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About the Book
"Babylon Rising" follows archaeologist Michael Murphy as he uncovers ancient biblical artifacts that have the potential to change the world. As Murphy races against time to unravel a prophecy and prevent an evil organization from using the artifacts for their own gain, he must confront his own doubts and fears. This fast-paced novel combines elements of adventure, suspense, and spiritual warfare to create a gripping story of faith and redemption.
Oral Roberts
Granville Oral Roberts was born January 24, 1918 in Pontotoc County, near Ada, in Oklahoma. His parents were deeply religious. His father was a farmer who also preached the gospel and established Pentecostal Holiness churches. His mother regularly prayed for the sick and led people to Christ. While she was still pregnant, Robert's mother committed Oral to God's service. Even though Oral had a very strong stutter his mother would tell him that one day God would heal his tongue and he would speak to multitudes.
The Roberts family was desperately poor. When Roberts was 16 he moved away from home, hoping for a better life. He rejected God and his upbringing. He started living a wild life and his health collapsed. Roberts had contracted tuberculosis. He returned home and eventually dropped to 120 pounds. He was a walking skeleton. God spoke to his older sister, Jewel, and told her that He was going to heal Oral. During this same time Oral turned his heart back to God and gave his life to Christ. A traveling healing evangelist named George Moncey came to Ada and held meetings in a tent. Oral's elder brother was touched when he saw friends of his healed in the meeting. He decided that he should get Oral and bring him to be healed. On the way to the meeting God spoke to Oral and said "Son, I'm going to heal you and you are to take my healing power to your generation. You are to build me a University and build it on My authority and the Holy Spirit." Once at the meeting Oral waited until the very end. He was too sick to get up and receive prayer, and so had to wait for Moncey to come to him. At 11:00 at night his parents lifted him so he could stand. When Moncey prayed for him the power of God hit him and he was instantly healed. Not only that but every bit of his stutter was gone!
After Roberts was healed he began to travel the evangelistic circuit. He met and married Evelyn Lutman, a school teacher from the same Holiness Pentecostal background as Roberts. They had their first child Rebecca and then the entire family began traveling as ministers. In 1942 they left the evangelistic field for a while and Roberts became a pastor. He also returned to college to further his education. While a pastor he prayed for a church member whose foot was crushed. The foot was instantly healed. God continued to speak to Roberts about his call to the multitudes. God called him to an unusual fast. Roberts was to read the four gospels and the book of Acts three times consecutively, while on his knees, for thirty days. God began to reveal Jesus as the healer in a new way. God also began to give Roberts dreams where he would see people's needs as God saw them. God called him to hold a healing meeting in his town. A woman was dramatically healed, several people were saved and Roberts' ministry changed overnight.
Roberts resigned his church in 1947 and began an itinerant ministry. Notable healings began to occur. One man tried to shoot Roberts. God used the story to bring him media attention, which expanded his ministry very quickly. Roberts felt called to purchase a tent and take his evangelistic ministry to larger cities. His first tent held 3,000 but he quickly exchanged it for a tent that held 12,000. In July 1948 The Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association was established. Oral began traveling continuously throughout the United States. Like many of his Pentecostal brethren Roberts held inter-racial meetings. This brought him a lot of negative attention from groups who didn't like his stand. He even received death threats for not holding segregated meetings. In 1956 Roberts was invited to Australia. He held meetings in Sydney and Melbourne. In Melbourne there were outright physical attacks and destructive gangs. He was literally driven out of the city for praying for the sick. Often when people discuss the healing revival of the 1950s Oral Roberts and William Branham are listed as the most widely recognized leaders of the movement. Others came along side and many emulated them, but they were the most widely recognized personalities.
Roberts was a man who understood and used the media for his benefit. Roberts began publishing a magazine almost immediately upon starting his ministry. He grasped the power of radio and television. In 1954 Roberts began filming his crusades. He began playing his sermons on radio and then airing the crusade tapes during evening television prime time. Unfortunately there is some evidence that healing meetings were scripted ahead of time, and not all healings were genuine. People began writing to the Ministry headquarters by the thousands. They were accepting Christ as their savior after seeing a person healed on TV. By 1957 the ministry was receiving 1,000 letters a day and he was getting thousands of phone calls. He established a round the clock prayer team to answer calls and pray for people who contacted the ministry. In 1957 Roberts claimed 1,000,000 salvations. Between 1947 and 1968 Roberts conducted over 300 major Crusades. Money was flowing into the organization at an unprecedented rate.
In the late 1950s the healing movement was waning and ministries were under attack for their lack of financial accountability. Roberts began to move on the vision God gave him to build a University. It was chartered in 1963 and became open to students in 1965. Roberts was having a significant national impact in the late 1950s and early 1960s. For several years his named appeared in the Top 100 list of the nation's most respected people. Although Roberts continued to hold healing meetings his focus shifted to the University and the television programs.
