My mother died of cancer, as did my wife’s father. Our older son survived cancer only through surgery and intensive radiation. Since cancer is the second-leading cause of death in the world, chances are good that you have been touched personally by this terrible disease as well.

Now comes an astounding announcement from a team of Israeli scientists: They might have discovered the first true cure for cancer. One of them told the Jerusalem Post, “We believe we will offer in a year’s time a complete cure for cancer.” He added, “Our cancer cure will be effective from day one, will last a duration of a few weeks and will have no or minimal side-effects at a much lower cost than most other treatments on the market.”

The scientists describe their discovery as a kind of cancer antibiotic. It uses a combination of compounds called “peptides” that kill cancer cells in a way that is unaffected by mutations. Their treatment attacks cancer stem cells and targets cancer cells so specifically that side effects are minimized. It can also be tailored to the specific cancer it is fighting.

The company will soon begin clinical trials that could be completed within a few years and would make the treatment available for specific cases.

As a medical officer with the American Cancer Society notes, it is far too soon to know if this revolutionary treatment is the cure its developers hope it will be. But imagine for a moment that it is. If you created such a drug, wouldn’t you want to give it to the world? Wouldn’t cancer patients everywhere want to try it?

The best possible news

“Gospel” translates the Greek word euangelion, meaning “good news.” Jesus began his public ministry by calling people to “repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15).

The Christian “gospel” is the best possible news: You can be saved from an eternity in hell for an eternity in heaven as the transformed child of your Father. The God who made you loves you so much he considers your eternal life worth the death of his Son. If you will repent of your sins and believe in this good news, asking Jesus to forgive your sins and make you the child of God, he will always answer your prayer.

Everyone needs to hear this good news. Everyone deserves to hear it.

But there’s a catch.

“Lord, let our eyes be opened.”

As Jesus was traveling toward Jerusalem and the cross, he came upon “two blind men sitting by the roadside” (Matthew 20:30a). When they heard that Jesus was coming, they cried out to him, “Lord, have mercy on us, Son of David!” (v. 30b). The crowd rebuked them, but they repeated their cry to Jesus (v. 31).

Our Lord stopped and asked them, “What do you want me to do for you?” (v. 32).

They replied, “Lord, let our eyes be opened” (v. 33).

And “Jesus in pity touched their eyes, and immediately they recovered their sight and followed him” (v. 34).

Lost people are as blind spiritually as these men were physically: “The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Corinthians 4:4). But unlike these men, most lost people don’t know that they are lost.

Growing up in a family that never attended church, this was my story. I assumed that if there is a God, my “good” life would be good enough to get me into his heaven. I had no idea I was destined for hell and would have been offended if you told me so.

This is why so many Americans are lost in a country where the gospel is so accessible. If they understood their peril, they would change. This is part of the enemy’s deception.

Four steps to spiritual sight

Spiritual blindness is a good metaphor for our culture. We are all born with such blindness. But like the men on the road to Jerusalem, some of us meet the Great Physician and our eyes are healed. Now it’s our job to “pay it forward,” helping those who are blind meet the One who can do for them what he did for us.

But if a blind man won’t admit that he’s blind, he’s likely to resist and reject our message in the belief that he doesn’t need what we are offering and that we are trying to impose ourselves on him. This is inevitable and logical. We feel the same way when Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses knock on our door.

What would cause such a blind person to welcome our help? Consider four steps.

First: Build a relationship with him so that he knows we care genuinely for him. We must earn the right to tell him what he does not want to hear.

Second: Live in such a way that he wants what we have. If we claim to be sighted but stumble as much as he does, why would he want to be like us?

Third: Be present in his life when the burden of his blindness becomes so great that he is willing to consider our offer of sight.

Fourth: Lead him to the Great Physician. Help him confess his blindness to Jesus and ask for his forgiveness and grace. Then celebrate with our friend as his eyes are opened and his eternity is transformed.

There are only two kinds of people in the world

If you discovered the cure for cancer, you’d do what the Israeli scientists are doing: You’d announce it to the world, believing that everyone deserves what you have found. In fact, you have discovered a far greater cure, one that prevents eternal death and gives eternal life.

What will you do with what you have found?

Craig Denison: “God believes that you are worth the death of his Son, and there is nothing you can do to change his mind.” The same is true for every person you meet today.

There are only two kinds of people in the world: those who are spiritually blind, and those who can see and are therefore responsible to help those who cannot.

Which are you?

Denison Forum

Did you hear about the Pennsylvania man who has a registered emotional support alligator?

Joie Henney says his pet, Wally, likes to give hugs. Henney told reporters that his doctor gave him approval to use the five-foot-long alligator for emotional support rather than go on medication for depression. He frequently takes Wally to senior centers and minor-league baseball games. “He’s just like a dog,” he told a woman recently. “He wants to be loved and petted.”

When I read about Wally, I thought of an Indonesian woman who was keeping Merry, a fourteen-foot crocodile, as a pet. Earlier this month, she was killed and partially eaten by the animal.

