Blogs by Leland Maples

Not too many years ago, subjects like abortion, homosexuality, same sex marriages, children born out of wedlock, adultery, unmarried couples living together and our continued drug problem would have caused our pulpits to be on fire. Those God-called men would have preached loud and clear about God’s judgment. With our morals and convictions hitting an all time low, our pulpits are speaking of developing a better self-esteem and encouraging more tolerance. Preaching about sin is pretty much passé. Now we have communicators and lecturers who ignore God and His evaluation of this world....

We live in unusual and interesting times. Never have things moved so fast around us. It took right at 5900 years for transportation to advance from animals to automobiles. In a 100 years man has achieved speed faster than sound, traveled to destinations as far as the moon and changed the English Bible over 200 times. In less than 50 years we have seen the most prosperous and advanced civilizations legalize murdering innocent babies, approve same sex marriages and strive to remove God and the Ten Commandments from our society. Man keeps contradicting himself. One day he is saying that Jesus...

The greatest king of Israel said:

“The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good. [2] The Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, and seek God. [3] They are all gone aside, they are all together become filthy: there is none that doeth good, no, not one.” Psalm 14:1-3

Centuries later, Paul echoed:

“As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: [11] There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after...

With the spring come carnivals, fairs and fun things to do outdoors. The first carnival of the year has just visited our city. Normally, this information would not affect my life, but that was before having a 7 year old granddaughter. She makes me aware of this type of data. Observation of the carnival caused me to draw some comparisons to the “new Christianity” inundating the church.

The carnival is designed solely to appeal to the desires of the flesh; thrilling rides that go nowhere, kewpie dolls impersonating valuable prizes and huge servings of cotton candy containing zero...