The 1970s and 80s brought many crises to the Roberts family. Their daughter Rebecca and son-in-law Marshall were killed in a plane crash. Their son Ronnie struggled with depression after serving in Vietnam and also declaring himself gay. He grew despondent after losing his job and committed suicide. Richard Roberts got a divorce. After Richard remarried he and his wife lost a new born son within two days. Roberts began teaching a doctrine of "seed faith" where he claimed that if you gave to his ministry then God would pay you back in multiplied ways. The television ministry received heavy criticism for the constant requests for money. The Roberts were living an extravagance lifestyle while many of their supporters were not wealthy. Financial questions were raised in how Roberts used University endowment funds to purchase personal homes and cars.
In 1977 Roberts had a vision to build a hospital where people not only received care but received healing prayer. It was to be called City of Faith. Roberts put his heart and soul into the project, believing that God would build it as He had the University. The hospital struggled along and Roberts called his followers to give to the project, believing he had a vision from God to raise the money. Roberts even claimed twice that if money didn't come in that Jesus would "take him home." The hospital was built, but never succeeded financially, and finally closed in 1989. Financial giving was plummeting for both the Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association and Oral Roberts University.
Roberts retired in 1993, at the age of 75. Roberts, with his wife Evelyn, moved to California to live near the coast. Evelyn died in May 2005. Although Roberts influence waned after the problems of the 1970s and 1980s, he was still recognized for his pioneering work on the "sawdust trail", television evangelism, and building a Christian University. He often appeared on religious broadcasting networks as a recognized leader in the healing movement of the last half century. He died December 15, 2009 at the age of 91.
Oral Roberts' legacy is a mixed one. Roberts brought the truth of God's healing to the public in a way that few others accomplished in his lifetime. His financial and personal issues and increasingly extravagant claims eventually brought his ministry into disrepute. The University he established continued to have financial crises under the leadership of his son Richard Roberts. It was only after Richard stepped down in 2009 and new leadership took over the University that it stabilized financially. The University is no longer connected to the Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association.
tweeted to and fro - surviving a distracted and divided age
“We live in a divided age” is so self-evidently true that it’s frankly boring to write. Theories abound on how we got here; what’s undisputed is that we’re here. It sure can feel as if the temperature of virtually every conversation and debate, however trivial, is set to blazing hot . And worst of all, the previous paragraph doesn’t just describe the world — it describes many churches. Rather than shining as a contrast to the perpetual outrage machine, many of us are too busy being conformed to the pattern of this age (Romans 12:2). How, then, can believers forge meaningful unity in a fractured time? It is looking unlikely that we’re going to tweet our way out of the problem. So what’s the path forward? Whiplash World As author Yuval Levin has observed in A Time to Build , the function of institutions in modern life has largely shifted from formative  to performative  — from habitats for growth to platforms for self-expression. Enter a secular university, for example, and you may well emerge more coddled than shaped. But this performative dynamic isn’t confined to colleges; it also infects local churches. Long past are the days when American churchgoers looked to their pastors first  (or perhaps even second or third) for help navigating a fraught cultural landscape. Nowadays it’s pundits — whether on cable news or talk radio or social media — whose voices are most formative. On one level, this is understandable. Pastors are not omnicompetent. They aren’t experts on everything, or even most things. Thus when it comes to current events, Christians should (in one sense) expect less from their pastors. Nevertheless, the larger trend is troubling. When church becomes just another arena in which to perform — whether via a “leadership position” or simply by keeping up appearances — rather than a family in which to be shaped, it has ceased to occupy the gravitational center of one’s life. No wonder priorities spin out of orbit. No wonder people demand that their pastors affirm, and publicly echo, their settled opinions on debatable matters. I’ve heard countless stories of someone leaving their church because of their politics. What I have yet to hear is someone leaving their politics because of their church. One reason churches are losing the battle to form hearts is because the Christians who visit and join and show up for worship Sunday after Sunday are battered by the storms of digital discourse. They’re limping along, exhausted and distracted and confused. No Longer Tossed This is precisely why congregational unity is so essential. Unity is not a squishy sentiment or optional add-on to the Christian life; it is something for which Jesus prayed and bled and died (John 17:22). Just consider the apostle Paul’s logic in Ephesians 4. The ascended King Jesus gave the gift of pastors to equip church members for ministry (verses 8–12). As such ministry builds up  the body (verse 13), the ensuing unity tears down  whatever threatens it (verse 14). In other words, ministry generates unity, and unity generates stability. Thus, unity’s purpose is plain: “so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes” (verse 14). Living in a turbulent time? Labor for unity. It will have a stabilizing effect. But how, practically, do we do this in the local church? How do we keep each other from being pummeled by the raging rapids of modern media? Here are two suggestions. 