There’s an old story about a scorpion and a frog who met on the bank of a stream. The scorpion asked the frog to carry him across the water on its back.

The frog asked, “How do I know you won’t sting me?”

The scorpion said, “Because if I do, I will die too.”

The frog was satisfied, and the two set out across the water. Midstream, the scorpion stung the frog.

As the frog started to sink, knowing they would both drown, it gasped, “Why?”

The scorpion replied: “It’s my nature.”

The danger of euphemisms Continue reading Denison Forum – The key to serenity in a chaotic culture →

Yesterday was Holocaust Remembrance Day. Survivors marked the seventy-fourth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, where more than a million people were killed. Six million Jews in total died in the Holocaust.

Closer to home, Dakota Theriot was captured yesterday afternoon at his grandmother’s home in Virginia. The twenty-one-year-old is believed to have killed his parents, his girlfriend, and her father and brother.

In other news, at least fifty-eight people are dead and at least three hundred are missing after a dam collapsed in Brazil on Friday. This morning’s Wall Street Journal reports that the rushing wall of mud was enough to fill a football stadium more than six times.

And ISIS has now claimed responsibility for the bombing of a Catholic cathedral in the Philippines during Sunday Mass. At least twenty people died in the double bomb attack.

Skeptics often ask what difference Christianity makes in a world like ours. If our God apparently cannot “fix” the world he made, how does faith in him change anything? Isn’t religion just the “opium of the people,” as Marx claimed?

In fact, isn’t religion not just irrelevant but dangerous to our progressive society?

Is religion dangerous?

When Christians like Karen Pence choose to follow biblical morality in ways the culture finds offensive, the outcry is deafening. Commentator Matt Walsh: “Gone are the days when leftists pretended to see religion as a thing that should be relegated to homes and churches and private schools. That very small amount of extremely limited and qualified ‘tolerance’ is gone. They will not tolerate Christianity in any forum, especially a private school” (his emphasis).

The “religion is dangerous” movement has been gathering momentum for several years. Critics such as Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris claim that religion is not just irrelevant and outdated but positively dangerous to society.

Religion flies planes into buildings and causes 9/11s, we’re told. It creates clergy abuse scandals and spends billions on buildings rather than people. It’s homophobic, racist, etc.

Of course, any group can be caricatured by blaming it for the sins of people who misrepresent and corrupt its teachings. Atheistic Communism has been responsible for 100 million deaths around the world. Are we to blame Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris for these atrocities?

When Christians were charged with cannibalism

We’ve been here before.

Early Christians were accused of being heretics since they would not worship the emperor and gods of Rome. They were charged with cannibalism for eating the “body and blood” of Jesus, with incest for loving each other as brothers and sisters, and with sorcery for performing miracles.

Apologists such as Justin Martyr, Athenagoras, and Tertullian responded by defending their faith rationally. But they emphasized as well the good lives and works of those they defended.

For instance, Athenagoras stated that Christians, though sometimes “unable to prove in words the benefits of our doctrine, by their deeds . . . exhibit the benefit arising from the possession of its truth.” Justin Martyr claimed that Christians are the empire’s “best allies in securing good order.” He noted that Christians pay taxes (Matthew 22:15-22) and submit to governing authorities (Romans 13:1-5) and even pray for the emperor as part of their worship (1 Timothy 2:1-2).

Then as now, our lives are our best defense. The culture may condemn us for obeying Scripture regarding same-sex relations, for instance, but it takes note when we work to eradicate AIDS. Skeptics try to dismiss our faith as dangerous, but they must account for the fact that Christians have contributed more to education, healthcare, the welfare and protection of children, and care for the impoverished than any other group in history.

“The victory that overcomes the world”

The more broken our world, the more relevant our faith. When you and I find positive ways to make a practical difference in the lives we influence, we sow the seed of the gospel and plant trees we may never sit under.

All the while, we should remember that “this is the victory that overcomes the world–our faith” (1 John 5:4). Our eternal victory in Christ is certain.

Saturday morning, I watched the women’s finals of the Australian Open. It was a terrific match between Petra Kvitova and Naomi Osaka. The momentum shifted back and forth. The television cameras repeatedly showed Osaka’s family, coaches, and friends reacting to the stress of the competition.

I, however, watched the match in complete calm. That’s because I was 100 percent certain that Osaka would win. And that’s because the match was over before I watched it.

Since Sydney, Australia, is seventeen hours ahead of us in Dallas, the match began at 2:30 a.m. our time. ESPN tape-delayed its coverage to later that morning. But a news prompt on my cell phone told me the results of the tournament before the television coverage began.

As a result, I watched two players compete for a prize one of them had already won.

While it is true that “for [God’s] sake we are being killed all the day long” (Romans 8:36), it is also true that “in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us” (v. 37).

Let’s claim–and share–our victory today, to the glory of God.

Denison Forum