Donald Trump is working with the Christian Broadcasting Network to promote his stance that he is a Christian. In clips of an interview that will appear on the 700 Club and other programs, Trump talks about his reverence for the Bibles that people send him and his efforts to attend church on special days like Easter and Christmas. Hmmm…

Do those things make a person a Christian?

More and more we are hearing people who like Jesus calling themselves Christians. But which Jesus are they talking about? And how are they following him? Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Unitarians, Buddhists, Muslims and others can all say that they follow Jesus to some extent. Some consider him a good teacher, some consider him a prophet, and some consider him to be “the son of God.” None agree on exactly what he taught or who he was. Are they Christian?

Christians hold a very specific view of Jesus. We take the writings of men who testify to have lived with and died for Jesus during the first century—documents that date all the way back to the century in which He lived and documents that date from before His birth that testify to what He did.

Those documents, unlike single author documents of other religions, explain that Jesus is the Son of God. They speak of our need for the forgiveness of sin, and our utter hopelessness to get to heaven without the sacrifice that Jesus made on the cross. They make it clear that Christians are people who believe in the Jesus of the Bible, who believe HIs work alone can give them eternal life, and who have experienced the power of God’s Spirit coming to dwell in their lives and begin the transformative process here on earth.

I don’t know Donald Trump that well, but I have a pretty good suspicion that he has not experienced the saving power of Christ or the transformation of the Holy Spirit. I think he’s just trying to get votes.

Do those things make me want to vote for Donald Trump as a political candidate?

As I mentioned in a previous post, I prefer a truly Christian candidate over a non-Christian one. I am not thrilled with prospects of Trump running for President. I’m sending up a lot of prayers for the 2012 election!

Read more on Trump’s activities from Christian Post here…

Disaster’s Victims continue to be great, especially as tornado season comes around for the Midwest United States. Please keep the hurting in your prayers, both for their physical needs and for the opportunity the church has to share the gospel during this time of great openness. Below is a list of events and people’s to pray for. I’ll try to update and expand it every month or so.

Haiti’s poverty will probably cause it to be hurting long after Japan. Read more…

Japan remains in great turmoil as the nuclear reactor remains a problem and aftershocks continue to cause the people to reimagine the terror that has past. Read more…

Texas wildfires are burning homes and endangering the lives of people across our massive state. Pray for safety and for those who have lost all they own. Read more…

Every day the citizens of Israel hear the rocket sirens and hide from the terror of incoming dangers like suicide bombers. Pray that the Gaza strip will one day establish a true cease-fire that will allow these citizens to live in a larger degree of security.

The Middle East remains in turmoil with political upheaval, reaction against the American pastor’s burning of the Koran, and various other controversies. Pray for courage that believers can continue to proclaim the gospel under the threat of death.

For those of you who are not aware, I am working with Victim Relief Ministries to respond to and comfort people who are enduring these hard times. We minister to crime victims in the city of Dallas every day, and work abroad whenever we can, acting as the Good Samaritan did. To learn more about Victim Relief, go to www.victimrelief.org

To consider training this weekend as a Victim Chaplain, register at www.victimchaplain.org

Here are a few random quotes I wanted to share with you…

“The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.”
– Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

Your past is much like your rearview mirror…It’s important to look back for an occasional frame of reference, but if you’re constantly looking back instead of ahead, you’re going to crash.

“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”
~C. S. Lewis

When I don’t understand something, I reach up and hold God’s hand. And we walk together in silence. ~ Ron Atchison

The current presidential campaign seems to favor two popular candidates: Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney. While there is still a high probability that some prolific figures will rise from national obscurity to seize the attention of the American people, I find myself worried that the affections of the American people will favor a clearly non-Christian candidate. While I have my concerns about our current president’s faith, I am somewhat comforted by the fact that he has decided to represent himself as a Christian. Mitt Romney would have no such constraints…and that bothers me greatly. I hope that by reading this article, I can persuade you to consider my reservations and make them your own, and here’s why:

Presidency is more than character, morals, or even political leadership. It’s about influence and representation of our beliefs before our nation, before other nations, and before God. Putting a Mormon on center stage means that Mormonism will be on center stage. Mormons will represent our country to our citizens, to other nations, and to God. People will question their own religious beliefs on the basis of what they see in the President…do we really want them considering Mormonism more than they do now?

God will also judge us through our actions and the actions of our leader. God has always dealt with people on a national, as well as on an individual basis. The books of Kings and Chronicles as well as the prophecies of the Old Testament make it clear that God judges the nations and their leaders based on their religious influence. We should be concerned for how our election of a non-Christian leader will affect our standing before God.