1. Dust Off Your Documents A good statement of faith, used properly, is a goldmine for church unity. Same with a members’ covenant. These documents shouldn’t gather dust in a file drawer or be confined to a website. They should be used , for they are pregnant with unity-forging potential. Why? They provide a common core, enabling churches to keep the main things central and helping to regulate the temperature of our debates. The million-dollar question then becomes whether our statement of faith speaks to a given topic. Yes, clearly?  Then we also will. Yes, sort of?  Then we might. No, not at all?  Then we likely won’t. In my estimation, a good statement of faith is neither so exhaustive  that an undiscipled Christian couldn’t join the church, nor so mere  that there’s little the church is actually standing for. But we refuse to divide over things we never agreed to agree on. As a church planter, I’ve had to think about developing documents that will establish biblical guardrails — while recognizing that not all doctrines are equally important or clear. In a recent membership class, someone asked why we don’t stake out a clearer position on the end times. It’s a good question. I briefly explained the idea of theological triage — there are first-rank doctrines we must agree on to be Christians, second-rank doctrines we must agree on to be members of the same church, and third-rank doctrines we can actually disagree on and still be members of the same church. Even if various gospel-proclaiming churches classify second- and third-rank doctrines a bit differently, the classification system itself is a useful tool. By codifying only certain doctrines (statement of faith) and promises (covenant), a church crystallizes what members must  agree on — and where there’s room to disagree. This engenders confidence in the essentials and freedom in everything else. This is not to say that a pastor should avoid debatable matters in his preaching — as he unfolds the “whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27), many such matters will arise. It’s simply to say that a church cannot bind members’ consciences on issues where (the church has agreed, as reflected in its documents) God has not clearly spoken. “It’s counterintuitive but true: one way to preserve sound doctrine is to leave ample room for Christian freedom.” It’s counterintuitive but true: one way to preserve sound doctrine is to leave ample room for Christian freedom. Otherwise, churches can easily succumb to legalism by requiring agreement on third-rank issues. But by lowering the fences on debatable matters, we raise the fences on non-debatable ones. Or to change the metaphor, by lowering our collective voice on issues where Scripture is not clear — say, a specific political-policy proposal — we can raise our voice on issues where it is. This is why liberty of conscience is so critical in an age of outrage. As Mark Dever has observed, leaving space for disagreement (on many matters other than gospel clarity) is, in part, what keeps the gospel clear. When we lack a clear understanding of Christian liberty and space for conscience, we will be tempted to stick more into the gospel than is there — that is, agreement on a wider variety of issues. Don’t underestimate the practical value of church documents. They are your friends; weave them into the life of your church. Corporately confess portions of your statement of faith on Sundays. Rehearse the covenant’s promises when you convene a members’ meeting or celebrate the Lord’s Supper. Quote the documents in sermon applications. In so doing, you will forge unity around what has been agreed on — and avoid division around what hasn’t. 2. Get a Table Another way to foster church unity, not to mention sanity, is to trade the Twitter timeline for a table. I mean this literally. How many hours per week do you typically spend scrolling through social media? (Statistically, it’s probably more than you think.) By comparison, how many do you spend conversing with fellow church members over meals? (Statistically, it may be less than you think.) If the first number dwarfs the second, consider that a check-engine light for your soul. Proximity may not always breed unity, but distance certainly won’t. It’s just harder to resent someone when you’re asking them to pass the salt. “Christian, you are spiritually responsible for the members of your church, not for strangers on the Internet.” Christian, you are spiritually responsible for the members of your church, not for strangers on the Internet. Yet who is getting your best energy these days — the members or the strangers? Likewise, if you are a pastor, remember that on the last day you will give account to God not for your followers, but for your flock (Hebrews 13:17). Who is claiming your best energy these days — the followers or the flock? To borrow language from later in Ephesians 4, we are called to “put off” anything that decreases our joy in God, and in his children, and to “put on” whatever increases it (verses 22–24; see also 1 Thessalonians 2:19–20). If something is generating suspicion or coldness toward fellow believers — especially fellow members — then put it off. Maybe that means shut it off . Pray your heart would be more animated by the faces in your membership directory than by the faces in your newsfeed. No Replacement Technology and parachurch ministries are gifts, but they are no replacement for the local church. Anchor your identity there, friend, for only in the communion of the saints will you find ballast amid the storms. In a world of endless options, the church makes our commitments clear. In a world of enormous complexity, the church makes our duties simple. In a world of escalating division, the church makes our unity sweet. These are my people, and I am theirs.
