Young Christian Leaders' Alliance

What will you be doing this year to support your school?  Have you considered starting a prayer group to uphold your friends, leaders, and teachers before the Lord?  The YCLA will be pressing forward once again in the 2010-11 school year with our Operation Pi vision: a “Prayer Initiative” for our education, in which you can be a part! 

If you are not praying for your school, you are missing an amazing blessing God wants to give you.  However, even if you already pray for your school on your own, it is still a great idea to begin praying regularly with your friends.  Not only does this action allow you to better track God’s workings and acknowledge Him to others, it creates a spirit of teamwork between students with a heart for Christ. 

The YCLA has developed two web pages that can aid in assembling such a group.  Go to www.YCLAlliance.org/operationpi.htm for more info on this project and to join our Facebook page!  Or, for resources and support in getting started, you can check out www.YoungChristianLeaders.org/prayer.aspx.

You may also email yclalliance@gmail.com with any comments, questions, or ideas.  Thanks for working with us to reclaim America’s schools!

The YCLA is happy to announce that our long-awaited Handbook is now available for distribution on compact disc. The disc contains the full edition of the BEAMS Handbook in PDF format. It also features printable sheets with all the required Scriptures for memorization, the BEAMS info sheet, and several other resources such as a download of the shareware Bible study program SwordSearcher.

Several months ago, we made the decision to forgo the option of paper publication for the time being. Instead, God gave us the idea of placing BEAMS on CD-ROM. More than a simple book, the Handbook will be a part of an interactive system.  Throughout the document, active links will be posted which will connect to other valuable information online. As a PDF, it will be completely searchable, and the Table of Contents will link directly to each page listed. Even better, such an arrangement allows us to include audio and video files which will no doubt play an even greater role in future CD editions.

Another important feature of the CDs will be a link to the login page of the YCLA site, www.YCLAlliance.org. By clicking on a picture of a golden telescope which also appears on the book’s front cover, users will be able to immediately connect to the YCLA online members’ features to post blogs and discuss issues on the forums, and to browse the archives of past newsletters.  If they are not yet members online, they will be able to join through this same link.

The Handbook ranks and material remains the same: a guiding set of achievements which build leadership, teamwork, and trust in God. The Handbook promotes courage by proclaiming God’s power to conquer every possible enemy.

Please pray for and join us in distributing this CD to churches, groups, and individual youth as we seek to train them in Biblical impact strategies.  Also, please consider ordering a BEAMS CD. The CD is $10.00 for members, and $12.00 plus shipping for non-members. You may order one or more at www.youngchristianleaders.org/contactus.aspx. The Handbook, with writing and compilation work spanning close to two years of YCLA effort, will undoubtedly prove to be an important resource in your arsenal of leadership skill for the Bible and its ageless principles.

The idea of a new reformation has been posed on many occasions in the past few years and decades. Many believe that God will do a work near the end of time which will show His power in a way paralleled only by His work in and around the early church. Such a belief has a foundation in Scripture. It stems mainly from passages describing a “latter rain” – a time of preparing for the final harvest.  These descriptions are found, for example, in Joel 2:23, Zechariah 10:1, and James 5:7.  It is believed that if Pentecost was the “early rain,” a “latter rain” is also still approaching, with similar proportions.

There have been numerous claims as to what the essence of this reformation will be. Statements vary that it will be anything from a revival of miraculous healing to a realization of true self-esteem. What is the truth about the final reformation?

The Bible gives us one main reason the “latter rain” is withheld. Jeremiah 3:1-3 describe the state of much of the church today – trusting and falsely loving everything but God Himself.  In order for the new reformation to take place, God’s Word must become the sole final authority.  We must truly believe in its truth.  We must be willing to follow God’s commands in our lives, for His sake and not that of others.  Thus, the first element of the new reformation is that the Bible must become our ultimate operational standard.

There are several specific areas in which a return to Scriptural authority is necessary. First, believers need to be willing to “wake up” and reclaim a healthy, Christ-like mind. Scripture tells us to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ (I Corinthians 10:5). Rock music and worldly television are two influences which often contribute to the inability of believers to obey this command.

Second, each of us must have a right fear of God. The Bible says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10). A fear of God will lead us to have respect for others, while giving us the courage to take a different path (Matthew 10:28).

Third, we must recognize and live the fact that the church is not an institutional system, but a community of believers God has created to edify each other on a daily basis (Hebrews 3:13). Church must become more than a once-a-week-event; it must be a cooperation and communication with others in the body of Christ, throughout the week.

Finally, the gospel must once again be preached as a message of salvation from sin (Matthew

1:21). It is not enough to scare people out of Hell. If claimed messengers of Christ do not teach His victory over Satan’s dominion, a grave danger exists that they are on the path of the “traitors” described by Paul in II Timothy 3:5: “Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.”  

God’s reformation will come in His time. Let us be strong in our “long patience” for the latter rain (James 5:7). In the mean time, let us accept His supremacy, its foundation.

-R. Josiah Magnuson

By R. Josiah Magnuson, YCLA President.

The theory of Evolution is based on a self-contradictory setof ideas. It depends biologically on two main features: natural selection (theidea that the best-adapted organisms will survive) and the existence of mutations(random changes of genetic structure, in reproduction). It is said that overmillions of years, mutations will gradually occur which will be beneficial toany given organism, giving it a competitive “edge” over others in its class.The trait will thus be passed on as that organism reproduces, eventuallybecoming the standard for the entire species.

However, the fact is that the process of natural selectionhas no inventive capacity, even in combination with mutations. Natural selectionwas created to modify existing systems to keep species as a whole alive, butnot to invent new systems or species. The reason is that in order for amutation (the “fuel” for natural selection) to create new information, it wouldhave to occur simultaneously with an enormous number of other mutations. Everyoperation of life known depends on a system with a number of inter-dependentcomponents, each of which must exist for the operation to occur.

Evolution proposes that sets of mutations did not come to besimultaneously, but were added one by one over many generations. Naturalselection would thus serve not to preserve organisms with elements of the newinformation, but to root out each new individual mutation as it occurred! Farfrom having a competitive edge, the organism or its close descendants which possessedthe mutation would be out-performed by the others around them, having expendedenergy for a useless cause.

There is nothing in Evolution to “see” which mutations couldbe useful in the future. The only goal is for the creature to survive; it mustwork with what it has. Even if it were possible for carriers of the mutatedinformation to keep from being selected against, it would be extremelyimprobable that all the mutations would finally add up to something useful inthe genetic code.

The only option we are left with is that each function oflife was formed with all the necessary components intact. Evolution clearlydoes not provide this answer. However, there is no reason why the creation oflife’s systems could not have been accomplished by a hyper-dimensionalIntelligence. The Evolutionary assumption that the universe and everything init are self-existing is not only unnecessary; it is irresponsible and opposedto rational scientific investigation.

The only way all the inter-dependent components of life’ssystems could have formed is if each were created with advance knowledge as towhat each component was meant for and how each would relate to the other. Dareanyone mention… God?

For info on other scientific laws which Evolution violates, goto www.WorldRevScience.blogspot.com.

For answers to challenges to a literal reading of Genesis, wealso highly recommend www.AnswersInGenesis.org