The reality of Spiritual Warfare necessitates the indwelling presence of the Spirit of God. I don’t want to give the impression that I’m crying “Antichrist” here. That’s not my point. But every day we encounter demonic activity in subtle ways, and every day across the world, our Christian brothers and sisters encounter cases of demon possession. Judas, who was with the Lord, was controlled by a demon. The truth is, I don’t want a president who doesn’t have the protection of the Holy Spirit in his life. If there’s one leader that I want to be immune from this type of influence, it’s our president.

Mormonism is NOT a branch of the Christian religion, it is a cult. Mormons have their own separate religious books (The Book of Mormon, The Book of the Covenants, The Pearl of Great Price) and their own prophet (Joseph Smith) and their own distinctive beliefs (polygamy as a way of gaining heavenly status, eternal marriage, eternal progression toward god-hood, etc.). Their movement was so clearly heretical that they were driven out of most of the communities they tried to settle in when they first began. Joseph Smith believed that God intended him to establish the only true church in the world, and was later killed for his movement.

Let’s never fall into the mindset that “Christianity” is defined by the fact that it creates moral people…that confuses the results of a relationship with Christ with their main focus: salvation from our sins and the punishment they demand. If we define Christianity by its effects, it is no different than any other religion—Mormonism, Islam, or Buddhist. But Christianity is not about creating moral people. Christianity is about the history of the world—mankind’s separation from God and God’s awesome work through Christ to restore them. Christianity is about a historical event, where a man named Jesus proved through miraculous events that He was God and that He had come to save the world through His death and resurrection. Christianity is about people who experience the power of rebirth when they come to know Christ and live lives with the power of God’s Spirit dwelling inside of them. Christianity is defined by ONE holy book: The Bible, which we trust and follow so passionately that we are translating it into every language imaginable. And Christianity is a religion that continues to grow because God is miraculously at work in the world—sending visions, healing diseases, casting out demons, and revealing Himself through the extreme love of those who know Him.

[UPDATE 4/5/11]

For those who want to read more, please do visit Tom’s blog (http://redemptivetheology.blogspot.com/) and also note his references to the Mormon (LDS) church’s own writings and records. I particularly appreciate his citation of the LDS’s own admission that “In bearing testimony of Jesus Christ, President Hinckley spoke of those outside the Church who say Latter-day Saints “do not believe in the traditional Christ. No, I don’t. The traditional Christ of whom they speak is not the Christ of whom I speak.” from LDS Church News.

Prestonwood Baptist Church announced this week that it plans to purchase an existing church campus inside the city of Dallas and open it as a third church campus this fall. Am I excited? YES!!! And here’s why planting a new campus is good for us…

“There are two reasons to plant a new campus: Reaching Unreached People for Christ and Mobilizing Existing Church Members in Ministry” ~ Jack Graham, Pastor

Our campus in Plano is filling up, opening a new campus in Dallas will free up seats in that location as well—challenging all our members to get out into their communities and reach people who need to come to church. It’s a good challenge when 2,000 of your members live closer to the new campus than the current one—hopefully that means we’ll have a lot of people inviting coworkers and neighbors that otherwise wouldn’t make the long drive.

Closer means more people in ministry too. Stacy and I love our church, but we have a hard time making the drive to Plano during the week to serve. We serve instead at ministries at school and here in our local area. We’re excited about having a campus close enough to minister at more often, and a lot of open needs that our members can help fill. We’re never closer to God than when we get the opportunity to serve others!

Aren’t there enough churches in Dallas? “How many ants does it take to eat an elephant?” Keep in mind that Prestonwood does not want anyone to join us from other churches…our goal is to fill our seats with unchurched people…and there are too many unchurched people in any area of Dallas for one church to reach. We are working with the other churches to reach people—we believe that more churches means synergy in their efforts, and a more fruitful harvest for all.

Reaching the lost means reaching the nations AND reaching our neighbors. A Dallas campus gives us an opportunity to fund more than our own comforts. We get to focus our expenses on greater evangelism locally.

Next stop, an area of greater need: South Dallas. Keep us in your prayers.

Our Movement seems good to the Holy Spirit and also to us. We have had a heart to do more in the city of Dallas for a while. Many members have had this in their prayers for a long time. Hundreds drove past the building to look and pray. We’re leaping at the opportunity. Why? God has placed it on our hearts. The desire to minister is definitely the predominant motivation here. We are not primarily motivated by a desire to expand, look bigger, or get more tithers—although these things are certainly attractive and exciting to some of us.

Our opportunity to buy this building is a win-win situation that the Holy Spirit seems to have driven to us. The church that owns it currently is not fading away—the building has become a financial burden to them, and they want to move somewhere else. We didn’t find the building, and we didn’t offer them pennies on the dollar for it. We are sending them away with the money they need to start afresh, and we are getting a facility that fits our needs for a third campus.

The church’s location will be off Hillcrest Rd, just south of the LBJ/635 Loop in North Dallas.

Pastor Graham’s announcement is here if you would like to watch.