living things are descendant from one common ancestor, modified by unguided natural processes such as natural selection and variation. 

But Darwin didn't write a book about how existing species change over time. That's totally irrelevant. People have known that for centuries. So minor changes within a species is not the issue here. The point is the origin of new species by this same ludicrously Darwinian process. Yet no one has ever observed the origin of a new species through variation and selection and they have tried again and again and again. But that key element in Darwin's theory, the origin of a new species, the title of his book, has never been solved. 

-BG Jett 

A major way to test a philosophy or worldview is to ask: Is it logically consistent? Internal contradictions are fatal to any worldview because contradictory statements are necessarily false. "This circle is square" is contradictory, so it has to be false. An especially damaging form of contradiction is self-referential absurdity -- which means a theory sets up a definition of truth that it itself fails to meet. Therefore it refutes itself....

An example of self-referential absurdity is a theory called evolutionary epistemology, a naturalistic approach that applies evolution to the process of knowing. The theory proposes that the human mind is a product of natural selection. The implication is that the ideas in our minds were selected for their survival value, not for their truth-value.

But what if we apply that theory to itself? Then it, too, was selected for survival, not truth -- which discredits its own claim to truth. Evolutionary epistemology commits suicide.

Astonishingly, many prominent thinkers have embraced the theory without detecting the logical contradiction. Philosopher John Gray writes, "If Darwin's theory of natural selection is true,... the human mind serves evolutionary success, not truth." What is the contradiction in that statement? 

Gray has essentially said, if Darwin's theory is true, then it "serves evolutionary success, not truth." In other words, if Darwin's theory is true, then it is not true.

Self-referential absurdity is akin to the well-known liar's paradox: "This statement is a lie." If the statement is true, then (as it says) it is not true, but a lie.

Another example comes from Francis Crick. In The Astonishing Hypothesis, he writes, "Our highly developed brains, after all, were not evolved under the pressure of discovering scientific truths but only to enable us to be clever enough to survive." But that means Crick's own theory is not a "scientific truth." Applied to itself, the theory commits suicide.

Of course, the sheer pressure to survive is likely to produce some correct ideas. A zebra that thinks lions are friendly will not live long. But false ideas may be useful for survival. Evolutionists admit as much: Eric Baum says, "Sometimes you are more likely to survive and propagate if you believe a falsehood than if you believe the truth." Steven Pinker writes, "Our brains were shaped for fitness, not for truth. Sometimes the truth is adaptive, but sometimes it is not." The upshot is that survival is no guarantee of truth. If survival is the only standard, we can never know which ideas are true and which are adaptive but false.

To make the dilemma even more puzzling, evolutionists tell us that natural selection has produced all sorts of false concepts in the human mind. Many evolutionary materialists maintain that free will is an illusion, consciousness is an illusion, even our sense of self is an illusion -- and that all these false ideas were selected for their survival value.

So how can we know whether the theory of evolution itself is one of those false ideas? The theory undercuts itself.

A few thinkers, to their credit, recognize the problem. Literary critic Leon Wieseltier writes, "If reason is a product of natural selection, then how much confidence can we have in a rational argument for natural selection? ... Evolutionary biology cannot invoke the power of reason even as it destroys it."

On a similar note, philosopher Thomas Nagel asks, "Is the [evolutionary] hypothesis really compatible with the continued confidence in reason as a source of knowledge?" His answer is no: "I have to be able to believe ... that I follow the rules of logic because they are correct -- not merely because I am biologically programmed to do so." Hence, "insofar as the evolutionary hypothesis itself depends on reason, it would be self-undermining."

Darwin's Selective Skepticism

People are sometimes under the impression that Darwin himself recognized the problem. They typically cite Darwin's famous "horrid doubt" passage where he questions whether the human mind can be trustworthy if it is a product of evolution: "With me, the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy."

But, of course, Darwin's theory itself was a "conviction of man's mind." So why should it be "at all trustworthy"?

Surprisingly, however, Darwin never confronted this internal contradiction in this theory. Why not? Because he expressed his "horrid doubt" selectively -- only when considering the case for a Creator.

From time to time, Darwin admitted that he still found the idea of God persuasive. He once confessed his "inward conviction ... that the Universe is not the result of chance." It was in the next sentence that he expressed his "horrid doubt." So the "conviction" he mistrusted was his lingering conviction that the universe is not the result of chance.

In another passage Darwin admitted, "I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man." Again, however, he immediately veered off into skepticism: "But then arises the doubt -- can the mind of man, which has, as I fully believe, been developed from a mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animal, be trusted when it draws such grand conclusions?"

That is, can it be trusted when it draws "grand conclusions" about a First Cause? Perhaps the concept of God is merely an instinct programmed into us by natural selection, Darwin added, like a monkey's "instinctive fear and hatred of a snake."

In short, it was on occasions when Darwin's mind led him to a theistic conclusion that he dismissed the mind as untrustworthy. He failed to recognize that, to be logically consistent, he needed to apply the same skepticism to his own theory.

Modern followers of Darwin still apply the theory selectively. Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould wrote, "Darwin applied a consistent philosophy of materialism to his interpretation of nature," in which "mind, spirit, and God as well, are just words that express the wondrous results of neuronal complexity." In other words, God is an idea that appears in the human mind when the electrical circuitry of the brain has evolved to a certain level of complexity.

To be logically consistent, however, Gould should turn the same skepticism back onto Darwin's ideas, which he never did. Gould applied his evolutionary skepticism selectively -- to discredit the idea of God.

Applied consistently, Darwinism undercuts not only itself but also the entire scientific enterprise. Kenan Malik, a writer trained in neurobiology, writes, "If our cognitive capacities were simply evolved dispositions, there would be no way of knowing which of these capacities lead to true beliefs and which to false ones." Thus "to view humans as little more than sophisticated animals ...undermines confidence in the scientific method."

Just so. Science itself is at stake. John Lennox, professor of mathematics at the University of Oxford, writes that according to atheism, "the mind that does science ... is the end product of a mindless unguided process. Now, if you knew your computer was the product of a mindless unguided process, you wouldn't trust it. So, to me atheism undermines the rationality I need to do science."

Of course, the atheist pursuing his research has no choice but to rely on rationality, just as everyone else does. The point is that he has no philosophical basis for doing so. Only those who affirm a rational Creator have a basis for trusting human rationality.

The reason so few atheists and materialists seem to recognize the problem is that, like Darwin, they apply their skepticism selectively. They apply it to undercut only ideas they reject, especially ideas about God. They make a tacit exception for their own worldview commitments.

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“Atheism collapses in notion and by self-imposed knavery insofar as its fundamental dispute is determined to resolve the nonexistence of anything or anyone greater than man as its source of conviction.  However, if the source of an atheist’s conviction does not exist, than something greater than mere man must exist as birthed from atheistically cynical necessity for there to remain any semblance of dispute to resolve or any appearance of a source of conviction.  The atheist is continually wading into self-referential absurdities which is to employ a definition of truth that itself flatly fails to meet.  For example, to state that “mankind doesn’t need a Creator to explain the creation He created,” is risibly absurd.  In short, to profess disbelief in God isn't courage in spite of hopelessness.  It is utter stupidity in spite of intelligence." -BG Jett