You may attend the Preview Class on February 7th (FREE OF CHARGE and WITHOUT REGISTERING), to see if you would like to sign up for all 13 weeks! Attendance to all other classes requires registration.

Class information is listed below. Click the following link to register and purchase class materials.
http://www.daveramsey.com/fpu/locations/org/32930/class/203622

But a new publication by Egyptologists and Biblical scholars Manfred Görg, Peter van der Veen and Christoffer Theis suggests that there may be an even earlier reference to Israel in the Egyptian record. Görg discovered a broken statue pedestal containing hieroglyphic name-rings in the Egyptian Museum of Berlin (pictured) and, after studying it with his colleagues, they suggest that one of the name-rings should be read as “Israel.” This newly rediscovered inscription is dated to around 1400 B.C.E.–about 200 years earlier than the Merneptah Stele.

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Pentecostal preaching at its finest!

Pentecostal preaching at its finest!

We believe that we made a great impact upon the city of Paris, the strongholds of Satan have come down and Jesus, the King of kings has made his triumphal entry into Paris and he will reign in the hearts of many Parisians.

Anne Nowacki
UPCI Missionary to France

1 Corinthians 13:1-3

In these first three verses we see a life without love. We have a picture of an individual who is blessed with many gifts and talents, but without love that life is empty and worthless. We learn from these verses three areas over which love must be sovereign: the heart, the mind, and the will.

1. Love – Sovereign in the Heart

“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal” (13:1).

Alan Redpath said, “The power behind your tongue, your speech, is not determined by the extent of your vocabulary but by the depth of your heart, by how much you love.” The tongue possesses incredible power to build up and to destroy. Our words hold incredible weight and reveal the condition of our heart.
I have heard preachers, and you probably have too, who were simply incredible public speakers. Their mastery of language and words was tremendous. One moment, they have people laughing. The next moment everyone is in tears. It is easy to admire an orator like that but while oratory can command admiration, only love can reach the heart. When love is sovereign in the heart, it will be manifested in what we say.

2. Love – Sovereign in the Mind

“And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understanding all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing” (13:2).

There are men in the Bible who illustrate this point. For instance, Balaam was a prophet, but he had no love, and therefore betrayed his office and God’s people. Caiaphas, the High Priest, had discernment, knowing that one must be killed for the nation, but he was without love, and become a leader among those who crucified Jesus. Judas Iscariot had knowledge from his three years at the side of Jesus, but he had no love, betraying Him in the end. [...]

3. Love – Sovereign in the Will

“If I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, and have not love, it profiteth me nothing” (13:3).

How dangerous it is to be willing to fight and die for our faith and yet lack the spirit of love. It is pointless to die for the wrong motive. [Jesus] told the church at Ephesus, “I know thy works, and thy labor, and thy patience, and how thou canst not bear evil men…and for my name’s sake hast labored, and hast not fainted. Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left they first love (agape)” (Revelation 2:2-4). What a picture of busyness, patience, work, and endurance! And yet it is lacking in the most important thing: love.

We must allow His love to be sovereign in our lives: heart, mind, and emotions.

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Pentecostal preaching at its finest!

Steve and Yvette Phelps
Region(s): Africa
Field(s): Uganda

Republic of Uganda
Area Coordinator: James A. Crumpacker
Superintendent/President: Philip Tolstad
Population: 34,612,250
Area: 93,066 sq. mi.
Capital: Kampala
Languages: English (official national language, taught in grade schools, used in courts of law and by most newspapers and some radio broadcasts), Ganda or Luganda (most widely used of the Niger-Congo languages, preferred for native language publications in the capital and may be taught in school), other Niger-Congo languages, Nilo-Saharan languages, Swahili, Arabic
Religions: Roman Catholic 41.9%, Protestant 42% (Anglican 35.9%, Pentecostal 4.6%, Seventh-Day Adventist 1.5%), Muslim 12.1%, other 3.1%, none 0.9% (2002 census)

Uganda lies astride the equator right in the heart of Africa. The northern portion of Lake Victoria frames Uganda’s scenic southern boundary. Uganda boasts a mild and pleasant climate due to an average altitude of 4,000 feet. Although the official language is English, more than 40 language/ ethnic groups present a mammoth challenge for evangelism and training. Beginning in the 1970s, missionaries appointed to Kenya endeavored to reach into Uganda, but the political turbulence in Uganda during the 70s and 80s made it impossible to exert lasting spiritual impact and influence. In the 90s, however, the situation changed. In May 1996 the Ugandan government registered the United Apostolic Church of Uganda. Eight apostolic pastors and their congregations in eastern Uganda, near the Kenyan border, formed the nucleus of the new church. These first congregations had blossomed from the witness of a Ugandan who graduated from the Bible school in Kenya in 1992 and felt a burden to reach his own nation and people. According to the 2006 Annual Field Report, the UACU had 2,700 constituents, 58 licensed ministers, and 52 churches and preaching points. AIMers and the Uganda A-Team, directed by Pastor Huey Royer from Georgia, have energized and expanded the church. The A-Team has brought advanced training to our pastors and outreach to non-apostolic groups and pastors. By January 2007, the licensed pastors numbered 62 and the church had expanded into 18 districts. As of 2011, there are over 50,000 constituents in 600 churches across Uganda.

Missionary Bio:

Steve and Yvette Phelps pastored for five years in Prescott, Arizona, where he also served for several years as the District Home Missions Secretary. Prior to pastoring, he assisted the late Don Ikerd, former missionary to Africa, for four years in Arizona. Yvette has served as the Ladies Ministries section leader and Home Missions Wives Support. The Phelpses received missionary appointment to Uganda in 2011 and will be teaching in the Bible school, conducting regional seminars/conferences, developing new areas of Uganda for evangelism, church planting and supervising the translating of materials.

Information courtesy of Global Missions of the United Pentecostal Church International and The World Factbook (CIA)

The second child of Martin Luther King Sr. (1899-1984), a pastor, and Alberta Williams King (1904-1974), a former schoolteacher, Martin Luther King Jr. was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on January 15, 1929. Along with his older sister, the future Christine King Farris (born 1927), and younger brother, Alfred Daniel Williams King (1930-1969), he grew up in the city’s Sweet Auburn neighborhood, then home to some of the most prominent and prosperous African Americans in the country.

A gifted student, King attended segregated public schools and at the age of 15 was admitted to Morehouse College, the alma mater of both his father and maternal grandfather, where he studied medicine and law. Although he had not intended to follow in his father’s footsteps by joining the ministry, he changed his mind under the mentorship of Morehouse’s president, Dr. Benjamin Mays, an influential theologian and outspoken advocate for racial equality. After graduating in 1948, King entered Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, where he earned a Bachelor of Divinity degree, won a prestigious fellowship and was elected president of his predominantly white senior class.

King then enrolled in a graduate program at Boston University, completing his coursework in 1953 and earning a doctorate in systematic theology two years later. While in Boston he met Coretta Scott (1927-2006), a young singer from Alabama who was studying at the New England Conservatory of Music. The couple wed in 1953 and settled in Montgomery, Alabama, where King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. They had four children: Yolanda Denise King (1955-2007), Martin Luther King III (born 1957), Dexter Scott King (born 1961) and Bernice Albertine King (born 1963).

Martin Luther King Jr. and the Montgomery Bus Boycott

The King family had been living in Montgomery for less than a year when the highly segregated city became the epicenter of the burgeoning struggle for civil rights in America, galvanized by the landmark Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision of 1954. On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks (1913-2005), secretary of the local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People chapter, refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery bus and was arrested. Activists coordinated a bus boycott that would continue for 381 days, placing a severe economic strain on the public transit system and downtown business owners. They chose Martin Luther King Jr. as the protest’s leader and official spokesman.

By the time the Supreme Court ruled segregated seating on public buses unconstitutional in November 1956, King, heavily influenced by Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) and the activist Bayard Rustin (1912-1987), had entered the national spotlight as an inspirational proponent of organized, nonviolent resistance. (He had also become a target for white supremacists, who firebombed his family home that January.) Emboldened by the boycott’s success, in 1957 he and other civil rights activists–most of them fellow ministers–founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), a group committed to achieving full equality for African Americans through nonviolence. (Its motto was “Not one hair of one head of one person should be harmed.”) He would remain at the helm of this influential organization until his death.

King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference

In his role as SCLC president, Martin Luther King Jr. traveled across the country and around the world, giving lectures on nonviolent protest and civil rights as well as meeting with religious figures, activists and political leaders. (During a month-long trip to India in 1959, he had the opportunity to meet Gandhi, the man he described in his autobiography as “the guiding light of our technique of nonviolent social change.”) King also authored several books and articles during this time.

In 1960 King and his family moved to Atlanta, his native city, where he joined his father as co-pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church. This new position did not stop King and his SCLC colleagues from becoming key players in many of the most significant civil rights battles of the 1960s. Their philosophy of nonviolence was put to a particularly severe test during the Birmingham campaign of 1963, in which activists used a boycott, sit-ins and marches to protest segregation, unfair hiring practices and other injustices in one of America’s most racially divided cities. Arrested for his involvement on April 12, King penned the civil rights manifesto known as the “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” an eloquent defense of civil disobedience addressed to a group of white clergymen who had criticized his tactics.

King Marches for Freedom

Later that year, Martin Luther King Jr. worked with a number of civil rights and religious groups to organize the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, a peaceful political rally designed to shed light on the injustices African Americans continued to face across the country. Held on August 28 and attended by some 200,000 to 300,000 participants, the event is widely regarded as a watershed moment in the history of the American civil rights movement and a factor in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The march culminated in King’s most famous address, known as the “I Have a Dream” speech, a spirited call for peace and equality that many consider a masterpiece of rhetoric. Standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial–a monument to the president who a century earlier had brought down the institution of slavery in the United States—he shared his vision of a future in which “this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’” The speech and march cemented King’s reputation at home and abroad; later that year he was named Man of the Year by TIME magazine and in 1964 became the youngest person ever awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

In the spring of 1965, King’s elevated profile drew international attention to the violence that erupted between white segregationists and peaceful demonstrators in Selma, Alabama, where the SCLC and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) had organized a voter registration campaign. Captured on television, the brutal scene outraged many Americans and inspired supporters from across the country to gather in Selma and take part in a march to Montgomery led by King and supported by President Lyndon Johnson (1908-1973), who sent in federal troops to keep the peace. That August, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, which guaranteed the right to vote–first awarded by the 15th Amendment–to all African Americans.

Martin Luther King Jr.’s Final Years and Assassination

The events in Selma deepened a growing rift between Martin Luther King Jr. and young radicals who repudiated his nonviolent methods and commitment to working within the established political framework. As more militant black leaders such as Stokely Carmichael (1941-1998) rose to prominence, King broadened the scope of his activism to address issues such as the Vietnam War and poverty among Americans of all races. In 1967, King and the SCLC embarked on an ambitious program known as the Poor People’s Campaign, which was to include a massive march on the capital.

On the evening of April 4, 1968, King was fatally shot while standing on the balcony of a motel in Memphis, where he had traveled to support a sanitation workers’ strike. In the wake of his death, a wave of riots swept major cities across the country, while President Johnson declared a national day of mourning. James Earl Ray (1928-1998), an escaped convict and known racist, pleaded guilty to the murder and was sentenced to 99 years in prison. (He later recanted his confession and gained some unlikely advocates, including members of the King family, before his death in 1998.)

After years of campaigning by activists, members of Congress and Coretta Scott King, among others, in 1983 President Ronald Reagan (1911-2004) signed a bill creating a U.S. federal holiday in honor of King. Observed on the third Monday of January, it was first celebrated in 1986.

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Pentecostal preaching at its finest!